"I am sorry." Nitarja covered her face with her hands, when she realized what she had done. "If I just have not . . "

"Fuck you Nitarja, I forbid you to be sorry. " He looked at her resolutely. "No, do not try to blame yourself, you have done nothing wrong."

"Let me think about it, in the meantime, you three should find a way to get inside." Frei said, pointing his finger in the direction of the city wall and withdrew into the depths of his mind, how they say it? Where is the will, there is always a way. He just needed to find it, but from now on, it would have to be inside his head, as Victor would know everything his companions knew.

There was no time for caution. Anything goes.

Since the moment he had woken up in that white room, he had been swallowed by the machine that was the Divine Universe's Adventurers' Guild, they had injected him into a dubious tutorial, forced a mission down his throat and in the end Gabri'El himself kindly persuaded him to stuck to the people involved in the Antares project. He had been dancing on the palm of their hand for too long.

Gabri'El should pay his debt for his services, right?

[Hey, you, stop being useless and provide some help]

He fired off a message he would not have dared to send if he was in his right mind.

[What?! How dare you address one of El with that kind of attitude?! I will have your head! Besides, I am in no position to help anyone, if I could only get rid of this heathen Cinibann, I would be able to think of a solution for every problem under the Heaven.]

[Wait, don't you have Aethon Cinibann in mind?]

[What?! You know him? Can you call him off? Why am I not surprised, he reminds me of you.]

The voice on the other side deflated significantly.

[I can help you to get rid of him easily, if you promise to earnestly help me in turn when I ask you for help.]

* * * * * *

Gabri'El gritted his teeth, he would lie to that incompetent subordinate of his any day, but now he had to bear the heavy burden of [Righteous] and could not easily promise something that he would not honor at a later date.

"Gabri'El, you are really diligent in your training, what weapon do you want to train with today? You are not that good with a sword, we should repeat the basic lessons." Gabri'El tried to ignore the voice of his unwanted companion.

[Alright, but I can do only what is in my ability, do not expect miracles.]

It pained him greatly to do service to such a worm, who surely sought only profit for himself instead of thinking about the greater good for the Divine Universe, he would reward him a plenty at a later date, when the order and his powers had been restored.

[I accept your promise, now say to your friend exactly what I tell you . . . ]

After a while Garbri'El was nearly shaking with fury. He would have never imagined that he would have to help this lowlife only because a few lines of curse words. But there was nothing he could do, he had given him his word and the pest, Aethon Cinibann, had really left his side.

"Pha, I can take the backlash, I am just a level one anyway." Gabri'El decided to play it smart. Halving his level? To forget all abilities? No problem, he had none as he was still level one!

"I had him good." He chuckled, laughing pompously.

[Hey, you, I have decided that I will not provide any help to you.]

It was a pity that he could not see the worm's long face.

[Well, I have not asked you to help me yet, so it is OK.]

Gabri'El's face turned to stone, when he remembered the exact wording.

[State your request now, I do not know if it will be possible to help you at a later date.]

He pressed on, he needed to break the promise now, not at a later date.

[The later it is, the higher your level and greater your skills and the more possible it will become.]

He could feel the sarcasm that was overflowing from the last sentence.

"That scum!!" Gabri'El almost shouted with his face turning red, he felt like he had aged in the past month more that in the last thousand years. "How can he know of the penalty?! That little rat!"

* * * * * *

"Damn, this is a problem. That cheater surely wants to break the promise while the stakes are low, I cannot call in his favor now." Frei bit his lip. Considering he had only weeks, Gabri'El was not a reliable help in any scenario he could come up with.

It was not realistic that he would be able to bury Victor alive in a matter of weeks while at level three. Although he could think of some scenarios that would allow him to do so, the problem was that he had to keep Victor alive for a long period of time and other vampires would be searching for him. The probability of them finding Victor was quite high especially when Frei did not know the spells and other specific tricks of this world.

He had to think out of the box, was there another solution he had overlooked?

Maybe Victor had a similar hobby and they could become great friends, through the virtue of gardening, hiking, computer games or other activity, he would find a soul mate in Frei and Frei could just kindly ask him to. ..

"No, that is not it." He shook his head while holding his chin with his right hand.

If he could not incapacitate Victor for eternity, or kindly persuade him to simply drop the matter, the only other solution was to find some leverage against him and use blackmail. The problem was that Nitarja already was Victor's leverage against Frei, he needed something strong to counter him.

"Think, think, think Frei. Out of the box, something that is escaping your attention, something simple, elegant that will solve everything right away, something . . " Frei abruptly stopped and his eyes opened wide.

"I have it!" A wide smile appeared on Frei's face, while he clapped his hands. It would not solve everything, but his immediate crisis would be no more.

He slowly bent his back and picked up the unfortunate instrument that still lay at the exact spot where Nitarja had dropped it. Turning it to face its small silver part, he sighed.

"This one will require a little bit of acting, but it should work." Frei waited for the group to return, they still needed to get inside.

In the end, they had to wait for the night and used simple wooden ladder to climb over the city wall. This kind of strategy was possible only because the wall was quite long and the guards did not seem to be disciplined or payed well. Once inside, Frei proposed for them to move separately and meet at the central square before lunch. He managed to persuade others that it would be faster to explore the city that way, but he needed to separate from them to execute his plan.

For his plan to work well, he needed for his companions to be unable to verify the current state of his hair.

Luckily, Frei found what he had in mind during the half-day he had and could meet his companions again at the city square with a spectacular smile.

"What the hell . . " Nitarja and Ejay stared at Frei who looked quite different.

"Well, I am sorry for making you worried, but I wanted to show you why that silver stick did not work." Frei smiled and ran his right hand through his dark purple hair. "See, I kind of had this interest in a certain person as of late and began coloring my hair to find the best look. It seems like the thick layer of color caused what happened yesterday."

"What, so you colored your hair for your fiance and got captured by the slavers then instead? You are one unlucky guy." Ratel laughed.

"Incredible, so when your hair get in the way, there is no reaction because of the thick layer of dye?! You are a piece of work Frei." Ejay shook his head. "To tell you the truth, I have suspected it, because your hair color was not ordinary for an elf."

"Do not act smart Ejay, you had no clue." Ratel jabbed Eajy with her elbow for his boasting.

"You said that you did it because of a certain person . . ." Nitarja let her sentence unfinished, waiting for Frei's explanation.

"Yeah, yeah, but that was before we have ended up in this mess, so none of you know her, of course." Frei laughed, but his laugh ended up kind of stuck in his throat halfway, when he saw how Nitarja began fidgeting.

"Damn, she definitely got the wrong idea." Frei thought, but could not clear the misunderstanding, because his lie was hanging on a thread too thin as it was, he had to leave the topic as fast as possible, the less memories they had about the incident, the better.

"So, when you like someone, you color your hair to look better, right? Is it Ejay?" Ratel continued to elaborate and Frei's lie began to bloat in a direction he had not expected.

"N-No, I mean y-yes, but . . " It was so unfair! He was afraid to deny it, as he might invalidate his spectacular plan to explain his yesterday's reaction to the silver stick!

"Oh, oh, we see. I have noticed that you stared at Ratel with interest back then, when she was lying on her bed." Ejay poured oil into the fire, enjoying the situation.

"You will have to try better boy, a smooth skin like you, at least you should have chosen black or white." Ratel began to measure him with her gaze, like if she could scan his genetic code with her eyes. "We can give it a try, eh?"

"Not you Ratel, I mean. . . " Frei blurted out, but realized too late that it was a setup, Ejay and Ratel just looked at each other and giggled like little kids who had just succeeded in pulling off a prank on their sibling.

"It looks good, Frei." Nitarja blushed and turned away from them, slowly walking forward to regain her composure.

"Oh, this is serious!" Frei thought and his eyes widened. Who was Nitarja? An intergalactic prostitute that had probably more sexual experience than all the three of them combined, she had built a cold fortress around her heart and her normal reaction would have been what Ratel had just said, but not meant as a joke. Acting like this probably signified that he had managed to penetrate the cold castle of her outer personality and get to her real persona that had been hiding inside all the time.

"Wait, had just Victor indirectly helped me to pick up a girl? Maybe we can really be friends in the end." A silly thought appeared in his mind for a second and he had to shake his head to clear his mind. They should focus on the mission, now that the incident with the stick was no longer inexplicable, they could complete it without him being exposed.

Still, he had to hurry and level up to find a way to break Victor's hold over Nitarja, before something similar came up. The next issue was if he wanted to pursue a deeper relationship with Nitarja at the same time.

"Man, life is always like this. All the time nothing happens and then . . .. Suddenly everything rushes at the speed of light." Frei thought, but was swiftly returned to reality by Ejay's voice.

"We should quickly get away from the square, the sun seems to be coming out." Frei followed Ejay's eyes and saw a big cloud that was slowly rolling to the south. "I know where we'll get the spells, we should be done by the evening."