“Well, let’s just pretend he’s been captured and be extra careful. Oh, by the way, is it common for the wyvern squads to patrol at this hour?”
“No. They were mostly in charge of reconnaissance back when I was a general, so they almost never flew this early.”
“It doesn’t matter if our plan was discovered or not,” Brod interjected. “I’ll take you to the castle.”
“And I will protect you no matter what, sir,” Lionel added.
I was glad the two of them were so reliable.
“I’m letting you two supervise the operations this time. Estia, we’re going to have to postpone it a bit but I promise we’ll deal with the slave merchants before leaving.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I turned to Dhoran next. “Dhoran, I’m counting on you to come get us when everything’s over.”
“Sure thing. Leave it to me, Luciel.”
“As for... Huh? Where’s Pola? Oh well. Lycian, make sure to help out Dhoran, all right?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Rina and Nanya, you two will be in charge of firing the cannons when Dhoran deems it necessary. Be careful, though. They take a lot of magic stones.”
“Uh, all right...”
“Y-Yes, sir.”
The airship was powered by mana, and it obviously wouldn’t do if we ran out of magic stones in the middle of the sky, so I’d made sure to give the girls a stern warning not to overdo it. Thankfully, they’d immediately understood my point and nodded. They’d been firing the cannons like crazy in Ebiza, but that had just been to test them. Now that we were in a serious situation, I was confident they would listen to Dhoran.
“All right then, should we head out?”
“Yes, sir!” my companions replied.
“Dhoran, I’m leaving the ship to you.”
“Yep. Ye better come back alive, ye ’ear?”
“Will do.”
With that, I headed to the elevator with the other five who’d be jumping down with me.
“Grab each other’s hands, everyone. I’ll be flying us to the middle of the capital, so Ketty, I’m counting on you for directions.”
“This kitty’s got it!”
“Estia, can you use Dark Magic to hide us?”
“Yes, sir.” She nodded, wrapping us in a cloud of mana.
“All right, off we go. Be my wings and soar, Wind Dragon!” I chanted. Six people was a bit much for the power of the dragon, though, and we couldn’t fly quite as freely as I’d hoped. Our bodies gradually began to float, so I decided that our best bet would be to just jump off the ship. “Okay, change of plan. We’ll jump down and I’ll use my power to reduce our falling speed. Just trust me.”
They nodded and jumped off the ship with me. I suddenly felt a weight on me, as if someone had clung to my back, but I paid it no mind. I was too busy slowing our descent and listening to Ketty’s directions.
After three minutes of what felt like free fall, we safely landed in the capital’s central square—and were immediately attacked.
“Become a barrier and shield us from all the threats, Wind Dragon!” I chanted right as my feet touched the ground.
Not a second later, a barrage of arrows and spells was fired at us. Thankfully, they were swallowed by the swirling winds I had summoned before they could reach us.
“So it really was a setup,” I said.
“Luciel, don’t move a hair from where you are. Darkness girlie, make sure to protect him. As for you, Lion, take the other two and deal with the enemies on the front lines—I’ll take care of the ones in the back.”
“Yes!”
“You sure you’ll be okay alone?” Lionel asked.
“Shut up.”
With that, Brod vanished, and Lionel, Ketty, and Kefin headed to fight our foes on the front line.
That was when I heard a voice from behind me. “Luciel, do you need a golem?”
I finally realized what the weight I’d felt on my back since jumping off the ship was. I hadn’t noticed at first because I was wearing my armor, but Pola was clinging to me from behind.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You said we couldn’t fire the cannons at the empire. But I want to get revenge on them for causing grandpa to lose his arms. Please let me come with you,” she said, lowering her head. I wasn’t used to hearing her speak such long sentences.
If I had it in me to refuse her request, I probably wouldn’t even be here in the first place.
“Well, I can’t exactly send you back right now. I’ll give you a proper lecture later, but for now, listen to me. You don’t need to take out the golems yet, but be ready to do so when the time comes. I might need you to break the gate of the castle over there,” I told her.
“Okay,” she agreed, though she seemed a bit frustrated about not being able to join the battle just yet.
I noticed that the barrage of attacks had stopped while we’d been talking, so I removed my wind barrier right as Brod and the others returned.
“You’ve taken them down already?” I asked.
“Not quite. Once they noticed it was me they were attacking, they immediately dropped their weapons. It seems like there were no demons in the lot,” Lionel explained, seemingly a bit lost.
“A bunch of the soldiers recognized him!” Ketty chirped.
“And?”
“They’ll be joining us now, so you can give them your orders.”
“Ugh, is it just me, or am I about to get dragged into a really annoying situation?”
“I’m leaving them to you, sir,” Lionel said, flashing me a bright smile as he happily passed all the responsibility to me.
But then, all of a sudden, we heard a weak, pitiful voice calling our names. “Sage Luciel, Master Lionel, please help me...”
Looking in the direction of the voice, we saw Albert tied up with ropes, being stepped on by a completely expressionless Lihzalea.
That was when it finally came back to me: Lihzalea had mentioned that she used to live in Ebiza.