Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 175: Suspicions

"Exactly how long have you two been together?"

Given how they were already acting like a married couple, she was curious about how long their ’relationship’ had gone on and Jamie gave a reply that nearly shocked the bottle of water she was drinking off her lips.

"Hmm? A little bit over 15, I think?

"15 months?"

"Years."

"Pfft!?"

Tiris experienced what it felt like to choke on water for the first time in her life and Kendra assisted her to clean up her stained dress when she asked.

"You guys have been dating for 15 years?"

To her question, the both of them gave her confused looks and asked back.

""Who said we were dating?""

""You’re not!?""

Even Kendra who had been trying to refrain from interrupting her mistress’ conversation snapped back a retort together with Tiris.

Both of them joined the long list of people nearly falling over in shock upon hearing the synchronous reply the two Hybrids gave.

Just then, the convoy began to slow and when they looked out the window, they were greeted with the sight of the walls of one of the cities of the Krovale Region, Kauron.

Jamie then turned back towards Tiris whose face had lit up at the sight of the city and asked.

"You have friends you’re meeting here, right?"

"Yeah."

The young woman nodded excitedly and seeing her joy at the thought of seeing her friends, Jamie sighed and shook his head.

Both the Church of Esanke and the Argeryan family had included Jamie and Miranda in Tiris’ guard detail for two reasons.

One was that they were powerful nonstandard Transcendents who could fight those in the Inferior Stage of the Deity Realm despite the huge power gulf.

The second was that unlike most of the other guards, Jamie and Miranda were closer to her in age and had jovial personalities—the kind that’d make it easier for her to relax around and have fun with, especially since ’having fun’ was not going to be on her To Do lists very soon.

It was also why they didn’t just have her use Teleportation Waypoints and head straight to Skyhaven.

Upon entering Kauron, her caretakers handled the accommodation arrangements while Jamie and Miranda went over to the Mercenary Guild Building to check in and report their stop.

Their convoy was heading through multiple Regions on the Kilgoth Continent that they were on, with their final destination being the Vroln Region, where Skyhaven Mountain was.

With every stop they made, Jamie and Miranda had to check in at the Mercenary Guild so that the ones who commissioned them could be sent updates.

They did get updates from the Priests and Kendra, but Jamie and Miranda still checked in for formality.

In ascending order, the Mercenary Ranks were; Copper - Iron - Silver - Gold - Platinum - Mithril - Orichalcum – Adamantite, and each Rank had Lower and Upper divisions.

Jamie and Miranda were currently the highest-ranked Orichalcum Mercenaries on the planet, and already had 95% of the merit points needed to become Adamantite. The Merit points this job would award them would be enough to skip the Lower Adamantite division and directly enter the Upper-division.

That was expected since this was a job commissioned by one of the greatest Noble Families on the planet and the biggest Religion of the entire Ciurath star system.

After finishing their check-in, Jamie and Miranda left the guild building while reviewing their itinerary for Kauron together when Jamie lightly bumped into someone.

At first, he just apologized and kept going on his way, only to freeze a moment later when he realised something.

Miranda was walking on his right side, and he bumped into the person on his right side as well.

This gap between him and Miranda was not up to 30 cm—not enough space for a grown man to walk through normally. Moreover, Miranda was holding his hand, so if Jamie bumped into them, then Miranda should have collided with them directly.

However, Miranda did not. She simply looked up at Jamie with a puzzled expression— 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Sorry for what?"

—and asked him why he had apologized.

"..."

Jamie went silent. He looked down at their joined hands and turned around, spotting the figure of the person he bumped into as he spoke.

"Gimme a sec, Mira. I need to get something from the guild."

"Huh? Get what?"

He didn’t answer Miranda’s query, simply turning around and running back the way they came. He quickly caught up to the person he bumped into earlier and purposely bumped into them this time.

This caused them to stumble and hit the shoulder of someone else carrying a bag, resulting in him dropping his bag.

"Hey! Watch it!!"

Having the contents of his bag spilt on the floor, the bag carrier was naturally displeased and she shouted at the one who bumped into her while Jamie who had caused this stopped and turned with his most surprised expression.

"Oh my, I think that was my fault. I’m so sorry."

He bowed lightly and helped the woman pick up her items, before questioning the person he hit as he placed a hand on their shoulder.

"Are you okay? I was running really fast there."

"...I’m fine, thank you."

The man replied after a short pause, completely oblivious to the fact that Jamie’s hand on his shoulder was tracing invisible runes infused with a trigger spell.

Jamie quickly took his hand off before the man could notice that he had a rune placed on him, apologizing once more before turning around and running back to the guild building.

He chatted with the receptionist there for a minute before coming out and meeting Miranda at the door.

"What was that all about?"

Miranda questioned him as she felt his actions were just too strange. From her POV, it was clear he bumped into that guy on purpose so she wanted to know why he did that.

"Mira. Did you notice that guy was there before I bumped into him?"

"Huh? Of course, I-wait, what?"

Hearing his question, Miranda was about to give an affirmative answer, before she realised something was off. She hadn’t recognized his presence until Jamie whom she was watching had hit him.

"As I thought. He has some sort of Imperceptibility."

Jamie spoke with a light frown, watching the direction the man had walked off to before returning his gaze to Miranda and continuing.

"Let’s meet up with Tiris. It seems our stay in this city wouldn’t be as peaceful as we would like."

Miranda naturally noticed that something was clearly wrong here and they headed to the location where Tiris had informed them that she would be.

It was a complex that had an Aquarium on its lower floor and a mall on its upper floors. That was where Tiris was meeting up with her old friends.

◇　◇　◇

Metro Mall Complex

Kauron City

Krovale Region

March 7th

Unknown Year of 899th Cosmic Cycle

"""Hot..."""

That word was what slipped out of the lips of Tiris’ three friends when they saw Jamie and Miranda.

As for which one of them they were referring to? It was Both.

Jamie and Miranda were both ridiculously good-looking. Heck, they were girls and they found themselves tripping at the sight of Miranda.

One of them even rushed up to both of them and held their hands, her eyes shining as she introduced herself.

"Hello, I’m Jodi.

Can I take pictures with you two? I don’t think anyone would believe I’ve ever met such a beautiful couple if I don’t have a picture as proof."

Hearing her request, Miranda’s first reaction was to correct her misconception of their relationship’s nature, but Jamie spoke up before she could get a word out.

"Sure, sure. You want singles or a group photo."

Turning to Tiris who wanted to chide her friend, he continued.

"Come join us, let’s all take pictures!"

Somehow, what was supposed to be Tiris introducing her guards to her friends turned into a picture session that lasted nearly 10 minutes.

When they were done, the three friends of Tiris very quickly dragged the Saintess Candidate along with them and dashed off into the Aquarium, with Jamie and Miranda trailing a short distance behind.

They had an unlimited number of things to do today but their time here together was far too limited so the four friends wanted to get as much done as possible.

Tiris’ other guards blended in with the visitors of the aquarium while Jamie and Miranda took the chance to have a little fun as well.