Pulling up to the tall, rusted, dark metal gate, the gravel underneath Mal-Co's sixtupel tyres made a sweet crunch. Only needing to look through the windshield, Inkaro spotted Xythio and Myendi stopped by the tall rod iron gate separating the oddly maintained and overgrown estate grounds of the manor. The aforementioned building loomed a little way off but within walking distance, like all the other buildings of the town, was crafted from the local red oak wood and the cobblestone. But unlike the other houses, the manor was, in the nicest way of saying it, in disrepair and dilapidation of the highest magnitude, without losing its wealthy and opulent aesthetic somehow. Yuuvia lightly whistled at seeing the building, only to turn very red in the face when Anazenpha mimicked her: pitch perfect and everything.

  Everyone disembarked from Mal-Co the second Inkaro cut its engine, doing so by employing various methods of executing such an action: the tall royal duo and Noaskou, with the hair nesting Saruno on his head, effortlessly hopped over the cargo bed wall like participants in sportsday's hurdle event. While everyone else, aside from the minaturised Lyunoto sitting on Anazenpha's head, made their way off Mal-Co in a less trip-enabling way.

  Although that didn't stop Yuuvia from catching her foot on the wall, however.

  Naturally, and following a surprised eep that got Anazenpha to turn around as she set Lyunoto on the ground, Yuuvia went tumbling out of the cargo bed: right on top of Anazenpha, with a wet squelching noise obnoxiously following moments after.

  What could've happened? Yuuvia got her face stuck in Anazenpha's mouth; that's what, with the only saving grace for Yuuvia being that she and Anazenpha were the only ones to get off the left side of Mal-Co. Sure, on second evaluation, she knew Lyunoto was next to her and Ana, while he didn't get out of the cargo bed, so technically, making her prior deduction true. But left to ruminate on it, she'd concluded that including him in anything related to judging others was unnecessary, given his personality, only to snap out of mental rambling as she remembered where her face was.

  Slinking out of Mal-Co's like a serpent emerging from its burrow after a passing winter, Lizu hopped out of the cabin from the passenger side, her tail lagging behind her as it carried Enetha on top of it for the little princess's own leisure and comfort. Unfortunately for Yuuvia, her arch-rival had, totally, unwittingly chosen the same side as Yuuvia to disembark from.

  "Soo... who knew plenchona could unhindge their jaws in their mostly humanoid form," Lizu remarked teasingly, before slowly bringing a cupped hand to her chin with teasing intent. "Or... perhaps you wanted to give Ana an extra deep kiss. I can totally relate to that feeling of wanting to do that for the person I love~"

  Turning into a deep red that spread across her whole head, Yuuvia deeply groaned in frustration, but sounded more like an engine on its last legs. The noble girl planted her feet firmly on the ground and her hands on Ana's shoulders. She mentally braced herself before simultaneously pushing against the snake girl's shoulders and pulling her own head away. Using all the might she could muster without fear of hurting her friend, Yuuvia struggled to pull her head away as Ana seemed stunned into metaphorical petrification, only moving from any force applied to her by Yuuvia, almost like some fear response.

  While all that was going on, Morilore, carrying a drowsy Paruneha by the hands, floated over the estate's entrapping rod iron fence and towards the manor, not waiting for the others to catch up.

  "Shut your bazonga-brained mouth up!" Yuuiva exclaimed in a hushed, muffled voice as she wrested her face free from Ana's mouth, leaving strings of saliva between that occasionally snapped when becoming too thin to bridge the gap between the girls. Yuuvia's distinctly unnoble-like outburst managed to get a weak huff of amusement out of Xythio, which Myendi swiftly teased the guy for.

  "Alright, everyone, I suggest you refrain from exploring by yourself," Inkaro stated as he tapped his golden agate curio against Mal-Co, forcing the vehicle to be zapped into the inside of its pocket storage space.

  At hearing Inkaro's suggestion, Myendi sprouted a sneaky grin, while flicking her attention away from the front courtyard and Xythio. "Why might that be the case, Paranormal Professional?"

  Instead of answering straight away, Inkaro whistfully walked in the direction of the manor before leaping into the air, bounding over the tall entrance gate without directly making contact with it. With a light thud underfoot, Inkaro landed on the estate's main pathway, forcing the brittle bricks of the path to crackle, crumble, and crack under the force. Lizu narrowed her eyes.

  "When I was here last time, the person I was with said the same thing to me, so I thought doing the same for you lot was logical," Inkaro stated calmly before continuing on his way towards the manor.

  Seeing the guy walking off without a care in the world, Anazenpha bounded her way, dragging a lagging behind Yuuvia by the hand, to the gate Inkaro circumvented. But as the snake girl reached for the gate's latch, Lizu defensively plopped her hand over Enetha's ears before a blaring shriek of an audible jumpscare slapped everyone nearby in the face. As the two startled girls who bared the point-blank impact of the scare toppled to the tall princess's feet, Nova crossed her arms disappointingly: "I hope it's not just a fake haunted house."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  A little bit later, Inkaro peered his inquisitive gaze upon a finely crafted vase sitting on top of one of the many podiums lined up against the central carpet, mainly doing so out of intrigue at how spotless everything in the manor's large landing still was.

  Bounding down the spruce floors of the first floor, Nova blitzed through the upper landing area, carrying Yuuvia and Anazenpha under her arms, with unrivalled focus in her eyes as she made it her mission to locate a strong apparition to battle. Other than the occasional appearance from Nova's trio, Inkaro hadn't seen the others in a while; in fact, G.Galore was slightly surprised Lizu decided to go around the place with Enetha instead of her creator: something about not spoiling the thrill of adventure by going with someone who'd been through it before.

  The sentient grimoire just couldn't wrap her ribbons around the reasoning.

  If Inkaro recalled right, he was sure the groups were as follows: Lizu and Enetha went off to the garden maze behind the manor. Myhail and Lyunoto remained out front to check out the fountain the mushroom teen spotted when returning to his original size. Myendi and Xythio went to the library at the girl's insistence. Noaskou, with Saruno on his head, headed up to the attic for some reason. As for the three he had just spotted, Nova and co could honestly be in any location at any moment in time.

  Neither making a sound as they approached, one from having such an act being forbidden, while the other simply floated, Paruneha and Morilore meandered their way back to their source of social energy. Inkaro only registered the duo when Morilore passed him and bumped face-first into the birch wainscoting with a sythisized thud.

  "Back from your adventure, I see," Inkaro remarked as he felt Paruneha clamber their way up onto his back with sluggish movements, before sagging their arms over Inkaro's shoulders to keep themselves in place. Morilore lightly huffed, snuffing out any potential for conversation, before disappearing into G.Galore's crown accessory. "Sounds like she had fun~"

  There was a knock on a nearby door, fleeting and frantic, more of an unintentional collision if anything. It was followed by that same door violently swinging open, then a light swoosh, before an equally violent slamming noise erupted through the whole landing and got some mileage through the nearby hallways. Which was soon drowned out by Yuuvia's distant scream. All that hullabaloo did little in the way of stoking Paruneha to so much as peek over as they delved into their subconscious to sleep, but it did entice Inkaro; well, it was more of the who doing it than the what.

  Louailanye, breathlessly huffing and puffing on instinct, slumped to the floor with her back against the locked basement door: a regal, rod iron-framed stained glass door nestled between the two slightly curved staircases. Her tails bustled out under her weight, splaying out into a single furry mass of tail fur, acting like water trapped in a balloon with how they moved around her body.

  [She is wearing a sleeveless pink fur hoodie with a see-through circle on its hood that takes up ninety percent of it. A white shirt with pink, interlocked rings on the sides that go up to her pink sleeves. Pink(right half) and silver(left half) leggings with three white rings on the lower half of its right leg and white threading on its left leg. And, a thick, pink metal band with golden kitsune tail-like engravings all around it that she wore on her left ankle]

  [Dreamy Sanctuary][Type: Pocket Storage and Portable Dwelling][Rank: S]

  -A thick, pink metal band with golden kitsune tail-like engravings all around it.

  -An instrument that can store objects and living things.

  Not looking a day older than the day Inkaro had met her seven years ago, the kitsune ear-having girl repeatedly bashed the back of her head against the door in pure dismay that didn't so much as chip or fracture. "That stupid sword maniac, why'd I have to listen to him? He only ever gives me nothing but strife and frus...stration?"

  Her words trailed off, aided almost exclusively by the liability of Inkaro's audacious presence. At least, she wasn't entirely sure if his presence was the cause of her initial lapse in frustration, or if something else could've been the cause, and she simply overlooked it the second she noticed Inkaro.

  "Fancy running into you here, Louailanye," Inkaro remarked cheerfully while presenting a warm hand to the girl. Not doing so at his hand's proximity, she reclusively and defensively sank into the throes of her tail fur, hoping to maintain her sanity at seeing the once small boy now all grown up in front of her. Begridingly, she had to admit he'd totally be his type of guy, had he the slightest bit of battle spirit in him, but she was glad he didn't, mainly from dreading having to hear him ramble about magic theory that would unquestionably melt her mind to goo.

  Grumbling under her non-existent breath, the kitsune-eared girl raised her small hands to grab onto his before he reeled her back onto her feet: "I don't fancy it one bit, you're nothing but trouble for anyone."

  "Are you still upset over that one time?" G.Galore murmured, intentionally hamming up Inkaro's parts of her synthesised voice to sound like her creator as much as possible. To Inkaro, he knew instantly what G.Galore was up to, but Louailanye fell for the bait without much pressure.

  "You were supposed to have got your socks blown off, but no, you had to have your little grimoire that can automatically whip out counterspells on the fly, so my centrepiece for my movie had to be rebuilt from the ground up, twice!" Following a moment to let her mind catch up to her mouth, Louailanye registered her blunder of mistakenly responding to G.Galore's question as if it had been delivered by Inkaro. She squinted her eyes, doing so with the utmost suspicion, and ocularly scrutinised G.Galore. "She talks now? Like, talk-talk. What's next, a bod... Is that made from a crown-type mana core of a U-Rank Mana Manifestation!"

  Following a cheeky chuckle, Inkaro reached a hand behind himself to scratch the back of his head, naturally resulting in his head scratch intended for himself to be motionlessly intercepted by the sleeping Paruneha.

  "Which should I confirm first?"