Eternal Bonds
Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:22 pm
by Lelouch vi Lescatie
Hey there. Welcome to my MGE fic, known as Eternal Bonds. To start with, here's a short summary of the story:
A nation of false peace invaded. The ones he loved lost to the overwhelming power of corruption. His dreams of an unchanging life of happiness together with them erased like it never existed at all. All because of the ambition of a monster who wants nothing more than one-sided coexistence. But even then, Levant does not give up, and thus, he musters his resolve, and goes unto a journey in an attempt to save his loved ones and return unto his former life, unaware of the obstacles that lie in wait between him and his goal...
Apparently, this fanfic of mine is going to take focus on the circumstances of the "protagonist" found on the fallen maiden's profiles. (The "you" guy the fallen maiden's profiles kept mentioning.) And also, unlike in the original fallen maiden's scenario, where the "you" guy always ends up in a rape-with-a-happy-ending situation, this fic will instead focus on what could have happened if the "you" guy escapes his fate instead of getting raped during the invasion of Lescatie. I can't reveal anything more things due to anti-spoiler reasons, but one thing is for sure to happen: The fanfic's protagonist will be seriously...traumatized after his survival from Lescatie's invasion. I mean, losing your family, friends, and everyone you love after all...
Will he recover from his pain and become an Iron woobie? Or will he blame everything on the world and become a villain? Or will he simply continue to live on as a man with broken ideals? Find out!
Chapter 1 is up!
Please tell me what you think, guys! Constructive criticisms are also welcomed with open arms, no matter how painful!
...It-it's not like I'm a masochist or anything...
A nation of false peace invaded. The ones he loved lost to the overwhelming power of corruption. His dreams of an unchanging life of happiness together with them erased like it never existed at all. All because of the ambition of a monster who wants nothing more than one-sided coexistence. But even then, Levant does not give up, and thus, he musters his resolve, and goes unto a journey in an attempt to save his loved ones and return unto his former life, unaware of the obstacles that lie in wait between him and his goal...
Apparently, this fanfic of mine is going to take focus on the circumstances of the "protagonist" found on the fallen maiden's profiles. (The "you" guy the fallen maiden's profiles kept mentioning.) And also, unlike in the original fallen maiden's scenario, where the "you" guy always ends up in a rape-with-a-happy-ending situation, this fic will instead focus on what could have happened if the "you" guy escapes his fate instead of getting raped during the invasion of Lescatie. I can't reveal anything more things due to anti-spoiler reasons, but one thing is for sure to happen: The fanfic's protagonist will be seriously...traumatized after his survival from Lescatie's invasion. I mean, losing your family, friends, and everyone you love after all...
Will he recover from his pain and become an Iron woobie? Or will he blame everything on the world and become a villain? Or will he simply continue to live on as a man with broken ideals? Find out!
Spoiler: show
This fic will take place before, during, and after the invasion of Lescatie. The reclamation attempts by the order are parts of the main story as well.
Disclaimer: The Monster Girl Encyclopedia series is owned by Kenkou Cross.
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Monster Girl Encyclopedia: Eternal Bonds: Prologue “Sky-blue days of false peace and true conspiracies.”
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The Nation of Lescatie…
One of the world’s largest nations, and as well as a nation where faith in the chief goddess is the main religion, Lescatie is one of the most religiously influenced countries in the world, ruled by the king named Castor Bistoa Lescatie. But it is not the only thing that the nation is famous for…
Lescatie has the second most powerful military among all religious order aligned states at the present time. And to add, this nation also has multiple hero training organizations and facilities, training people into fighting for the order from a young age.
The most prominent of these organizations is the Templars of the Goddess’s Cross, or in short, the Holy Cross Templars. This organization produces a minimum of a least a hundred heroes of all kinds per year, and produces a maximum of thousands per year than any other organizations around Lescatie and the world itself. Thus, Lescatie boasts as the number one hero producing nation around the world.
Due to its status as a high class hero producing nation, the nation of Lescatie is also one of the world’s largest centers of trade, ranging from the important military supplies to things needed for daily life. The nation’s city has dazzling central districts, merchant districts, parks, and all sorts of things one may expect to see in a prosperous and powerful city.
However, along with these benefits, came problems typical of urban life: corruption, violence, crimes, and poverty.
Thanks to the corrupt habits of the many high officials of the order, who makes use of their positions for their own conveniences, most of the money that was supposed to be given for the healthcare, food, and shelter of the people ended up straight into the pockets of these high officials, forcing the poor into the squatters of the slums. Because of this, the heroes who came from the poor families often have mistrust , and would have the tendency to quit their jobs as heroes to take jobs that actually make money without risks, or cause dissent among the order by desertion during a mission.
Amidst this oppressive environment, a young man persevered…
A freshly recruited member of the Discreet Mamono Elimination Department of the Holy Cross Templars, named Levant Zanvolt…
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-3rd Person POV-
A fine day has arrived once again in the courtyard of Holy Cross’s headquarters, where the training of the Holy Cross Templar’s new recruits and veterans are occurring as usual in a day of peace and good weather within the nation of Lescatie.
Throughout the courtyard, sounds of spears, arrows, maces, swords, and shields clashing can be heard, as a whole multitude of Templars are having sparring matches by pairs. Those who train have different specialties, ranging from regular knights, spearmen, assassins, archers, scouts, and all other kinds of warriors.
The new recruits are always paired up with a fellow Templar with more experience, so that they might get evaluated on their performance after the battle. For example…
“Tch!” A newly recruited assassin, wearing black robes with a hood on and wielding two short blades held in reverse grip with both his hands, jumps into the air as he attempts to land a blow onto the neck of his opponent, a shielded knight, from above with his pair of blades, only for the said knight to deflect the attack with his shield, and swing his sword vertically upward with a lot of raw force, causing the twin bladed assassin to guard himself and get sent up to the air.
The shielded knight then begins his counter-assault by jumping up into the air towards his twin bladed foe, and slashes downwards in an attempt to force his foe into the ground. However, as if in anticipation, the assassin quickly intercepts the knight’s attack with his own by swinging one his blades with focused strength in a horizontal manner from the left, causing them to clash and allowing the assassin to push himself away from the knight and land before him using the force of the collision.
As soon as the assassin landed, he quickly switches his blade in his left hand with a knife, and throws it towards the head of the knight as he was about to hit the ground, surprising him and making him guard his head with his shield, and making him stumble as he landed, giving the opening that the assassin has been waiting for.
Wasting no time, the assassin quickly lunges forward before landing a swinging kick to the knight’s left foot, causing the knight to lose balance and fall flat on his ass. And thanks to the weight of his armor, the knight had a hard time getting up, allowing the assassin to jump and heavily land on the knight’s chest plate, causing him to groan in pain, and with quick speed, the assassin skillfully disarms the knight, removing his helmet in the process, revealing a middle-aged man with brown hair, green eyes, and beard all over the lower area of his face.
The scout quickly points the tip of his blade to the area below the knight’s bearded chin, as a sign of victory…Making the said knight tap the ground as a sign of surrender. The assassin then quickly puts away his blades…
The knight smirks as the assassin gets off him and helps him up, and after finally being able to stand, the knight commends his trainee, “Heh, not bad for a fresh meat! Even though you’re young and a part of the sneaky back-stabby guys, you sure have strong arms! Say, what’s the secret to that strength of yours, eh? A lady waiting at home?” The knight teases the assassin, who just laughs along and pulls up the hood of his robes, revealing his face. He had spiky silver hair, golden eyes, and his skin tone akin to ivory.
The assassin then proceeds to answer in a joking manner, “Well, for one, I’ve been single for seventeen years!”
The knight lets out a hearty laugh before replying, “Hahaha! You’d better stop using those hands and get yourself a real woman, Levant! Hahaha!” Instead of being embarrassed, the assassin Levant just laughs this off. The knight then proceeds to pat Levant’s shoulder before saying, “I’m being serious about the woman part, my boy. A year more and you’ll be of age! As a man, it is a part of your duty to find yourself a woman who’ll be by your side when you’ll start rottin’ in the keister!”
Levant then proceeds to brush off the old knight before replying, “Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that, though, Sir Ganz. It’s just that…I still have to look after everyone in the orphanage, along with Ramir, Primera, and Sasha-err, I mean, General Sasha. I can’t just leave them after all they’ve done for me. And that’s because they are my family.” The knight named Ganz proceeds to give Levant a look of apology and understanding before patting Levant’s shoulder again, since the old knight forgot that Levant is actually an orphan who grew up in an orphanage, and that Levant has no one else other than his fellow orphans for family.
“Well…Keep up the good work, kid. I forgot that you still have your little sisters and brothers to deal with.” As Ganz finished talking, the loud sound of a bell echoed throughout the headquarters, a signal that it is already mid-noon, the time for change in patrol shifts.
Ganz then proceeds to give Levant instructions before leaving, “Alright. Supposedly, I’m supposed to give you a 1-hour break, but…Listen to me for a bit, kid.” Ganz then proceeds to take a piece of paper from his pocket, and hands it to Levant. Written on it is ‘Evaluation passed with an A++’. Levant’s eyes widened at what was written on the paper, especially when he realized what it entails…
Ganz then proceeds to keep speaking, “Out of most of the trainees I’ve encountered, you’re one of those few that actually show tactics, spirit, and dedication, despite your lack of magical skills, my boy, unlike most of these day’s young brats, who just runs around while randomly swinging a sword declaring their ‘heroes’. I could see a good future set for you, if you won’t die on the battlefield, that is, knowing your job!” Ganz then stares Levant into the eye as he kept speaking, “You actually have that fire in you. Your mentors trained you well. Keep that bravery with you all the time, and I guarantee, you’ll reach great heights!” Ganz then once again pats Levant’s shoulders…Before taking out another piece of paper from his pocket.
“You have a mission tomorrow, as decreed by the high priests. You will receive the information tomorrow at your squad room, which means you’ll have to be on time, awright? Oh, and your designated squad is…General Dascaros’s Squad, named the Snake’s Lance squad. You know which room that is right?”Ganz informs Levant, who gives off a nod.
“With the information I gathered, the squad leader is someone named Mersé Dascaros, a war veteran from a previous war with monsters. Because of her knowledge at fighting, she’s the one who gets all the newbies these days. So I guess this means I get to work with more fellow newbies too? That’s…a good thing, I guess.” Levant then proceeds to speak, “Very well. I’ll be on time tomorrow. Goodbye, for now, Sir Ganz.” He then proceeds to bow, before turning his back to Ganz and leaves the headquarters…
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“Looks like Ramir is in patrol duty right now…Primera’s not in her quarters, too…Geez. I’ll just have lunch by myself, then. Workaholics these days…Oh wait, maybe Mimiru is going to visit again today…” Levant mutters to himself as he walks around the central square of Lescatie, which is currently filled with so many people, ranging from kids who are playing around, residents just taking a walk, tourists who are checking up the shops, and Templars on patrol duty strolling around…
“I guess it’s the barracks for me…as usual. She’ll come over there around lunch time, anyway.”
As Levant was about to head back into the headquarter’s barracks, a young girl’s voice interrupted him by calling his name, causing him to stop in his tracks…
“Hey, big bro! Over here, you lolicon!” A girl calls out to Levant. A vein throbbed on his forehead as he guesses the identity of the girl. Levant then turns towards the said girl.
The girl appears to be around the age of twelve. She has pink eyes, long pink hair tied up by a large white ribbon at the back of her head, and light colored skin. She wears a pink and red shoulder-less dress, with detached pink and white sleeves. Her lower attire consists of a non-transparent white stocking that reaches above her knee, and she also wears a pair of brown colored shoes. She also appears to carry a staff with her.
Despite her small appearance, a strong, suffocating atmosphere of magic surrounds her, a sign that it would be foolish to mess with this child…
“Oh, hey there, Mimiru. Are you on break too?” Levant asks the little mage, Mimiru.
“Of course I am, big bro! And speaking of that, the great Mimiru would like to ask a great favor to you, lowly peasant!” Mimiru declares in a proud, yet playful tone. Levant just gently pats her head before replying, “Okay, okay, I get it. So, the great Mimiru wants her lunch, right? Say, how about we have our lunch together at the barracks as usual? You can ask your question while we’re eating, is that okay with you, little sis?”
Mimiru’s face turned beet-red, causing her to fret as she attempts to retort to Levant’s words, “Wha-what are you saying, you si-sick pervert?!”
A smirk crept its way upon Levant’s lips as he replies, “I’ll take that as a no, then. Bye!” He then casually turns his back to Mimiru while attempting to run away straight to the barracks...
His actions causes Mimiru to run after him and started shouting, “Wa-wait! I was just joking about the lolicon part! Don’t leave me!!!” A blush was making itself known as Mimiru shouted this words. Knowing that she will persist in the chase, Levant just smirked again and kept running, but a little more slower otherwise…
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"Hmm...this is weird. Why isn't there anyone around?" Levant mentaly noted as he ate his food. Indeed, the barracks are only occupied by himself and Mimiru. It's as if the other Templars suddenly vanished into thin air...
“Wow…That tasted great! Even the maids at the mansion can’t cook this good!” Mimiru says in praise as she kept on chomping the lunch, and omelette, that Levant made at his home, at the orphanage, for lunch.
Usually, every lunch time, Mimiru would look around the headquarters for Levant. Even though she has a lot of cooks back at her mansion, Levant’s cooking seemed to have that ‘warmth’, whereas, the cooking at the mansion seems to lack this mysterious ‘warmth’.
In a matter of seconds, Mimiru already finished off the omelette, surprising even Levant, despite having seen the same scenario so many times in the past.
“Really? I guess Sasha was right to have taught me the recipe for this then.” As soon as Levant mentioned Sasha’s name, Mimiru suddenly had a dark look on her face, as if she just heard something unpleasant…
Sighing, Mimiru closes her eyes and lowers her head, trying to look asleep. However, the insides of her mind are not as sleepy as it seems. “Sasha this, Sasha that. Can’t he speak about something else?! Like…me…Why can’t he praise me like how he praises that hag with the quadruple giga-sized chest?! Damn him and his paizuri fetishes…”
“You know, if you’re trying to pretend to be asleep or playing dead, you should at least slow down your breathing by a notch. You’re not supposed to look like you’re having asthma.” Levant speaks in an as-a-matter-of-fact tone, surprising Mimiru, but at the same time, made her realize something she did wrong…
Her breathing was deep and loud. If she has something to blame for that, it would be her anger from earlier…But she’s not about to reveal that…
Mimiru then tries to talk her way out of embarrassment, “I-I was just testing you, that’s all! You’re an assassin right? So yeah, I was just trying to see if you can, uh, guess it right if I’m actually asleep! B-but you did it right, so you have my praises for that, haha…hahaha!” Her tone was fretting, a sign of an obvious lie in the making...
“You don’t guess it if you want to know if someone’s asleep. You check their breathing.” Levant swore that if he had ten pairs of hands right now, they would be planting themselves on his face.
“Okay, okay, I believe you.” Levant casually replies.
However, Mimiru’s intelligence says otherwise, “No, you don’t! You’re lying! *sob* You’re a jerk! Uwaaaah! *sob*.” Taking advantage of Levant’s weakness to his ‘little sisters’ at the oprhanage, Mimiru then decides to use the same tactic and puts on her most powerful weapon: the crying little sister.
With his big brother instincts kicking in like a spear impaling his chest, Levant unconsciously lowers himself on one knee, as he tries to console the crying Mimiru by unconsciously hugging her with one arm, and gently rubbing her head with the other, “There, there, I really believe you, I swear! Just…stop crying, alright?” Levant says in a staggering manner as he kept on trying to console Mimiru.
“Damn it…Why is it that I can’t resist little girls?! Oh, wait, that came out wrong…” Levant’s mind was in turmoil as the…sensation of hugging Mimiru is already being engraved onto his senses…
“Ehehe…” Mimiru freely lets out a giggle as she rubs away her tears onto the frontal part of Levant’s robe. “Only if I can do this anywhere I want…And for as long as I want…” Mimiru’s mind calmed down as her big brother’s ‘warmth’ wrapped around her…
“Aaah! Help! Monster!” A scream interrupts the two, causing them to quickly let go of each other. A man comes inside the barracks, panting. He spots both Levant and Mimiru, “Thank the goddess! A soldier is in here! Please help me!” A large vein popped in Mimiru’s forehead for being ignored, but proceeded to ask the man about his situation anyway, “What happened?! And what was that about a monster?!”
The man then proceeds to speak, “Me and my buddy were riding in our wagon to deliver goods into this city! But as we were leaving the forest borders, a minotaurus appeared out of nowhere and attacked our wagon! I managed to get away, but my buddy was left in there, trying to take the delivery goods to safety! I arrived at the city gates, but there were no guards on duty. I went inside, there were no guards on patrol either! Please, I beg of you, help me!”
“That’s funny…How the hell are there no guards at all? That’s not even possible!” Levant thinks as he proceeds to console the man, “Okay, I’ll help you. The entrance to the forest border, right?” Levant asks the man, who nods in return.
“Let’s hurry then, big bro! This man’s friend must have gotten laid by this very moment!” Mimiru speaks in a sarcastic manner while moving out, leaving the man and Levant, whose gearing himself up.
“Who was that brat?!” The man angrily asks Levant, who replies in a deadpan tone before putting on his hood and leaving hastily, “…Mimiru Miltie.”
The man’s jaw dropped.
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“You’ve got to be kidding me…There really isn’t anyone around at all!” Levant mentally exclaimed as he runs across the rooftops of Lescatie’s southern district, whereas, as he observed while running, there really isn’t a single Templar on patrol…even from when he passed through the central district.
As Levant is free-running his way throughout the rooftops to the southern gate, Mimiru rides throughout the skies on a green colored glyph, which is a wind transportation spell she learned during her first time studying magic.
“Whoa, that guy from earlier wasn’t joking! There really isn’t anyone of those Templar jerks out here!” Mimiru’s thought’s reflected what she saw: The total absence of Templars around the districts and the area around the gates.
As she flew, a rush of sudden chill ran throughout Mimiru’s body, disrupting her concentration for a moment…
“What in the…What was that surge of magical power?!” Mimiru thinks as she recognizes the chill she felt just now. It was a surge of magical aura, yet, it was brimming with dark energy at the same time, giving off that cold, intimidating atmosphere, which also got stronger as Mimiru approached the gates from above…
A precaution made itself known as Mimiru descended down to the gates, “I just hope the monster outside really IS just a minotaurus…I don’t wanna lose big bro! Not while I can still breathe and fight!” Mimiru’s fear of the surge of magical aura is slowly changing into courage as she holds her staff tighter…
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“Ufufu…so that’s the famous young mage from the organization of human magicians? She does look quite powerful…Although, if you cannot sense her magic, you will be unable to differentiate her from a normal little girl. Aww, so cute…” A monster girl declares as she watches Mimiru from a distance fly her way into the gates. The said monster girl has white hair with horns protruding from behind her head, she has red eyes with the supposed white part are colored black. She also has a pair of white demonic wings, and wears a very revealing set of armory, barely covering her purplish skin.
“Yes, indeed, mistress Deruella. I did not even recognize her as such when I first saw her in the barracks with her companion.” A middle aged man whose clothes is in tatters replies to his master, Deruella, who shifts her attention from Mimiru to Levant, who’s currently free-running across the rooftops on the way to the southern gates.
“…That boy in the hood. Is he someone well-known as well?” Deruella points to Levant, prompting her companion to reply quickly.
“Ah, you mean the young man in the black robes? He is a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, an infamous branch of the Holy Cross Templars. They are also known as the Discreet Mamono Suppression Department. As for fame, you could say that the organization he belongs to are known to work in the dark, so there isn’t much information about them in the open, except if you start sniffing the drawers of the order’s high officers.” The human companion of Deruella explains.
“Oho? Could you tell me more about these ‘Discreet Mamono Suppression Department’?” Deruella asks again, causing her human companion to clear his throat before explaining once again.
“That organization is infamous for preventing organized assaults of mamonos before it could even start. Their method is taking the source of intelligence, power, and organization of the mamono groups by assassinating the important members of these said groups. This assassins are also well known among humans and monsters for being able to easily take anyone’s life with relative ease, and disappear like ghosts right after, earning them the fear of the leaders of the pro-monster human factions. In short, mistress, they are the well-rounded chaps who do the dirty work for the chief goddesses’ order. Oh, and a fun fact: Due to what they do, they never receive the chief goddess’s blessing, making them disposable cannon fodder for the order’s conveniences.” The human explains to Deruella, who had a sour expression as the explanation finished.
“…To think that she’d face an assassin and a high rank mage at once…Should we not interfere? Minorin might be a minotaurus, but to go against two on one isn’t something to sneeze at.” Deruella asks as she prepares to leave, but Duran, her companion, stops her before she could take flight.
“Do not worry mistress. From what I have gathered from a certain high priest’s drawers, the assassin who is currently with the mage is just a fresh graduate of the brotherhood, and still doesn’t have any experience in real monster combat or magic. Even if he could take on humans, he can’t take on monsters that easily, most especially against ones with attacks that induce pleasure. So please, do not reveal yourself just yet. And what do you know, he might be the one for Minorin, if you know what I mean.” Duran carefully explains to Deruella, who sighs, and returns to watching the human city…
“Very well. I shall observe, then. But I will still interfere should it be necessary.” Deruella says as she crosses her arms and observes both Mimiru and Levant from afar.
“Hmm, I wonder what he looks like with his hood off…Humans and their silly fashion sense.” Deruella smirks as she thinks of the possible results of today’s mischief…
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In the forest borders, southern Lescatie…
“There she is!” Levant whispers to Mimiru as they observe the minotaurus from afar, while hiding under a thick bunch of bushes. The said minotaurus has bright blue eyes, and vibrant red hair that reaches towards her muscular shoulders. She wears a metal chest plate with no cloth beneath, held by a pair of spaulders stationed on her shoulders. She wears a skirt of jaguar fur held by multiple belts. She also appears to be barefoot.
Far behind the minotaurus is an old-aged man with white hair and black eyes, tied and gagged.
“Let’s plan this out before we do anything. There’s only the two of us, so we’ve got no choice but to be careful, okay?” Mimiru says in a serious manner, sounding like a professional adult.
“Very well. Do you have a plan?” Levant asks, earning a nod from Mimiru.
“Of course. Listen up, because this is what we are gonna do…” Mimiru then begins explaining her strategy as Levant listened intently…
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“Whoa, boy, those Templars sure are slow. Are they on lunch break or something?” The minotaurus asks herself, but her words causes her human hostage to shiver in fear.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt anyone lest they start swinging at me first. And other than that, I’m just looking for a young and healthy husband-to-be. Don’t worry, I’m not that horny to attack old men like you.” The minotaurus explains, earning a look from the human hostage that says ‘Are you kidding me’? However, she just ignored the tied up man.
A few more minutes later, sleepiness occupies the minotaurus’ mind…
As she closed her eyes, a sudden surge of magical energy and a shout jolts her senses, and as she opened them, she saw in front of her a young human girl in the middle of a dancing blue glyph, who shouts, “Gefrorenen Käfig!”
As the shout ended, a blue glyph appeared below the minotaurus, a sign that she must dodge in any way possible, and she was just about to do that, when…
Her body wouldn’t move!
“Wha…Why can’t I-!” The minotaurus screams in panic, as her body felt very, very heavy, like it was held down by gigantic weights. She then takes a look at the little mage before her, and gave her a questioning look as the ice magic glyph is about to finish…
Even with the minotaurus’ painful looking stare, Mimiru just puts on a sadistic smile before saying, “Oh no, don’t look at me, you horned muscle-bound...something. I would have taken better care of my back earlier if I were you! Ahahaha!”
With all the strength that she can muster, the minotaurus forces her head to get a look behind her from her right side...
…And found five throwing knives impaled on her right shoulder, with a smell she was familiar with: poison. And worse, she also saw a man in black robes with a hood on untying the minotaurus’ hostage, much to her displeasure.
A second later, a bright blue pillar of light bursts forth from the glyph below the minotaurus, and as the light subsided, the minotaurus is now encased in a block of ice!
“Err, are we supposed to take her to prison like that? There’s no way I can carry that block of ice! It might even melt before I can lift it!” Levant complains as he eyes the frozen minotaurus.
“Don’t worry. That block of ice is self-sustaining, as it feeds on the prisoner’s own magic energy. And knowing how monsters are like reservoirs of magic energy, she’ll stay in there for a long, long time. And as for the transfer, I have my teleportation spells, so we’ve got nothing to worry about!” Mimiru proudly explains to Levant, who gives off a sigh of release.
“Good thing you were able to throw those knives without being detected or those knives being felt by the monster. Was that magic too, young man?” The freed hostage, the old man, asks Levant, who just shakes his head.
“Yeah, that’s right! There’s no way that ordinary throwing knives can paralyze a monster, much less a minotaurus, out of all of them!” Mimiru adds, in hopes of seeing Levant’s secret.
Levant sighs as he gives up resistance and pulls something from his pockets, “No, it’s not magic. But rather, a good mix of strong paralysis poison and high grade anesthesia, which is best for long range stealth kills. The combination is meant for a slow, painless death for humans, but will only cause strong, but undetected paralysis among monsters due to their resistance.” Levant explains as he pulls off a vial containing a transparent colored liquid, and shows it to Mimiru and the old man, who both gave an ‘ohhh’.
“So then, now that we’re done here, let’s take the old man and the monster to the headquarters for reporting.” Levant declares, earning a nod from the old man,, and Mimiru, who summons multiple teleportation glyphs, enough for everyone, even the frozen minotaurus…
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Meanwhile, at a certain part of the forest borders of Lescatie…
“Gah!” Duran is currently bound by tentacles, as a punishment for an error from earlier…
…Which is his miscalculation of the High Mage Mimiru Miltie, and the unnamed Assassin.
“You…Should have not stopped me when that assassin was already positioning himself…Minorin could have been saved! But because of you and your understatement…” Deruella speaks in an angered tone, due to the capture of her comrade and soldier, the minotaurus Minorin.
“…I wasn’t expecting them to be that cunning. But I’ll admit: I didn’t anticipate that blitzkrieg tactic of theirs…I was sure that the assassin would get caught as he was sneaking behind Minorin…My mistake, my mistress.” Duran answers in a calm manner, despite the tentacles around him tightening at every syllable he sends off his mouth.
“And now that you understand that it is your fault, how are you going to compensate for Minorin’s life?” Deruella questions Duran, who then begins to explain quickly.
“Have you not noticed, that as of late, many of the monsters to be executed always would get away the day before the execution? Well, that’s because…” Duran takes a deep breath before continuing, “We have an pro-monster insider, within the veteran heroes of Lescatie’s order.”
Deruella appears to remember something as Duran was done speaking. Deruella herself begins to ask, “Now that you mention it…There have been cases of monsters escaping executions, and most of them would end up at our camp, to boot…Say Duran, who is this insider?”
Duran then speaks in a loud, clear manner, “The Maiden of Light, Sasha Folmoon.”
Deruella smirks as she recognizes the name…and lets go of Duran.
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“What?! You didn’t have a travelling partner?!” Mimiru asks in surprise. After teleporting the monster successfully to the dungeons, the trio went back to the headquarter’s lobby…Both Levant and Mimiru took this opportunity to ask the old man about his travelling companion, who isn’t present with them…And it was discovered that the old man was actually travelling alone.
“Well, yes. I was travelling alone when this horned monster came out of nowhere and flipped my wagon…” The old man explains.
“I guess that explains the disappearance of our ‘guest’ from earlier…Fishy bastard. Oi, Mimiru, you remember his face, right?” Levant asks Mimiru, who responds with a nod.
“All right then old man. You are free to deliver your goods around the city as you planned. Me and my partner here will report about our ‘friend’ to the big guys. okay?” Levant tells the old man, who nods in reply. But before he went out of the headquarters, the old man takes out a large rolled clothe from his bag, and hands it to Levant…
“Here, as a token of my gratitude. Thank you, Sir Levant, and thank you too, Miss Mimiru!” Before Levant could say his welcome, the old man walks out quickly of the headquarters with a contented smile on his face…
Levant then senses the weight of the cloth, and is quite tempted to open it…
“Big Bro, let’s look for those lazy ass Templars first! We have a report to make! Let’s check the activity board upstairs!” With Mimiru’s declaration, the mage and the assassin went to the second floor of the Holy Cross Headquarter, and went straight to the bulletin board…
On the latest list of activities are written…
‘Sewer check-up session after lunch. Please proceed to the Lescatie Sewer entrance for details…’
“You’ve got to be kidding me…They’re in the sewers right now?! Useless bunch of…Ugh, no wonder why they can’t know anything that happened upside…” Levant angrily mutters to himself as he palms his face. To think that the proud Templars would be cleaning sewers rather than be on duty…He felt irritated.
Meanwhile, Mimiru just yawns as she watches Levant check the bulletin board, “Hey, big bro, I wanna go home…I don’t think they’d be in the mood to listen to an attack report while cleaning poop…And I don’t wanna go to the sewers, either.” Mimiru complains as she yawns again…
“…I’m tired too. I’ll just leave a written report on the notices, and go back to the orphanage. You may go home first if you’d like.” Levant tells Mimiru, who just wordlessly nods and leaves, obviously very tired…
Taking a pen and a piece of paper from the registrar’s table, Levant begins to write everything that transpired during the incident with the minotaurus from earlier…
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-A few hours later-
Around the time where the sun has completely set…
At the front of the Goddess’s Loving Embrace Orphanage…
“Phew. Finally home. Good thing Lescatie allows rooftop commute…For those who can do it, anyway.” Levant says to himself as he jumps from a tree branch, before proceeding to open the gates of the rather large orphanage. He also appears to be carrying a bag of food on his right hand, and the rolled up cloth he received from the old man from earlier carried on his shoulder like a sling bag.
“I’m home!”
Opening the front door, he is then greeted by two little girls. Every time he or Sasha comes home, these two girls are the one to first greet them before all the others…These two are quite close to the two of them, and they even proclaimed themselves as Levant’s ‘official’ little sisters. They even went as far as claiming Levant’s last name, Zanvolt.
“Ah! Welcome home, big bro!” The first girl energetically greets Levant as she runs and tackles him in a hug. She has medium length dark brown hair tied by a pair of blue ribbons in a two-ears hairdo… and has dark brown eyes. She also wears a blue colored long dress, with white long sleeves. Her name is Elisha Zanvolt.
“Big bro…Welcome home…” The second girl shyly greets Levant. She has blue eyes, very light brown colored hair that reaches below her waist, and wears a short sleeved blue colored long dress. Her name is Silmeria Zanvolt.
The other group of kids seemed to have noticed Levant’s arrival, and like a group of moths heading for one large light bulb, they started greeting Levant at the same time…
“It’s big bro Levant!”
“He’s back! With food too!”
“Welcome home, big bro Levant!”
Levant gently pats their heads before speaking, “I bought something tasty for everyone today. Who wants to help me cook again? I’ll only allow two people this time!”
The two girls who greeted first from earlier managed to raise their hands before everyone else, catching Levant’s eye.
“Alrighty then! The two joining me in cooking duty today are…Elisha and Silmeria!”
With a loud cheer, the two of them followed Levant to the kitchen with a smile on their faces, while the other kids cutely pouted…
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Later, at the kitchen…
“Say, Elisha, did Primera take her lunch with her today?” Levant asks his brown haired little sister.
“Yes, big bro! I nagged at her till her face went red and she took it without complaints! Ufufufu!” Elisha proudly states, earning a sweat drop from Levant…
“That’s…a good job done!” Levant proceeds to pat Elisha’s head.
“Muuu…I did a good job too…Pat my head too, big bro…” Silmeria complains with tears in her eyes, causing Levant to temporarily lose control of his composure as his ‘big brother instincts’ took over, but managed to limit himself to patting Silmeria’s head.
“All right, now that you girls are ready, let’s get cooking!” Levant declares as he and his little sisters started their cooking…
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-An hour and a half later-
After cooking and having dinner, washing the dishes, and putting all of his little siblings to sleep, Levant finds himself resting on the rooftop of the orphanage, as a result of his recent activity…
“Oh boy…Primera and Ramir are overdoing their duty…again. Can’t they at least remember thay have a home? Damn workaholics…” Levant mutters under his breath…
“Oh, what a surprise to find you here this late…” A gentle voice of a woman from beside him grabs Levant’s attention from his rest…
Levant takes a look behind him, and finds…
A woman with flowing, long green hair and calming blue eyes. She wears a hat adorned with white feathers on both left and right sides. Her clothes is the standard uniform of the high priestesses of the order, which is a white blouse paired with a blue colored mini-skirt. The blouse also has detached white sleeves. She also wears black colored knee-high stockings and pair of blue and gold heels for her feet…
Levant knows this person…
“Sasha…Don’t tell me you’re always home this late.” Levant reprimands his fellow caretaker of the orphanage, Sasha Folmoon. Other than her job as the said caretaker, she’s also one of the highest ranked veteran heroes of Lescatie, superior to even Mimiru, or Lescatie’s current strongest rookie knight, Wilmarina Noscrim.
“Please understand. Things are very hectic right now. But if I can finish-” Before Sasha could finish, Levant cuts her off, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I know for one thing being a hero is important, but so is your health! What are you gonna do if you collapse in the middle of the battle field and get eaten or killed?! What about this orphanage?!”
“…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I know about your situation already. It’s our little brothers and sisters that you should apologize to! They could only see your face for, like, twice a week! They do not even know why!” Levant angrily reprimands Sasha once again…Who shows a tired and sorrowful face…Levant noticed this, and deciding that it’s enough, he decides to switch topics…
“…You know, it was really fun cooking with Elisha and Silmeria today. They have been learning well.” Levant speaks in a nostalgic manner, without any hint of anger in it, causing Sasha’s face to lit up…
“Really? So what did you guys cook?” Sasha’s burdens somewhat lightened up as kept talking…
“Well, we started with…” Levant then explains what kind of food is it that they had cooked, and even discussed with Sasha what is going to be cooked the next day, along with a promise that she’ll join the next day…
After and an hour of chatting about different topics, thirst caresses both Levant’s and Sasha’s throats…
“Ehehe, that was fun. Didn’t think you could be this talkative, Levant.” Sasha comments as her throat already feels dry, out of talking.
“…Fun times, huh?” Despite his thirsty throat, Levant kept on speaking as he looks up to the starry night sky, “You know, Sasha, despite our situation right now, I still could proudly say that…we are leading a good life.”
“Yes…A really good one. Especially when everyone is together, including Primera and the others too…”Sasha replies with a smile…
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s just that…” Levant speaks in a nostalgic manner, “…I wish it will never change, this life of ours, with everyone…”
Sasha shares them same nostalgic look as Levant as she answered, “I wish as such, too…”
The two of them stared at the stars for a while longer, before retiring back to their rooms and falling into the embrace of sleep…
-Prologue end-
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. Time never waits. It delivers all to the same end.”
And done!
I hope you enjoyed the prologue!
Oh, and note:
Gefrorenen Käfig –means ‘frozen cage’ in German.
Disclaimer: The Monster Girl Encyclopedia series is owned by Kenkou Cross.
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Monster Girl Encyclopedia: Eternal Bonds: Prologue “Sky-blue days of false peace and true conspiracies.”
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The Nation of Lescatie…
One of the world’s largest nations, and as well as a nation where faith in the chief goddess is the main religion, Lescatie is one of the most religiously influenced countries in the world, ruled by the king named Castor Bistoa Lescatie. But it is not the only thing that the nation is famous for…
Lescatie has the second most powerful military among all religious order aligned states at the present time. And to add, this nation also has multiple hero training organizations and facilities, training people into fighting for the order from a young age.
The most prominent of these organizations is the Templars of the Goddess’s Cross, or in short, the Holy Cross Templars. This organization produces a minimum of a least a hundred heroes of all kinds per year, and produces a maximum of thousands per year than any other organizations around Lescatie and the world itself. Thus, Lescatie boasts as the number one hero producing nation around the world.
Due to its status as a high class hero producing nation, the nation of Lescatie is also one of the world’s largest centers of trade, ranging from the important military supplies to things needed for daily life. The nation’s city has dazzling central districts, merchant districts, parks, and all sorts of things one may expect to see in a prosperous and powerful city.
However, along with these benefits, came problems typical of urban life: corruption, violence, crimes, and poverty.
Thanks to the corrupt habits of the many high officials of the order, who makes use of their positions for their own conveniences, most of the money that was supposed to be given for the healthcare, food, and shelter of the people ended up straight into the pockets of these high officials, forcing the poor into the squatters of the slums. Because of this, the heroes who came from the poor families often have mistrust , and would have the tendency to quit their jobs as heroes to take jobs that actually make money without risks, or cause dissent among the order by desertion during a mission.
Amidst this oppressive environment, a young man persevered…
A freshly recruited member of the Discreet Mamono Elimination Department of the Holy Cross Templars, named Levant Zanvolt…
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-3rd Person POV-
A fine day has arrived once again in the courtyard of Holy Cross’s headquarters, where the training of the Holy Cross Templar’s new recruits and veterans are occurring as usual in a day of peace and good weather within the nation of Lescatie.
Throughout the courtyard, sounds of spears, arrows, maces, swords, and shields clashing can be heard, as a whole multitude of Templars are having sparring matches by pairs. Those who train have different specialties, ranging from regular knights, spearmen, assassins, archers, scouts, and all other kinds of warriors.
The new recruits are always paired up with a fellow Templar with more experience, so that they might get evaluated on their performance after the battle. For example…
“Tch!” A newly recruited assassin, wearing black robes with a hood on and wielding two short blades held in reverse grip with both his hands, jumps into the air as he attempts to land a blow onto the neck of his opponent, a shielded knight, from above with his pair of blades, only for the said knight to deflect the attack with his shield, and swing his sword vertically upward with a lot of raw force, causing the twin bladed assassin to guard himself and get sent up to the air.
The shielded knight then begins his counter-assault by jumping up into the air towards his twin bladed foe, and slashes downwards in an attempt to force his foe into the ground. However, as if in anticipation, the assassin quickly intercepts the knight’s attack with his own by swinging one his blades with focused strength in a horizontal manner from the left, causing them to clash and allowing the assassin to push himself away from the knight and land before him using the force of the collision.
As soon as the assassin landed, he quickly switches his blade in his left hand with a knife, and throws it towards the head of the knight as he was about to hit the ground, surprising him and making him guard his head with his shield, and making him stumble as he landed, giving the opening that the assassin has been waiting for.
Wasting no time, the assassin quickly lunges forward before landing a swinging kick to the knight’s left foot, causing the knight to lose balance and fall flat on his ass. And thanks to the weight of his armor, the knight had a hard time getting up, allowing the assassin to jump and heavily land on the knight’s chest plate, causing him to groan in pain, and with quick speed, the assassin skillfully disarms the knight, removing his helmet in the process, revealing a middle-aged man with brown hair, green eyes, and beard all over the lower area of his face.
The scout quickly points the tip of his blade to the area below the knight’s bearded chin, as a sign of victory…Making the said knight tap the ground as a sign of surrender. The assassin then quickly puts away his blades…
The knight smirks as the assassin gets off him and helps him up, and after finally being able to stand, the knight commends his trainee, “Heh, not bad for a fresh meat! Even though you’re young and a part of the sneaky back-stabby guys, you sure have strong arms! Say, what’s the secret to that strength of yours, eh? A lady waiting at home?” The knight teases the assassin, who just laughs along and pulls up the hood of his robes, revealing his face. He had spiky silver hair, golden eyes, and his skin tone akin to ivory.
The assassin then proceeds to answer in a joking manner, “Well, for one, I’ve been single for seventeen years!”
The knight lets out a hearty laugh before replying, “Hahaha! You’d better stop using those hands and get yourself a real woman, Levant! Hahaha!” Instead of being embarrassed, the assassin Levant just laughs this off. The knight then proceeds to pat Levant’s shoulder before saying, “I’m being serious about the woman part, my boy. A year more and you’ll be of age! As a man, it is a part of your duty to find yourself a woman who’ll be by your side when you’ll start rottin’ in the keister!”
Levant then proceeds to brush off the old knight before replying, “Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that, though, Sir Ganz. It’s just that…I still have to look after everyone in the orphanage, along with Ramir, Primera, and Sasha-err, I mean, General Sasha. I can’t just leave them after all they’ve done for me. And that’s because they are my family.” The knight named Ganz proceeds to give Levant a look of apology and understanding before patting Levant’s shoulder again, since the old knight forgot that Levant is actually an orphan who grew up in an orphanage, and that Levant has no one else other than his fellow orphans for family.
“Well…Keep up the good work, kid. I forgot that you still have your little sisters and brothers to deal with.” As Ganz finished talking, the loud sound of a bell echoed throughout the headquarters, a signal that it is already mid-noon, the time for change in patrol shifts.
Ganz then proceeds to give Levant instructions before leaving, “Alright. Supposedly, I’m supposed to give you a 1-hour break, but…Listen to me for a bit, kid.” Ganz then proceeds to take a piece of paper from his pocket, and hands it to Levant. Written on it is ‘Evaluation passed with an A++’. Levant’s eyes widened at what was written on the paper, especially when he realized what it entails…
Ganz then proceeds to keep speaking, “Out of most of the trainees I’ve encountered, you’re one of those few that actually show tactics, spirit, and dedication, despite your lack of magical skills, my boy, unlike most of these day’s young brats, who just runs around while randomly swinging a sword declaring their ‘heroes’. I could see a good future set for you, if you won’t die on the battlefield, that is, knowing your job!” Ganz then stares Levant into the eye as he kept speaking, “You actually have that fire in you. Your mentors trained you well. Keep that bravery with you all the time, and I guarantee, you’ll reach great heights!” Ganz then once again pats Levant’s shoulders…Before taking out another piece of paper from his pocket.
“You have a mission tomorrow, as decreed by the high priests. You will receive the information tomorrow at your squad room, which means you’ll have to be on time, awright? Oh, and your designated squad is…General Dascaros’s Squad, named the Snake’s Lance squad. You know which room that is right?”Ganz informs Levant, who gives off a nod.
“With the information I gathered, the squad leader is someone named Mersé Dascaros, a war veteran from a previous war with monsters. Because of her knowledge at fighting, she’s the one who gets all the newbies these days. So I guess this means I get to work with more fellow newbies too? That’s…a good thing, I guess.” Levant then proceeds to speak, “Very well. I’ll be on time tomorrow. Goodbye, for now, Sir Ganz.” He then proceeds to bow, before turning his back to Ganz and leaves the headquarters…
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“Looks like Ramir is in patrol duty right now…Primera’s not in her quarters, too…Geez. I’ll just have lunch by myself, then. Workaholics these days…Oh wait, maybe Mimiru is going to visit again today…” Levant mutters to himself as he walks around the central square of Lescatie, which is currently filled with so many people, ranging from kids who are playing around, residents just taking a walk, tourists who are checking up the shops, and Templars on patrol duty strolling around…
“I guess it’s the barracks for me…as usual. She’ll come over there around lunch time, anyway.”
As Levant was about to head back into the headquarter’s barracks, a young girl’s voice interrupted him by calling his name, causing him to stop in his tracks…
“Hey, big bro! Over here, you lolicon!” A girl calls out to Levant. A vein throbbed on his forehead as he guesses the identity of the girl. Levant then turns towards the said girl.
The girl appears to be around the age of twelve. She has pink eyes, long pink hair tied up by a large white ribbon at the back of her head, and light colored skin. She wears a pink and red shoulder-less dress, with detached pink and white sleeves. Her lower attire consists of a non-transparent white stocking that reaches above her knee, and she also wears a pair of brown colored shoes. She also appears to carry a staff with her.
Despite her small appearance, a strong, suffocating atmosphere of magic surrounds her, a sign that it would be foolish to mess with this child…
“Oh, hey there, Mimiru. Are you on break too?” Levant asks the little mage, Mimiru.
“Of course I am, big bro! And speaking of that, the great Mimiru would like to ask a great favor to you, lowly peasant!” Mimiru declares in a proud, yet playful tone. Levant just gently pats her head before replying, “Okay, okay, I get it. So, the great Mimiru wants her lunch, right? Say, how about we have our lunch together at the barracks as usual? You can ask your question while we’re eating, is that okay with you, little sis?”
Mimiru’s face turned beet-red, causing her to fret as she attempts to retort to Levant’s words, “Wha-what are you saying, you si-sick pervert?!”
A smirk crept its way upon Levant’s lips as he replies, “I’ll take that as a no, then. Bye!” He then casually turns his back to Mimiru while attempting to run away straight to the barracks...
His actions causes Mimiru to run after him and started shouting, “Wa-wait! I was just joking about the lolicon part! Don’t leave me!!!” A blush was making itself known as Mimiru shouted this words. Knowing that she will persist in the chase, Levant just smirked again and kept running, but a little more slower otherwise…
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"Hmm...this is weird. Why isn't there anyone around?" Levant mentaly noted as he ate his food. Indeed, the barracks are only occupied by himself and Mimiru. It's as if the other Templars suddenly vanished into thin air...
“Wow…That tasted great! Even the maids at the mansion can’t cook this good!” Mimiru says in praise as she kept on chomping the lunch, and omelette, that Levant made at his home, at the orphanage, for lunch.
Usually, every lunch time, Mimiru would look around the headquarters for Levant. Even though she has a lot of cooks back at her mansion, Levant’s cooking seemed to have that ‘warmth’, whereas, the cooking at the mansion seems to lack this mysterious ‘warmth’.
In a matter of seconds, Mimiru already finished off the omelette, surprising even Levant, despite having seen the same scenario so many times in the past.
“Really? I guess Sasha was right to have taught me the recipe for this then.” As soon as Levant mentioned Sasha’s name, Mimiru suddenly had a dark look on her face, as if she just heard something unpleasant…
Sighing, Mimiru closes her eyes and lowers her head, trying to look asleep. However, the insides of her mind are not as sleepy as it seems. “Sasha this, Sasha that. Can’t he speak about something else?! Like…me…Why can’t he praise me like how he praises that hag with the quadruple giga-sized chest?! Damn him and his paizuri fetishes…”
“You know, if you’re trying to pretend to be asleep or playing dead, you should at least slow down your breathing by a notch. You’re not supposed to look like you’re having asthma.” Levant speaks in an as-a-matter-of-fact tone, surprising Mimiru, but at the same time, made her realize something she did wrong…
Her breathing was deep and loud. If she has something to blame for that, it would be her anger from earlier…But she’s not about to reveal that…
Mimiru then tries to talk her way out of embarrassment, “I-I was just testing you, that’s all! You’re an assassin right? So yeah, I was just trying to see if you can, uh, guess it right if I’m actually asleep! B-but you did it right, so you have my praises for that, haha…hahaha!” Her tone was fretting, a sign of an obvious lie in the making...
“You don’t guess it if you want to know if someone’s asleep. You check their breathing.” Levant swore that if he had ten pairs of hands right now, they would be planting themselves on his face.
“Okay, okay, I believe you.” Levant casually replies.
However, Mimiru’s intelligence says otherwise, “No, you don’t! You’re lying! *sob* You’re a jerk! Uwaaaah! *sob*.” Taking advantage of Levant’s weakness to his ‘little sisters’ at the oprhanage, Mimiru then decides to use the same tactic and puts on her most powerful weapon: the crying little sister.
With his big brother instincts kicking in like a spear impaling his chest, Levant unconsciously lowers himself on one knee, as he tries to console the crying Mimiru by unconsciously hugging her with one arm, and gently rubbing her head with the other, “There, there, I really believe you, I swear! Just…stop crying, alright?” Levant says in a staggering manner as he kept on trying to console Mimiru.
“Damn it…Why is it that I can’t resist little girls?! Oh, wait, that came out wrong…” Levant’s mind was in turmoil as the…sensation of hugging Mimiru is already being engraved onto his senses…
“Ehehe…” Mimiru freely lets out a giggle as she rubs away her tears onto the frontal part of Levant’s robe. “Only if I can do this anywhere I want…And for as long as I want…” Mimiru’s mind calmed down as her big brother’s ‘warmth’ wrapped around her…
“Aaah! Help! Monster!” A scream interrupts the two, causing them to quickly let go of each other. A man comes inside the barracks, panting. He spots both Levant and Mimiru, “Thank the goddess! A soldier is in here! Please help me!” A large vein popped in Mimiru’s forehead for being ignored, but proceeded to ask the man about his situation anyway, “What happened?! And what was that about a monster?!”
The man then proceeds to speak, “Me and my buddy were riding in our wagon to deliver goods into this city! But as we were leaving the forest borders, a minotaurus appeared out of nowhere and attacked our wagon! I managed to get away, but my buddy was left in there, trying to take the delivery goods to safety! I arrived at the city gates, but there were no guards on duty. I went inside, there were no guards on patrol either! Please, I beg of you, help me!”
“That’s funny…How the hell are there no guards at all? That’s not even possible!” Levant thinks as he proceeds to console the man, “Okay, I’ll help you. The entrance to the forest border, right?” Levant asks the man, who nods in return.
“Let’s hurry then, big bro! This man’s friend must have gotten laid by this very moment!” Mimiru speaks in a sarcastic manner while moving out, leaving the man and Levant, whose gearing himself up.
“Who was that brat?!” The man angrily asks Levant, who replies in a deadpan tone before putting on his hood and leaving hastily, “…Mimiru Miltie.”
The man’s jaw dropped.
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“You’ve got to be kidding me…There really isn’t anyone around at all!” Levant mentally exclaimed as he runs across the rooftops of Lescatie’s southern district, whereas, as he observed while running, there really isn’t a single Templar on patrol…even from when he passed through the central district.
As Levant is free-running his way throughout the rooftops to the southern gate, Mimiru rides throughout the skies on a green colored glyph, which is a wind transportation spell she learned during her first time studying magic.
“Whoa, that guy from earlier wasn’t joking! There really isn’t anyone of those Templar jerks out here!” Mimiru’s thought’s reflected what she saw: The total absence of Templars around the districts and the area around the gates.
As she flew, a rush of sudden chill ran throughout Mimiru’s body, disrupting her concentration for a moment…
“What in the…What was that surge of magical power?!” Mimiru thinks as she recognizes the chill she felt just now. It was a surge of magical aura, yet, it was brimming with dark energy at the same time, giving off that cold, intimidating atmosphere, which also got stronger as Mimiru approached the gates from above…
A precaution made itself known as Mimiru descended down to the gates, “I just hope the monster outside really IS just a minotaurus…I don’t wanna lose big bro! Not while I can still breathe and fight!” Mimiru’s fear of the surge of magical aura is slowly changing into courage as she holds her staff tighter…
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“Ufufu…so that’s the famous young mage from the organization of human magicians? She does look quite powerful…Although, if you cannot sense her magic, you will be unable to differentiate her from a normal little girl. Aww, so cute…” A monster girl declares as she watches Mimiru from a distance fly her way into the gates. The said monster girl has white hair with horns protruding from behind her head, she has red eyes with the supposed white part are colored black. She also has a pair of white demonic wings, and wears a very revealing set of armory, barely covering her purplish skin.
“Yes, indeed, mistress Deruella. I did not even recognize her as such when I first saw her in the barracks with her companion.” A middle aged man whose clothes is in tatters replies to his master, Deruella, who shifts her attention from Mimiru to Levant, who’s currently free-running across the rooftops on the way to the southern gates.
“…That boy in the hood. Is he someone well-known as well?” Deruella points to Levant, prompting her companion to reply quickly.
“Ah, you mean the young man in the black robes? He is a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, an infamous branch of the Holy Cross Templars. They are also known as the Discreet Mamono Suppression Department. As for fame, you could say that the organization he belongs to are known to work in the dark, so there isn’t much information about them in the open, except if you start sniffing the drawers of the order’s high officers.” The human companion of Deruella explains.
“Oho? Could you tell me more about these ‘Discreet Mamono Suppression Department’?” Deruella asks again, causing her human companion to clear his throat before explaining once again.
“That organization is infamous for preventing organized assaults of mamonos before it could even start. Their method is taking the source of intelligence, power, and organization of the mamono groups by assassinating the important members of these said groups. This assassins are also well known among humans and monsters for being able to easily take anyone’s life with relative ease, and disappear like ghosts right after, earning them the fear of the leaders of the pro-monster human factions. In short, mistress, they are the well-rounded chaps who do the dirty work for the chief goddesses’ order. Oh, and a fun fact: Due to what they do, they never receive the chief goddess’s blessing, making them disposable cannon fodder for the order’s conveniences.” The human explains to Deruella, who had a sour expression as the explanation finished.
“…To think that she’d face an assassin and a high rank mage at once…Should we not interfere? Minorin might be a minotaurus, but to go against two on one isn’t something to sneeze at.” Deruella asks as she prepares to leave, but Duran, her companion, stops her before she could take flight.
“Do not worry mistress. From what I have gathered from a certain high priest’s drawers, the assassin who is currently with the mage is just a fresh graduate of the brotherhood, and still doesn’t have any experience in real monster combat or magic. Even if he could take on humans, he can’t take on monsters that easily, most especially against ones with attacks that induce pleasure. So please, do not reveal yourself just yet. And what do you know, he might be the one for Minorin, if you know what I mean.” Duran carefully explains to Deruella, who sighs, and returns to watching the human city…
“Very well. I shall observe, then. But I will still interfere should it be necessary.” Deruella says as she crosses her arms and observes both Mimiru and Levant from afar.
“Hmm, I wonder what he looks like with his hood off…Humans and their silly fashion sense.” Deruella smirks as she thinks of the possible results of today’s mischief…
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In the forest borders, southern Lescatie…
“There she is!” Levant whispers to Mimiru as they observe the minotaurus from afar, while hiding under a thick bunch of bushes. The said minotaurus has bright blue eyes, and vibrant red hair that reaches towards her muscular shoulders. She wears a metal chest plate with no cloth beneath, held by a pair of spaulders stationed on her shoulders. She wears a skirt of jaguar fur held by multiple belts. She also appears to be barefoot.
Far behind the minotaurus is an old-aged man with white hair and black eyes, tied and gagged.
“Let’s plan this out before we do anything. There’s only the two of us, so we’ve got no choice but to be careful, okay?” Mimiru says in a serious manner, sounding like a professional adult.
“Very well. Do you have a plan?” Levant asks, earning a nod from Mimiru.
“Of course. Listen up, because this is what we are gonna do…” Mimiru then begins explaining her strategy as Levant listened intently…
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“Whoa, boy, those Templars sure are slow. Are they on lunch break or something?” The minotaurus asks herself, but her words causes her human hostage to shiver in fear.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt anyone lest they start swinging at me first. And other than that, I’m just looking for a young and healthy husband-to-be. Don’t worry, I’m not that horny to attack old men like you.” The minotaurus explains, earning a look from the human hostage that says ‘Are you kidding me’? However, she just ignored the tied up man.
A few more minutes later, sleepiness occupies the minotaurus’ mind…
As she closed her eyes, a sudden surge of magical energy and a shout jolts her senses, and as she opened them, she saw in front of her a young human girl in the middle of a dancing blue glyph, who shouts, “Gefrorenen Käfig!”
As the shout ended, a blue glyph appeared below the minotaurus, a sign that she must dodge in any way possible, and she was just about to do that, when…
Her body wouldn’t move!
“Wha…Why can’t I-!” The minotaurus screams in panic, as her body felt very, very heavy, like it was held down by gigantic weights. She then takes a look at the little mage before her, and gave her a questioning look as the ice magic glyph is about to finish…
Even with the minotaurus’ painful looking stare, Mimiru just puts on a sadistic smile before saying, “Oh no, don’t look at me, you horned muscle-bound...something. I would have taken better care of my back earlier if I were you! Ahahaha!”
With all the strength that she can muster, the minotaurus forces her head to get a look behind her from her right side...
…And found five throwing knives impaled on her right shoulder, with a smell she was familiar with: poison. And worse, she also saw a man in black robes with a hood on untying the minotaurus’ hostage, much to her displeasure.
A second later, a bright blue pillar of light bursts forth from the glyph below the minotaurus, and as the light subsided, the minotaurus is now encased in a block of ice!
“Err, are we supposed to take her to prison like that? There’s no way I can carry that block of ice! It might even melt before I can lift it!” Levant complains as he eyes the frozen minotaurus.
“Don’t worry. That block of ice is self-sustaining, as it feeds on the prisoner’s own magic energy. And knowing how monsters are like reservoirs of magic energy, she’ll stay in there for a long, long time. And as for the transfer, I have my teleportation spells, so we’ve got nothing to worry about!” Mimiru proudly explains to Levant, who gives off a sigh of release.
“Good thing you were able to throw those knives without being detected or those knives being felt by the monster. Was that magic too, young man?” The freed hostage, the old man, asks Levant, who just shakes his head.
“Yeah, that’s right! There’s no way that ordinary throwing knives can paralyze a monster, much less a minotaurus, out of all of them!” Mimiru adds, in hopes of seeing Levant’s secret.
Levant sighs as he gives up resistance and pulls something from his pockets, “No, it’s not magic. But rather, a good mix of strong paralysis poison and high grade anesthesia, which is best for long range stealth kills. The combination is meant for a slow, painless death for humans, but will only cause strong, but undetected paralysis among monsters due to their resistance.” Levant explains as he pulls off a vial containing a transparent colored liquid, and shows it to Mimiru and the old man, who both gave an ‘ohhh’.
“So then, now that we’re done here, let’s take the old man and the monster to the headquarters for reporting.” Levant declares, earning a nod from the old man,, and Mimiru, who summons multiple teleportation glyphs, enough for everyone, even the frozen minotaurus…
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Meanwhile, at a certain part of the forest borders of Lescatie…
“Gah!” Duran is currently bound by tentacles, as a punishment for an error from earlier…
…Which is his miscalculation of the High Mage Mimiru Miltie, and the unnamed Assassin.
“You…Should have not stopped me when that assassin was already positioning himself…Minorin could have been saved! But because of you and your understatement…” Deruella speaks in an angered tone, due to the capture of her comrade and soldier, the minotaurus Minorin.
“…I wasn’t expecting them to be that cunning. But I’ll admit: I didn’t anticipate that blitzkrieg tactic of theirs…I was sure that the assassin would get caught as he was sneaking behind Minorin…My mistake, my mistress.” Duran answers in a calm manner, despite the tentacles around him tightening at every syllable he sends off his mouth.
“And now that you understand that it is your fault, how are you going to compensate for Minorin’s life?” Deruella questions Duran, who then begins to explain quickly.
“Have you not noticed, that as of late, many of the monsters to be executed always would get away the day before the execution? Well, that’s because…” Duran takes a deep breath before continuing, “We have an pro-monster insider, within the veteran heroes of Lescatie’s order.”
Deruella appears to remember something as Duran was done speaking. Deruella herself begins to ask, “Now that you mention it…There have been cases of monsters escaping executions, and most of them would end up at our camp, to boot…Say Duran, who is this insider?”
Duran then speaks in a loud, clear manner, “The Maiden of Light, Sasha Folmoon.”
Deruella smirks as she recognizes the name…and lets go of Duran.
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“What?! You didn’t have a travelling partner?!” Mimiru asks in surprise. After teleporting the monster successfully to the dungeons, the trio went back to the headquarter’s lobby…Both Levant and Mimiru took this opportunity to ask the old man about his travelling companion, who isn’t present with them…And it was discovered that the old man was actually travelling alone.
“Well, yes. I was travelling alone when this horned monster came out of nowhere and flipped my wagon…” The old man explains.
“I guess that explains the disappearance of our ‘guest’ from earlier…Fishy bastard. Oi, Mimiru, you remember his face, right?” Levant asks Mimiru, who responds with a nod.
“All right then old man. You are free to deliver your goods around the city as you planned. Me and my partner here will report about our ‘friend’ to the big guys. okay?” Levant tells the old man, who nods in reply. But before he went out of the headquarters, the old man takes out a large rolled clothe from his bag, and hands it to Levant…
“Here, as a token of my gratitude. Thank you, Sir Levant, and thank you too, Miss Mimiru!” Before Levant could say his welcome, the old man walks out quickly of the headquarters with a contented smile on his face…
Levant then senses the weight of the cloth, and is quite tempted to open it…
“Big Bro, let’s look for those lazy ass Templars first! We have a report to make! Let’s check the activity board upstairs!” With Mimiru’s declaration, the mage and the assassin went to the second floor of the Holy Cross Headquarter, and went straight to the bulletin board…
On the latest list of activities are written…
‘Sewer check-up session after lunch. Please proceed to the Lescatie Sewer entrance for details…’
“You’ve got to be kidding me…They’re in the sewers right now?! Useless bunch of…Ugh, no wonder why they can’t know anything that happened upside…” Levant angrily mutters to himself as he palms his face. To think that the proud Templars would be cleaning sewers rather than be on duty…He felt irritated.
Meanwhile, Mimiru just yawns as she watches Levant check the bulletin board, “Hey, big bro, I wanna go home…I don’t think they’d be in the mood to listen to an attack report while cleaning poop…And I don’t wanna go to the sewers, either.” Mimiru complains as she yawns again…
“…I’m tired too. I’ll just leave a written report on the notices, and go back to the orphanage. You may go home first if you’d like.” Levant tells Mimiru, who just wordlessly nods and leaves, obviously very tired…
Taking a pen and a piece of paper from the registrar’s table, Levant begins to write everything that transpired during the incident with the minotaurus from earlier…
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-A few hours later-
Around the time where the sun has completely set…
At the front of the Goddess’s Loving Embrace Orphanage…
“Phew. Finally home. Good thing Lescatie allows rooftop commute…For those who can do it, anyway.” Levant says to himself as he jumps from a tree branch, before proceeding to open the gates of the rather large orphanage. He also appears to be carrying a bag of food on his right hand, and the rolled up cloth he received from the old man from earlier carried on his shoulder like a sling bag.
“I’m home!”
Opening the front door, he is then greeted by two little girls. Every time he or Sasha comes home, these two girls are the one to first greet them before all the others…These two are quite close to the two of them, and they even proclaimed themselves as Levant’s ‘official’ little sisters. They even went as far as claiming Levant’s last name, Zanvolt.
“Ah! Welcome home, big bro!” The first girl energetically greets Levant as she runs and tackles him in a hug. She has medium length dark brown hair tied by a pair of blue ribbons in a two-ears hairdo… and has dark brown eyes. She also wears a blue colored long dress, with white long sleeves. Her name is Elisha Zanvolt.
“Big bro…Welcome home…” The second girl shyly greets Levant. She has blue eyes, very light brown colored hair that reaches below her waist, and wears a short sleeved blue colored long dress. Her name is Silmeria Zanvolt.
The other group of kids seemed to have noticed Levant’s arrival, and like a group of moths heading for one large light bulb, they started greeting Levant at the same time…
“It’s big bro Levant!”
“He’s back! With food too!”
“Welcome home, big bro Levant!”
Levant gently pats their heads before speaking, “I bought something tasty for everyone today. Who wants to help me cook again? I’ll only allow two people this time!”
The two girls who greeted first from earlier managed to raise their hands before everyone else, catching Levant’s eye.
“Alrighty then! The two joining me in cooking duty today are…Elisha and Silmeria!”
With a loud cheer, the two of them followed Levant to the kitchen with a smile on their faces, while the other kids cutely pouted…
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Later, at the kitchen…
“Say, Elisha, did Primera take her lunch with her today?” Levant asks his brown haired little sister.
“Yes, big bro! I nagged at her till her face went red and she took it without complaints! Ufufufu!” Elisha proudly states, earning a sweat drop from Levant…
“That’s…a good job done!” Levant proceeds to pat Elisha’s head.
“Muuu…I did a good job too…Pat my head too, big bro…” Silmeria complains with tears in her eyes, causing Levant to temporarily lose control of his composure as his ‘big brother instincts’ took over, but managed to limit himself to patting Silmeria’s head.
“All right, now that you girls are ready, let’s get cooking!” Levant declares as he and his little sisters started their cooking…
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-An hour and a half later-
After cooking and having dinner, washing the dishes, and putting all of his little siblings to sleep, Levant finds himself resting on the rooftop of the orphanage, as a result of his recent activity…
“Oh boy…Primera and Ramir are overdoing their duty…again. Can’t they at least remember thay have a home? Damn workaholics…” Levant mutters under his breath…
“Oh, what a surprise to find you here this late…” A gentle voice of a woman from beside him grabs Levant’s attention from his rest…
Levant takes a look behind him, and finds…
A woman with flowing, long green hair and calming blue eyes. She wears a hat adorned with white feathers on both left and right sides. Her clothes is the standard uniform of the high priestesses of the order, which is a white blouse paired with a blue colored mini-skirt. The blouse also has detached white sleeves. She also wears black colored knee-high stockings and pair of blue and gold heels for her feet…
Levant knows this person…
“Sasha…Don’t tell me you’re always home this late.” Levant reprimands his fellow caretaker of the orphanage, Sasha Folmoon. Other than her job as the said caretaker, she’s also one of the highest ranked veteran heroes of Lescatie, superior to even Mimiru, or Lescatie’s current strongest rookie knight, Wilmarina Noscrim.
“Please understand. Things are very hectic right now. But if I can finish-” Before Sasha could finish, Levant cuts her off, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I know for one thing being a hero is important, but so is your health! What are you gonna do if you collapse in the middle of the battle field and get eaten or killed?! What about this orphanage?!”
“…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I know about your situation already. It’s our little brothers and sisters that you should apologize to! They could only see your face for, like, twice a week! They do not even know why!” Levant angrily reprimands Sasha once again…Who shows a tired and sorrowful face…Levant noticed this, and deciding that it’s enough, he decides to switch topics…
“…You know, it was really fun cooking with Elisha and Silmeria today. They have been learning well.” Levant speaks in a nostalgic manner, without any hint of anger in it, causing Sasha’s face to lit up…
“Really? So what did you guys cook?” Sasha’s burdens somewhat lightened up as kept talking…
“Well, we started with…” Levant then explains what kind of food is it that they had cooked, and even discussed with Sasha what is going to be cooked the next day, along with a promise that she’ll join the next day…
After and an hour of chatting about different topics, thirst caresses both Levant’s and Sasha’s throats…
“Ehehe, that was fun. Didn’t think you could be this talkative, Levant.” Sasha comments as her throat already feels dry, out of talking.
“…Fun times, huh?” Despite his thirsty throat, Levant kept on speaking as he looks up to the starry night sky, “You know, Sasha, despite our situation right now, I still could proudly say that…we are leading a good life.”
“Yes…A really good one. Especially when everyone is together, including Primera and the others too…”Sasha replies with a smile…
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s just that…” Levant speaks in a nostalgic manner, “…I wish it will never change, this life of ours, with everyone…”
Sasha shares them same nostalgic look as Levant as she answered, “I wish as such, too…”
The two of them stared at the stars for a while longer, before retiring back to their rooms and falling into the embrace of sleep…
-Prologue end-
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. Time never waits. It delivers all to the same end.”
And done!
I hope you enjoyed the prologue!
Oh, and note:
Gefrorenen Käfig –means ‘frozen cage’ in German.
Chapter 1 is up!
Spoiler: show
Monster Girl Encyclopedia: Eternal Bonds of the Soul Chapter 1:
“Fate: A friend, or foe?”
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-3rd Person POV-
Inside a certain mining cave around the outskirts of Lescatie…
“Hey, hey, Wilmarina! Look what I found!” A young boy of 10 years old with short, spiky silver hair shouts to a girl from afar as he runs carrying a purple colored gem in his right hand. The said gem gives off a light, vibrant glow of purple light…
From a few walks away from the boy was a girl roughly his age. She has short, and smooth silver hair adorned with a black colored hair-crown on her head. She has bright blue eyes and a fair skin, and she also wears a sleeveless, long white dress, and a pair of blue sandals for her feet. She also appears to carry an iron sword, albeit a little smaller in-order to accommodate her size. Her name is Wilmarina Noscrim, the hero apprentice of the Noscrim family.
“Wah! Don’t do that! You scared me! Idiot Levant!” Wilmarina replies in surprise as Levant’s shout from earlier shocked her and somewhat disoriented her focused watch for monsters.
“Okay, okay, sorry ‘bout that. Here.” The boy called Levant comes closer to Wilmarina and hands over the gem in his hand to the hero apprentice before continuing to speak, “Do you think Francisca will like it for her birthday?”
Taking a look at the gem given by Levant, Wilmarina took a long pause before she replied, “…This is an amethyst, Francisca’s birthday stone! Where did you get this?! It’s a pretty rare stone!”
“From mining?” Levant replies, while avoiding eye contact with Wilmarina, who notices it…
“Really?”
“Yes, really!”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not!”
As the two friends started bickering, a loud, monstrous roar shook the mines, abruptly ending their antics. Or rather, perfectly silencing them for a few seconds.
“…Did you really mine this?” Wilmarina asks a shaking Levant, who hesitates before opening his mouth…
“Err…yes?” Came Levant’s nervous reply.
“Then, where did you get this?!” Wilmarina asks in a scolding manner as she prepares her knuckles in case of an another act misbehavior by her best friend…
“…From the…dangerous valley of adventures?” Levant hesitantly replies, with sweat rapidly falling from the sides of his face like bullets…
“What are you talking about?” Wilmarina’s hands are on her hips as she asked that question. Levant, on the other hand, was avoiding eye contact with Wilmarina like the plague…
“Uhh…a valley of bouncy treasures? Aha…hahaha…” Levant laughs awkwardly as Wilmarina raised an eyebrow, a sign that she’s slowly seeing through Levant’s lie…
“…You stole this from one of the residing monsters from the deeper parts of the mines, didn’t you? Tell me! Tell me!” Wilmarina childishly interrogates Levant , discovering another one of his life endangering mishaps, and causing Wilmarina to give him the dead fish eyes look as a result…
“…Okay, okay! You got me!” Levant concedes to Wilmarina’s stare, and starts to confess his deed, “I found the gem stuck between…a dragon’s gigantic bazongas-I mean, cleavage…”
Wilmarina’s jaw dropped, “Wha-what?!”
“They were so large and so soft and smelled like mom’s so…Wa-wait, that came out wrong! I mean, removing the gem was really tough! I couldn’t resist groping-err, her cleavage was so tight is what I mean to say! I had to find a way to yank the gem without waking her up!” Levant explains in panic as his tongue suddenly rolled on its own, exposing a part of his manly ‘adventures’, despite being so young…
“…What?!” Wilmarina’s face turned beet red at Levant’s words, particularly at the ‘big’, ‘soft’, ‘smelled like mom’s’, and ‘groping’. Her shock was so intense, she threw the amethyst back at Levant in high speed, but not so powerful that it allowed Levant to catch the said gemstone…and pocket it.
“So…uhh…are we done?” Levant asks while slowly turning his left foot towards the direction of the mine’s exit, anticipating danger, but not from the dragon or any other monster…
…But Wilamrina’s angelic smile and cracking knuckles…
“Now, now, Levant…What was that about the dragon’s cleavage and groping? Mind elaborating about that part? I wanna hear more about how BIG and SOFT it is!”
Levant slowly starts to back off as Wilmarina’s eyes are slowly losing their light, a sign for Levant to start begging for his life, “But I’m mostly innocent, I swear!”
As Wilmarina was about to give a heavenly punishment to Levant’s crotch with her knee, another roar shakes the mines, this time in a closer proximity to the two kids…
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Inside the room of a certain 17 year-old ace rookie knight of Lescatie…
“Gyah!” Wilmarina screams as her nightmare ended. Not used to having such bad dreams, her heartbeat was faster than how it should be every time she wakes up in the morning.
“…It’s that dream about the mines again…From 7 years ago…” Sweat was rolling around her face as she massages her forehead…And as she opened her eyes, soft sunlight was the first thing to greet her, disorienting her mind for a short moment…
“Huh? Did I wake up too late, or…” Wilmarina looks around, only to find a few streaks of sunlight pass through the window curtains…
“Just in time, I guess…”
And with that, Wilmarina gets off her bed and was about to begin her morning preparations, when she noticed a certain object placed on top of her dresser. She comes closer and takes the said object, which is a necklace. It had a pendant which is made of a gemstone called emerald. The shape of the pendant appears to be an emblem of an eagle…If one should observe, they would say that it was an expensive gift…
But it was not something that Wilmarina often received from suitors, friends, or from the Templar order…for those things they gave her had no sentimental value whatsoever, and unlike the emerald eagle she is holding now, all the other gifts she received were all subtle attempts by hungry old men from the order to get between her legs…and they failed, obviously, either by Wilmarina’s rejection, or her sword and spells.
Clenching the necklace in her hands tighter, she remembers the time when she received this precious gift of hers…
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-Flashback-
6 years ago, in the middle of the night, inside the Wilmarina’s room of the Noscrim family’s manor, during the aftermath of Wilmarina’s 11th birthday…
A crying Wilmarina is tightly gripping Levant’s hands, in an attempt to prevent him from leaving…
“No! Don’t go! I’ll tell them to let you stay here! Please, I beg of you!” Wilmarina pleads with desperation in her voice, as she is truly intent on preventing her best friend from leaving.
But Levant, on the other hand…
“I thought I told you, I can’t stay here! They already fired mom, and even attempted to kill her when she begged to stay for work! If they find out that I’m here, I’ll get executed for sure! I’m sorry…” Levant explains with a tint of hatred in his voice, especially after seeing the guards of the Noscrim Manor drag his mother like a doll out of the manor’s gates, threw her to the ground, and even spat at her. No longer able to take the abuse, Levant himself rushes towards the guards, grabbed his mother, and ran. The guards chased after him, of course, but Wilmarina herself happened to see the whole thing happen and managed to stop the guards by threatening them of being fired for ‘hurting her personal attendants’.
“But if you leave…I’ll be all alone…” Tears were falling from Wilmarina’s eyes as she spoke out these words. Her grip on Levant’s arms became even tighter as Levant tried to shake her off, with little success.
“I’m sorry. I can’t leave mom alone too. She…got hit by the plague. I need to find a way to make a lot of money to buy medicine and cure her…” Levant explains in a sorrowful voice as he kept on trying to shake off Wilmarina from his arm, “I really have to get out of here. That haughty old butler might come in at any moment…Please, let me go…” Levant continues to shake Wilmarina off as he said those words. Her grip only restricted further, however…She saw the determined look on Levant’s eyes, and realizes that no matter how much she begs, he won’t stay, causing her to loosen her grip.
“Thank you.” Says Levant as he backs away from Wilmarina, “Oh, and by the way…I have something for you… ” Levant takes out something from his pockets as Wilmarina watched in curiousity. A moment later, an eagle shaped emerald pendant is placed on Wilmarina’s palms by Levant.
“Happy 11th birthday, best friend!” Levant happily greets, like nothing had happened earlier. However, there was some sort of disappointment in Wilmarina’s face as soon as Levant said the last part.
“Is this for me…? Thank you…Levant.” Wilmarina clenched the pendant hard as she tried to forget the fact that this is the last day that she’ll see her best friend, and does her best to avoid another outburst of tears…
…Only for her emotions to explode even more as Levant suddenly hugs her.
“I’m sorry, Wilamrina. I want to leave…” Levant apologetically says as he caresses the back of Wilmarina’s head, “But, I promise…That when I grow up and had become stronger, I’ll come back here, and I’ll take you away from this place, and live like how we want right after! Like those adventurers from the story books mom used to read for us!” Levant’s hug became tighter as his heart was already pumping his emotions hard, as the feeling of leaving a precious friend alone was starting to get to him. Wilmarina herself is crying out loud at this point, and is hugging back Levant.
“I promise, I’m gonna come back. Someday.”
“Then, I promise that I will wait for you!” Wilmarina declares as she slowly lets go of Levant. Both of their eyes and faces are soaked in tears…
“Goodbye, best friend. Wait for me, okay?” Levant says as he slowly backs off, before turning to the nearest window of the room that he can find, opens it, and jumps from there.
“…Goodbye…” Wilmarina softly says as she watches Levant leave with an old man in robes, who appears to be in his eighties. From what she could remember, the old man is a sort of mentor to Levant. But that is not important to Wilmarina right now…
“I’ll wait for you, no matter how long… So, don’t forget about me, okay?” Wilamrina softly mutters as Levant’s silhouette fades into the darkness of the night…
And so, as her childhood friend left, Wilmarina, the young girl in love, began her long sleep, eagerly awaiting her ‘hero’. And in her place, was born Wilmarina the Hero, the girl who fights for the nation of Lescatie, thinking of nothing more than the good of her country and fellowmen, and in atonement for what her family did to her best friend’s family...
-Flashback end-
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“…I hope that you haven’t forgotten those words, Levant.” Wilmarina says as she places the emerald eagle necklace back on her dresser, “For it is the reason I…lived and fought to this day. I’m still waiting…for you.”
Finally having enough of the nostalgia, Wilmarina proceeds to the bathroom of her room, readying herself for another day as ‘Wilmarina the Hero’…
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Inside Levant’s room, in the Goddess’ Loving Embrace Orphanage…
“Hmm…So this is what the official uniform looks like. Not that I complain or anything, but, why did it had to be robes, again? It makes us look like those goddess fanatics praying on the streets…”
After cooking and eating breakfast with his little siblings, preparing his lunch, and having a warm bath, Levant now stands in front of a mirror, and examines his new official uniform, or rather, robes.
As for what the robes look like, the upper body of the robes featured a hood that was shaped like an eagle's beak in the center; this was connected to the main part of the robes, which were jet black. The main body part, the chest area, is closed by the robe. It also has long sleeves reaching till the hands. Levant also wears black colored fingerless gloves. Around the back was a belt containing a sheath for two short blades, which was buckled below the shoulder.
The lower portion was two-layered, with the inner layer of the robes extending down lower than the outer layer. They are also vertically open on the front, the back, and the sides for easier movements. Around the waist is a wide, red sash with a set of leather sheaths for knives at the front and pouches at the sides able to contain small supplies. Beneath the layers, Levant wore a pair of black pants and a low-cut, light leather black boots that are made to fit to his lower feet by three small black belts, allowing Levant easier movement when running, climbing, and jumping.
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers, they say. Which is why they will just pick up whatever they will find on the ground.”
Levant then proceeds towards his bed to gear up, as his personal set of weaponry is laid there.
The first set of weaponry that Levant equips are a pair of hidden blades, concealed beneath a pair of black colored vambraces. The blades are operated to spring and retract from below the forearm through a button that uses a system known as the pressure plate system, where only a flick of the wrist is required to spring and retract the blade from beneath the forearm. This pair of hidden blades are most useful when going in for a quick stealth kill, or when in close combat. These hidden blades are the ‘uniform’ weapons for the members of the Assassin brotherhood.
The second weapons Levant picks up are his throwing knives. They are half the size of a normal knife, but they can be deadly weapons from afar or melee when aimed accurately and discreetly towards an enemy’s weak point, or when dipped and infused with chemicals such as poison. Levant stores the knives in the leather sheaths found in front of his sash.
The third set of weaponry is a trio of small medicine vials, with a different color marking on each cap.
The first vial has a violet skull, a color that indicates poison. The poison is mixed very well with a special kind of anesthesia, which numbs the senses of the body part it first comes in contact with the moment it penetrates through the target’s skin. This is useful when going for a stealth kill. Although, so far, it has only proven fatal for humans. Monsters appeared to be able to recover after a few hours from the poison, without a problem.
The second vial has a blue colored half-moon, a mark that indicates sleeping liquid with anesthetic properties, used when the target is only to be captured intact, or when avoiding kills during an infiltration to avoid suspicion from the area.
The last vial has a red cross, a mark that indicates medicine. This medicine’s mixture speeds up the healing process of wounds taken, and even has pain killer properties, so that the user can keep fighting when wounded or be allowed to escape without bearing the pain.
Levant takes the three vials unto the pouches on the left side of his sash, and proceeds to take the last set of weaponry he needs to equip…
His most trusted pair, the twin short blades. He takes hold of the two blades, gives them a few test swings, and sheathes them onto the sheath on his back. He then proceeds to put on his hood…
But before he leaves, Levant picks up a set of feathers and places them inside his sash. These feathers are to serve as ‘markers’ for an assassin’s deeds. One example would be when a successful stealth kill on a target is achieved, allowing the assassin the leave the feather on the victim’s body, as a sign that it was an assassin who did it. This is also done when an assassin kills any criminals not related onto any assassination missions, like robbers, thieves, bandits, etc.
“Alright! Now that I’m all set, time to leave!”
Levant proceeds to the window of his room, opens it, and dives right out of it. The cold sensation of morning air wraps around his body as he descended, informing him that today is a good day for a rooftop commute to the Templar headquarters.
A few seconds later, Levant emerges from a hay bale that’s found straight below his window, which was 4 stories from above ground. As he jumped out of the hay bale, however…
“Wha…what sorcery is this?! Are you alright in there, sir?!” A girl’s voice rang loudly from outside the orphanage’s gates, causing Levant to take a look at the source of the voice…
The girl has long, flowing black hair adorned by two red colored talisman-like tubes on the side locks of her hair, and a large ribbon tied at the tip of her hair at the back. She has eyes that matched the color of her hair. She appears to wear a kind of clothing found only around the east, something called a kimono. In the girl’s case, her kimono is a combination of the color flesh and and red, adorned with a large red ribbon on her hips.
The lower part of her clothing, colored deep red, appears to be layered. The outer layer reaches below the knees, but is opened around the frontal area, revealing the inner layer, which is a short skirt. She appears to wear white colored knee-high stockings, and a pair of black and red slippers for her feet.
Based on his own observation, Levant concludes that this girl is obviously from the oriental eastern part of the world, the region known as Zipangu.
Wanting not to be appear rude, Levant proceeds to climb and jump off the gates, and lands before the oriental looking girl.
“…Err, yes, I'm okay. Thank you for asking.” Levant casually replies, before continuing, “Those clothes…You are from Zipangu, right? What brings you here in Lescatie?” Levant asks, aware that it is quite rare for people from a region that coexists with monsters to visit a land that totally despises monsters.
The oriental girl raised an eyebrow before she replies, “Are you not supposed to introduce yourself before asking questions from a stranger?”
“Oh, right. Zipangu’s customs. I’m supposed to introduce myself first before anything else…” Levant mentally reprimands himself as he clears his throat out of embarrassment, before speaking, “I’m sorry about that. I forgot about the customs from your place. My name's Levant Zanvolt. So, what brings you to Lescatie, miss…?”
The oriental girl proceeds to bow before speaking, “Koyoi. Amanomiya Koyoi, a monster slayer from the east. But please just call me Koyoi, for my last name is quite…tedious for elongated conversations.” After speaking, Koyoi then pulls out an envelope from her pocket. On it is written ‘For General Dascaros of the Snake’s Lance.’ Levant was pretty much surprised on how such a gentle looking girl was an eastern monster slayer, but that did not stop him from losing his focus.
“I am looking to deliver this letter for the Templar squad ‘The Snake’s Lance’, and its unit captain, a woman named Mersé Dascaros. I was told by the patrolling Templars around here that a member of her squad lives inside the ‘Goddess’ Loving Embrace’ Orphanage, named Levant Zanvolt. Are you him?” Koyoi speaks in a monotone voice. Taking a good look of her eyes from inside the hood of his robes, Levant observed how Koyoi’s eyes are so…deprived of life. It was so different from her frantic screams of concern from earlier when she saw him jump from a window 3 stories above…
“Well…I AM a member of that squad. A newly recruited one, anyway. I can deliver the letter for you, Miss Koyoi.” Levant explains, earning a nod from the oriental girl.
Koyoi then hands the letter to Levant, “Very well. I shall leave it to you, Zanvolt-san. Please take this and deliver it to your unit captain. I must hurry and take my leave.” And with that, Koyoi quickly disappears from Levant’s eyesight within a few seconds, surprising even the assassin himself, whose skill in disappearing from someone’s eyes is just as feared. But to Levant, a gentle looking girl with a pretty face doing the said feat is much more admirable…and fearsome.
Levant shook off the surprise and started looking for a wall to scale, while thinking about what he just saw, “That was weird. Oh, screw that, almost everything from Zipangu IS weird. I mean, just how much craziness and balls does it take to co-exist with monsters like a group of people in a community? I don’t find it bad, but…are the monsters really that civilized? I wonder how it’s like to talk to a monster like how you talk to people…without getting killed for the next 10 minutes.” After spotting a fairly low house leading to much taller buildings, Levant starts to scale it, and within a few seconds, the assassin now runs across the rooftops of Lescatie…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Across the rooftops of Lescatie…
“Ahh…the feeling of the fresh morning air on my face…” Even as he was running, jumping, and scaling at high speed, Levant took the opportunity and time to enjoy the fresh morning air. Although, due to his ‘uniform’, only his face can fully enjoy the cool embrace of the morning wind. But still, he was having the run of a very quiet morning…
“Hey, get down, now!” The voice of a man rings out loud, catching Levant’s attention. Stopping in his tracks, he looks for the source of the voice, only to find an archer across the rooftop from where he is. Thanks to the archer’s interruption, Levant’s quiet morning was disturbed. However, as Levant stared at him, the archer seemed familiar to the assassin…
“…Oh. It’s that archer I caught last time. Reading eroticas on the rooftop, again? They allow rooftop commute her in Lescatie, you know? It’s a crime for a soldier to tell people to get down…just so that you can read those...things in public…” Levant palmed his face as he observes the archer quickly hide a small book into his pocket.
“I said, go down! No peasants allowed up here!” The archer, garbed in little armor and equipped with only a bow and a set of arrows, warns Levant, who pops a smirk on his face before disappearing from the eyesight of the archer…
“Phew. Damn assassins. I still remember the last time one of them reported me for slacking up here on the rooftops. But that was because I didn’t see ’em. Now then, for that doujin…” The archer mumbles onto himself as he pulls out a small book, entitled ‘Magical Echidna Alipheese-chan’. He then sits at the edge of the rooftop he’s on…
“Ohohoho. Alipheese-chan is so damn sexy! Who gives a shit if she’s a monster girl? She turns me on! Only if monsters WERE actually like these…damn, I seriously wish they were!” The archer incoherently mumbles, unaware of the creeping black figure behind him…who kicks him, causing him to fall down straight into a merchant stand two stories below…
The archer’s scream filled the air as he fell, “Oh my goddess!”
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A second later, an archer fell into one of the merchant stands, alerting the patrolling Templars around the area. When they checked the scene…
“…Ah, it’s that archer again.”
“…Who?”
“The infamous one who hides on the rooftops to read eroticas and cheesy love novels?”
“…Check his belongings.”
And the 4 Templars weren’t wrong. Searching the unconscious archer’s body, they found three volumes of ‘Fluffy Magical Fox Tamamo’ in one pouch, 4 volumes of ‘Magical Girl Alma Elma-chan’ in another pouch, and one newly released volume of ‘Magical Echidna Alipheese-chan’ in the archer’s hands…
“Let’s arrest the guy and get one of the books for evidence…I’m pretty sure he fell asleep while reading these…” One Templar suggested.
“…Let’s keep the rest.” The unit captain suggested, earning a nod and a bro-fist from his unit members…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…Pffft…Ahahaha!” Levant couldn’t hold his laughter as he watched the archer, now awake and crying, is being arrested by the Templar patrol on charges of ‘Unreasonable vile acts on public property’ and ‘Slacking off on the job.’
“And that’s why you don’t read eroticas on the rooftops. You read them at your room!” Levant says before turning around, and proceeding to free-run his way to the Templar headquarters. As he runs and jumps through the rooftops, he still enjoyed the sight of the busy people filling the streets, since for him, it’s the sign of life in an extremely large city…The very sight of many people made him alive, for some reason…
“Kyaaah! Someone, help me, please!”
A scream rings out from somewhere below the rooftops, stopping Levant in his tracks. Following the source of the voice, he arrives on a rooftop above the back alleys of the business district…
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“Now, now, young lady, it would be wise of you to just stop moving, and have fun with us strong men, ya know.” A robber, holding a knife in his left hand, slowly approaches a cloaked young woman cornered into a wall of the back alley. Two more bandits await behind the first one, standing beside each other, banishing the cloaked woman’s hope of ever escaping…
“That’s right, why don’t you just strip that cloak and let us see your goods, hmm? You’ll live longer that way…” One of the robber’s lackeys declares as he looks at the cloaked woman, whose body and face are fully covered by her cloak. But the trembling of her body and her covering of her head with her hands did not cover her fear, much to the robber’s pleasure.
Unbeknownst to the three robbers, Levant jumps from the rooftops, brandishing hidden blades from his forearms in mid-air, before descending towards the robber’s two lackeys…and stabs the back of their shoulders with the hidden blades dipped in sleeping liquid, while landing on their backs and using their bodies for safe landing. The loud sound of bodies hitting the ground alerted the first robber, causing him to look behind…
…Only to find his two allies lying on the ground, making a light snore, with the assassin standing between their bodies, shocking the robber.
Taking advantage of the robber’s shocked state, Levant runs and jumps towards him at high speed, grabbing the robber’s equipped left hand with his right and landing his left foot on the robber’s right leg while in mid-air, before brandishing a hidden blade from his left forearm at the same time. Within a split second, the sound of a blade piercing flesh echoed throughout the alley as Levant’s hidden blade is planted into the robber’s right shoulder area.
With the body of the robber lying on the ground, Levant proceeds to retract his hidden blades with a flick of his wrist, and declares, “Don’t worry, I’m not the stab-happy type. You won’t die, but you will just fall asleep for a while, thanks to that sleeping liquid I used. Killing you off isn’t my job. Executing criminals are for the Templars.” He then proceeds to take out a feather from his sash, and leaves it onto the robber’s bloodied shoulder, leaving a sign that it was an assassin who knocked out this vile criminal.
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The assassin, now clear of any danger, then proceeds to console the cloaked woman from earlier, who now places a hand on her chest out of relief. Before Levant could start speaking, the cloaked woman began to speak. “Thank you so much, sir! I don’t know what could have happened to me if you didn’t arrive…”
“It’s alright. You’re welcome.” Levant says before taking a look at the sleeping robbers, and then at the cloaked woman before continuing to speak, “Although, an advice: Don’t take the back alleys when you’re alone or unarmed. As you can see, robbers and rapists love women who pass through these back alleys unprepared. Where were you going that you had to pass through here, anyway?” Levant asks the cloaked woman, who cheerfully answers his question without skipping a heartbeat, as if she did not get attacked at all.
“Well, I was gonna go to the Templar headquarters, when these guys popped out of nowhere and started harassing me. You see, I’m an envoy to the dwarf village. I’m supposed to deliver a letter to them today. I was going to the Templar headquarters to get the letter, but I got lost and ended up here…” The woman explains to Levant, who nods in understanding.
“I see. I guess I can escort you then. I know the way.” Levant says as he proceeds to leave the alley, with the woman following after him.
“So, what’s your name, mister hoody?” The woman cheerfully asks, earning a raised eyebrow from Levant, although the woman couldn’t see this due to his hood.
Despite being displeased at the odd nickname, Levant proceeds to answer anyway, “I’m Levant Zanvolt. How about you, miss?” The assassin asks in a casual manner, prompting the cloaked woman to remove the hood of her cloak, revealing the face of a beautiful woman with long, jet black hair, has black colored eyes beneath a pair of glasses, and beautiful fair skin. From what Levant could see, she’s probably the same age as he is.
“I’m Saphirette Spherica, an explorer, envoy, scholar, and adventurer! Nice to meet you, Sir Levant!”
“That’s a lot of…jobs.” Levant mentally comments before proceeding to reply to Saphirette, “Nice to meet you as well, Miss Saphirette. Shall we proceed to headquarters?” Levant asks the scholar-envoy, who nods in reply…
“But, what about them?” Saphirette points to the sleeping figures of the three robbers, prompting Levant to reply in a surprised tone…
“Oh, right. I’ll need to report them to the nearest patrols…”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Around the Military District of Lescatie…
After reporting the incident with the three robbers to the nearby patrols, Levant gets asked by the same patrolling Templars to escort Saphirette to the Templar headquarters, and gets advised to pass through the Military district of Lescatie to prevent further danger…
Walking through the said district, Saphirette couldn’t help but look around with curiousity as she walked alongside Levant in the Military District…
“So, are you a Templar as well, Sir Levant?” Saphirette asks Levant, who shrugs before answering…
“Well…I guess you could say that.” Levant replies, before mentally noting in his head, “But I am an unblessed one, though. More like cannon fodder.”
“Hmm…I see.” Saphirette says, before something caught her attention, “Hey, what is that building for? The one over there…” Saphirette points to a wide building with a tall tower at its middle. Levant sees where Saphirette was pointing at, and replies.
“That’s the military library. They keep information about military training, history, and monster in the books found in there.” Levant explains as Saphirette’s eyes sparkled at the mention of ‘monsters’. And as such…
“Sir Levant, I have a request…”
“Yes, Miss Saphi…rette?” Levant suddenly paused in his words as he sees a…troubling sparkle in Saphirette’s eyes…
“Let’s go in there! In the Library!” Without waiting for Levant’s answer, Saphirette drags him towards the large building…
“Wai-wait! I still have a mission to tend to-”
“Screw that! This is for KNOWLEDGE!” Saphirette irrationally replies as stars sparkled in her eyes while dragging Levant, much to the latter’s dismay…
“General Mersé’s gonna impale me on a halberd…on my first day…such misfortune.” Levant almost silently complains as he and Saphirette are nearing the library’s guards…
“Then impale her with your spear of manliness! She’ll quickly forgive you for sure!” Saphirette incoherently replies to Levant, who had a shocked and red face at realizing what her words implied…
“Wha…what?!”
A few moments later, the assassin and the scholar are given a paper of permit by the guards, and with that, the two of them proceeded to enter the gigantic military library of Lescatie…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Wow…So much books! I didn’t think military people are this studious!” Saphirette airily declares as she admires the sight of so many books lined up on multiple tall shelves, the topics ranging from military history, war tactics, monster anatomy, and the history of Lescatie.
Saphirette proceeds to take a book about Lescatie’s history, before taking a look at Levant, “Could you please wait for me a bit? Please, please, please?” Begging incoherently as soon as she held the book, Levant could only sigh at Saphirette’s antics, and he concedes to her by silently giving a small nod. With Levant’s approval, Saphirette happily takes a seat in one of the library’s wide tables, and starts reading…
“Damn it. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s an important envoy, I would’ve escaped as soon as possible. My mission at the squad is waiting! What to do, what to do…” Levant starts walking around the library by himself as he tries to think up of a way to get Saphirette to the Templar headquarters and get this business done…
Drowned in his own thoughts, Levant did not see a figure who’s currently reading a book in front of him…causing Levant to crash at that person…
“Gah!”
“Kyah!”
The force of the crash was quite strong that it knocked down Levant and the person he crashed onto. Falling on his back on the floor, Levant slowly stands up, with his hood being pulled up by gravity while doing so, revealing his face.
The person he crashed into was also standing up, and appeared to be a girl around his age, with short silver hair and blue eyes. She also wears a white colored two-layered dress with blue puffy sleeves, with a skin fit blue cloth covering her entire arm, and iron vambraces at her forearms. She also wears a red cape and carries with her a sword, signifying her status as a hero.
The lower area of her dress has two layers, with the outer layer reaching below the knee area, while open at the frontal area showing the inner layer, which is a mini-skirt. She also wears blue colored stocking that reach above the knee till the lower area of her legs, and wears a pair of brown knee-high boots for her feet.
The girl and Levant took a good look at each other’s face for a few seconds after she and Levant were already standing straight. Both of them had a shocked look on their face as they recognized each other…especially Levant.
“W-Wilmarina?!”
“Levant?! Is that…you?!”
Levant was about to reply, but before he could do so, Wilmarina quickly glomps him in a hug, tears visible in her eyes…
At that very moment, ‘Wilmarina the Hero’ temporarily fell asleep, giving way to ‘The true Wilmarina’…
“…It’s been so long! I haven’t seen you for a long time! I really missed you!” Wilmarina says as she lets go of Levant, who has a red face due to Wilmarina’s earlier action, the hug. But despite his initial surprise, he still manages to reply to her.
“…I missed you too, best friend. It’s been quite some time ever since I arrived from my training with my mentor, but this is the first time I’ve seen you in 7 years…” Levant says as he sizes up Wilmarina, “You got taller! You seem to be well fed too!” Levant comments at Wilmarina, who had a slightly pouty face at that.
“Are you…are you saying I got fat?!” A vein plopped in Wilmarina’s forehead as she asked that question. Levant, on the other hand, pops a smirk on his face as he kept on teasing her.
“I didn’t say that. I only said that you only got a bit wider-” Before he could finish his statement, Levant is abruptly assaulted by an embrace from Wilmarina, earning her a deep face of red from the assassin. This then got worse when Wilmarina suddenly rubs her face on Levant’s own, treating him to the soft sensation of her cheeks…
“Wha…what are you doing?! Stop it! Someone might see us! Do you want to send my head flying off my shoulders or something?!” Levant exclaims as he attempts to stop Wilmarina, who just kept on hugging him and rubbing her face on his own…like a 10-year old girl greeting her best friend that she hasn’t seen for a long time…
“What are you saying? We always do this back then! And now, we rarely get the chance to do so! So why not take it? And besides, there’s no one at the library at this time of the day!” Wilmarina airily states as Levant manages to move his head around enough to confirm that there is no one around, before replying…
“Well, if you say so…Just hurry up with it…B-but, it’s not like I’m enjoying this or anything…” Levant shyly concedes to Wilmarina, who giggles and stopped rubbing her face on Levant’s own, but kept on hugging him anyways…
“He feels…warm.” Wilmarina mentally comments as she feels Levant’s body heat… “He really grew up…”
“Her bazongas have grown quite much since last time…impressive-wait, why am I thinking of that at a time like this?! Ahh, damn you, my manly instincts!” Levant mentally face palms as the feeling of Wilmarina’s…chests are causing complications to his usually cold and calculating mind…and causing him to close his eyes out of shyness. Wilmarina does the same as well…It didn’t take too long before Levant couldn't resist and hugged back Wilmarina…
However, it seems that fate is not so kind to most people, and will tend to interfere at the most opportune moment…
“What is the meaning of this, Wilmarina?! To think that you’d let that filth take advantage of you!” A voice suddenly interrupts Levant and Wilmarina’s moment, causing the both of them to open their eyes and look for the source of the voice…which was an old looking man in priestly garbs…
“Oh…shit.” Levant nonchalantly says as he recognizes the man before him…
“Oh no…” Wilmarina is sweating bullets as she recognizes the man in front of her and her best friend, “F-father?! How long have you been there?!”
Wilmarina’s father then replies in an angered tone of voice, “Ever since you made contact with that unblessed filth! And for that…” The old man then points his finger at Levant before shouting, “Guards! Guards! Bring me the head of that assassin!”
Wilmarina was in shock of her father’s declaration, while Levant already puts on his hood and has already started running and climbing for the nearest window he finds inside the library…and breaks through it!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A hooded figure suddenly breaks out of one of the library’s windows, surprising the nearby guards.
Not wasting even a split second, Levant runs as fast as his feet can take him, away from the direction of the library, where a group of heavily armored soldiers has just went out of, looking for him.
“Ah! Over there, Assassin!” One of the heavily armored soldiers shouted, alerting his allies as he pointed towards Levant, who just kept running. Without hesitation, they chased after the assassin…But compared to the latter, the running speed of the soldiers appeared to be hampered by their heavy armor and weapons…
“Sending heavily armored brutes with broadswords and axes against a guy who runs in robes, can scale buildings, and run through rooftops? Seriously, Cardinal Noscrim?” Levant mentally muses as he pulls out a bag of coins from his wallet, opens it, and spills its contents at random directions while running, catching the attention of beggars and broke, greedy soldiers alike…
…And causing them to start a rumble of grabbing the coins, getting in the way of the armored soldiers that are chasing Levant, and causing them to end up crashing onto the beggars and other soldiers due to the momentum caused by the weight of their armors while running, stumbling the armored soldiers and buying Levant time to scale one of the nearest walls he can find…and found one, he did.
“Damn it, he’s getting away!”
“Get out of the way-oh look, gold coins!”
“I can’t see him anymore! Screw this, I’m getting those coins!”
“I love you, random assassin!”
Giving up on the chase, the soldiers went straight to join the rumble for the coins left by Levant. Meanwhile, the aforementioned assassin is on his way to the Templar headquarters as he runs across the rooftops of Lescatie once more…But as he ran, Levant’s heart and mind was invaded by a certain feeling he had always hated, even back when he was of young age…
…The feeling of being weak and unable to do anything in his own power, the same reason why he couldn’t become a full Knights Templar, the same reason of failure to save his mother, and most of all, the same reason why Wilmarina is still bound by her greedy mess of a father’s whims and wishes…
“I’m sorry, Wilmarina. Right now, I do not have the strength. Please, wait for me a little bit longer…I promise, as soon as I find a way to get more 'power', I’ll save you…and free you! I won’t fail. I won’t lose anyone I love ever again!”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, inside the squad room of the Snake’s Lance Squad, in the headquarters of the Holy Cross Templars…
“Damn newbies…Always late like some damn VIP!”
A female general complains as she paces back and forth inside the squad room she’s in.
She has grey eyes and grey hair tied up, and a normal skin tone. She wears a metal chest plate beneath a green-colored long sleeve military uniform, with black gloves fully covering the entirety of both her hands. She also appears to carry a halberd in one of her hands.
She also wears a pair maroon short shorts held by a belt bearing the insignia of Lescatie. The length of her shorts exposes scars from both of her legs, obviously from battles with monsters. As for her feet, she wears a pair of brown colored knee-high stockings and armored greaves.
This war general is known by the name of Mersé Dascaros, a famous war general who has fought and survived wars with monsters. But as of right now, her experiences didn’t seem to matter, as not even one of her ‘new’ students had shown up.
Mersé gives off a sigh as she eyes the clock hanging by the northern wall of the squad room, “It’s about to hit noon. Damn, I’ll just have a drink and…”
As Mersé was about to give up waiting and leave the room, a hooded figure suddenly jumps in from the squad room’s main window, alerting her and making her ready her halberd on reflex…
Seeing her reaction, the hooded figure raises his hands before speaking, “Whoa, whoa, easy! I’m a squad member! My name’s Levant Zanvolt!” After saying that, Levant proceeds to pull up his hood, revealing his face to Mersé, who takes a long good look at his face before taking out a piece of paper from a pocket of her uniform…
“Zanvolt, Zanvolt…ah! There you are!” Mersé cheerfully points out the last name found in the paper she pulled out earlier, “So, they sent an assassin this time, eh? Oh well, doesn’t matter that much. Let’s get started! At least, I got myself a unit member who’s actually on time! To be honest, I don’t know if I should slap you or kiss you for arriving!” Mersé declares as she gestures to Levant to leave the room, earning a confused look from the assassin.
“Neither is fine, thank you. But ‘get started?’ On what?” Levant asks Mersé, who gives him an excited look…
“For the first day of our training as a squad, of course! Even with just the two of us, we’re still a squad! So move that robed ass and go!” Mersé ecstatically declares as she exits the room…
“…Well, at least she’s…dedicated. Unlike the other Templar Generals, anyway…” Levant unenergetically mutters as he follows Mersé out of the room…
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In the training courtyard of the Holy Cross Templars headquarters…
“Alright! For today’s lesson, we will start with-”
“Wa-wait!” Levant suddenly cuts off Mersé, who raises an eyebrow.
“Oh come on. What is it?” Mersé asks in an irritated tone, prompting Levant to hurriedly take an envelope from one of his pouches…
“Here. It was delivered by a girl named Koyoi Amanomiya, a monster slayer from Zipangu. She said to give this letter to you.” Levant explains before handling a letter to Mersé, who had a curious look on her face as she received the letter, and opens it.
“Hmmm.” Mersé kept on silently reading the letter, while Levant just watched.
It took a while before Mersé closes the letter and begins to speak, “Looks like we got ourselves a mission. Luckily enough, it’s just a B rank escort mission.” Levant listened intently as Mersé kept on explaining, “We are going to escort a scholar-envoy named Saphirette Spherica to the Zipangu’s dwarf haven. With our members not available for the moment, I guess the both of us will have to do some borrowing from the other squads…Say, Levant, do you know someone?” Mersé asks Levant, who places a finger on his chin, before someone strikes his memory…
“…I have a friend who’s a mage. I also know an archer.” Levant says as Mersé looked intrigued at his words as he kept speaking, “The mage goes by the name of Mimiru Miltie, while the archer is known by the name of Primera Concerto. I believe you’ve heard of them?”
“That little magical girl and the emo elf? Of course!” Mersé declares as she proceeds to leave the training courtyard, “I guess we have a mage, an assassin, an archer, and me, a spearman. All that’s left is a swordsman and a priestess, at least. And lucky for us,” Mersé kept on speaking, “I happened to get along with those last two. I guess I’ll have to go and borrow them! You go get the magical girl and the unhappy elf, Levant!” And with that, Mersé leaves Levant’s eyesight. For some reason, the words ‘emo elf’ and ‘little magical girl’ won’t leave the insides of his ears…but he shakes it off anyway, and focuses on the task at hand.
“Hmm…It IS about lunchtime. Time to wait at the barracks… As for Primera, I’ll look for her around the forest borders this afternoon…But, to think that the person I’ll be escorting is that book loving scholar…Today is really just full of surprises…” Levant mutters as he thinks of what to say to Mimiru to have her temporarily join the Snake’s Lance Squad…
…In a few minutes, Levant is in the barracks, preparing lunch along with the other Templars, while waiting for Mimiru…
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Around the business district of Lescatie…
“Okay! Now that I’m done with the gravity reversal magic, time for the magic of love! Ufufufu…” Mimiru declares unto herself as she jogs excitedly on the side of the street.
Today was another usual day for Mimiru Miltie. She was going to eat lunch with her big bro again today.
As she jogged on the streets, Mimiru caught sight of two children, a boy carrying a little girl who’s currently crying in the boy’s shoulder. From what she could see, Mimiru deduced that the two are siblings. As she watches the spectacle before her, Mimiru remembers the first day she met him…her ‘big bro’…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-Flashback: A few years ago, sometime prior to meeting Levant-
Ever since becoming a mage, her daily routine has changed from a kid’s mornings into a mature adult’s scheduled life. At first, the routine only consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, training at Magitec, eat lunch at Magitec, more training at Magitec, go home, eat dinner, sleep. And then, rinse and repeat.
Even then, as she would pass through some districts, she would often see sights of children her age, both boys and girls, playing around freely, having no care around the world. At first, Mimiru only ignored them, believing that her current status as being recognized as genius is enough joy for her and her parents. She was happy, with learning magic and all that.
Well, she was happy. Until a certain sight unfolded before her.
While walking around the streets, she caught sight of a girl, also her age, being bullied by a group of teenage boys in noble clothes. From what she could hear, the boys are ridiculing the poor girl for having no parents and being peniless, easily telling Mimiru that the said girl is an orphan, with no family to defend her.
Mimiru herself was about to step in, when a hooded figure entered the scene. Without delay, the hooded figure proceeds to skillfully beat the lights out of the nobles, resulting in each of them earning a damaged face from the hooded figure’s fists and feet. In a few moments, the nobles ran away, threatening the hooded figure that they’ll call the city guards if he appears before them again, before running back to their large homes.
However, the sight after the fight is what shook Mimiru. The hooded figure approaches the girl in rags, who is now crying, and carries her in his arms, like a small child. As Mimiru watched, she could hear bits and pieces of the conversation between the hooded figure and the girl in rags…
“Are you hurt anywhere, Silmeria? Did they touch you?”
“*sob*…Nope, big bro Levant. *sob* You arrived just in time…*sob*… I was…really scared…*sob*Uwaaah! *sob*” The girl in rags says as she buries her face, crying onto the hooded figure’s chest…
The hooded figure, revealed to be the girl’s older brother, softly caresses the back of the girl’s head while saying, “There, there. Don’t worry, they won’t come back. Big bro is here…”
The very touching sight disturbed Mimiru for many nights, as realization was slowly dawning on her as each day of her routine repeated itself…
Even with her great magic, people feared and admired her at the same time, but never cared for her in the slightest.
Even with all the money, her parents never actually looked at her like their beloved little daughter, only believing her to be their walking money maker.
Even with the fact that she’s still a small child, the adults use her for their protection instead, when it was supposed to be the other way around to begin with.
Despair and hatred reigned Mimiru’s will to live, realizing that her ‘freedom as a child’ has been taken away by greedy adults, who only want their own survival against monsters without an ounce of care for those that protect them. A little more, and Mimiru could have sworn, she would’ve ended her own miserable existence, that is, till he came…
It was during a hot summer day. Mimiru was walking in the middle of the street at noon, having just finished training once again. However, not having been able to take refreshments before leaving Magitec, thirst and hunger conquered her senses, and it didn’t take too long…
…Before she fell to the ground, unconscious.
As Mimiru opened her eyes, she found herself on a bed, inside a neatly set room. And beside her, was…
…A young man in a hood. But as Mimiru looked closer…
She recognized the hooded figure as the same one that saved the girl in rags from the nobles.
Mimiru then realizes that the hooded man does not seem to move. Taking common sense into consideration, she places a hand on the hooded man’s shoulder, and attempts to shake him awake…
“Hmm…? Oh, you’re up. Good morning!” The hooded man cheerfully greets as he pulls up his hood, revealing his face to Mimiru. What was hidden in the hood was actually a young boy in his teens. As she stared at him, Mimiru couldn’t help but admire the bright glow coming off from the boy’s golden eyes, like they were crystals…
“Are you hungry, little miss? I prepared something for you. Wait here.” The teenage boy went to leave the room, however…
“Wait! Do you even know who I am? And why are you helping me?” Mimiru asks, earning a confused look from the teenager, who answers…
“Well, first, nope. I don’t know who you are, nor do I care. Second, I can’t leave an unconscious little girl in the middle of the street. Third, my mother always had told me to help people when they need it.” The boy leaves, leaving a confused Mimiru inside the room…
“Wha…what the hell does that even mean?!” Mimiru loudly declares, as confusion hits her mind. For her, that boy’s logic is…flawed. He doesn’t know her, the great mage Mimiru? Preposterous! Helping strangers simply because they look like they need help? Ridiculous!
…But somehow, the boy’s words affected Mimiru. From the way he treated her, it was like he was talking to a random little girl. That’s right…
Out of so many people, that boy actually treated Mimiru like a little girl…But, will that stay the same once he knows who she is?
Mimiru decided to wait and see…
-A few minutes later-
“That soup was amazing…thank you!” Mimiru thanks the boy before her, who nods and smiles.
“You’re welcome, little miss.” The boy replies as he takes away the dishes from Mimiru’s hands and places it on the table beside the bed, “By the way, what’s your name, little miss? I’m Levant Zanvolt.”
“I’m…Mimiru Miltie.” Mimiru hesitantly replies, waiting for a reaction from Levant.
“Hmm, so that’s your name? Nice to meet you, little Mimiru! I know this is sudden, but…” Stars were obviously sparkling from Levant’s eyes as he kept on speaking, “You’re…so cute! You’d make a great little sister, ufufufu!” No longer able to restrain himself, Levant proceeds to lightly pinch Mimiru’s cheeks, much to her surprise…till she saw the blood trickling from Levant’s nose…
“Wha-?! Get away from me, you lolicon! Thunder spark!”
“Gah! So cute! Oh wait…is that lightning? Oh, shit!”
*BOOM*
Even after that incident, Levant would still tease Mimiru and treat her like his little sister from time to time when they meet, earning the former with either a sarcastic remark or a lightning bolt. Even so, as their interactions continue, Mimiru felt something slowly reviving inside her…and eventually, it made itself know to Mimiru…
…The feeling of loving, and being loved.
Since then, Mimiru would no longer wait for Levant to appear around the streets, as she would now proceed to the barracks of the Holy Cross Templars instead, and often end up straight into the arms of her ‘big bro’…
-Flashback end-
Shaking off the memories, Mimiru proceeds to hurry to the barracks, no longer able to wait into jumping straight into Levant’s arms once more…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside the Council of Ten, Lescatie’s main castle.
“From this point onwards, you are not to leave the premises of your home or interact with any living commoner when not with proper authority. Most especially, with any of the unblessed soldiers of the order. Will that be understood?” Cardinal Noscrim declares to the kneeling Wilmarina, who nods.
“Yes, fathe-Cardinal Noscrim.”
“Very well. Dismissed!” Cardinal Noscrim declares, allowing Wilmarina to leave the council room…
-Outside the Council Room-
“I’m sorry…Levant. I’m so sorry.” Wilmarina holds back her tears as she tightly grips her sword, her heart burning with sorrow and hatred for the Council of Ten once more.
Because of what happened at the Military Library from earlier, the council of ten cardinals decided to prevent Wilmarina’s ‘corruption’ by the ‘lowly classes’ by declaring an order that authority shall watch every single one of Wilmarina’s actions when outside the Noscrim Manor. To Wilmarina, this obviously means one thing…
…She would be no longer able to talk to Levant, not in the open, anyways…
But, the fact that the council will execute her beloved assassin once he is found making contact with her crushed Wilmarina’s hope of ever landing between Levant’s arms…
“Someday…I will be free. Levant will come and save me, I know it. I believe in him, just as he believes in me! Till then, I...must remain as the 'Hero'!”
With that little hope in mind, Wilmarina proceeds to the training courtyard of Lescatie’s castle, to find some unfortunate training dummies to take out her frustration on…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deep in the prison dungeons of Lescatie…
“Gah!”
A guard falls unconscious as a palm filled with divine energy lands behind his head. Behind the said guard is a woman, with flowing green hair, who proceeds to check the pockets of the knocked out guard…
“Ah! Here’s the keys.” Sasha Folmoon declares as she takes away the keys hanging from the guard’s belt, and proceeds to leave the area, and going deeper into the dungeon…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cell # 33 , The Monster prison cells, Prison Dungeons of Lescatie…
“Okay, here’s cell number…33.” Sasha mutters as she takes out a key from her pocket, numbered ‘33’. And with it, she opens the door of the cell, revealing…
…Minorin, the minotaurus.
“Holy shit, now that’s what I call a miracle! I still hate your Chief Goddess though...but I owe ya one for this!” Minorin happily declares as she exits the prison cell, with Sasha turning her back from Minorin in front of the door, and started casting a spell…
“What are ya doin’?” The minotaurus asks Sasha, who quickly replies…
“I’ll be teleporting you straight into a camp of monsters up in the tip of the northern forest borders. You’ll be safe once I finish this teleportation spell, so please, for the meantime, wait warmly till it’s ready.”Sasha declares, earning her a nod from the minotaurus.
“I know I shouldn’t be askin’ this, but, why’re ya helpin’ us monsters?” Minorin asks, earning her a gentle smile and an answer from Sasha…
“…Humans and monsters are not so different. We both have bodies and souls, even feelings. The only thing that separates us are our physical appearance, and the way we need to live…But with understanding and love, I’m sure…that we can co-exist. Someday.” Sasha says as the teleportation spell she’s doing is about half finished…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deep down Lescatie’s sewers, in the hidden catacombs…
“Hmm…So his name is Levant Zanvolt. Such a strong name, if you ask me. His first name reminds me of the name the region father once belonged to in the middle east.” Deruella comments as she hands over a parcel over to the woman in front of her, “Take this with you on the journey to the dwarf haven in Zipangu. Give it to the elder in place of the letter that the humans made.”
“I will, mistress. But how about the assassin? You see, the last time I got sent into reconnoiter into a squad with an assassin, I almost got found out. They are quite the pain to deal with, in fact. And worse, some other monster managed to ravage him when I finally managed to be alone with him!” Saphirette says as she takes the parcel Deruella handed over.
“Oho? Just be cautious then. You managed to finish last time's reconnoiter with similar conditions, yes? I’m sure you can also do it this time. And other than that, the assassin you mentioned doesn’t even seem to be as brutal, as he is still just a green horn when it comes to the matters of his job. I saw it for myself when he and the magical girl fought Minorin.”
“What are you implying, mistress?”
“That our assassin is still inexperienced. Tell me, would a seasoned assassin spare those three robbers who attacked you this morning?” Deruella asks Saphirette, who nods in understanding.
“But enough of the assassin. What intrigues me right now are the main targets for the invasion’s starting phase. So far, the ones we are aiming most are called Wilmarina Noscrim, and a little magical girl named Mimiru Miltie, am I not right?” Deruella asks, earning a nod from Saphirette. Deruella then proceeds to continue, “…Now that I think about it, You did say in your report that the rookie hero is quite close to a certain assassin, down right to the point of physical contact, albeit being forbidden from such act, is that correct?” Deruella states as Saphirette gave her a curious look.
“What are you plotting, mistress?” Saphirette asks, earning her a mischievous smile from the lilim in front of her.
“Say, Saphirette, do you know how kids feel during the few days before Christmas?” Deruella smiles as she kept speaking, “Because I’m sure that our lovely Wilmarina is in such a state…So why don’t we become the Santa Claus on Christmas day? You know, give her the present she wants the most…” Deruella’s smile only became wider…
“…An Assassin in a box. Alive, of course!”
“…But I thought the invasion plan for Lescatie is still in planning process, my dear mistress…” Saphirette chimes in.
“Of course, it is, dear scholar! I was only putting another kid’s name on my special list!” Deruella answers, with the same unfading smile…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1 end
We only realize the value of happiness once we part with it, and when we find out how rare it is to find another one.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And done!
“Fate: A friend, or foe?”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-3rd Person POV-
Inside a certain mining cave around the outskirts of Lescatie…
“Hey, hey, Wilmarina! Look what I found!” A young boy of 10 years old with short, spiky silver hair shouts to a girl from afar as he runs carrying a purple colored gem in his right hand. The said gem gives off a light, vibrant glow of purple light…
From a few walks away from the boy was a girl roughly his age. She has short, and smooth silver hair adorned with a black colored hair-crown on her head. She has bright blue eyes and a fair skin, and she also wears a sleeveless, long white dress, and a pair of blue sandals for her feet. She also appears to carry an iron sword, albeit a little smaller in-order to accommodate her size. Her name is Wilmarina Noscrim, the hero apprentice of the Noscrim family.
“Wah! Don’t do that! You scared me! Idiot Levant!” Wilmarina replies in surprise as Levant’s shout from earlier shocked her and somewhat disoriented her focused watch for monsters.
“Okay, okay, sorry ‘bout that. Here.” The boy called Levant comes closer to Wilmarina and hands over the gem in his hand to the hero apprentice before continuing to speak, “Do you think Francisca will like it for her birthday?”
Taking a look at the gem given by Levant, Wilmarina took a long pause before she replied, “…This is an amethyst, Francisca’s birthday stone! Where did you get this?! It’s a pretty rare stone!”
“From mining?” Levant replies, while avoiding eye contact with Wilmarina, who notices it…
“Really?”
“Yes, really!”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not!”
As the two friends started bickering, a loud, monstrous roar shook the mines, abruptly ending their antics. Or rather, perfectly silencing them for a few seconds.
“…Did you really mine this?” Wilmarina asks a shaking Levant, who hesitates before opening his mouth…
“Err…yes?” Came Levant’s nervous reply.
“Then, where did you get this?!” Wilmarina asks in a scolding manner as she prepares her knuckles in case of an another act misbehavior by her best friend…
“…From the…dangerous valley of adventures?” Levant hesitantly replies, with sweat rapidly falling from the sides of his face like bullets…
“What are you talking about?” Wilmarina’s hands are on her hips as she asked that question. Levant, on the other hand, was avoiding eye contact with Wilmarina like the plague…
“Uhh…a valley of bouncy treasures? Aha…hahaha…” Levant laughs awkwardly as Wilmarina raised an eyebrow, a sign that she’s slowly seeing through Levant’s lie…
“…You stole this from one of the residing monsters from the deeper parts of the mines, didn’t you? Tell me! Tell me!” Wilmarina childishly interrogates Levant , discovering another one of his life endangering mishaps, and causing Wilmarina to give him the dead fish eyes look as a result…
“…Okay, okay! You got me!” Levant concedes to Wilmarina’s stare, and starts to confess his deed, “I found the gem stuck between…a dragon’s gigantic bazongas-I mean, cleavage…”
Wilmarina’s jaw dropped, “Wha-what?!”
“They were so large and so soft and smelled like mom’s so…Wa-wait, that came out wrong! I mean, removing the gem was really tough! I couldn’t resist groping-err, her cleavage was so tight is what I mean to say! I had to find a way to yank the gem without waking her up!” Levant explains in panic as his tongue suddenly rolled on its own, exposing a part of his manly ‘adventures’, despite being so young…
“…What?!” Wilmarina’s face turned beet red at Levant’s words, particularly at the ‘big’, ‘soft’, ‘smelled like mom’s’, and ‘groping’. Her shock was so intense, she threw the amethyst back at Levant in high speed, but not so powerful that it allowed Levant to catch the said gemstone…and pocket it.
“So…uhh…are we done?” Levant asks while slowly turning his left foot towards the direction of the mine’s exit, anticipating danger, but not from the dragon or any other monster…
…But Wilamrina’s angelic smile and cracking knuckles…
“Now, now, Levant…What was that about the dragon’s cleavage and groping? Mind elaborating about that part? I wanna hear more about how BIG and SOFT it is!”
Levant slowly starts to back off as Wilmarina’s eyes are slowly losing their light, a sign for Levant to start begging for his life, “But I’m mostly innocent, I swear!”
As Wilmarina was about to give a heavenly punishment to Levant’s crotch with her knee, another roar shakes the mines, this time in a closer proximity to the two kids…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside the room of a certain 17 year-old ace rookie knight of Lescatie…
“Gyah!” Wilmarina screams as her nightmare ended. Not used to having such bad dreams, her heartbeat was faster than how it should be every time she wakes up in the morning.
“…It’s that dream about the mines again…From 7 years ago…” Sweat was rolling around her face as she massages her forehead…And as she opened her eyes, soft sunlight was the first thing to greet her, disorienting her mind for a short moment…
“Huh? Did I wake up too late, or…” Wilmarina looks around, only to find a few streaks of sunlight pass through the window curtains…
“Just in time, I guess…”
And with that, Wilmarina gets off her bed and was about to begin her morning preparations, when she noticed a certain object placed on top of her dresser. She comes closer and takes the said object, which is a necklace. It had a pendant which is made of a gemstone called emerald. The shape of the pendant appears to be an emblem of an eagle…If one should observe, they would say that it was an expensive gift…
But it was not something that Wilmarina often received from suitors, friends, or from the Templar order…for those things they gave her had no sentimental value whatsoever, and unlike the emerald eagle she is holding now, all the other gifts she received were all subtle attempts by hungry old men from the order to get between her legs…and they failed, obviously, either by Wilmarina’s rejection, or her sword and spells.
Clenching the necklace in her hands tighter, she remembers the time when she received this precious gift of hers…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-Flashback-
6 years ago, in the middle of the night, inside the Wilmarina’s room of the Noscrim family’s manor, during the aftermath of Wilmarina’s 11th birthday…
A crying Wilmarina is tightly gripping Levant’s hands, in an attempt to prevent him from leaving…
“No! Don’t go! I’ll tell them to let you stay here! Please, I beg of you!” Wilmarina pleads with desperation in her voice, as she is truly intent on preventing her best friend from leaving.
But Levant, on the other hand…
“I thought I told you, I can’t stay here! They already fired mom, and even attempted to kill her when she begged to stay for work! If they find out that I’m here, I’ll get executed for sure! I’m sorry…” Levant explains with a tint of hatred in his voice, especially after seeing the guards of the Noscrim Manor drag his mother like a doll out of the manor’s gates, threw her to the ground, and even spat at her. No longer able to take the abuse, Levant himself rushes towards the guards, grabbed his mother, and ran. The guards chased after him, of course, but Wilmarina herself happened to see the whole thing happen and managed to stop the guards by threatening them of being fired for ‘hurting her personal attendants’.
“But if you leave…I’ll be all alone…” Tears were falling from Wilmarina’s eyes as she spoke out these words. Her grip on Levant’s arms became even tighter as Levant tried to shake her off, with little success.
“I’m sorry. I can’t leave mom alone too. She…got hit by the plague. I need to find a way to make a lot of money to buy medicine and cure her…” Levant explains in a sorrowful voice as he kept on trying to shake off Wilmarina from his arm, “I really have to get out of here. That haughty old butler might come in at any moment…Please, let me go…” Levant continues to shake Wilmarina off as he said those words. Her grip only restricted further, however…She saw the determined look on Levant’s eyes, and realizes that no matter how much she begs, he won’t stay, causing her to loosen her grip.
“Thank you.” Says Levant as he backs away from Wilmarina, “Oh, and by the way…I have something for you… ” Levant takes out something from his pockets as Wilmarina watched in curiousity. A moment later, an eagle shaped emerald pendant is placed on Wilmarina’s palms by Levant.
“Happy 11th birthday, best friend!” Levant happily greets, like nothing had happened earlier. However, there was some sort of disappointment in Wilmarina’s face as soon as Levant said the last part.
“Is this for me…? Thank you…Levant.” Wilmarina clenched the pendant hard as she tried to forget the fact that this is the last day that she’ll see her best friend, and does her best to avoid another outburst of tears…
…Only for her emotions to explode even more as Levant suddenly hugs her.
“I’m sorry, Wilamrina. I want to leave…” Levant apologetically says as he caresses the back of Wilmarina’s head, “But, I promise…That when I grow up and had become stronger, I’ll come back here, and I’ll take you away from this place, and live like how we want right after! Like those adventurers from the story books mom used to read for us!” Levant’s hug became tighter as his heart was already pumping his emotions hard, as the feeling of leaving a precious friend alone was starting to get to him. Wilmarina herself is crying out loud at this point, and is hugging back Levant.
“I promise, I’m gonna come back. Someday.”
“Then, I promise that I will wait for you!” Wilmarina declares as she slowly lets go of Levant. Both of their eyes and faces are soaked in tears…
“Goodbye, best friend. Wait for me, okay?” Levant says as he slowly backs off, before turning to the nearest window of the room that he can find, opens it, and jumps from there.
“…Goodbye…” Wilmarina softly says as she watches Levant leave with an old man in robes, who appears to be in his eighties. From what she could remember, the old man is a sort of mentor to Levant. But that is not important to Wilmarina right now…
“I’ll wait for you, no matter how long… So, don’t forget about me, okay?” Wilamrina softly mutters as Levant’s silhouette fades into the darkness of the night…
And so, as her childhood friend left, Wilmarina, the young girl in love, began her long sleep, eagerly awaiting her ‘hero’. And in her place, was born Wilmarina the Hero, the girl who fights for the nation of Lescatie, thinking of nothing more than the good of her country and fellowmen, and in atonement for what her family did to her best friend’s family...
-Flashback end-
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…I hope that you haven’t forgotten those words, Levant.” Wilmarina says as she places the emerald eagle necklace back on her dresser, “For it is the reason I…lived and fought to this day. I’m still waiting…for you.”
Finally having enough of the nostalgia, Wilmarina proceeds to the bathroom of her room, readying herself for another day as ‘Wilmarina the Hero’…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside Levant’s room, in the Goddess’ Loving Embrace Orphanage…
“Hmm…So this is what the official uniform looks like. Not that I complain or anything, but, why did it had to be robes, again? It makes us look like those goddess fanatics praying on the streets…”
After cooking and eating breakfast with his little siblings, preparing his lunch, and having a warm bath, Levant now stands in front of a mirror, and examines his new official uniform, or rather, robes.
As for what the robes look like, the upper body of the robes featured a hood that was shaped like an eagle's beak in the center; this was connected to the main part of the robes, which were jet black. The main body part, the chest area, is closed by the robe. It also has long sleeves reaching till the hands. Levant also wears black colored fingerless gloves. Around the back was a belt containing a sheath for two short blades, which was buckled below the shoulder.
The lower portion was two-layered, with the inner layer of the robes extending down lower than the outer layer. They are also vertically open on the front, the back, and the sides for easier movements. Around the waist is a wide, red sash with a set of leather sheaths for knives at the front and pouches at the sides able to contain small supplies. Beneath the layers, Levant wore a pair of black pants and a low-cut, light leather black boots that are made to fit to his lower feet by three small black belts, allowing Levant easier movement when running, climbing, and jumping.
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers, they say. Which is why they will just pick up whatever they will find on the ground.”
Levant then proceeds towards his bed to gear up, as his personal set of weaponry is laid there.
The first set of weaponry that Levant equips are a pair of hidden blades, concealed beneath a pair of black colored vambraces. The blades are operated to spring and retract from below the forearm through a button that uses a system known as the pressure plate system, where only a flick of the wrist is required to spring and retract the blade from beneath the forearm. This pair of hidden blades are most useful when going in for a quick stealth kill, or when in close combat. These hidden blades are the ‘uniform’ weapons for the members of the Assassin brotherhood.
The second weapons Levant picks up are his throwing knives. They are half the size of a normal knife, but they can be deadly weapons from afar or melee when aimed accurately and discreetly towards an enemy’s weak point, or when dipped and infused with chemicals such as poison. Levant stores the knives in the leather sheaths found in front of his sash.
The third set of weaponry is a trio of small medicine vials, with a different color marking on each cap.
The first vial has a violet skull, a color that indicates poison. The poison is mixed very well with a special kind of anesthesia, which numbs the senses of the body part it first comes in contact with the moment it penetrates through the target’s skin. This is useful when going for a stealth kill. Although, so far, it has only proven fatal for humans. Monsters appeared to be able to recover after a few hours from the poison, without a problem.
The second vial has a blue colored half-moon, a mark that indicates sleeping liquid with anesthetic properties, used when the target is only to be captured intact, or when avoiding kills during an infiltration to avoid suspicion from the area.
The last vial has a red cross, a mark that indicates medicine. This medicine’s mixture speeds up the healing process of wounds taken, and even has pain killer properties, so that the user can keep fighting when wounded or be allowed to escape without bearing the pain.
Levant takes the three vials unto the pouches on the left side of his sash, and proceeds to take the last set of weaponry he needs to equip…
His most trusted pair, the twin short blades. He takes hold of the two blades, gives them a few test swings, and sheathes them onto the sheath on his back. He then proceeds to put on his hood…
But before he leaves, Levant picks up a set of feathers and places them inside his sash. These feathers are to serve as ‘markers’ for an assassin’s deeds. One example would be when a successful stealth kill on a target is achieved, allowing the assassin the leave the feather on the victim’s body, as a sign that it was an assassin who did it. This is also done when an assassin kills any criminals not related onto any assassination missions, like robbers, thieves, bandits, etc.
“Alright! Now that I’m all set, time to leave!”
Levant proceeds to the window of his room, opens it, and dives right out of it. The cold sensation of morning air wraps around his body as he descended, informing him that today is a good day for a rooftop commute to the Templar headquarters.
A few seconds later, Levant emerges from a hay bale that’s found straight below his window, which was 4 stories from above ground. As he jumped out of the hay bale, however…
“Wha…what sorcery is this?! Are you alright in there, sir?!” A girl’s voice rang loudly from outside the orphanage’s gates, causing Levant to take a look at the source of the voice…
The girl has long, flowing black hair adorned by two red colored talisman-like tubes on the side locks of her hair, and a large ribbon tied at the tip of her hair at the back. She has eyes that matched the color of her hair. She appears to wear a kind of clothing found only around the east, something called a kimono. In the girl’s case, her kimono is a combination of the color flesh and and red, adorned with a large red ribbon on her hips.
The lower part of her clothing, colored deep red, appears to be layered. The outer layer reaches below the knees, but is opened around the frontal area, revealing the inner layer, which is a short skirt. She appears to wear white colored knee-high stockings, and a pair of black and red slippers for her feet.
Based on his own observation, Levant concludes that this girl is obviously from the oriental eastern part of the world, the region known as Zipangu.
Wanting not to be appear rude, Levant proceeds to climb and jump off the gates, and lands before the oriental looking girl.
“…Err, yes, I'm okay. Thank you for asking.” Levant casually replies, before continuing, “Those clothes…You are from Zipangu, right? What brings you here in Lescatie?” Levant asks, aware that it is quite rare for people from a region that coexists with monsters to visit a land that totally despises monsters.
The oriental girl raised an eyebrow before she replies, “Are you not supposed to introduce yourself before asking questions from a stranger?”
“Oh, right. Zipangu’s customs. I’m supposed to introduce myself first before anything else…” Levant mentally reprimands himself as he clears his throat out of embarrassment, before speaking, “I’m sorry about that. I forgot about the customs from your place. My name's Levant Zanvolt. So, what brings you to Lescatie, miss…?”
The oriental girl proceeds to bow before speaking, “Koyoi. Amanomiya Koyoi, a monster slayer from the east. But please just call me Koyoi, for my last name is quite…tedious for elongated conversations.” After speaking, Koyoi then pulls out an envelope from her pocket. On it is written ‘For General Dascaros of the Snake’s Lance.’ Levant was pretty much surprised on how such a gentle looking girl was an eastern monster slayer, but that did not stop him from losing his focus.
“I am looking to deliver this letter for the Templar squad ‘The Snake’s Lance’, and its unit captain, a woman named Mersé Dascaros. I was told by the patrolling Templars around here that a member of her squad lives inside the ‘Goddess’ Loving Embrace’ Orphanage, named Levant Zanvolt. Are you him?” Koyoi speaks in a monotone voice. Taking a good look of her eyes from inside the hood of his robes, Levant observed how Koyoi’s eyes are so…deprived of life. It was so different from her frantic screams of concern from earlier when she saw him jump from a window 3 stories above…
“Well…I AM a member of that squad. A newly recruited one, anyway. I can deliver the letter for you, Miss Koyoi.” Levant explains, earning a nod from the oriental girl.
Koyoi then hands the letter to Levant, “Very well. I shall leave it to you, Zanvolt-san. Please take this and deliver it to your unit captain. I must hurry and take my leave.” And with that, Koyoi quickly disappears from Levant’s eyesight within a few seconds, surprising even the assassin himself, whose skill in disappearing from someone’s eyes is just as feared. But to Levant, a gentle looking girl with a pretty face doing the said feat is much more admirable…and fearsome.
Levant shook off the surprise and started looking for a wall to scale, while thinking about what he just saw, “That was weird. Oh, screw that, almost everything from Zipangu IS weird. I mean, just how much craziness and balls does it take to co-exist with monsters like a group of people in a community? I don’t find it bad, but…are the monsters really that civilized? I wonder how it’s like to talk to a monster like how you talk to people…without getting killed for the next 10 minutes.” After spotting a fairly low house leading to much taller buildings, Levant starts to scale it, and within a few seconds, the assassin now runs across the rooftops of Lescatie…
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Across the rooftops of Lescatie…
“Ahh…the feeling of the fresh morning air on my face…” Even as he was running, jumping, and scaling at high speed, Levant took the opportunity and time to enjoy the fresh morning air. Although, due to his ‘uniform’, only his face can fully enjoy the cool embrace of the morning wind. But still, he was having the run of a very quiet morning…
“Hey, get down, now!” The voice of a man rings out loud, catching Levant’s attention. Stopping in his tracks, he looks for the source of the voice, only to find an archer across the rooftop from where he is. Thanks to the archer’s interruption, Levant’s quiet morning was disturbed. However, as Levant stared at him, the archer seemed familiar to the assassin…
“…Oh. It’s that archer I caught last time. Reading eroticas on the rooftop, again? They allow rooftop commute her in Lescatie, you know? It’s a crime for a soldier to tell people to get down…just so that you can read those...things in public…” Levant palmed his face as he observes the archer quickly hide a small book into his pocket.
“I said, go down! No peasants allowed up here!” The archer, garbed in little armor and equipped with only a bow and a set of arrows, warns Levant, who pops a smirk on his face before disappearing from the eyesight of the archer…
“Phew. Damn assassins. I still remember the last time one of them reported me for slacking up here on the rooftops. But that was because I didn’t see ’em. Now then, for that doujin…” The archer mumbles onto himself as he pulls out a small book, entitled ‘Magical Echidna Alipheese-chan’. He then sits at the edge of the rooftop he’s on…
“Ohohoho. Alipheese-chan is so damn sexy! Who gives a shit if she’s a monster girl? She turns me on! Only if monsters WERE actually like these…damn, I seriously wish they were!” The archer incoherently mumbles, unaware of the creeping black figure behind him…who kicks him, causing him to fall down straight into a merchant stand two stories below…
The archer’s scream filled the air as he fell, “Oh my goddess!”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A second later, an archer fell into one of the merchant stands, alerting the patrolling Templars around the area. When they checked the scene…
“…Ah, it’s that archer again.”
“…Who?”
“The infamous one who hides on the rooftops to read eroticas and cheesy love novels?”
“…Check his belongings.”
And the 4 Templars weren’t wrong. Searching the unconscious archer’s body, they found three volumes of ‘Fluffy Magical Fox Tamamo’ in one pouch, 4 volumes of ‘Magical Girl Alma Elma-chan’ in another pouch, and one newly released volume of ‘Magical Echidna Alipheese-chan’ in the archer’s hands…
“Let’s arrest the guy and get one of the books for evidence…I’m pretty sure he fell asleep while reading these…” One Templar suggested.
“…Let’s keep the rest.” The unit captain suggested, earning a nod and a bro-fist from his unit members…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…Pffft…Ahahaha!” Levant couldn’t hold his laughter as he watched the archer, now awake and crying, is being arrested by the Templar patrol on charges of ‘Unreasonable vile acts on public property’ and ‘Slacking off on the job.’
“And that’s why you don’t read eroticas on the rooftops. You read them at your room!” Levant says before turning around, and proceeding to free-run his way to the Templar headquarters. As he runs and jumps through the rooftops, he still enjoyed the sight of the busy people filling the streets, since for him, it’s the sign of life in an extremely large city…The very sight of many people made him alive, for some reason…
“Kyaaah! Someone, help me, please!”
A scream rings out from somewhere below the rooftops, stopping Levant in his tracks. Following the source of the voice, he arrives on a rooftop above the back alleys of the business district…
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“Now, now, young lady, it would be wise of you to just stop moving, and have fun with us strong men, ya know.” A robber, holding a knife in his left hand, slowly approaches a cloaked young woman cornered into a wall of the back alley. Two more bandits await behind the first one, standing beside each other, banishing the cloaked woman’s hope of ever escaping…
“That’s right, why don’t you just strip that cloak and let us see your goods, hmm? You’ll live longer that way…” One of the robber’s lackeys declares as he looks at the cloaked woman, whose body and face are fully covered by her cloak. But the trembling of her body and her covering of her head with her hands did not cover her fear, much to the robber’s pleasure.
Unbeknownst to the three robbers, Levant jumps from the rooftops, brandishing hidden blades from his forearms in mid-air, before descending towards the robber’s two lackeys…and stabs the back of their shoulders with the hidden blades dipped in sleeping liquid, while landing on their backs and using their bodies for safe landing. The loud sound of bodies hitting the ground alerted the first robber, causing him to look behind…
…Only to find his two allies lying on the ground, making a light snore, with the assassin standing between their bodies, shocking the robber.
Taking advantage of the robber’s shocked state, Levant runs and jumps towards him at high speed, grabbing the robber’s equipped left hand with his right and landing his left foot on the robber’s right leg while in mid-air, before brandishing a hidden blade from his left forearm at the same time. Within a split second, the sound of a blade piercing flesh echoed throughout the alley as Levant’s hidden blade is planted into the robber’s right shoulder area.
With the body of the robber lying on the ground, Levant proceeds to retract his hidden blades with a flick of his wrist, and declares, “Don’t worry, I’m not the stab-happy type. You won’t die, but you will just fall asleep for a while, thanks to that sleeping liquid I used. Killing you off isn’t my job. Executing criminals are for the Templars.” He then proceeds to take out a feather from his sash, and leaves it onto the robber’s bloodied shoulder, leaving a sign that it was an assassin who knocked out this vile criminal.
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The assassin, now clear of any danger, then proceeds to console the cloaked woman from earlier, who now places a hand on her chest out of relief. Before Levant could start speaking, the cloaked woman began to speak. “Thank you so much, sir! I don’t know what could have happened to me if you didn’t arrive…”
“It’s alright. You’re welcome.” Levant says before taking a look at the sleeping robbers, and then at the cloaked woman before continuing to speak, “Although, an advice: Don’t take the back alleys when you’re alone or unarmed. As you can see, robbers and rapists love women who pass through these back alleys unprepared. Where were you going that you had to pass through here, anyway?” Levant asks the cloaked woman, who cheerfully answers his question without skipping a heartbeat, as if she did not get attacked at all.
“Well, I was gonna go to the Templar headquarters, when these guys popped out of nowhere and started harassing me. You see, I’m an envoy to the dwarf village. I’m supposed to deliver a letter to them today. I was going to the Templar headquarters to get the letter, but I got lost and ended up here…” The woman explains to Levant, who nods in understanding.
“I see. I guess I can escort you then. I know the way.” Levant says as he proceeds to leave the alley, with the woman following after him.
“So, what’s your name, mister hoody?” The woman cheerfully asks, earning a raised eyebrow from Levant, although the woman couldn’t see this due to his hood.
Despite being displeased at the odd nickname, Levant proceeds to answer anyway, “I’m Levant Zanvolt. How about you, miss?” The assassin asks in a casual manner, prompting the cloaked woman to remove the hood of her cloak, revealing the face of a beautiful woman with long, jet black hair, has black colored eyes beneath a pair of glasses, and beautiful fair skin. From what Levant could see, she’s probably the same age as he is.
“I’m Saphirette Spherica, an explorer, envoy, scholar, and adventurer! Nice to meet you, Sir Levant!”
“That’s a lot of…jobs.” Levant mentally comments before proceeding to reply to Saphirette, “Nice to meet you as well, Miss Saphirette. Shall we proceed to headquarters?” Levant asks the scholar-envoy, who nods in reply…
“But, what about them?” Saphirette points to the sleeping figures of the three robbers, prompting Levant to reply in a surprised tone…
“Oh, right. I’ll need to report them to the nearest patrols…”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Around the Military District of Lescatie…
After reporting the incident with the three robbers to the nearby patrols, Levant gets asked by the same patrolling Templars to escort Saphirette to the Templar headquarters, and gets advised to pass through the Military district of Lescatie to prevent further danger…
Walking through the said district, Saphirette couldn’t help but look around with curiousity as she walked alongside Levant in the Military District…
“So, are you a Templar as well, Sir Levant?” Saphirette asks Levant, who shrugs before answering…
“Well…I guess you could say that.” Levant replies, before mentally noting in his head, “But I am an unblessed one, though. More like cannon fodder.”
“Hmm…I see.” Saphirette says, before something caught her attention, “Hey, what is that building for? The one over there…” Saphirette points to a wide building with a tall tower at its middle. Levant sees where Saphirette was pointing at, and replies.
“That’s the military library. They keep information about military training, history, and monster in the books found in there.” Levant explains as Saphirette’s eyes sparkled at the mention of ‘monsters’. And as such…
“Sir Levant, I have a request…”
“Yes, Miss Saphi…rette?” Levant suddenly paused in his words as he sees a…troubling sparkle in Saphirette’s eyes…
“Let’s go in there! In the Library!” Without waiting for Levant’s answer, Saphirette drags him towards the large building…
“Wai-wait! I still have a mission to tend to-”
“Screw that! This is for KNOWLEDGE!” Saphirette irrationally replies as stars sparkled in her eyes while dragging Levant, much to the latter’s dismay…
“General Mersé’s gonna impale me on a halberd…on my first day…such misfortune.” Levant almost silently complains as he and Saphirette are nearing the library’s guards…
“Then impale her with your spear of manliness! She’ll quickly forgive you for sure!” Saphirette incoherently replies to Levant, who had a shocked and red face at realizing what her words implied…
“Wha…what?!”
A few moments later, the assassin and the scholar are given a paper of permit by the guards, and with that, the two of them proceeded to enter the gigantic military library of Lescatie…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Wow…So much books! I didn’t think military people are this studious!” Saphirette airily declares as she admires the sight of so many books lined up on multiple tall shelves, the topics ranging from military history, war tactics, monster anatomy, and the history of Lescatie.
Saphirette proceeds to take a book about Lescatie’s history, before taking a look at Levant, “Could you please wait for me a bit? Please, please, please?” Begging incoherently as soon as she held the book, Levant could only sigh at Saphirette’s antics, and he concedes to her by silently giving a small nod. With Levant’s approval, Saphirette happily takes a seat in one of the library’s wide tables, and starts reading…
“Damn it. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s an important envoy, I would’ve escaped as soon as possible. My mission at the squad is waiting! What to do, what to do…” Levant starts walking around the library by himself as he tries to think up of a way to get Saphirette to the Templar headquarters and get this business done…
Drowned in his own thoughts, Levant did not see a figure who’s currently reading a book in front of him…causing Levant to crash at that person…
“Gah!”
“Kyah!”
The force of the crash was quite strong that it knocked down Levant and the person he crashed onto. Falling on his back on the floor, Levant slowly stands up, with his hood being pulled up by gravity while doing so, revealing his face.
The person he crashed into was also standing up, and appeared to be a girl around his age, with short silver hair and blue eyes. She also wears a white colored two-layered dress with blue puffy sleeves, with a skin fit blue cloth covering her entire arm, and iron vambraces at her forearms. She also wears a red cape and carries with her a sword, signifying her status as a hero.
The lower area of her dress has two layers, with the outer layer reaching below the knee area, while open at the frontal area showing the inner layer, which is a mini-skirt. She also wears blue colored stocking that reach above the knee till the lower area of her legs, and wears a pair of brown knee-high boots for her feet.
The girl and Levant took a good look at each other’s face for a few seconds after she and Levant were already standing straight. Both of them had a shocked look on their face as they recognized each other…especially Levant.
“W-Wilmarina?!”
“Levant?! Is that…you?!”
Levant was about to reply, but before he could do so, Wilmarina quickly glomps him in a hug, tears visible in her eyes…
At that very moment, ‘Wilmarina the Hero’ temporarily fell asleep, giving way to ‘The true Wilmarina’…
“…It’s been so long! I haven’t seen you for a long time! I really missed you!” Wilmarina says as she lets go of Levant, who has a red face due to Wilmarina’s earlier action, the hug. But despite his initial surprise, he still manages to reply to her.
“…I missed you too, best friend. It’s been quite some time ever since I arrived from my training with my mentor, but this is the first time I’ve seen you in 7 years…” Levant says as he sizes up Wilmarina, “You got taller! You seem to be well fed too!” Levant comments at Wilmarina, who had a slightly pouty face at that.
“Are you…are you saying I got fat?!” A vein plopped in Wilmarina’s forehead as she asked that question. Levant, on the other hand, pops a smirk on his face as he kept on teasing her.
“I didn’t say that. I only said that you only got a bit wider-” Before he could finish his statement, Levant is abruptly assaulted by an embrace from Wilmarina, earning her a deep face of red from the assassin. This then got worse when Wilmarina suddenly rubs her face on Levant’s own, treating him to the soft sensation of her cheeks…
“Wha…what are you doing?! Stop it! Someone might see us! Do you want to send my head flying off my shoulders or something?!” Levant exclaims as he attempts to stop Wilmarina, who just kept on hugging him and rubbing her face on his own…like a 10-year old girl greeting her best friend that she hasn’t seen for a long time…
“What are you saying? We always do this back then! And now, we rarely get the chance to do so! So why not take it? And besides, there’s no one at the library at this time of the day!” Wilmarina airily states as Levant manages to move his head around enough to confirm that there is no one around, before replying…
“Well, if you say so…Just hurry up with it…B-but, it’s not like I’m enjoying this or anything…” Levant shyly concedes to Wilmarina, who giggles and stopped rubbing her face on Levant’s own, but kept on hugging him anyways…
“He feels…warm.” Wilmarina mentally comments as she feels Levant’s body heat… “He really grew up…”
“Her bazongas have grown quite much since last time…impressive-wait, why am I thinking of that at a time like this?! Ahh, damn you, my manly instincts!” Levant mentally face palms as the feeling of Wilmarina’s…chests are causing complications to his usually cold and calculating mind…and causing him to close his eyes out of shyness. Wilmarina does the same as well…It didn’t take too long before Levant couldn't resist and hugged back Wilmarina…
However, it seems that fate is not so kind to most people, and will tend to interfere at the most opportune moment…
“What is the meaning of this, Wilmarina?! To think that you’d let that filth take advantage of you!” A voice suddenly interrupts Levant and Wilmarina’s moment, causing the both of them to open their eyes and look for the source of the voice…which was an old looking man in priestly garbs…
“Oh…shit.” Levant nonchalantly says as he recognizes the man before him…
“Oh no…” Wilmarina is sweating bullets as she recognizes the man in front of her and her best friend, “F-father?! How long have you been there?!”
Wilmarina’s father then replies in an angered tone of voice, “Ever since you made contact with that unblessed filth! And for that…” The old man then points his finger at Levant before shouting, “Guards! Guards! Bring me the head of that assassin!”
Wilmarina was in shock of her father’s declaration, while Levant already puts on his hood and has already started running and climbing for the nearest window he finds inside the library…and breaks through it!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A hooded figure suddenly breaks out of one of the library’s windows, surprising the nearby guards.
Not wasting even a split second, Levant runs as fast as his feet can take him, away from the direction of the library, where a group of heavily armored soldiers has just went out of, looking for him.
“Ah! Over there, Assassin!” One of the heavily armored soldiers shouted, alerting his allies as he pointed towards Levant, who just kept running. Without hesitation, they chased after the assassin…But compared to the latter, the running speed of the soldiers appeared to be hampered by their heavy armor and weapons…
“Sending heavily armored brutes with broadswords and axes against a guy who runs in robes, can scale buildings, and run through rooftops? Seriously, Cardinal Noscrim?” Levant mentally muses as he pulls out a bag of coins from his wallet, opens it, and spills its contents at random directions while running, catching the attention of beggars and broke, greedy soldiers alike…
…And causing them to start a rumble of grabbing the coins, getting in the way of the armored soldiers that are chasing Levant, and causing them to end up crashing onto the beggars and other soldiers due to the momentum caused by the weight of their armors while running, stumbling the armored soldiers and buying Levant time to scale one of the nearest walls he can find…and found one, he did.
“Damn it, he’s getting away!”
“Get out of the way-oh look, gold coins!”
“I can’t see him anymore! Screw this, I’m getting those coins!”
“I love you, random assassin!”
Giving up on the chase, the soldiers went straight to join the rumble for the coins left by Levant. Meanwhile, the aforementioned assassin is on his way to the Templar headquarters as he runs across the rooftops of Lescatie once more…But as he ran, Levant’s heart and mind was invaded by a certain feeling he had always hated, even back when he was of young age…
…The feeling of being weak and unable to do anything in his own power, the same reason why he couldn’t become a full Knights Templar, the same reason of failure to save his mother, and most of all, the same reason why Wilmarina is still bound by her greedy mess of a father’s whims and wishes…
“I’m sorry, Wilmarina. Right now, I do not have the strength. Please, wait for me a little bit longer…I promise, as soon as I find a way to get more 'power', I’ll save you…and free you! I won’t fail. I won’t lose anyone I love ever again!”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, inside the squad room of the Snake’s Lance Squad, in the headquarters of the Holy Cross Templars…
“Damn newbies…Always late like some damn VIP!”
A female general complains as she paces back and forth inside the squad room she’s in.
She has grey eyes and grey hair tied up, and a normal skin tone. She wears a metal chest plate beneath a green-colored long sleeve military uniform, with black gloves fully covering the entirety of both her hands. She also appears to carry a halberd in one of her hands.
She also wears a pair maroon short shorts held by a belt bearing the insignia of Lescatie. The length of her shorts exposes scars from both of her legs, obviously from battles with monsters. As for her feet, she wears a pair of brown colored knee-high stockings and armored greaves.
This war general is known by the name of Mersé Dascaros, a famous war general who has fought and survived wars with monsters. But as of right now, her experiences didn’t seem to matter, as not even one of her ‘new’ students had shown up.
Mersé gives off a sigh as she eyes the clock hanging by the northern wall of the squad room, “It’s about to hit noon. Damn, I’ll just have a drink and…”
As Mersé was about to give up waiting and leave the room, a hooded figure suddenly jumps in from the squad room’s main window, alerting her and making her ready her halberd on reflex…
Seeing her reaction, the hooded figure raises his hands before speaking, “Whoa, whoa, easy! I’m a squad member! My name’s Levant Zanvolt!” After saying that, Levant proceeds to pull up his hood, revealing his face to Mersé, who takes a long good look at his face before taking out a piece of paper from a pocket of her uniform…
“Zanvolt, Zanvolt…ah! There you are!” Mersé cheerfully points out the last name found in the paper she pulled out earlier, “So, they sent an assassin this time, eh? Oh well, doesn’t matter that much. Let’s get started! At least, I got myself a unit member who’s actually on time! To be honest, I don’t know if I should slap you or kiss you for arriving!” Mersé declares as she gestures to Levant to leave the room, earning a confused look from the assassin.
“Neither is fine, thank you. But ‘get started?’ On what?” Levant asks Mersé, who gives him an excited look…
“For the first day of our training as a squad, of course! Even with just the two of us, we’re still a squad! So move that robed ass and go!” Mersé ecstatically declares as she exits the room…
“…Well, at least she’s…dedicated. Unlike the other Templar Generals, anyway…” Levant unenergetically mutters as he follows Mersé out of the room…
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In the training courtyard of the Holy Cross Templars headquarters…
“Alright! For today’s lesson, we will start with-”
“Wa-wait!” Levant suddenly cuts off Mersé, who raises an eyebrow.
“Oh come on. What is it?” Mersé asks in an irritated tone, prompting Levant to hurriedly take an envelope from one of his pouches…
“Here. It was delivered by a girl named Koyoi Amanomiya, a monster slayer from Zipangu. She said to give this letter to you.” Levant explains before handling a letter to Mersé, who had a curious look on her face as she received the letter, and opens it.
“Hmmm.” Mersé kept on silently reading the letter, while Levant just watched.
It took a while before Mersé closes the letter and begins to speak, “Looks like we got ourselves a mission. Luckily enough, it’s just a B rank escort mission.” Levant listened intently as Mersé kept on explaining, “We are going to escort a scholar-envoy named Saphirette Spherica to the Zipangu’s dwarf haven. With our members not available for the moment, I guess the both of us will have to do some borrowing from the other squads…Say, Levant, do you know someone?” Mersé asks Levant, who places a finger on his chin, before someone strikes his memory…
“…I have a friend who’s a mage. I also know an archer.” Levant says as Mersé looked intrigued at his words as he kept speaking, “The mage goes by the name of Mimiru Miltie, while the archer is known by the name of Primera Concerto. I believe you’ve heard of them?”
“That little magical girl and the emo elf? Of course!” Mersé declares as she proceeds to leave the training courtyard, “I guess we have a mage, an assassin, an archer, and me, a spearman. All that’s left is a swordsman and a priestess, at least. And lucky for us,” Mersé kept on speaking, “I happened to get along with those last two. I guess I’ll have to go and borrow them! You go get the magical girl and the unhappy elf, Levant!” And with that, Mersé leaves Levant’s eyesight. For some reason, the words ‘emo elf’ and ‘little magical girl’ won’t leave the insides of his ears…but he shakes it off anyway, and focuses on the task at hand.
“Hmm…It IS about lunchtime. Time to wait at the barracks… As for Primera, I’ll look for her around the forest borders this afternoon…But, to think that the person I’ll be escorting is that book loving scholar…Today is really just full of surprises…” Levant mutters as he thinks of what to say to Mimiru to have her temporarily join the Snake’s Lance Squad…
…In a few minutes, Levant is in the barracks, preparing lunch along with the other Templars, while waiting for Mimiru…
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Around the business district of Lescatie…
“Okay! Now that I’m done with the gravity reversal magic, time for the magic of love! Ufufufu…” Mimiru declares unto herself as she jogs excitedly on the side of the street.
Today was another usual day for Mimiru Miltie. She was going to eat lunch with her big bro again today.
As she jogged on the streets, Mimiru caught sight of two children, a boy carrying a little girl who’s currently crying in the boy’s shoulder. From what she could see, Mimiru deduced that the two are siblings. As she watches the spectacle before her, Mimiru remembers the first day she met him…her ‘big bro’…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-Flashback: A few years ago, sometime prior to meeting Levant-
Ever since becoming a mage, her daily routine has changed from a kid’s mornings into a mature adult’s scheduled life. At first, the routine only consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, training at Magitec, eat lunch at Magitec, more training at Magitec, go home, eat dinner, sleep. And then, rinse and repeat.
Even then, as she would pass through some districts, she would often see sights of children her age, both boys and girls, playing around freely, having no care around the world. At first, Mimiru only ignored them, believing that her current status as being recognized as genius is enough joy for her and her parents. She was happy, with learning magic and all that.
Well, she was happy. Until a certain sight unfolded before her.
While walking around the streets, she caught sight of a girl, also her age, being bullied by a group of teenage boys in noble clothes. From what she could hear, the boys are ridiculing the poor girl for having no parents and being peniless, easily telling Mimiru that the said girl is an orphan, with no family to defend her.
Mimiru herself was about to step in, when a hooded figure entered the scene. Without delay, the hooded figure proceeds to skillfully beat the lights out of the nobles, resulting in each of them earning a damaged face from the hooded figure’s fists and feet. In a few moments, the nobles ran away, threatening the hooded figure that they’ll call the city guards if he appears before them again, before running back to their large homes.
However, the sight after the fight is what shook Mimiru. The hooded figure approaches the girl in rags, who is now crying, and carries her in his arms, like a small child. As Mimiru watched, she could hear bits and pieces of the conversation between the hooded figure and the girl in rags…
“Are you hurt anywhere, Silmeria? Did they touch you?”
“*sob*…Nope, big bro Levant. *sob* You arrived just in time…*sob*… I was…really scared…*sob*Uwaaah! *sob*” The girl in rags says as she buries her face, crying onto the hooded figure’s chest…
The hooded figure, revealed to be the girl’s older brother, softly caresses the back of the girl’s head while saying, “There, there. Don’t worry, they won’t come back. Big bro is here…”
The very touching sight disturbed Mimiru for many nights, as realization was slowly dawning on her as each day of her routine repeated itself…
Even with her great magic, people feared and admired her at the same time, but never cared for her in the slightest.
Even with all the money, her parents never actually looked at her like their beloved little daughter, only believing her to be their walking money maker.
Even with the fact that she’s still a small child, the adults use her for their protection instead, when it was supposed to be the other way around to begin with.
Despair and hatred reigned Mimiru’s will to live, realizing that her ‘freedom as a child’ has been taken away by greedy adults, who only want their own survival against monsters without an ounce of care for those that protect them. A little more, and Mimiru could have sworn, she would’ve ended her own miserable existence, that is, till he came…
It was during a hot summer day. Mimiru was walking in the middle of the street at noon, having just finished training once again. However, not having been able to take refreshments before leaving Magitec, thirst and hunger conquered her senses, and it didn’t take too long…
…Before she fell to the ground, unconscious.
As Mimiru opened her eyes, she found herself on a bed, inside a neatly set room. And beside her, was…
…A young man in a hood. But as Mimiru looked closer…
She recognized the hooded figure as the same one that saved the girl in rags from the nobles.
Mimiru then realizes that the hooded man does not seem to move. Taking common sense into consideration, she places a hand on the hooded man’s shoulder, and attempts to shake him awake…
“Hmm…? Oh, you’re up. Good morning!” The hooded man cheerfully greets as he pulls up his hood, revealing his face to Mimiru. What was hidden in the hood was actually a young boy in his teens. As she stared at him, Mimiru couldn’t help but admire the bright glow coming off from the boy’s golden eyes, like they were crystals…
“Are you hungry, little miss? I prepared something for you. Wait here.” The teenage boy went to leave the room, however…
“Wait! Do you even know who I am? And why are you helping me?” Mimiru asks, earning a confused look from the teenager, who answers…
“Well, first, nope. I don’t know who you are, nor do I care. Second, I can’t leave an unconscious little girl in the middle of the street. Third, my mother always had told me to help people when they need it.” The boy leaves, leaving a confused Mimiru inside the room…
“Wha…what the hell does that even mean?!” Mimiru loudly declares, as confusion hits her mind. For her, that boy’s logic is…flawed. He doesn’t know her, the great mage Mimiru? Preposterous! Helping strangers simply because they look like they need help? Ridiculous!
…But somehow, the boy’s words affected Mimiru. From the way he treated her, it was like he was talking to a random little girl. That’s right…
Out of so many people, that boy actually treated Mimiru like a little girl…But, will that stay the same once he knows who she is?
Mimiru decided to wait and see…
-A few minutes later-
“That soup was amazing…thank you!” Mimiru thanks the boy before her, who nods and smiles.
“You’re welcome, little miss.” The boy replies as he takes away the dishes from Mimiru’s hands and places it on the table beside the bed, “By the way, what’s your name, little miss? I’m Levant Zanvolt.”
“I’m…Mimiru Miltie.” Mimiru hesitantly replies, waiting for a reaction from Levant.
“Hmm, so that’s your name? Nice to meet you, little Mimiru! I know this is sudden, but…” Stars were obviously sparkling from Levant’s eyes as he kept on speaking, “You’re…so cute! You’d make a great little sister, ufufufu!” No longer able to restrain himself, Levant proceeds to lightly pinch Mimiru’s cheeks, much to her surprise…till she saw the blood trickling from Levant’s nose…
“Wha-?! Get away from me, you lolicon! Thunder spark!”
“Gah! So cute! Oh wait…is that lightning? Oh, shit!”
*BOOM*
Even after that incident, Levant would still tease Mimiru and treat her like his little sister from time to time when they meet, earning the former with either a sarcastic remark or a lightning bolt. Even so, as their interactions continue, Mimiru felt something slowly reviving inside her…and eventually, it made itself know to Mimiru…
…The feeling of loving, and being loved.
Since then, Mimiru would no longer wait for Levant to appear around the streets, as she would now proceed to the barracks of the Holy Cross Templars instead, and often end up straight into the arms of her ‘big bro’…
-Flashback end-
Shaking off the memories, Mimiru proceeds to hurry to the barracks, no longer able to wait into jumping straight into Levant’s arms once more…
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Inside the Council of Ten, Lescatie’s main castle.
“From this point onwards, you are not to leave the premises of your home or interact with any living commoner when not with proper authority. Most especially, with any of the unblessed soldiers of the order. Will that be understood?” Cardinal Noscrim declares to the kneeling Wilmarina, who nods.
“Yes, fathe-Cardinal Noscrim.”
“Very well. Dismissed!” Cardinal Noscrim declares, allowing Wilmarina to leave the council room…
-Outside the Council Room-
“I’m sorry…Levant. I’m so sorry.” Wilmarina holds back her tears as she tightly grips her sword, her heart burning with sorrow and hatred for the Council of Ten once more.
Because of what happened at the Military Library from earlier, the council of ten cardinals decided to prevent Wilmarina’s ‘corruption’ by the ‘lowly classes’ by declaring an order that authority shall watch every single one of Wilmarina’s actions when outside the Noscrim Manor. To Wilmarina, this obviously means one thing…
…She would be no longer able to talk to Levant, not in the open, anyways…
But, the fact that the council will execute her beloved assassin once he is found making contact with her crushed Wilmarina’s hope of ever landing between Levant’s arms…
“Someday…I will be free. Levant will come and save me, I know it. I believe in him, just as he believes in me! Till then, I...must remain as the 'Hero'!”
With that little hope in mind, Wilmarina proceeds to the training courtyard of Lescatie’s castle, to find some unfortunate training dummies to take out her frustration on…
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Deep in the prison dungeons of Lescatie…
“Gah!”
A guard falls unconscious as a palm filled with divine energy lands behind his head. Behind the said guard is a woman, with flowing green hair, who proceeds to check the pockets of the knocked out guard…
“Ah! Here’s the keys.” Sasha Folmoon declares as she takes away the keys hanging from the guard’s belt, and proceeds to leave the area, and going deeper into the dungeon…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cell # 33 , The Monster prison cells, Prison Dungeons of Lescatie…
“Okay, here’s cell number…33.” Sasha mutters as she takes out a key from her pocket, numbered ‘33’. And with it, she opens the door of the cell, revealing…
…Minorin, the minotaurus.
“Holy shit, now that’s what I call a miracle! I still hate your Chief Goddess though...but I owe ya one for this!” Minorin happily declares as she exits the prison cell, with Sasha turning her back from Minorin in front of the door, and started casting a spell…
“What are ya doin’?” The minotaurus asks Sasha, who quickly replies…
“I’ll be teleporting you straight into a camp of monsters up in the tip of the northern forest borders. You’ll be safe once I finish this teleportation spell, so please, for the meantime, wait warmly till it’s ready.”Sasha declares, earning her a nod from the minotaurus.
“I know I shouldn’t be askin’ this, but, why’re ya helpin’ us monsters?” Minorin asks, earning her a gentle smile and an answer from Sasha…
“…Humans and monsters are not so different. We both have bodies and souls, even feelings. The only thing that separates us are our physical appearance, and the way we need to live…But with understanding and love, I’m sure…that we can co-exist. Someday.” Sasha says as the teleportation spell she’s doing is about half finished…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deep down Lescatie’s sewers, in the hidden catacombs…
“Hmm…So his name is Levant Zanvolt. Such a strong name, if you ask me. His first name reminds me of the name the region father once belonged to in the middle east.” Deruella comments as she hands over a parcel over to the woman in front of her, “Take this with you on the journey to the dwarf haven in Zipangu. Give it to the elder in place of the letter that the humans made.”
“I will, mistress. But how about the assassin? You see, the last time I got sent into reconnoiter into a squad with an assassin, I almost got found out. They are quite the pain to deal with, in fact. And worse, some other monster managed to ravage him when I finally managed to be alone with him!” Saphirette says as she takes the parcel Deruella handed over.
“Oho? Just be cautious then. You managed to finish last time's reconnoiter with similar conditions, yes? I’m sure you can also do it this time. And other than that, the assassin you mentioned doesn’t even seem to be as brutal, as he is still just a green horn when it comes to the matters of his job. I saw it for myself when he and the magical girl fought Minorin.”
“What are you implying, mistress?”
“That our assassin is still inexperienced. Tell me, would a seasoned assassin spare those three robbers who attacked you this morning?” Deruella asks Saphirette, who nods in understanding.
“But enough of the assassin. What intrigues me right now are the main targets for the invasion’s starting phase. So far, the ones we are aiming most are called Wilmarina Noscrim, and a little magical girl named Mimiru Miltie, am I not right?” Deruella asks, earning a nod from Saphirette. Deruella then proceeds to continue, “…Now that I think about it, You did say in your report that the rookie hero is quite close to a certain assassin, down right to the point of physical contact, albeit being forbidden from such act, is that correct?” Deruella states as Saphirette gave her a curious look.
“What are you plotting, mistress?” Saphirette asks, earning her a mischievous smile from the lilim in front of her.
“Say, Saphirette, do you know how kids feel during the few days before Christmas?” Deruella smiles as she kept speaking, “Because I’m sure that our lovely Wilmarina is in such a state…So why don’t we become the Santa Claus on Christmas day? You know, give her the present she wants the most…” Deruella’s smile only became wider…
“…An Assassin in a box. Alive, of course!”
“…But I thought the invasion plan for Lescatie is still in planning process, my dear mistress…” Saphirette chimes in.
“Of course, it is, dear scholar! I was only putting another kid’s name on my special list!” Deruella answers, with the same unfading smile…
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Chapter 1 end
We only realize the value of happiness once we part with it, and when we find out how rare it is to find another one.
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And done!
Please tell me what you think, guys! Constructive criticisms are also welcomed with open arms, no matter how painful!
...It-it's not like I'm a masochist or anything...
