“Thank you.”
The princess, still shaken from her near-death encounter managed. The wolf fishman looked at her as he sheathed his sword.
“It was just my duty, your highness.”
He replied and straightened his back. He held a black orb up to his face and scanned it. He applied a bit more pressure to the orb, trying to crack it, but the princess noticed this early.
“Don’t do that.”
She snatched the orb from his hand protectively and put it at her side, while cautiously swimming back from the guard.
“Excuse me?”
He was perplexed. He failed to understand why she didn’t allow him to destroy it. That was the very creature that just attempted to kill her, so why would she protect it?
“No need to worry about that. Who are you, anyways?”
She quickly changed the topic, not feeling like explaining. After thinking over the situation, she realised that she could have ended up causing a war between Hinotori’s people and Atlantis. The best course of action would be killing the slime if she didn’t want this information to spread, but it would also be more beneficial to have the slime convince Hinotori’s people that Atlantis had nothing to do with it rather than kill them all. From what she’d seen, it was very plausible that those on the surface could come beneath, but the same could not be said for the fish folk and merfolk.
The only exception to this rule was the members of the royal family. And sure, they may not have been stronger than SharkFang, but it was possible that SharkFang would receive an exceedingly tempting offer from the surface and help them. There were way too many things at risk for her to simply go off killing the slime.
Then there was the wolf fishman. She was sure to memorise the faces and names of those in the royal guard in order to find those she could trust and those she couldn’t. Even if the royal guards themselves had no opinions, they were extremely loyal to those they were assigned to. So, if this fishman came under orders from her brother’s side, this could very well be the end of her.
“Excuse my rudeness, your highness! My name is Osveta. I am a new recruit, assigned to your personal safety, your highness.”
He put an arm to his chest and bowed.
“Osveta? Hmm… I’ve heard that name before.”
Osveta let out a nervous laugh and scratched the back of his head.
“I was sort of famous amongst the new recruits.”
“Is that so? What was your graduating rank?”
Still suspicious of him, she asked him another question.
“First, your highness!”
“Really? That’s quite impressive.”
‘I guess that explains how he easily disposed of the slime. I was certain it would cause some trouble for one or two royal guards. That means his potential is great. Still, that makes him even more suspicious.’
“Sorry, I may be asking you too many questions.”
“It is no problem at all, your highness.”
“I have one more question. Is that alright?”
“Of course!”
“Who assigned you to me?”
“His majesty, your father, Njorri Mox Den Anon Yorul, assigned me to your safety.”
‘Father did? Hmm, then he’s trustworthy, I guess.’
Her heart was put at ease once she was informed of this. If there was one person she could put all her trust in, it was her father. If he was certain that this guard would be good enough to protect her, she could rest easy.
“Is my father around?”
“His majesty will be appearing on the day of the feast. He wanted to present me to you as a gift on that day, but decided you would need my protection as soon as possible.”
“How very much like father. Ruining the surprise so early on.”
“Sorry, but may I speak?”
He asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you not want to destroy that thing? Did it not try to kill you?”
There was a certain level of threat in his voice, mostly directed towards the orb, but it still caused the princess to flinch.
“She’s an extremely important project of mine. Could you not try destroying it?”
“Oh? A project? I’d heard that you were quite the scientific explorer yourself. Glad to see your experiments are quite… erhm, powerful.”
His attitude had completely changed, making the princess feel a bit annoyed.
“For a royal guard, you talk too much.”
“Eh? But those other guys are too boring. I don’t want to be like that… your highness.”
“Are you sure you received training? No royal guard talks nearly as much as you do.”
“But I did! You gotta believe me.”
“Oh? No “your highness”? How impertinent of you.”
“Eek! I apologise, your highness. Let me lead you back to Yorul.”
He gestured to the floating dome with his hand a light warm smile.
“Do that, you impertinent guard.”
‘Huh… he reminds me of Sunalla. We might get along just fine.’
***
After I described what happened to me, Daxia decided to describe her story to me. I didn’t know why, but she just did it, refusing to let me do anything till she finished. She ended up explaining why she kidnapped the princess and I had come to the conclusion that I had no real idea of the situation. This entire mission was much bigger than an internal feud in Atlantis. Which meant Sunalla and Yokino had just got themselves wrapped up in something that could very well be the end of us.
It turned out that other than the princess being a target for murder by her brother, the other nation, the Exsuole Empire was planning to attack them during their important feast. Their plan was quite simple. They were simply going to strike when all the defense was concentrated on one area. They would hit it hard with all their resources in a surprise attack, crippling Atlantis.
Apparently, the princess already knew of this but kept it hidden from all of us. She got herself kidnapped… she paid the SharkFang bandits to rescue her from Atlantis. Once she got there, she was planning on talking to Daxia about an alliance, but Daxia refused to help the princess due to certain reasons, one being that she didn’t like the princess’ way of doing things. That was why the princess ended up becoming an actual prisoner. Daxia was going to collect a ransom from Atlantis, essentially crippling them right before their face off with the Exsuole Empire. She was crueller than I assumed.
That meant, from our perspective, either way one looked at it, Atlantis was doomed. It would be worse if the Exsuole ever decided to pay Daxia to help them.
‘Uuuhhh… that’s… gaah, what am I supposed to do now?!’
I yelled, scratching my head.
“Hahahaha! Your reaction is so funny!”
Daxia laughed at the way I reacted to what she just told me. I felt kind of annoyed by that and ended up pouting.
‘So, you’re telling me this entire trip is a wasted effort?’
I basically threw myself in the middle of a war between two countries. Fortunately, I wasn’t in too deep. Then again, I needed that royal wish in order to get Minerva back. Damn it! All this would have been solved if I added her to my familia. Akira was mocking me in my head as well.
“You aren’t going to participate then?”
Daxia asked me with a weird grin on her face. A sigh escaped my mouth when I thought over it.
‘It’s not like I’m trying to get myself killed or anything, but…’
I steeled myself for what was coming next.
‘I really need that favour. I’ll join them and hopefully, we can stop this so I get my wish and find Minerva.’
I looked at Daxia and her grin widened inhumanely, sending a cold shiver down my spine.
“Good! The more the merrier! The SharkFang crew’s gonna be helping you out!”
'Eh? Why are you helping out? I thought you didn't want to participate.'
"Hahaha! You see, that's what you get wrong. I'm already a part of this. I was just going to mess with Atlantis, but hurting Exsuole looks like fun now."
'I-Is that so?'
"Of course, I'll be expecting a reward from you at the end of this. A very hefty price for my services."
She had a very greedy look in her eyes, discouraging me. Still, that was simply a problem for later. I'd ask her what she wanted after my problems were solved.
‘Alright then. When do we move out?’
“We’ll intercept Exsuole in the next 4 days if we move fast. I’ll catch up in the next two days, so I’ll start it off.”
Daxia was completely confident in her ability to hold back the army of an entire nation by herself. Then again, if she was able to play around with a Kraken like it was a child, I guess that was to be expected. I thought over the matter a bit more and came up with a better plan.
‘How long will it take for word to spread from Exsuole to Atlantis?’
“It’s impossible. Atlantis prevents any unknown form of communication through various magical means.”
‘That’s kind of stupid and smart… hmm, that means this entire invasion is a calculated strategy.’
‘Yeah. So, we’ll need to assume that the one orchestrating this is a sort of genius, right?’
‘T-Then, do y-you guys think what we know is m-misinformation?’
‘Misinformation is one way to put it.’
‘More like we’ve been given some level of information to make us assume we know the entire ploy.’
‘T-That means, the army m-marching to Atlantis isn’t the real one?’
‘Yeah. Just a distraction or…’
‘Reinforcements.’
‘T-then there’s already some of them in Atlantis?’
‘Quite possibly. Think about it. Why come up with such a simple strategy for the event with the most security imaginable up?’
‘It could be they chose that event because more security would be focused on the royal family than the kingdom itself, making it easy to invade.’
‘No. News would still spread, giving the royal family time to escape.’
‘Also… is Atlantis a nation or a city?’
‘Ah… didn’t think about that. Daxia, does Atlantis have multiple cities?’
“Oh… about 5 cities? But they aren’t big from what I’ve seen.”
‘How long would it take to move from one city to the other?’
“Not long. Not even half a day. Way less. They are really close to one another.”
‘That so? So, if one were to enter Atlantis, which city would they see first.’
“All of them.”
‘Huh?’
