Chapter 188: Defense of the City of Sandra, Part 3

I fell from the sky due to sudden mana sickness.

When you’re suffering from mana sickness, you can’t protect yourself with mana.

The moment the word “death” crossed my mind, my vision turned purple and I lost consciousness.

I slowly woke up… apparently, I had been asleep. I must have lost consciousness from the impact of the fall.

My armor had been taken off and I had been laid on a bed.

I must have recovered while I was asleep. There was no particular pain when I moved my body.

When I got up and looked around, I noticed that I was in one of the guest rooms First Lady Miria had prepared for us yesterday.

Apparently, I had been carried to the lord’s mansion and put to bed.

El, Ashera, Mom, Laila… I wondered if they were still fighting the Mantises.

I changed into the dragon armor that was next to my bed and ran out of the room.

“Excuse me! Is anyone there? Is anyone here?”

As I was walking through the mansion, a maid came towards me.

“Yes… what’s the matter…?”

“Is First Lady Miria or Commander Fagil here?”

“…I don’t know about Mr. Fagil, but the lady of the house is resting in her room.”

Night… When I looked out the window, it was pitch black. It must have been the middle of the night.

Was I in such a hurry that I hadn’t even noticed that…?

I slapped my cheeks with both hands. It made a louder sound than I expected, and the maid’s eyes widened.

“I’m sorry. Do you know where Royal Shadows and the others are?”

“Oh, everyone from Royal Shadows went out to defeat the monsters…”

“Where!?”

“Huh… I-I don’t know…”

If I looked closely, I could see that the maid was wearing a nightgown too… There was no way a maid would know where El and the others were! What am I, an idiot…?

“…I’m sorry. I’ll go find them myself. I’m sorry, but could you close the window after me?”

“W-window?”

The maid didn’t seem to understand what I meant, but I didn’t have time to explain.

I opened the window and ran out into the sky.

After going a little further, I glanced behind me and saw the maid cowering on the spot.

I’m sorry for scaring you, but I hope you’ll forgive me this time.

For now, I headed for the Miasma Stone.

There had to be someone over there. I didn’t know if it would be El or the knights, but…

After flying for five minutes, I arrived at the hill.

The knights’ tent was set up on the hill, and about ten knights were guarding it.

I didn’t want to startle them, so I came down to the ground a little before the hill.

“Excuse me. Is Royal Shadows here?”

I asked the knight who had watched me descend from the sky with a dumbfounded look on his face.

“Eh, ah, oh, the lords of Royal Shadows… are taking a break in the tent…”

“I see. Let me in.”

“P-please, go ahead…”

I was also wearing a mask, so I should have looked like one of Royal Shadows’ companions. He was probably so surprised because air step is so rare.

Inside the tent, it was very cool, probably thanks to air-conditioning magic.

El, my mother, and Laila were sleeping on blankets on the floor. Ashera was keeping watch alone beside them.

When Ashera saw me, she looked surprised for a moment, but then greeted me with a big smile.

I decided to leave the tent with Ashera so as not to wake everyone else.

After we’d gotten a little way from the tent, I asked her what had happened after I crashed.

“I got too close to the territory carelessly and got mana sickness.”

“I see. Since you fell so suddenly, I thought you’d been attacked by something invisible.”

“It was completely my own carelessness. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Besides, if you want to thank someone, you should say it to Laila.”

“To Laila?”

“Yeah. Laila caught Aldo.”

“Huh? Laila saved me?”

“Yeah. Elphas and I never thought Aldo would fall… but it seems like Laila was watching for the right moment to hug Aldo… and…”

“The right moment to hug me…”

“Whatever the reason, Laila was a lifesaver. Laila’s injuries were worse than Aldo’s. If she’d made one mistake, you really would have died.”

“That bad…”

“Yeah… When Laila wakes up, it’d be a good idea to give her a hug.”

“…”

“?”

“After what happened with Olivia, why aren’t you angry about Laila?”

“…It’s a secret?”

She tilted her head and looked up at me… Miss Ashera, you know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?

She really was a lifesaver, and I’d love to hug her…

I let out a sigh and sat down on the spot.

“Leave Laila aside. What’s going on with the Mantises?”

Ashera’s expression turned serious and she sat down next to me.

“After Aldo fell, Elphas fired Condense Ray twice.”

“Two shots…”

“Yeah. Then the forest burned down, and there was a bit of trouble with some people from Sandra.”

“Was there an argument?”

“It seems that there were graves of the people of Sandra in the forest that burned down. But it all burned away in Condense Ray…”

“I see… I understand why they’re angry, but we weren’t in a position to worry about that either…”

“Yeah. If Master hadn’t sent the Knight Commander back, I think it would have turned into a question of Elphas’s responsibility.”

“Blaming El personally… that makes me a little angry…”

“Aldo, your killing intent.”

“Ah, sorry.”

It seemed I’d let a little killing intent slip out. The knights around us were scared.

I heard various other things from Ashera.

There was a wide variety of information: that it was now around 3 a.m., that it had been about six hours since I’d passed out, that El had searched for Laila and me with sonar and recovered us, and that some Mantises had headed for the lord’s mansion, but my mother and Ashera had been able to repel them.

It was 3 a.m…. no wonder I was hungry. I took some black bread and dried meat out of my backpack and bit into them.

“I’m really hungry.”

While I was eating the devil’s menu, the knights started making noise.

“W-well, a swarm of Mantises has arrived…”

When I looked in the direction of the Great Serpent Forest, there was indeed a swarm of Mantises coming towards us.

The wind was also blowing from here towards the Mantises.

Apparently, it was true that they had a habit of heading upwind.

I’d rather they all came towards me than scattered all over the place…

The distance to the Mantises was about 1,000 mede. I wanted to draw them in a little closer.

While I was watching the Mantises, one of the knights grew impatient and called out to me.

“W-well, aren’t you going to fight back yet?”

The knight was asking with a frightened expression on his face, so I decided it was time to fire.

“I’m about to fire.”

I pointed my right index finger towards the Mantises and supported my right hand with my left.

Concentrating mana into my fingertip…

After about thirty seconds, it approached criticality, and for a moment, the light grew even brighter.

“Firing!”

Taking those words as the signal, I released my mana.

This time it was a horizontal shot. I swung the sword of light from left to right.

Red.

The Mantises evaporated on direct contact with Condense Ray, turning into fuel and causing explosive flames.

Since my mana would recover quickly, I used wind magic to make the existing tailwind blow even stronger.

Some of the Sandra knights might have seen El’s Condense Ray, but it seemed that most of them were seeing it for the first time.

They stood stunned, staring at the blazing red.

What filled their hearts… joy, surprise… or fear?

I used wind magic for about ten minutes, but I thought it would soon be fine to stop.

There was already a tailwind blowing, so there was no problem.

I kept watch for about thirty minutes, but there was no sign of any more Mantises appearing.

“Ashera, I know what happened after I lost consciousness now. I’ll keep watch from here.”

“Understood.”

“Just tell me whose turn it is next.”

“Next is Laila…”

“…I see.”

Ashera went to sleep amid a somewhat delicate atmosphere.

It was almost time for the change, so I shook Laila’s shoulders and called out to wake her up…

“Laila, shift change.”

Laila slowly opened her eyes and stared blankly at me.

I wondered if she was half asleep…

Just when I thought she was smiling, she grabbed me, and we ended up hugging each other on the blanket.

My current situation: surrounded by my younger brother, my mother, and my fiancée, I was cuddling on the bedding with a woman I’d only known for a short while…

A chill ran down my spine, but I didn’t know what to do.

As Laila stayed frozen like that, the light of reason gradually returned to her eyes.

Her cheeks gradually turned red, her gaze wavered as if she were agitated, and her body grew stiffer as if she were tensing up…

Eventually, Laila stood up, screamed, and ran out of the tent.

“…W-what is it?”

El and Ashera woke up at the scream, and I desperately tried to explain to them that it was nothing.

It was a blessing in disguise that the Ice Witch didn’t seem to wake up even with this commotion…

When I left the tent and looked around, Laila was crouching behind it.

There wasn’t the slightest hint of the warrior who had defeated the Mantises in her appearance.

The way she crouched and trembled reminded me of a small animal.

“Laila…”

Laila slowly looked up, startled by my voice.

“I heard from Ashera. It seems you caught me… or should I say, thank you.”

“Uh, no. I was just doing the obvious thing… and more than that… I hugged you earlier… I’m sorry…”

“Ah. I guess you were half asleep. No problem at all.”

“R-really?”

From there, we made a little small talk and then switched the watch.

“Then I’ll get some sleep. Wake me up as soon as the Mantises come.”

“Understood.”

“Well then, good night.”

“Good night… Aldo-kyun.”

Laila sometimes had an odd accent. Maybe she wasn’t born in the kingdom.

I closed my eyes and slowly fell asleep.