They had essentially just slid into the booth when the man from earlier returned, an older, mustached man accompanying him.

  Though they wore the same white uniform with roses tucked into their pockets, the older of the two held an obvious air of seniority. Vivi couldn’t know exactly where he stood in the restaurant’s hierarchy, but seeing how he was the person who had been called in to deal with a woman claiming to be demonic nobility who’d gone around flashing starmetal, she could safely assume he was the manager.

  Even just by the way he tossed open the curtain and strode in, Vivi could tell she wasn’t going to be shown the same unerring politeness the other staff member had extended. To be fair, that was probably the manager’s job—she had come in with a ludicrous story and it hadn’t been the lower-level staff’s role to question her, only to be unfailingly courteous. And even then, the two starmetal coins had been all that kept her from being immediately dismissed as a troublemaker.

  Now it was time to be subjected to real scrutiny.

  …though she honestly would’ve expected the manager to continue being polite, given the apparently ridiculous amount of coin she’d handed over. Vivi could tell by the way he had barged through the booth’s curtains and his annoyed expression that this was going to be a bumpier conversation than the first.

  The irritation on his face morphed immediately to blank confusion when he was met not with three individuals, but five. Including an archmage so ancient every strand of his hair was bright white, despite his impressive rank having slowed his aging considerably.

  Vivi took satisfaction in her judgment call earlier: that she should go and fetch Aeris before the restaurant’s staff returned. Not only did it serve as proof of her claims, but she could also defer to ‘her superior’ and let Aeris handle the situation from here on out. She felt bad for thrusting the event upon him, but she doubted he cared. His six hundred years of life, much of it spent in leadership positions, had probably made him pretty accustomed to any scenario Vivi herself would struggle in. He had people skills, and she intended to leverage them for her own selfish ends.

  She watched the manager of the restaurant—or so she would assume that was his position until given reason otherwise—with quietly growing amusement, since the man’s eyes went round as saucers upon seeing Archmage Aeris.

  Then the man’s expression flattened, his surprise vanishing. He scoffed. “Did you truly believe I would fall for that? An illusion?” He squinted at Archmage Aeris, then dismissed him and turned his attention to Vivi. “You are a mage of at least moderate skill, that is obvious, but I was not born yesterday. As if the Guardian Sage himself would appear in Sundermere when Meridian was just a week ago nearly torn apart by the Eighth Cataclysm. He has more important matters to attend to.” He snorted, the noise heavy with derision. “And I may not be an expert in the arcane, but even archmages cannot teleport across the continent on frivolous whims. But I care not for this game you are playing.” He held up two white-blue coins of otherworldly metal. “This is what is important. These are clearly counterfeit. The Queen herself would not have the funds to pass out starmetal for an evening’s meal. Really, what even is this childish understanding of money? What a waste of a sophisticated counterfeiting method—our instruments even validated them as genuine. We might have been fooled if they were simply orichalcum, no matter how much that would have strained credulity too.”

  The manager placed the two coins down on the table, and Aeris stared at the money himself. Vivisari’s stoicism was really being put to the test, because Vivi felt like her whole face was burning red.

  “You are fortunate that I do not wish to disrupt the evening’s atmosphere,” the manager went on, “else I would have called for the guards. Make no mistake that this will be reported, however. Consider yourself lucky: this is the only chance you have to leave without turning this into an incident neither of us wants, ‘Lady Nysari.’” His tone of voice made it clear that he didn’t believe Vivi was even telling the truth about her identity. Which was correct, ironically enough.

  Several moments of stunned silence filled the air. Even Archmage Aeris took a while to recover. At last, the old man cleared his throat and replied, “I… suppose it is a rather incredible development from your perspective, but let us remain civil, yes?” He smiled in that grandfatherly way of his. “You are correct that spatial warping is difficult even for an archmage, but it is far from insurmountable given time to prepare. I am most definitely capable of casting [Greater Warp] should I have proper motivation to do so. As for being here… I have other private business to attend to in Sundermere, and I invited Nysari to the Alabaster Rose since I have long been interested in visiting. It has been a trying week, and I felt myself deserving of a treat.”

  Vivi felt her eyebrows rise. She was impressed at how smoothly the lie came to Aeris, though again, six centuries of experience probably made that sort of thing rather easy for him. He’d seen and done everything life had to offer several times over.

  “And as for the starmetal,” Aeris said, glancing again at the two coins on the table. This part he struggled to come up with an explanation for. “It appears Nysari was feeling particularly generous today. They are not counterfeit, you have my word.”

  The manager was unconvinced. In fact, he’d only briefly paid attention to Aeris before his gaze returned to Vivi. “Stop playing these games,” he told her flatly. “You insult my intelligence. It is clearly an illusion.”

  The mustached man leaned forward and swished his hand back and forth, obviously expecting it to pass through the false image of the old archmage.

  Instead, the back of his hand made contact with Aeris’s cheek.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Both men flinched at the thwack, the manager especially pulling back with a jerk. Tatiana, Saffra, and Isabella all gasped.

  Vivi almost covered her face with both hands to groan into them.

  Am I actually, physically incapable of getting through a single day without something ridiculous happening? she mentally lamented. Is this the curse I traded for inheriting Vivisari’s power? It isn’t worth it.

  The manager’s gaze flicked around the table, at the three horrified girls staring at him. He shook his head, clearing his disorientation, and another scoff escaped him—though this one sounded forced rather than natural.

  “More realistic than I assumed, I see. Physical illusions are… not as common, from what I know…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his hand with his other hand, then shook his head again. “This is your last chance. Leave now, or I will call the guards. If that happens, this will end substantially worse for you.”

  Aeris rubbed his cheek, and he only seemed amused at the accidental assault on his person. If Lysander had been in his place, Vivi really doubted the man would have remained so calm. Vivi’s opinion of Aeris rose once again, and it had already been high. There was a reason that, of the public figures in the world, he had been the man she’d sought out after Rafael.

  “I understand your disbelief,” the old man chuckled. “Truly. I do believe you should have requested my seal from the start, no matter how ridiculous you might perceive my presence and this situation in general. But I do understand. Here, let us settle this matter definitively before events escalate further.” Aeris held his hand out, and a golden signet ring appeared in his palm, pulled from his inventory. “Verify as you please, sir.”

  Rafael had provided Vivi a similar means of identification: papers and a ring that supposedly proved beyond a doubt that she was ‘Nysari Keresi.’ The rings were magical in origin, utilizing mana-based signatures that could be approximated to the modern concept of cryptography, though she honestly thought she could break through that security if she needed to. That said, most people weren’t the Sorceress.

  The mustached manager observed Aeris and the offered object for a moment before huffing and taking the item, jolting slightly when he could actually interact with it. “I admit, it’s a very thorough illusion,” he muttered, pulling out a glass lens with a gold rim. “But you are correct. This farce will dissolve once I—”

  Once you inspect the seal? Vivi thought with mortified entertainment. That was surely how he intended to finish his statement, but he cut himself off instead.

  Vivi had seen a person’s brain forcibly restart dozens of times by now. This one was even more pronounced than the prior instances. She could practically see the grinding gears in his head locking up, and she imagined he was repeatedly activating the verification artifact and getting the same result every time.

  “No,” the mustached man said. “That can’t be right.”

  Vivi sympathized with his plight, but at the same time, he’d come in with guns blazing. She knew his unshakeable disbelief was understandable to some degree, given the sheer absurdity of both Aeris’s presence and Vivi’s apparently ridiculous bribe, but he could have behaved in the same manner his underling had and given them some benefit of the doubt.

  “That makes no sense,” the man stated, his voice somehow full of both confidence and doubt. “It reads like it should, but…” He thrust the signet ring and the glass lens toward his subordinate. “Does this verify for you?”

  When the response the manager received was dawning horror on his subordinate’s face, he went ghost white.

  “No,” the manager repeated, louder. “That simply does not make sense.”

  Aeris cleared his throat. “I take no offense, truly. In my days, I have been party to far greater misunderstandings, and even at fault for some of them. I sensed no malice in your actions. We have all made mistakes before, and this one harmed no one. Let us set aside this… awkwardness.” He smiled, and it didn’t even seem strained. “Might I ask what the Alabaster Rose is serving this fine evening? I have long looked forward to dining in this respected establishment.”

  Aeris’s amiability received nothing but open gawking in response.

  Finally showing why he was a high-ranking staff member of the most famous restaurant in the human kingdoms, the mustached man straightened himself out and forged together a semblance of composure. Vivi was pretty sure if she’d been in his shoes, if she’d said the things he had—had slapped Aeris by accident—she would have promptly found the nearest shovel to start burying herself alive, no matter how gracious the offended party was being.

  “My… my deepest apologies, Lord Archmage,” he choked out. “Yes. Yes, Vincent here will see to your needs. If you need anything whatsoever, feel absolutely free to ask. I apologize profusely for the misunderstanding; my behavior was unacceptable.”

  He patted his subordinate on the shoulder, hesitated after looking at the two pieces of starmetal on the table as if wondering whether he should reclaim them, then promptly decided against that and fled through the curtain before anyone could respond.

  Vincent visibly didn’t know how to process much less react to everything that had just happened. His mouth opened as if he would say something, then closed a second later.

  Saffra burst out laughing.

  The girl leaned over, forehead pressing against the tabletop, and plainly tried to control herself, but the noises only grew louder, her body shaking with the force of her mirth. Isabella broke shortly after, covering her mouth with a hand and seeming horrified at the noise that had escaped her, but she was also unable to quiet herself as nervous tittering ballooned into outright laughter like Saffra’s.

  Tatiana just looked horrified sans the amusement of the other two, gaze pivoting between the laughing girls, Aeris, and Vivi, seeming as unsure how to react as the staff member did.

  Vivi considered teleporting herself into the middle of a lava lake somewhere.

  Aeris stroked his beard. “Two starmetal is quite generous, Lady Nysari.” He wasn’t howling like Saffra was, but he obviously found the situation as humorous as they. “I can’t particularly blame that poor gentleman, faced with such truly unexpected… benevolence.”

  She’d based the sum on the only expensive items she’d purchased since arriving in this world: a set of silver-rank armor, which she would’ve thought couldn’t be that expensive in the grand scale of things. Journeying to Meridian with Saffra had given Vivi a tentative understanding of commoner prices, like what a room at an inn or a simple meal might cost, but she knew that values skewed heavily the higher up the ranks a person went, and the Alabaster Rose was supposed to be very high rank. She’d thought upper nobility and Titled adventurers, who the Alabaster Rose surely often catered to, wouldn’t have that much difficulty getting a few pieces of starmetal. Even in retrospect she didn’t think her logic had been completely off.

  She’d been set up to fail, inheriting several kingdoms’ worth of wealth and having so few reference points to work with. It really wasn't her fault.

  Vivi ignored Aeris’s remark, desperately wanting to move on. She addressed the staff member instead. “Your menu for today?” she asked, voice totally unflustered but her thoughts anything but. “I would also like to hear it, if you please.”