Claud looked at the two newcomers, who were eyeing them with equal interest. One of them was a man, whose body was covered by a cloak, hiding most of his features. The other was a woman, whose face was hidden by a white mask that had some esoteric markings on it.

“The guy roleplaying with the cloak and dagger act is Hein, my assistant. The woman who’s playing at a masquerade ball’s Skald, who’s my second assistant. Together, we make up the Seekers of Truth.” Norn smiled, indicating the two people who were seated to her left and right. A table laden with fragrant dishes sat in front of them, separating the Seekers of Truth from Claud and Lily.

Claud eyed the two of them and smiled. “Nice to meet you two. I’m Claud.”

“And I’m Lily!” Lily looked at them. “Still, assistants? I was expecting party members, not assistants.”

“I’ll call them party members when they catch up to me in the act of piercing through falsehoods,” Norn replied. “Until then, however, they’re still my assistants. Still, they are indeed close friends of mine. Right, how goes the search?”

“Boss,” Hein replied, “we’ve mapped out the area surrounding the Secretary-General’s office. There are quite a few artefacts located around the building, but we can’t identify their use. Nor can we approach them easily.”

“What’s the problem?” Norn asked.

“It’s a Border of Transmigration,” Skald replied. “It’s blocked off the surrounding area…”

Claud and Lily listened intently. He knew that the Border of Transmigration was one of the most dangerous death traps in the ruins, far more so than a spatial collapse. The latter could be dealt with through the use of an artefact called the Sea-Queller, which looked like a wristwatch that could stabilise space for around ten seconds. The former, however, could only be avoided.

“Curses.” Norn pondered for a moment. “Never mind. Let’s search another area after this.”

She turned to Claud and Lily. “Sorry. Right, you guys don’t really need to wait for us, you know. We won’t be polite when you’re cooking for us tomorrow!”

Claud rolled his eyes and speared a sausage with his fork. Raising it to Lily’s mouth, he said, “Open wide!”

“Ah, youth…”

The five of them began to focus on eating seriously after that. While it was not that different from a second honeymoon in Claud’s opinion, they still needed to get things done. For one, the two of them had only explored one building before getting the heck out of the place, so there were lots of things that they hadn’t checked through yet.

That was going to change, naturally.

As Lily fed Claud some soup with a huge grin on her face, Norn asked, “How are you guys going to explore the place? Are you just going to explore randomly? Or do you have a map?”

“Randomly, I think,” Claud replied.

Lily nodded her head. “We’re just looking out for places of interest and places that supposedly hold good artefacts. We’re not that interested in breaking new ground.”

“Good choice,” Norn replied. “Exploring new areas can be very deadly. Even if you’re a mid-rank folder, you’ll need to be very careful.”

“We very much agree,” Claud replied.

“Right, of course you do.” Risti’s aunt laughed. “I forgot. Anyway, as requested, we’ll be freeloading off you two for tomorrow’s share, okay?”

“I hope you like stew,” Lily replied.

“Oh, I love stew. Those two rarely make it for me, though. They’re quite disappointing.” Norn shook her head. “Right, is your base completely constructed? There are some places you can use around the square that can be of use. For instance, there’s a bathroom if you actually need to relieve yourself, and there’s a fountain of sorts.”

“A bathroom?” Claud turned to look at the place where she had pointed at. It was a small outhouse-like building of sorts; it was probably no different from an actual outhouse in terms of function and form either. Evidently, even across universes, there were still things like public toilets and whatnot.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it? Even in the ruins of another universe, there’s still places like this. Makes you think that they aren’t all that different from us,” Norn replied.

“Speaking of things that aren’t all that different, what do you think about the commonalities between our languages and theirs?” Lily asked.

Norn and the cloaked Hein looked at their last party member, who had already turned to regard Lily with interest. “It’s fascinating, to say the least.”

Skald’s quiet voice was tinged with passion. “Is the fact that our society and this more advanced society has similar language systems proof of convergence? That things do gravitate and converge upon a single thread? Or is it proof that our world and the Celestia Ruins came from the same origin and bear the same legacy?”

She chuckled. “Of course, our language systems might have been developed from Celestia’s own too.”

“You don’t sound that enthused by that particular possibility,” Claud noted.

“Oh, I am, but it’s not as interesting as the former two theories. Besides, it’s a discredited theory. If our language is really derived from this place, we would have names for the many things here,” Skald replied. “A bit of common sense here and there is enough to tell us that. Anyway, both theories are quite hotly debated in the lodges dedicated to the Goddess of Knowledge.”

“Convergence or origin, huh.” Claud bobbed his head. “Both are quite fascinating, though. There’s an element of fate here and there.”

“So there is. I was really excited when I saw that I could recognise the words in the Secretary General’s office. Still, it’s worth noting that there were some words that did not seem to fit our language expectations, and—”

She rattled on for five minutes, forcing both Claud and Lily to react and take in her words with valiant effort. Fortunately, Norn rapped her knuckles on the table after a while, ending Skald’s soliloquy.

“Alright, alright. Are we here to deal with linguistics or are we here to look for artefacts?”

“Ah, sorry! It’s rare that I get to meet people who are as interested in such things as me, so I lost control over my mouth.” Skald cleared her throat, and then shifted subtly towards her leader’s back. “Thank you for the exchange, though.”

“It’s nothing, really.” Claud forced out a smile.

“Skald’s quite the oddball,” Norn replied. “She’s usually reticent, unless you happen to speak about something that she’s interested in, at which point she starts rattling on and on. I should bring her to Vacuos when all this is over. I imagine the City of Knowledge will be very helpful to her.”

“It’s a battleground right now, though.”

“Yeah, it is.” Norn paused. “Anyway, don’t let us keep you two here. You have a lot of things to do, right?”

Her gaze wandered over to the huge blue dome, and Claud watched her lips twitch once. It was quite the magnificent base, all things considered, but the part he was most proud of was how it was so easily set up. What remained was defences, just in case some nasty treasure hunters appeared. Even without that, however, the dome itself was impressively well-made, and it would probably block all kinds of attacks with ease.

After all, it was infused with his mana.

“It’s made out of some barrier artefacts,” Claud explained. “Very convenient, isn’t it?”

“Barrier artefacts?” Norn’s eyes glittered. “I’ve never thought of using them that way. Now that you mention it, though, it seems that we can build a small house really easily like this, right?”

“Exactly. It’s both easy to set up and tear down,” Claud replied. “Not to mention that the whole structure is naturally really tough and hard to tear down.”

“Because it’s a barrier, right?” Norn bobbed her head. “Thanks for the tip, Claud.”

“You’re very welcome.” Claud got up. “Thanks for the meal by the way.”

“Do remember to drop by tomorrow,” Lily added. “We’ll go off now.”

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Claud and Lily returned to their own base. There were still lots of things to do before Claud was satisfied with their overall security, but it was also equally important to foster good relations with well-meaning neighbours.

“What do you think?” Lily asked.

“About?”

“Those three,” Lily replied. “I’m wondering if we should work together with them or something.”

“I think it’ll be best if we explore areas separately,” Claud replied. “If, by pure happenstance, we get into conflict over things like spoils, we’ll be at a disadvantage. While they seem to be friendly, we should also show them adequate respect. They are no different from us; they are people with desires.”

Lily nodded. “In that case, I suppose we should trade some items with them. We have quite a lot of Second Shadows, and they have information. We don’t want them to target us over the Second Shadow, so if we trade or something…”

Claud paused, and then smiled. “I never thought of that. We should indeed do just that, yes. You’re a genius, do you know that?”

Lily rubbed her nose. “It’s just part of my upbringing…”