The Simulacrum - Chapter 88~ Part 4

“Good night!” Elly rose to her tiptoes and gave me a chaste kiss. “Don’t forget the stage.”

It took me a moment to realize she was talking about the stage for the school festival concert. I had no idea what I was supposed to remember about it, but I still obediently answered, “I won’t. Also, for the record, it’s barely evening yet.”

“Hush, Chief. Nobody likes a nitpicker,” Judy scolded me, but then she glanced down at the ring on her finger and added, “Other than me.”

“Us,” the princess corrected her, showing off her own ring, and my dear assistant amended herself.

“Other than us.”

The ring on Judy’s fingers was, naturally, the custom-made defensive artifact I made for her. Well, technically I only tuned it for final specifications, but it’s a distinction without a difference. Since she wasn’t supposed to enter into combat, its only job was to protect her in case of an emergency, at least until she could be extracted, by encasing her in a barrier. It would only last for a couple of seconds on a single charge, but I figured it was more than enough time for me to Phase in and take her to safety.

As for why the princess also had an identical silver band on her finger, the explanation was quite prosaic: balance. After all, giving a ring to only one of my girlfriends was pretty much begging for further misunderstandings. The fact they insisted on wearing them on their ring fingers, and that I had to put them on myself, went without saying. Of course, Elly’s artifact was more offensively-oriented, and Judy received a couple of other enchanted tools as well, but rings had special significance, so I made sure both of them would get one.

In any case, my lips twisted into a smile, and I kissed both girls before gently urging them out the door and towards the patiently waiting limousine parked on my driveway. My girlfriends lingered long after the rest of our group already headed home, and while their company was always welcome, it was getting late. After our final goodbyes, I saw them off and waited until the car left the street before I returned to the living room.

I considered whether to grab some snacks, but my train of thought was interrupted by screeching noise coming from upstairs. A soft sigh later my legs carried me up the stairs, stopped in front of Snowy’s room, and I knocked twice. A long beat later my sister opened the door and poked her head out. My redhead sister, that is.

“Yes?”

“What’s the commotion about?”

Penny cocked her head like my question was weird, but then she fully opened the door and said, “We’re just rearranging things a little.”

Looking inside, I found Snowy carefully moving the computer desk to the corner where her wardrobe used to be.

“Why do you need to move the furniture for a sleepover?”

My perfectly reasonable question was met with conspicuously averted eyes and a tongue-tied silence.

Long story short, after I scolded Josh and Rinne, and established new rules regarding sparring and the usage of small Purple Zones, I discovered that my sisters already finished discussing the whole ‘seduction’ topic. Since Snowy was still feeling apologetic, she apparently allowed Penny to use her PC whenever she wanted, and my other sister snatched at the chance with suspicious zeal. She also wanted to capitalize on the opportunity right away, so with my blessing, she was going to stay over at our place. Actually, now that I thought about it…

“Say, Penny? Where do you plan to sleep tonight again?”

“Here, of course,” she declared, and gestured towards Snowy’s bed, currently occupied by the duffel bag holding her change of clothes and school uniform.

“With Snowy?”

“Obviously.” I was just about to respond to that, but then her face flushed red and she hastily proclaimed, “D-Don’t have any weird ideas! It’s totally fine to do that! We’re both girls, right, Snowy?”

“I… Yes?” my other sister responded a bit slowly, visibly taken aback.

“You see? This means it’s totally fine.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“No, I’m not!” Penny fumed, but for the moment I ignored her and turned to the Abyssal girl instead.

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yes. If Penny wants to sleep over, I don’t mind sharing.”

I eyed the silver-haired girl for a while and decided to say, “Just for the record, you don’t have to listen to everything she says just because you’re feeling guilty for what happened.”

“Hey! You make it sound like I’m blackmailing her!” Penny protested, but I continued to ignore her.

All things considered, I was happy they were still getting along despite this whole ‘seduction’ hubbub, but I was a little worried their relationship would get unbalanced by Snowy’s guilty conscience. For now, it seemed Penny was only using it as an excuse to hole herself up in her room and get her hands on her PC, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Just remember, if things get too crummy in here, Penny can still sleep in the guest room.”

“Things aren’t going to get ‘crummy’!” the redhead in the front objected with a galactic pout and gave Snowy a small bear hug. So… a cub-hug? Is that a thing? Should it be? Anyhow, she continued with, “We can fit in a single bed no problem! Also, there’s nothing strange about that at all, because we’re girls, right?”

“I… think we are still girls, yes?”

Snowy sounded even more confused but endured the cub-hug without any complaints.

“Yes, we are! Also, sisters! Sorta!” Penny carried on. “So there’s nothing weird about sleeping in the same bed, right! Siblings do that all the time!”

She was still kind of suspicious, but her going out of her way to call Snowy her sister was definitely a welcome development. An odd, rushed, and questionable development, but definitely not a bad one, so for the time being I decided to leave these two to their own devices and let them figure out their relationship on their own. I would still step in if Penny got too overbearing or Snowy too uncomfortable, but I had no reason to do so yet.

So, since I confirmed the source of the noises and that my sisters were getting along just fine, it was time to move on… after some obligatory teasing.

“Are you sure you’re the same girl who chased Snowy across the school building while calling her a pastry?”

Penny reeled back like I just smacked her in the nose, followed by a shrill “Brother! Did you seriously have to bring up Snowy’s trauma right now?”

“Excuse me, but weren’t you the one who caused that trauma in the first place?”

Her face tinted in a shade of crimson, Penny finally let go of my other sister and used both hands to push me out of the doorway. I let her do it, and once I was out of the way, she exhaled an indignant huff.

“Out with you! You don’t have a shred of delicacy!” And with that, she very carefully and quietly slammed the door on me. However, even after that, I could still hear her let out a groan on the other side, followed by a much softer, “I-I didn’t mean it! When I called you a tart, I mean! It was in the heat of the moment and everything…”

“It doesn’t really bother me,” Snowy answered softly, eliciting a confused noise from the other girl.

“It should! I-I mean, not in this case, but you shouldn’t just let anyone call you that! If somebody does, just call me, and I’ll teach them a lesson! … Or, I suppose you can probably beat them up too, but… but never mind! Just call me, and I’ll show them what’s what!”

Whatever Snowy’s answer was, I couldn’t hear it, because I was already heading to my room. Eavesdropping was rude, after all. Unless it was done using supernatural remote viewing by a handsome, talented, and criminally humble guy, in which case it was Hunky Dory.

Putting my self-deprecating hypocrisy aside, once I was inside, I sat down and did a Far Sight roll-call. Josh and Angie were already home, and she was giving first-aid after-care to her childhood friend. There was a nice atmosphere between those two, which made me wonder when and how they would cross the proverbial finish line. It wasn’t likely I’d learn anything important though, so I moved on. There was nothing on the rest of the gang, nothing on Abram, nothing in the base, Mike was already sleeping, Jaakobah was holed up in a room somewhere, and as for Crowey… Let’s just say he was still suffering from the fallout of my infiltration of the Inanna’s the Mana Well. By the looks of it, he wouldn’t be bothering us for at least a couple of weeks longer.

Now then, that meant it was time to move onto my main target, and I honed in on a certain incognito arch-mage, currently leisurely lounging in her high-class hotel suite. She had probably taken a bath, as her hair was wrapped up in a bright pink towel that contrasted with the plain joggers and hoodie she was wearing. Normally I would’ve used a more indirect entry, but I already promised Rinne that I would head back to the base later today to finalize the plans for the new training grounds, so without any further ado, I Phased away.

“Evening.”

“Whaaaa…?”

The brown girl on the couch nearly jumped out of her skin, but once she realized it was just me, her tense shoulders slouched like it was going out of style.

“Leonard! What are you doing here?”

“I’m not really here, just projecting. You know? Illusions and stuff,” I answered off-handedly and walked around the couch to face her.

“Really? Wow. That’s, like, so bad.”

“Bad?”

“In, like, a good way!” the old lady in the body of a teenager declared with a grin so wide I could see her molars. “So, like, why are you not here?”

“Just wanted to discuss your participation in the tournament,” I told her without beating around the bush, and her good mood evaporated like hand sanitizer in the Saharan noon.

“It was the old badger who set you up for this, wasn’t he?” When I nodded, he let out an angry ‘Bah!’ and threw her hands into the air. “Gag me with a spoon! That’s totally typical! So what? Do you, like, want to tell me to withdraw?”

“The old man definitely wants me to, but I can go either way. It really depends on why you want to participate.”

“Oh, that’s simple,” she brightened up and pulled her legs into a cross under her. “It’s gonna be totally tubular!”

“So you want to join because it sounds fun.” She nodded without the slightest hint of hesitation. “Even though it will draw attention to you, may make the Assembly investigate you, and potentially mess up your inheritance?”

“Hey! Whose side are you on?”

“Don’t mind me, I’m just making a token effort,” I told her without reservation. “So, is that it?”

Sahi eyed me for a while, then out of the blue, she took the wet towel off her head and shook her hair loose.

“Listen, Leonard. I already lived a long, lame life. If I had to choose between trying something fresh and playing it totally safe, I would choose the first every time! Like, look at me!” She pinched a tuft of her hair between her fingers and showed it off to me. “No split ends! No grey strands! And I’m, like, totally hot! Why should I waste my time worrying about my money and research? What good did they ever do to me?”

“Technically, it’s because your research set the foundations that I could transfer you over to this body,” I pointed out, but she dismissed me with a roll of her eyes.

“Don’t, like, split hairs on me! I just told you how I’m totally stoked that I don’t have to deal with those anymore! And, like, more importantly, I just want to live a new life without any regrets.”

“And you would regret not participating in the tournament.”

“Fer shur!”

“Well, that settles it then.”

Sahi once again looked at me funny.

“Is that it? I thought you would, like, try to convince me and stuff?”

“Nah. I just came over so that I can tell Lord Grandpa I tried. He probably won’t be going to like it though.”

“Of course he won’t! That wizened weasel never had a day of fun in his life! Like, he wouldn’t recognize adventure if it totally hit him in the nose!”

“Wouldn’t he? I was under the impression he led at least one expedition into the Amazon in his younger days.”

The fuming girl on the couch fell silent and gave me a look that said she wasn’t sure if I was pulling her leg or not.

“Where did you hear that?”

“From the school nurse,” I admitted, and her eyes opened wide.

“Those dweebs did something like that, and they never invited me? The gall of those posers!”

“I have nothing to add to that, so if you excuse me, I’m going to sublimate out of perception now.”

“Oh, okay. One day you have to show me how you do these gnarly illusions. It’s major amazing! Even when I know it’s fake, it’s like you’re totally here in front of me!”

“Maybe one day,” I told her mysteriously, and after waving goodbye, I left the penthouse suite and returned to my own room. Token effort: complete.

My eyes automatically checked the clock on the wall. It was still a little early, and I internally debated if I should head over to the secret base, or stay around for a while longer in case my sisters made a commotion. In the end, I decided to stay. First, I would continue the roll-call, then I’d check the Celestial Hub for any interesting news, then maybe brew a nice hot cup of tea. Sounded like an easygoing yet productive plan for the evening, so I went with it.

For a start, I focused on the new marks I’d made during the banquet. The first person I checked was naturally Zihao, and I found him sitting in an empty room, legs in a lotus position, and meditating. Or napping. Either way, absolutely riveting.

Okay, so that was a dud. Moving on, I focused on the Western Draconians I marked, but it didn’t go much better either. Were Draconians early sleepers, I wondered? The few of them who were still awake weren’t doing anything interesting either, so I ran out of targets really quickly.

This left me with one last group. While I never got the chance to mark Naoren and the grand elder, my previous experience with the Knights showed me that marking an otherwise generic placeholder in their environment was almost as good, so I made sure to sneakily poke a couple of the lesser family members and servants orbiting around the main players. Some of them were duds, but at least one of them turned out to be the personal assistant of the bespectacled clan head, and I managed to pick two members of the grand elder’s inner circle as well.

Long story short, my indirect glance at Naoren proved to be less than exciting, as he was doing paperwork. I had no idea what kind, as I couldn’t read Chinese, but it had a lot of big numbers and tables in it, so I was pretty sure it was business-related. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Now then, as for the people around the Grand Elder—

“…exactly do you want in exchange for this information?”

The raspy female voice hitting my ear made me shudder, and the moment my vision cleared, I could feel my chest tighten with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. The shock kicked my brain into higher gear, and I immediately changed my Far Sight target Phased out of the house.

“[Ah? Blackcloak?]” Brang uttered in surprise when I appeared out of thin air in the Fauns’ barracks, and he put the book he was reading aside. “[What bring you here at—]”

“[The time to converse does not exist!]” I barked out while taking off my shirt. “[I request that you retrieve mine Abyssal masquerade of Bel with absolute haste!]”

The old general probably had a lot of questions in mind, but to his credit, he didn’t ask a single one of them, but instead he rose to his feet and rushed out of the room to fulfill my command, and by the time he returned with a box and a coat hanger, I was already down to my underwear. Time was of the essence, modestly was secondary, and while I wasn’t sure how I’ll play this, one thing was for sure: my plans for an easygoing evening were definitely out the window.