Chapter 247: Return To Salaria
Lukas slowly woke up, a yawn blooming inside of him.
He sat up with a hand covering his mouth, blinking at the light streaming in through the window.
Based on the angle and the fact that the rays were tinted with orange, he could tell that it was already evening. Somehow, he’d slept longer than he intended.
He turned his head to find Melody and Akira seated at the small table across the room, with a deck of cards spread between them.
None of them had even noticed that he was awake. They were focused on the cards in their hands, arguing about something. Or rather, Melody constantly prodded at Akira and kept her arguing back.
Then Melody glanced over, her gaze meeting his.
"Good evening," she said, her voice light and sweet. "Look who decided to join us in the land of the living?"
"It was a hard battle, but I won," he muttered, dragging a hand down his face.
He stood with another yawn before walking across the room towards them, pulling up a chair and dropping into it.
He glanced between the two of them and the cards on the table.
"What’s going on here?"
"A bet," Melody said, arranging her cards with a small smile.
"What kind of bet?"
Melody nodded towards Akira. "If I win, Akira uses her new [Tinker] skills to build me a car. A super fast one."
Lukas’s brows rose. He turned to Akira. "Can you actually build that?"
Akira set a card down, considering the question with a slight tilt of her head. "I’m pretty sure I can build a car, yes. Whether it ends up super fast is another matter entirely. The speed depends on what materials we’re working with."
"So possibly yes."
"Possibly yes," Akira agreed.
Lukas leaned back, looking between them again. "Alright. And what do you get if you win, Akira?"
Akira opened her mouth to answer, then stopped.
Her eyes dropped to the table. A long pause followed, then she slowly turned to look at Melody.
"We never finalized that," she said, her voice flat.
Melody said nothing, her expression perfectly innocent.
"We sat here and talked about this bet for how long," Akira continued, her voice rising slightly, "and somehow the only reward on the table is yours?"
"I suggested the bet," Melody said with a shrug. "You agreed to it."
"You argued me into agreeing to it! You kept talking about the car until I just went along with it!" Akira’s chair scraped back as she stood, pointing an accusing finger across the table. "You tricked me."
"I didn’t trick you," Melody said, already rising from her own chair, finally breaking into laughter. "You just weren’t paying close enough attention."
"That is the same thing!"
Melody bolted.
Akira went after her with a snarl, chasing her around the room while Melody giggled, darting behind furniture and using Lukas as a shield without a second thought.
Lukas leaned out of the way, watching them with a smile on his face. After a few minutes, he finally raised a hand.
"Alright, enough. We need to head back to Salaria."
Akira stopped chasing Melody immediately, straightening up and smoothing her clothes like nothing had happened.
Melody came to a stop a step later, still catching her breath from laughing.
"Right," Melody said, looking around the room. "Do we have everything?"
The three of them did a quick sweep of the space.
Lukas moved to the bedside table, picking up the book he’d left sitting there and slipping it into his spatial ring.
Melody checked the wardrobe while Akira checked her spatial ring to make sure nothing was being left behind.
"I think that’s everything," Akira said.
Melody turned towards Lukas. "Should we pay for a few extra days to keep the room open? Or should we just close it down?"
Lukas thought about it for a second, then shook his head. "Close it. There’s no point in paying for a room we’re not using."
Melody nodded in agreement. "Fair enough."
They gathered the last of their things and made their way downstairs, approaching the front desk to settle the bill.
Lukas handled it quickly, and once they were done, he turned and scanned the tavern out of habit.
The tables were occupied by the usual crowd, and he was surprised to realize that he could even recognize a few faces. But Karrakas wasn’t among them.
Lukas hadn’t expected him to be, but he’d looked anyway.
"Let’s go."
Then the three of them turned and stepped out of the inn.
They made their way through the ringed city, heading towards the tower rising at its center.
Now, the streets looked familiar. Lukas was sure they could find their way back to the inn when they returned.
They soon arrived and the courtyard around the base of the tower was busy as always, with the merchants calling out from their stalls.
Lukas gave them a glance as they passed through but kept moving. There was nothing worth stopping for.
They took the lift up to the top floor, stepping into the large hall when they arrived. The moment they stepped inside, cool air washed over them.
Lukas paused for just a second, blinking.
He’d already gotten used to the desert heat, and the cool air now felt almost strange against his skin.
"That happened faster than I expected," he muttered.
Neither Melody nor Akira asked what he meant. They probably felt it too.
They walked across the hall and stepped through the spatial gate, the familiar pull lasting only a moment before the first floor hall materialized around them.
They moved without stopping, heading through one of the side doors and starting down the stairs.
This wasn’t like their first time here, when they’d stood in place, discussing. Lukas couldn’t help but smile at the memory.
They soon arrived at the checkpoint, and they pressed their IDs to the keypad, the light blinked green, and they moved through.
When they finally reached the underground garage, they walked across it and emerged onto the street above.
Akira looked left, then right.
"Where to?"
