Arriving close to the city entrance, Shina sighed while looking at the long line of people waiting for the guards' permission.

Thinking about the amount of time she would have to wait before entering the city, she started sulking and entered the queue. After a dozen of minutes, the queue didn’t advance by much compared to the wagons.

Shina didn’t even need to think to understand the reason why, simply by listening to her surrounding, she came to know that a lot of the travelers here came from city and villages from the neighbor kingdom.

They were fleeing the kingdom due to a sudden poverty. For some reasons, the country’s treasury, as well as most of the nobles, lost all their money. Many rumors were running around like the country being punished by the gods, others said that it was another country’s action.

The country didn’t say much on the case and actually tried to conceal the truth by saying it was just a fake rumor, but the sudden massive increase in taxes spoke for itself.

Patting her small purse, Shina remembered her mother a few days ago, leaving for a few hours before returning with this purse and talking about pocket money, but she quickly shook her head to forget that stupid thought.

The sudden increase of taxes forced a large amount of citizen to flee the kingdom and migrate to other countries.

Not much time had passed since then and the rumor still hadn’t propagated through the kingdom, making it mostly known by the merchants who traded with nobles. Realizing the situation, they almost instantly began to migrate and escape to avoid the incoming rise in taxes.

When this situation came to be known by the other kingdom, most of them opened their borders while opening their eyes. The incoming merchants would make their economic flourish, but they were also wary of spies.

Being unable to sustain itself due to the lack of money and losing their merchant, it wouldn’t be surprising for a war to happen.

Looking at the size of the queue barely diminishing, Shina kicked a rock next by in anger and glanced at the closeby wagons with annoyance. While she had barely advanced, a wagon that came a little later than she was on the point of entering the city.

A sudden idea crossed her mind and Shina started laughing silently while leaving the queue, heading toward the last wagon. It was a covered wagon which was protected against the rain, but also masked the visibility of anyone inside.

Shina sneaked around it while making sure that none of the travelers in the queue as well as the guards saw her and started crawling under the wagon.

The wagon wasn’t high enough for an adult to crouch under, but for children, it absolutely wasn’t a problem.

With the sound coming from the horses pulling it, Shina couldn’t hear much of what was going on outside as she crawled after the wagon while making sure to stay hidden. Very quickly, she noticed the clothes of the travelers which previously were in front of her and smirked.

It wouldn’t take much time to enter the city at this rate, the wagon moved on pretty quickly and it would take only a few minutes for it to pass the gate.

Shina stretched on the ground as she continued to crawl, despite not being there for long, crawling for tens of meters on a ground full of pebbles was still uncomfortable. While her skin was protected by invisible scales, it didn’t mean that she didn’t feel the pebbles at all.

As she was crawling under the wagon, a rather loud sound abruptly came out of the wagon above her and shrieked while holding her mouth in the middle of it, afraid of alarming the people nearby.

The sound suddenly stopped, leaving behind a deafening silence.

Shina sighed as she was certain that she was caught. The heavy silence lasted a few seconds before a blue axe cut through the wagon and embedded itself on the ground only two or three inches away from Shina’s head.

A *Bzzzt* sound echoed in Shina’s ears as the axe emitted electricity which looked very terrifying.

A black haired man holding the axe retrieved it with a cold expression and readied himself to strike it down at any moment. He looked at the girl in front of him with a cold inexpressive face together with a woman dressed in leather armor.

Next to them, a middle-aged man dressed in expensive looking clothes was staring at her completely stupefied. From his look, he didn’t look like a fighter.

“There was really someone under here!”

“Boss… Your instinct is really something fearsome!” exclaimed the young man who was driving the wagon.

Unlike the man, they were looking at Shina with a surprised expression, not expecting their unexpected guest to be a little girl.

His hands still gripping hard the axe, the man’s eyes only flinched for an instant before returning to cold ones.

“Ha...Haha…”

Shina couldn’t help but make laughing strangely with a tone that lacked emotions. She didn’t really know what to do in this embarrassing situation and just said the first thing that crossed her mind.

“Hello?”

“...Hi.”

Nobody knew what to say under this strange situation. A sturdy man was holding an axe, aimed toward a young girl with a serious expression and the first thing on her mind was to say ‘Hello’.

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“That’s a nice axe… I like how it let some *Bzzzt* around.”

“Thanks…”

The man nodded while thanking her in a cold tone.

Shina maintained a tense smile while pointing at the axe hesitantly, she didn’t want to take a hit of this scary looking axe. Her eyes kept looking around at the man’s companions, pleading for help.

“M-Mind putting that cool looking axe away for a moment?”

“...No”

“...”

“Pretty please?”

Among his companions, the woman was the first one to react and tapped the man’s shoulder with a reproaching stare.

“Come on, stop threatening that child.”

Shrugging his shoulders, he acted as if he hadn’t heard anything and continued to stare down at Shina with a gruesome look.

His eyes looked like they were trying to pierce a hole through her, they contained uncertainty and vigilance.

“I didn’t perceive her at all…”

“What?”

The group looked at him with uncertainty, the man’s instinct was always his strong point, they sometimes even wondered if he wasn’t actually an animal. He was always the first one to notice a danger or when a beast approached. Nobody among his group even dared to doubt it, his instinct saved their lives many times to the point that harbored a blind trust.

“S-Still… You can’t cause troubles here, the guards are close by.”

A faint hesitation formed on his face and the hold on his axe slowly relaxed, the electricity surrounding his blue axe vanished, making the weapon revert back to being a steel weapon under Shina’s amazed eyes.

She then recalled the time when she was in the darkened realm and somehow managed to pretty much do the same thing, but ever since then, she didn’t manage to do it again. She barely managed to form a few thread of darkness, something incomparable to what happened back then. Maybe it was due to the fact that she was angry or in a real fight to the death, but she couldn’t do it.

The tense atmosphere surrounding the black haired man still didn’t relax even though he removed his weapon. Whenever they fought or not, it didn’t change the fact that Shina was an uninvited guest.

“Are you okay?”

Without waiting for Shina to answer, the woman helped Shina inside the wagon and took a nearby cloth and soaked it with water before it rubbed it against Shina’s dirtied face and hands while at the same time lightly cleaning off the dirt on her clothes. She looked used to it, making Shina wonder whether she had some siblings or even a child.

It was the middle-aged man’s turn to approach her. But as he stepped forward, the look on the black-haired man’s face became even more intense like he was going to act if she did any suspicious movement.

“You’ll have to forgive us for such action, that man is not used to deal with children.”

Shina smirked while glaring at the black haired man with teasing eyes.

“With a face like that, no wonder~”

“Ha… Haha, you have a sharp tongue, don’t you?”

Despite her mocking, the man remained unmoved. Now that she didn’t have an axe above her head, Shina managed to calm down and return to her normal self. The previous situation actually made her feel quite scared, after all, who would remain calm when having a man ready to smash your head with an axe surrounded by lightning.

“Are you a merchant fleeing the neighbor kingdom?”

The whole group was surprised as they hadn’t expected this rumors to be known even by children. It was a heavily guarded secret within his country.

“How do you know about that rumor?”

Shina merely pointed at the group of travelers waiting for their turn in a depressed way, complaining about how long it is and talking exchanging information about rumors and stuff.

“No wonder there's so many merchants...”

The man looked at the girl in front of him with a complex expression, the girl seemed far more intelligent than children of her age and more mature. Just taking into account the fact that she didn’t even cry despite being menaced with an axe was someone incredible….but also worrisome.

“I don’t know if you were playing around, but it is dangerous to stay close to travelers. You never know whether they might be dangerous. Even with the guards nearby, they might not be able to save you in time.”

“That’s true, it’s not because the guards are nearby that you should allow yourself to mix-up with unknown people.”

Contrarily to what they were expecting, it didn’t look like the girl in front of them took their advice to heart and actually started laughing mockingly.

“Fufufu~ That’s a nice joke.”

Her words surprised the group while the black haired man frowned. They thought that the girl was mocking them but after noticing their expression, Shina finally realized that they actually knew nothing of the city.

“So you guys actually know nothing at all of this city?”

At the same time, the wagon once again started moving toward the city gates and the young man driving turned around to notify his group.

“It’s our turn.”