As the sun was rising on the cold morning, a strange shadowy figure slithered around the castle's inner bailey, making its way toward the castle without any soldier noticing its presence.
***
After leaving the castellan's room, Aryn and Leheen were walking through the halls of the castle.
“That castellan woman is a real jerk,” said Leheen. “If she weren't level 45, I would have smacked her in the face.” She clenched her fist.
“Fighting her now doesn't make sense. We just gotta focus on finding the divine relic.”
“How are we gonna do that?”
“I guess... we have to go to this new world she was talking about.” As Aryn walked, he looked at his feet, lost in thought.
“Is something wrong? You look weird.”
“It's nothing. I was just thinking about what she told us. I am a priestess, so it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible. Still, it's a mission I can't avoid. I just wanna let that sink in.”
“It's not impossible if we do it together. You can count on me.” Leheen smiled at him.
“Do you have any idea where we should go first?”
“Hmm, that's a good question. Where do we find it?” She put a finger on her chin and looked up. “I don't knowww.” She smiled with an airhead expression.
Aryn sighed. “It's very overwhelming, isn't it? We have the task of saving the world, but there are no instructions or anything like that. We don't even know where to start.”
Aryn was feeling confused and discouraged. In RPG video games, you have missions that tell you exactly what to do, where to go, how to do it, and what you can get from completing them.
Instructions were Aryn's way of life. At college, his friends would tell him that he was very intelligent, but he never considered himself that way. He only followed instructions: what to study and when to study it. And everything became easy.
He wasn't an improviser.
When he checked his system. all he could see were his statistics.
[Aryn – Priestess Lv. 1
Awakening No. 1: King's Mark
Awakening No. 2: -
Defense: 1
Speed: 1
Magic Ability: 3]
Hmm, if I could get any instructions, a hint, anything, things would be much easier. This is getting frustrating.
Besides that, the system only showed the names and levels of monsters during battle, as he remembered from what had happened at the lake. He could also see the names of buildings. That meant his system was limited to controlling battles, general missions related to awakenings, and his statistics. The lack of information felt like a dead end.
“Hmm. That reminds me of something my mother told me.” Leheen stopped Aryn’s train of thought.
“Casia?”
“Casia isn't my mother. She only found me in the river. But anyway, what she told me was that, with patience and saliva, the elephant stuck it into the ant.”
Aryn and Leheen stopped in front of a large window overlooking the mountains in the frontiers, a landscape of trees and rivers, and the people living in their homes.
“Everyone is living their lives, maybe as a baker or a blacksmith,” she said. “But none of them started out knowing they would become one thing or another. Every decision they made throughout their lives led them to the exact moment they're in now. Maybe the fact that you and I are only a level one and a level five priestess means we're blank slates. If we make enough small decisions, then we'll find the sacred relic.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. At this moment, nobody expects anything from a pair of weak priestesses.” She shrugged “It would be impossible to beat the demon or angel armies, so we should start small, right? We should start small, very small.” She held her palms close together to show how small she meant.
“A blank slate. Actually that sounds very smart Leheen, How did you come-.” Aryn noticed Leheen's pervert face. A grin with eyebrows raised
“Also, if we manage to get stronger in the process, we'll take that castellan's virginity... Aaahhhhh!”
“You're such a pervert, Leheen.”
“Hey, don't say that as if you weren't also very excited about the wager!” She grabbed Aryn's breasts and fondled them. “Don't you want to grab her bare tits and muscles on which no hands have ever been?”
“Y-yes, I do.”
“Then we're gonna do it!” She raised a finger toward the ceiling. “Don't you see? The castellan's chest led us to our first goal in this catastrophic war. Now we gotta go for it!”
“That's right! Our first goal is to defeat her, so we gotta become stronger before then.”
“Now... how would someone live in order to defeat a level 45 fire knight?”
Both their stomachs grumbled.
***
As the king of Arel, Aryn had the right to summon the castle's cooks. A butler was in charge of taking their orders, and soon, many plates of food were served in the large dining table. Sausages, egg custard, rice pudding, a plate of fresh out of the oven bread. Everything tasted good as they washed it down with a goblet of red wine.
“It's very good,” said Aryn, taking a spoon of the rice pudding. It had a soft texture and was sweet but not overwhelming.
At the same time, Leheen was quickly going between each spoon of her three plates and taking a bite of bread in her hand.
“Relax, nobody’s taking it from us, Leheen...”
“A very nice morning,” said a voice that startled them both, as if the speaker had appeared in the room without walking in. “It's a shame it's stained by such a tragedy.”
“Ah! Who are you?” Aryn asked.
“I am Relouf, Duke of Soriel, the proctor sent by the Kingdom of Chanderay. I was resting in the castle last night, expecting to meet with the king at this hour.” The mysterious horned man in a black cloak stared at Aryn “And It seems that even though he just died, the meeting is still happening.”
“What was he going to talk to you about?”
“The king assigned me to negotiate a truce in exchange for some forces from Arel joining the war against the angelic kingdom.” He grabbed a piece of bread just as Leheen was about to take it from the plate and started eating it. “…Good bread.”
“That's... that's perfect, right, Leheen? Could that end the war?”
Leheen started coughing from eating too fast “Er... I'm not well-versed in politics, but I guess? Two is more than one, so maybe it's good.” She shrugged as she kept eating.
“We should do that, then.”
“I am relieved to hear that.” Said Relouf “When I was making my way to Arel, I was afraid the king would say no because he was so stubborn about not doing direct attacks. So even if this doesn't end the war immediately, many lives will be saved in the near future.”
Aryn’s stereotype of demons quickly shattered. One could say that this demon was more civil and educated than many humans.
“Do you see? Living our lives has made everything easy!” said Leheen. “There's no need to go out after all.”
The food tasted even better now that things seemed to be sorted out. They enjoyed the relief of the moment... for a few seconds.
Suddenly, Aryn and Leheen had their vision wrapped in shadows, making them blind.
“What? What is this?”
“No!” shouted Relouf. “Noooooagghh!!”
They heard a body fall to the floor and a window shatter.
Their blindness slowly subsided, and as their vision returned, they saw the proctor lying on the floor with a face of horror, no longer breathing.