Chapter 68 - A Brisk Reunion

"Damn it."

Rynold cursed as he was covered in a vile mixture of liquids and small chunks of food. The elf girl who was previously drunk beyond her years slightly sobered up. She saw what she had done and somewhat inched back in regret.

"You alright?" Rynold asked a question of full sentiment and concern but his expression and tone implied otherwise.

With his overall careful and caring nature, Rynold has a face that expresses calm when he's not doing anything. However, the very moment he gets upset, his face entirely distorts. That meant that his expression and tone convey the direct opposite of whenever he meant compassion and caring.

In other words, Rynold was trying to be caring and mindful but the elf completely misunderstood. That is because his face was contorted into an expression of anger and terror to which the young elf concluded that she pissed the wrong guy off.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry," she said in a terrified tone.

Rynold sighed. He didn't know why but this always happens to him whenever someone did something to him; he'd always check on their conditions first. But, it always turns south because they'd either get angry or completely apologetic. It was odd, to say the least.

"It's fine," he said in a regretful tone, "it could happen to anyone so don't worry about it."

Without waiting for a response, Rynold headed out the door. His goal of finding Oliver clearly wasn't achievable in the HQ. At the same time, there's just this one dude who kept staring at him from the start. Regardless of what anybody says, it was still creepy as all hell.

X saw his Master come out of the door and saw him covered in suspicious liquid. The Mech Knight asked what had happened to which Rynold simply responded nonchalantly as if nothing did happen. Rynold decided that it might be time for him to head on back to his quarters. Oliver was nowhere to be seen and his appetite was ruined.

"Rynold?" someone called out, "what are you doing here, man?"

Turning around, he saw Oliver who was approaching him at a steady pace. 'No wonder I can't find him,' Rynold thought to himself as he wiped a bit of vomit off him to greet Oliver.

"Where have you been, dude? I've been looking for you," Rynold said as he approached Oliver.

Oliver instinctively stepped back, "before that, what the hell happened to you?" he asked as he looked at Rynold up and down and covered his nose from the smell.

Rynold chuckled before answering, "that's a story for later. Let me just clean up and I'll tell you all about it," he turned to the elderly elf who was beside Oliver, "can I borrow him for the night?"

"Yes, My Lord," the elderly elf answered with respect, "he has no missions for the night and the tour's all finished as well."

"Thanks," Rynold responded politely before turning to Oliver, "let's go."

The two of them stepped on the platform along with both X and Strider who had never left Oliver's side. They headed up into Rynold's private quarters and along the way, the vomit started to dry up.

Eager to clean himself off, he headed to the shower as soon as he reached the door. Oliver could help himself to anything he wanted for all he cared because there were other more important things for now.

He quickly washed himself off from all the vomit and the random chunks of food that were somehow tangled in his hair. Rynold scrubbed and scrubbed until his very skin turned red and before long, finished taking his desensitized cleaning.

Rynold grabbed whatever loins that were left for him and headed out of the shower door.

Oliver was sleeping on the bed with hands behind his head and Strider was curled up on the floor. X, on the other hand, was just waiting in the corner of the room.

"Get up!" Rynold yelled as he kicked Oliver awake.

Oliver jolted awake and got up from the bed. Clearly, he was in a mood for a nap but Rynold, jokingly, didn't have time to deal with his bullshit.

Opening the door, Rynold went down the stairs and reached the rooftop garden. Oliver followed soon behind and went down the stairs to meet up with his friend. He had no idea why they were going through a flower field but it certainly wasn't to Oliver's taste.

Rynold stood in the middle of the garden and appeared to be talking to someone who was sitting on the soft grass. Oliver approached behind and notice who Rynold was talking to.

"Hey Eileen," Oliver said to the young girl who was sitting and playing with the wind sprites.

"Oliver!" she said as the young girl stood up to embrace him.

Oliver patted her on the head as he fully embraced her as well. "How have you been?" he asked the young girl.

Rynold was smiling as the two reunited and started to converse on what they've been up to.

He let the two be for the while and looked around the penthouse area. Despite him being here for the third time now, he hasn't really explored the place yet. There were some rooms here and there and the place for his workshop was slowly being constructed.

Rynold could tell the building was slowly being built by experienced hands. What's more, the architect in charge must've been experienced because the new building matched the rest of the buildings in the area.

Opening doors left and right, there really wasn't anything of note here except that this place was a lot grander than he had expected. Rynold guessed that the previous lord had an exquisite and expensive taste that his subjects seemed to have fulfilled completely.

There were guest rooms and other sorts of areas that were meant for use in an aristocratic setting to which Rynold thought it was completely stuck up and fancy. These sort of "rooms" were in their own buildings for crying out loud.

He opened the room to the dining area and suddenly realized something.

'I could've eaten here the whole time?!'

Rynold could have avoided the whole eye-catching half-naked fiasco if he had known that there was a private dining area here of all places. As the new Lord of the Tree, he at least had to be presentable and not embarrass himself at all times.

Too bad, though, he not only embarrassed himself in front of the people, he also managed to make a fool of himself along the way. Talk about the worst Lord in history.

Rynold decided to forget about it for now and headed back to where Eileen and Oliver were.

The two were still enjoying their time together while both X and Strider were still in his room. He thought that interrupting them might ruin their fun so he decided to leave them for now.

With that, Rynold walked back up to the balcony outside his room, called X, and the two of them rode on his personal floating platform. He thought that Jack shouldn't miss this since he was a part of the team after all.

So, the duo headed towards the library where Jack was supposedly studying with Margareth. At this point, it suddenly donned on Rynold that he might already be dead, killed by annoying the living the daylight out of Margareth.

Rynold knocked on the door but, instead of the door being opened, an explosion came from within the room.

Nearly crapping his pants, Rynold kicked open the door to check on what happened. He can't lose anybody more than he already had in the past.

Everybody was fine. That's what first came to mind as Margareth was busy doing something that required her full focus while Jack was still alive at the very least. Well, alive was an understatement considering he was on the floor, eyes unblinking.

Jack's face was covered with what appeared to be ash. Rynold ran up to him and checked on his condition in which he concluded that Jack was completely fine.

"What the hell happened? What was that explosion?!" Rynold started scolding now that Jack turned out to be fine.

"I uhh.... I....," Jack was still stunned, obviously.

Rynold didn't have the patience to deal with the guy's utter nonsense and slapped him to get Jack to focus.

Rubbing his cheeks, Jack managed to snap out of his daze. "Thanks," he said while continuously rubbing where Rynold snapped, "I was trying out this spell I read from the book I was reading on a bullet I had leftover. It was an Enchant spell that I thought would work well but something went wrong."

Rynold raised an eyebrow. 'He did all of this unsupervised and somehow managed to understand Elvish language?' Rynold thought to himself as he helped Jack stand back up.

He then turned to Margareth and called out her name to which she simply ignored him. With a sigh, Rynold soon realized that this Tree would be in great danger if they didn't get their act together.