"COME BACK HERE YOU KNIGHTED BALL OF DUSTY FUR!” I shouted while jumping over a pile of boxes in my way.

“Nya nyyy-nyaa!” Lieutenant shouted back as he slid under a street stall selling fruits, the now snow free ground helping him with his maneuver.

“Don’t give me that cliché line! Now stop right there and don’t make me make you regret your decision!” I shouted while dodging the market stall and chasing after him.

“Hello dictator. Hello martyr.”

“Good day to you too!” “Nyaa na!” We stopped briefly to greet back to the occasional random person on the street that greeted us before going back to the chase scene. Huh? Get him while he’s stopping to greet someone? That’s just rude, you know?

Anyway, I must admit that he’s an opponent unlike any other I have faced before. Lieutenant knows all my usual tactics and strategies, so almost anything I might try against him he’ll have foreseen it in one way or another. On the other hand, it’s the same thing the other way around. Since I have a rough idea of how his furry head works, I can foresee his strategies of using his soldiers to slow me down and distract them with some well thrown fishes.

Fu fu fu. Truly, this is a battle for the ages. While thinking such grandiose thoughts, I decided that the matter at hand was too important to just go on like this. Although I was sure I could eventually catch up to this knight wannabe, the time it’d take would be far too long, so I decided to play a bit dirty.

“Oh well. Looks like you don’t want to be a hit with the ladies then.” I said while stopping my sprint near the entrance of an alley and shrugging. In a most spectacular and inertia-less way, Lieutenant froze in place all of a sudden as his ears straightened out. “Well, looks like Lieutenant knight’s days as a ladies’ man is coming to an end.”

“N-Nanyaa?” Lieutenant asked while still not turning back.

“What? You really thought there would be nothing for you in this?” I said while shaking my head disappointed. “Also, caught ya!” I said while throwing the freezing knife I had discreetly pulled out right beside his feet.

“NYA!” He leapt in surprise and tried to move away, however, this brief moment of surprise was enough time for me to do a dive and grab him by the scruff of his neck. “N-NYAA!”

“Not entirely. There WAS some truth to what I said.” I replied while standing back up with my best evil*cough*friendly smile. “That still doesn’t mean I can’t use it as a trick to get you.”

“N-N-Nyaa! Na-nyaa ny-nynanya!”

“Haaah? What are you talking about? Your affinity is Chaos.” I asked confused while tilting my head. Then, just to be sure, I quickly opened up my now larger pet list and checked Lieutenant’s status, and true to his words, there It was. Elemental affinity: Chaos / Metal. “…That wasn’t your old affinity.” I commented confused.

“Nyaa-na Ninininanyanyaow. Nyana-na-nanya.”

“Heeh… That’s actually pretty cool. Not that it changes much to be honest.” I said with a nod. “Then, how was it with the previous costume?”

“Nyaa-na.”

“Earth? That’s odd… Though I guess a good military is pretty solid.”

“Nyaa-na-nyanynyna.”

“…Yeah, I’m not buying that one.” I replied bluntly while dropping off my amused look. “Besides, even if you WERE to get rusted, all we need to do is to remove the armor and you’d go back to normal, right?” I said with my best evil*cough*friendly smile. Meanwhile, Lieutenant only became paler and paler each passing second as his trick was seen through. “Not like you’d wear your clothes or armor when taking a bath anyway.”

“NYAAAAAAAAAAH! NYAAAH NYAAAH NYAAAH!” He started screaming and squirming, trying to escape from my grasp as I put him under my arm while walking back to where I had left the others.

…

While cheerfully laughing at my totally not underhanded victory, I made my way to the back entrance of Lord Wich’s estate while still carrying the little furball under my arm. Reaching into the courtyard, I met with the sight of two large wooden basins filled to the brim with water. In the larger one, I could spot Aura’s muzzle peeking over the water line as she lazed in the bath.

If I were to be honest, I’m actually surprised that Aura not only had nothing against bath, and instead seemed to be enjoying it, point proven by the tip of the tail wiggling lazily right under the water level, sending ripples to the slightly frosted water line.

Meanwhile, on the second basin and smaller basin held a few centimeters above a small bonfire, we had Pebblesworth, Rio and Crys. The first two got curious about what I was doing with Aura and decided to join in, while the last one just decided that she’d take a day off and enjoy the bath as well. Well, Pebblesworth was mostly playing around underwater while Rio and Crys floated around lazily on the water level. The crystal elemental in specific looked like she was having a hard time keeping her body together as she looked completely relaxed.

“Ah, teacher.” Lily called out to me as she added a bit more wood to the fire that was heating up the trio’s bath. “So you caught him.” She commented with an awkward smile as I casually stripped the furball from his armor.

“Yeah. Might as well get over with this now since I’m already dealing with these three.” I said with a shrug. “Might as well say it that it’s a preparation for going to a brand new world!” I said while pumping myself up.

“Teacher… We are only taking a boat to the next continent. And it isn’t even that far from here…” Lily said with an awkward smile.

“No, you see… Brand new world is… ” I was about to explain to Lily the wonders of traveling with friends in a very shounen-manga style, but a certain ball of fur took that as a chance to try and run away. I quickly grabbed him by the tail and carried him nonchalantly to the water. “Just saying, but you get out without washing and I’m shoving you together with Aura.” I told him.

For a brief moment he stopped to weigh the pros and con as he stared at the larger basin. His eyes shrunk in sheer terror once he noticed the slight detail that Aura’s water was, in fact, almost freezing over, with a large amount of ice gathering on the top layer of the water.

He needed no more motivation to dive into the lukewarm heated water.

I mean, it might not be snowing anymore, but it’s still pretty damn cold out here. Aura is a special case since she actually prefers the cold, but I’m not that heartless to have the other three washed together with her.

“Anyway, did you manage to find it?” I asked Lily after finishing to deal with the furball issue.

“Ah, yes.” She said while reaching out to her backpack that was nearby. “Here. Coarse sand and fine polishing sands, as well as polishing wax.” She said while handing me a pair of medium sized leather sacks and a small bottle. “It was ten silver coins.” She told me.

“Hmm, I’m not entirely sure, but it sounds expensive.” I said with a frown while passing her the coins.

“Well, this town doesn’t really specialize in stones so much as ores, so it’s not a specialty for the area.” She explained to me with a serious tone. “That, and besides the wax, as long as you do it properly, these can be somewhat reutilized.”

Fair nuff. I thought while throwing the items into my inventory. Since I wouldn’t be using it for now, I stored it away and took out what I was going to use right now. Taking out a bottle of shampoo and a long cloth, I moved towards Aura.

“Wakey wak-UGHHHHH COLD! W-w-wakey…” I said while lowering my hand into Aura’s basin and patting her gently to bring her back to reality, only to feel the sheer agony of the icy water piercing through my skin and reaching up to my brain.

-13-13-13-13-13-13-13-13-13-13

-130 (1050/1180)

THE HURT! IT PAINS! THE BURNS! COLDS IT!

Removing my hand from the plane of eternal hurtdom and agony, I could still feel it hurting as the water slowly dripped from it. Aura woke up from her semi slumber and peeked over the water towards me.

“C-Come on… T-time to c-clean your f-fur.” I said while still shivering in cold and pain. She seemingly noticed my situation as she quickly woke up and stared at me worried. “J-Just a bit of c-cold water… D-Don’t worry ab-ab-about it…” I shrugged it off.

As she stretched a bit within the basin, I took the time to lay the cloth on the ground before her so that she could stand on it without getting dirty. She easily jumped over to the cloth and I started to gently apply the shampoo to her fur.

She let out a pleased sound as I massaged her body, making sure to not accidentally pull on her fur while doing my job. I wasn’t entirely knowledgeable on how to wash animals if I were to be honest, but thankfully, Aura could tell me if I was doing something wrong.

I do recall hearing something about water causing infections if it enters into a dog’s ears, but apparently, Aura had none of that to worry about. An advantage of having a water related element, I guess? While I thought so curiously, I turned to Lily.

“So, what did you decide?” I asked the undine. “Will you wait here or will you cross with us?”

“I spoke with Argento.” She told while sitting down and watching me curiously. “He said that he’ll stay back too and try to strike a supply deal with lord Wich.”

“I see…” I replied with a thought. Geez, he sure wastes no time to try and make a bit more money. Doesn’t he have a business to run in real life or something? Still… If he and Lily will stay behind and we’ll have to wait for them, doesn’t this mean that we going ahead makes no big difference since we’ll have to wait for them?

“He said that we can catch up to you later.” Lily explained, probably understanding my doubt. “At earliest, we might catch you at the other port after one or two days. At worst, we can just meet at Ezoria Argus.” She explained.

“Are you two fine with that?” I asked just to be safe, and Lily nodded with a smile. “Hmm, I guess that’s for the better too, since I have a bunch things to do at the capital anyway.”

“Hmm? Really?” Lily looked surprised for a moment.

“Yeah. I heard from a friend that she has a relative that might just point me out to someone who knows a bit more about how to fool around with elemental crystals.” Her expression froze at the mention of elemental crystals. Probably recalling back to what happened when we were going to the mine. “And if my memory doesn’t fails me, Yuu had to search around for something around there too. A book or something…” I tried to recall back to what her teacher had told her, but every time I recalled the little womanizer, I got this urge to punch someone.

“Hmm. So if you go ahead and deal with that before we catch up to you, then we might not even lose time, huh?” She asked, to which I nodded.

“Yeah. Guess it’s actually a win-win if we go ahead then.” I said after a moment of thought as I finished shampooing the big fox, who was now laying on the ground with a leg twitching and eyes closed in pleasure. All while her entire body was hidden beneath a layer of bubbles. “Okay, now turn here so I can wash your face.” I told the freezing tail who complied lazily. I hesitated for a moment, trying to recall back to what I read just to be sure. “Close your eyes so water doesn’t get in.” I told her while sinking a towel in water and then using it to gently wipe the dust away from her face. “There we go. Now to just leave the shampoo on for a bit before rinsing it off.” I told her while petting her head a bit.

“Strange… I’m almost sure you said you had no idea how to wash animals before.” Lily commented doubtfully.

“Yep. That’s the knowledge of google sensei for you!” I said with a proud smirk.

“Google sensei…? Who’s that? An academic?”

“Ermm… It’s a thing from where I come from. Don’t worry about it.” I waved her doubt off. She looked at me dubiously for a moment, but then shrugged off with an: ‘it’s teacher after all’ air to herself. I’d say I got hurt by her reaction, but I do deserve it, sooo… “Anyway, did that news idiot give any sign of being alive?”

“Ozzur? Yeah, I saw him just a few minutes ago.” Ugh! I sincerely wasn’t expecting that answer. “He was actually looking for you with his notebook in hand.”

“And you…”

“I told him you got a new house, and when he asked me where it was, I told him the location.” She replied mysteriously.

I stared at her blankly trying to understand the meaning behind her words and her awkward avoid-meeting-eyes guilty look. He asked her where she was… She replied about my house… Oh…

“You naughty, naughty girl.” I said with a mischievous smirk.

“Well… he is a bit annoying with that ‘scoop scoop’ of his…” She said while blushing slightly. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Yeah, I really need to watch out whom I relate to, because it seems my teasing instinct and mischievous spirit is contagious.

“I’m so proud of you right now!” I said while laughing and petting the embarrassed lily’s head.

“…That’s not something to be proud of.” She complained in a low voice.

“Yeah, I’m proud about a lot of bad things.” I said seriously.

“You have to work on that…” I ignored her remark while making my way to the second basin. “Where are Yuu and the others?” She asked curious.

“Yuu went off to grab some materials for making talismans, while Hanbei and Yami left to do something in our world.” I explained to her. For one, Hanbei had to do homework that she had postponed and then submit it via the internet. Yuu being the honor student she is, had already completed everything the teachers had planned before even traveling here.

I fear that if I ever tell her about PDF files I might lose her to study-land.

Meanwhile, Yami went off to make preparations for dinner, since she might not have time to do so once we board since we’ll be leaving at late afternoon slash early evening in-game time, which is about the time she’d usually start on food preparation real-life time.

Though, let’s be honest, she’s most likely just using the chance to stay close to Hanbei.

“Okay, Rio, come here.” I called the dragonling while taking out a brush from my inventory. “How’s the water?” I asked her as she approached the border of the basin.

“It’s really nice, Stone-Mister. It’s really warm and feels good.” She said while perking her neck a bit.

“That’s good. Now stay here so that I can brush off your scales for a bit.”

“Hmm… Can I stay in the water?” She asked a with a slightly disappointed tone.

“Shouldn’t be a problem for now.” I said with a shrug. “But afterwards I’ll need you and lieutenant to leave.”

“Heeh? Why?” Guuuuh. Don’t make that voice while giving me those upturned eyes! It’s bad for my mental health!

“It’s because I’ll start polishing pebbles, and I’ll need to pour some sand in the water for that.” I explained, and while she did look a bit disappointed, she was an obedient girl, so she nodded weakly.

Guuuh. I’ll have to spoil her somehow later.

While failing my puppy eyes resistance roll, I started to ever so carefully brush her scales while supporting her body from underneath so that she wouldn’t sink. Her bad humor quickly vanished away as she started humming in satisfaction. Feeling a bit relieved at seeing that brushing wasn’t something she disliked, I went on with the cleaning.

“Anyway, have you decided how you’ll go around with your crafting?” I asked Lily to dispel the silence that was settling down.

“Ah, hmm, yes. I’ve been thinking about it.” She said after a bit of thought. “I think I might do that after all.” She said with a bit more confidence than the previous time I had asked her. “That said, I don’t think I’ll abandon basic crafting.”

“Sticking to the basics, huh?” I said with a proud tone.

“Hmm. After all, that’s what made me want to start working with crafting in the first place.” She said with an awkward tone and a small smile.

“Well, if I have a say in this matter, I think it’s not a bad idea, since you’d limit what you can do if you only stuck to one thing when crafting.” I gave her my honest opinion. “Well, I guess this means that you have just graduated from Gon’s schools of free-style crafting! Congratulations!” I put my best into sounding congratulatory while smiling.

“Ah, thanks teach… Wait, what?”

“Yeah, you have proven yourself good enough to graduate from the school, and thus is considered good enough to survive on your own in this cruel world that is the land of crafters!” I said in the most pompous and important sounding tone I could muster before going back to brushing Rio.

“Eeeeh? Already?” She asked me in shock. “I mean, it’s been…. A couple of weeks… Maybe a bit more…”

“Lily. You do understand that, by the time you decided to make yourself my apprentice, I had only started on crafting for about, what? A few weeks?” I told while looking at her with an incriminatory gaze. She became quiet as she processed my words. “I mean, yeah, the way I do it might be unique or something, but overall, I’ve only been in the job for a very little time and had almost to no experience beforehand.”

“That’s…” She started saying something, but her words was escaped her lips.

“Now, if you want to improve your basic crafting skills, then you’d either need to start training or find a better professional to teach you.” I told her while giving a quick glance at Rio in the water and deciding that she had been cleaned enough. Letting go of the young wyvern who chirped satisfied, I quickly dried my hands into my robe and then turned back to Lily. “Okay, rare Gon serious time. There’s literally nothing I can teach you since, as I stated dozens of time before, I have no idea what I’m doing. I told you what I do, you saw and even started training with it. From now on, It’s pretty much up to you what happens.” I said while briefly patting her head.

“…If you say so…” She said a bit disappointed.

…Hmmm…

“…Teacher?” She suddenly called to me, looking at me confused and worried. “Did something happen?” She called out to me confused.

“Oh… Sorry, was just wondering about something.” I said absentmindedly.

“Huh? What is it?” She sounded a bit worried.

“I… Was just wondering whether you’d be a fluffy or a smoothy.” I said while this great doubt rose up within me.

…

“A what…?” Confusion.

“You see, recently I came to this moment of enlightenment that you have fluffies, and smoothies.” I said while looking at Aura, who was still covered in bubbles, and Pebblesworth… Who somewhere in the time I had been brushing Rio pulled out his scarf and was knitting underwater once again. “So I was wondering where I should fit you in.”

“…” For some reason she just stared at me blankly.

“What?”

“…”

“W-What?” I asked worried.

“Haah… Nothing.” She shook her head.

“Whaaat?” It’s never nothing when people say nothing. Even more if it’s a woman if media ever told me anything.

“Anyway, weren’t you going to polish Pebble and Crys?”

“Oh yeah, I was going to do that.” I nodded while turning back to the basin. “Rio, Lieutenant. I’ll need the two of you to leave.”

“Nyaany.” Lieutenant said with a triumphant tone while standing up.

“No, You’ll be using the shampoo.” I said while pointing to the bottle near Aura.

“Nanya?”

“No complaints else I’ll just dump you in the bucket of ice with water.”

“Nyaa…”

He tiredly got out of the basin before walking tiredly towards the shampoo bottle. Meanwhile, Rio climbed up my arm and was now resting on the top of my head, with the water still dripping from her. I felt a twitch of annoyance, but the reminder that she wasn’t doing it on purpose quickly made it fly away.

“Hey, Rio, why don’t you go with Lily so she can dry you up?” I asked her. She looked down towards me and then towards the still disappointed looking Lilly, who gave a brief sigh before nodding and turning picking a towel and beckoning Rio to come closer. As the wyvern leapt out from my head, I turned to the two remaining bath-going mineral beings that stayed in the basin.

“…You still there?” I called out to Crys who was completely motionless while her shards floated freely on the water’s surface. However, seeing that no response was coming, I gently poked one of her shards to the point that she sunk underwater.

“I’M AWAKE! I’M AWAKE!” She shouted suddenly as all her shards flew and gathered in a hurry, reforming her body a few centimeters above the water. “I TOTALLY DID NOT FALL ASLEEP BECAUSE THE WATER TEMPERATURE WAS NICE!” She added in a hurry as she, for whatever reason, made a salute.

“…I was curious about why you were so quiet… So you just were napping huh…” I said with a smirk. “I didn’t even know you could nap to be honest.” I said with a frown.

“…I wasn’t napping…” She told me after an awkward moment of silence.

“You sound about as guilty as you can be right now.” I replied bluntly. She avoided my eyes for a moment before I sighed and shook my head. “Anyways, I’m going to dump some sand into the water, so you might want to get out for now.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I can wash the sand off myself afterwards.” She waved it off. However…

“You just want to nap a bit more, don’t you?”

“…No. That’s totally not… ”*Yawn* “the reason…”

“You are a horrible liar.” I told her, to which she just kept quiet. “Oh well, it’s your call what you’ll do.” I opened up my inventory and picked up the polishing sand. I spread some around my hands for a bit before turning to pebblesworth. “It’s time for some polishing, little guy.” I told him, making the small elemental turn to me curiously. “You might want to store the scarf away so it doesn’t get dirty.” It tilted its body for a bit, confused, but complied nonetheless. “Look, I don’t really know if I’m supposed to do this, but if it feels bad or hurts, do tell me, okay?”

I think I heard a muffled tek coming from underwater. Taking that as a sign that he understood, I poured the sand into the water before submersing my hand into it.

If Google sensei told me anything, is that a good way to polish a stone is to use sand and another stone with water in between. Since I’m already made of stone, I guessed I already had that covered.

Still… Doesn’t this kind of means Its just an underwater sandy petting session?

Oh well. Following what I read and what I guessed, I made sure to thoroughly wash each segment of his body. From the main body to the legs and tails, I kept on rubbing his body with my fingers while always making sure that it was covered enough in sand for it to have an effect by grabbing the sand that gathered at the bottom of the basin and spreading over my hand once again.

Once again, I couldn’t help but feel relieved at seeing that Pebble wasn’t really against the polishing, and after a couple of minutes we were done.

“…I know it sounds weird, but that kinda looks likes it feels good.” Crys commented while staring at Pebbles.

“…I must say that I really didn’t expect that from you.” I told her bluntly.

“Master, you do not understand the power you hold on your hands.” She replied to me coldly, leaving me slightly surprised.

“I can attest to that.” Lilly suddenly added. “Teacher’s petting should not be taking lightly.”

Aura barked from her bubbly shell while Rio just lifted her head from her towel cradle and stared around confused.

“You guys are just exaggerating it.” I gave a wry laugh. I mean, if it was the skill I would understand, but this is just normal petting. While it does feel good, it’s not that much, right? “Anyway, I didn’t really find anything about crystal being polished via sand.” She suddenly made a really disappointed expression. “…But I did hear that waxing can help a bit.” Her expression suddenly became brighter. ”Anyway, have to change the water now for the finer sand.” I told him. “Could you go get me a bit more water?” I asked Crys, who nodded before floating away towards the well we used to draw water.

Deciding that enough time should have passed, I turned back towards Aura and grabbed the other bucket that we had used to draw water to rinse her off the shampoo.

Lieutenant? He can do that himself.