Chapter 25

My girlfriend was a bit surprised to see that my pet lich wasn't as painful to look at as she used to be, but I sent her a quick telepathic message telling her what happened and why. As the door opened, I was met with an individual I do not recognize. "Is he going to be my Model?"

"No." I said pointing behind the door. "Curb your enthusiasm, it's just her." As the door closed, she saw my pet lich waving a bit shyly as if nervous to have someone so excited to become so intimately acquainted with her body's every curve and distance, as she'd soon be taking measurements to fit her for clothes.

"Oh, what a cute girl…"

"Eh, she's alright…"

"I can see why she needs a tailor."

"Yeah, we don't have clothes that fit her, so we needed someone to come over and make her new clothes after her old clothes were destroyed."

"Oh no, what happened." My pet and I shared a look.

"She doesn't remember."

"Well, that's ok I'll make her some clothes. What did you have in mind?"

"I was thinking something like a maid would wear."

"I was asking her!" she seemed a bit upset with me and turned her attention to my pet lich who began to look nervous. "I'm fine with maid clothes."

"Is that really what you want?" she asked staring at me when she said it.

"I personally don't care for clothes but since they went out of their way to bring you here it seems rude to just say I don't need it." She answered honestly.

"What kind of a girl doesn't like clothes?"

"I was fine without them when I was on my own."

"That can't be true it completely goes against modern standards of morality and ethics."

"Just make the maid clothes I don't plan to be wearing them much anyway."

"Right, I'll make you multiple sets of clothes and you'll wear your favourite right?"

"My favourite is to not wear them." She answered honestly again.

I spoke up now again. "I think you're misunderstanding something fundamental about this one's nature." When I said that my pet walked right up beside me, and I showed off the matching marks on my hand and her eye. "For you see, she's not even human."

"Oh… she's a contracted monster…"

"In a manner of speaking."

"So, you want her to wear clothes because it would be a problem if you summoned her to your side and she was… dressed like that."

"You understand then."

"Yes… right… sorry… maid clothes you said?"

"Yeah, if it's not too much trouble can you make them battle maid clothes? She's quite the fighter."

"I can try."

With that, she stopped trying to argue. She soon stripped my pet of even her robe got out her measuring tape and notebook and started measuring while taking notes. It took her about an hour to get all the measurements she needed for the outfit and started on the sketch when we were about ready to go back to the in laws' house for lunch.

"We've got somewhere to be for lunch, can I trust you to lock the door when you're done?"

"Sure, sure." My pet lich replied. And with that, we left the house and teleported back to her parents' house. They were waiting by the door for us to return. And we looked at them in confusion. "We did say we'd be a bit late."

"Yeah, your lunch is cold, and on the table, we just thought maybe you'd… never mind forget I said anything."

I could check book to see what his intention was, but I'd rather not get a confirmation on what I think he thought we were doing. Nor do I want it to be denied and admit he unintentionally made me think he thought we did that.

The local food in this town is freshwater fish and root vegetables as opposed to the more landlocked town where I live, where the main foods are monster meats, domesticated animals, and plants. This more peaceful village has more of the peaceful things in life it's like a big retirement village most of the people who live here are old folks and adventurers who'd made their fortunes and are ok with never risking their lives again.

The thing is the successful adventurers make money far too easily and retire far too quickly and the unsuccessful adventurers either give up or die before they can contribute anything to society. I've heard in multiple countries once successful adventurers retire, they are hounded by nobles to pay higher taxes as a way of forcing them back into their jobs as adventurers because no one else will and the world needs adventurers for jobs normal knights can't do.

It's a fine beautiful town and since most of the people who live here are ex adventurers nothing bad can really happen to this town because it's full of seasoned veteran fighters. Even if they are a few years out of practice.

It's strange though most of the adventurers who are actually successful and continue working to old age either have expensive and poor spending habits or were just too lazy to become a bandit. But no one wants to hire a bandit even though everyone knows bandits are in constant want for money.

Yet they drive respectable adventurers into a need for money to keep them working because they know if they don't work all the young talentless adventurers who seek fame will just die or give up eventually, what they should be doing is investing in a way to teach new adventurers to keep the business alive… well they have a school for adventurers, but you have to pay to enter.

Most adventurers choose the occupation because there are no requirements to take the job and they need money, why then would they want to go to adventuring school when it's not even a requirement. But I understand if there were a requirement there'd be even fewer adventurers to throw their lives away for the errands of the rich.

Her father loved complaining about this specifically. He was actually friends with a noble and when he was about to be subject to the unfair taxes that drove my parents to return to adventuring he simply teleported over to him unannounced and unbidden to give his complaints in person and remind him that for years he'd paid his taxes diligently and to the letter, that nothing he had done was deserving of this and that he'd never pay these unfair taxes on money he'd already been taxed for as long as he lived and teleported away without further explanation.

The tax collectors soon gave up on trying to crack his safe of a house and returned empty-handed. I know the local militia being given orders to make him pay his taxes regardless is one of the reasons he's so paranoid, but the militia is also made up of sympathetic adventurers, so they don't really listen to the edicts of the nobles that specifically target and oppress the successful.

After listening to his nostalgic ramble, we wandered about the town some more and checked in on the progress of my pet's clothes. The girl was sitting on the floor looking over a few rough sketches trying to get my pet to choose one, but it seems like her desire not to wear clothes is showing as the designs are getting progressively more and more revealing.

I then picked up a blank sheet of paper and sketched out something I thought would be fitting. It was in my style a bit so it looked like a regular maid outfit with minimal frills and pointless details and decorated with skulls bones and claws. I handed it over to them and she had a disagreement about how a cute girl shouldn't wear something so dark and redesigned my drawing in something a bit less like I drew it and more in a gothic style.

I shrugged and said, "As long as she's covered, and it doesn't offend my eye to look at I don't care."

"Me neither." My pet said mimicking my body language and verbal idiosyncrasies.

She let out a long-drawn-out sigh and met me in the middle, there were a few skeletal elements left in as jewellery and embellishments to be added and removed from the clothes at will while designing the base dress as a regular maid's outfit, it goes down to a hand's length below the knees and has sleeves that go all the way down to the wrists the collar covers the neck completely and it has a headband for some reason.

It's drawn in blacks and whites with mostly blacks with the white bits to emphasize the darkness of the dress she wasn't that happy as a designer, but we were pleased enough with the final design for the dress.

She left to get the materials together and make a prototype and we told her to take her time. "Where's my pendant?"

"It's made we'll just have to wait for your clothes to be ready and I'll give it to you."

"I want to see it."

"Alright but I forbid you to take it from me until you have your clothes."

"I'd be in breach of contract if I use it anyway."

Rather than showing her where I hid it, I used my spell to summon small objects to my hand to teleport it to my palm and showed it to her. "Can you prove to me that it works?"

"If you're going to be this ungrateful every time I do something nice for you I might just learn my lesson and not do anything for you anymore."

"It really would build my trust in you if you prove to me just this once that you are a man who keeps his word."

"I don't remember ever breaking a promise to anyone I cared about"

"That does not reassure me"

"Cleaver girl… alright I'll prove it to you." I handed my pendant over to my girlfriend during the pause closed the distance between us as I spoke and punctuated my sentence with a hand on her shoulder. And with that, I teleported her back to the labyrinth.

"Well?"

"Yes, this is sufficient." She got down on her hands and knees. "Forgive my rudeness, no one who has ever hired me has ever been honest with me so I assumed you would be the same."

"You worked for the same corrupt nobles who seek to tax all the hard-earned coin out of the coffers of people who do real work and wonder why no one wants the highest paying job anymore. I don't blame you."

"You carry yourself very similar to them, so I presumed you to be like them in some way, but I was wrong, and it was rude of me to think of you like them."

"You don't have to grovel at my feet, you're already my possession if I wanted to step on you, I'd just do it. Know that there is nothing stopping me from treating you much worse than I treat you I simply want you to know that we will never be an item. So I try to keep the distance like this."

"Regardless now that I know you're an honourable man I pledge this heart, mind soul and body to you, I'll never question your decisions again."

"Just get up." I said kicking her to get her out of her bowing position. She landed on her feet and bowed again. "Of course, sorry if my display of loyalty disturbed you."

"Your sudden change in addressing me troubles me more."

"Right, I'll try going back to talking more casually but. It's going to be a bit difficult now that I actually respect you."

"I can kick you some more if you like."

"Do as you please."

"This isn't fun anymore." And so I walked off.