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Priscilla lay collapsed in what could only be described as a sea of blood, not even moving a finger. I immediately turned her face up and checked her breathing. She raised a groan as I did that, so I called out to her in a loud voice.

“Priscilla, you’re alive… Hold on, I’ll have healing magic cast on you immediately!”

Fortunately, we had a monster by the name of Maxwell here, who had mastered all kinds of magic. Albeit he wasn’t quite at Maria’s level, he was able to use top-ranked healing magic, too. His activation speed and effect fell short of Maria, but still easily surpassed an average healer.

“N… Haumea, stop making me do all the work.”

He remembered to call me with my alias. But despite his words, his hands quickly drew the circle and cast the magic.

“L…Lord…Maxwell…Lord…Ell…iot has…”
“He was attacked, huh?”
“Yes. I…fought back…was not strong…enough…”

Her words were broken, but clear. If someone was aiming for Elliot’s life, this kind of back street was the ideal place to attack. This was a big blunder on his part.

“S̲h̲i̲t̲… But who would…”
“That lad has many enemies. A good number of them may have slipped into this town.”
“Can you guess who’s behind it, old man?”
“There are too many candidates for that.”

Speaking of Elliot’s enemies, as much as you’d want to just brand them as uninvited guests and turn them away, this was Raum. It was different from the United Nations. You couldn’t just reject the dispatched nobles simply because they were sus. That’s just the way the world of politics worked.

As I was thinking that, Priscilla interrupted my thoughts.

“They fled with…a carriage…”
“Carriage? Then we might be able to track it down.”
“I…attached threads…from my sleeve to it…”

She was in tatters so I hadn’t noticed it, but looking again, her left sleeve was torn. Did she attach her sleeve to it? For what? That was needless to even ask. She bled enough to cause such a disastrous scene. As such, her clothes were naturally bloodstained. If they took part of it with them, it should have left traces.

“Well done, Priscilla. You are indeed a secret agent of Raglans.”
“Leave the rest to me. I will definitely bring him back.”

The moment she heard my words, her consciousness was cut once again. She used her remaining strength to give us information.

Her lack of strength was clear. But even so, she did the best she could under those circumstances. Now, it was up for a Hero to answer her wish.

“Are you going, Reid?”
“Yeah. I leave her to you.”
“Elliot got into some trouble over the matter of succession. This might be related to that. Be careful, they might have assembled considerable combat power.”

Maxwell was giving his all to healing her as he spoke. Maria would’ve healed her injuries in the blink of an eye, but I suppose this was simply the difference in skill.

“Leave it to me. Who do you think I am?”
“A little girl?”
“Gah!?”
“Hurry up, there might not be much time left. Also, take this one along.”

Maxwell pulled out a small pigeon from his bosom. Naturally, it was no ordinary pigeon, but instead, Maxwell’s familiar.

“If you bring it along, I can link my visual and hearing senses with it. I would be able to immediately come to your aid as well.”
“That’s reassuring.”

When it came to Maxwell, even his familiars were on another level compared to Cortina’s. This pigeon was self-conscious and could move, share five senses, talk and even fight. It was only a bit stronger than a novice Adventurer, but it was still plenty enough.

But Maxwell held the initiative to its consciousness, so it couldn’t be considered a constant battle asset. Even so, it was good enough to entrust my back to. Having my back covered during independent operations was extremely reassuring.

“Alright, I’m off!”

We were short on time now. Since Maxwell had his hands full, there was no choice but to deal with it myself. Fortunately, Maxwell was on my side this time. As long as I managed to secure Elliot’s safety, the rest was to just buy time.

With such expectations, I rushed out from the alley.

A carriage wouldn’t fit in a narrow alley. But the main street was too crowded. That meant there was a high chance they had the carriage parked on the opposite side of the alley.

Thinking that, I arrived at its opposite end, and as expected, I discovered blood traces in the corner of the street. It was a blurry red trace as if it was swept with a brush. It was undoubtedly the work of Priscilla’s bloodstained piece of cloth.

“There, huh?”

Raum had many stone-paved areas, so I couldn’t trace the tracks of the carriage. However, the periodic blood marks along its path still remained. If I followed them, it should have let me straight to where Elliot was taken.

Following that, I slipped through several alleys and turned corners…

“They sure are taking their time with detours. I mean, it’s natural since they are kidnapping someone, but still…”

It was a common technique to take detours so the kidnapped person would not be able to guess the location. However, Maxwell said it was a race against time, yet there were being quite leisurely here.

“They won’t kill him… It would be naive to think that.”

They kidnapped a sovereign of a kingdom, so they should be aware of the consequences. In which case, they would make sure to kill the eye-witness. And that meant, Elliot would definitely die if I left them alone.

If so, they had to quickly finish their business, otherwise, it would only invite danger… And yet, it felt as if they didn’t care at all how long it would take and just went along the way casually.

“Doe this mean they realized that he didn’t have many guards?”

And, it felt like they were confident that they would be able to drive away their pursuers. Just as I came to that conclusion, I arrived at a single house.

It was in a high-class residential area most of which was inhabited by nobles. This area, in particular, was where the foreign nobles took the majority.

“This… Should be Count Tarkashere’s residence.”

Count Tarkashere was a distant relative of the Gritnir royal family that had been incorporated in the United Three Nations. His domain was located in southern parts of the Gritnir kingdom, adjacent to the Stolla domain of the Raum forest kingdom.

It could be said that it escaped the Evil Dragon’s calamity exactly because it was located where it was. And ever since Elliot took the throne, he started acting as a diplomat with Raum.

“I see. Could it be that his conceited thinking has led him to assume he could take Elliot’s place just because he was a former royalty?”

As I was thinking that, I started investigating the surroundings of the mansion and planning how to go about infiltrating it.