Chapter 147: A Sprouting Friendship

Chapter 147: A Sprouting Friendship

Late Morning - Early Spring : Springarrow City, Elynnor

Emelia and I continued to talk outside for a while before we ended up going back inside and spending the night socializing with Adrian.

Emelia was in high spirits the rest of the night which was a good sight and, although they still had their moments, for the most part they seemed like a normal father and daughter.

Adrian was a bit special though, simply put, he was the opposite of the rumors I had heard.

From what I could tell, he was a simple minded man that was just living for the fun of it. He constantly wore a smile and cracked jokes with his incredibly contagious laugh. He honestly seemed like a giant teddy bear to me.

After his talk with Emelia, he also looked like he had taken a heavy weight off his shoulders which made the rest of the night a good one for him.

Although I never asked what their situation was myself, after a dozen or so glasses of booze, they did let out a hint.

From what I could tell, it seemed like the woman Emelia hated so much was actually her mother. Neither of them ever revealed why she was killed but I obviously wasn't going to ask.

On top of not wanting to ruin the good mood, something about the topic made me incredibly uncomfortable.

Besides that though, the night was great.

Once morning rolled around, we finally discussed our plans to leave and stopped drinking.

After a couple more hours of casual talk and letting Adrian sober up, people started to flow into the guild to get their morning quests and we left.

As we walked out of the guild, I overheard some whispers among the adventurers.

"Who is that guy?" It was two female adventurers whispering to each other.

"No idea.. but he's walking in front of the Pirate King.."

"He's kinda cute.."

"Y..yeah.. he is.."

"I was talking about the demihuman you dumb*ss!" *smack* The sound of the smack echoed through the quiet room.

I had to hold back my laugh to not cause a scene.

Once we got outside though, Adrian couldn't help but joke. "Hey, that adventurer girl back there was pretty cute." He turned to Emelia with a sly smile. “What are your thoughts about having a stepmother?”

"Father! She's younger than me!" Emelia didn't find it as funny as we did.

After joking around a bit more and gathering the attention of everyone around us, we made our way out of the city.

"Vice wins that round! He's 5-0! Who can stop his monstrous streak?!" The distant voice echoed out of the ship.

As we got to the part of the beach closest to the ship, Emelia raised a question. "How do we get out to the ship?"

Adrian twitched a bit before looking back with a bit of worry. "You don't remember?"

Emelia just looked confused.

"Haah.." He walked over and picked her up, princess style.

"What are you-"

"Hyup!" Bending his knees, he jumped all the way out to the ship and landed on the bow. *Thump*

-I guess I should do the same..- *Pshh-fwoosh* Instead of taking the effort to jump, I just picked up Ilios and turned on the thrusters for a second.

*Thump*

Thankfully the wood that made up the ship was exceptionally sturdy. My landing didn't seem to break anything but it did rock the ship pretty hard. "Sorry for the hard landing Adrian."

"Haha, you're fine! This baby is made of 500 year old, mana reinforced redwood. Even monsters struggle to even bend its planks." He said it like he was bragging, it was clear that he was proud of it and I honestly couldn't blame him.

The ship, although mostly wood, was covered in beautiful metals, carvings and to my surprise, even artifacts.

Although I didn't know their purpose, there were artifacts just about everywhere that had something for a crewmember to do, like hoist the sails or drop the anchor, so I could at least make some assumptions. -Are they there to reduce the workload of the crew?-

*t-t-t-t-t-t-t-tap* The noise of footsteps echoed through the ship.

Hearing the people come up from below deck, I quickly moved up to the bridge deck so they wouldn't see Ilios or I. -Emelia should have the spotlight..-

A moment later, a bald man stuck his head up out of the companionway. "Captain is back with the Young Miss!" He cheered out as he sprung above deck.

Following behind him, there were around 25 guys and around 5 women of varying ages. -They're all quite strong but isn't that too few crew?-

The aura coming from the group was quite impressive, most of the crew seemed to be at least S rank if not low nation rank, but the galleon was not small.

"We greet the young miss!" The crew all lined up and bowed in front of Emelia on the deck.

"Uhm.." She just awkwardly stood there, unsure of what to do until she looked up at me sitting on the railing next to the helm as if to ask for help.

In return, I just gave an encouraging smile. -To think it hasn't even been a day since we first met..-

Although I wore a smile then, my gut told me something was going to happen on this trip across the ocean. A strong sense of premonition. -I doubt it'll be anything I cant handle. Plus..- I looked up at Adrian who was introducing Emelia to the crew with a proud smile. -He's quite a monster himself..-