Chapter 749

Sue lets out a puff of air before turning to Kamiko, “Well, you’ve heard me complain enough for now. How was your last job Kamiko?”

Kamiko hesitates for a moment to look at Kat for permission, causing Kat to just raise a confused eyebrow. Blushing Kamiko turns back to Sue and says, “It was... interesting? I guess? If I’m supposed to be complaining I’ll say that I’ve never wanted my wings to let me fly more than I have the past few days. It wasn’t a horrible mission but I couldn’t help but think it’d be so much easier if I could just fly!”

“Well, you’ll have to explain it to us,” said Kat, “Last time we talked about it you weren’t too worried because it was clear you’d be able to fly eventually when you got stronger,”

“Yeah... yeah I guess so. Ok, my most recent Contract involved me searching for this box. I don’t know what was in it but apparently whatever it was, was important enough to make not opening the thing part of the Contract just as high a priority as returning it to them. I also wasn’t called in for my strength or any of my unique abilities.

“It was an ice world that was just heading into winter. See, whatever the box is, let’s just call it ‘the relic’ was desperately needed in the capital for some ceremony or ritual or something. They were pretty cagey about it so I didn’t push too hard. Just that I needed to find the relic and get it back as fast as possible, though I dodged that being part of the actual Contract just in case. The race there was one I’d never heard of before...

“They were sort of a combination between bear beastkin and walrus beastkin. They had thick fur that was usually brown or black with large tusks and a thick layer of fat on their entire bodies. They didn’t exactly look fat because it was distributed really specifically but you could tell by how they all moved and how parts of their bodies... bounced for lack of a better term when they walked. They also had large tusks that could NOT be easy to deal with. They stuck up to be about as high as Kat’s horns.

“I’m also not sure if there was a difference between genders either. I might have only seen one, I only met a couple of them before I was sent out, but... I think there was at least one of each on the streets surely. Either way, the main way that they differentiate themselves was by braiding their fur in different ways. Braiding different sections, different coloured ornaments. They normally stuck to wooden beads but they also had a few of them with varnished sticks and stones, feathers. Didn’t wear any clothes though,”

.....

“OOoh, did you get a good look at the goods?” interjected Sue.

“Thankfully no,” said Kamiko with no more than a slight twitch of the face. She’d been waiting for that one and reacting meant that Sue won. “If they even had genitals they were certainly covered by the fur. Now, despite the fact their whole race has adapted to living on what is essentially a frozen hellscape they still have their limits and in winter it gets really bad. The relic was lost on one of the nearby mountains and while they can survive outside in the winter without too much trouble. Outside in the winter on tall mountains was beyond them.

“So I was sent out instead. It did actually take a fair bit of arguing back and forth before they accepted my Contract which was annoying. I’ll... I’ll just play it out roughly I suppose,” Kamiko trailed off as she sucked in a few breaths, did a few test hums and then started up once again in a much deeper voice.

“Where is your fur? How can we trust you to brave the winters without proper fur?”

“I’m immune to the cold I don’t need it,” Kamiko swapped back to her voice for ‘her’ lines.

“You do not know the chill of an Arctlan winter. You will freeze out there and we do not want to be responsible for it,”

“No I will not. It doesn’t matter how cold it is outside I am immune to it. It is simply part of my abilities. It is the reason I was summoned. Not all demons can survive this cold but I CAN”

“You are tiny as well. While demons are supposed to be strong, we’re not sure if we can trust little bald girl to find our treasure. Even with the locator we will be providing you,”

Kamiko shifted back to her normal relaxed position. “So it went on like that for a while, I got annoyed and offered them a chance to feel my cold fire. If it didn’t chill them they could refuse my service. I did warn them to be careful, repeatedly, but the volunteer stuck his whole hand straight into my demonic flames.

“He LOST that hand and was lucky someone was paying attention because they chopped it off before my fire could devour his arm. They stopped complaining after that,”

Sue’s eyes went wide. “That’s brutal girl. I can’t believe you just froze a guys hand off like that!”

Kamiko shrugged and said, “It’s just a hand. With a bit of effort they can heal that up. Surely if they were important enough to be at my summoning they can afford such a thing or if it’s all community barter they’ll be able to get healed and pay it off later somehow.”

Sue gave Kamiko a bit of a strange look. “I know your Mum is a hotshot healer but like... demonic fire wounds are pretty bad. It’ll take more than just a regular healer to fix the hand. You need to remove the surviving skin around the area very carefully and then you have to sort of... coax the hand back into a proper state otherwise it’ll just heal back improperly. Demonic fire like that isn’t enough to cause corruption but it is enough to sort of... cling to the wound and cause healing to fail. Even demon healers can have issues with it,”

Kamiko’s eyes went wide, a somewhat horrified look on her face. “No!”

Sue looked a little apologetic but couldn’t let up, “I don’t want to lie to you Kami. Not that I can. You should know that as well as I do,”

Kamiko bit her lip and took in a deep shuddering breath before looking to Kat for reassurance. Kat couldn’t though. She didn’t really know how bad such a thing was or how skilled a healer needed to be to fix something like that. “Is it really that bad?” asked Kat.

“Well. Sort of. Demonic fire can be sort of fought off by coating your body in mana or qi because it’ll ‘burn’ that stuff first. Then if you can like... scrape the skin off and just let it scar over naturally it’s not so bad. It’s something about the healing process that doesn’t play nice with demonic fire. Natural healing, if you can manage it, tends to give pretty good results actually. Though... how do you not know this Kami?” explained Sue.

“Um... sorry. I... maybe I did? I... I feel pretty bad about it now...” mumbled Kamiko.

Sue sighed dramatically, “Look Kami, the guy will live. Don’t worry so much about it. They clearly didn’t complain about the result otherwise you would have mentioned it already. Let’s just go back to the story. Get your mind off it,”

“Right...” mumbled Kamiko, not quite as thrilled as Sue seemed to be but she did manage to keep explaining. “So... I left there... town? City? I’m not sure how many people they need. It was a pretty bit settlement but very spread out so it’s somewhat hard to judge. Anyway, I left town with a bag of food and the compass thingy and headed for the mountains. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that instead of a normal 2D compass it was a little glass globe. I don’t want to even think about how long I’d have been digging through the snow otherwise.

“See, what I didn’t know was that the mountain was FULL of tunnels. So I spend a full day heading pretty much straight on to my destination, just trekking through the snow and dealing with it. I might be immune to the cold but sometimes the snow still gets stuck in my boots or worse MELTS. Like... WHY? I don’t have proper body heat?

“Still, I dealt with that. Managed to get to the place and it was this big snow drift. Apparently somewhere under all that was my box. So I build a little makeshift igloo and set up camp for the day. Urgh... just looking back on it makes me so annoyed. Poor past me had no idea what she was about to be in for.”