Volume 5, Chapter 48 – A Reminder from Claire

A short while earlier.

“So, you just came here to look around, with no other purpose?”

Nola held a wine cup filled with red liquid in one hand, her eyes intentionally or unintentionally glancing at Fia.

After parting ways with the Wandering Knight in the corridor, Nola, having met Fia’s group, had invited them to a larger room on the fifth floor of the Hunting Ground. It was clear that the fifth floor was a place for entertaining distinguished guests and discussing important matters. It was exceptionally quiet, and the decor was magnificent. The ceiling, a good seven or eight meters high, and the bright crystal chandeliers made Fia feel as if she had walked into a magician’s association.

“For now, at least. If I had other intentions, I wouldn’t have brought Claire.”

Fia spread her hands magnanimously.

You have to consider the owner before you hit their dog, not to mention Nola is Claire’s niece. If I were to hit her, it should be done in secret.

Nola’s expression stiffened. Although the flogging she had received in Yureidon territory had fully healed, it still left a lingering fear in her. She wanted to retort, but another part of her forcefully held her tongue.

Although she felt that if she had her divine weapon and was in an open field, she wouldn’t be without a fighting chance against Fia, the final result would either be a mutual loss or a narrow victory. Besides, she had understood these past few days that Claire didn’t like to see her and Fia fight. If she were to provoke a conflict for no reason, it would only push Claire further away from her—that was not a smart move.

She forced a calm expression and used drinking to cover her embarrassment.

“Since you are here as travelers, feel free to look around. Just that the security in the city is not as good as in your Silvar. It’s best not to go out at night, and be especially careful of the Charm Cat Tribe. They like young, beautiful, and plump elves like you. They have a pink heart-shaped pattern on their faces, which is their racial feature. You can recognize them with a little attention. Ying and I will be out for the next two days and won’t be able to entertain you. Please forgive us.”

“Out?” Fia turned to look at Claire beside her, then back at Nola and Ying. “You mean to go and support the Snake-folk?”

“Didn’t you just come from the Snake-folk city? I heard from Ying about you saving her. Thank you. I used to think all elves were incompetent, but I didn’t expect you to be a decent person. Ying likes to harass beautiful women, but she doesn’t actually have any thoughts in that direction. She just thinks it’s fun. I apologize to you on her behalf.”

“No…”

There’s so much to comment on in every aspect.

“Ying didn’t cause me any trouble. That relaxed and pleasant atmosphere was very nice.”

Fia coughed lightly and glanced at Nola again.

Because she was about to fight the Wandering Knight, Nola was now wearing a light swordsman’s uniform that clung to her body. Because of this, her figure, which combined the slenderness of a young girl with the bewitching charm of a cat-person, was outlined. In human terms, the parts that should be slender were slender, and the parts that should be prominent were prominent. Although her chest was just the right size, the S-shaped curve of her body’s side was astonishingly exaggerated, from her slim waist to her perky buttocks. If it were a rude person, they would already be imagining what this cat-girl looked like lying on the bed.

From an artistic point of view, this fire cat is quite beautiful.

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Fia regained her composure and added.

“You don’t need to assemble your troops. The crisis of the Snake-folk has been resolved. You can ask Ying over there for the details. But since we’ve run into each other, I might as well ask you, are the Weeping Mountains far from here?”

“The Weeping Mountains?”

Although Nola had noticed Fia’s gaze sizing her up, she didn’t pay it any mind, just frowning imperceptibly.

“Why do you ask? It’s very dangerous there. Even for the current me, without my divine weapon to guide the way, it’s hard to guarantee a safe return. And the monsters in the mountains have been rampaging recently. If not for the imminent crisis of the Snake-folk, my target would have been the monsters in the south. You might not understand what I’m saying, but if you imagine the tide of undead that your Silvar encounters every winter, it should be much easier to understand.”

As she spoke, Nola leaned her head towards Ying, who was sitting beside her. She hadn’t heard what Fia had said about the crisis being resolved; she needed to confirm its authenticity with Ying. In fact, she didn’t know how many men Chazo had sent to attack the Snake-folk. Sending troops to support them was, one, to ensure the peace around the Fire Cat Tribe’s main camp, two, to win over the hearts of other tribes, and three, because the Snake-folk tribe was Ying’s hometown.

Just as Chazo still didn’t know that Silvar was at peace, due to the lack of information, she was also completely unaware that his true target was her.

The monsters in the Weeping Mountains are rampaging?

Catching the key words, Fia thought for a moment. Nola’s god was in the Weeping Mountains. A place controlled by a god should be very stable. Just like how the mountains used to be shrouded in a great fog, with the monsters inside neither coming out to cause trouble nor outsiders being able to easily enter, for the monsters to actively come out and attack the city was an anomaly worth paying attention to.

However, Fia did not delve deeper, for the same reason she had never asked Nola who her god was or how to find them. Once she answered, if she were to have a conflict with the god, she would be implicated.

“One person against thirty thousand soldiers, and fifty War Behemoths!?”

Hearing Ying’s whispered explanation, Nola let out an incredulous cry, nearly dropping her wine cup.

“Putting aside how it was done, what on earth is Chazo trying to do?! Ying, you don’t need an army of this scale to deal with a single Snake-folk tribe!”

“I share your view. I was just about to send spies to the surrounding territories to investigate after this. Perhaps their target was us from the beginning. Chazo not being with those thirty thousand means he must have another plan. We need to be on our guard. You should thank Her Highness for bringing us this news. Otherwise, it would have been days before we learned of it, and that would have been too late.”

“Mmm…”

Nola was at a loss. She looked at Fia with a complicated expression. Unlike Ying, who simply believed that Fia had the strength to fight thirty thousand, in her view, Fia must have borrowed the power of other magic casters in Silvar to accomplish this feat.

Insiders see the trick, while outsiders just see the show. Ying was a Fifth-Tier powerhouse. Although that was already very strong, she had not touched the threshold of one person being able to stop an army of ten thousand. Only someone who had reached the Seventh Tier like her could understand how difficult it was for one person to make thirty thousand surrender.

If it were her, she could make the thirty thousand strategically retreat due to heavy losses, but she could absolutely not make them surrender. Beastfolk were not like humans or elves, who would rout after a certain level of loss. Once they entered a battle state, even the commander of the army could not pull them back.

However, even with the help of other magic casters, the power to tear the earth apart was undoubtedly a forbidden-level spell. This made Nola’s understanding of Fia’s strength reach a new level.

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She hesitated for a moment, and finally, reason overcame her unwillingness. She stood up from her seat, letting her fiery red long hair slide down her cheeks, and gave Fia a deep bow.

“Thank you.”

“She is Claire’s niece, after all. If you were seriously injured, Claire would also be worried. You still have to fight that man in the dark red armor later, right? Who is he? He gives me a very strange feeling. Radric also said he has a familiar feeling about him.”

At this moment, Radric was tailing that man. According to him, he should have met this Wandering Knight before, and more than once. But because it had been too long, he could no longer remember where this aura came from. He could only surmise from his past work for the Absolute Evil that this person was also from the Darkborn camp.

Although Radric was treating him as a major enemy, in Fia’s view, he was not at the point where she had to chase after him and strip off his armor to see his face. As long as she found time to meet and talk with him later, it would be fine. There was no need to start a fight from the beginning. That would be no different from how Nola had faced her at first.

After all, the Darkborn were also divided into harmless and harmful. Just as Radric and the Demon General of Knowledge were Darkborn but had turned over a new leaf, since he could stay in the Fire Cat Tribe’s city for several months and gain the approval of the Holy Son Nola, it meant he had not done anything bad, at least for now.

“He is a man from the land of Molten Flow in the south. He has always called himself a Wandering Knight. No one knows his real name.”

Nola paused. She glanced at the people in the spacious room—besides her and Fia, there were only Claire and Ying. Tilulu’s brother had been asked by her to go to another room. She did not like this Tiger-kin.

She took the Flame Greatsword, which was wrapped in cloth, from her back and placed it on the table with a thud.

“Although I don’t like you, I must admit you are not a bad person. So I’ll be direct. My divine weapon tells me he is a Darkborn. At first, I wanted to kill him secretly to prevent him from causing trouble in my city. However, in the process of tracking him, I found that what he did was more human than a human. Not only would he drive away men who were harassing women, but he would also give food to children and slaves. Even if it was just to casually toss things over, it was far better than our own nobles in the Cold Night.”

“So I tacitly allowed him to stay in the city and did not reveal that he was a Darkborn—Radric is also a Darkborn, right? My divine weapon repels the other party when it gets close to a Darkborn, and it shines brightly. I thought that not all Darkborn were evil, so I tried to contact him, and thus we have today’s scheduled fight.”

“You are a Holy Son, and he is a Darkborn. Won’t your god be unhappy with you for doing this?”

“Uh.”

To everyone’s surprise, Nola’s mouth was slightly agape, and she stood frozen on the spot.

Everyone, even Claire, had a strange expression. Ying simply used her snake tail to pat Nola’s head.

“Hey, don’t tell me you didn’t even consider this.”

Nola’s fiery red cat ears instantly folded back, and her tail also drooped. Fia, who had experience with Tilulu, knew that this was a sign of guilt.

“I… I haven’t received any revelation from the goddess, so I didn’t think in that direction. Besides, as long as I don’t go to the Weeping Mountains, the goddess won’t give me any instructions—”

“But that’s common sense. Since you knew he was a Darkborn, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

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“Because I thought Ying would just arrest him without distinguishing right from wrong.”

Nola’s face was full of embarrassment.

“Then didn’t you know that a Darkborn shouldn’t appear in the city?” Ying wrapped her tail around Nola’s neck in annoyance. The two of them were more like an elder and a junior than peers. “But since the goddess didn’t give you any instructions, maybe this Wandering Knight is really a good person. Have you met with him alone, I mean, besides arranging that if you beat him, he would join us.”

“I asked him before why he came to the Cold Night. He told me he has been wandering the continent, and coming here was just a coincidence. Helping those children who lacked food and clothing was purely out of interest. And then there was nothing more.”

“You…”

Ying, like Nola’s mother, poked her cheek with the tip of her tail, then glanced at the arena below the glass wall and sighed helplessly.

“Forget it. You go and prepare for your fight with him first. It’s almost your turn. Your Highness, Miss Claire, I will take my leave first. A fight of this level requires the audience to be far from the arena. I will come and find you after I’ve maintained order.”

“Don’t be in a hurry. Claire and I are just looking around.”

Fia stood up and, watching Ying, who was holding her Flame Greatsword with one hand and pushing Nola with the other, couldn’t help but find it amusing.

Compared to Nola, Ying was more like the chieftain of the Fire Cat Tribe. As for the reluctant look Nola gave Claire as she left, she would probably come looking for her—mainly Claire—at night.

As the door closed and the room quieted down, Claire, dressed in a dark gray long dress, brought her teacup to the glass wall, her clear emerald eyes filled with a smile.

“It’s just the two of us again. It seems Tilulu and Liti below have finished their fight.”

“Have you been watching them, Claire?”

“You’ve been talking with Nola the whole time, so I had to be the one to supervise them, so I could react immediately if anything happened.”

Under Claire’s guidance, Fia also saw Tilulu, with her gray hair, leaving the venue with Liti. Although she was two or three hundred meters away, with an elf’s vision, she could still see them very clearly.

“Who won?”

“Liti. Tilulu didn’t use the magic in the stone-shooting staff.”

“Wait, Claire, even at this distance, you can see their fight clearly?”

Claire was human when she didn’t overuse her magic, and a human shouldn’t be able to see people at this distance.

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Claire put her index finger to her chin, a look of innocence on her beautiful face.

“I can see clearly. In fact, I can even count the feathers of a eagle in the sky. Little Fia can’t treat me as a human.”

“…That’s true.”

If she were human, she wouldn’t be burdened with a curse. But to be able to see the feathers of a eagle flying a thousand meters in the sky clearly, this vision was far beyond an elf’s. She must be a higher-level race, similar to a Stellacryst Beast.

As if thinking of something, Claire, after a moment of silence, said casually.

“By the way, Tilulu has been acting a little strange lately. When we were in the carriage before, the way she looked at you changed. I don’t mind, but Milu thinks it’s not good. Have you thought about how to handle it, Fia?”

“Strange? What’s strange?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed until now, little Fia?”

Because the two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder by the glass wall, Claire could conveniently pinch Fia’s pointed ear. In this cold winter, her action brought some warmth—an elf’s pointed ears had poor blood circulation, so they were usually very cold. In the streets of Blossom, you could often see elves with frostbitten ears.

Fia leaned her head against Claire’s body and answered honestly.

“I haven’t.”

“Then on the night you had Tilulu call you ‘mother’, did she ever say to you that she had to be a queen? I mean, the reason and determination to be one.”

A look of contemplation and memory appeared in her ruby-like magnificent eyes. Fia said hesitantly.

“I don’t think so…”

At that time, Tilulu had only said that she wanted to avenge her deceased clansmen. She had not said that she wanted to become a queen for them and restore the glory of the Tiger-kin. Thinking about it, she was just being pushed by Fia. It was not her own will. Fia was just her strongest backer.

With a look of “as expected,” Claire sighed helplessly, like an elder looking at a disappointing junior.

“That’s the problem. If this continues, she will lose her motivation sooner or later. And being too dependent on you, she will surely become depressed and even go crazy if she leaves you. She is not as strong as Nola. It’s not surprising for a child to do anything. If you could give her an accurate time, like being together forever in a few years, you wouldn’t have to worry about this problem. It would even become her motivation to work hard. But can you give such a promise, Fia?”

¹ pls no more babysitting….