Ling and Lian, the two sisters, sat on chairs, intently attacking the roast meat and bread on the plates before them with wooden knives and forks. The crunching never stopped. Both sisters had an adorable smear of white milk on their lips, while their cups of milk sat off to the side.
Sloma was a fairly large town near the Bucci region. Located on the border of the Black Forest, it had long been a gathering place for large numbers of adventurers and merchants who traded with the Black Forest, making it one of the largest settlements and marketplaces outside the borders of Madara and Eluin. Naturally, it was also usually a lawless zone. The town was controlled by a mercenary group, and so long as no conflict broke out openly, all sorts of schemes and trickery were permitted.
Of course, Brando did not take such petty tricks seriously. Only after secretly dealing with three shortsighted thugs who had tried to lay hands on Ling and Lian, as well as two thieves who had tried to covet his purse, had they been able to sit peacefully in this inn. Naturally, the two sisters knew nothing about it.
This place was very close to both the Ring of Trade Winds and Bucci. To the north lay the southern foothills of Tosankard Forest and the Silman River Valley, while to the west was the gentle-sloped belt of the Grahall Mountains. Brando remembered that before summer arrived, he had once taken Freya into the Grahall Mountains. The dim, dusky forest he had seen when gazing eastward from those cliffs was actually the very forest they now occupied—the place known as Summerfield Woods.
This forest marked the easternmost end of the Black Forest belt around the Ring of Trade Winds. Farther east lay the