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One of the understated benefits of being apprenticed to the Sorceress, Saffra reflected, was that she basically never had a need for money.
For Gods’ sake, she lived in the White Glove Academy, surrounded by dozens of maids and butlers who would be all too happy to wait on her and get a glimpse of not just her master, but Saffra too, and what apparently made her so special. It was a tad voyeuristic and mildly disturbing, but the servants never made it too obvious just what they were doing, so Saffra learned to tolerate it.
She ate food the likes of which even Isabella would be hard-pressed to match—well, had she not also been invited to stay with the Academy while her Noble House crashed and burned, anyway. She slept in luxurious beds bigger than entire dorm rooms at the Institute. Whenever she wasn’t wearing whatever ludicrously powerful outfit Lady Vivi had commissioned for her apprenticeship, she wore rich gowns and dresses that sparkled with all sorts of expensive materials.
Saffra’s life had suddenly been drowned in splendor of the highest degree, and she wasn’t really sure how to feel about it.
On one hand… yes, it was very fun, and deep down she knew it. There was a reason all of these things were absurdly expensive, and it was because they really were quite nice to have.
But on the other, Saffra couldn’t help but feel like it trivialized all of her work up to this point.
I mean, of course it did. She had been working with subpar spells of, according to Lady Vivi’s musings, awful design. She hadn’t had all of the ridiculous artifacts she had today, and neither did she have the nigh-impervious safety net that Lady Vivi represented. She couldn’t have made even a tenth of the money she could draw in now if she tried.
But still, Saffra couldn’t help but be a little bitter that all of the money she’d saved up to this point was now nothing more than pocket change in comparison to the vast sums the Sorceress had at her disposal.
In any case, she and Lady Vivi were at the Adventurer’s Guild again, this time in an obscure branch location in a town outside of Prismarche. It was here that Saffra had taken her Gold-rank entrance exam, and unsurprisingly, she’d passed with flying colors—[Flash Freeze] and [Scorchlance] were more than enough to steamroll her way through the spars and such that barred her. And as a Gold-rank, she would finally be drawing in enough cash to actually live independently, if for whatever reasons he wanted to.
As a Silver-rank, she’d scraped by, but largely she’d depended upon the likes of Missus Tilly to keep her fit and fine enough to continue hunting and growing. Gold-rank was largely seen as the standard at which adventuring became a viable full-time job. Simultaneously, it also meant that they would be tangling with enough dangerous monsters for hunting to legitimately pose a risk to one’s life without the hunter necessarily having done anything wrong. For these reasons, the Guild required Gold-ranks to link with a bank account of some kind so that the Guild knew where to place the standard-issue bereavement package to officially registered Gold-rank hunters in full-time employ of the Guild.
Saffra vaguely remembered Lady Vivi having told her a story about dealing with the same issue in Prismarche, after having those two members of Morningstar. The Guildmaster then had permitted her to sign on without a linked bank account.
But that was because Dougal Flint was sufficiently impressed with her strength and character that he didn’t think she needed one, or that she would be staying for very long. As it were now?
Saffra needed to make a bank account. And as a minor nearing her fourteenth trip around the sun, she needed a family member’s permission to do so.
Saffra eyed the worn form in her hands, clutched so tight her knuckles were pale. Why, Gods? Why did she have to do this?
Perhaps had she been in Prismarche or Meridian, places that were much more formal and polished than the one in the little hamlet they’d stopped in, there would have been an alternate way to sign on. Perhaps if they had been in a Guild hall that actually had its crap together, the form wouldn’t have been so woefully limiting. But no, because Fate hated her.
In a few minutes, she’d reached the place she’d been dreading—the meeting place where she and Lady Vivi had agreed to meet up after Saffra had completed her sign on. It was a small, out-of-the-way alley where teleportation wouldn’t have been noticed easily.
Saffra hesitated, then tugged on the spell anchor Lady Vivi had planted there.
In mere moments, the Sorceress popped into existence next to her. Lazy, disinterested red eyes met Saffra’s.
“Ready to leave?” She asked, her voice devoid of emotions.
Saffra swallowed heavily.
“Err, no,” she said lamely. Lady Vivi tilted her head, and Saffra hurried to elaborate. “The Guild. They, uh, want me to create a bank account. But since I’m not an adult, they need a family member’s permission.”
Lady Vivi digested her words in quiet contemplation. A few moments later, she reached out, gesturing for the paper in Saffra’s hands.
Hesitantly, the cat beastkin handed the sheet of paper over and watched Lady Vivi skim through it. Once she did, the Sorceress reached for Saffra’s hand and teleported the both of them into the Adventurer’s Guild.
Their arrival immediately caused a small stir among the various patrons, all of whom turned to get a good look at the at least-orichalcum rank who had just [Blink]ed into the hall. Saffra kept her gaze firmly planted on the ground as Lady Vivi led them to the reception desk.
Lady Vivi’s short stature did not do them any favors. The man at the reception desk had to peer over the kiosk to speak to her. Their eyecatching entrance must have been a blessing in disguise, because otherwise nobody at the Guild would have taken them seriously.
“I’m here to sign off on Saffra’s form,” Lady Vivi said in a bored tone. She placed the form on the kiosk, and, using some kind of esoteric spell, materialized a floating quill that began to fill it out.
The man looked at Lady Vivi. Then back at Saffra. Then back at Lady Vivi. “Ma’am,” he said with a small snort, “the form requires a family member’s permission. She is clearly not a demon.”
Looking straight back up at the receptionist, Lady Vivi said, without so much as a twitch of her straight face, “I’ve adopted her.”
Saffra wanted to die.
She had never been so humiliated in her entire damn life. Her master, who had already done way too much for her, was now acting as her adopted parent just to punch through some bureaucratic processes. And the worst part was, as Saffra reflected, she couldn’t help but feel like the sentiment, in essence, had at least a grain of truth to it. Lady Vivi had swooped into her life, picked her up by the scruff, and basically did everything for her nowadays. She clothed her, fed her, housed her. She taught her, offered aid and advice whenever asked, and endlessly worried about her health, physical or mental… not that she made it particularly obvious.
But the mere notion that the Sorceress had stooped to claiming she had adopted a random beastkin made Saffra’s skin crawl.
And this was Saffra’s fault.
To hopefully prevent the man at the counter from seeing her growing red face, she pretended like the form being signed was the most interesting thing in the world.
She wished she hadn’t.
Because on the form, Lady Vivi was now marking herself down as Saffra’s mother, and of course providing her “Nysari Keresi” identity as official proof.
The receptionist didn’t say anything until the entire form had been completed. Upon reviewing it, he raised an eyebrow at Lady Vivi, a small bead of sweat forming on his otherwise placid face. “First Blood?” He said questioningly.
Lady Vivi reached over and offered her identification ring. The receptionist scanned it using some kind of magic artifact, and after it was done, he nodded. Saffra would have thought him a surprisingly reserved and even man had it not been for his tomato-red ears.
“Everything checks out, Lady Keresi,” the man said with a curt, somewhat stiff bow. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Lady Vivi’s eyes flicked to him. She sniffed—not disdainfully, perhaps, but certainly not far from it—grabbed Saffra’s hand, and teleported them both out of the hall.
“Okay, what was that?!”
Lady Vivi’s gaze turned to her. “What?” She said coolly.
“You know what I’m talking about!” Saffra demanded. “You… you put yourself down as my mother!”
Lady Vivi’s lips twitched upward. “Did not.”
“Don’t you laugh at me!”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was a mild strain to Vivisari’s voice, as if she was holding in a laugh.
“Are you teasing me?” Saffra tried to concentrate as much menace as she could into her voice, but it ended up just sounding silly.
“What would you rather me have done?” Lady Vivi asked instead. “It would be a waste of time to go to another bank and ask for a different form, or haggle with the receptionist for an ultimately meaningless label.”
“But—but it’ll be on the records now!” Saffra protested. “You’ve officially adopted me into the Keresi family!”
For the first time, Lady Vivi looked a smidge uncomfortable. “... the paper trail is unlikely to cause us any issues,” she tried. “It is small enough to be dismissable should we need it. In fact, it could give you some pretty hefty benefits as a noble.”
“It’s the principle of the matter!” Saffra said, shaking her fist at Lady Vivi.
“Do you object to it? If so, I can correct it.”
Saffra stared at Lady Vivi. In reality… no, this probably did not matter all that much. Saffra was already somewhat well-known as the apprentice of the Sorceress by the meaningful powers that be, so being declared the adopted member of a ducal family didn’t really supersede her previous status. And no, Saffra wasn’t really mad about it. As far as she was concerned, it was just an embarrassing thing she’d had to do to get by, which she was hardly a stranger to.
Sighing heavily, Saffra hung her head. “You owe me for that one,” she muttered, as ridiculous as it sounded for the Sorceress to owe anyone.
But Lady Vivi just nodded. “I owe you one.”
She reached over and tousled Saffra’s hair, to which the beastkin protested with an indignant whine. And finally, Vivisari laughed.