Polymath Redux

Chapter 9: Join them? No, we'll be controlling them!

"Ugh..."

Yda gave up on trying to remove it, in fact she may have just given up on trying to remove it for good. She had just willingly entered into a slave contract, or at least something close to it, 'just how cruel can this man be?' she thought to herself while silently weeping.

"There, there."

Morgana crouched down to the floor and gently stroke her hair. Carefully and kindly, like a mother calming a newborn. This too was part of Mordred's plans, the 'stick' and the 'carrot'. Through the use of [intuition], Mordred was able to feel Yda's heart rate going down to a stable level, as expected it was easier for a woman with softer features to soothe another person's mental condition.

"Well I think I've delayed it long enough, so we should go find something to eat before we continue on with the conversation."

As Mordred was about to leave to find a restaurant, there was a small knock on the door. Since [intuition] only tells the user where the other players were and not who the other players were, he wasn't able to determine who was behind that door. However from a process of elimination it would've been easy to deduce that there could've only been one answer, and that would be the matron of this inn. 'Rena Vardis' if he remembered correctly.

"Yes, who is it?"

Morgana was the one to open the doors to answer. Earlier when Irina was out to retrieve Yda, Morgana had already introduced herself to the matron, despite merely being a doppelganger of Mordred they paid a little extra for her lodging too. To Rena and Yda, Morgana was simply another entity altogether.

"Ah, Ms. Morgana, I was wondering if you were all getting hungry? I've prepared some food downstairs if you didn't mind joining me for dinner."

Morgana replied with an extremely feminine and gentle smile.

"Yes, that would be nice."

"Wonderful, then I'll go set up. Please come down when you are ready."

"Thank you."

With a happy smile Rena left for downstairs.

"Then, shall we?"

Mordred was the first to leave the room, followed by Morgana and then the only two remaining in the room were Irina and Yda. Yda was still on the floor and breathed a sigh of relief as dinner time had interrupted her death sentence. However as she was about to get up she was met with Irina's unblinking stare, she didn't say anything other than a barely audible 'hmph~'.

"Why me..."

Yda wanted to cry right now.

...

"Thanks for the meal. It was very delicious."

Mordred complimented as he finished his portion. The food was a lot better than what he had been eating for most of time, which would be instant noodles or just take away food. It almost felt like that for the first time he had been able to indulge in something so delicious.

Morgana also said the same thing after her meal, though she only ate about 10% of what Mordred ate, not surprising because she was literally just 10% of him. Though for some reason Yda kept staring at her with an intense and longing gaze, of course Mordred would feel that since, again she and he were the same.

Irina simply finished the meal with disinterest, though she thanked the matron as well after eating.

Unbeknownst to all of them Rena was looking at them all throughout their meal with a wondering gaze. She had thought that they might not eat her food since she was a demon, but none of them seemed to have any reservations about the food and ate it as though it was actually delicious. She wondered what it was, this 'swelling of emotions' that was inside of her.