Some simple shelves, conveniently spaced along the walls, and we were pretty much done. All in all, we’d spent about three-and-a-half grand on everything. Not the worst deal ever, but certainly not the best either. Hopefully, the investment would pay for itself in a jiffy.

  “Alright. It’s time to get those iron boys all hot and steamy.” Aisha winked at me when I came to check on how things looked.

  “Let’s grab the firewood we chopped near our little nest on the way back from our latest foray before it disappears. That would be a waste of a good wood.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.

  She chuckled with a wide smile and we moved to the entrance, grabbing our weapons just in case. You never knew.

  “Oh.”

  The moment I opened the door, a familiar sight greeted us.

  “A Pixie?” Aisha tilted her head at the unexpected guest, which floated before us on the other side of the door. “It must have followed us back from that place.”

  “Do you think it’s the same one we initially met? It’s pink too,” I wondered out loud.

  To answer my question, the Pixie made some vertical loops with joyful abandon, which we quickly recognized as the same ones our little friend had made earlier. We were now sure this was the same Pixie we’d found hiding under a cluster of shiny crystals.

  “Glad to see that you are doing okay, buddy.” I smiled at the cute orb. “Did your friends manage to get away?”

  It again made the swooping circles that I took for confirmation. I nodded happily at Aisha, proud of our little stunt.

  “Do you need something?” She asked, coming closer to the pink sphere. “If you came to ask if we could help others, then—”

  Before she could finish, our enthusiastic friend flew towards her and circled Aisha’s body—from her feet to her shoulders—before making rounds around her face a number of times. It then zoomed to me and did the same thing before stopping by my cheek.

  I glanced at it curiously. “I think that means something else. It might be hard to figure out what exactly, though, unless we want to play the guessing game, again.”

  Clearly understanding our frustration at the communication issue, the pink Pixie floated by my face almost motionlessly, perhaps thinking of a hint. It then slowly circled both of us again and moved towards the open entrance to my apartment.

  Some weird net of sigils and symbols lit up over it when it got close, preventing it from going inside. The cheerful orb kept moving around the doorframe, though, returning to my side shortly after. It flew back and forth around my hand, so I turned it over, palm up, on top of which, it then landed.

  “I think I’m confident in my guess enough to bet one of my horns.” Aisha smirked at me. “It clearly wants to stay with you.”

  “With us,” I corrected her with a faint grin.

  The Pixie launched itself upwards and began making the confirmation loops again. We chuckled together. It hadn’t taken us long to figure it out. Our new friend was quite good at charades.

  “Do you think you can register it as a Subordinate, perhaps?” she wondered. “Or give it permission to enter your realm? Otherwise, it will certainly get left behind when the connection gets cut once we are done here.”

  “I have no idea, honestly. I didn’t see an option to add a Subordinate, only to summon or create one. Nor did I notice anything about authorizing guests under the Residence Management tab.”

  “It would be closer to a pet.” Aisha snickered.

  I shook my head with a smile and brought out my smartphone, diving into the Wiki first. My drakan mate arrived behind me and read over my shoulder as I scrolled through various entries related to Overlords, Subordinates, familiars, pets, et cetera. Even our pink friend seemed to pay attention, floating between our faces.

  “It looks like there is a way to recruit a Subordinate without using those two options. Unlike using the normal options, though, the target has to be completely willing to come under me and must agree fully to become subservient. And, it should work without a Token, if the entity could be considered a familiar-type—more or less—albeit only once,” I summarized what I had found.

  “Other than that, it’s only the normal master-familiar pact, I guess. But, without someone to properly conduct the ritual for us, it would be quite costly. The materials for that are damn expensive.” Aisha sighed. “Too bad you aren’t a tamer.”

  “I tamed you, does that count?” I smirked at her.

  She rolled her eyes at me with a smile.

  “So, are you going to take it in?”

  “I don’t know. No offense, little guy, but I’m just not sure if I want to use up my only free Subordinate-Familiar spot.” I tried to mimic patting the pulsing pink orb. “What do you think, Aisha?”

  My drakan partner shrugged. “Beats me. I’d say, why not? Do you think you will get a better shot in the future? There’s that full willingness part, no? Does our Pixie friend even agree?”

  I turned my eyes back to the sphere in question. “Do you?”

  Almost instantly, it spun around in vertical circles the fastest we had seen yet, causing the two of us to chuckle at the adorable display. Its answer was obvious.

  “How can I say no to such enthusiasm?” I laughed as it finally slowed to a stop between us. “Whatever happens, happens. Let’s do it and get the Woodmen before they dissipate into nothingness."

  Chapter 25

  A New Companion

  “So, how does this work?” Aisha asked, once we’d decided to adopt the cute floating ball of pure energy.

  “From what I read, for a familiar-type connection, we should make do with my blood and both sides demonstrating a clear willingness to go through with it. If there’s any doubt or uncertainty, the bond won’t form,” I answered.

  “What about people? Can you turn a person that hasn’t been summoned through the System into your Subordinate?”

  I scratched my head a little while scrunching up my face. “The info on that seems a bit vague. I think it’s possible, on a similar basis, but there might be a quirk to it depending on what kind of Overlord you are. At least that’s what people suggest. Who knows how much of that is even true?”

  She smirked at me. “I think I know what your quirk would be.”

  “Oh? Care to share, then?” I glanced over at her, curious.

  Aisha’s lips curled into a mischievous grin as her gaze wandered down my front. Realizing what she meant, I rolled my eyes at her antics, but smiled involuntarily.

  Yeah, if it was going to be anything, it might as well be about that. Overlord of Lust and all. At least it wasn't pain, torment, or agony. I could well imagine how much worse those paths would be when it came to fulfilling that requirement.

  She chuckled softly and lightly slapped my arm. “Let’s get a move on, before the wood goes poof. We did bring in a good stack of it earlier. But just like you said, why let it go to waste?”

  I nodded at my drakan partner and turned to our Pixie friend.

  “Last call to back out. Are you sure about this? I can promise to be a good master, but those are just words. You might not be able to free yourself easily after the ritual.”

  “I can vouch for him,” Aisha chimed in, slugging me in the shoulder. “Best master I’ve ever had. Ignoring the fact that he’s my first.”

  I shook my head with a wry smile and watched the pink sphere hang in the air without moving for a few seconds. It then buzzed in what felt like joy and made a few energetic loops of confirmation.

  That was so freaking adorable each damned time.

  “Alright. I hope this works. Come closer. Or fly closer, whichever suits you better.” I chuckled.

  The Pixie listened to my request and stopped right in front of me. Guided by what I had checked in the wiki and the forum, I unsheathed one of the daggers strapped to my belt and made a shallow cut on my ring finger.

  “This part I’m not so sure about, but… I have to somehow share my blood with you, while both of us will the connection to be created.”

  Ignoring my brief confusion, the pink sphere jiggled faintly and darted down, towards my hand. Before we understood what it was aiming for, my finger disappeared.

  My brows crawled up to my hairline as I watched the Pixie pretty much impale itself on my digit. I mean, yeah, I knew it was kind of ethereal, spiritual, or whatever you might call it, but I hadn’t really seen it phase through stuff yet.

  Immediately, a weird sensation assaulted my finger. It was hard to pinpoint. I guess it was somewhat like sticking it into a pool of water, except that I didn’t feel any wetness. Instead, my skin prickled as millions of little needles poked me lightly from every possible angle.

  It wasn’t painful. No, the sensation was closer to a tingle, and was perhaps a tiny bit irritating, but I could tell that there was no obvious damage being done to my flesh. At least, that was what it seemed like. I wasn’t so sure about the long-term effects of prolonged exposure to Pixie radiation, though, if something like that even existed.

  After a moment, I felt something else, inside my own mind and body this time. My phone buzzed and I checked the notification.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  You are trying to form a Subordinate bond with a Pixie.

  Due to the nature of the requested entity, the assumed bond is chosen as follows:

  Subordinate Familiar

  ※　※　※

  Requirements:

  Mutual agreement and will - Confirmed

  Mutual consent - Confirmed

  Exchange of spiritual carrier - Confirmed

  ※　※　※

  Do you want to register the entity as your Subordinate Familiar?

  Y / N

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  Without thinking about it for long, I tapped the confirmation button. My attention was quickly stolen by an unexpected phenomenon. The Pixie, which still surrounded my finger, began to glow brighter and brighter until both Aisha and I had to cover our eyes from the searing, vibrant pink light.

  The radiance faded as quickly as it had begun, and another notification appeared on my phone.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  Congratulations!

  The entity Pixie is now bound to you!

  You are now able to access its information through your Subordinate Management function.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  “Looks like it worked?” I half-asked, half-announced.

  “Cool. You can stop fingering the Pixie now.”

  I chuckled at Aisha’s playful remark and pulled my digit out of the prickly sphere, bringing it up to my face to inspect. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though, besides the fact that the wound I’d made in my finger was gone.

  Glancing at our new companion, I arched a brow. “Is this your doing? I don’t think I can heal this fast, even if that was just a tiny cut, and even if my body is now slightly better than it was, thanks to the System.”

  The cute orb spun around in a gleeful circle, and I could guess what it meant to convey much, much easier than before.

  “Oh. I understood that perfectly,” Aisha said in a slightly surprised tone.

  “Same here. That’s going to be useful.”

  “For sure. Although, I will miss the guessing games a tiny bit.” She smiled as she came closer to both me and the Pixie. “So, it can heal?”

  “I got a notification that I can check on it in my Subordinate Management, so we’ll see about that in a minute. First, the wood,” I replied and started walking away from the apartment, giving the cheerful orb a brief pat before doing so.

  “Roger that, boss.”

  Aisha quickly joined me, and we navigated to the spot where a few dismembered Woodmen lay on the ground, some already stacked in rather neat piles. I collected those, while Aisha piled up the less dismembered bodies on top of each other. She left the biggest one on the bottom with its legs sticking out, thereby creating a makeshift sled.

  A sled from the corpses of your enemies.

  Metal as fuck.

  Without any interruptions, we brought all that wood back home. Me carrying a bunch of loose pieces in my arms, and Aisha pulling the rest of the wood on her impromptu sled, to the accompaniment of odd scraping sounds.

  Our spherical friend buzzed around both of us like an extremely excited bee, with a pleasant hum, instead of the usual buzz.

  Thanks to the bond, nothing stopped it from flying straight into my apartment when I opened the door. It instantly started zooming through the entire place. The sight made us chuckle as we exchanged glances.

  It felt like bringing home a little puppy from a shelter. I had never imagined myself getting such a unique doggo, though. Hopefully, the no-pet rules of my lease didn’t apply to fictional fantasy creatures.

  Well, maybe not so fictional anymore, but I digress.

  We transported all the bits and pieces of the Woodmen into the freshly constructed forge, including the wood we’d left chilling in the storage from our previous escapades, after chopping their corpses into neatly sized blocks.

  Aisha set the wood in the little trench running through the center of the narrow hearth and we stepped back, side by side, our fists on our hips.

  “Ah, shit. I fucked up.” I winced a little after noticing something.

  “What? Why? We are ready to go full factory mode now.” Aisha glanced at me while furrowing her brows.

  “Factory mode might be a good term.” I spun my wrist in a circle, waving my finger at the ceiling. “There’s one crucial element that accompanies those.”

  “Which is?” she asked, getting only more confused.

  “Where there is fire, there’s…” I raised a brow at her.

  Shifting her gaze between the hearth and the ceiling a few times, my intent finally clicked in Aisha’s head.

  “Ah. Smoke. Fuck.”

  “Exactly. Fuck.” I chuckled wryly. “With the door behind us being the only path leading outside, my apartment will turn into a smokehouse in a blink once we light these up. I think you are aware that closing the door won’t do much good.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. “What now? This kind of cripples our plans.”

  “Well, there’s only one thing to do. Back to the Residence Management tab, in the hopes that we can fix this.”

  Walking back into the main section of the apartment, we navigated through the menus. Fortunately, there was an entire branch related to forges and similar workshops, where we found that ventilation was a thing.

  Modern technology to the rescue.

  Instead of purchasing a pricey set that included a complete installation, I picked out the parts individually, which reduced the cost of our mistake to just over five hundred D-Dollars instead of over one thousand. I had to place and connect each piece myself, but it was nothing more than a fun Tetris-themed make-it-fit on the computer screen.

  In the end, our workshop gained a set of large—though thankfully quiet—fans attached to the ceiling which were supposed to suck up all the bad stuff into a simple circuit of vents that led everything away. The pack available for purchase had dedicated sleeves specifically for furnaces, but we didn’t need them since this was more of a hybrid room without a single, clear purpose. No reason to overpay for things we didn’t need.

  I was curious about one thing, which was the most expensive part I’d had to add. The vents ran into one of the walls, obviously one of the outer walls of the apartment, but I worried that thick, black smoke coming out of a random flat in the middle of the building might be rather eye-catching.

  Thankfully, something called a filter existed; its description mentioned its main function being that of absorbing and dispelling toxic fumes.

  What greeted us when we walked out onto the balcony to see what others might see, was a standard, consumer AC unit hanging on the wall. Its fan slowly spun, as the entire system had already started circulating air through the forge room. Supposedly, it was equipped with a magical purifier to do its job.

  All hail fucking magitech.

  In the meanwhile, our new friend flew straight into the barrier blocking off my apartment from the outside world, bouncing off it with quite the rebound, causing both of us to chuckle at its wobbly movements afterward. It had learned how limited our space was the hard way.

  Without wasting too much more time, we got to work. I had a feeling that our little hustle wouldn’t last for much longer. It always went like that. The moment you set things up properly, everything went to shit in less than a day. Of course, that meant we couldn’t afford to slack now.

  Aisha lit the stacked wood while I filled the pots with water. She seemed to possess the ability to inherently understand the fire’s temperature and intensity, preparing the entire length of the hearth almost perfectly for boiling water without any accidents. I left the duty of watching over it to her, and focused on mixing the salty soup.

  The pink Pixie floated around us the entire time, keeping well back from the equipment. It must have understood that this wasn’t the time to play around or act too lively, letting us work pretty much unhindered. Whenever it passed close to either of us, we threw a tender pat onto its shape with a warm smile.

  “Does it have a name?” Aisha asked as we shuffled around the workshop.

  “No idea. It certainly can’t let us know by itself. I guess it’s time to check you out, buddy.”

  While stirring one of the pots, I pulled out my phone and navigated to the Subordinate Management menu. Its glowing pink form showed up above one of the flat pedestals just next to Aisha. Where its name should be along the bottom of the pedestal, only question marks showed.

  I tapped the Pixie’s avatar to get some more details about it.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  INFORMATION