"Bwaaahaaa! I feel sick!"

On Rami's suggestion, the trio of imps decided to reach the continent of Sentora by ship rather than by using a harpy feather. The leader had soon regretted her decision, as she discovered she was prone to being seasick while the inclement weather had decided to add its grain of salt.

The boat they took was rocking heavily in the middle of a storm. Rami was holding herself at the edge of the sip, and was all too regularly throwing up over the board. In the meantime, Remi was nowhere to be seen and Rumi was somehow sleeping in their designed cabin.

The crew itself was staying relatively calm, even as they kept moving back and forth on the boat to keep sure their mean of transport remained afloat. The lookouts remained particularly careful, as it was almost impossible to see past a few meters.

"Why did I choose to take the boaaaaaat! That was a terrible ideaaaaaa!"

Rami exposed her doubt about her own plan once more as rain kept washing the bridge and thunder boomed across the air, highlighting a large flying form that was gliding over the ship.

"Bwahahaha! This ship is going to be mine!"

"Nooooo!"

A manta girl was hovering slightly above the bridge of the ship. The crewmembers tried to warn each other, but the rain muffled all noises and the lack of sight made it hard to see the threat itself.

"Oh, what's this? Weak imps standing in my ways? I will crush you like the fleas you are!"

In a panic, Rami casted an unfocused salvo of thunderbolt. The manta girl avoided most of them and gloated.

"Pathetic. That tickled. Can't you do anything better?"

"Bwaaaaaah!"

The imp summoned a single, extremely powerful thunderbolt that knocked the manta girl into the mast, which proceeded to collapse on top of her. With difficulties, she managed to remove the large wooden pylon from her and groaned.

"Gnnh. Mark my words! I will retreat for now, but this isn't over! I shall have my vengeance next time you're near the sea!"

She then flapped into the water before diving and disappearing from everyone's sight. The crew fully focused on fixing the ship, while several sailors kept their eyes on the sea to avoid hitting a reef. Feeling further unwell, Rami decided to go back to her cabin.

When she entered, she was hit by the heavy, moist atmosphere inside the room. She saw that Rumi was still asleep on the bed. The blond imp was impressed that her friend had apparently not been disturbed by the commotion in the slightest. She decided to sit at a small desk in a corner, when she suddenly heard a whimper. As she looked under it, she could see Remi folded into fetal position.

"W-What happened outside? That was s-so scary!"

"Heuurgh, you don't want to know. You don't have a magic spell to help me?"

The timid imp shook her head negatively. Fortunately for the trio, the storm calmed greatly and no further issue plagued their trip toward Port Natalia. Nobody in the crew had noticed the fight, and the manta girl had been considered either an hallucination or the result of perspective issues. The destruction of the mast had been attributed to the storm, and the imps were left alone, with everybody else none the wiser on what had happened.

And so the three imps landed on the southern part of Sentora under a shining sun, eager to find adventures and, most of all, wishing to forget their terrible trip.

"All right! Why don't we go to the haunted mansion? This place was super scary last time! I'm sure there's still treasure to be found there!"

Remi shivered. "Why do you want to go to a scary place?"

Rumi sighed heavily. "Do we have to bother walking there?"

Rami, Remi and Rumi had already been walking for several hours when the sun was starting to set down. It was at this precise moment that their predicament really hit them: They were lost and in the middle of nowhere. No settlement was in sight, and the verdant plains had started to disappear to make some places for rocky hills and steep mountains. It had started when Rami's adventurous spirit pushed them to ditch the road in favor of exploring the wild lands, then they were pushed further away from their path when Remi ran away because she thought she heard a strange noise, end eventually ended up actually completely lost when they searched for Rumi, who was sleeping on a rock.

Of course, they had made no preparations for the trip, and had neither food nor equipment for camping outdoors. They only succeeded in starting a small campfire with a fireball spell, and were huddling together around it as they tried to appreciate its warmth.

"Hungry…" Rumi was laying pathetically on the ground.

"Where is the food? Why isn't there any food?" Remi was checking around her in a panic.

"That's because we didn't bring any with us…" Rami was scowling as she was comforting herself with the fire's warmth. "Luka always brought food with him, enough for his companions…"

"It's such a bother…"

"Let's try sleeping… We'll see what we'll do tomorrow."

They went to sleep on empty stomachs. However, they wouldn't need to wait the next day before the issue solved itself.

In the middle of the night, Rami was awaken by Remi who was shaking her.

"There's a scary noise coming from there!"

The small, purple haired imp pointed in a direction as Rami rubbed her eyes open. The two imps slowly moved through the rocks, away from the still burning campfire. As they looked over a rock, they could see a Watermelon Girl, licking her lips as she was watching the asleep Rumi.

"Mwahahah! What a stupid imp. She will never get to learn to remain discreet."

"Noooo!"

"What?"

Panicking, Remi launched a powerful salvo of light arrows. While a few hit their intended target, most of them missed it by several meters, before disappearing harmlessly into the night. The fruit monster got tossed away and ran without asking for more, leaving behind a watermelon. The imps rushed to the fruit and ate it whole, flesh, skin and pips alike.

The next morning they were back onto the road with Rumi even more exhausted than usual, to the point that they had to carry her through the hills the group was currently crossing.

"Can't you even walk? I mean I'm tired and my stomach hurt too. Maybe it's because we had to sleep on rocks…"

"Or it's because you ate a whole watermelon in the middle of the night…"

"What? That's false! Who said that?"

Rumi sighed. "You still have pulp on your cheek…"

Rami almost accidentally dropped her friend on the spot to check and noticed that indeed, her cheek was quite sticky with a sugary substance. Still, she continued carrying her friend, red as a tomato.

Eventually, after several more hours spent perilously crossing the rocky hills rather than reaching the road a few hundred meters away, the three imps finally managed to reach San Ilia. It's only when they saw its inhabitants that they remembered that the city was the heart of the faith in Ilias, and that as such they were not exactly fond of monsters. As imps, they had less monstrous features than most creatures of darkness, but they would still need an appropriate plan if they wanted to enter the town.

The first plan they considered consisted in disguising themselves as bushes to enter the city. Their devious strategy was foiled by the lack of greenery in the city, as well as the presence of a high amount of human traffic that would question the nature of moving plants.

Their second plan involved bribing someone to get them into the city, but they realized soon that they would still need to visit it, and that they had brought only very little money with them, money that was needed for food anyway.

Finally, their solution came under the form of a merchant caravan that passed on the road. The unfocused guards didn't notice the small group of imps sneaking into the wagon, who hid themselves into one of the numerous pots transported. After several minutes of waiting, they could feel the pot they were in being moved away. They waited until the noise died off before peeking from their hiding spot, and noticed they were in a large warehouse.

"Woaaaaah! Look at all that!" Rami started salivating in front of all the food stacked around. She jumped from the pot, soon followed by her friends, and threw herself at a stack of apples. She started munching fruit after fruit, followed unenthusiastically by her two accomplices. In barely a few minutes, several stalks were scattered apart on the ground.

"How can you eat so much?" Remi shivered as she ate a single one.

"That's because she has to fill these two fun bags…" Rumi pointed at Rami's chest.

Rami shamefully put her hands over them while emitting a low, whining noise. "I didn't want them either! I can't fly because of them!"

The imps stopped eating as the awkward silence filled the room. Eventually, they decided it was time to go…

…And noticed another error with their new master plan. Namely, that they now had to go through the whole city without being noticed. While Remi was panicking and Rumi was facing the situation with fatalism (or rather a total lack of concern), Rami was actually trying to figure out a plan to get out of the town. After a while, she took some oiled clothes used to protect merchandises from water, and gestured for her friends to come closer.

A few minutes later, a strange, stumbling figure was slowly walking out of the building. The imps were using their latest find as a coat, under which Remi and Rumi were carrying Rami, while the head imp had covered her head with a cut linen roll to attempt to hide her horns. The result from afar looked like a drunken pregnant peasant with throat issues.

"Slow down! Left!"

Rami was guiding her two partners in crime with much difficulty. Still, they managed to cross almost half of the city before inevitably ramming into a guard.

The man himself wasn't even destabilized by the shock, only surprised.

"Oh, sorry, I'm, huuuh, really tired, and, like, I want to go home."

The man checked the unsubtle disguise before offering a large smile. "Oh sure, just be careful out there, there are monsters that will want to eat someone like you if you know what I mean…"

Rami loudly gulped. The guard continued his patrol until he reached a younger recruit. The young man pointed at the "peasant", who was by now fully focused on trying to climb a set of stairs.

"Shouldn't we arrest them?"

The man laughed. "Why? As long as they don't harm anybody, it's fine." He then turned back toward the imps, who were having a lot of difficulties with the stairs. "Besides, I'm pretty sure it'll be funnier like that."

As if on cue, the totem trench pole collapsed, and the three imps bolted out of the city under the laughs of the guards and the surprised gazes of the city's inhabitants.

Rami, Remi and Rumi only stopped running when they were in sight of the decrepit mansion that Chrome had used for her past experiments. The place looked even more ruined than the last time they visited it, with the doors blasted open and all the windows broken.

"Woaaah, this place is still super scary… I bet there's treasure out there only waiting for us!"

Remi flinched and was starting to burrow herself under a tree. "I don't want to go in there!"

Rami ignored her and entered the mansion. Its insides were in the same state as its outsides, with a carpet torn and various furniture being scattered around left and right. Her courage vanished as soon as the floor under her creaked, even as her friends joined her.

"Helloooo… Is anybody there?"

Rami was trying to whisper loudly, adressing no one in particular, and Rumi was just dragging her feet behind her. As they slowly progressed through the main hall, they started to hear a small rumbling noise. When they turned, they noticed the house's entrance was trembling. They slowly backed away from the doorway, before running upstairs in a panic.

"Hiyaaaaaa!"

As they looked behind them, they could see Remi running in a different direction. Rami tried calling out to her, but the small purplish imp was in too great a panic to even notice her friends as they kept running deeper into the manor. They only stopped when they reached a large bedroom that, while clearly abandoned, looked better than the remainder of the manor: The carpet was still in pretty good condition, there were several paintings lining on the wall, and a finely crafted doll was lying on a bed that hadn't been completely destroyed by time yet.

Rami was trying to catch her breath while Rumi apathetically threw herself on the bed.

"We safely got away… Phew…" The blonde imp was still breathing heavily when she started smiling again. "Let's start looking for treasure!"

Rami checked most of the bedroom, but the only chests she found were empty. She also found a secret access leading to a side room, but the putrid smell that emerged from the place pushed her back. Eventually, she came back to check on Rumi, who was still lazing on the bed. She finally noticed the doll, and tried to appraise its value when its head turned toward the imp.

"Do you want to play, little sis?"

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Rami let out another blood curling scream as she jumped to the ceiling. She then ran out of the room and closed the door, leaving behind Rumi who destroyed the door with her fist as she exited the room nonchalantly, and a surprised doll who started pouting.

The duo ran downstairs, occasionally stumbling as the floor sometimes gave up under their steps. They entered another room that looked like a small kitchen, and the two imps closed the door behind them. With a sigh of relief, they turned toward the room to see several ghosts surrounding Remi in a corner.

"Are you alright? Do you want anything to eat?"

"No! Stay away!"

"Are you lost?"

The three imps started screaming once more and tore the door of its hinges as they yet again ran to another room. This one looked like a small study room, with a table surrounded by a few chairs, and a desk in a corner with a closed chest in a corner.

Once they recovered, the imps slowly made their way to the chest, who opened naturally to reveal a mimic.

"Huuuh, what time it is?"

The three imps once again screamed while huddling together, surprising the mimic who tried raising her hands in an appeasement sign, but eventually lost patience as an headache started to form.

"Wait… Don't… Please… Calm down… STOP!"

Eventually, the three imps stopped screaming as the mimic sighed. "What are you three doing here? This house's been abandoned for months now, and you don't look like the kind of monsters who'd like living there…"

"We…" Rami started timidly before proudly putting her hands on her hips and bombing her comically oversized chest. "We came here to search for treasure!"

The mimic groaned. "More treasure hunters… What a surprise." She looked at the imps. "Look, every treasure here had been grabbed by a hero a few months ago when he removed that necromancer who was experimenting on creating zombies. Since then the mansion is mostly occupied by monsters like me who just want tranquility."

Rami started shining as she exclaimed herself. "Oh yeah! We were with him at that time!"

"You… Were with him?" The mimic looked shocked at the imps. They definitively didn't look like hero companion material, but then again, she remembered said companions were pretty weird, so him travelling with those three wouldn't be surprising.

"Soooo, why did you came back to find treasures then? He took everything, and treasures don't just spawn from nowhere like that after you leave the place…"

Rami gradually deflated. She eventually ended pathetically hunched, just like Rumi. However, she failed to manage to balance herself because of her breasts and fell on the ground in a small "pof."

The mimic looked sympathetically at the small imps. They weren't even ill-intended, only incredibly naïve in their thought process.

"Look… How about we share a small meal and you continue on the road? If you want to visit a nice place, you should go to the Forest Spirit west of there. I don't know if you'll find treasures, but the place is nicer than a decrepit old mansion and you'll find friendly fairies to share company with…"

Rami looked at each other, and, after seeing their total lack of reaction, gladly accepted.

The imps left the mansion a small hour afterward, their stomachs nicely filled and thankful to their host. They followed the river down to the main road before going back upstream, ignorant all the while of the curious eyes that had taken an interest in them.

They were carrying with them the emotions of other people. She could smell the lust-filled rage of a bunch of humans. The haughty scorn of a sea monster… And so on. Their trip had attracted a lot of negative attention, which could make for a good show later on.

A sensation of familiarity ran through the watcher. Or was it déjà vu? Anyway, it was something new and entertaining worth watching over for now…