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Maria’s body shook up and down in rhythmic movements. Under her waist, her beloved husband was violently moving his body. His sweat-covered body, having regained its youthfulness, had a powerful rhythm.

In the corner, you could also see the already worn-out Cortina.

“Hey, Cortina! You haven’t met your quota yet, you know?”
“I can’t anymore, I’ll die…”
“Come on, you can’t even do a hundred pushups?”
“Don’t lump me together with you. I even have Fina on my back, so any more than this is just impossible for me!”
“Tina, hang in ‘ere!”

In the mansion backyard, Lyell was scolding Cortina while doing pushup exercises for building up her stamina. Cortina was already out of juice and had fallen to the ground. Fina was straddling happily on her back, acting as a weight.

She was normally neglected when they focused on Cortina’s training so she was in high spirits today since she was able to join them.

Fina alone was assumed to be light and even the Carbuncle was added on, but it had already gotten down from Cortina’s back. It sat next to her and was casting Cure on her.

“I can’t let you meet Reid again with that level of stamina. You have to at least be able to defend yourself.”
“Ghh!”

Hearing Lyell’s remark, Cortina put her trembling hands on the ground and tried to lift herself up. The two could see from that just how much she wanted to meet Reid. Lyell glanced at Maria sitting on his back and sent a smile.

Fina sitting on Cortina’s back raised her hands in delight once Cortina started to move again. But then, their servant showed up.

“Lord Lyell, a vigilance squad member, has come.”
“Hmm? Okay, l will meet them later and—”
“They seem to have an urgent report.”
“What?”

At those words, Maria quickly got off Lyell’s back. Lyell also stood up at the same time without even turning back to check. Their efficient communication showed their long association.

Cortina looked at that with a tinge of envy. Lyell failed to catch it, however, and followed the servant into the mansion.

“Good grief, our men are really…”
“Huh, what’s wrong?”
“Both Reid and Lyell are quite dense, I mean.”
“Well, I can’t deny that.”

Cortina also stood up and hugged Fina to her chest. Carbuncle jumped on Cortina’s head too. That made her feel quite troubled.

“Come on, you’ve grown up a lot, so stop climbing on people’s heads. Fina’s neck could break if you did it.”

Ignoring the Carbuncle that looked away to feign ignorance, Cortina joined Maria and they followed after Lyell.

The vigilance squad coming to report to Lyell directly meant that the situation was quite serious. However, if it was an emergency they would have rushed in without telling the servant, so they believed it wasn’t an urgent matter.

“I wonder what they want to report.”
“I have no idea. We have to hear it from them.”
“Can I come too?”
“You’re my comrade, so I see no problem with that.”

That said, they couldn’t take Fina along on such talks, so they entrusted her and the Carbuncle to the servant.

The Carbuncle acted as Fina’s guard on top of being her babysitter. Naturally, it recognized that fact too, so it raised its forefoot as if saying “leave it to me” and headed away with the servant.

The vigilance member was guided to Lyell’s home office, and they started talking with Cortina and Maria joining in. The other party knew Cortina so they didn’t hesitate to make their report.

“Lord Lyell, this information has only just arrived, but it seems that you were witnessed in the Methuselah domain.”
“Huuh?”
“And in a tight jersey.”
“Huuuuuh?!”

Lyell hadn’t left the village lately, of course. He wouldn’t have gone all the way to Methuselah which was quite far. In other words, someone was pretending to be him there.

“So they’re pretending to be me huh? That’s quite brave of them. What did they do?”
“Ah, they completely destroyed an illegal drug manufacturing facility and then reported it to the guards.”
“…They didn’t do anything bad?”
“They didn’t. They did kill the lord’s son, Cain Methuselah Lamech, who was the principal offender, but nothing else. It was reported that Lord Maxwell was dealing with the aftermath of it.”
“Maxwell? Then could it be—”

Cortina saw through the report and held her breath.

Someone who worked under Maxwell and also was brave enough to take on Lyell’s appearance. Not to mention, someone who could destroy the local mafia factory on their own—there could be only one.

“It’s definitely Reid. He probably used your form this time, Lyell.”
“Yeah, he does know me well enough to manage that… but he did something troublesome.”
“Not realizing that is also what makes Reid who he is. Mateus also falls among the likely candidates since he’s Maxwell’s pawn, but he can’t change his form.”

Seeing Cortina acting restless, Maria realized what she was thinking. That she wanted to go meet Reid so much. Cortina, being the youngest of the Six Heroes, was like a little sister to Maria.

As such, she wanted to aid her with her feelings to the best of her ability. But due to her powerlessness, Cortina was the most targeted person among the Six Heroes. They couldn’t let her go when they couldn’t even provide her with a guard.

“Sorry about this.”
“What’s this, all of a sudden?”

She hugged Cortina from behind and caressed her head. They couldn’t stop this training until she was at least strong enough to escape their enemies.

“Just in case, I’ll contact Maxwell for details. In the unlikely chance that they weren’t Reid, we would need to come up with some defense plan, right?”
“True. It would be troublesome if people pretending to be us started to show up.”
“We do have the World Tree’s scent bags, but not many people know that. Maybe we should think about how to let people know, too?”

It was the scent bags they created from the Elixir to deal with Kufar’s imitation. If the world knew about it, people pretending to be the Six Heroes would decrease by a lot too.

The three thought that they had to come up with a way to make it common knowledge.