An Owl's Rise

'They are late.' Evelyn thought while waiting for her siblings to arrive.

They had decided to meet at the ranking hall since it had easily accessible private rooms and was a neutral location that was easy to enter.

Before Verrader went off to pay his loan he was going to show Evelyn that he had indeed gathering the necessary credits.

At the same time, she would learn from Aralee what exactly they had been up to for the last month.

'Finally, they are here.'

Hearing the bell on the door chiming, Evelyn headed over and opened it up.

On the other side were her two siblings, both of them looking noticeably stronger than they had been before.

Neither of them had jumped up from the low tier of the awakened rank, but it was obvious that they had accrued more experience in the last month.

Leading them into eh room Evelyn beckoned them to sit down in front of her and got right to business.

"So, did you manage to succeed?" She asked.

A smug smile formed on Verrader's face in response to this question and eh showed Evelyn his identification cuff and pulled up his credit balance.

Looking at the number Evelyn was actually quite surprised to see that it was slightly over three hundred thousand. Even if Aralee had been helping him this was an astounding sum for them to have gathered in just a month for their level.

"As you can see we managed to collect all of the credits I need to pay back what I borrowed. I also want to apologize for going ahead on my own to raise Aralee's rank without consulting either of you." Verrader said, bowing his head.

Seeing this Evelyn was shocked, and she could not tell if he was being genuine, or if his acting skills had gone up a notch.

Watching him something just seemed more genuine than before, and Evelyn felt slightly more comfortable around him than before. Though she could not really place what had changed.

In the end, she just chalked it up to character growth over the last month and moved on. Not wondering why she was so easily letting her guard down, or taking note of the slightly sweet smell emitting from him.

"I accept your apology. I know that you were trying to help Aralee, but it was quite reckless to put yourself in danger as you had by taking out a loan. Clearly you already had the skills needed to help her if you only put in a little bit of effort. Though if you do not mind, would you mind telling me how the two of you earned so much in such a short amount of time?"

Naturally Evelyn was curious about what they had done to earn their funds. Had they taken her advice and gone to the Glowing Woods at first before working their way up to other areas? Or perhaps they found their own more profitable path?

"You would not believe it sister, but Verrader is truly amazing. He must have a keen sense for where treasure lies. On numerous occasion he found items or beasts that were incredibly rare in the areas we were hunting in."

Aralee then went on to extoled how amazing Verrader had been, and hearing her little sister giving out so much praise towards their brother made her a bit jealous.

'No, I will have time to show off later how competent I am as an older sibling.' Evelyn thought, her state of mind going off topic.

Turning her attention back towards her siblings Evelyn listened to a detailed account of what happened, and she could only believe that Verrader had been supremely lucky.

He had managed to find valuable items of track down uncommon beasts almost every time he and Aralee left the Roost. It was almost uncanny in a way. As if he must have had a force of helpers searching things out for him.

Of course, Evelyn had found plenty of rare materials and such herself in the past, and while it may have been supremely lucky for Verrader to have been so consistent, it was not impossible.

'I suppose that they passed my test. Perhaps I was too hard on them from the start. It seems that they just wanted to join me as family again.' Evelyn thought, seeing things in the best possible light for some reason.

With the confirmation that Verrader had earned more than the necessary number of credits to repay the loan he had taken, Evelyn sent him off and stayed with Aralee.

"I am glad to see that everything worked out for you both. I know I was harsh, but I wanted to make sure that both of you were able to grow on your own. I often get into fairly dangerous situations and if both of you are going to be sticking with me, you need to be at least strong enough to handle yourselves." Evelyn said.

"We understand sister, at first I thought that you were trying to drive us off, but I realized that if that was the case, you would have just told us to leave you alone and stopped associating with us entirely. In your own way you were just pushing us to get stronger on our own."

Nodding her head, this had indeed been part of Evelyn's intentions, though another part had been to test how trustworthy they were.

At first she had been suspicious of them, especially Verrader, but now she felt like her misgivings about them had vanished almost completely. For some reason or another she could not quite pin down.

Just like them she wanted to reforge their family bonds again. Evelyn may have had bad experiences in regard to family in the past, but deep down she really did desire to try and regain what she had lost twice already with her siblings.

'Things certainly work out in a weird way. I never thought I would want to have a family again. But I managed to find comrades I can trust like family and my siblings miraculous made it to the Roost as well. Maybe things are finally looking up for me.'