"You sent out familiars?" Abigail asked. "When?"
"Yesterday, while we were packing our stuff to co here," Laurene replied instantly.
It was a good thing Laurene’s Lie Detection ability didn’t activate on her as well.
"I doubt the familiar was destroyed by monsters, so it’s very likely they’ve realised they were being watched," she continued, bringing up her phone and tapping the screen rapidly. "Evan’s busy with the World Tree right now, and I don’t know when he’ll be done, so I ca to get you instead so we can head over there as fast as possible and take them out."
"I see. That’s certainly urgent," Abigail replied, glancing at Zestari for a mont. The woman nodded and imdiately brought out a phone to call over several Imperial Mages, and while she did that, Abigail returned her gaze to Laurene and asked, "What was the location of this familiar?"
Laurene silently turned her phone over to Abigail, and displayed on its screen was a map of the Elven Empire, with a particular section of the digital map highlighted.
"This is... Votix-Lerion?"
"You’re familiar with it?" Laurene asked, earning a nod from Abigail.
"Yeah. It’s close to my mother’s hotown."
"Oh, Jine-Alora is close to it? I didn’t notice," Laurene said, moving a bit closer and panning the map around.
Several elves rushed out of a nearby do-roofed building at that mont, and with a glance, Laurene identified them as spatial mages.
Turning to Kuro, she said, "Can you go get Eliza and Lord Leoniel, too?"
[Eliza is fine, but that Marquis is too strong for to teleport with the restrictions in this place. It’d be much quicker to have those mages bring him over.]
After saying that, Kuro sank into his shadow, then returned a few monts later with Eliza.
Upon erging from Kuro’s shadow, Eliza turned toward Laurene with a questioning look, and Laurene quickly retrieved her phone from Abigail and moved over to her, switching apps and turning the screen to face her as she spoke.
"One of the familiars Evan and I sent out to scout Demonic Hand bases got destroyed. They know we’re onto them, so we’ve gotta go take them out before they can evacuate. I’ll leave Evan a ssage so he knows where we are when he’s done with the World Tree."
And as Laurene said this, the phone screen displayed a notepad with two words written on it.
[PLAY ALONG.]
Eliza’s expression didn’t change even as she saw it, and Laurene quickly locked the screen and slid the phone back into her pocket.
’What is she up to?’ Eliza wondered, but decided to leave the questions for later and just focus on following Laurene for now.
It was in such a manner that Eliza, Laurene, Kuro, and Leoniel ended up going to the Votix-Lerion Province of the Elven Empire through spatial magic, with the goal of destroying a Demonic Hand base hidden deep within the forest.
When Evan ca out of the World Tree and was inford by an elven Living Legend waiting for him on Abigail’s orders, he was...confused.
’Familiars? What familiars? I only sent out my Factor Mimic, and unless Cellica went there with her Perfect Appraisal glasses, no one in the Demonic Hand can detect my Factor Mimic concealed with Lethe.
What’s more, I told Laurene that the Demonic Hand base in Votix-Lerion is where stragglers from the Seventh Division that escaped Tarse are hiding out. She knows I wanted more of them to gather before I take them out in one fell swoop, so why would she suddenly drag Abigail over there?’
Almost everything Laurene told Abigail about the familiars had been a lie, and Evan wanted to know why she would go as far as that, even if it ant disrupting his plans to deal with the Demonic Hand.
He pulled out his phone to check if she had sent him any ssages, and she had indeed left one, but all it said was for him to head over to Votix-Lerion and that she’d found what was ’off’.
Equal parts curious and confused, Evan dismissed the elf after they finished speaking, then activated Lethe and shot up into the sky, his wings unfurling as he moved across the sky at hypersonic speed, heading straight for the province he’d been told to go to.
He gradually slowed as he got closer, then began using Blink to teleport repeatedly across the skies once he entered the range of Series Skill Resonance, repeating this until he was right above the battlefield.
Floating in the air, Evan surveyed the forest in ruins, not a single Demonic Hand mber still standing.
The main cause of this was Leoniel, whose Sovereign Level power completely overwheld even the Level 700 Fifth Division Senior mbers and their contracted demons, who were among the stragglers that had escaped Tarse.
These ones hadn’t been on the Wild Lands battlefield and were instead those who had operated behind the scenes of the uprising to split the forces of Tarse’s military, pulling the strings of the Regional Chiefs who had defected to the Demonic Hand.
Evan hadn’t spent that long speaking with Lios, but the battle had already ended by the ti he finished.
All that remained was clean-up, being handled by a battalion of elven soldiers under Abigail’s orders.
Evan exhaled softly at the sight, then disabled Lethe and folded his wings, letting gravity bring him down to the ground at high speed.
He unfurled them before he hit the ground, reducing his descent speed to near zero in seconds and landing with a strong gust of wind.
"Seems like the fun’s already over," he said casually, slipping his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
The elven soldiers who had gone on alert upon sensing his presence lowered their weapons when they saw his face, and Evan, despite having acted in a way that wouldn’t have made it strange for them to attack, walked past them and headed toward where Laurene and Eliza were.
He waved in Leoniel’s direction from afar, then reached out to lightly hug Eliza before grabbing Laurene.
"My Factor Mimic hit a barrier. Co check it out," he said, glancing upward and teleporting high into the sky with Blink.
He spread his wings wide, and in a flash, he’d shot off into the distance with Laurene, leaving before anyone could even figure out where he was heading.
In the blink of an eye, Evan was several thousand tres away from the forest, and he landed on the flat roof of one of the buildings in the nearest city.
The mont they landed, he released Laurene and crossed his arms over his chest, an eyebrow raised as he asked, "So? Why did you ss up my plans?"
"Ugh...give a mont," Laurene said, pressing her fingers to her forehead and taking a deep breath, her slightly dizzy vision steadying.
She then exhaled before turning to Evan and speaking.
"I found what was off with Abigail."
Evan instantly narrowed his eyes at that line.
When Laurene had used her Mystic Eyes of Truth on Abigail earlier in the day, she’d confird it was indeed Abigail, but said there was sothing off about her, and due to the elf’s Irregular nature, the laws around her were so distorted Laurene couldn’t see what was wrong.
"But while you went to talk with Lios, I sensed sothing for an instant, and when I had Kuro teleport to where she was, I was able to confirm it.
The reason I sensed sothing ’off’ with Abigail earlier is quite simple."
Laurene paused for a mont, then, eting Evan’s eyes, she said the most absurd thing Evan had heard in a long while.
"When we t Abigail earlier, she only had ’ONE’ Mystic Eye."
User Comments
0 comments from readers