"Heh." Lizu snickered beamishly, stopping in her tracks to bask in the glee welling up in her, much to Enetha's confusion as she sat on the girl's tail for transportation. The princess ensured her cloth-like appendages were firmly wrapped around Lizu's tail, ensuring each and every one of them was functionally skintight, so as to avoid any avoidable falls if Lizu decided a sudden boost in speed was an appropriate thing to do. Again.

  "What's so funny?" Enetha murmured lazily whilst flicking her two king chess pieces between the fingers of her respective hands, whilst her Mould Breaker rings floated right beside her in their duo fifty percent infusement mode. They were primed and ready for anything of the spooky variety jumping out at the two girls, and blasting them with the full might of her second-stage kings.

  "Oh, nothing much, I just have the feeling Yuuvia is experiencing a delectable helping of... something that could be mistaken for embarrassment. Heheh, if I had to quantify it, her 'sheepish feelings' are tantamount to how much excitement Inkaro feels when he's tinkering away, late at night, while I get to watch."

  Enetha lightly hummed at the long-winded answer, face still perfectly neutral like the little princess always has it, as she dinged the tops of her king pieces together, making a little tune to focus her thoughts.

  "What about when he's-"

  Abruptly placing a finger over the little princess's lips, Lizu cut Enetha off before she could finish her question that the dragolyte knew would aggravate her, or make her weep somehow. If Lizu were being honest with herself, both would likely happen, so saving the two of them the embarrassment was for the greater good or for the little princess's best interest.

  "Hey! ... Don't ask things like that; someone experiencing love and like are two different metrics, I'll have you know!" Lizu blurted out, her voice peetering on cracking at her rising embarrassment that readily turned the dragolyte's cheeks a burning rosy hue. Involuntary as it might've been, Lizu whipped her tail from side to side; naturally, that entailed Enetha joining the tail in all its whipping, but luckily for the shorter girl, her preparations kept her from going flying. Following a huff of indignation, Lizu continued marching on, finding no pleasure in continuing the conversation, as she marched through the freakishly expansive hedge maze, that she sure was no bigger than a fifteen-square-meter square.

  Back in the manor's landing, where the screams of a fox had finally subsided, Inkaro and a red-faced Louailanye peered down the open door, gazing together at the same sight; roughly starting after the seventh step down, a dark abyss of shadowy veils trickled up from the basement, reaching out like desperate hands seeking salvation, but abruptly cutting of exactly where the fifth step started. "Interesting; given the abrupt cut off, it's highly probable that something, or one, is being used as a proxy for the stigmais' power. Which means G.Galore won't be able to decipher what the power is comprised of without locating the proxy first."

  Louailanye slowly craned her angry stare in Inkaro's direct direction.

  "Got that all from one look, have you?" Louailanye grumbled as her tails faintly bristled up with objective vexation. She tightened her grasp against the doorframe, much to its physical detriment as it bent and cracked under her angry little fingertips. Not that she vocally "Also, why didn't dealing with the proxy come up in your little spiel?"

  "Isn't dealing with it a given?" Inkaro asked calmly whilst he slightly adjusted Paruneha in his arm as he carried them in his left arm. From the kitsune-eared girl's perspective, Paruneha somewhat resembled a baby, which made her feel irrationally irate for some bizarre reason she couldn't understand, mostly from how her annoyance from her observation of Paruneha was higher than the annoyance Inkaro had caused to her earlier.

  She found it truly perplexing. However, thinking over such convoluted things, or so Louailanye considered as she diverted her attention by saying the first thing that came to her mind: "I believe your definition of 'dealing' isn't what any rational person would dare consider employing."

  "Heh, par for the course with my creator," Morilore teased as she reformed her mana-based body behind Inkaro before jumping out at the kitsune-ear-haver like she was making some grand reveal, whilst she hovered in the air. Louailanye almost bit her tongue with how quickly she tried to verbally destroy Morilore's snarky comment.

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  "Don't you, heh me! You-you little... urm brat siphoner."

  With the blunder that was her counterattack, Louailanye feverishly flailed her tails behind herself with unrestrained vigour, allowing them to wildly expand in size, which ultimately led to the girl tumbling backwards into her tail fur from her centre of balance being dragged away from her feet. Kicking and flailing her legs for dear life, Louailanye desperately attempted to right herself from her tails, but basic physicals kept her firmly in place on her tails, leaving Inkaro to wonder if the girl was partaking in some sort of warm-up exercises. "S-stop gawking at me and grab my hand before I bump my head!"

  Meanwhile, in the attic, the space that had become a dusty, cluttered storage area from years of abandonment. Noaskou and Saruno found themselves surrounded by a legion of apparitions that resembled ghost girls ranging from the ages of five to twenty-three, all dressed in clothing belonging to different eras. Their united giggles were unnervingly pleasant, drowning out any other sounds beyond them at the sight of a board game finally being played.

  Aside from the ghost girl sitting opposed to the two guys, all the ghost girls were huddled around, watching the ongoing game take place; if they had to put labels on the game, it was some sort of Chess-like board game.

  "I move my piece from Z-10 to E-3," the contending ghost girl announced with verbose pride, which went in total opposition to her fellow ghost girls' annoyed grumbles, much to the playing ghost's befuddlement. Saruno cheekily giggled that the currently playing ghost girl didn't see the error that her fellow brethren.

  "I don't believe that is a legal move," Noaskou voiced as he followed it up by explaining how and why the move wasn't allowed, pointing out how the girl hadn't rolled a high enough number to do such a move. The playing ghost whined and wailed, well... it sounded more like a chirping bird, as her fellow ghost carried her away from the table while others were busy resetting the board for a new game. "And here I thought that them being ghosts would be the most shocking thing about them, not their abysmal Getsu March playing skills."

  "Beats me, but I hope one of them has enough skill to waste more of your time, so I can have a turn," Saruno said in a huff, arms crossed and wings glittering from how fast he flapped them. Noaskou scoffed cheekily at the smaller guy's impatience to have a go, just like the ghost girls.

  The strained creaking from the attic's trapdoor rippled through the stilled air of the dusty attic, drawing all the ghost girls' attention in a smooth wave of head turns. And from the fully open trapdoor, a familiar individual jumped up into the attic: Novarala. She landed with a silent, but impactful tremor, leading to the trapdoor behind her swinging forward and slamming such. The following little bang made her jump, just a little bit though, and absolutely not from anything remotely close to fear.

  "So this is where all the apparitions had been hiding, think you could hog all the fun for yourselves, boys?" Saruno jerked to an upright position on Noaskou's head as he heard a familiar voice, which the wolf demon paid no mind to while he helped the ghost girls reset the board pieces.

  Following a moment to catch her breath, Nova tilted her head to the side, very slowly at that. Although the scene before her was rather self-explanatory, the tall princess wasn't entirely sure how to comprehend what the group was doing. But she was sure of one thing: the apparitions of the attic weren't going to scratch her battle itch. So she kicked the trapdoor open and hopped back to the lower floor, followed by a silent, but heavy, footsteps racing away.

  "Was she serious about that wanting to fight an apparition thing?" Saruno murmured as he steadily lead back down on Noaskou's head, but on his back this time instead of lying on his side.

  With the last game piece back in its starting position, Noaskou slightly smirked at his tag-along's remark: "I doubt she'll find much luck in that personal task."

  "Why's that, mister?" one of the ghost girls, a six-year-old-looking one, asked perplexly as she took her place on the seat opposite to Noaskou, ready to have her go at challenging the wolf demon.

  "You lot said that all the ghost-type apparitions flocked here when I found this board game, correct?" Noaskou remarked, to which all the ghost girls nodded together. "And that's why, anything that she'd be able to beat by merely punching it won't satisfy her self-imposed conditions."

  "Oh... Um," the six-year-old ghost girl mumbled meekly as she picked something up before dropping the three dice on the board. "E-4 to... F-3?"