The Villainess and I, her Zombie

The small adventurers guild seemed as busy as always with all the people going in and out, reporting the completion of their mission, or picking up the new ones from the posters made by the guild staff, put up on the clipboard on the eastern wall.

Usually, the posters compiled from the requests received the previous day were hung up in the morning so obviously, that was the time when the most adventurers gathered to snatch the best job for themselves leaving only the most arduous and least paying jobs for the latecomers.

The only exception from that was when someone wealthy offered enough money for the emergency mission to be posted – or straight up offered to a particular adventurer.

---

Zombie was standing in front of the clipboard while carefully studying all the missions that weren't picked up by the others.

It wasn't like he was late and had to make do with the low-paying leftovers, unless he was held back by the increasingly suspicious Laura, he would be the first person waiting by the east wall for the guild staff to put up the new posters each day without fail.

|How long have we been doing this? I'm almost six years old already and the appropriate mission never showed up! Maybe we should just run away on our own without overcomplicating everything?|

The boy's face soured and he sighed internally.

|Zombie, I would love to run away with you, but it's not really feasible until the game will be completed and the threat of the Eternal will be gone.|

Patience responded with a melancholic sigh.

|What...?|

|What?|

Zombie furrowed his brows in confusion and shook his head, but the response he got was just Patience's playing a fool.

|Ekhem... Putting that aside – we still have more than enough time to set everything up the way we want it. I'm keeping an eye on the timing of everything so you don't have to worry about a thing.|

Patience let out a fake cough inside of Zombie's mind and hurriedly changed the subject.

|Traveling on foot to the forest where the hidden elven village is would be far too insufficient and time-wasting considering how far it actually is from here. Hiring a carriage to go that far would cost you a house, an arm, and a leg – and that's if you would be lucky. And you know how much you're spending on your transforming pet. Finally, Laura will start looking for you as soon as you won't come back for dinner – and with how she is, she will do her best to track you down. It's best to get on the carriage and disappear before she notices anything. We prepared Mia as a smokescreen to pull the attention away from us, although Laura will surely give you hell once we come back...|

|Yeah... Well, as long as we will make sure that she will let us return to the village once I'm seven years old, everything will be fine. And even if she won't, well we will have to figure something out then.|

With how much Patience started talking over the things they both have already discussed many times, Zombie gave in and breathed out.

"..."

He turned around and noticed the dark-skinned girl walking in and queuing up in one of the lines to the loot apprisal with a big bag on her back.

A few loose green stalks were sticking out of it, betraying that the content was just a bunch of low-grade healing herb that was really useful, but not really that expensive.

|Uwah, she never learned that it's much better to keep that stuff to herself and just ask Papaya to turn it into a simple medicine? Or if she tried, she would eventually get a skill for making it herself, sell that, and it would make her ten times more money.|

Zombie frowned and shook his head.

|I think that she simply doesn't have time for any of that  – she is also hiding the fact that she's an adventurer, just like you, but unlike you, she is also working at the local inn where Laura goes from time to time to check up on her.|

Patience sounded as if they shrugged their shoulders and took a guess.

|Huh, sucks to be her... well, as long as it won't affect the future events, it's none of my business anyway.|

Zombie nodded and also shrugged his shoulders – which for the bystanders looked as if he had given up on the remaining posters – and just went to one of the tables by the west wall.

While he walked he kept his left arm on his sword, gently caressing the pommel with his thumb out of a recently gained habit.

"Living the dream, eh?"

As Zombie walked by Mia, he nodded at her, smirked, and shook his head with a disappointed expression, hinting at the recent jobs getting worse and worse.

"...hmph...!"

But that only caused Mia to scoff at him and look the other way while her hand gripped the bag with herbs a bit tighter.

|...and what's up with that? I thought that we're friends?|

Zombie furrowed his brows and walked away.

|You are younger than her, have stronger skills than her, fight better than her, have more time than her, and can go out and actually hunt monsters instead of being stuck between working at an inn and picking up only the crappy leftover missions since her shift at the inn starts early and she can't get anything better.|

Patience responded calmly.

|She's stuck in a vicious cycle... Still, it's alright, you have nothing to worry about – she is a strong-willed person – so this whole situation is exactly what she needs to be pushed into seeking Durian Greed's easy way to get stronger. And that is exactly what we need. Also, she doesn't hate you. She's just tired.|

They added.

|And how come you are so sure about that...?|

Zombie asked internally, raising his brow while sitting by the wall and observing the hustle and bustle of the guild.

|You are just really hard to hate.|

|Huh...? What does that mean?|

|Figure it out for yourself, hmph!|

"...?"