Thrown into chaos, Konrad's mind almost shut down.
Adrenaline and pressure had his body thrum in more ways than one. Sweetness invaded his nostrils, pain forgotten, a new sensation taking hold over him.
A girl, straddling his hips, wearing only scraps of fabric.
Wild, orange tangles in tiny buns. Soft thighs warm against his hips, paint smeared all over.
Hasty blue lines crossed pale cheeks and arms, a circle drawing attention to a bare stomach.
Her face, the freckles, even the situation felt somehow familiar. But Konrad smashed into a wall when he tried to dig deeper. Another memory he knew he had, but couldn't put together.
"Enjoying the view, nya?"
The smug grin revealed long and pointy incisors. They were a little crooked, freckles shifting on her round face and upturned nose. What he thought were buns turned out to be ears.
Triangle-shaped, fluffy, orange, matching the fiery hair.
As she wiggled her hips — sending Konrad over the moon — a tail came into view. A white tuft hypnotized him, swishing around at its end.
"Have some decency, Liliske," a raspy, apologetic voice came from the right.
Realizing they weren't alone, Konrad pushed the petite body off his lap. He gathered the last morsels of his sanity, covering his groin as his face burned in shame.
"Oww, that wasn't nice," the girl complained, dusting herself off.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a tall, ginger man swing a heavy blade, decapitating a Griphlet. The last of the monsters turned into smoke, too.
Only a crystal remained, pulsing with faint purple light.
"Well, I guess we won't find the dungeon now," the man sighed, sheathing the blade.
"There will be more," the girl shrugged, picking off the other crystal from Konrad's chest.
She threw it into her gaping maw, crunching it like glass. Her companion grabbed the others before she could get to them.
"Don't eat them all, stupid," he smacked her head. "These can fetch a gold each."
"Can't help it, too tasty," she shrugged, the chewing grating on Konrad's ears. "You couldn't hunt them without meow magic anyway."
Magic? The word had him perk right up.
"W-who are you, people?"
"It talked," the man noted, wrestling the girl for another crystal.
"Oh, he talked indeed," she gulped, spinning and skipping back to him. "Who are we? That is my minion, and you can call me Her Serene Demonic Highness, Liliana the Fire Sorceress."
Her curtsy was gauche and exaggerated, cut short by another smack on her head.
"Don't listen to her. I'm Welf, she's Lily. From the nearby tribe," the man offered a hand, yanking him off the ground. "Is that your cart? You the peddler?"
Welf was a head taller, even when he stood. Sunburnt, muscular.
He had the same blue war-paint, and wasn't exactly overdressed either.
It was Konrad's first time seeing the wild tribesmen whom the merchants were so scared of.
Yet they saved his life.
"No, I'm Konrad. Konrad Ostberg," he did his best to bow, not to offend his saviors. "The guards ran when those things attacked."
"Smart, you should have, too." Lily chirped, dancing around him. "Konrad, nya?"
She sniffed at him from an inch away, making him even more self-conscious. Her sweet scent was intoxicating, but he had a rough idea how bad he might have smelled after the fight.
Welf pushed the girl away, giving him some space.
He couldn't help but notice that he had no feline features.
"Go check the cart, Liliske, you're bothering him," he rasped, and she skipped away with a shrug. "If it's not yours, you don't mind if we help ourselves, right?"
Konrad had to put in a lot of effort not to stare at her back and consider the question.
He had no close ties with the trader, and they abandoned him. The horse died in the attack, and it was bulky food stuff anyway. He couldn't care less.
Drawing on the blood that rushed into his lower regions, his brain began to function again.
"It's grain and some dried chanterelles, go for it," he said, looking around. "But, did you say those crystals are one gold each?"
"Oh, dibs on the mushrooms," Lily yelled, already losing interest.
"They're valuable," Welf nodded, shaking his pouch. "If you know who to sell them."
"I, um, killed two of those things, so their loot should be mine," Konrad cleared his throat. Negotiations weren't his strong suit. "I also broke my gear, so—"
"Meow, you didn't," the girl chirped, not even stopping to look up from her looting frenzy. "If they didn't go 'POOF', they weren't dead."
He remembered the monster on his chest turning into smoke.
And getting hit by a fireball? Even if it happened minutes ago, it was all hazy.
It was his first time seeing anything like that. Beasts near Haiten didn't explode — hunters would've gone out of business if they did. What was even happening?
He couldn't make sense of anything.
"Well, I guess you wounded two of them," Welf scratched his temple, then threw him a crystal. That caught him off guard. "You're lucky I'm a blacksmith, so I'll fix your sword, too."
"Huh?" He scrambled to grab the loot, feeling warm in his palms. "Thank you?"
"You don't let me eat them, but he can have one?!" Lily complained, with a mouth full of chantrelles, while the man picked up the broken blade. "I already healed him, too."
Konrad realized only then that while his tunic was in shambles, he felt no pain.
"H-how?" he tapped himself down, eyes going wide.
"How, how?" she puffed her almost flat chest out, "told you, I'm a sorceress."
Oh, right. Without missing a beat, he threw himself on his knees.
"C-can you teach me? Please!"
The redheads froze. Welf suppressed a chuckle while the girl struggled to swallow.
"Teach you what?" she fluttered her long eyelashes.
"Magic," Konrad yelled, desperate. "Please, I'll do anything."
"Do you happen to be a demonic entity older than time itself?" The girl raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms in front of her barely-there chest. "A dark lord with untapped potential?"
As much as he wished he were, Konrad shook his head.
"Then it's im-paw-sible," Lily shrugged, stuffing her face with another handful of mushrooms.
"Sorry, she was born like this," Welf tapped his back, helping him up again.
"Born with magic?" he asked, confused.
"No, batshit crazy. You don't want her to teach you that."
The boy couldn't hide his disappointment. But he was alive. He could even find that mage in Aset. Not that he had the money for it, but he had that crystal—
The girl was back to devour chanterelles, tail swishing.
When she finished — destroying at least three pounds of the food — she flashed a grin.
"Hey, even if I can't teach you, you could be my servant," she offered. But before he opened his mouth, her cat ears twitched. "Ah, they're coming back."
"The Griphlets?" Konrad looked around, but saw nothing. Not even the redheads—
Almost as if they turned into smoke, like the dying monsters.
He was alone with the cart, but not for long.
The guards and the peddler returned a few moments later, shocked to find him alive.