I Built This City Chapter 73: Chapter 73

Read chapter 73 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Merchant Ellen “Are you sure about staying?” Ellen asked as she heaved the box into the cart. Two other Ellens were helping her, since she needed to get on the road as soon as possible. Hopefully nobody would ask about the crate with the bodies. Explaining one would be easy considering the gossip about the death, but they’d had to pack three corpses in there. Better to bury them with the rest rather than have to explain a local burial. It was going to make the trip back very unpleasant. “We work together well, and if someone was willing to kill us, there’s something going on we should know about,” Whisper sighed. “We’ll see what we can do here for a while, and head back to Onroc once we know more.” “Just leave it to us, yes!” Stage Ellen raised a hand, her face smiling brightly in a weird contrast to Whisper’s stoic resignation. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ll dig up whatever Whisper here needs and she can figure it out! It’ll be fun, don’t worry! And with me around, I’m sure we’ll run into Uncle Anroll and have a chance to explain everything before he sees you!” Ellen squinted at her other self standing there, beaming at her. Suspicion bubbled up within her. Not that she thought Stage Ellen was lying to her… but she had some suspicions she would regret this whole decision. As if reading the expression on her face—which she probably was—Whisper shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep her out of too much trouble. We just want to find out why they’d go so far as to try to murder the owner of the dungeon. It’s not like that would help them.” “Well that’s why you need to figure it out,” Ellen replied. “Still can’t believe you two already reached Level 11,” Bookkeeper grumbled from behind Ellen, shuffling about some of the boxes in the cart. Neither she nor Ellen was close, but they hadn’t had the chance to practice their various mercantile skills while tracking down the killers. Ellen suspected Bookkeeper was especially grumpy since she’d very nearly let the third conspirator get away. Whisper had scolded her for that, and Bookkeeper was not very happy with the situation. Ellen could understand that. They were merchants, not spies… even if Whisper had gotten into the espionage game with aplomb despite sharing their origin. She did admit it had been fun seeing the expression on that guy’s face when he’d noticed her, though. “I’m not sure even you can keep this one out of trouble, Whisper,” Ellen sighed. “Just try not to stab anyone, Stage.” Stage Ellen grimaced as if offended. “Why would you think that? I’m a friendly girl, you know that! We all are! Nobody wants to stab anyone here!” Even Whisper gave Stage a sidelong glance at that, and Ellen gave Stage a flat stare. “Considering how much our Class seems to change our behavior, I’m just being a little wary about the Ellen that chose a Class called Blade Orchestra , sorry.” “It’s for juggling!” Stage insisted. Whisper brushed a lock of hair back behind one ear. “I will do my best to make sure she doesn’t do anything we’d all regret. She’s going to be very visible, we don’t want any charges of breaching the peace or attempted murder messing up my plans.” “You all know I’m standing right here and can hear you,” Stage complained. “I’m not going to attack anyone without good reason! I’ll just be Whisper’s bodyguard, okay? Relax!” Ellen did not relax, but there wasn’t much she could do about Stage right now. Internally, she wondered at the different approaches. After seeing the Adventuring Party she had thought further splitting might lead to something like that… but Stage and Whisper weren’t just wildly different from one another, they were very different from her as well. For that matter, Bookkeeper was similar to her in direction at first, but had no interest in handling the Settlement Interface. Ellen had brought up the idea of both of them taking the Founder Class, but Bookkeeper had waved off the idea and selected her name without even considering it. She’d offered to han