I walked behind Maladrain towards the front door of the mansion. It was larger than the largest of houses in my village, though still outshadowed by the mansion just down the road. Was I going to be staying the night at this place? It was luxurious, to be sure!

After a tension-filled sigh, Maladrain knocked on the door with its door-knocker, “I hope he’s home already.”

A moment passed, then I heard a click. A woman dressed in well-made black and white clothes opened the door. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She looked between the two of us, then spoke in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, “Please tell me your name, class, age, and purpose for coming here.”

Maladrain straightened his back but didn’t respond to her command, “Hey...Miss Symantha, Long time no see!”

She looked at him unenthusiastically, wasting no words, “Have we met?”

“...Yeah. I guess we have...Remember, I was there during the patron ceremony for Keen...and you?”

“...No, I do not.”

“O-oh. Well, I was there.” Maladrain was usually easy to talk to, but something had him off-balance and talking without confidence.

I heard some muffled talking somewhere in the mansion, but couldn’t locate the sound. Her expression didn’t change, “Your name, class, age, and purpose for coming to this abode, please.”

“Well, I guess you wouldn’t remember; you were only nine at the time. But I also came here two days ag-”

She scowled at Maladrain, then glanced at me, ignoring his attempts at conversation, “Your name, class, age, and purpose for coming to this abode, please.”

“Yeah...sure,” Maladrain said, sounding defeated, “I’m Maladrain, also known as Juiviv, I’m twenty-three, and I’m a [scout] who works under Juthen’s adventurer’s guild. This here is Saya and she-”

“Let her speak for herself, Juiviv Carson.” The lady glared daggers at Maladrain.

He didn’t let up, though, “Well, you see, she’s-”

“Let her speak.”

“But-”

“Speak.”

Maladrain finally admitted defeat and spoke unintrusively, “Yeah...sure...”

I pulled out my slate then began to write on it.

Her eyes softened as she saw me write, recognizing my robes despite their tattered and dirtied appearance. “A silent angel...?” she said as if enchanted in curiosity.

{Hello! I am Saya, and I am an [apprentice] and 13 years old.} I wrote out of pure habit. It was the way I’d always greeted others, verbatim.

“I see. And why are you here?”

“We are reconvening with my comrade. Didn’t Luxo tell you I was coming here?”

“Master Luxo would not fail to inform me of important events.”

Maladrain reeled in shock, “So you’re saying I’m not important!”

She kneeled and hung her head in an exaggerated manner, an alternative motion to bowing for being polite. In this case, though, she was certainly not being polite, “Of course you aren’t, but his excellence chose to inform me nonetheless.”

“I see...he thinks so little of me.” Maladrain grieved, averting his head in mock shame.

{I’m confused.} Maladrain and Symantha’s conversation had turned from awkward to playfully mocking in just a moment, and I knew almost nothing about what they were saying.

The woman stood back up, looked to me with a warm smile, then spoke in a calming tone, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll explain everything to you since your lowlife companion seems to have hidden the details of your stop at this abode.”

“Says the person who lied she didn’t know who I was! Besides, I just didn’t feel like explaining it until we got here.”

She ignored Maladrain and continued to speak to me, “Now, come in, please.” I walked into the house, but when Maladrain took a step in, she glared at him, “[scout], please make sure to wipe your shoes off on the carpet. I wouldn’t want any dung in my master’s house, after all.

Maladrain just looked at her with a disheveled expression, then meekly followed her command. He began to take a step forward.

“You should also know it’s rude not to take your shoes off in another’s house.”

He frowned but still slid off his shoes.

After he took them off and closed the door, she looked at me, and spoke in her calming tone once more, “Same goes for you, angel.”

I took off my shoes while I observed the room. It was pretty large, by my standards. A staircase led to the second floor, where a hallway filled with doors overlooked past the room’s vast confines. An open entrance opposite the front door led to another, where a fireplace burned in front of couches.

“Master Luxo is away at the moment because something urgent has brought his attention. He may be back in as little as hours, but I cannot guarantee you an audience with him within the next day. As far as your comrade goes, I was told she would arrive tomorrow...”

Cobaltio jumped off of my shoulders onto the ground and began exploring its new surroundings curiously.

She looked to the [drake], “Before we proceed, can I take it your pet will not cause any trouble, angel?”

I nodded vigorously, {He’s smart.}

“Good. And one more thing, why have you brought a silent angel here? I didn’t hear about her in the manifest. Does she relate to the conquest of The Mudmule in some way?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s an oddball. I kinda found her on the side of the-oof!” I jabbed him in the stomach with my elbow. Don’t tell her about that! “I mean, she had documented valuable information on the mudmule and insisted she participate in taking it down.”

I nodded in agreement.

“I see. I will lead you to your designated rooms. Although I was not prepared for an extra guest, I’m sure we have space.”

She led us up the stairs, then showed us to a room. When she opened the door, the cold air of the outside rushed in. There was an open window, a bed with unstraightened sheets, and a nightstand with an open book, “This will be your room, Maladrain.”

She then led us to another room and opened it, revealing a mostly identical room, bar that it was larger, with two windows instead of one. The room was entirely cleaned, “I’m sorry I couldn’t furbish your room any better, mistress Saya...what’s your last name again?”

“Hey! Why’s my room a mess, but hers is perfectly fine!?”

{I don’t have one.}

“Oh, well that’s a shame, Saya. Please tell the Moorland family if you ever feel the need to esteem yourself further. Silent angels are always their friends.”

I narrowed my eyes, staring at the woman of an unnamed profession with some level of contempt. That coddling was the very reason I’d left home in the first place. I’m a warrior, not a [priest] or [mage]. She grimaced in confusion at my suddenly fierce glare.

“Don’t ignore me!” Maladrain pleaded.

She looked away from me and glared at Maladrain seriously, “You should really show some respect when I address your superiors.”

“Superiors...?” he said with genuine confusion.

“Perhaps a ruffian capital-dweller like you wouldn’t be aware, but as a member of The Sanctuary of Seraph, your companion here, a silent angel of Seraph, outvalues you easily.”

Maladrain was annoyed, but spoke softly, “...She does?” he shook his head, “That’s pretty silly...”

Well, it wasn’t like I wasn’t worth valuing.

“...” Symantha remained silent for a moment, tapping her foot impatiently while looking at seemingly nothing. She began to move her eyes around, apparently reading nothing. Did she have her menu up? She narrowed her eyes and muttered to herself, “Maybe the visibility is too low for me to see...? Hmm...”

Maladrain looked stunned, “Wait, do you have an advanced [menu method] already?” [menu method]s allow someone to see pieces of other’s menu, but not everything. There are multiple [menu method]s that can be used without a skill, but ‘advanced’ [menu method]s are only accessible through specific skills, and usually require less time and effort to use.

“Yes, I have been...diligent enough in my duties to achieve level eleven already, granting me [serviceable information].”

“Wow! What’s your class?”

“[maid], obviously.”

“Ok, I’ll give you that one-it was pretty obvious.”

{[maid]?}

She looked to me, “I am Symanthya Wilderbalt, the Moorland family’s [maid] and the retainer of my master’s son, Keen Moorland.”

I was more concerned with what a [maid] even was, but that worked too...

“You’ve grown so much, miss Samantha,” Maladrain said sentimentally, with a touch of sarcasm.

Samantha looked to me with a concerned expression, “Angel, I’m noticing you seem quite...well, underequipped.”

I frowned, {Please call me Saya.}

“Saya, then. Has that man been putting you in places you shouldn’t be? Your robes are tattered, and...are they melted?” They were, as a matter of fact, melted from my fight with the bubblebear, “And your slate...what is it made out of? That can’t be a good material for your chalk to write on. Please, allow me to contact the church. They will make sure you get a new set of clothes and slate, if that slate is not of particular value, of course.”

I shrugged, reluctantly accepting her offer. My apparent reluctance elicited a disapproving frown from the [maid].

“I will take that as...acceptance of my offer. Now, I need to attend to other matters, so if you two could take a seat in the living room just across from the front door for a deciminute, that would be appreciated.” She made her way down the hall and turned into a room before any of us could respond.

Maladrain stood with a strange expression on his face. He suddenly spoke, still looking where Symantha had stood a few seconds ago, “Did she just say...‘deciminute’?”

I shrugged.

“What made her grow up this way?”

I shrugged.

Maladrain shook his head, “Jeez, could a maid be ruder? Who does she think I am, your accessory? Like, I’m a decade older than you!”

I nodded, following along mindlessly with the adult’s ranting as I stared at the flickering fire.

“And then she gave me the messy bedroom, though I bet they have a bunch of clean ones I could use too. Not to mention how she just let Cobaltio just roam around the place! I bet she was more suspicious of me than the baby [drake].”

I looked right, where Cobaltio was staring at a vertical box that displayed a pendulum behind glass, following the pendulum with an eye as it swung to and fro, while watching us with his other.

“Plus, she never asked if we were fine with her using a [menu method] on us!” I heard Maladrain sigh beside me. Both of us were sitting on a couch directly opposite of the fireplace. “Jeez, she’s done well for herself.” he let out the sentence like a sigh of relief, speaking quietly.

I looked back to Maladrain, surprised to see a smirk on his face.

He grimaced, “I just hope they’re treating her right...”

I reluctantly wrote on my slate, despite how the chalk sprinkled onto the couch as I did, {You don’t trust your ‘friend’ to?}

He looked to my slate, his eyes going downcast, “I’m...” he looked around himself, making sure nobody was listening in, then leaned closer to me and whispered, “I don’t trust him at all. A rich man is a rich man, and I doubt he would give anyone a chance if they threatened his power, just like the rest of them.”

What? What sort of jargon was that? Didn’t ‘rich’ just mean he had a lot of stuff? Where does ‘power’ get involved? How was that relevant to how a [maid] was treated? I raised an eyebrow, uninterested in dirtying the nice furniture with any more of my chalk.

“What’s that look for?”

I rolled my eyes then scribbled more down, {I have no idea what any of that means.}

“Oh. I guess you wouldn’t. You’re just a village kid after all.”

Did you need to put it that way?

“Speaking of which, you seemed pretty annoyed when she spoke to you, did she anger you in some way? If it’s about how she treated me, don’t worry, that’s just how we used to talk when she was a little...lot? hmm, a little younger.”

So he noticed? {I don’t like being coddled.}

“Hmm, I don’t really get it, but by the way you’re grinding your chalk on the slate like you’re shredding cheese...I guess it’s a sore subject.” He looked to my lap, where the white powder had fallen in bulk.

I sighed and dismissed the subject with a wave, then made sure to write lighter, {What’s that pendulum thing?}

“A grandfather clock. I don’t know how it works, but it keeps track of time somehow. pretty neat, huh?”

I nodded.

For a few moments, we sat in silence. Then, the front door opened.

Febuary 3