New Day (2)

I spent my days peacefully in the rundown hotel. After I finished familiarizing myself with the geography of the continent, I realized just how far my plan had already progressed. I was probably close to 60% done with my plan, all I needed to do decide on one country, pick a route, and escape. The reward I get from living here should be enough to sustain my travel and living expenses while I was escaping, the Pendle household is not stingy with rewards, so there was no need to focus on money. The only thing I wished I could do was to learn a few more soul techniques, but it's unlikely I find a new one.

In the meantime, I've also stopped my daily dagger practice, I'm in no rush to learn and I'll get taught in a few months anyway. I'd be a fool if I didn't take the time I have right now to relax. I even stopped counting the days I spent here.

My life finally felt like the stories I read about in the past. All I did was read and wander around the hotel. I did go outside a few times, but there's nothing notable other than nature. It's much more interesting to wander the abandoned rooms of the hotel. At first, I blindly walked through them, imagining what kind of people would've visited the rooms. Recently, while I was wandering, I found some spare change hiding in the corner in one of the rooms, marking the beginning of me searching through each room like it was a crime scene.

Kasa was confused as to what I was doing at first, but when she saw the money I found, she put aside her magic training to look around with me. For the past few days, all we've done is turn every room upside down, as of right now, 25% of the rooms here have been thoroughly searched.

When we first started searching, Kasa used her magic to move the leftover furniture and search around. When I told her to do it without magic, she looked at me like I was an idiot. I tried to explain searching was more entertaining without magic, but she didn't listen. After a few more rooms, because she got bored, she decided to listen to me.

Fortunately, for her, searching the rooms without magic truly was more fun, and she started to enjoy herself. Looking at her like this, it felt like I did have a younger sister.

We decided to split the loot 50/50. I was a bit disappointed, all we found were some more coins and a few rags, but Kasa was excited even if we didn't find anything in a room. This might be the first time she's done something other than studying magic or talking to me that she's done in the past few years, so I guess it makes sense that she's excited.

Currently, we were on our lunch break. Usually, we both just read books and didn't talk while we ate. Today, however, Kasa asked me a strange question.

"Why were you so nice to me from the start?"

I almost choked on my food, she finally started questioning my intentions. Luckily, I already prepared for this. After swallowing, I started to carefully choose my words.

"Because we're brother and sister."

"But the others (siblings) didn't treat me as well as you have."

"They didn't treat me that well either, why are you thinking about something like this right now?"

She narrowed her eyes "I was wondering if you have any additional motives for befriending me."

"As I said earlier, we're brother and sister."

"But we aren't related."

Now that I think about it, she's right, we aren't related by blood. I had to think carefully about my next response. If she figures out that I wanted to use her future reputation, I would be in a lot of trouble.

After some thinking, I responded with "Being brother and sister is determined by how we treat each other. As long as I treat you like a sister, and you treat me like a brother, without a doubt we are brother and sister." I almost cringed at myself saying this line. It was incredibly corny, but I hoped that she would buy it.

It seems like she did, she never asked me about this again. We spent the next few weeks conducting a thorough search of all the rooms. At the end of it, we both had 15 coins each. I gave anything that wasn't a coin to Kasa, I had no use for those.

After we finished searching, Kasa began devoting herself to magic again. While we did spend time together, there was much less interaction between us. I didn't mind, I was finally able to put a dent in the pile of novels I was reading. Most of the novels I was reading were simple action novels, they had no real plot or character progression, but they were rather addicting to read.

Kasa couldn't understand why I liked these novels so much. When I gave her my reasoning and suggested she pick one up for herself, she threw my suggestion back at me, telling me to read the romance novels she enjoys.

I did have a lot of time on my hands, so I did take up her suggestion. To be honest, I was rather surprised, there was a good amount of character development and politics in most of them. I couldn't get through the romance though, I found it quite unbearable.

Kasa had a similar opinion on my books. She enjoyed the characters getting stronger and the fast-paced battles, but couldn't continue when the main characters of these books started to challenge a god.

No matter how hard each of us tried, we couldn't convince the other about the superior genre. Eventually, I went back to reading action novels, and she went back to reading romance novels in her spare time.

To be honest, these days were the happiest days of my second life, I had no responsibilities, and could just spend my time lazing around.

All good things eventually come to an end though. The next time we were given lunch, I was told that the banquet was right around the corner, and that meant my time here will soon come to an end.

While I did think about staying here permanently, it was too isolated from the city, it would take me a long time to walk from here to the prison and back.

A few days later, I was given a set of clothes to wear for the next day, and the next day, I began my walk back to the mansion.