“M-Margarious! Her name’s Margarious!”, Kudo immediately tried covering up her mistake.

The guards didn’t budge. It seemed like Kudo’s cover-up didn’t work. He slowly reached for his backpack to find something that could help them escape the situation, but then he noticed the guards shaking.

“M-Margarious?! Then are you perhaps… Avangar the Ripper?!”, the guard in front of him was slowly backing off.

Kudo looked at Brylle and saw him discreetly nodding his head.

“Y-yes! Yes I am!”, Kudo responded confidently. The guard immediately dropped his weapon and knelt on the ground.

“Please forgive me! Spare this lowly human’s life!”, the guard started kowtowing towards Kudo.

“W-why didn’t you inform us ahead of time that you were coming great adventurer?”, the employee from the Adventurer’s Guild was shaking, but he had to come up and do his job.

Kudo looked at Brylle again, trying to look for help as to what to do. Brylle stepped forward and winked at Kudo as if to tell him that he’s gonna handle everything.

“You dare ask us questions?!”, Brylle shouted at the employee, who passed out as his loud voice reached his ears.

“We’re very sorry, great ones… Please, continue what you were doing.”, the soldier made way for the three to pass through.

They didn’t let the opportunity pass. They hurriedly moved towards the exit and made their way outside.

“So that’s how one of the greatest adventurers looked like…”

“I expected a really strong party to look… better…”

“It’s a miracle that we are able to see one of the strongest parties in the entire world! They’re very rarely spotted in towns!”

Rumors of Avangar the Ripper’s party being in the town quickly spread like wildfire. Everyone seemed to be excited, except for one guy…

“Who the hell is Avangar the Ripper?”, Kudo asked Brylle.

The three of them were now in a carriage, about to leave the city.

“He’s one of the strongest adventurers in the land, known to be extremely violent and ill-tempered.”, Brylle said.

“Yeah! He’s really famous for clearing an entire dungeon with just three people.”, Margaret added.

“If he’s famous, how come the guards didn’t recognize us at first glance? And did I really get the make-up to match all three of us with their faces?”, Kudo continued asking while eating a sandwich he bought while they were waiting for a carriage.

“Well… no one really knows how they look like. They’re always out and about clearing dungeons and killing monsters.”, Brylle responded. The siblings were also eating what seemed to be food enough to feed ten people, but Kudo didn’t mind. He thought that they must’ve been famished after all that escaping.

“Well, whatever. As long as we’re getting out.”, Kudo said while feeling relieved. As long as they got out of the town, he could easily hide against anyone chasing him.

“Yeah, from here on out, it’s smooth sailing. They don’t even do inspections upon exiting the town.”, Brylle added, making Kudo feel even more reassured.

Kudo smiled and nodded out of relief. He felt that the mission was a complete success. He ripped the disguise off his face and cleaned his face with water from a pouch that the siblings brought.

“You two should clean up your faces as well. Your skin will get irritated if you don’t remove it soon.”, Kudo said while handing them the pouch. They immediately doused their faces with water while rubbing off whatever make-up the two of them had on their faces.

The siblings were back to looking like the Sutton siblings. Margaret looked extremely attractive, but Kudo was no longer stunned by her beauty. Since he was already stunned by it once, his brain must’ve developed an anti-body and resisted her beauty.

“Wait, that guard said that the rooms were reserved for A-class adventurers, right? So are you two, like, famous?”, Kudo asked them.

They both looked at each other, trying to figure out what to answer his question.

“Well, there are a lot of A-class adventurers. You only have to present a big achievement to become one. But I guess we are sort of famous?”, Brylle responded.

“…well, I guess not me. She’s famous for sure.”, Brylle pointed at Margaret, who seemed to be embarrassed about being told that she’s famous. Kudo wasn't surprised. Her appearance alone should be enough to make her a celebrity.

As the three of them were enjoying their meal, the carriage suddenly stopped. A knock came from the back of the carriage and the coachman opened the curtain.

“Well, it seems like there’s gonna be an inspection. Some kids caused a ruckus earlier and the guards are looking for them. You three just sit tight.”, the coachman immediately closed the curtain.

Unlike the coachman, who looked incredibly calm, the three passengers were sweating bullets.

“K-Kudo… do you have any more of that make-up thing?”, Brylle asked Kudo, who simply shook his head in response.

“No… the ones I used on you guys were the last set I had.”, Kudo replied.

“So… what do we do now?”, Margaret asked the question that everyone in the carriage was trying to think of an answer to.

The three of them were completely silent. They took quite a while trying to think of ways on how to get out of this sticky situation, but none of them could think of any.

Before they could find a solution, they had already arrived at the checkpoint.

“The passengers in the carriage, please come out for inspection.”, a voice came from outside.

The three passengers looked at each other and sighed. It seems like they all had no other choice.

*KNOCK*

“Please come out… the line is getting longer.”, the same voice came from outside the carriage again, but this time, the man sounded a bit impatient.

“Yes… we’re coming.”, Kudo responded and made a signal to the other two, telling them to go first.

“No, you go first!”, Brylle angrily whispered to Kudo, who adamantly held his ground. If they were gonna get arrested, he’d rather be arrested last.

It didn’t take long before the guard outside the carriage ran out of patience. He opened the curtains behind the carriage, revealing the three passengers, who seemed to be fighting over something.

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The guard looked at the three passengers. They looked oddly familiar as if they were the people that they were looking for. In his hand were sketches of the people that they were looking for. He looked at the sketches, and back at the three passengers, who seemed to have been frozen.

“Ah! The criminals! They’re here!”, the guard exclaimed, which gathered the attention of all the other soldiers in the area. They immediately surrounded the carriage.

“Stand down! Come with us peacefully, or we’ll resort to force!”, one of the soldiers exclaimed. In his eyes, the sheer number of the soldiers that surrounded the carriage should’ve been enough to scare the three criminals.

“Well, shit…”, Kudo muttered under his breath.

“What now?”, Margaret asked her two companions.

Kudo sighed. He pulled out the only weapon he had… the stick.

“I won’t go down without a fight!”, Kudo exclaimed.

Brylle and Margaret looked at each other and sighed. They really didn’t have any other choice. Brylle opened his large bag and took out a saber. Margaret also took out her fighting gear, a sword, and a shield.

The three of them looked like valiant adventurers about to challenge an extremely powerful monster, but in reality, they were just three criminals that are fighting because they accidentally did a crime.

“Apprehend them!”, the soldier in front called out his command. The soldiers that surrounded the carriage slowly closed in towards the three of them.

Kudo knew that if they waited any longer, they wouldn’t have any more space to maneuver. If he wanted them to get out of this situation, he had to take a gamble. He dashed straight towards the soldier who was giving out the commands. While he was dashing, he quickly took out another sleeping gas grenade from his backpack and threw it towards a hurdled group of soldiers that were far enough for them not to be affected by the gas.

The soldier in front was startled and didn’t have enough time to pull out his sword. Kudo swung his stick as hard as he could. The soldier blocked the blow with his right arm, but he could feel that it really hurt.

“Geh…”, the soldier flinched from the sheer force that the blow delivered, but what happened next was going to change the entire flow of the fight.

[Activated: Earthquake]

As the blue window floated in the sky, Kudo had a victorious look on his face. This was the gamble that he took. He knew that something would happen if he hits someone with the stick, but he had to gamble whether or not it was going to happen, and if it did happen, it would have been something big enough to grant them an opportunity to run away.

The ground underneath them started shaking violently. The area it covered wasn’t big enough to cover the entire group of soldiers that surrounded them, but it was big enough so that the soldiers near them would be disrupted.

The soldiers wore heavy armor. As the ground shook, they all started losing their balance. As they fell to the ground, they struggled to get back up since the shaking did not stop and their bodies felt extremely heavy.

Kudo looked back at his companions and saw that even if they were struggling to keep their balance, they were still standing. The two of them looked at Kudo dumbfounded. They had no idea what just happened.

As the shaking stopped, Kudo immediately alerted his two companions.

“What are you standing around for? Let’s go!”, Kudo shouted at them as he ran straight past them, which immediately woke the two siblings. They quickly ran after Kudo, who waltzed past the soldiers who were lying on the ground, trying to catch them as they tried to stand.

Kudo ran straight towards the city gates. People were flocking the area, trying to figure out what was happening. He forced his way through the crowd, along with his two companions.

He knew that if they were just going to keep running, they wouldn’t get very far. He spotted a carriage that was just by the gate. It seemed to have been undergoing inspection before they were caught.

“Get in that carriage!”, Kudo shouted at his two companions, who immediately caught wind of his idea.

The three of them hurriedly went into the carriage. The guards continued to chase them, but the crowd of people made it difficult for them to move.

As the three of them looked at each other in the carriage, they all realized that they had made a grave miscalculation.

“Who the hell is going to drive?!”, the three of them shouted in unison.

As they argued over whose fault it was, they suddenly heard a woman’s chuckle.

“What an interesting bunch.”, the woman was standing outside the carriage, looking at the three idiots arguing inside. She then went into the carriage.

“Charles! Go!”, she then shouted.

“But madam… they are wanted criminals…”, the voice of an old man responded on the other side of the carriage.

“It doesn’t matter. Just go.”, she calmly responded.

“Yes madam.”, the old man caved In, and the carriage immediately started moving.

“Don’t let them go! Chase after them!”, the cries of the soldiers could be heard behind them, but their voices slowly faded as the distance between the carriage and the city increased. Kudo and the Sutton siblings looked at the other woman in the carriage in confusion, trying to figure out what just happened.

“Hmm? Is something wrong?”, the woman asked them.

“N-no… it’s just… why did you help us?”, Brylle asked.

“Oh... well you seemed to be an interesting bunch, so why not?”, the woman responded with a smile.

The three of them let out a sigh of relief. They all felt blessed after meeting their savior, but suddenly…

“The three of you don’t expect this favor to be free, do you?”, the woman’s face then turned serious. After a while, she revealed an evil grin, which made the other three nervous.

“Ah! But alas… there are three of you, and only one of me… even if I wanted to ask you a favor, you could simply just overpower me and have your way with me…”, the woman then suddenly turned into a drama queen. She began sobbing, and tears started to form in her eyes.

Kudo looked at the Sutton siblings, who were also looking at him. Even if they didn’t say anything yet, they felt like they had done something incredibly wrong to the woman who saved their lives.

“Uhh… what kind of favor do you want us to do?”, Kudo asked the woman, who was still sobbing, but as soon as she heard Kudo’s words, the tears in her eyes disappeared and a cheerful expression appeared on her face.

“Why it’s nothing difficult!”, the woman cheerfully responded. It was as if the earlier drama never happened at all.

“I just need you to let me see something.”, the woman added. Her eyes then locked onto Kudo. As the two of them maintained eye contact, he noticed that the woman’s eyes slowly started looking at his lower parts.

“I-I can’t! I’m too pure for that!”, Kudo’s embarrassment showed in his voice. His face was as red as a ripe tomato.

The woman sighed.

“Your mind is in the gutter.”, the woman shook her head while expressing her displeasure towards Kudo’s interpretation of her words.

“I’m talking about that.”, the woman added while pointing at the stick which was hanging by Kudo’s belt.

“This stick?”, Kudo pulled out the stick and examined it again.

“What’s so special about this stick?”, Kudo asked the woman as he handed it over to her.

The woman closely examined the stick. The more she examined, the brighter the glow in her eyes looked. It seems like she had an idea as to what it was.

“You’ve stumbled upon quite a treasure…”, she told Kudo as she handed the stick back to him.

“Well… what is it?”, Kudo asked her.

“Have you ever heard about the origins of magic?”, she asked him.

“Well… I’m not from this world… so no.”, he responded.

The woman then had a confused look on her face. She looked at the two siblings, who were sitting in silence. Kudo saw that her eyes had the same look as the Sutton siblings when he first introduced himself to them. Kudo let out a sigh.

“I’m not crazy…”, Kudo told her.

“It’s true… he really might be from another world.”, Margaret tried convincing the woman as well, but she didn’t seem to believe her.

“Well, let’s continue about the stick.”, the woman seemed determined to change the topic.

“That stick is a branch from the Tree of Magic.”, she pointed towards the stick.

Kudo seemed unimpressed, but the two siblings were in shock. It was as if they had just struck the jackpot. They looked at the stick as if it was covered in gold and diamonds.

“So… it’s a tree branch… is it anything special?”, Kudo asked. The three other people in the carriage looked at him as if he was crazy for not knowing what it was.

“Look… the branches of the trees from where I am don’t do anything special, okay?”, Kudo angrily told them.

“The Tree of Magic is one of the three trees that gave birth to the world.”, Margaret explained to Kudo. As she looked at his expressions, she realized that Kudo really had no idea what it was.

“In the beginning, the world was only a vast body of water. As eons passed, three trees formed after gathering the energy that was scattered all over the world. The Tree of Life, which gave birth to living creatures such as humans, the Tree of Magic, which gave living beings the ability to use magic, and finally, the Tree of Evil, which exists to bring balance to everything, since nothing good can exist without evil.”, Margaret continued explaining. Kudo listened attentively; as it was the first bit of information he had about the world he was in.

“Unlike the Tree of Life and the Tree of Evil, the Tree of Magic is slowly disappearing. Unlike the other two, magic isn’t a renewable resource. The more magic was being used, the more the tree withered, which is why magicians are becoming harder and harder to find.”, she continued.

“And that over there…”, the woman interrupted Margaret while pointing at the stick in Kudo’s hands.

“Is a branch from that very tree.”, the woman’s serious look made Kudo realize that the stick on his hands was indeed something special.

After processing the information that he had just received, he then had a question pop up in his head. The stick being a treasure is fine and all, but they all had missed one simple question about everything that just happened.

“Who are you?”, Kudo looked at the unknown woman. A woman that suddenly came and saved them out of nowhere had suddenly appraised the stick that Kudo had.

The woman smiled at him as if she had already expected the question that Kudo wanted to ask.

“My name is Asteria Fantasmagoria, the eldest princess of the Fantasmagoria Kingdom.”