Chapter 409: The Personal Trainer
Figg tried to say something back. Perhaps it would have been a scathing insul that would have been a dagger into Belladonna’s egot, or perhaps it would have been a witty and thoughtful retort that would have made her laugh.
Unfortunately what she got was,
"I h-bluurggh!" Before more lunch was lost, along with his wonderfully witty and scathing words. Although that still made her laugh, so that was something.
𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
She pulled bucket boy to the side, letting him recover his composure and making sure that he didn’t get in the way of any others teleporting in, some of which shared Figg’s lunch loss whilst others clearly learned from their previous mishaps and held their breath.
"Are you waiting on someone else?" Figg asked, when he could finally talk once again, as he stood up straight and wiped his mouth clean.
A refreshing and minty air swirled around him, removing any unpleasant smells as well as acting as a slight healing spell to settle the poor druids stomach.
"Mhm. The most important member of our team." She told him with a wide smile.
Figg frowned for a moment, considering all of the options, before his face fell.
"Oh you mean-"
"My Beany Baby!" Belladonna shouted in glee, as a figure appeared atop the gazebo’s circle, specifically her own figure.
Her Fox Figurine, in the appearance of herself, glanced around without even the slighest hint of discomfort, before stepping off of the platform. At the same time, it’s shadow flickered before a mass of black fluff leapt from it and lunged at Belladonna. It’s paws wrapped around her neck, its face burying itself into her most vulnerable spot, as Belladonna caught Beans and cuddled him back.
Belladonna giggled to herself, dancing and spinning in place as she cooed to Beans, giving him plenty of cuddles and snuggles to make up for their time apart.
She also made sure to take the time to give Figg a smug smirk when she caught him glaring at her Fox Figure.
Of course, it was essentially a Golem, which had no stomach to upset and no reason to feel any discomfort at all. In fact, it was so inhuman that teleporting it here actually cost Belladonna the cargo price, which was cheaper by the weight than teleporting a live person, even with Beans acting as a naughty little stowaway.
But Figg didn’t need to know that, and even if he already knew, it was hard for him not to feel irritated at the same face not showing even a hint of the torture that he had to go through. It just wasn’t fair.
"Come on, Let’s get somewhere private. Still need to finish up the transfer." Belladonna said, giving Beans one last flurry of welcome kisses before she shifted the Shadow Demon back onto her shoulder, his eternal throne.
Whilst she was unfamiliar with the city that they had teleported to, a small trade focused city called Nived which was a popular detour for travelling merchants, it was easy enough to find an alley that was out of the way and gave them enough privacy to complete the transfer.
Once she was sure they were alone, Belladonna gave the signal to her clone, which immediately held out its hand. Its shadow extended, stretching across the floor and inflating into a circular abyss that was definitely not representative of Belladonna’s body shape, as the shadow started to spew out chunks of meat and various animal parts, along with anything else the clone had collected on its travels.
Figgs eyes widened as the pile kept growing and growing, filling with plants, ore, crystals and even some stolen gear - which was still equipped on the bodies of the players she had killed and stolen from.
"You really were cheating..." He muttered in disbelief, making Belladonna chuckle.
"Yep. Although, she probably went a little overboard. I only get a portion of the XP that she gathered from killing all this, I think around 50% - give or take. But when you have a ceaseless Golem that can kill without tiring, even when you are sleeping away peacefully, that stops being a problem.
The level curve was more of an issue. If I kept up with this it would take me another few weeks just to go up five or ten levels. But it got me this far, and a lot of materials for us to work with."
"I’ll say. But here I was thinking that I had it easy. Every time I grow something to fruition, or cleanly harvest a plant, I get a small bit of XP. I can level up just by gardening, hehe. That sounds like the name of some cheesy novel or something." Figg chuckled.
Belladonna laughed with him, as she absorbed all of the loot into her own shadow and then dismissed the Fox Clone, letting its essence return to the Fox shaped bracelet that she wore. An item truly deserving of being called a Relic.
But the main benefit of having the Fox do all of her training was not the easy XP or the extra study time that it gave her, although that was an amazing boon. The best part, was it gave Beans a chance to work off all of the weight he had gained when he had been staying in their world.
All of the processed food, and all of the treats the various guild members would always give him when he begged them, caused her delightful little Shadow Demon to get very chunky very fast. These last few weeks had been all about slimming him down with the help of his very own personal trainer.
Belladonna’s shoulder couldn’t be happier that he was finally skinny again.
"Alright, Time to get moving!" Belladonna said, clapping her hands together.
"Okay, so where are we going? How long is it going to take us to get there? Remember, we still have the tournament coming up that Ren is insisting we attend."
"I know, which is why we aren’t going to take long, because we are teleporting there." She declared triumphantly, pulling out a scroll from her shadow and holding it up in the air in reverence, before unravelling it and scanning over the contents.
"Teleporting? Again? Then why did I have to come here to do that? Couldn’t you have come to me and we could just jump right there?"
"No, I couldn’t have." Belladonna muttered, pulling out her crystal-nibbed pen and starting to generated the mana laced ink, before drawing slow and delicate lines on the scroll.
"Teleportation requires a lot of mana, and it increases exponentially with the distance you are travelling, especially if you are free teleporting like we are. That’s why the Tower charges the way it does."
"I guess that makes sense..."
"Indeed it does. Plus, this is my first time doing it like this, so if I screw it up then it means we have less distance to walk. Assuming we don’t end up inside of a wall or something, that is."
"Well... Thank you very much for reassuring me that I am in the best of hands..."
"You’re Welcome."