When Murphy heard Palanno lavishly praise his talent in an embarrassingly over-the-top manner, his cheeks grew hot. Both he and Triss wore rather strange expressions.
Triss hesitated over whether to tell Palanno the truth.
Namely, Murphy had spent most of the past year slacking off and looking after her, a useless vampire who could barely care for herself. He'd only really started getting stronger in the past twenty-odd days.
Yikes!
When you thought about it that way, little Murphy's talent really was terrifying!
Perhaps Triss had guessed what was on his mind. Murphy remained expressionless as he squeezed the hand resting on her shoulder, bringing her back to her senses.
All right.
She couldn't tell him.
Especially not anything about Murphy and his Otherworldly Warriors. That was absolutely off-limits.
It seemed the psionic dog tags Triss had made for the little players were pretty useful. At least Palanno, who'd taken the physical combat route, hadn't discovered that the players were summoned from another world.
"As Triss said, among vampires, I'm a thorough 'semi-literate.'"
Murphy sighed as if helpless, then turned to Palanno and said:
"Perhaps you could explain the Black Calamity to me. I only know that it's an alliance of monsters that erupted from the Dark Mountains and periodically surges across the continent every century. I don't know anything about what causes it."
"Mm, that's actually a very accurate summary."
The First Lord smiled and casually took a folded map from his bag.
Most absurdly, the thing even had that strong scent of roses on it. Murphy's eye twitched.
Hey, man, I know your whole deal is being a roguish womanizer, but you don't need to take your personal style this far. I mean, you're really going overboard here.
"Whoosh."
With Palanno's psionic support, the map unfurled before Murphy.