“You guys are dangerous! I’m gonna have to bury you here!”
“Why are you so murder-happy?!”
“God, you’re so stubborn!”
“Don’t let your guard down! Who knows what he’ll try next!”
Miledi and the others could handle the flames, but Alfard had been counting on them to stop his spell. His real goal had been to create a veil of steam that Meiru couldn’t easily dispel. Laus realized that a second later and shouted, “Huh?! Shit, we’ve been duped! Miledi, it doesn’t matter how much collateral damage it causes, swallow up everything around us!”
Miledi was still confused, but she placed her faith in Laus and summoned a Spatial Severance, absorbing all of the steam and the flames. Had Alfard been anywhere in the vicinity, he would have been heavily injured, but fortunately, he wasn’t. In fact, he was all the way over near the shore.
“......”
Miledi and Meiru exchanged glances. After boasting about how he was going to kill them and firing off such a powerful spell, he’d immediately started running away. No one could have predicted that.
“That prince sure got us good,” Laus said, sounding impressed.
Standing next to Alfard was a plain-looking woman with black hair with a small child in her arms.
Alfard glanced back to see what had happened to Miledi and the others, and a hint of panic entered his expression as he saw they’d already dealt with his flames.
From the very start, he hadn’t been trying to fight seriously. This had all been a calculated plan to escape. In truth, he’d even believed Laus when he’d said he didn’t want to hurt Alfard. However, Alfard was up against the church’s strongest knight, and someone who could control gravity. While Alfard had sensed Laus’s initial spell, he knew that if Laus had tried to actually attack, he had no way of defending against magic of that nature. Moreover, Alfard could tell Miledi and the others were desperate to catch him.
That scared him, for he knew he couldn’t actually match up to these three in a serious fight, and his family was close by.
From his perspective, if he’d stuck around to hear them out and negotiations broke down, it was entirely possible that Miledi and the others would try to take his family hostage. That was an utterly unacceptable outcome in his eyes, which was why he’d pretended to be belligerent, while secretly looking for an opportunity to get his family to safety.
Seeing that Miledi and the others were free, Alfard took a jewel out of his pocket and started pouring mana into it.
“Miledi, below us! Hold it down!”
“Whoa—Heavensfall!”
Miledi sensed a huge surge of mana from the ground below. As the three of them leaped up, she pushed down with a powerful gravity field.
A second later, the ground burst, but whatever would have jumped out of it was forced back down. That had been one dangerous booby trap.
“We really can’t let our guard down around that prince.”
Looking up, Miledi and the others saw a giant black eagle coming in from the coast. Moreover, a multi-layered barrier had been activated around the log cabin, trapping the Liberators. It seemed there was a powerful artifact inside. The barrier it had made was strong enough that it would take a Heavencrush to destroy.
“He was really thorough with his defenses.”
“This isn’t the time to be praising him!”
“Agh, he’s getting full of himself because we’re holding back!”
Meiru was at her limits, so she sucked in a huge breath and shouted, “Alfaaaaaaaaard! You’ve been looking for me this whole time, haven’t you?! I finally came to see you, but now you’re pretending like you don’t know me? How cruel!”
She was obviously trying to cause a misunderstanding. And unsurprisingly, the black-haired woman next to Alfard stiffened in response.
“A-Al-sama? What is she talking about?” she asked in a confused voice.
Laus, who was also having some family troubles of his own at the moment, looked at Meiru like she was the devil incarnate, but Meiru simply ignored him and continued sowing discord.
“The daughter you’re looking for is right here!”
“Meru-nee, don’t say something so misleading!”
“She’s pure evil.”
It was true that Meiru was the daughter of Alfard’s dad, and that he’d been looking for her, but of course, she was omitting the most crucial information. She really was the devil. And yet, Alfard didn’t falter even once.
“I don’t know her,” he stated flatly.
“Really?” the woman asked, and he nodded to reply.
Alfard then pointed at Meiru and said in a loud voice, “I mean, just look at how pathetic she looks, Selene!”
“Huh?” Meiru said, and Selene also turned to look at Meiru in confusion.
“She ticks all the boxes of a failure of a woman. She’s lazy, selfish, greedy, and if I’m not mistaken, she’s also a sadist.”
“Is he psychic?!” Miledi exclaimed.
“Miledi-chan?!”
“I bet she’s horrible at housework too. Anything she tries to cook would probably come out as a grotesque travesty that’d kill anyone who ate it. Worse, she probably can’t hold a steady job! I bet she’d rather shake down people on the street than work for honest pay!”
“Wow, he’s analyzed you perfectly!”
“If you gave her a comfy bed, I bet she’d snuggle up inside it and never leave it again!”
“Has he been spying on you?!” Miledi said, impressed. Alfard’s observational skills were ancient magic-tier.
Meiru hadn’t been expecting such a powerful verbal counter, so she was left trembling.
“Do you really think a woman like that would appeal to me in the slightest when I have someone as wonderful as you, Selene?”
“Al-sama...”
“She’s lacking in every department. Besides, there isn’t a single woman in the world more charming than you, Selene. The only one I will ever love is you.”
“N-Now you’re just exaggerating, Al-sama...” Selene muttered, blushing furiously. She rocked back and forth, which seemed to unintentionally soothe the baby in her arms.
“Are they just flirting now?” Laus asked, his eyes glazing over.
As the two of them hugged, Alfard surreptitiously placed Selene and their child onto the eagle’s back. However, just before he ordered it to take off, he heard a familiar voice call out to him.
“Your Highness, please wait!”
At long last, the other search parties had arrived. Miledi had contacted them as soon as they’d found Alfard, but it had taken some time to make it all the way over.
Alfard turned in surprise and said, “Morgan! Nevrai! You’re alive?!”
Morgan and Nevrai ran over and knelt before Alfard. Oscar, Vandre, and Lyutillis were a short distance behind them, while Naiz slipped through the barrier and teleported over to where Miledi and the others were.
Alfard’s expression grew nervous, and cold sweat poured down his forehead. This was more adversaries than he could handle.
“Your Highness! We’ve finally returned from our mission. I’m terribly sorry it took so much longer than expected. However, I’m glad to report that we’ve succeeded.”
“You have? Oh, I see. She must be...” Alfard trailed off as he turned back to Meiru, looking at her with renewed interest.
“You do have all the right traits... What was your mother’s name?”
“Reej.”
“I see... I guess it’s a bit late to be formal now, but do you want me to address you with a title or something?”
“You can just call me Meiru-onee-chan,” she said with a wink, which Alfard completely ignored.