Chapter 54: Floating Eye

“Alicia, look there.” I pointed to where the little mammal was. A few meters away from the three we were hiding, a white rabbit was eating some leaves from a bush.

“Aah! It’s so cute~” Alicia cheerfully said.

“Yeah, it’s almost a shame that I have to kill it.”

“W-Why?” she asked nervously.

“Shhhhh.” I hushed her with my index finger in front of my lips. “It’s easy prey. We need to eat, so it can’t be helped.”

“But…” She was going to protest, but lowered her face, thinking about the situation. “Understood.”

“Thanks for being understanding. I’ll do it quickly, so it doesn’t suffer much.” I said to her.

I turned myself towards the rabbit once more. The distance between us was enough so it might run far from my grasp the second it heard my footsteps. I needed to get closer to the animal much faster than it could escape from me.

My Valkyrie Tamer class had some options among my skills. Out of my original skills, Ero Boost was the most useful for the situation. However, I didn’t want to use it and suffer from its side effects. The other ones, Healing Fluids and Tamer Appraisal, were useless for my current objective.

Thankfully, I didn’t have just these. My relationship with Sarah granted me access to her skills from her Swordmaster class. I looked up my offensive powers in my system.

[ Flash Thrasher: This skill makes the user unleash a sequence of three fast attacks. The user’s Agility is also temporarily increased during the attack.

Cost: 6 MP ]

[ Thunderblade: This skill charges the user’s sword with electricity for one strike. This attack becomes faster than regular ones. It doesn’t improve your agility stats.

Cost: 5 MP ]

Two powerful skills for a beginner, both with a low cost of mana. Thinking about which I should use, Thunderblade wouldn’t make me close the gap between me and my prey, different from Flash Thrasher, so I decided on the latter.

I sighed deeply. It wasn’t the first time that I used a sword or killed a living being, but it was the first time I used Sarah’s skill. ’Well, there is a first time for everything.’

’Flash Thrasher!’ I called my power using my mind.

My body dashed towards the rabbit with an agility beyond my usual self. The closest I had reached to that velocity was when I used Ero Boost, but even back then I wasn’t so fast. When I realized it, the white fur ball was within my sword’s range.

It jumped, trying to escape my thrust. But I didn’t lose the opportunity, slashing its belly with my blade, killing it with one blow, dirtying its white fur with crimson blood. I took its body by the foot, showing it to Alicia. “Now we have our meal.”

“It was impressive, Rick!” Alicia said with an amazed voice.

“Yeah, it was…” I barely responded to her, my mind remembering the red-haired girl that was with us yesterday. I shook my head to push these thoughts out of my mind. Of course I missed Sarah, but thinking about her like that wouldn’t do me any good. As soon as we reached the next town, I could meet her again.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrr!” My thoughts were interrupted by a guttural sound. The silence between Alicia and me was broken by a growl coming from the princess’ belly.

“Pffff! Hahaha hahaha!” I couldn’t help but laugh at this situation.

“It’s not funny!” Alicia cried angrily.

“It’s quite funny, actually. I think the old bread wasn’t enough to fill your stomach,” I playfully said to her. “I am also missing better food. Let’s stop somewhere and prepare this meat.”

“Hmm!” Alicia nodded to me, but her eyes focused on something at my back, her face expressing horror. She hesitantly pointed at it. “Rick, what is that?”

When I looked behind my back, it was something disturbing looking at me. And when I say looking, it was the only thing that thing could do, but I was still shocked by the view.

An eye. A perfect copy of a human eye was floating in thin air, staring at us. I hastily swung my sword, cutting the eye into two pieces. The eye fragments returned to their original clay color, breaking into smaller pieces that were carried by the wind.

“Rick, what was that?” Alicia asked me, still tense.

I pulled Alicia by her wrist in a hurry. “We need to go!”

“Huh?”

“They are on our track! Quick!” I told her, going as far as I could away from there.

…

“Ouch! My eye!” Justine screamed as if someone had punched her.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, my Magical Eye was destroyed. It’ll take a while, but I’m going to be fine,” she responded to me with her left eye closed under the glasses.

“It was that Rick guy?”

“Yes, Erina. His appearance matched the physical description that they gave to us,” Justine said, blinking her eye like mad. “And he is with Alicia.”

I smiled widely when I heard her. It was just a hunch of mine, but I hit the target right in the middle.

After the people gathered to confront me in the inn, I pulled out the Silver Fang card, telling them that I would take responsibility for all the damage that I caused there. I also decided to pay for their meals at the tavern for the night, so I got rid of the problem.

I still needed someone to stay in the town to ensure that all would be restored, so I asked Bernardo and James to do that as my representatives. They were opposed at first, but when I convinced James that I would arrange a date with one of my sisters, he happily agreed, convincing Bernardo to stay.

Justine looked at me as if I was some kind of scoundrel, throwing my responsibilities onto other people, but I ignored her. Justine takes things very seriously. What is wrong with dividing my work with my underlings?

Anyway, since I was going to pay for the night, I decided to stay by the tavern, while the others were going to sleep. I stayed there talking with some old folks that opened up to me after some cups of beer.

“Do you want to marry me, miss? Hic!” the man next to me said.

“Sorry, but you’re not my type.” I politely said to the old man who had too much to drink. For some reason, the guys are asking me out today.

’Maybe I’m really that pretty!’ I thought, amazed by the idea.

“Eh? Really? You too?”

“Have you asked another girl? I’ll be jealous.” I played with the drunk. “Is she here?”

“No, that girl Sarah isn’t here, maybe she left for some adventure or something. Hic!” he said.

The name Sarah caught my interest. I saw Diane running away carrying Alicia out of town, right? Something was not right, but I couldn’t point out what. It was like an uneasy worm inside my brain, asking me to investigate more.

“This girl, Sarah, she is an adventurer, right? Does she have companions?” I asked him.

“Huh? Why do you want to know?”

“You know, since I was little I wanted to be an adventurer,” I lied to him, trying to make the drunk spill the beans. “I would like to meet her party.”

“I see, my lady. But sadly, there are only guys in her party…” he said, gulping his beer once again.

“Is that so? How many are they?” I asked him patiently, trying the best feminine voice that I could.

“I think there are two… No. One. I heard that one of them left town.” he responded.

“So, her other party member, who is he?”

…

I took the information from the old man and gave him to his friends so he wouldn’t sleep in the tavern. I confirmed the info with people that were sober, so I got a good description of this Rick.

My brain didn’t stop thinking about him. His party member was with Alicia, and then she vanished. Diane made that weird appearance. All of this is strange as hell!

What if they were all together in the princess kidnapping? What if Diane was a decoy?

I looked at the map and thought as if I was trying to mislead the Silver Fang. It was just a hunch, but I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to make a little night trip to stretch my legs.

I couldn’t ask more of Bernardo and James. I already put too many things on their shoulders, so I just couldn’t interrupt their sleep. I’m not insensitive.

So I just woke up Justine instead. She is already accustomed to following me since we were little kids, so there is no problem. I grabbed my old friend with magical powers and entered the woods.

It was just a hunch, but when we found traces of fire, I got excited and asked her to use her Magical Eye, an earth magic that creates a clay eye which she could share her vision with.

“To think that we would find Alicia like this?” Justine said, her left eye finally going back to normal.

“But isn’t that great! Our loss is very close to turning into a win.” I smiled at Justine. “After that, we’ll score a big promotion.”

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