Gawain paused cautiously before pushing open the heavy wooden door. Beyond it lay the hall where the anomaly had occurred.
Magic flowed calmly through the air. Under Magic Sight, the corridor looked no different from the outside, and his instincts as a legendary powerhouse gave no warning. The anomaly seemed to have ended completely, and the power of Bofar, God of Commerce, had left no lasting "imprint" upon the real world. That put him somewhat at ease, and he reached out to push open the wooden door.
But at that moment, Amber, standing beside him, suddenly stepped half a step ahead of him. "Wait, let me do it."
"You?" Gawain gave the Shadow Assault Goose a deeply surprised look. For a moment, he even suspected she had been replaced by someone else. Normally, she was so cowardly that she would activate a skill before fighting a dog, yet now she was saying something like this. It was more anomalous than the anomaly itself. "That doesn't sound like something you'd say. We still don't know what's on the other side of that door..."
"Didn't you always throw me out to scout the way?" Amber sounded remarkably matter-of-fact. "You even called it 'scouting with the lady'..."
That made Gawain a little embarrassed. Thinking back, that really had happened, and at the time, he had given Amber, his "scouting lady," extremely high praise. Once thrown out, she knew to run first; and if she got hit, she made more noise than anyone else. She truly had been the ideal choice for exploring dangerous places face-first—but that had been ancient history from their startup days. He had not expected her to bring it up so seriously now. "That was then. Now you..."
Amber waved it off. "I've got way more experience now than I