"You can have this, Nessia," Charles said as he handed a bamboo steamer to the young lady, whom he had first met a few hours ago. "They’re custard buns."
"Custard buns?" Nessia echoed, narrowing her clear blue eyes just a bit. "What are custard buns?"
With her stern tone, thin-rimmed spectacles, and neat braid, she reminded Charles of a librarian or teacher. "It’s hard to explain," Charles said hastily. "Here, let me show you."
Charles held the steamer a distance from Nessia before lifting the lid to show her it was not a trap.
The young lady’s gaze softened a little as she saw three white buns inside. She reached out and picked one of them. Still unsure what custard was, she took a small bite.
"S-Sweet!" Nessia exclaimed in surprise and delight, all hesitance gone. She came from a poor family, so she rarely got to enjoy sweets and desserts. Unsurprisingly, they’d become one of her few weaknesses.
If Renard had trust issues, Nessia had a sweet tooth.
She simply had zero resistance against sweet things. As a result, her impression of Charles improved drastically.
That aside, the young man had also saved her from two Rank 2 Dire Wolves.
After he saved her earlier, the young lady proposed forming a party together so they could watch each other’s backs.
Charles also had a weakness. Luckily for Nessia, that weakness happened to be his soft spot for the opposite gender. He readily agreed to her suggestion. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that he had indeed made the right decision, as Nessia proved to be a very capable teammate.
Nessia was a mage, but she specialized in creating magical formations.
Although she could fight normally as a mage, her true skill shone when she had enough prep time to create devastating magical arrays that could trap anything inside them.
She was one of the Heroines of ELO and held the title of Phoenix Tactician.
"Where did you get this, Charles?" Nessia thought to ask after she finished eating one of the custard buns. "This must be expensive, right?"
"I don’t know if it’s expensive or not, but a friend gave them to me," Charles replied. "Its name is Dim Dim. Before we entered the trial, it gave us a week’s worth of food called dim sum. So, just eat as much as you want. I still have more."
As if to prove his point, Charles took out another bamboo steamer from his storage ring.
He then opened it to reveal a roasted pork bun, which he liked very much.
Nessia was intrigued, so she also tried one.
Although it wasn’t sweet, it was still very delicious. The lady visibly found it tasty, and Charles subconsciously smiled at the sight of how happy his acquaintance looked while eating.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the majority of the trial takers were commoners. Given Frieden Academy’s ten thousand gold tuition fee, obviously only the rich families could afford to pay for it.
Since they have a few things in common, Charles and Nessia hit it off right away.
Although it was still too early to call each other friends, they had found each other trustworthy enough to form a team.
"You said you have two other companions who are also on the island, right?" Nessia asked after she had her fill. "What are they like?"
"They’re good people," Charles answered. "One of them is a Catkin, and her name is Lavinia. She’s very strong and specializes in using the sword whip. From my observation, she’s a very competitive person.
"The second one is Alex. He’s someone who prefers to use shields in combat. If I remember correctly, his job class should be an Oathkeeper. He’s a very mysterious person and also my savior. I owe him a debt that I don’t know if I can ever repay in this lifetime."
"He sounds like a great person," Nessia commented.
"He is." Charles nodded. "And accompanying him on his journey is Dim Dim. Dim Dim is the one I mentioned earlier."
"Oh! I’d love to meet Dim Dim." Nessia smiled sweetly. "I’m going to be its close friend no matter what."
"... You’re drooling, Nessia."
The young lady wiped the corner of her lips in embarrassment.
For her, eating something sweet was a luxury. If she could eat what she liked for free, then wouldn’t that be the best thing ever?
Charles could tell what the young lady was thinking, so he could only shake his head helplessly.
However, knowing Dim Dim, the little one would probably be more than happy to befriend Nessia and give her lots of delicious food to eat.
’Yeah, I can already see that happening,’ Charles thought, amused, before looking outside of their cave. ’I hope they’re safe. Especially Alex. After all, he got injured because of me.’
Every word he had told Nessia was sincere. He felt indebted to Alex and his comrades, who had helped him, a complete stranger to them.
They could have easily left him behind to die, but they didn’t.
Instead, they carried him until they could no longer move forward.
All of them had fought tooth and nail until the arrival of reinforcements.
Charles even felt guiltier at the fact that he had attacked those who had helped him.
While it was true that he hadn’t been himself at that time, what happened still happened. Just the thought that he could’ve killed the people risking their lives to save him made him shudder.
Fortunately, he had eventually snapped out of it. Thanks to Alex repeatedly bashing his head with a shield, he had been brought back to his senses.
"You should get some rest, Nessia," Charles said. "I’ll keep watch for seven hours. We will swap after that."
"Okay." Nessia agreed because she was truly tired. "Good night, Charles."
"Good night." Charles nodded before shifting his attention back to the entrance of the cave, marking the start of his vigil for the night.