My question gave the man pause for a few moments before he responded to my request, saying, “It would be my pleasure to host such gracious Immortals such as yourselves. However, I am afraid that any services I could offer would not be able to please those of status like yours.”

  This response did not mean much to me. It was not like I was trying to ignore the fact that he was trying to hint that we should not join him either. It was just that I was oblivious to what he meant at that moment. So I quickly replied to him, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We can make do on our own. Besides, we are going to head to Fearous Bear Town tomorrow anyway, so it will be kind of awkward if we ended up traveling together regardless. So what do you think?”

  The man himself looked a little constipated at the moment after hearing what I said, but his daughter off to the side was now nodding her head rapidly, causing him to sigh and say, “Oh well, I guess you’re right, but before that, I should at least properly introduce myself and my dear daughter. I am Edward Scythe, Father of this one here, and what I would like to think was a great husband to my te wife. As for the girl, She is Lanalia Scythe, a very smart little ss and my most precious treasure as well as, at times, my worst nightmare. It is nice to meet you three.”

  Next to him, Lanalia suddenly looked very embarrassed and coughed before saying, “Yes, it is nice to meet you all, and I am sorry for not introducing myself earlier.”

  Listening to their introduction, I realized that we did not introduce ourselves either. It was not like it was intentional. It was just a consequence of being overly cautious and a little distracted. Thankfully, they brought this up, giving me a good excuse to introduce ourselves. "And I am Varia Lockheart. It is nice to meet you, and I am sorry about not introducing myself earlier as well.”

  After my short introduction, I watched Edward’s eyes go wide as his body completely locked up, and a weird smell began to drift into the air. The smell confused me for a moment, but after sensing it, something in my brain told me that the man was currently feeling fear. I was not sure why I even thought that until I remembered a bit of research that was done on Earth, which said that certain animals might be able to smell fear or other emotions due to certain chemicals that are released by the body.

  Besides that, I heard a sigh from my two companions as Lou Xia hung her head and May face palmed while gncing at me from the side. The only somewhat normal one was Lanalia, who got slightly excited before saying, “Oh, that’s a pretty name.”

  Correction: Her response was completely normal, and it was also one I had never received before. It was something I would not have been happy about in my st life, given obvious reasons, but now I was confused about how I should feel about it. Part of me was very happy about hearing that, whereas the rational part of my brain was saying that something was wrong with that response and I should not have adapted in this way yet. Everything else kind of just froze or crashed into each other violently. Eventually, I was able to stutter out a response after turning my head away, saying, “O-Oh, uh, th-thank you.”

  After that, I quickly got my brain out of its traffic jam by refocusing on a different topic, saying, “It’s getting pretty te. Do you guys want to set up camp and rest, or do you want to travel through the night?”

  It was clear from the looks I received after speaking that my change of topic did not go unnoticed. However, no one called me out on it, and instead, Edward responded, “I think we will set up camp outside and stay the night. You are welcome to join us if you would like.” With that, he grabbed his daughter by the arm and pulled her outside, leaving the three of us alone inside.

  Not long after he left, May turned to me with an exasperated expression and said, slightly despondently, “Vale, how about next time you only tell someone your first name and not your st one?”

  Hearing that I turned to look at May with confusion, not knowing why she would say this, but it was not that big of an issue, so I went along with it and nodded my head before charging out of the shrine.

  —

  Outside, I saw most of what I guessed were guards unloading some supplies from the fourth of the five carriages as a few others started a few fires, and the remaining ones looked around the road and the forest. All of them were clearly avoiding the shrine and myself by extension, though I could not bme them after seeing the avatar trying to destroy the shrine. Outside of that, my companions walked out of the shrine, went to our comparatively tiny campsite, and started packing some things. We did not take out much and only had a couple of mats as well as some cooking tools sitting out, so it took almost no time at all.

  Since they were doing that, I darted forward through some of the guards, causing them to jump, before scaling up a tree on the other side of the clearing where I could see what everyone was doing. That included the few guards who pulled out their weapons and my now confused companions.

  Now, all I had to do was sit here and people-watch until I got bored and decided to read through my near-endless stack of cultivation manuals. It was not like I could sleep thanks to the divine coffee, after all.

  Vulthurtoor