After a day of rest, we went to the Adventurers Guild to decide where we should go next. Well, Lia goes to the into the Guild while I wait around outside since I can neither bring my self to enter the Guild building nor do I believe I can stop myself from trying to kill everyone inside if they make a bunch of noise again. Even now there are some adventurers who are entering and leaving the Guild, pointing at me and whispering to their companions.
Doing my best to ignore the people passing by I try and keep myself distracted by taking a quick look at my status to see the new stuff from the Soul Connection.
There is, of course, the Soul Connection Soul Skill to Lia which allows me to see what she sees and to speak with her telepathically, but there is also a change to my Humanoid Shapeshift. I still have the same uptime and downtime, but I can now ignore this limit when I am within one kilometre of Lia and this time won't count against the normal time I spend in my humanoid form when I am not near Lia and the cooldown will continue if my time is up.
Other than the change to my shapeshift ability, there aren't any other changes to my abilities. So I decided to test out the other ability. Tapping into the Soul Connection, I bring Lia's image into my head and focus in on her head and the sight of the Guild fills my eyes. Not only that, but I can also even hear what I would assume she can hear. As I had expected, I can hear some of the other adventurers talk about what happened yesterday, both the raid on me and the show Lia put on the other day. Doing what I can to ignore them, I try to only focus o Lia's sight and find that she is examining a large map on the wall and talking to the receptionist about the nearby towns and cities. She is a better talker than me, using subtle hints to find out from the receptionist which areas have a connection to the government or military in some way.
Other than the obvious Capital which is too dangerous to try and rob, there are two locations that seem to have some importance, at least as far as the receptionist is aware of. With a few days of travel, there is a city with a factory that has been producing firearms, two actually, but one is north-west of Redinium and the other is south-east. If we chose the wrong city then it is a long way to the other city, or we would have to look around for a new facility to raid. Thankfully, due to the nature and objective of the mission, I don't need to obtain a large number of their weapons and only need a handful of them.
Eavesdropping in on her thoughts, Lia comes to the conclusion to head to the southern town since the northern city is close to the Capital, inherently increasing the difficulty of the job.
With our destination in mind, Lia takes a quick look at the quest board and finds an escort quest set for later today, with the destination being the same as us, the City of Lofinium. Just guarding a merchants caravan with another party. With it being a convenient quest that is quick and easy to take for the journey.
As Lia takes the paper off the board I hear her voice call out in my head, {I know you've been watching. Come in so we can sign up for this quest.}
{Fine, but don't blame me if something happens to someone later then don't blame me.}
As expected, as I enter the Guild and catch up with Lia, I hear plenty of adventurers talking about the two of us. Ignoring them we get the quest processed and I quickly make my way out and head towards the meeting spot, with Lia following shortly behind.
After a couple of hours the caravan shows up and we introduce ourselves to the head merchant here.
"So one of my escort parties are a couple of young women, I don't have high hopes so just don't drag the other party down."
We know his name as Titus from the quest papers, but the guy is looking down on us and is so arrogant that he didn't even introduce himself to us. Shortly after the other party arrives and the merchant is practically fawning over them.
As we prepare to set out the other group walks over to introduce themselves and while I'm already dissatisfied with the difference of treatment between us, things become more awkward as we soon find out that they are one of the parties I fought with on the beach the other day.
"So... this is uhh, how about we just put yesterday behind us. I'm Julius, the leader of this party and a swordsman. That's Marcus our great shield user, Aurelion the mage of the party, and over here is our party's archer Falkin."
"I'm familiar with you guys, I did toy with you lot for a while the other day. Pretty sure you met Lia here and I'm Cordelia. Let's just get this quest over with."
Shortly after the introductions finish, our three groups began this awkward journey. Sitting around in the passenger's carriage I hear Lia's thoughts, {this is definitely not the best way to start a trip.}