Ganersam Volume 2

“So... where are we going? I was hoping you would have a good explanation for pulling me out of my bed, but instead, without a word, you dragged me up here. Now I demand an explanation.”

“There.”

I pointed toward the roof of the guild. Emma looked over my shoulder.

“That wasn’t enough, but alright.”

She prepared the tube Nia used yesterday.

“You can use charge?”

She asked while handing the tube over to me.

“No...?”

“Ah, you’re so useless.”

She grunted and pulled the tube back.

“I’ll push you off the roof- don’t give me that look, I’m just joking.”

“Willy is going to kill me...sob.”

“Hey... hey, keep your voice down, someone’s going to hear us.”

Hearing my response, Emma gave me a chuckle.

She then pulled a small cylinder from the bag, half in diameter to the tube, before connecting a cable to the tube. The tube lit up faint yellow, and after a while, she pulled off the cable. She pointed the tube toward the roof, and similar to what Nia did yesterday, fired off the metal claw at the roof.

The shot was accurate, and after lightly tugging on it, she looked at me.

“Got anything to throw?”

The claw was quiet, so the pedestrians below did not hear it. However, the sound and sight of two adults ziplining across would surely catch someone’s attention. We need a distraction.

I looked inside my bag.

...

“What is that box?”

“I had no idea.”

In my hand was Amber’s mystery box. It was so large it had blocked my bag’s zipper, so it was the first thing that I pulled out. I flicked the switch, but nothing happened.

“I think it’ll suffice as a distraction.”

She then grabbed the box and threw it onto the street. The box slammed onto the cobblestone road, breaking into countless tiny pieces. The people around it looked in shock. Smoke started pouring out from the box, causing the person surrounding us to quickly run away.

Using the diversion, we quickly zipped across the street.

“Just what is that!? It’s not toxic, is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If anything happens, you’re at fault.”

“You’re the one that threw it down! Don’t blame it on me!”

People below were coughing, with knights rushing from the other end of the street.

A notification soon arrived, erasing our worries.

“What is it?”

“A message from Amber. ′Me just remembered. That box is one of me experimental smoke machines. Don’t worry, it’s normal smoke, it’s not toxic. Me thought it’s some kind of storage box, me must have placed that stuff somewhere else.′"

“She could have said that earlier.”

“She could.”

We made our way across the roof, approaching the glass window we entered through yesterday.

“What’s the point of this window?”

“I don’t know. Lisya questioned the same thing.”

Using Nia’s tool, which we ‘borrowed’ from her, I slowly opened the glass window. After making sure that no one was inside, we dropped in.

“This reminds me of when we penetrated that mansion to save you.”

“That’s quite a while ago.”

It had been a whole month since that event, but with the way these events are happening, it felt like it was a few years ago. Unlike that previous one, though, I was now penetrating with Emma, the partner I ‘chose’ when I came to this world. The word ‘partner’ does give it a slight romantic feeling.

“...What is it?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

I did choose Emma because I wanted a partner, so I unconsciously stared at her after I thought about that.

We quickly examined the room. After confirming that nothing is out of the ordinary, we slowly made our way to the door.

Tiptoeing through the metal staircases, we made our way to the floor below us. We peeked into the meeting room. The room’s lights were on, signaling that someone was inside.

I peered slightly more into the room.

“Empty?”

I whispered.

“This world has cloaking devices, so be aware.”

Emma silently replied. Riko had one of these devices on his ship, labeling it as ‘stealth mode’. We slowly made our way into the room. From my understanding, cloaking did not hide the physical object it was hiding, it just made it look invisible. With that in mind, I stretched out my hand and started feeling around, hoping to accidentally touch something.

To my surprise, I came out empty-handed.

“They’re not here...”

“You thought they’ll be? I thought we were looking for something.”

I shook my head.

“No, I thought whoever was responsible for the demon attacks would try to kidnap Lisya and Nia and bring them here.”

Emma looked at me with a face that said ‘are you stupid?’ before vocalizing those thoughts into words.

“If a demon kidnaps a human, then they’ll probably bring said human to a place that demon controlled, not bring them to a place that specific human controlled.”

“But...”

I wanted to reply, but I can’t think of any reason a demon’s army member or partisan would have any reason to bring the two here, a place where Lisya has some control of. Besides, the signal device was in Amber’s hand, not here.

“You think Amber’s the impostor?”

“H... How did it get to that?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Amber’s the one that gave me that smokescreen, there’s no way she’ll give me a convenient device if she wanted... Maybe she did it on purpose to lure us away from her warehouse?”

“... Maybe? What did she say when she gave you that smokescreen?”

“She said it was some kind of normal storage box.”

For a second, we looked at each other, before running out of the room.

Before heading out, we decided to check if there were any rooms under the meeting room. The metal staircases do extend to the two rooms below us, before connecting to a small lift.

The two rooms under us were of no interest though. One of them contained a large silver machine that looked like some kind of computer with various panels. The room under it had a stack of papers, probably the documents room.

We returned back to the roof. Unlike before, a knight was now guarding the street that we had just crossed, two other knights closely examining the box.

Emma grabbed my shoulders and whispered,

“We can’t go down from here.”

I looked around the guild. The guild’s roof was relatively high up. There was no way we could jump down without hurting ourselves and causing a huge ruckus. And despite already being here for a while, I still had no clear idea of how my defense stat worked.

Assuming it could protect me from this fall, there was no guarantee that Emma and her low stats would be safe. Even if we both were able to jump down safely, there was no guarantee the knights wouldn’t hear us.

“There must be some kind of haystack or something around here, something to mask the fall.”

I said that, hoping that a conveniently placed haystack would appear out of thin air.

We decided to slowly descend the roof, trying to get to the lower parts of the roof. The roof was slanted at around a 45° angle. While it was pretty steep, the roof was divided into three parts, each around 2 meters tall, and on its underside there was a small half-circle pipe that circled the entire roof, presumably to move rainwater.

We stood on top of those pipings, slowly making our way down the backside of the guild, the place with fewer people. When we finally reached the lowest point of the roof, I looked down. We were around maybe the fifth or sixth floor of the guild, so we were still high up.

I looked around again and found our next target. Covered by a part of the roof, is some kind of terrace on the backside of the guild. It was located roughly aligned with the fourth floor of the guild. We hopped down. Luckily, no one was on the terrace. The terrace connected with the guild’s inn, and we went inside.

From there, we took the normal way down. As we walked through the halls of the silent inn, I got reminded of something.

“What did you do to the claw?”

“I used its auto-retrieval function.”

“Ah, I see... what is that again?”

Hearing that, she opened her bag and showed me the tube.

“It’s basically a motor inside the tube that could pull back the tube’s main body at extreme speed, so that it wouldn’t be pulled down by gravity. The main body would be ejected from the roof holding it, and the motor would quickly reel it in before uniting it with the claw. I thought there’s a chance we won’t be going back that way, so I used it.”

Well, that was one of my worries answered.

When we went down into the guild, we caught the eyes of various adventurers and staff down there. They didn’t see us go up, so they were probably confused when we went down, but they shrugged their shoulders and continued with whatever they were doing.

I’ve prepared the excuse ‘we rented a room’ in case someone asked, but I’m glad they didn’t ask any further.

“Being famous does bother me a bit.”

“You’re right, I guess.”

What Emma said is somewhat true. We weren’t celebrity-level famous yet, but we were, to some extent, pretty well known.

After leaving the guild, we rushed towards Amber’s warehouse. It didn’t take long for us to arrive.

We knocked on the large metal door, but there was no reply. Fearing something is going on, I forcefully pushed the door, which was not locked, open.

“Nia! Lisya!”

I yelled, but I did not get a reply. I stepped in. The warehouse was dark. We could hear the faint sound of grunting from the back of the warehouse.

“We’re coming!”

I yelled, before running across the various machines lying on the ground. We arrived at the end and found a quite peculiar sight.