[Bonus Chapter thanks to Castle from VokayroK <3]
It took the whole rest of the night for Mauve and Brad to recover. For the time being, Grey decided he would wait out deciding how to move forward. Instead, he just asked them questions about their current Abilities and paths and found out that he could actually take a look at the stat pages of others so long as they decided to share.
Of course, if he paid attention to his chat, he would have known about stat sharing a long time ago. They were always asking him to share the stats of the treasures he got, but he rarely looked at his chat.
They were an annoyance that just buzzed around at the back of his head.
The more of a time crunch he felt he was on, the more he ignored them. But...
His sponsorship offers were only getting more and more enticing.
Grey didn’t accept any of them either, but this list he did pay attention to. In fact, he checked it two or three times an hour, mostly because if he didn’t, he would quickly get more than he could care to keep up with.
He wasn’t looking for a sponsor, though. He was looking for something very specific, it just hadn’t shown up yet. And it might never show up.
Because whichever sponsor ended up going that far would have balls of steel, or at least a meaty enough dick to slam on a table or two.
Clearly... none of them felt that Grey was worth that...
Yet.
**
The next day came and Mauve, Brad, and Amunet stepped forward in bright spirits. By comparison, it was Grey who looked like he was half dead again.
It was just hard to tell because this had practically been his state since the very beginning.
When the group of four made it to a familiar lobby, they found three people waiting for them.
One was Petri who rocked from his heels and then to his toes, looking around with a pleasant smile on his face. He acted like a man half his size would. It was almost possible to forget he and his gut were both massive.
The second was someone Grey almost immediately gave a bright and cheery smile.
It was Elowen. She was still just as small, her robes looking just as oversized. He hadn’t seen her since the lightning bastard had blasted her to pieces, and something about seeing the light of confusion in her eyes turn into a smile made him feel happy.
The last person, though, completely ruined Grey’s mood.
"Hoho, you made it, Grey. Nice to see that you have time on your hands between humiliating Duke descendants."
"I did?" Grey blinked. "Oh! Right, I did do that. Almost forgot."
He genuinely had. His mind had been elsewhere for the last 12 hours, he had many other things to focus on.
"I thought you’d bring the other one here." Grey said.
Petri chuckled. "Pandro’s not in the best condition right now, and he’s also suffering master’s punishment, so his situation is worse than it might otherwise be."
Grey raised an eyebrow. "Being punished for losing to me? Sounds like a lot of people might need some punishment, then."
Petri burst into a boisterous laughter that felt like it shook the entire atrium.
"I have kept up my end of the bargain, Grey. I’ve brought you not just one, but two princesses today, and..." Petri flipped a palm and a disk appeared. "... This disk here has every map available to the empire. It goes well beyond the scope of our borders and touches onto areas that took quite a lot of lives to excavate, or longstanding relationships to produce. So, if you want it, you will have to keep up your end."
"I don’t agree with this."
The reason for Grey’s soured mood spoke.
Zara.
Grey had met her before too. In fact, her bloodline was part of why his Last Paladin Frame was so powerful right now. She was another Imperial Princess, unsurprisingly. And she was Elowen’s sister.
"The maps of the empire can’t be given to just anybody. Especially not a lewd bastard who wants to take advantage of my little sister."
"Zara!" Elowen blushed and then immediately snapped. "What are you saying?!"
"How does he even know who you are? Was he stalking you this entire time? Have you checked to see if any of your undergarments are missing? I wouldn’t put anything past this pervert who thinks they can just say whatever they want about Imperial Princesses far beyond his station."
Amunet looked away, rolling her lips over themselves. She was doing her damnedest not to laugh.
"Well we do know one thing." Grey said with a grin.
"And what’s that?" Zara snorted. In her opinion, Grey wouldn’t dare to say anything too bad, not with her status.
She hadn’t come here because Petri had invited her either. She had come because she heard this involved Grey and Apollo had asked a favor of her to obstruct.
Even if Apollo hadn’t asked for the sake of the Valdi family, she would have still come purely based on the words Grey had spoken. Even if she didn’t like Elowen all that much, did he think that he could just say anything about Imperial Princesses—?
"That you don’t have to check your panty drawers. Nobody is gonna want to steal anything that’s already been busted open. How many positions has Apollo bent you over in already?"
Zara’s eyes went wide, even Petri’s smile froze, not expecting Grey to have said something like that.
Yet, clearly, neither of them knew Grey well enough, because he just kept talking as though he didn’t notice their reactions at all.
"You know, it’s quite interesting. With all this talk of Imperial Princesses this and that, you’d think that you’d pick someone who... I dunno, isn’t from the same family as the guy who killed your other sister.
"Oh no, wait. He didn’t just kill her, did he? Seems that the status of you Imperial Princesses isn’t all too high. Why do you think that is?"
Grey shook his head as though he was lamenting something. Then his eyes lit up like he realized what the problem was.
He brought the side of his fist to a palm.
"Oh, I know what it is. Fatherless behavior for sure. I’ve heard all this talk of an Empress, but who’s the Emperor? Don’t tell me your mom’s as loose as you are."
"I’LL KILL YOU!" Zara shrieked, her Frame exploding with power.