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“Holy crap! The situation outside is turning into something crazy!!”

Jones, who mailed the letter, went to procure food and then headed back to the mansion’s storage room. But by the time he came back, soldiers were rushing into Lyell’s residence en masse, quickly forming an army of a hundred strong.

Jones sneaked around and somehow made it back, but given the situation outside that would soon be impossible to repeat. And during the passing, he saw Maxwell, Gadius, and even a young man dressed in an assassin getup. Needless to say, it was Reid.

All the Six Heroes were present.

“Huh, assassin? Big bro Reid came? I have to say hello!”

Fina had met Reid several times, so when she heard that he had come, she couldn’t help but jump to her feet. Forgetting her objective at hand so easily showed that she was still a child.

But if she rushed out like that, not only would their hiding place be discovered, but even this situation would get easily resolved.

And that would be a matter of life and death for the kidnappers.

Since all Six Heroes were present, getting discovered could easily mean instant death for them.

“Hold it hold it! We’re hiding now, remember?! Don’t go meet people who came to look for us!”
“Oh, right.”

Fina answered while sticking out her tongue, while the Carbuncle shook its head at her actions.

It was hard to say who she took after, but she was brimming with energy, so the carbuncle always ended up being dragged around.

“But since people gathered, it means the letter properly reached them, right?”
“Yeah. But who’d have thought all Six Heroes would’ve gathered… and so fast.”
“And look at the number of the troops. Not only are they from the north, I even saw people wearing crests of Raum and the World Tree Religion.”
“Maxwell probably gathered them up with teleportation magic.”
“Come on now. Even Maxwell couldn’t gather so many people so soon, right?”
“Which would mean, they gathered up naturally, huh?”

Arriving at that realization, the three looked toward Fina.

She was playing around with the Carbuncle, but seeing how the soldiers gathered up for her, her charisma perhaps rivaled the Six Heroes.

Troy and the two had still been working with Kufar, even if they were merely members of his organization.

Jones even saw the World Tree Religion’s crest among the troops. They clearly remembered that Kufar had attempted assassinating the Pope. From their perspective, the three were practically their archnemesis.

In other words, at present, they were pursued by the United Three Alliance, the Forest Kingdom of Raum, and the Holy Tree Kingdom of Forneus.

“There was even some child dressed in gaudy clothes. What’s up with that?”
“Who knows? But if they were dressed luxuriously, they were probably some high-ranking priest.”
“Priest, huh? Maybe it’s someone related to Maria. If so, it’s probably someone dangerous.”
“Huh?”

Zell collected the information and started pondering while holding his chin.

“At the very least, this is a serious situation for Maria. And then that young girl shows up who seems to be a high-ranking priest. I can’t imagine her being someone ordinary.”
“…True. We should consider her to hold enough power to be worthy of Maria asking for her help.”
“In that case, we’re pretty much checkmated here, aren’t we?”

Above them was stationed a hundred-strong army, on top of Six Heroes and an unidentified priest (who was naturally Pope Ashella).

They were thinking that as long as they got Maria to Kolbo village, they would be able to get her to treat their important people one way or another, but even that was hardly feasible now.

In the first place, it was hard to even get out of here in this situation.

“Maybe it was a mistake to hole up here…”
“Nope, it wasn’t. There’s Tina here, after all.”
“By Tina, you mean Cortina, right? What do you mean?”
“I knew Tina would have called grandpa Maxwell here. And he would definitely use Search to look for me.”
“Search… You mean the spell to look for items?”
“Yup, but if we’re here, we wouldn’t get caught.”
“Oh, I see. The responses from the storage would mix up with the responses from your items… You’re pretty smart.”

The three were convinced by her explanation. Seeing that, Fina’s expression turned even prouder.

“Eheh. The white goddess said if you do something you have to do it thoroughly.”
“Who’s that goddess…”
“Err, her name is God of Destruction Yuuri.”
“Isn’t that an evil god!”
“She’s not! She said she’s similar but different!”

Fina got angry that the God of Destruction who was her teacher was called an evil god. She waved her arms around in protest, but the trio had more severe problems to worry about.

There were around a hundred soldiers above them who were looking for them right now.

It would be a herculean task to escape with as many soldiers as the villagers, on top of Six Heroes with their opponents.

“Well, it’s as this little lady says. If we took her and fled the village, Maxwell would instantly find us.”
“Having that said, we can’t exactly sit and hide here forever. We have people waiting for us in Kolbo.”
“I know that, but…”

They were in a complete checkmate. At this point, it was a test of patience between giving up and surrendering, or waiting for Maria to grow impatient and head to Kolbo.

The problem was that the longer they held Fina confined here, the higher the chances of them dying grew.

Even if they didn’t harm her, if Lyell’s accumulated stress turned into bloodlust, they wouldn’t survive wherever they ran in this world.

That’s how many connections he had with influential people. Having lost their leader Kufar, these three had no way of overcoming his power.

“There’s no other way. If we’re going to surrender, it’s better to do it sooner than later.”
“But then, my mother will…”
“My daughter’s life is on the line here!”
“Calm down, all of us have important people on the line. That’s why we resorted to something this reckless anyway.”
“R-Right… sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. We all feel the same.”

The three hung their heads in dejection. Fina sensed their gloomy mood and started fidgeting around, unable to say anything.

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