Chapter 239

When Natalie and Ana joined their three teammates down in the inn’s lobby, Liz immediately blushed, giving away that Jordan had filled them in on what had been happening. The reason for the delay.

Now that Natalie thought about it, Liz had probably felt when [Divine Invigoration] had changed targets. A person could sense when they gained or lost stats, often quite clearly—much less a boost as big as the one Liz had been accustoming herself to. That must have been, uh, an interesting realization. Liz had basically been alerted to the exact second Natalie had finished inside Ana.

“You’re wearing a different shirt, Ana,” Jordan said innocently. “What happened?”

Ana paused, obviously taking the question literally. She opened her mouth to answer, but Natalie interrupted.

“Alright. We have a meeting with the Baron, right?” She tried to play off how flustered she was, but she probably didn’t do a good job.

Jordan smirked at her, but thankfully chose not to press. “Just a routine thing,” she said. “Probably thanking us for yesterday.”

Thanking them for yesterday. At that phrasing, the event with Alaina flashed into her head. Her accidental late-night intrusion, the Baron’s daughter having come upstairs to also thank her.

Should Natalie tell them about that?

Nah. Why would she? It’d just been an awkward mishap. She would still be keeping her promise; she wouldn’t fuck the Baron’s daughter.

“Which is a bit tedious,” Sofia said. “There’s obviously no need to be thanked. And the mission hasn’t changed. There’s no new information.” She sighed. “It’s definitely because Liz is on our party, so he feels obligated to.”

“Sorry?” Liz offered timidly. “It’s annoying to me too.”

“Not your fault, of course,” Sofia said. “Let’s go and get it over with so we can head out and start our search.” She wrinkled her nose. “Might take all day, or longer. The sooner the better.”

Natalie nodded in agreement. “And by the way,” she said, “I’ve got some stuff to talk about, while we’re walking around.” There would be plenty of opportunity while roaming the Duskwood fruitlessly searching for the goblin nest to chat, so she’d save it until then. “Me and Malice discussed some things.”

“Oh?” Jordan said. “Important topics?” Her eyebrows went up. “Things only she knows about?”

“Yeah. That stuff.”

“Interesting,” Ana said. “Let’s hurry, then. I want to know.”

After a brief visit with the Baron, which indeed provided no new information and was rather a pointless waste of time filled with frivolous politeness, their party of five returned to the inn, got dressed into their adventuring gear, and headed out to begin the hunt for the goblin nest.

The same enchanted carriage carried them outside the city’s limits and a bit past, down a less-maintained branch where the bumpy dirt had the cart rattling around like it would fall apart. The swift convenience lasted until the edge of a thick forest: the Duskwood.

Varten, the [Tracker], had created a map for their team, identifying the portion of the forest he had narrowed his search to. He had needed to leave at a certain point, the danger growing too prominent. An armored, combat-ready squad would need to crawl around to close the search off. Them.

Assuming Varten’s preliminary work was accurate, and she did assume that, since the man was a level six [Tracker] who had the Baron’s trust, then they weren’t in for all too tedious of a mission. Though definitely somewhat tedious. Trudging through a forest for hours on end looking for a goblin nest wasn’t anyone’s favorite way to spend an evening, least of all Natalie’s.

Even with the amount of the Duskwood they needed to look through narrowed significantly, the search space of ‘a section of the forest’ was still a decently large area. And unlike the dungeon, there weren’t frequent combat encounters to spice things up. Just plodding along with a compass, a map, and trees all around them.