“Either this guy is crazy confident or mad nuts.” Yuuji mumbled these words out with his hand digging into his own hair upon Amilia finishing the letter.
Utter shock was apparent upon all their faces. The adventurers who didn’t know what was actually going on. Marcus, who was shocked at how fast Sirius came back. And then finally, Yuuji. However, Yuuji's shock came out with such mumbling.
They all looked towards Yuuji who broke the silence of the situation with his words, then as if suddenly regaining the ability to think again they all blinked before Marcus finally spoke out.
“We need to send this message to Miss Thoka… I don’t think it can even wait until morning..” Marcus gently took the letter from Amilia’s hands and put it in his own pocket.
“We don’t know how much time we have before he comes back..” Yuuji put a finger to his chin, thinking.
In a situation like this, the offender would give a deadline or demands. However, Sirius stated none of these.
Looking back on it now, he only stated his desire to destroy the kingdom, but to Yuuji this alone did not make sense. He couldn’t get a grasp on what it was that Sirius wanted and it doesn’t seem like he’s the sort of lunatic that wakes up one day and says “I’ll destroy a kingdom” either.
‘I can’t even begin to analyze this lunatic’s actions at all!’
Cutting into his train of thoughts was the beauty standing next to him. Her amethyst eyes sparkling under the moonlight was a dazzling sight to behold indeed, but he couldn’t spare the time for such thoughts.
“We should probably ask this when we’re making the plans for what we should do next.”
“Yes, you’re right. We should save these questions for the meeting.”
Yuuji looked at Amilia with a complex expression then a stiff smile flashed across his face.
“I’ll rush this to Miss Thoka. You two should go back and rest for now, I’ll handle the rest. You’ll probably need to come tomorrow as quick as possible however. so please keep that in mind.” Marcus quickly grabbed everyone’s attention “Amilia, can you please heal those adventurers a little ?”
Amilia nodded and immediately got to healing. While she wasn’t the best at it she could do some basic first aid using magic which in many situations is all that’s needed.
The adventurers’ injuries were either surface level or not deep enough to be of concern. Blue light came out of Amilia’s hand while healing the adventurers.
Beautiful silver hair shining in the moonlight, beautiful snowflakes flowing from those pale hands of hers towards the wound and stopping the bleeding.
“Can you walk now?” her voice directed towards the adventurer snapped Yuuji out of his mesmerized state.
With a nod, the adventurer got up. With a bit of a struggle and being shouldered by his other companion, he was able to walk fine and well. Same for the other injured adventurer.
With a wave as to thank them, the adventurers moved away–
“Yuuji, Is your leg ok?” Amilia asked still looking towards the adventurers
It wasn’t an out-of-place question, in fact. It was a well picked question as Yuuji just recovered from his leg injury. Sure, he did go out and kill slime, but it wasn’t as intense as this one fight with the undead.
“Yeah. Just a little stinging pain but nothing too bad.” Yuuji replied to her whilst touching the injured area of his leg.
“More importantly…” he directed his gaze towards Amilia with seriousness in his voice “His intent wasn’t to kill these 4, you realized that too, right?”
Amilia widened her eyes then looked at Yuuji’s face. His face was full of seriousness and it didn’t seem like he was blabbering some random crap to her. She closed her eyes, clenched her fist and put it on her chest.
“So you also noticed that the hostility only got stronger the moment we showed up, Yuuji?”
With a nod, Yuuji reached his hand out to the far far skies. As if trying to grab a piece of paper out of stack or perhaps a book to answer his doubts.
“I wonder what he might do next.. what meaning does his action amount to..” Yuuji asked as he clenched his fist and brought it back to his side.
With that declaration, the two walked back home. A journey that was full of anxiety for the future and a lot of thinking about the events leading up to today.
On the crack of dawn, Yuuji and Amilia were getting ready to head to a meeting
‘Come as quickly as you can huh..’ Yuuji thought to himself as he stood outside waiting for Amilia to finish up.
Yuuji was so anxious he barely slept. that, and he didn’t bother taking off his clothes so that he could be ready as fast as possible.
Yuuji kept looking at the sunrise. The sky looked clean, there weren't a lot of clouds that day either. The colors mystified him, it felt like a fantasy. ‘That’s because it is one, dumbass.’ he thought to himself.
“Clear sky today huh.. unlike our situation here.” As he got too focused on the sky a voice called out to him. He looked beside him and found the short, cute silver-haired girl looking directly where his gaze was.
With a simple nod, he only muttered a “Yeah.” and nothing more. With enough of a pause, they started walking.
It was a quiet trip to the meeting area, both of them felt too stiff about the whole situation to even talk.
About the meeting place, It was a historic place people used as a monument for this kingdom. The sort of thing people would say “this kingdom is known for this” like with Egypt for the Pyramids, or like Japan for Mt. Fuji.
From what Yuuji read in the time he was hospitalized, It was a massive stone-brick building with massive wooden windows. The sort of thing Yuuji only saw in old architecture when he was still in Japan. It looked cool, and it was functional too.
Time passed by and they arrived at the place. The books didn’t lie. It truly was a stone-brick building with wooden windows and a decently high wall almost like a cathedral of some sort. It had the Kingdom’s crest onto it made out of wood.
“I’ve not seen anyone with this crest, no knights nor at the royal mansion..” Yuuji couldn’t hold his curiosity and Amilia nodded and lifted her finger to explain.
“This crest is an old sign of the kingdom, it was around the time when The Great Revolution happened. People stopped using it trying to abandon those old days of abuse, but since this is a monument it’s been kept as is.” her explanation didn’t miss a beat and made sense.
People usually wanted to forget about their old rulers when they were abusive or a dictator. However people loved the idea of having something old to be the identity of the kingdom. People were just that complicated.
“This is the Cathedral of Kage.” it wasn’t a mansion, well at least before that is, it was a cathedral.
“Convenient for meetings..” Yuuji blurted out
During their chitchat at the gate, someone from the yard came rushing at them. It was Boryana looking in very bad shape.
“I don’t know what took you so long but this is intense in there.” she was grimacing as if she was in pain.
From how she looked, it didn’t look too good in there and probably extremely tense. And it was understandable too. The whole kingdom was in danger of a swarm of monsters led by a lunatic and they didn’t know what to do.
“Right..” Yuuji realized they’ve been chatting for too long and remembered what Marcus had asked of him ‘To come as soon as possible.. nothing beats that guy after all.’
With that thought in mind Yuuji, Amilia, and Boryana all headed inside. Boryana bowed her head as she led Yuuji and Amilia in and then left the room.
A spacious room with 10 seats in the middle around a small table. It looked like a waste of space if Yuuji had to describe it but nonetheless, It was not supposed to be for meetings, it was a cathedral.
“This is the Hero, Mister Yuuji Wakana.” Thoka opened her palm towards him, a sign of introduction.
“He should’ve come sooner.”
The voice belonged to a balding man in a noble outfit. He didn’t seem like a fighter from his shape but he clearly was an important figure because he was present here.
“Please, Sir Licht. This is not the time to be talking about late or not, the fact he is here is what matters”
Another voice popped up, it was a man with long hair and a long beard. If Yuuji saw him in a game he’d think he’s a wizard or a wise man about to give him a side-quest for an unbelievable skill to beat the final boss in this MMORPG!
“Sir Licht, Sir White, this is not the time to argue.” Thoka finally put a stop to that and looked at Yuuji with a gentle look.
In fact, even putting a stop to that argument, she had done it so gently and everyone listened to her. Truly a great leader is what anyone would say.
“Forgive my delay… Thoka, what’s the plan” Yuuji bowed first then looked at Thoka with a serious look which prompted a smile out of her.
Noticing that smile, Yuuji frowned but quickly dropped the subject.
“Take a seat. We were waiting for you to discuss the plan.” Thoka said as she looked at 2 empty chairs.
Written by: shehablasheen
Published at: 14-01-2025
