-Silvea-
"Watch out!"
*Woosh*
I tilt my head to the left and a bladed limb barely misses my neck, before the 'death mantis' can strike again, I take the chance to slice its thin body in half with a single swing of my sword, then I jump backward to distance myself from the remaining six.
'Razor wind'
Paula's spell comes from behind me and decapitates two more of the insects, but the rest of them don't seem to get scared at all and rush towards us, I need to hold them back until she's ready to cast another spell.
"Leave this one to me!"
Roul grabs the forelegs of one of the death mantises with his armored gauntlets and then tears them off with nothing but his raw strength, no matter how many times I see it, I always keep getting impressed by his strength. Then he pulls out a dagger from his side and slices its neck.
I manage to take out another one, and I see Paula's spell slicing yet another in half, but where's the last one?
"Eeeek!!!"
Somehow it managed to sneak its way past us and is now attacking Paula, I need to do something!
"Agh!"
*Clang*
I barely make it in time to block the slash, but in my hurry, I'm unable to take a proper stance and my sword is knocked off my hands.
Being unarmed in front of such a monster should be quite a terrifying experience, and yet, I do not feel scared at all, maintaining my calm, I dodge the next few attacks coming my way until Roul gets here and stabs the mantis from behind.
"Silvea! Are you alright!?"
"Yes, I'm fine"
"You really have become brave recently, nothing seems to be able to scare you anymore"
Nothing is able to scare me... that might appear to be true, but it has nothing to do with bravery, I simply cannot help but keep comparing everything to the time I was chased by the very embodiment of terror, something like a giant mantis seems cute by comparison.
"You did it! You killed them!"
It seems like the old man from the village who told us about the monsters had been watching the fight.
"When I saw those things wandering around the forest I thought that we would need to leave our village, how could I possibly thank you for this?"
"There's no need sir, this is our job as knights"
Paula always sounds so cool when she acts professionally.
"But you are not knights from this kingdom are you..."
He turns to look at me.
"And it was really surprising that such a small and cute girl could be so strong"
"Well, Silvea is very talented and hardworking, so that's to be expected"
"No... I'm really not that great..."
I don't deserve to be praised, not after the incident with the queen of darkness, I cannot believe I sleep the whole time while the captain was doing his best to fight, and as a result, he received a curse that nobody was able to identify.
Even if he pretended to be fine it must be really hard on him, after all, the queen of darkness left him alive with only that curse, and with no way of knowing what it is we can only assume the worst, he even told us that we should be prepared to kill him if necessary, I don't even want to think about that...
Since it would be far too dangerous for the captain to go after her with that unknown curse, it was decided that Roul, Paula and myself would become 'knights errant', which in practice means that we are now adventurers working directly for our kingdom, then I would use my 'perfect pursuer' skill to follow the queen of darkness from a safe distance and keep monitoring her.
However, there's no way we can confront her directly, we would get killed for sure, that much was made clear shortly after we began following her. We saw her cast a monstrous spell that reduced an entire mountain to rubble, when we went later to investigate we encountered two tribes of demons that were too terrified to tell us what had happened, they didn't say anything no matter how much we asked, just what horrible things did she do to scare them so much?
In the end, we decided to report about the spell but not about the demons, they were clearly only victims, after all, so we didn't want the higherups to think that they were related to her.
After that we found several guards chained inside of a carriage, according to their testimony, the queen of darkness has kidnapped the princess of the Agua kingdom, she also killed two of her guards and placed several curses on the rest. That girl must be so scared... I want to help her but there's nothing that we can do...
Then she went to another town and stayed for a while until she decided to start destroying the place and terrorize the citizens there, we weren't able to investigate what that was about because she left in a hurry for some reason, so we had to chase after her.
No matter how much we think about it, we just cannot see how all of these things connect to each other. To be honest, if I didn't know any better, I would think that she's just traveling without any specific goal in mind and she's just randomly getting herself involved into a bunch of different incidents, but that cannot be, we are talking about someone who was patient enough to keep herself hidden for years while she was getting ready to conquer the world, this has to be all part of some greater plan.
"Silvea! Look at this! You just reached level 100!"
It seems like Paula pointed an appraisal stone at me while I was thinking.
"Oh! It's true! We should have a feast to celebrate!"
And as always Roul is thinking about food.
"That's not something to celebrate, I'm still far too weak..."
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"Why do you always have to be so negative? You have been gaining a lot of levels lately, you might even surpass the captain someday"
Even if Paula says that, when I think about how much stronger our enemy is, I cannot help feeling depressed.
We leave the village the next morning to continue our pursuit, but there's something I cannot get out of my mind.
"Is there really nothing we can do to help that captive princess?"
I cannot imagine how terrible it must be to be the prisoner of the queen of darkness, I feel so sorry for that poor girl...
"I also feel bad for that girl, but there's no way we can possibly rescue her"
"That's not entirely true"
Eh? There's a strange girl just ahead.
She looks much shorter and younger than even me, her body is completely covered by a blue robe and on her head, she's wearing a blue pointy hat. There's also a small frog standing on the hat, wearing a miniature version of its owner's hat.
"Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Ranna, I currently work as an assistant for the queen of the Agua kingdom, here's the proof of my identity"
She shows us a necklace that I assume is supposed to prove that she's who she claims to be, but I don't really know what it is...
"The princess of our kingdom was kidnapped recently by the queen of darkness, brave knights! I request your assistance in order to rescue her!"
She's making such an impassionate speech but her face seems to be completely expressionless... that actually makes her look cute in a weird way.
"We would love to help, but I'm not sure if we can..."
"This is also personal for me, my older sister is working for the queen of darkness"
"Your sister!?"
Is she serious about that?
"My sister is very smart and it's not easy to catch her off guard, but I believe that the skill you have been using to chase after her is the key to defeating her"
"You mean 'perfect pursuer'?"
How will that help? That skill is for finding people, not defeating them.
"Yes, that one, you see, we can take advantage of the fact that your skill is extremely rare, so rare that my sister does not know it exists, and not knowing, she won't be able to predict your attack"
"Eh? But what about..."
"My sister has taken measures to make sure that nobody can find her while traveling, but your skill can let you chase after her regardless, thanks to that, you'll be able to strike at a time when she believes that nobody will be able to locate her"
"Well, that's great, but what about the queen of darkness?"
"Don't worry about her, I'll distract her while you rescue the princess"
"What? How?"
"By distracting her"
She sounds like she thinks that her sister is a bigger threat than the queen of darkness, does she not know who we are dealing with?
"It won't be easy to defeat my sister, but you should be able to do it if you focus on trying to steal her hat, that is her greatest weakness"
"Her hat?"
How can a hat be a weakness?
"Yes, a white hat similar to the one I'm wearing, I will be grateful if you give it to me afterward"
"I see... so about the queen of darkness..."
"I will distract her"
"..."
"And one more thing, I believe that the princess has been subjected to some form of mind control, she may resist when you try to rescue her and even claim that she's not been kidnapped at all"
Mind control? That's terrible! I didn't know such a thing was possible.
"What is your answer? Will you help me?"
I take a look at Paula and Roul but they just shrug their shoulders.
"If you can really do what you said... then yes"