a ring

"Right, so what did you come here for?"

After barely getting my mind straight, I changed the subject.

"Hmm, well I did come here to see you, but I also have some interest in Merlin's Staff as well~"

"I see."

Seeing that she wasn't willing to try and lie to me, I felt relieved.

"I was planning to visit your place, but because of your uptight butler worried about your health, I decided to bother you this way. Since the only way I can get any information about Ellie is by sticking around your mansion located in London after all."

"Wait, so you were waiting all day long?"

"Hehe. Well, not really, I was around here for an hour or two and I just happened to see you. My intuition was correct."

"Ah, I see."

"So what I want to ask is, can you sell that Merlin's Staff to me? I really really want it…"

Holding my two hands together and showing a pleading face to me, I felt my heart grow extremely weak towards her. Even though I should be making a logical judgment here, it was really impossible to do something like that when she looked like that.

"One million pounds."

"Aww. Can you make it a bit cheaper? Huh? One million pounds?" she asked with wide eyes.

"Huh? Well of course that would be good for me, but you'd be losing way too much money that way, Ellie. Now, let's not do that price, and to be honest, I have exactly 50 million pounds in my account. Let's negotiate around that! In my estimate it should cost around over 100 million pounds. Though I can't ever hope to afford that much even if I were to sell off everything that I had. So please?"

"I don't really need money and I think it's best if you got the staff. your merlin. second best on the server and my fiance. Having the staff will be good for us in the long term. "

Even though 50 million pounds is money that would make the eyes of any ordinary citizen spin, I already had an even more astronomical amount of money in assets so to me, it didn't feel like it was a lot.

"Then can I take it that it's your gift for the marriage that will be taking place in the future?"

"… hahaha!"

"In any case, thank you for the wonderful present."

I pulled out Merlin's Staff from my inventory and handed it to Katalina. Since it is me changing the ownership of an important item, I needed to go through several digital processes of confirming my identity. But since I've already done this many times in my previous life, I went through the process without much problem and finished the trade.

A different trade was created. It was to receive a ring that's usually in a pair. A ring with a simple design and a red jewel embedded in it.

[Ring of Promise(?)

Legend tier

A paired ring. No special effect until two people equip the same pair.

Able to teleport to the location of other user wearing the ring once per day (No delay)

All stats +10

Luck +10

All magic resistance +10%

Health +5%

Mana +5%]　

I've given a legendary item, and now I'm getting another legendary item back. Of course, logically I am getting half the value of the pair of rings, but in other ways, it is much more worth it because it's a pair.

On top of that, the special effects that it has on the item are all really great ones, so it's actually kind of crazy that she had this just lying around the inventory this whole time.

"wow"

I can't say with 100% certainty that she was keeping the pair of rings to herself and was waiting just for me, but I couldn't help but feel some kind of warmth in the corner of my heart as I received it.

"Hehe. Now my hunt will be more fun!"

Katalina took off her robe of concealment and equipped Merlin's Staff. The silver-white robe that she originally wears along with the staff exuding a red aura went along well together, making her look like a proper, powerful, and mystical mage.

As she looked like she was straight from a beautiful illustration or a portrait photo, I admired her beauty quietly inside my mind.

"Take off your robe of concealment too, Ellie!"

Although I did put the effort of wearing the robe of concealment, she had already figured out who I was from the moment I stepped out the door so I decided to take it off as well without complaint.

The appearance of silver armor and my Excalibur became revealed to her.

"But hey, you're not wearing your helmet. I see that you're wearing a circlet instead now. So you're not going to wear your helmet anymore?"

As Katalina looked over and all around me, she asked with curiosity in her voice.

"Yep."

"Ooh~ Good thinking! It's not like you're a loner anyways, I always wondered why you had to hide your face the whole time. Hey, be honest with me, how many people do you have in your friend's list? None, right?"

"Yep, it's empty."

Seeing as how Katalina was pointing out exact details about myself the whole time, I no longer had the feeling that she could be lying to me at all.

"Yep, I knew it. Then I'll be at the top of your friend's list, right?"

Realizing my weakness to her beauty, Katalina pushed her face close to mine as she asked. She was completely right, as I backed up all the way to the wall and just nodded my head.

"Okay okay, I'll make sure to add you."

"Hehe, all right!"

Seeing her ball up her fist and make a slightly sly smile, it made her look like a very lively girl.

So after adding Merlin to my friend's list by half-threat and half-request, Katalina asked me with a smile on her face.

"Actually, where were you planning to go just then while wearing all that concealment robe and everything?"

"I was planning to look around London for a bit."

"It amazes me that you logged into the game even though you lost your memory…"

She certainly did catch a hole in my logic, but I replied with a relaxed voice.

"It's only certain memories that I have lost. It's not like my memories were completely wiped clean."

"I see. I kept thinking you were trying to pull a trick on me because even though you were the same Ellie I knew, you were acting quite differently. But in any case, are you going to go out and take a look around now?" 

"Well, I had gone through the trouble of disguising myself yet you found me out immediately, so I kind of don't want to go out now. You ?"

"I was actually planning to go out hunting. I promised to go with guild members. Do you want to join me?"

"With your guild members? Are you going to go through a raid?"

"Hmph! Raids? As opposed to you who can just hunt monsters while sucking on potions as much as you want, I have to have the monsters rounded up for me. Because of my low health, I also need a tanker who can protect me as well. Plus a healer of sorts that can buff my magic power."

"But you'd be splitting experience points then. Your efficiency would go down."

"Mmhmm. So that's why I'm hunting in a straw method where I receive help from guild members that I didn't party up with."

A straw method, which is called that because you're sucking away the potential experience points that the one helping you could get, is a method of receiving help from others while not putting them in the same party as you so that you'd get all the experience points for yourself. Doing this is mostly only possible for guild masters or leaders since the members have to be willing to give up their portion of experience points in order to help the leader level up faster.

"Straw, huh…"

But it's definitely regarded as an abusive method of exploiting your members.

"Ugh. Unlike those other terrible guild masters, I give adequate amounts of items or gold as compensation for their work, so don't make that kind of expression!"

Katalina snapped at me, even though I wasn't sure what kind of expression I was making. If she is compensating for their loss of experience, then it's pretty fair.

"If that's the case, how about you and I go together?"

Katalina's frowning expression quickly changed to a bright one.

"Really?"

She may have planned all this out just to make me say that.