Reborn as a Reluctant Demon Lord

Chapter 19 - Southward Bound

Do you ever think about how much time the average RPG character spends traveling around? To be honest, I myself hadn't given it much thought before we went off on our own adventure. It turns out the answer is a lot.

I wish the makers of Placeholder would've had the decency of adding a fast travel button at least.

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After sending off the [Message] to Doom Fury, Jake had one more thing he wanted to take care of. "Hey, Megan. Can I talk with you for a minute?"

"Sure," she said.

"I think it should be in private. Mind taking a walk?"

"That's not ominous or anything," she muttered but followed him anyway.

Once Jake thought they were a decent distance from the party, he broke the silence. "I just wanted to say that Titus' wrath aura wasn't the only thing that showed up on the party interface. It says that you have a condition as well." Jake paused. "I guess conditions function like permanent status effects or something? I don't know. Either way, I looked at it, and you have Major Kleptomania."

Megan snorted. "I'm glad your perk can confirm what I already told you."

"Well, it did, and I just wanted to apologize. I didn't actually believe that part of your story. I also wanted to ask if it was okay if I let everyone else know about it."

"Sure, it doesn't matter to me. Anything else you need, Jake?"

"Well.. A third thing is that I wanted to say I'm proud of you. We haven't heard of anything stolen in the past 6 months, so you must have really been working hard to fight your urges."

Megan didn't seem to know what to say about that. "Uhh.. Thanks."

"And last thing, I don't really want to become the team shrink, but if you need someone to talk to, just let me know, okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Thanks, though."

They stood there in silence for a bit. "Well, let's head back then," Jake said. He turned his head away from Megan for a second, and she had already vanished. It's still a bit creepy how she can do that.

He decided to follow Megan through the party and quickly noticed that she was [Sneaking] up on Titus yet again. After making him jump, she said something to him, and they both went on their own walk.

Huh, looks Emilia was right. Something's going on between those two.

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I wasn't quite sure what Megan would want to talk about, but I knew that it definitely wouldn't be anything good. "So, what's up?" I asked as soon as we were far enough away.

"We're about to go off to who knows where, and I won't have any stupid villagers to [Steal] from when I get the urge," she stated flatly.

I didn't know what to say to that. "Oh. That's not good. Why are you just bringing it up now?"

"Jake just found out about my kleptomania. Apparently, it shows up to him, along with your wrath aura. We had a little chat about it, and I realized I don't have a good way to deal with the urge if we are off traveling alone."

I thought for a moment. "I see two options here. First, you could try [Stealing] from party members and then putting it back, just like you were doing with the villagers. The other option is to come clean about how you are handling it now, and then see if they were willing to help with it."

Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I meant that they just let you [Steal] stuff from them, and then you give it back," I answered. "It should work out fine as long as you convince everyone to vote on it. The [Hero] and Garrett will buy it if you convince them you're just trying to get your kleptomania under control. Sam and Lindsey probably won't care too much either way, and that leaves Emilia, Andrew, and Tim. For Andrew and Tim, if you just get on Tim's good side, Andrew will cave since he only cares about his precious baby boy." I suddenly realized I was scowling and also that my wrath aura was back out. I stopped both.