"What if these monsters showed up here after they did their routine scouting?"
Eliza tilted her head and asked as she slowly sipped her hot tea, citing a possible scenario that would cause the goblins they had just killed to be missed by the nearby dungeon city.
"True, goblins do have ridiculous rates of reproduction, after all. It is very possible for them to grow this much in just a month."
Evan replied as he casually circled his arms around Eliza's waist and hugged her from behind, placing his chin on his shoulder as he continued.
"But that doesn't explain how the goblins were that strong, even the weakest among them was a level 100 goblin. It's impossible for over hundreds of goblins to all get that strong within a month, unless they raid dozens of villages and kill thousands of humans."
"But if that happened, then it would be impossible for the nearby towns not to notice, after all, they have rchants who go to these small villages on a weekly basis to buy and sell stuff."
The blonde battle priestess spoke as she leaned back into Evan's embrace and rested her weight on his body, taking a sip of her tea as she wondered how exactly the goblins got that strong.
It was then that she noticed Pride giving her a weird gaze and titled her head in question while asking.
"What?"
"The two of you have been getting really comfortable with each other recently."
At first, she did not understand Pride's words, but when Eliza looked at herself a second later, a look of realization flashed through her eyes as her cheeks turned red instantly.
Perhaps in an attempt to cover up her embarrassnt, she used her elbow to hit Evan's stomach, causing him to unconsciously lose his hands that were wrapped around her waist.
"What gives?!"
Evan received no answer as Eliza just walked, almost running as she went behind a nearby tree and 'hid' there.
Seeing this, Evan just sighed and turned to Pride before speaking.
"You just had to ruin it."
"This is the fifth ti this morning you two are doing PDA around . Don't you think it would be weirder if I didn't get pissed off at this point?"
Her rely caused a surprised expression to appear on Evan's face as he looked in Eliza's direction, and then at himself before turning to Pride and asking.
"You were counting?"
◇ ◇ ◇
A quick apology saved the young hero from getting a fistful of flas from the high demon, with him promising to not inconvenience Pride with his and Eliza's PDA anymore.
"I'm not making any promises, I just said I'd try not to. It's fifty-fifty."
Ignoring Evan's words, the group's journey continues with them crossing more than half the distance left between them and Osto, leaving them with just half a day's trip left.
They decided to stop for the day and rest after finding a suitable spot right outside a small forest that was a dozen tres off the freeway, spending the night there and continuing their journey the next morning.
They rode their horses towards Osto, with Evan occasionally looking through the map to gauge their position.
He believed their journey would be uneventful as always, however, his words ended up jinxing it as less than an hour after they set off, they ca across a strange situation.
"These are carriage tracks, and from how they look, it seems that said carriage probably stopped for a mont, before trying to turn around, but sothing prevented them from going back the way that they ca so they ended up driving straight into the nearby forest.
"And judging from the multiple sets of footprints here, it seems that said carriage was surrounded by a group of people on both sides, which was most likel7 y the reason why they drove into the forest."
Pride and Evan analysed the tracks on the freeway while Eliza traced the tracks leading towards the forest with her eyes before saying.
"Well...it seems that the people who caused the carriage to stop followed them into the forests. There are also signs of a battle here.
So of the trees here have sword traces on them and a few bushes have burn marks with residual traces of magic."
The three looked at each other in silence before Evan spoke up.
"So group A on their carriage got surrounded by Group B who are most likely outlaws and ended up driving into the forest to avoid them but were followed by group B who clearly don't have any problems with starting a forest fire given the fact that they used fire magic."
"Yep."
"That sounds like what could have happened."
[What...happened...?]
Pride and Eliza answered, with the forrly sleeping lightning spirit waking up as she asked with a sleepy voice while looking around with slight confusion.
[Master, why...did we...stop?]
"Oh, Kayla.
No need to worry about anything, just go back to sleep, okay?"
Evan patted the head of the lightning spirit that shrunk her body and was resting on his head. Her eyelids were slowly closing as she was about to fall back into the abyss of sleep, only for them to shoot open in the next second as she spoke.
[Lightning...]
"Huh?"
Pride followed the gaze of the spirit and saw she was staring in the direction of the forest where the carriage that got surrounded most likely drove into.
Rembering that Kayla could sense all sources of lightning within a certain ranger around her, Pride instantly arrived at a conclusion.
"Could it be that a fight is going on right now?"
"And we are not going to interfere in said fight as it does not concern us in any way, shape or form."
Evan who made a similar conclusion spoke up and turned around, however, his shoulder was grabbed by Eliza who pulled him back and spoke words that were the exact opposite of his.
"No, we ARE going to interfere."
The two stared at each other in silence before Evan sighed and held out his clenched fist. Eliza took a similar action and the two of them called out at the exact sa ti.
"Rock, paper, scissors!"
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