Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

"Illusinaria!" Getting everyone inside her shop, Linkle ran her hand through the air with a flair of her mana. Deactivating the spell, she reverted everyone's appearance back to normal. Letting her hand fall back down, her eyes squinted as she glanced across everyone's faces. "You should be paying me for casting that idiotically inefficient spell."

Having to maintain their false appearance so the hero's party could sneak into her shop without anyone noticing them, she'd spent an exorbitant amount of her strength and the day had just started.

"Mages…" Shaking her head with a disapproving scoff, she quickly turned around and walked over to her work desk. "Always troubled creatures to deal with, not to mention a priestess who's also a trapper–might as well have been trying to trick a dark general!"

"Are you done complaining?" Mino retorted, scowling.

"As grumpy as ever, do your people not know courtesy? Or house rules for that matter?" Reaching behind her desk, Linkle grabbed something in her hand and floated from behind to the top of the desk. "This is my shop, the least I expect is some respect."

Though she spoke on and on about something or the other, nobody truly listened when they noticed what she had in her hand. The head of a vampire, one that the party themselves had slain. Tied with a rope like pots hanging near doorways, Linkle carried it so casually it could be mistaken for a lantern.

"What are peo–" Finally realizing that nobody else was listening, the witch followed their gaze to her right hand. "Oh, this?"

Lifting it higher, she fiddled it in the air and the lifeless head of the vampire came back to life. Its eyes glowing with a silver light carrying an emerald hue, the head seemed conscious, but its rampant attempts at nibbling at Linkle's clothes proved that the vampire lord wasn't really there.

"Just a helper, nothing more nothing less," letting go of the head, Linkle floated right beside her. It instantly tried to bite her dress, however, she gently nudged it away from her body. "Go and clean up my workshop."

Hearing the command, the head's movements seized for a moment. A second later, it turned around in mid-air and began making its way to the backside of Linkle's shop. The whole ordeal had left the party baffled, but their shock didn't last long as Mino had already witnessed something more bizarre–something that made the current situation pale in comparison.

"About the carriage, tell me what you know!" Stepping up to the counter, Mino slammed her hands on top.

Taking a moment to look over the cowgirl, Linkle shook her head side to side before shifting her gaze to Raven.

"I had a client who wanted a mystic parasite out of their son's body, but as you can already see, neither them nor their carriage made it to my shop," beckoning Raven closer, she reached inside the desk's drawer and quickly tossed the teleportation ring she'd been talking about. "I decided to take their carriage as payment since I'd already bought the material for their son's cleansing."

Looking back and forth between Mino and her master, Linkle still couldn't figure out why they were making such a big deal about the situation. After all, from her perspective, none of them were involved in the deal nor were they close to the family that had died, so why did they care? That too to the point of being viscerally mad.

"Seems like you know more than you're letting in, care to share?" With a snap of her finger, she dragged all the chairs scattered around her shop right behind every party member. A bit surprised at first, everyone turned their attention to Raven, who himself was glaring at Mino's back.

"I'll tell you, but you gotta tell me what the hell was wrong with the kid," nearly taking down the chair as she sat on it aggressively, Mino kept staring at Linkle before starting her explanation about what happened to her in the forest.

Taking a seat as well while she explained, everyone listened to her talk until she'd laid down everything down to the minute detail. Just hearing what had happened, left the girls creeped out–the thought of their own body transforming into a parasitic spider was enough to make their skin crawl. As for the boys, they were more concerned about running into a similar creature in the future.

It may not have sounded like much, but if one of them got infected by the thing and never realized it'd be far more troubling than what Mino had to deal with.

"So you had to deal with a horror, big deal minotauress," still unamused by Mino's tale, Linkle shook her head disappointed.

"What's a horror?" Though she felt angry at the arrogant witch, Mino kept it under control as she wanted to find a way to deal with such a situation better in the future.

"You don't know what a horror is?" Wearing a deep frown tinged with confusion, Linkle stared at Mino for a spell before turning around to check on the others. "You guys don't know either? Are you insane? Never been to the library or something?"

"Yeah sorry, we orphans didn't get a scholarship funded by the royals," Raven spoke up, somewhat annoyed at Linkle's increasingly condescending tone.

"And what we do know is from what little the church allowed us to read," jumping into the conversation, Erika wanted to defend the church, but even she knew they'd always been biased against them. "But we did manage to study more with Darius' help, though even his collection of books had nothing related to these horrors you're talking about."

Scoffing in their faces, the witch jumped off the desk and began making her way into her workshop. The rest of the group tried to get up and follow her, but with a simple show of her hand, she made them sit back down in the chair.

"Just sit down, and let me help you for the umpteenth time," as crude as her words had been, seeing potential in a partnership, Linkle wanted their party to prosper, and thus, getting inside her workshop, she grabbed hold of 'The book of horrors' detailing everything about those monsters, at least everything that people who'd encountered them knew of.

'They'll die even with this won't they?' And though their intentions differed like the poles, the witch and the goddess were both on the same page over the hero party's survival.

Note: Lewd stuff will return soon, just a few chapters of character and world-building XD. Vote for the Next Sexy Monster Encounter in comments in the meantime!