Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Ike whirled. Ahead of him, Wisp tensed as well, and behind him, Mag cringed.

A man, not masked, nor wearing white, stood before them. He looked like an ordinary mage in all ways. No… he is an ordinary mage? Ike frowned. He couldn't be sure of anything. After all, Brightbriar's puppets could perfectly replicate people. Unless he cracked the guy open, there was no way to tell if he was a puppet or not.

It's probably best to assume he's a puppet. So decided, Ike clasped the handle of his blade.

"Are you some of Cami's kids?" the man continued. His mana didn't spike, nor did he reach for a weapon. He gestured. "Come on, off with the masks. I get it, it's fun to pretend to be one of the automatons, but playtime's over. They're busy. We've got important visitors coming soon, and we've gotta be ready for them."

Ike hesitated. He glanced at Wisp. From the man's aura, he wasn't more than a Rank 3. The three of them outnumbered him. If they took their masks off and the man's reaction was bad, they still had time to deal with the fallout.

Wisp glanced back at him. She tipped her head his way, indicating for him to take the lead.

Ike turned back to the man. He kept his hand on his sword, but with his other hand, removed the mask as the man had requested. "Sorry, sir. We were just playing."

Beside him, Wisp lowered her mask, and Mag hesitated for a moment, then complied as well.

The man's eyes roamed over them without recognizing their faces, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he just harrumphed. "Aren't you a bit too old for this? Now come on, get back downstairs with everyone else. We're short on hands; now isn't the time for joking around."

"Of course, of course." Ike nodded, bowing politely, just like he'd seen low-ranked mages do to higher-ranked mages back in his home city.

That seemed to please the man, because he nodded and walked off. At the entrance, he turned back. "And leave those robes up here, too. Don't be ridiculous, but behave. You know this is a rare opportunity, so don't waste it goofing around."

A rare opportunity? Ike raised his brows, but said nothing. He glanced at his robes, then at Wisp, and cocked a brow. He had his old robes, but they were tattered and filthy. The man's robes had been pristine, and from what he remembered of his original city, most of the other mages' had, as well. He'd stand out in filthy clothes.

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Wisp winked back at him. From her storage ring, she flourished a set of colorful robes. "Snagged them back there in the cloth section. Remember what you said about white? Now we can wear all sorts of colors!"

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Ike grinned and patted her on the head. "Good going." He considered for a moment, then took a set of goldenrod robes for himself. The yellow went well with his mid-brown hair.

Mag chirped and snatched a pair of red robes from Wisp's hand, not that anyone had ever doubted his color preference. Wisp glared at him. "You aren't even going to wear them!"

"Mine," Mag replied, hunkering down, and Ike could just about see his feathers puffing up, even though he was in human form.

"Yeah, yeah. Your shiny things," Ike replied placatingly.

"I was gonna wear red," Wisp complained, pulling on the remaining purple robes.

Ike looked at her. "You like red?"

"Colors are whatever, but red hides blood best," she replied with a savage grin. "I once went house-to-house eating idiots who were foolish enough to answer the door. It stopped working after the third one until I looped back and threw on his red robes, and then I got another five houses before they caught on and stopped opening their doors."

"No wonder the Abyss was out to kill you," Ike commented.

"To be fair, they'd just burned down my forest trying to kill me and all my spider underlings. They got most of the underlings…I was still recovering from it when you showed up. It was a little preventative vengeance, so they'd know what would happen if they tried to burn down my comfy forest again."

Ike tipped his head back and forth. Humans considered beasts lesser than humans, so who was he to tell a beast not to consider humans less than beasts? If she'd been a human, they would have fought her toe-to-toe, not tried to burn her house down while she was in it. Well… in most cases, anyways. The point was, if someone had burned down his house, he would certainly not be happy unless they suffered in return, so what was a little door-to-door murder? If the result was the extreme fear he'd seen of Wisp in the village, then it had certainly worked out for her.

Ike turned away and quickly changed. He kept on the underrobes from the white gear, so he didn't need to worry about finding a nook. The white overrobes he tucked into his storage ring, along with the mask. He didn't have a need for them, but it wasn't a bad idea to have a mask on hand, or a pair of generic white robes.

The man had long-since vanished down a narrow staircase ahead of them. Ike glanced at Wisp. "What's up ahead?"

Wisp shrugged. "I didn't make it past the weaving puppets the first time. I saw weird shit and thought, hmm, I should traumatize Ike with this."

"Oh, thanks," Ike deadpanned, rolling his eyes.

She grinned, then went serious. "I don't know. I stole some spare robes and scampered. Didn't know how sensitive these things were to mana, so I didn't want to hang around needlessly and alert them."

Ike nodded. He took a deep breath and tightened his belt. "Let's go find out."