Veronica quickly finishes the bag, overwhelmed by the new and amazing snack she received. Meanwhile, the dishes on the extra table and the main table were being shuttled off by a legion of busboys. Victoria offers the last two dishes to Cain, who declines them. She stares at him in disbelief while the boys pack up their belongings and move the extra table back.
Cain merely shrugs his shoulders while saying "I don't eat veggies."
"But… your familiar is a plant." Victoria replies with a suspicious smirk on her face.
"Yep, I haven't… oh. Well played." Cain responds, returning her smirk with his own. He was about to say "I haven't eaten her either," only to realize that was what Victoria was trying to find out. Dresil could easily rival any elf's beauty after all.
Realizing that she wasn't going to get anywhere, Victoria nudged Veronica, signalling her to get ready to leave. Veronica was staring down the empty chip bag, baffled it was already gone. Upon Victoria's nudge, she jumped, dropping the bag of chips that dissipated into mana before touching the ground.
She stares at Cain with expressions flashing between sorrow, shock, and remorse. Cain got up from his chair and pat Veronica's shoulder thrice.
"Don't worry, that's supposed to happen. It's friendly to the environment, no?" Cain states. Veronica nods her head, suppressing a laugh. He turns around, pushing his chair in. At this point the group is ready to depart.
"Are we heading back to the inn, even though it's this dark?" Cain asks the party. There were no streetlights or anything of the sort. Except for a few lanterns that hung outside wealthy shops, there was hardly any light on the streets.
---Dms: Cain and Bob--- (3ms)
Cain: Can you create a portal from here to the inn? It'd need to be big enough for everyone to pass through.
Bob: Sure, just give me a signal.
Cain: Thanks.
--------------------------
"Yeah… we don't have much of a choice though." Jacob replies with a heavy sigh. "We'll just need to be careful of the alleyways."
"I can open up a portal to the inn." Cain offers. The party nods, signalling Cain to do so. He lifts his left hand up; facing it behind him towards the exit to the guild. The mark on top of it glows in a purple-black hue. A gateway roughly 2 meters wide and 3 meters tall opens on the wall next to the door.
The inside of the gateway remains black, before suddenly distorting and displaying the office of the inn. A confused Rick peeks from the side. Upon noticing the Horizon Party, he waves and walks back over to his desk. The party stares at the portal with a blank face.
"Well… Let's go, I guess…" Jacob, still somewhat dazed, breaks the moment of silence and walks through the portal. The rest of the party and Cain follow him, with Cain being the last. The portal stays open for one second after Cain's figure is completely in the inn, then quickly closes.
'Hmm… Seems like my Mana Zone gets somewhat distorted while travelling like this. I'll either need to move the mana extremely fast, or have it exist on both sides of the portal. The latter seems to be a temporary solution. If I overuse it, people with high mana sensitivity might notice a drop in natural mana, and it'll expose the zone… It consists of several million units of mana after all.'
Rick greets the party from his desk. "Oh, Cain. I forgot to give you your keys to the room earlier." Rick tosses a set of keys towards Cain, snapping him out of his thoughts. He swiftly catches it, and puts it in his pocket.
"No worries." Cain replies with an understanding nod. His short term memory is almost nonexistent so he understood how it happened. "My room is right next to Veronica and Victoria's, right?" Rick nods politely.
The party exits the main office, entering a hallway filled with doors. Cain follows them down the hallway, passing multiple rooms. The girls stop at room 70; the boys continue walking to 71. Cain looks at a door with a copper 69 nailed to it. He looks over at the girls who've entered their rooms already.
'Nice.' Cain thinks to himself, then proceeds to open the door and enter his room. The girls resided in the room across from Cain's; with the boys on the left (when entering the room). It was set up similar to modern hotels on Earth.
Cain inspects his room with a hint of suspicion. It was similar to the one bedroom apartments back on Earth but a tad smaller. There was only a bedroom and a small room in the corner which seems to be the restroom.
The bedroom had a bed similar to a twin sized bed and a cabinet was placed next to the head. The length of the bed lined the wall, with the other side exposed to the front door. The door to the bathroom was across from the bed and cabinet, placed in the corner.
Yikes, the flood gate is about to open. Cain rushes to the bathroom, disinfecting the entire room using a more accurate method than what he used to clean the cup of beer during dinner. Upon a quick inspection, it appeared that someone did a quick wipe down with bleach. It was clean, but not as clean as can be.
Seems good enough for now… Cain ponders while inspecting the toilet, if it could be called one. It was just a wooden version of the toilets back home except there was no flush. It was just a small hole leading directly to the sewers. A lever that controlled the cap of the hole was in place of the flushing mechanism.
Faint mana fluctuations could be perceived from the toilet. It appeared to be from durability increasing and some minor maintenance magic circles. At least, that's what Cain assumed. Why else would a wooden toilet have mana fluctuations?
Unable to delay the impending doom of the toilet, Cain sits down and opens the floodgates. The toilet vibrates softly from the impact. He sighs while saying "Fire in the hole."
*RIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPP*
*Rumbleee*
*kadaratatatatat*
The room shakes slightly from the sound of the fart that was released. Cain quickly turns the odor into mana; it was after all, just a mix of chemicals. He was unable to do it completely, but luckily the scented candles placed around the restroom barely finished the job.
---Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex--- (30ms)
Rex: Damn dude, you just dropped a bomb in there.
Bob: *inserts image*
Dresil: *inserts image*
Cain: Ye… I was worried about when this time would come. Thankfully my body converted most of the food into energy.
Cain: If it had the same efficiency as a normal human body… Well, let's just say what would happen next could be considered chemical warfare.
Rex: Damn…
Bob: Is it normal for your body to do that?
Cain: Only when I exercise a lot and can't eat to my full. But that's more of it being forced to.
Rex: Sheesh… just how much exercise did you need to do for that to happen…?
Cain: I usually rode my bike 100 miles per week and would need about 14k calories per day, but only got around 7k due to lack of money.
Rex: Well damn
Dresil: Weren't you ded? :sus:
Rex: I was forcibly revived by the thermodynamics textbook :cry:
Cain: Rip…
Bob: F
--------------------------
Cain finished his business then inspected the toilet for damages. The cap that blocked off the passageway to the sewer was forcibly shattered. Needless to say, he tore the toilet a new one. Cain sighed once again then repaired the toilet with mana, setting up illusionary magic circles around the room to make it look like the toilet was never broken in the first place. There were rats crawling around…
Cain walked over to his bed, disinfected it, then sat down at the edge of it. 'At least I don't have to worry about lice thanks to Insect Eraser… I guess Creepy Crawly Eradicator would be a more fitting name… meh.' Cain closed his eyes and focused on his mana zone, discreetly using it to disinfect and wipe out as much bacteria, insects, and other similar creatures in the party's room. Then he looked up at the ceiling and sighed once more.
"I know you're there. All 6 of you can either leave, face me, or be wiped out. You have 30 seconds…" He said, seemingly talking to the air.
---Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex--- (14ms)
Rex: I thought there were only 5 people following you.
Cain: There was. I said 6 so that even the strongest among them all would assume there was one more that they couldn't detect, but I could, causing them to estimate my strength to be more than theirs.
Dresil: As expected of the Master.
Bob: So it was a bluff… Nice.
Cain: :nod:
Cain: I'm too tired to fight right now, not that I actually know how to anyways.
Bob: How did you do that?
Rex: do /me
--------------------------
Cain felt 3 presences disappear, 2 of them took 10 seconds before vanishing. Two black figures appeared abruptly, dropping down from the ceiling. Knives in hand, they attempted to charge at Cain and slit his throat.
Vines bursted from around him, preparing to fend off the assailants. Before they could do anything however, they dropped on the floor lifelessly. A minute passed and still no movement occurred.
---Dms: Cain and Dresil--- (3ms)
Cain: Dresil, check for brain damage and heal any if it's there.
Dresil: ...aren't they dead?
Cain: Nope, I just lowered their blood pressure and reduced the blood flow to their brain causing them to faint. Also send me any knowledge and experience you have with mind reading.
Dresil: Understood, Master.
--------------------------
The tens of vines that were around Cain retreated, save two. These two cautiously crept up to the assassins, flinging their weapons that were in their hands and searching their clothes to further disarm them. After thoroughly disarming them, they implanted themselves into the base of their necks.
Dresil released more vines to adjust the position of the assassins now that they were secured. They slowly propped up the motionless bodies into a traditional seiza, the form commonly used by the Japanese while eating. This form reduced the effort the vines had to exert to maintain an upright posture due to the assassins' well toned muscles supporting the upper body.
Two platforms of vines formed under them and moved the assassins in front of Cain. While Dresil was setting everything up, Cain was parsing through the vast amount of information he got from her.
About a minute or so after the preparations were complete, Cain understood how to read minds with mana. He already knew how to do it in theory. All one had to do was interact with the hippocampus inside the brain using mana and filter through the memories. He just didn't understand how exactly that interaction was supposed to be done.
It's like knowing that an HDMI cable is needed to connect a laptop to a monitor and, with some extra settings, a second screen can be set up. But not understanding how the cable transmits such data and how the monitor interprets it into the desired format.
'I'll have to thank whoever sent these assassins. Now I can experiment with mind reading.' He ponders to himself while raising his hand in front of the assassins' drooped heads.
"Eeinie miney, mo. Ah screw it, the right one it is." Cain put his palm on the assassin's head and began releasing his mana fluctuations. After some probing, they dug into the depths of his hippocampus, searching for the memories related to who hired him.
Numerous images flooded into Cain's mind. 'No… No pleaseeeee. I just want to know one thing… not an entire flashback…' Cain laments his situation inwardly. Due to his lack of practical experience, he is unable to skip the flashback without potentially damaging the assassin's brain.
With a sigh, he stops resisting the flow and rolls with it. 'I'll just use this opportunity to get comfortable with the image feedback, manipulating the rate at which the info comes in, and eventually skipping memories. '