“I, there…”
“…I don’t have time to talk now! Get out of here quickly!”
I untied the whip that had been tied to Irina’s leg, grabbed her arm and started running out of the cave.
“Come on, wait… Whoa…!”
Then Irina, who started running with me, stumbled and fell.
“Papa, get up quickly! If you don’t get out of here…”
I started urging her to stand up like that, but…
“Hey, I’ll have to take off this eye patch and the rope on my arm so I’m not going to run away properly!!”
“…ah.”
Hearing Irina’s words, she gave a persuasive expression and loosened her eye patch and the whip on her arm.
“…W, where are you?”
Then Irina, who frowned for a moment, began to look around with a bewildered expression on her face.
“…This is where Frey’s secret hideout is. Usually, there are monsters lurking around, so no one approaches.”
“……..”
I gave her a brief explanation and was on my way back, but suddenly Irina glared at me sharply and asked a question.
“…Who are you?”
“……..”
After looking at her for a moment, I answered in a low voice.
“…a nameless maid of the Starlight family’s shadow unit.”
Saying that, I was meticulously hiding my appearance with a white mask and black robe, and my voice was made as thin as possible using the mana of the stars to erase the feeling of a man as much as possible.
Still, I was holding my breath because there was a possibility that the experienced Irina would reveal my identity, but Irina tilted her head and asked the question again.
“…why are you helping me?”
It seems that Irina did not recognize me. It was also good to wait until all sides were engulfed in pitch-black darkness.
Of course, it would be a little dangerous because of the lack of visibility, but if I wanted to maximize the efficiency of the black robe I’m wearing now and deceive Irina, moving at night was the best choice.
“That’s it…”
With that thought in mind, I breathed a sigh of relief and began to tell Irina the scenario I had made in advance for this moment.
“…Actually, I’m also a victim.”
“victim…?”
“Yeah… I’m a member of the Shadow Squad and… in this secret hideout I’m serving the heinous Frey every night…”
“I mean… you mean Frey is here…?”
As she asked with a surprised expression, I lowered my head helplessly and said:
“Yeah… Frey was planning to kidnap you during a recent match-up, and replaced Arianne’s recovery scroll with a teleportation scroll that was trying to help you with the Shadow Army.”
“What, what…?”
“Unbeknownst to you, Arianne tore the scroll to help you down… and that’s how Frey and you got here.”
“Then Arianne…!”
“Yeah… Miss Arianne who falls into the trap will be severely punished. Of course, Frey, who came here with you, will safely enter his secret hideout and hold me and you until the arrival of a search team that has been located by magic retrospective. I’m just looking forward to being embraced.”
Upon hearing this, Irina trembled and began to mutter in a voice filled with anger.
“Wow, it’s disgusting… how can a person do that…?”
“Yeah… you’re right… When I was first brought here…”
I sympathized with her words, but as she shook her head helplessly, blurring the end of her words, Irina began to ask me carefully.
“You… Then why are you helping me…?”
“Yeah… I saw the woman I was running away from being killed today, and I decided… I had to get out of here somehow…”
“ah…”
“So I was trying to get out, but you were brought with me because you were at the entrance of the cave. I wanted to bring other people with me if possible, but they are all chained up…”
As I continued to speak in a trembling voice, Irina, who was biting her lip, approached me and opened her mouth.
“Thank you, really. This grace even after death…”
“Huh, huh…!”
Then she tried to hug me, so I hurriedly backed away and shouted.
“Shi, I hate it!!”
“ah…”
And for a moment there was an awkward silence between us.
“Sin, I’m sorry… I was traumatized…”
“……..”
My body shape could be found out if I was hugged by Irina, so I started making excuses with the settings that I immediately came up with.
“…sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. Then slowly get out of the forest… um?”
Having accepted Irina’s apology with such a calm expression, I was preparing to slowly exit the forest when I suddenly felt a presence behind me and looked back with a sharp expression.
“Kiruk…! Kiruuk…!”
“For him…”
Looking back, what came into my sight was a horde of goblins eroded by the Magi that were approaching us with a lick of their lips.
“Joe, be careful…!”
Seeing the scene, Irina hurriedly stopped in front of me and lit a fire from her hand, but the fire was extinguished in less than 3 seconds.
I watched it quietly, and straightened a useful knife I found in a pile of skeletons inside the cave, while Irina began to whisper to me in a calm voice.
“Because I’m in charge of this… First of all, you…”
– Paging!
“…what?”
But when I ran forward and cut off the head of the captain goblin who was in front of the group, she hung her mouth and looked at me.
“Ke-e-e-eek!!”
“Keep, go ahead…!”
On the other hand, I looked at the group of goblins who started running away after losing the captain goblin, glanced at Irina, who was still staring blankly at me from behind.
“Come on, there are agents who are many times stronger than me in the hideout.”
“Uh… huh…”
That’s how Irina’s arduous adventure began.
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“haha…”
“I, over there… are you okay…?”
For a while, only weak monsters appeared, so we were able to endure it to some extent… In the end, within a few hours of leaving the cave, we met a group of pretty powerful monsters, Drakes.
Thanks to this, for a while, I had no choice but to protect Irina while facing all the drakes who were rushing from all directions, and as a result, my body reached its limit.
If it wasn’t for the penalty, I would have survived somehow, but it’s a pity.
“Sorry, I’m sorry… I guess I’ll have to take a break…”
Fortunately, he drank a lot of high-quality mana-generating potions with the intention of handing over a lot of mana to Irina, so the mana of the stars is overflowing.
So, unlike usual, it was not too difficult to modulate the voice with the mana of the stars for such a long time.
“Yeah… Let’s get some rest… You, you’re not in a good mood right now…”
As I was thinking about it, Irina pointed at me with a trembling voice.
Why, however, I wanted to look down at my body, and the condition didn’t make sense.
His shoulder, which had been torn off by Fenryl, had turned blue, his body had cuts and scrapes, and he vomited so much blood that blood was seeping through the mask.
“…don’t worry too much. It’s a hundred times better than the terrible things that happened in the secret hideout.”
I tried to reassure her with a smile, but Irina saw me and started trembling and muttering.
“If you get out of here… I’ll kill you somehow… Frey… for sure…”
‘…this, did I dig my grave?’
Thanks to that, my spine was a little chilly, but I concluded that it would soon be my false evil point anyway, so I quietly shut my mouth and sat down on the floor.
“Ugh…!”
However, as soon as I sat down on the floor, I suddenly began to feel a tingling pain all over my body.
I don’t know if it was because the tension was released in an instant, or because I changed my posture, but the pain only got worse and worse.
Thanks to you, I was shaking for a while, but suddenly Irina came up to me.
“Hey, if it’s okay over there… I’ll cast a healing magic on you… I don’t know much about mana, but if I touch my skin directly, it might relieve some of the pain…”
“I, don’t touch me!”
As I rushed away from Irina, who was trying to cast a healing spell on me, she made a surprised expression for a moment and then bowed her head.
“What the hell… what a terrible trauma… why a strong child like you is so fussy…?”
“……..”
“…if you hadn’t saved me, would I have suffered such a terrible thing?”
She murmured to herself for a moment, then raised her head and gave me a sad smile.
“Hey… what’s your name?”
“…it’s Liana.”
After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a pseudonym that came to my mind, and Irina looked at me with a determined look and started talking.
“Liana… If you escape from here… Hide for a second.”
“…yes?”
“Wait a little bit… good news will come. So, when that time comes, let’s live with peace of mind.”
“Are you going to… kill Frey?”
When I asked carefully, she nodded her head with a grim expression.
“Yeah… I’m going to kill that bastard somehow. Even if he’s crawling under his crotch, definitely.”
“…are you going back to the academy?”
“Yeah… I honestly want to quit the academy… but if I do that, my childhood friend and her sister will be in danger.”
“…okay.”
“Yeah, so once you get into the academy… you’ll be as long as a dog to Frey. If you crawl under your crotch, you’ll crawl, if you’re self-harm, you’ll injure yourself, if you ask me to serve you at night… you’ll have to serve you at night.”
“……..”
“I was so frightened by this incident, I pretended to completely surrender to him… When the opportunity arises, I will somehow kill that bastard with my hand. So, until then, I will have to endure any humiliation. .”
Seeing Irina speaking in a venomous voice in front of me about her plans to kill me didn’t make me uncomfortable, but it made me smile because I knew her heart had not yet been broken.
“Hey, but I have a question for you…”
“…yes?”
“Why are you wearing that mask?”
“……..”
But that smile faded away when Irina began to wonder about my mask.
In fact, no one has seen this mask except for the little boy who once presented the lucky ring, the succubus queen who is now suffering in purgatory.
Of course, Clana and Perloche have seen me wearing a mask, but back then, the whole area was immersed in pitch-black darkness, and the mask was also a prom mask distributed at the auction house, so it’s probably safe.
However, if Irina thinks that my mask itself is strange, that is a bit difficult.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to show myself to other people…”
“…why?”
“…it got hit too much, it’s swollen.”
“……..”
In the end, I had no choice but to sell my notoriety again, and Irina made a persuasive expression and looked away.
To be honest, I thought I would be suspicious to some extent, but my notoriety must have been quite strong.
“Then, close your eyes for a moment…”
– Knuckle…
“…oh.”
With that in mind, I was about to lie down on my seat, when suddenly I heard a creaking sound from somewhere.
“…
I looked around and shook my head, wondering what the noise was, and then I realized that Irina was blushing and clutching her stomach.
“…are you hungry?”
“Oh, no… not really…”
– Knuckle…
“”……..””
Irina, who had struggled to deny the fact that her stomach had rumbled, bowed her head when she heard the rumbling sound from her stomach again.
‘…well, not even hungry.’
Irina at this point would be quite poor.
So, she must be getting a day’s meal at a cheap price at the commoners’ restaurant in the academy.
She used up a lot of mana because she got caught up in an incident like that, and she couldn’t even eat… Of course she’s hungry…
– Knuckle…
“Um, sorry…!”
After another squeaking sound, Irina hurriedly handed me an apology. However, the sound she heard this time was not from her stomach.
‘…By the way, I also suffered quite a bit, didn’t I?’
Apparently, I’ve been rolling too much lately, so I’ve become too insensitive to this kind of situation.
Anyway, I guess I’ll have to fill my hungry stomach a little more than this.
The best way to restore your depleted vitality is to eat well and rest well.
“…I’ll get you something to eat.”
“I, I’ll help too…! Even after all this, the battlefield… No, I’m pretty confident in my survival anyway…!”
“Then, don’t go too far… Look for it around here. If something happens to you, make sure to scream.”
“…Okay.”
So, in the middle of the night, the operation to find food to satisfy a hungry stomach began.
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“You, you… how did you catch that…?”
Irina, who appeared at the promised place with her bosom full of berries, began to look astonished when she saw the Giant Bore I had caught.
“…a knife.”
“No, that’s… Phew, that’s it.”
So I answered calmly, and Irina, who was about to say something, immediately shook her head and asked, putting the fruit down on the ground.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while… Are you really strong?”
“…yes.”
“By the way… why were you stuck with Frey?”
“…because the hideout was full of strong men several times stronger than me.”
Irina started to doubt again, so when I answered calmly, she frowned and nodded, wondering if she remembered the man I had acted with earlier.
“And… not long ago, my brothers were held hostage.”
“…as a hostage?”
“Yeah, it’s a dirty trick that Frey always uses.”
“That’s right, because that bastard specializes in such dirty tactics.”
Irina, who had strongly sympathized with my supplementary explanations that followed, frowned and started talking to herself.
“By the way… the sound of ‘until a while ago’…”
After talking to herself for a while, she looked at me with a gloomy expression on her face and immediately closed her eyes and muttered.
“Why are you making so many mistakes today…”
Of course, it’s not that she made a mistake, I’m acting. So, there is nothing wrong with Irina.
‘By the way, am I becoming too trash? Are you okay?’
Leaving behind Irina, who felt so guilty, I looked at the Giant Boar and grabbed the knife, but suddenly I started to worry that I was becoming too trash… Started trimming the bore.
– Tap… tap…
And after a while, Irina began to glance at me as the meat of the giant bore I had prepared was cooked in the campfire.
“…You can eat Irina-san too.”
“I, really?”
“At the beginning, I caught it to share, but…”
“Ha, but… I barely got the berries…”
“Oh, this is my favorite Bingryong fruit? I loved it when I was little…”
“…What?”
So Irina could eat the meat without noticing it, she picked up a berry and took a bite, but suddenly Irina frowned and started looking at me.
“Why?”
“No, nothing…”
“Umm… It’s delicious… After all, this fresh taste is the best…”
“………”
So, with a happy smile, I started to push the tree fruit under the mask, and Irina, who had been looking at me for a long time, quietly picked up the meat from the bonfire and bit it.
So, for a while, a wailing sound echoed through the forest.
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After eating like that, the two decided to close their eyes for an hour each.
“Then… I’ll sleep first…?”
“…Okay, I get it.”
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Eventually, Liana, who won the rock, paper, scissors, fell asleep first, and Irina stood quietly next to her for an hour.
“……..”
However, even after the promised hour had passed, Irina was silently staring at the woman who introduced herself as ‘Liana’ without waking up.
“Drink… Cool… Umm… Umm…”
“great…”
After such a long time, when Liana started snoring, Irina began to approach her cautiously.
“…well, I’ll have to check it out.”
Irina reached right in front of her and began to reach out to the mask she was wearing… The moment she was about to reveal her secretly hidden face…
“…Ahhh!”
“…Hey!”
Liana yawned loudly, stretched and jumped up, and the wind caused Irina to stumble backwards.
“…Um? Irina-san? Why are you like this?”
“Oh no… nothing…”
“By the way, it’s time for a shift. You must have worked hard today… Close your eyes for a moment.”
“…yes.”
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Eventually, when Liana suggested a shift, Irina answered in a calm voice, chewing her lips, and sat down, then quickly closed her eyes.
“……..”
And Liana, who looked at it for a moment… No, Frey quietly muttered, sweeping her chest.
“…I almost had a bad day.”
And so, Frey began to stand by Irina’s side, thinking to herself that it was a good thing that she had not slept for an hour.
“…well.”
He nodded and fell asleep in exchange for not revealing his identity.
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I wanted to give Irina a little more rest, so I stood by her side for about an hour and a half, and then I woke up and started to break through the forest again with her.
As I continued walking through the forest, morning slowly began to arrive, but the gray forest, as its name suggests, was a place that maintained pitch-black darkness until noon, and thanks to this, I effectively showed myself to Irina until I reached the exit. could be hidden with
“Irina-san, look over there! The end of the forest is starting to appear!”
“…that’s true. I’m glad.”
As the morning sun came up, we finally reached the exit of the forest.
For some reason, we were lucky enough that the monsters suddenly disappeared in the area, so we arrived at the exit a few hours earlier than expected, smiling brightly and looking at each other.
“Then… is it time to break up soon?”
“Yeah… I’m going to beg for Frey’s life like a dog… Make sure you hide somewhere.”
“…all right.”
“Oh, and… I’ll never forget that you protected me today. So, if you’re in need later, please visit the Imperial Wizard, Irina Philadel.”
She paused for a moment, then smiled and opened her mouth again.
“…if you’re tired of memorizing names, you’ll just have to find the strongest archmage in the Empire.”
“…all right.”
As I waved my hand to her with such determined eyes, I began to listen to Irina’s words, who began to mumble from behind, concentrating on the mana of the stars in my ears.
“…After all, shall we take off the mask by surprise?”
And soon after realizing that she was still suspicious of me, I quickly started heading towards the exit…
– oo!!!
“……!”
Suddenly, something huge came out of the exit and froze on the spot.
“I, that’s…!”
And it was the same for Irina, who had experienced the previous episode.
Because that’s…
“…f*ck, that was the reason the monsters in the area all disappeared.”
This is because he was the dark golem, the final boss of the ‘Academy Monster Invasion Incident’ that will take place a long time later.
– Target recognition… Goal setting…
The gigantic golem that sprang up from the ground in such an instant, quietly stared at us, and began to make a crackling voice.
– Start uninstalling…
And, as soon as that voice ended, a black beam of light flew towards us.
Apparently, we’re f*cked.