Late Spring of the Thirteenth Year

Reporting Quests

Adventurers are nomadic entrepreneurs. As such, they must bear the responsibility of reporting their results to whoever hired them, even if that news is painful to deliver.

I’d mentioned that the world wasn’t lenient enough for everything to end happily ever after back when we’d been brainstorming ways of saving Miss Celia, and my claim was valid. We humans were fated to clean up after the messes we’d made—personally, faithfully, and in a way that would appease whomever owned the property the mess was made on.

“So, what sort of charming little excuse have you brought for me?”

After finishing the game of ehrengarde with Miss Celia in her midnight greenhouse, Mika and Elisa had come to liven up the party. We’d all enjoyed tea for a bit and gone our separate ways—save for Mika, who’d caught Lady Franziska’s eye and gotten whisked away—but upon carrying my sister home, I was faced with cruel reality: our master had returned before we knew it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d known that this woman had some means of telling who intruded on her territory. Rather, I would have been worried if shedidn’t. My employer was exceptional even among her immortal peers; I would sooner expect lightning to arc across blue skies than to see her feeling under the weather.

And so, after tucking in Elisa—my safe return had gotten her so worked up that she’d fallen asleep by the time we’d left the Bernkastel estate—our master’s first words to me following her own safe return were as previously mentioned.

“First and foremost,” I said w