This ti Joji and his party of six took the main road, the broad artery that linked the feudal ladder of territories within the Kingdom of Vicario.
The traffic was heavier and the faces were blander, which was the point.
A man hid best among people who did not want to look closely.
Along the way, Joji began gulping down powdered ores and tal like he was scooping whey protein.
At first he tried to be civilized about it. He mixed the powder into a tall glass and stirred until it looked smooth enough to lie.
It was a mistake. Powdered steel was not a fad on Earth, and it was not any kinder on Priria.
The taste hit his tongue like chewing a coin. tallic and wrong, like his mouth had beco a forge.
He nearly spat it out, eyes watering. Still, he swallowed and forced the next mouthful down because he did not know how much it would take for the armor to evolve, and guessing wrong could waste all his effort.
As he did all this, he did not waste Rizz’s effort pulling the carriage.
Under his clothes, Joji practiced.
He contracted and retracted the armor in small controlled motions, learning how to pull it back like claws sliding under skin.
The more he did it, the more the movent stopped feeling like a trick and started feeling like a reflex.
As he ate the ores, he noticed sothing stranger. His body rembered.
His mind seed to catalog the texture of each tal through his stomach, as if the materials had beco part of him the mont he digested them.
He learned the trick by accident.
If he wanted the armor to flow fast, he needed to start with softer tal first, molding it like a base.
That made shaping easier. Then, with a second thought, he let the harder layers follow, locking in and reinforcing what the softer tal had already ford.
With practice, he could cover his chest in real armor in five breaths.
Slow, sure. But he had only just arrived in this world, and even Joji knew that was massive progress in such a short ti.
When they made camp, he barely ate proper food. The powder sat heavy in his gut, filling in the dull, stubborn way mud filled a boot.
Joji tried every trick he could think of to make it bearable. Water. Wine. Thick stew. None of it helped.
On the second day he found sothing that worked.
In a small village they passed, he bought dough from a baker and paid extra to use the oven.
He ordered the man to bake the steel powder into hard bread.
The baker stared like he had been asked to poison soone. Still, coin convinced him.
The bread ca out dense and ugly. With cheese, it beca tolerable. Not good. Tolerable.
Joji chewed slowly, jaw aching, swallowing grit and iron without gagging.
After two days of travel, as they drew close to the estate, Joji and Alaric retrieved the evidence from Joji’s dungeon.
The kobolds, Lilina, and even Rizz looked confused.
Rizz’s ears twitched, eyes narrowing as if he wanted to ask a hundred questions at once.
Joji did not give them room to.
"It’s a hiding spell," he said, casual and final.
It did not affect them. It did not change their marching order. So the doubt thinned.
In a world full of magic, most people accepted what they could not touch, especially when touching it might get them in trouble.
Soon the Everhart Estate lood on the horizon, its walls rising out of the road haze like a promise you could finally touch.
Daisy was the first to et them.
She must have spotted the line of travelers from far off, because she ca running down the muddied road, skirts hiked without sha, breath sharp and fast.
She hit Joji like a starved cat and kissed him hard, deep enough to steal the air from his lungs and make the world blur around the edges.
She did not care who saw. People had already looked down on her for quitting magic school.
Being Joji’s woman would not make them kinder. If anything, it made her safer.
Let them assu she was weak. Let them underestimate her. She could live with that.
Joji felt how keyed up she was, not sickness, not fever, only anticipation cramd into a flushed face and trembling hands.
"Daisy," Joji murmured when she tried to kiss him again. "You need to relax. People might say things. You’re still an heiress."
"I don’t care," Daisy snapped, eyes bright with defiance.
"If they start calling Joji’s whore or heiress bitch, let them," she said, waving a hand as if shooing away the gossipers themselves.
Daisy blinked, confused at what Joji was studying. Then she rembered what she had been doing most of the day.
Rushing her duties, rushing back to her room, and working herself into a flushed, sweaty ss until even Duchess Rosalind had started giving her curious looks.
The thought lit her cheeks with a deeper red. She tried to pull her hand away.
Joji did not let her. He had strength worth nine n now, and her little struggle only made her more embarrassed.
He turned his body slightly, using Alaric and the others as a screen, then lowered his mouth and gave her wrinkled fingers a teasing nibble.
After, he leaned in and whispered against her ear.
"You’ve been cheating with with this hand," Joji murmured, teasing and tempting at once.
Daisy bit her lip hard enough to hurt. Joji had changed for her, and the change made her feel seen in a way she did not know how to handle.
She put on a frightened little face, trying to look offended, trying to look composed.
Joji only pressed two fingers lightly against her lower abdon, the spot he had discovered by accident.
Daisy’s knees went soft. Her breath hitched, eyes rolling for a heartbeat before she caught herself.
A warm slickness threatened to spill down to her shoes.
Joji clicked his tongue under his breath and swept a thin thread of aura through her skirt, cleaning her up without making a show of it.
He kept her dignity where it belonged. Even back on Earth, for all the work he had done, Joji had rules.
His woman was his woman. He did not share. Joji was no pig.
Daisy sagged into him after, overwheld, and hugged him tight.
This ti it was not heat that filled her. It was warmth in her chest.
Then her mind snagged on sothing else.
Her index finger lifted and pointed past Joji at the abnormally large donkey.
"Joji," Daisy asked, brows raised, curiosity pecking at her like a bird. "Why does that large donkey have pants?"
Joji sighed like a man who had accepted that his life would never be normal again.
"That’s Rizz," Joji said. "My mount. My partner in battle."
"Six seven," Rizz said at once, front hooves bouncing up and down.
Daisy stared.
"It can talk. Isn’t he a beastman?"
"Sort of," Joji said, not committing to any explanation he did not have ti to finish.
They entered through a side gate.
The guards greeted their superiors with practiced respect and did not ask questions that would invite trouble.
Alaric and Joji hauled the huge bag from the carriage, the one stuffed with evidence from Fourteen’s work.
Daisy did not cling or demand attention now. She read the weight in their faces and followed quietly.
They reached Duchess Rosalind’s office.
She was already seated, posture stern, eyes sharp enough to cut.
"Knight Alaric and Knight Joji," Duchess Rosalind said. "Report your findings."
Reviews
All reviews (0)