"*Sigh* Finally I did it." Victor muttered with an exasperated tone as he let go of Penny's blonde short hair which now carried a blue papillion. Penny spun around herself, as the blue and white colored skirt danced along with her petite body.
"Wah!" She was amazed at the way her skirt spinned around and let out a wide smile. Then she approached the river, not minding her shoes and socks getting wet, and let out an amazed sound at the reflection on the water, looking at herself in new clothes.
"I look weird!" Her words didn't match her happy expression. Maybe, her vocabulary isn't great enough to fully express what she was thinking. Anyway, her cute acting helped Victor focus elsewhere from the awkward dressing session he had with her.
"...Well, I guess there isn't anything else to do here." Luka said, bringing back the attention of the others back to the current situation. Indeed, there is no reason to stay here any longer…
Victor shifted in a more comfortable position on his wheelchair and sighed. "That's true. It's better if we get to Iliasburg before night…"
"Huh?" Penny blinked in surprise and once again pulled on Victor's sleeves. "Where are you going? Aren't you going to stay here and play with me?"
Victor sighed as he pulled his arm away from her tiny grasp. "We have to go now. The only reason why we came here in the first place is because we were being chased by evil Monsters. Besides, I can't play with you even if I want, I can't move from here." Victor gestured to his left bandaged leg, holding new and dry medical bands.
Penny curiously looked at his left leg and commented. "Like Mama!"
""...?"" Both Victor, Luka, and Alice weirdly stared at Penny. Alice recovered first and asked with a soft tone. "Sorry, can you please explain?"
"Mama also has this, but it is brown and it is covering her head and back! Mama doesn't want to play with me anymore, she is always tired. But Mama still treats me kindly! So I forgave her!"
"..." Luka and Victor looked at each other in doubt, with Luka frowning and taking the initiative to Penny. "Penny, can you please bring us to your Mother?"
Penny quickly nodded with a smile on her face. "Yes! I can also show Mama my new clothes!"
After saying that, Penny began to playfully skip across the rocks on the shore and reach for the greener part of the surroundings, while Luka pushed Victor's wheelchair across the irregular path, with Alice slithering at their side.
A single minute had passed, but they already reached their destination. There was no difference with the surroundings, always covered by many trees and dry leaves; but if one had to point out something out of place, it was a figure sitting against a tree.
The figure is a beast woman that looked much older than Penny, around the age of 30. However, Alice already taught him enough that her body and actual age didn't match.
Just like Penny, she also has golden floppy dog ears, although the golden color was more prominent on her rather than Penny. Her hair is also long and messy, and she was dressed in a simple brown rag.
As Penny had mentioned, she had more layers of rags covering her body, mainly one that is tightly hugging her waist and one covering the entire left-upper side of her head. She is currently sleeping, and at each sound their step made against the dry leaves made her floppy ears twitch.
"Mama!" Penny called the woman out, and the larger Golden Retriever Girl gently opened her big blue eyes as she looked at Penny's direction.
She didn't even bother moving her head around and simply shifted her eyes around with some hesitation, as if the mere movement of her eyeballs brought her pain. Yet, in some dozens of seconds, she accomplished the task that should have been pathetically easy for many people but her.
"Oh, Penny…" The woman tiredly answered the Dog Girl's call. "Have you finished bathing?"
"Hmm!" Penny hummed and nodded in affirmation. "I also found new friends!"
The party approached the woman and appeared in her field of sight. The woman remained silent as she did her best to observe them with her ruined eyesight. It had been an awkward and silent half minute before the woman managed to smile.
"I see, it's nice to know you got new friends, Penny. My name is Wendy, who might you people be?"
"I'm Luka." Learning from his past mistake, he didn't mention his self-proclaimed job and merely gave away his name.
"I'm Victor."
"..." Alice didn't say anything, merely observing Wendy's conditions with narrowed eyes. Soon, a sigh escaped from her mouth as she shook her head.
"She got a terrible concussion and a broken spine." All of a sudden, Alice announced, surprising both Luka and Victor.
Wendy remained silent for a dozen of seconds and then she called for her daughter. "...Penny, I would like to see a nice and unique stone, can you please go to find one?"
"Yes!" Penny excitedly walked away from the area, leaving the party alone with Wendy. Wendy shifted her eyes towards the group and asked.
"Could you please come closer? I can't see you guys properly at this distance…"
Although no answer came back to her, she could hear the dry leaves cracking apart as the three people approached her. And soon, their shapes and colors became clearer: Two humans and a monster.
"...I'm sorry for showing myself like this, but I hope we can have a nice conversation between us. It's been a while since I met new people…"
"No problem." Victor commented with a casual tone before he began to wheel in front of Wendy, followed by Alice and Luka standing at his sides.
"So… How did it happen?"
"Victor, that's rude!" Luka rebuked at Victor's nonchalant attitude, but Wendy didn't seem bothered at all.
"It's just an unlucky encounter with a group of Heroes a week ago, they must have passed here for Baptism Day… Speaking of which, I can't smell anything like that from you two. It's rare to see non-baptized people outside their settlements, are you from outside?"
"Not really. I came from way far from here, but Luka lived here for a long time. The only reason that he isn't baptized is because something went wrong with the baptism at the temple." Victor replied to Wendy's curious question.
"Hold up, Heroes did this to you?" Luka was taken aback from that. For someone who looked up to Heroes, seeing a poor and innocent victim of their attacks here was a heavy blow for him.
"It would always happen every year. Old Heroes cleaned up the road to Iliasburg for the new Heroes, and they looked far and wide through the road. Unfortunately, I was there by coincidence and I fell victim of their strategies.
I could have outrunned them, but I can't simply leave Penny behind. She is too slow to escape from them, so I shielded her while she ran away. After a while, things happened and I ended up here after taking a large and heavy hammer on my back and a pickaxe on my head…"
"A pickaxe?" Victor repeated with a strange expression. Why would one wield a pickaxe? This wasn't Minecraft, and even there it didn't have much of an advantage against other weapons… Well, a pickaxe must be really sharp, so that's that…
"I must look pathetic now… I am still alive because I am a Monster, and I can't bear to leave Penny alone…" Wendy commented with a self-deriding tone, but no one of the party showed agreement with her judgement.
"That's not true, I think that is really a great attitude for a mother..." Luka commented with a gloomy expression, his eyes looking down as if he reminisced about something of the past.
"...Hey, Alice…" Victor curiously looked at Alice, but as if she already saw that coming from far away, she interrupted him by shaking her head in powerlessness.
"She is in a similar situation to yours. I can heal her spine, but the fragments of her skull stabbed in her brain would end her life much earlier if I casted a healing spell on her."
"..." Victor sighed and shifted his gaze to Wendy. Seeing her wretched state, he actually wasn't feeling any kind of empathy… After all, she is a stranger; there is no reason for him to feel pity for her, or spend the Money he was collecting for his leg to help another person…
...He didn't know if he should be proud about himself for this or he should be sad about his hypocritical heartlessness…
He had no problem not caring about other people, and yet he couldn't even give a fatal attack to someone he had never seen before… Although he was fine with being hypocritical, he couldn't help but look down on himself for this.
"Anyway, could you please not tell anything about this to Penny? I'm fine with teaching her about the world, but there is no reason to show her the darkness hidden in the shadows for some life lessons, especially at her young age."
"...Certainly." Luka answered with a firm nod, trying to hide his sadness about the situation.
By now, Penny turned back with an excited expression on her face as she carried a weirdly-shaped rock on her hands.
"Mama! Mama! I found a shiny stone!" Penny showed Wendy a brown crystal that was so dirty that it couldn't even reflect the light of the sun. Although no one noticed it except for the person herself, Alice blinked a couple of times at the presence of the crystal in Penny's hands.
'How did she find an Earth Stone?' That was her thought as she was the only one to recognize the wild energy within the brown crystal.
"What a nice stone, it's really unique…" Wendy smiled at Penny and patted her head, eliciting a cute laugh coming from Penny. Meanwhile, Wendy started to look down on her body and saw the new set of clothes that her daughter was wearing. She looked surprised and commented.
"This is a really beautiful set of clothes, Penny. Where did you get them?"
"Victor gave me these clothes! He let me pick one set from many different drawings on a strange book!"
"They really fit you, you know?" Wendy replied with a wide smile as she continued to stroke Penny's head.
"Ehehe…" Penny's floppy ears moved and her tail wagged around.
Soon, Wendy's hand slipped from Penny's head and once again landed on the ground. Wendy tiredly kept her eyes open as she stared at her daughter and everyone else in silence.
A dozen of seconds had passed before Wendy spoke again. "What was your name again…?"
"Luka, Victor, and Alice." Luka replied for all three of them, and Wendy nodded in affirmation.
"I'll do my best to remember those names… Anyway, even though I am a Monster, I hope that you could do me a small favor."
"What is the favor?" Luka curiously asked.
After taking a deep breath, Wendy asked. "I hope you can take care of Penny from now on."
"Yay! I have new friends!" Penny, not understanding what Wendy was really saying, lifted her arms up in excitement. However, Wendy stopped that from continuing by hugging Penny with one arm.
She pulled Penny towards her moderately-sized chest, prompting Penny to hug her back by instinct.
"Penny…"
"Yes, Mama?"
"I want you to follow these nice guys from now on, can you do that?" Wendy asked, and Penny quickly nodded. "Yes! Does that mean we will change home?"
Wendy shook her head very slowly and elaborated. "No, I will remain here while you leave."
"...Huh?" Penny stared at Wendy in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"I am too tired to stand up, so you have to go with your new friends without me." Wendy told Penny as she rubbed the back of her head.
"But… I don't want to leave you, Mama!" Penny insisted on staying close to Wendy, but Wendy seemed to remain firm on her decision.
"Do as Mama says and go with them, okay? You will meet more people if you go with them, and many new friends. I'm sure of that…"
"No!" Penny looked up to Wendy as tears began to form on her eyes. "Why do you want me to leave? Don't you love me anymore? Did I do something wrong? I can pick more shiny stones for you…"
"Oh sweetheart…" Wendy hugged Penny tighter than before. "You are the best gift I could ever ask from the Founder, of course I love you…"
"Then… *Sniff* Then why can't I stay with you?"
Wendy sighed and replied. "I am just thinking about the best for you…" Then she faced the other three people in front of them and asked. "Do you think you can do that? If it is too much of a burden, you can simply carry her to somewhere safe. I heard that Enrika welcomes Monsters in their village…"
"I don't have any problem with that, what about you two?" Victor asked Luka and Alice, as they promptly shook their heads in agreement.
"It's the Hero's job to aid people who need help! It doesn't matter if it is a Monster or Human!"
"Shut up for a moment, Fake Hero." Alice rebuked, and Luka remained silent as he looked down on the ground with a hurt expression.
A surprised look appeared on Wendy's face as she looked to Luka. "You want to be a Hero?"
Upon hearing that question, Luka's bearings came back immediately and nodded in her direction. "Yes! I want to see humans and monsters living together, this is why I am here now!"
"Fufufu, that's a really noble goal you have in mind, young man…" Wendy commented with a teasing smile on her face as she kept caressing her crying daughter's head.
"Penny, it's time to go…"
"No!" Penny shouted back at Wendy, making her ears ring in pain due to the concussion and her already heightened senses. Yet, Wendy didn't seem to care about the pain and replied.
"Please, Penny… Don't make it hard for Mama. When I am not tired anymore, I will go to find you immediately, so don't worry about me."
"*Sniff*" Penny slowly raised her cute and sad face as her tears couldn't stop flowing down from her cheeks, along with the snot appearing on her nose. "...R… Really? Will you come to me when you are not tired anymore…?"
Wendy gave a light kiss to Penny's forehead before she swiped one hand over Penny's eyes, rubbing away her tears. "When did Mama tell you a lie? I will certainly come to you when I am not tired, so we can play together with your new friends…"
"..." Penny was still shaking, but she didn't answer at all after Wendy finished her sentence. Soon, she gave a tight hug to Wendy before she silently walked in the party's direction.
Without saying a word, Penny merged with the group and looked at Wendy with teary eyes, this time cleaning her face by her own.
"...Well… I hope you can keep Penny safe from the evils in the world…" Wendy said with a shaky smile, and Luka nodded in determination. "I'll do my best!"
"Good… I bid you farewell then, I'm pretty tired now…" Those were her last words before she gently closed her eyes, inciting a pitiful expression from Luka, although Victor and Alice remained mostly indifferent.
"Let's go, Penny." Victor said as he gently pushed her around, and then went away with the rest of the group.
Half a minute later, as Victor wheeled forward with Luka and Penny walking at his sides in a terrible mood, a sharp sound of many dry leaves breaking apart attracted his attention. He was taken by surprise, but he relaxed when he noticed that it was Alice that 'caught up with them'.
He didn't take much notice of this, so he simply turned his head forward and continued to wheel. Hopefully they won't have to meet any other monster along the way, or they will arrive too late…
...Wait, late for what?
Victor visibly slowed down at that thought. He had a bad feeling whenever Iliasburg came in his mind, but only now he noticed a big problem that will happen in the near future.
Won't Granberia start her single-handled invasion this evening at Iliasburg?
"Is something wrong, Victor?" Luka asked, noticing Victor standing some meters behind them. His voice brought Victor back to reality and he quickly shook his head.
"Nothing, nothing… Let's just go to Iliasburg, maybe we can find something there to make our travels easier."
"Oh, I heard of something called Monster Warding Incense that Heroes used in the night to keep monsters away." Luka voiced out his suggestion. "We could buy that at Iliasburg's tool shop, so we won't risk encountering monsters while we travel on foot."
"Can't we just buy a transport?" Victor suggested.
Luka frowned a bit and replied. "We could, but it is expensive renting a carriage for Iliasport. Besides… I doubt Alice could fit in…"
"I know what else to buy now…" Victor muttered under his breath. He knew a lot, and that included Alice's capability of disguising her monster features into a more human-like body. If she used that, there was no way she couldn't fit on the average carriage. The only problem is her attitude about it…
...If he can buy a big vehicle, there won't be any more need to seek other kinds of transportations, and it would make traveling around much easier.
"Also, I like to walk. Even if I am annoyed at being threatened to get raped every hour, I can use that experience to temper myself for when I will reach the Monster Lord's Castle."
"Fair enough." Victor replied to Luka's reasonings. At least, he won't have to bother buying any big vehicle for all of them. Once he finally fixes his leg, he can get the hell out of there and buy himself a nice house near Port Natalia, maybe.
He will have to find some viable defenses to utilize here without raising suspicions by any public eye. Maybe a magical barrier? Or he could buy people to guard his house…
Well, the problems from the future will belong to his future self.
Victor's eyes casually fell on Penny, who still gloomily stared on the ground as she walked along with them. Carrying her along might change some things for the future, but things already began to change since he appeared in this world.
After all, after the meeting with the Mandragora, there was supposed to be a time skip up to the evening of the same day, not a Monster Horde made up of Slime Girls and Imps, not to talk about the numerous presences of Slug Girls the previous evening…
Things are beginning to change in this world, Victor knew that. Yet, what is he supposed to do about it? Become the archetype of the Hero summoned from another world to fight the 'Demon King'? That's not him at all.
If he really needs to do something, he could simply buy an actual Hero summoned from another world, like the Four Cardinal Heroes…? Nah, they are too pathetic to act like real Heroes. Besides, the real danger is not Alice, but the Light Goddess Ilias.
There was no need for a simple Hero, but for a God Slayer… Maybe any character from Dragon Ball Z? The weakest of them all could bench press the planet. However, they are too expensive…
...Maybe Zancrow? Unless there are some problems, he could use his God Slayer Magic to dispatch Ilias. Speaking of Heroes and Demon Kings, what about Anos Voldigoad? He is the best bet he has against this kind of problem, as someone capable of resurrecting himself and others repetitively, and also interfering with space and time.
Unfortunately, as good these suggestions are, they all have an abominable price at their side, which is why he had decided to simply not meddle with the problem at all and live peacefully with his tycoon system, something he got prived off for the moment due to his own stupid decisions and ways to deal with his problems.
Welp, he will get used to it. If you make a mistake, you can learn to not do it the next time.
…
Victor Luis' (future) Trivia Book: Iliasburg
Iliasburg is the capital of Ilias Continent, taking the form of a grand city in the middle of the continent used as a hub for many travelers in the region. The system resembles more of a Tree spreading its branches everywhere, with the branches being the travelers who wish to visit the other places around the continent.
It is also home of the most expensive inn in the world, the Sutherland Inn. If you want to pay up for a night there, you better convince one of the four rulers in Sentora to help you with the payment, because only nobility have the capacity to pay for the absurd price of 2 million and half Gold Coins.
If you can't do that, you can simply hope to get on the Hostess' good side and let her pull down the price from the high heavens to 5 Gold per night.
Unlike other towns and cities, there is no mayor or monarch governing the city single-handedly. The government of Iliasburg is left to an oligarchic system made up by the five leaders of the Guilds made up in Iliasburg:
The Innkeeper's Guild is responsible for the health and safety that the inns guarantee, and also responsible for the finances and monetary flow of the entire Iliasburg;
The Shipping Guild has the job of sending wanted items to their destinators, even beyond the seas. No matter who sends the request and where they live, the order will arrive to their doorsteps in less than a week;
The Information Broker Guild gathers every kind of information and data at a less-than-fair price, and its leader is a particularly famous and infamous figure that goes by Amira, the unfortunate Lamia that personally visited every place despite being the head of a faction that was supposed to 'gather' information;
The Traveler Guild is responsible for the many people that have taken one of the missions monopolized by the Guild to get paid for it, while also passing datas to the Information Broker Guild regarding unique events that happen during their travels. If you lack money, you can be a freelancer over there and help people in return of money.
And then there is the Banking Guild, setting two bases on Iliasburg and San Ilia. They are the ones responsible for keeping up large amounts of money within specially-made magic vaults that are created by the royal mages of San Ilia. Usually, only veteran Heroes and nobles possess these kinds of vaults, because only they have the need to store their huge amounts of Gold.
The leaders of these five Guilds are the ones that govern the city and manage it in the background.