In the afternoon, a group of knights arrived at the adventurer's guild of Luka town, surprising the adventurers in it.
When the guild master ca over to ask them about what they needed, they held up a painting of Evan and asked if they had seen him.
Evan was fairly popular in Luka during the few weeks he spent there so a lot of the adventurer's present could recognize him.
They all turned their gazes to Eliza's party as they had been with him the day before.
"U-m! He said to tell the knights that ca asking for him that he was going south."
"Eliza!"
Eliza relayed Evan's ssage and her party mbers scolded her. They seed to think Evan was wanted as a criminal or sothing similar and by knowing his whereabouts they could be suspected of colluding with him.
"He said south? Are you sure it's the sa person?"
"Y-yes, he was slightly taller than you said he was but it was definitely him. He had a scary sword and a spirit, or rather two spirits with him."
The party leader spoke up this ti. Although he was slightly scared, he did not want to offend the knights nor endanger his party.
His reveal of Evan's spirit companions evoked surprised shouts from the adventurers, they seed to think that was why the knights were looking for him.
The Knight who asked the question sighed and looked back at the other knights, before speaking to one of them.
"Go to the south gate and confirm this quickly."
"Yes, Sir Thompson."
The knight who gave the orders, Ralphie waved his subordinate off and sighed to himself for the nth ti today. He turned his gaze back to Eliza and studied her for a mont, only looking away after a few seconds.
"Thanks for the info.
Seriously, why the hell is the young duke giving so much stress. I should be on leave right now."
He kept on grumbling to himself as he walked out of the guild, but those who heard his grumbles were left in a state of shock.
'Young Duke!'
They all rembered the news of a duke's son who ran away from ho that was strangely spread at a fast rate.
A Duke was the highest rank of nobility that none of them ever believed they would ever encounter.
That was precisely why they couldn't believe that very sa duke's son was the blood-thirsty kid they just t a day ago.
Eliza was the most shocked of them all.
'He was a duke's son!! And I was disrespectful to him!! What if he took offense? He might have executed!!!'
Fortunately, here fears would not co true because Evan was quite interested in her, or rather, her healing skills.
◇ ◇ ◇
The weeks turned into months that went by as quickly as ever and the search for Evan led by Ralphie, one of the ten great swordsn of the Great Western Empire and the Captain of the Duke's knights, continued, although the search party was visibly exerting less effort to locate him.
As always, the searches were fruitless as planned, although they gained information that Evan had spirit companions and was most likely a spirit contractor, that was all they gained.
He always seed to know when they were about to reach him and left wherever he was a few days earlier or even the day before.
One ti, he left nearly an hour before they arrived, leaving a ssage with the city lord telling them that he got bored of that city at the last mont so he left imdiately.
He also said that the next ti they should move faster if they want to have any chances of getting to him.
Although they searched the periter around the city, they unsurprisingly found no traces of him at all, this led them to believe that he had so sort of teleportation artifact that could take him long distances.
This also confird the theory brought up by the empress that he had a shadow spirit with him, one that could use a fairly high rank of shadow movent.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, they were half wrong and half right.
While he indeed possessed a shadow spirit that could use a high-ranked shadow movent skill, the distance he could move with it depended on his and Kuro's magic power.
Luckily for Evan, he had also gained a teleportation skill of his own.
Although he could only teleport distances he could see and as far as his magic power could take him, it was still a handy skill to have.
He could also support this skill with magic stones when necessary.
It allowed him to run away from the knights once when they went undercover and entered the city he was in at separate tis like normal citizens.
He would have been caught if he didn't see a knight that he recognized wearing a farr's hat and driving a run-down carriage.
Evan quickly went to the highest point in the city, the top of the church tower, and used the skill to teleport outside the city walls.
He then used Kuro's shadow movent to go further as he had exhausted all his magic power and magic stones on hand after that teleportation.
Luckily, they did not search the surrounding forests so he was able to rest for a while before continuing on his journey to the next city.
As for how he knew when they would arrive, it was naturally because he had eyes in the sky looking out for him.
The 'eyes in the sky', in this case, belonged to the goddess Artemisia, who urged him to go to the 'Spider Nest' as fast as possible.
,m She even went as far as to create a dungeon diving schedule for Evan, urging him to adhere to it as it would be the best for his growth.
◇ ◇ ◇
While he did plan to keep in touch with her, Eliza surprisingly contacted him first.
She began apologizing repeatedly for being rude to him, this led him to figure out that she must have found out about his identity.
It took three days to finally convince her he was not annoyed, he also gave her advice on how to use her healing skills better and suggested she learn so close combat techniques (preferably mace wielding so she could wrap a barrier around the mace to increase is power) to protect herself.
She was promoted to a D-rank adventurer and decided that bragging to him about it was the best course of action.
She also went to the Dungeon of Pride, 'Graveyard of The Arrogant' and successfully cleared a few floors together with her party.
There was a ti she called him to seek comfort as one of their party mbers perished during a dungeon raid, Evan sighed rembering how much she cried then.
Their contacts continued for weeks and they had reached the stage where they could be comfortably called friends, albeit long distanced ones.
She was still slightly stiff when talking to him as all things considered, he was still the son of a duke.
He told her that he'd need her help soti in the future and that she should be stronger by then. She asked when this was but all he said was that he'd co and get her when he was ready.
[I heard you never went past the 4th floor.]
"Tsk, where are you?"
[H-Hmph, I'm already on the 13th floor. I'm different than you.]
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