The cathedral was buzzing with activity when I returned, as they had to prepare for the princess’ funeral. Fortunately, there was a priest waiting for me when I arrived to take me wherever I would be teleporting from.
As it turned out, the church of Order didn’t have any teleportation artifacts. That type of artifact was actually much rarer than I thought it would be. Very few spatial mages were powerful enough, and skilled enough craftsmen to make artifacts capable of transporting people long distances. Small spatial artifacts existed, and were owned by the incredibly wealthy to allow them to teleport short distances to escape danger, but an artifact capable of transporting people even between cities, let alone countries or continents, would be nearly impossible to make.
Instead, they would be borrowing the power of an accomplished spatial mage, who, in this case, was Natalya. She was waiting with the cat man in his office when I arrived, resting on one of the couches.
“Lucy!” she said, standing up.
“Right on time,” said Antonio appreciatively. “Do you have any last questions before you depart?”
“Anything I should watch out for from the other Virtues?” I asked
“I’d stay away from Humility if you value your comfort, and Chastity if you value silence,” he said.
“...Good to know. Thanks,” I said.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Nope, that’s all. I’m ready.”
“Archmage Natalya,” he said, nodding towards the elf.
“Of course,” she said graciously as she focused her mana to start a portal. “Have a safe trip,” she said to me once it formed. “Don’t die.”
“I won’t,” I said as I stepped into the void.
.
.
.
The other end of the portal dropped me off in an empty room inside another stone structure. I immediately used earth magic to sense the general shape of the building, and concluded that I was inside another church, though this one was much smaller than Claude’s grand cathedral. There were many people inside, most of them priests or paladins, but there was a group of people who were distinctly neither gathered in a room on the second floor, which is likely where the other members of the Greed hunt were congregated.
As I took in all this information, a set of wooden doors opened in front of me, and two paladins walked in.
“Archmage Lucille?” asked one of them.
“That’s me,” I responded.
“Welcome to Hengeberg,” he said, bowing slightly. “The others are waiting for you in another room. Follow me.”
“Of course,” I said.
The other guard remained outside while the one who had spoken to me led me through the church. Both in size, and quality, it was vastly inferior to the cathedral, but it was clean and well-kempt, and had a much warmer, friendlier feel than its grandiose counterpart. Where the cathedral was extravagantly decorated, and every inch of it was designed to impress and invoke awe, the Hengeberg church seemed designed to invoke comfort, and peace. Its stone floors were dull, but dust-free, and its walls were made from brown stone brick, and lit with simple magical light sources.
As I had predicted, the paladin led me toward the room full of non-priests and non-paladins. While we walked down the hall, I focused my hearing on the room, and tried to hear what they were saying through the walls. Surprisingly though, the voice I heard was strangely familiar.
“Where is she?” it said in an annoyed tone. “She was supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“It’s only been twenty minutes,” said a second, almost identical voice.
“Well, it feels like it’s been an hour. I’m hungry,” said the first.
“She should be here any second,” said the second. “Didn’t you feel that mana just now?”
“I thought that was my stomach,” said the first as my guide put his hand on the door handle. “Well, thank the gods. She’d better apologize for making us-”
The speaker stopped when the door opened, and a pair of brown eyes locked with mine, and widened in shock and fear. It was Liliane, my second Thrall, and the assassin who had slit my throat. She was wearing a similarly tight-fitting black outfit to the first time we had met, though in much better condition now. Her hood and mask were down, revealing her pale skin and paler hair, which was now shaved on the sides and tied up in a short bun on the top. She was leaning back in her chair with her feet up on the table in front of her when I arrived, but when she saw me, she flinched so violently that her chair lost balance, and she fell backward onto the floor.
Her twin sister Maxine was sitting next to her in a much more secure position, so when she flinched, she didn’t fall over, but the look of horror on her face was almost a better reaction. While her sister appeared to have committed to the assassin/scout role, and kept the look that went with it, Maxine had transitioned to something else entirely. She was wearing a plain white robe– the kind that, on Earth, would be associated with wizards and witches– and had grown her hair out so that it nearly reached the floor when she was sitting. Her pale hair, robes, and skin combined with her light gray eyes expression of terror made her look like a ghost.
I sat down in an empty chair next to Liliane’s overturned one, and observed the rest of the room’s occupants. There were nine in total, eight sitting at a round wooden table with expressions ranging from indifference to mild curiosity, and the eighth wearing a mask and standing in the back corner.
The two closest to me seemed to be mages, judging by the way the mana moved around them. One was an older woman, who looked to be nearing retirement age. Despite her age though, she sat tall and straight, with a fiery look in her eyes, which, combined with her red robes, gave me the distinct impression that she specialized in fire magic.
The man to her left seemed about twenty years younger, and the best way I could describe him would be jolly. He looked like the kind of man that would be volunteering as a mall santa once he got older. He was a little on the heavier side, but not so much that it was out of the ordinary, and the extra few pounds added to his strange charm. His impressive mustache and most of his hair was black, but his sideburns had skipped gray and gone straight to white, and the rest of his hair would likely join it within the next five years. He smiled widely and nodded at me when I entered, and his entire body bounced slightly as he did so.
On his left was a woman who must have been from the famed western continent that I knew so little about. She was the first person in this world that I could say looked Eastern, with her narrow eyes and pitch black hair. She sat perfectly upright with her hands folded politely in her lap, and a long spear rested against the back of her chair. She was almost completely disinterested in me, barely even glancing over, and not bothering to make eye contact.
The man to her left was the one of two in the room who were recognizably affiliated with the church of Order. He wore the standard paladin suit of plate mail, with his helmet resting on the table. Like many of the other paladins I had seen, his brown hair was close-cropped and his beard neatly trimmed. He nodded to me when I entered, but he made no other motions.
The next person was a dwarf with a beard that would put the one Alphonse was so proud of to shame. It was long, full, and covered nearly their entire chest down to their waist. As I looked closer at them, I noticed that the shoulderpads of their armor matched the ones of the paladin next to them, which meant they were probably also a paladin, but at a glance, it was hard to tell with all the hair in the way. At first, they looked at me with disinterest, but then, they suddenly started smiling broadly.
The last at the table was a man so plain that my eyes almost skimmed over him entirely. He didn’t have a single defining feature, which makes him very difficult to describe. His hair and eyes were a boring shade of brown, and the most that could be said about the rest of his facial features was that they were present. He nodded at me briefly, before turning to the twins with a faint hint of a smirk.
The masked figure in the corner, who I assumed to be Humility, made no reaction to my arrival. None that I could see anyway. Their face was completely hidden by a black mask that didn’t even have eyeholes, and the rest of their body was covered with a thick, baggy gray cloak that obscured the shape of their body. Their cloak and mask were enchanted so that even with my high [Perception], I couldn’t tell anything about them.
“I told you that would happen,” said the plain man to Liliane. “You shouldn’t have been leaning on your chair like that.”
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
She ignored him as she scrambled to her feet. “Y-you!” she said, pointing at me.
“Yes, me,” I said with a smile. “Good to see you again, Liliane, Maxine.” the other twin stiffened when I said her name. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Ah, it seems you’re already acquainted with the twins,” said the plain man, ignoring their looks of fear. “That’s good. That’s two less introductions we’ll need to make. My name is Otto Schuchardt. I am the Godly Emissary of Temperance. You can call me Otto.”
“I’m Ingrid Eide,” said an energetic feminine voice from within the dwarf’s beard. It took me a moment to register that the voice actually belonged to them, and when I did, I did a double take. “I’m the Godly Emissary of Chastity. I’m so happy to meet you, and I look forward to working together!”
She said that last sentence with such enthusiasm that it almost made me shiver as I recalled Antonio’s warning.
“I am Orderbound Blade Sylvester Weiss,” said the Paladin.
“Ji-Soo,” said the dark haired woman quietly.
“I’m Barnabas Beckert!” said the jolly mage. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance! They call me a Sage, because I’m good with magic, but you can call me whatever you’d like. I’ve heard that you’re the youngest archmage in the last few centuries! I’d love to have a talk with you about magic sometime if you’re free!”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” I said with a smile.
“I’m Hermina Ebner, Sage of Water,” said the red-robed woman. I was taken aback to hear she was a water mage, rather than a fire mage, but she probably knew that would happen, and was already smirking mischievously as she spoke.
“Humility,” said the masked figure. Their voice was magically distorted, and seemed to change with each syllable, so I still couldn’t tell anything about them.
“And, that’s everyone,” said Otto. “Now, onto the briefing. I believe you should already know a bit about Midhna, but I don’t think you know much about us. Tell me what you know about Midhna, I’ll fill you in on whatever you’re missing, then I guess we’ll go around the room explaining our skills. And Liliane, sit down. Normally this time, please.”
Liliane slowly obeyed, keeping her eyes on me the whole time. I returned her stare until she was seated, then turned back to Otto.
“I don’t know too much about Midhna. Only general information. I know he’s old, so he’s over level 100, and has had plenty of time to become an archmage. Because he’s a dragon, he has an incredible amount of [MP], so he can use powerful attacks frequently without needing to recharge. He’s also very wealthy, and has many lairs and underlings, which make him difficult to track down.”
Otto nodded. “You got pretty much everything as far as general information is concerned. What I’m about to tell you is information we’ve gathered from reports we’ve read of him, and our own experiences fighting him.
“Midhna may be an archmage, but the only three elements I’ve seen him use are fire, wind, and spatial, and he only uses spatial for escaping. He mostly uses fire for direct attack spells, and wind for indirect attacks and mobility. However, he rarely uses more than a few attacks before escaping. He fights just hard enough to make us wary, and as soon as he has the space to do so, he flies out of our range and teleports. As the only high level spatial mage here, it will be your job to interrupt his attempts at spatial magic. Everything else is secondary. Even if that is all you do in the entire battle, you will still have done enough. Any questions?”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Sounds good to me.”
I was a little disappointed that my role was so small, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. Even if Midhna was incredibly high leveled, with not one, but three Godly Emissaries, an Orderbound Blade, who would be in the 90s, and two other powerful mages, he wouldn’t stand a chance if he couldn’t get away. And the rules of the game never said that I needed to be the one to defeat them.
“Excellent,” said Otto. “Now for our abilities. I believe you are already familiar with the twins, yes?”
“Actually, I think I’ll need a refresher,” I said. “I haven’t seen them in years, and they definitely weren’t powerful enough to be on a team like this back then.”
“Then I’ll let them start. Liliane, tell her what you can do.”
“I- uh- I-” started Liliane. “I’m the Scout. I’m good with… stealth and …sneak attacks…” her voice trailed off at the end.
“Maxine?” prompted Otto when the ghostly girl failed to speak.
“Oh,” she said, flinching. “Yes. I’m a- I specialize in mental skills. I do interrogations and… other things…”
“I see,” I said, smiling. “It’s been a while, but you two haven’t changed as much as you look like you have. Let’s talk afterwards. I’d love to hear your stories.”
“Y-yes ma’am,” said Maxine nervously while Liliane nodded in agreement.
“As I said before, I am Temperance,” said Otto once he was certain we were done talking. “You can just think of me as a stronger paladin. I fight up close with a sword and shield using aura. I can heal most wounds, but the difficulty increases with [Vitality]. My Divine gifts are essentially just buffs to skills and stats I already had, so there’s nothing much to explain there. Ingrid?”
“I’m mostly the same as Otto, but my buffs are more conditional,” she said excitedly I couldn’t see her mouth through her beard, but I could tell she was smiling. “I get stat buffs depending on how many sexual partners my opponent has had.”
“You what?” I said.
“Depending on how many sexual partners my opponent has had, my stats increase. So against some people, I’m just at the level of an ordinary paladin, but against the more lustful, I get some big advantages. It’s especially helpful against creatures with really long lives, like Midhna. He’s had over 200, so I’m really powerful while fighting him. I can’t wait to see the actual Demon King of Lust again. I felt like I was going to explode with power when I met him the first time.”
“Wait, how do you tell how many partners a person has had?” I asked. “Do you just look at your stats and calculate it based on your buffs, or…?”
“No, I have a skill that tells me!” she said happily. “I just look at them, and boom! I just know.”
My heart sank as I realized why she had been so happy when I arrived. It looked like I would need to take Antonio’s advice about her to heart and avoid her like the plague. I could already imagine the kinds of things she might want to talk to me about, and I was really not looking forward to it.
“...I see,” I said, then turned to the paladin next to her and nodded.
“I am a paladin specializing in defense,” said Sylvester. “I can take a full force blast of Midhna’s [Incineration Beam] without a scratch, so if you are low on [MP], or need to conserve it, stand behind me, and you’ll be safe. I can also heal and attack some, but as the others here can do that much better than me, I just focus on defending the mages.”
“I am the heir to the Ak clan,” said Ji Soo softly. “I wield the spear.”
“She’s a bit shy, but don’t underestimate her,” said Chastity. “In terms of single target attack power, she’s the strongest in the group. Even with my buffs, I can’t match her.”
Ji-Soo didn’t react to the compliment, but her cheeks did gain a little color.
Next was the jolly mage’s turn.
“My official class is [Steel Sage],” said Barnabas. “I specialize in metal manipulation, but I can use earth magic just as well. I can also use a little bit of spatial magic, though not enough to do anything exciting with it. My role in combat is to try to pin down the dragon with chains or shackles. Unfortunately, my attack magic isn’t quite strong enough to get through the dragon’s scales though.”
“I am a [Water Sage],” said Hermina. “And I can use wind magic almost as well. My job is to nullify the dragon’s attack magic.”
Seeing that she had nothing else to say, I turned to Humility in the corner.
“My divine gift is to cancel skills,” they said in their strange, ever-changing voice. “However, I need to know the details of the skill, and it has a very limited range. I will likely not be able to do much in the fight. I hope you will forgive me for that.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“Excellent,” said Otto, clapping his hands. “Could you share yours as well, Lucille, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course,” I said. “As you are aware, I am an archmage, so I can use every type of magic at a high level. My specialties though are illusion, water and spatial. I can also use some aura, though it’s fallen way behind my mana so it’s not enough to be useful. I guess I’ll be preventing Midhna from escaping. I have some powerful attack spells too, but if there are going to be melee fighters, it’s probably best not to risk it.”
“I agree,” said Otto, nodding. “We have plenty of firepower up front. I’ll want to see some of your illusion magic, so that I can work it into our strategy, but as of right now, your only duty is to prevent Midhna from teleporting out. Ji-Soo, Ingrid and I will be fighting Midhna directly, and Sylvester will protect the mages while they provide support. If they cannot reach a safe distance from the battlefield, Humility and the twins will stay with the mages, but they will be non-combatants.
“Of course, this is all only for when we actually encounter Midhna, which we haven’t in two years. In the meantime, you can just relax and focus on other things, as long as you stay close.”
“How close?” I asked.
“Within the same city. Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out and tossed it to me. “This is a basic communication device. It can’t send complicated messages, but it’s almost impossible to disrupt the signal. Keep it with you at all times. If you ever feel it vibrate, come to me. I have another one, and there should be a spatial magic connection between the two that you can follow.”
I examined the object he had tossed me. It looked like nothing more than a very smooth, and strangely lightweight stone. It was about the size of a cell phone, but an oval, and twice as thick. There were no markings on the outside, but when I focused [Magic Sense] on the inside, I could sense multiple layers of magical circuits.
“Sounds good.” I said. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“We’ll be investigating a lair tomorrow morning, so you’ll need to be there for that. Come prepared to fight. There probably won’t be anything there, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Other than that, unless you have any other questions, I think we’re all about to head out for some dinner. I know you don’t eat, but if you want to get to know us all a little better, you’re welcome to join us.”
“I’ll pass,” I said after a few second’s consideration. “Thanks for the offer. Though, I’d like to have a little conversation with the twins before that, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing,” said Otto standing up. “I’m sure you three have important things to discuss, so we’ll get out of your way.”
As he walked out of the room, the rest of the dragon hunting party stood up and followed. Humility was the last to go, and before they left, they stared at me for a few seconds. I don’t know what kind of expression they might have been making, but I doubted it was a pleasant one. I was fairly certain that they couldn’t tell that I was Pride. If they could, they probably would have made some kind of move against me. With the amount of powerful people in the room, it would have been difficult for me to survive. Still, I couldn’t let my guard down too much. I resolved myself to stay as far away from them as possible whenever I could.
Once they had all left the room, and I was finally alone with the twins, I erected a [Wall of Silence], and turned towards them.
“Long time no see,” I said. “So tell me, how did two assassins end up working with the church of Order to hunt Demon Kings?”