Plop!
“Ow!”
Because the chair vanished, Veil, who had been sitting there watching the show and eating melon seeds, suddenly landed on the ground. The pain brought tears to her eyes.
And those crows… after a few cries, they instantly shrank down, turning into ordinary-sized purple-black crows, flapping their wings…
The next second, they disappeared from everyone’s sight.
They flew away?
Then… what about the enemy!?
Holly looked in confusion at the Clown’s corpse lying on the ground…
But the once mangled and bloody corpse had already vanished without a trace.
All that remained on the ground was a pile of wood shavings.
It looked as if some large creature had trampled through a thicket…
Looking around again… because the light was no longer dim, the faces of those “spectators” around them were now completely revealed to everyone.
What lay on the ground were piles of humanoid wooden figures, some still frozen in applause and cheers.
Wrinkled, dark bark had replaced these people’s skin.
It was hard to tell… had trees turned into people, or had people become trees?
“Hmm?”
And as the whole town faded into mist and vanished, there was no longer any barrier between Ileya and the others.
With a tilt of her head, she immediately saw Holly holding the Holy Sword and… Reliel, who now only had a white chest wrap covering her upper body.
At the same moment Ileya saw Reliel, Reliel clearly saw her as well.
Ileya…? The disappearance of the surrounding town… was it her doing?
Tap, tap, tap…
However, just as everyone faced each other, the young lady didn’t say a word and simply walked over.
“What happened to you?” Ileya frowned as she spoke, draping her coat over her sister’s shoulders.
While putting the coat on Reliel, she also caught sight of the fading black tattoo on her sister’s back…
Looking closely, Ileya was quite certain… the tattoo seemed to depict the scales of some kind of creature.
It stretched from Reliel’s shoulder all the way down her back.
And… the tattoo had a strangely captivating quality.
There was an inexplicable beauty that made it hard to look away, a feeling that made one subconsciously want to reach out and touch it.
“Battle.”
Reliel kept to her usual style, answering with utter brevity.
And perhaps because of Ileya’s earlier high-handed behavior, the younger sister, who had been opening up more in front of her elder sister, once again became a bit distant from Ileya.
Looking at her sulking sister, Ileya could only smile helplessly and reach out to pinch her cheek.
Reliel only gave Ileya a calm look, but did not stop her.
But… after showing concern for her sister, the young lady was far less cordial with the others.
She turned her head and looked at the bandits, who were now staring blankly at everything around them.
She raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Um…” Black Wolf noticed Ileya’s gaze and had just opened his mouth to say something when he heard the young lady’s cold voice.
“Get lost. I’ll give you only ten seconds.”
Whoosh! Black Wolf stood up without hesitation and ran into the woods that had appeared on the side!
The other bandits scrambled to their feet and followed behind their leader.
But… what they didn’t hear was that, as she watched their retreating backs, Ileya quietly added another sentence in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Eliminate them all.”
Buzz… the next moment, a black hole the size of a fist appeared on Ileya’s shadow, and a barely perceptible shadow slipped out, merging into the last bandit’s shadow…
Then vanished along with them into the forest underbrush.
When it came to certain matters, Ileya was very petty.
Not to mention these people were scum to begin with—after seeing her secrets, they had no right to live.
After finishing these things, she turned back to look at her attendants with a smile~
Hmm… not bad~ After all that, everyone made it through with all limbs intact~
“Holly~”
“Yes!!” The Holy Sword Maiden, suddenly called upon, instinctively straightened her back!
“Later, tell me everything that happened on your side~” Ileya smiled as she turned to look at Holly beside her.
She had just spoken such harsh words to her before, but now she acted as if nothing had happened at all…
It really felt like she was a completely different person.
Actually. Actually, I’m still a little upset about what happened before!
Hmph…
So thought the Holy Sword Maiden in her heart, but the next second she felt someone gently patting her head.
“You weren’t frightened earlier, were you?”
Ileya’s gentle voice sounded in her ears, her slightly cool hand softly caressing her head.
Clearly… the other girl was about the same age as herself, yet her tone was just like that of a senior advising a junior.
“Since your master taught you the way of battle, then let me teach you… the principles of being a leader~”
As Ileya spoke, she withdrew her hand and slowly removed the top hat from her head.
With the evening breeze blowing through the forest, her white hair, like frosted willow branches, brushed against the girl’s cheek.
“Most of the time, having other voices in a team is a good thing… but in critical moments, in times of danger… the leader’s word is absolute.”
The young lady stretched lazily as she spoke, then started walking slowly toward the carriage.
“Even if you think the decision is wrong, you must carry it out to the end. That is the meaning of a leader’s existence.”
Listening to Ileya’s words, Holly felt a bit confused.
She didn’t quite understand what they meant, but… before she could think it over, Amisa stepped out from the bushes nearby.
“Miss, everything has been taken care of.”
“Mhm~” The young lady didn’t look back; she only gazed at the Staff in her hand, her eyes deep and distant.
“Since the mist has cleared, let’s… move on~”
As everyone climbed into the carriage one by one, Amisa raised the whip, and with the horses’ hooves pounding and the wheels rolling, everyone’s nerves gradually eased from the tension of Mist Town.
On the carriage, Holly recounted to Ileya everything they had experienced in the Circus.
When she described how the acrobat woman had grown black feathers and turned into a giant crow, and how the regular spectators around them started scratching their faces as if infected and grew black hair on their faces…
Ileya’s eyes lit up.
This matched the information she had found; it was very similar to the disaster recorded on the Ancient Tablet that was ultimately resolved by the Hero King of the First Generation of Halonza.
Back then, black hair would start growing on people’s bodies, and in the end they would turn into monsters.
Also… it was very similar to the symptoms her aunt had shown before she died.
Thinking of this now…
Suddenly, Ileya recalled what that man had said before he died.
[It wasn’t us who found you, but you who found us.]
Hiss… listening to those words now, they seemed spot on.
And in this “Golden Sun Circus,” she had indeed obtained some information she wanted.
[The Royal Family, and even the humans who know the secret… are all afraid of my mother’s family, that is, the Seredon Family bloodline.]
[Arthur is a very important person, whether it be to those monsters, or to the Seredon Family.]