Helare came to him once she finished her work for the day. She looked to be in some sort of rush.

"You'll be training with Collab today, won't you?" she asked.

Rafe blinked at her. "Yes…" he answered, not quite able to hide his questioning intent.

"Great. More competition for your limited attention," Helare muttered. A private thought that had escaped. And she hadn't noticed. Rafe decided he wouldn't be the one to inform her.

"You're going to be training with Collab?" Filoria stepped forward.

Helare jolted like she hadn't noticed the other girl, or she'd forgotten her presence. She'd forgotten the presence of her bodyguard? That was a good bodyguard, one who made themselves inconspicuous to their ward's senses. But hadn't these girls once been closer?

Rafe answered Filoria in the affirmative. The girl got oddly excited by Rafe's answer. He looked away from her, from them both, but he kept studying them with his racial ability. Filoria turned to Helare in her zeal, probably preparing to say something or ask Helare some sort of question.

The princess, though, after she'd gotten over her shock turned with a cinematic-villainess flick of her hair, putting the other girl out of her mind. And that was the moment Filoria happened to be turning to her, and the swishing blue hair hit her in the face and Filoria back stepped like a dancer and tried her damnedest to keep her balance but still fell on her ass.

"Huh?" Helare turned to the seated girl. "What are you doing Filoria? I know everyone is entitled to their own preferences, but we have to maintain decorum in public."

And then she turned to Rafe again. Rafe turned and stared at Filoria covertly. The fallen girl glared at Helare's back. Her aquamarine pupils were red veined. There was a hint of blue in everything about the Ma'la. Even their skins and eye had light blue undertones. The red colour of blood was one of many similarities they had with humans. The blue undertones that were their nature hid the red most of the time.

Anyway, the guard was showing such a fierce expression of hatred to her master's back. Rafe decided he would at least look into this. He did not like Filoria, but that didn't matter. He had developed a soft spot for Helare, and he wasn't going to be around forever. There was no reason for the girl to sabotage her whole life for someone who was going to leave soon.

Filoria stood up, dusted herself off and walked off in the direction Collab had walked to earlier. He knew where he would be finding her later, at least. How he would fix their relationship, he didn't know. Had he ever involved himself in girl politics before? Helare didn't even appear to have noticed Filoria leaving.

"Let me guess, you are planning to get straight back to work?" she asked him.

Rafe could only shrug. There was no use trying to deny what they both knew was obvious.

"Yes. As you know, Hestus was here earlier," Rafe informed her.

"Was he pressuring you again?" Helare asked, and from her tone, Rafe realised she hadn't noticed the lightness of his tone. "Maybe it's time I broke off the contract. He might be getting just a little too familiar with this job. With me. Maybe I should hire a new merchant."

Rafe waited for Helare to take a break before inserting himself back into the conversation. "Now, wait just one second, Hel. Let's leave Hestus alone. He's a good merchant. He was just making sure your investment was worth it, you know? Besides, who else is going to teach me about the merchant system during my breaks?"

He had noticed Helare's eyes go wide when he called her Hel. He had regretted it the moment he had moved on, but he couldn't backtrack now. All he could do was gloss over it like it meant nothing. And it should have meant nothing.

But could that be true anymore? She meant something to him now. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd gotten comfortable around her. Around a princess? That was absurd. He was a virgin.

"Did…did you just…?" Helare seemed to be struggling, her face looking like a Burned's face with reddish undertones instead of the normal light blue. Then she breathed and became of a mind with Rafe. "So you are still interested in the merchant system?"

"Yeah," Rafe replied. He was natural, silky, smooth.

He touched his smithing hammer. There was no particular reason. He just wanted to touch something so he could distract his body. He did not want any trees growing instantly due to too many ingredients being transported to them via scientific but mostly magical means. And by magical means he meant that cute and attractive as hell squirming dance Helare was doing.

"I mean, the system has a whole other service made just for one specific profession? Talk about a busted job, am I right?"

"Yeah," Helare answered. "I would…uh, be interested in that as well, I think. I always wondered how the economy of the multiverse was structured. You know, with how the system likes to hoard its credits. And why does it hide money anyway? That's what I'd like to know."

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She stopped squirming sometime during her long speech. She was truly expressing her interest in the subject. It shouldn't have been surprising. She had proven herself to be the kind of person who was very interested in money after all.

"So, anyway, what about veils?" Rafe said. It was best to distract her a little. To distract them both.

"Oh, yeah," Helare latched onto it like a drowning woman to a bit of driftwood about to pass her by. "I did promise to teach you that, didn't I? Let's say everyday after your work? Before you go off to train with Collab."

Rafe nodded, finding that acceptable. He did have to find a suitable time to schedule his meetings with Hestus then. He needed as much information on the rest of the multiverse as he could get, and Hestus was the only person on this planet who'd been to the greater multiverse.

"Can I watch you train?" Helare asked.

Rafe frowned. Watch him train? With Collab and the others? That was probably what she meant. Why she would need his permission, he would never understand. She was the princess. She owned this whole camp.

"Why would you need my permission?"

She was quiet for a bit. "I don't want you to think I'm weird or anything."

Rafe turned and looked at her face fully. She started at first, but then she straightened and just stared back. When a full thirty seconds later he had said nothing, she started to squirm uncomfortably.

"Hel, I say this very respectfully, because you are a princess. I think you're really weird."

There was a double attack there. Rafe had done it on purpose. He'd called her Hel again, because what the hell? And he also needed the end of his speech to take as much time as it could to reach the processing centers in her brain.

"Hey!" she complained, though there was a sad puppy look in her eyes. "You really think I'm weird?"

"Yes," Rafe said slowly, not taking his eyes from her.

"That's rude!" she tried. Rafe just continued looking. "Alright, I apologise for staring too much. And for worrying about you, okay? If anything, you're the weird one. Your skin is just pale. And what's with those weird tattoos of yours? Did you know they shined when you had that episode two weeks back? Anyway, why do you have to take off your shirt all the damn time?!"

"You like what you see?" Rafe asked as he looked down at his now better developed chest. He still looked more athletic than bulky, but his thoracic and arm muscles had been getting more and more toned over these past few weeks. It was a wonder he hadn't gotten any stat increase in strength or any skill growth in physical fitness.

Helare snorted at his attempt to lighten the mood, though her eyes dropped to his pecks too for a moment, until she looked away with an ever deepening blush.

"But you made my point for me though. I'm weird because of my differences. I was like a curiosity to you. You'd never ever seen anyone like me. Well, I've never been friends with a princess before too. Or someone who wasn't human. Not to mention the differences in our culture. So yes, you are weird. But so what? I am weird too. And I like it."

Helare's eyes widened, and she started to smile.

"But I agree with you, watching me the way you did those first few days was weirder than even I am used to. Almost stalker-ish. Creepy, a little bit."

****

"What have you done to our princess?" Collab asked Rafe.

Helare had still come to watch even though she'd run away from Rafe's forge after his, in his opinion, friendly bashing of her creepiness. So she had chosen to embrace her inner creep? Good for her. As far as Rafe was concerned, any form of self-awareness was a win.

Turning back to Collab, Rafe shrugged. "I have no idea what you mean. The princess seems one hundred percent fine to me."

"She looks like a Burned youth," Collab complained. "And she is staring at you so intently?"

The last was framed slowly, like a question.

"Hey, the princess has no melee training experience, does she?" Rafe asked to change the subject.

"No," Collab answered with a frown. "Why would she need such a thing? Her magical prowess is such that she is unrivaled among her peers."

Rafe made some small acquiescing noise. He did not agree with Collab completely. He thought knowing the basics of how to fight wasn't the worst thing ever. And wouldn't the princess feel better participating than just watching. Something to explore in the future.

Collab taught Rafe about techniques. They were things he already knew from his time in Aeon. In Aeon, the people had only guessed at the classifications. Here on Primus, with the advent of the system, information had come as well. And they'd learned the classifications and the exact reasons for them.

Rafe was soon going to step into the realm of mastery with the first few techniques he'd learned from Aeon. His defensive sword technique was at the peak of the advanced realm, but it needed something more before it could advance to mastery, even with his developed insights. It needed time to be used, to be useful.

He did have another defensive technique he needed to start training as well. Besides, it wasn't his intention to reveal how good he was. His intention was to gain information and leave. He would start his training, but he would be starting slow. By learning a new technique and trying to grow it.

He did not see a calamity beast in his near future, so he doubted he'd go far past the beginner realm of this new technique. He'd had a lot of time in the trial via time dilation as well. Was two weeks enough time for him to completely master the basics of a new technique? He was good, but not that good. And maybe he could now try and continue to develop that one technique he had been in the middle of developing when he'd seen the gods that last time. That time they had frozen the tower to talk to him.

All those were considerations for his next two weeks or so. He needed to so thoroughly distract himself from his impending trip back home. Things always worked out when he wasn't so obsessed with them, at least in his experience.

He was going to go home in a few weeks.

"So then, young master Rafael," Collab said all respectfully. Rafe was finding the man's conduct very different from the stories Helare had told him. He seemed oddly respectful toward him. "Give me a bit of your wisdom."

Rafe blinked. Did he mean he wanted to exchange pointers as in via a spar, or was he being literal? Did Rafe have any advise to give?

Then he thought about his experiences in the tower and trial. He'd only been there perhaps fifty years in total compared to the hundreds of years of experience Collab had. Still, he had fought, he liked to think, higher quality battles. Higher quality foes. He had had higher quality of teachers. He remembered the impromptu six months training session with Liam immediately after his trial. He had wisdom to dispense for sure.

Only, how was he going to dispense it without appearing more skilled than he wanted to appear?

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