Come morning, the royal family rode their griffon carriages and left, leaving Ifira and Rontress to stew in their thoughts and think about their own place in the kingdom's political sphere. Last night was a long discussion of what they should do and how they should do it, not much progress was made in the end.

  The current political climate is simply too complicated, with a lot of unknown variables that could easily mess up any plan they make if left unchecked.

  As the carriages turned into dots in the distant sky, Rontress looked at Ifira and said the words she has been holding back all this time, "they are not our allies." Ifira most likely knew this but it didn't hurt to give a reminder. "We're on our own in the end. Best not to be reliant on them."

  "You're the one who went out at midnight to talk to the princess, shouldn't you be saying that to yourself?" Was she still hung up on that? Why? "Regardless, I don't really like them, and as much as I want to marry the crown prince, I am still cautious and would prioritize our territory over my own feelings."

  "Me too." Rontress gave Ifira a hug. "If it ever comes down to it, I'll pick Flotol and Ghorise over my own emotions, I promised to develop this place and I intend to keep that."

  Rontress felt a hand on her back.

  "I feel the same way."

  They split, stared at each other, then wordlessly walked to the mansion. When she first came here, Rontress remembered this place as being luxurious yet as time passed, she realized that it was just bias.

  She was poor so a mansion looked good, that was it.

  What used to be Ifira's home was poor compared to the other higher nobles.

  Ifira's home increased in size alongside the economy, as the annual taxes increased, so did the height and width of the house. What was once a piece of land owned by a decaying noble house had turned into an estate with several buildings and countless hedges maintained by dozens of servants.

  "An Orchard with a mansion at the center." Rontress softly said, her tone defiant, as though she's trying to manifest the words just by saying them. "No, not an orchard, a forest. I want a forest, it'll have a mansion at the center and a bunch of other things inside of it."

  "Will I be in it?"

  "Naturally?" Wow, did her midnight rendezvous leave that much of an impression on Ifira? Why is she so paranoid about their relationship now? Rontress needed to fix this. "Ifira, look."

  She stopped walking and so did her best friend, Rontress held both of Ifira's hands and lifted them to her collar, she pressed her friend's palm on the head of her collarbone. "I can never replace you, okay? You're one of a kind, even if more people come into my life from now on, you will always be my friend. That will never change."

  "Eonea feels like she's better for you, though." Ifira's tone was laced with guilt. "She's cunning, smart, and can actually keep up with you, meanwhile I'm just powerful, every conversation we have ends up in me learning new things, never you."

  "And that's perfectly fine!—"

  "You don't understand!" Tears flowed down Ifira's cheeks, staining her otherwise perfect skin. "You relied on her! You met up with her knowing that she can plan with you! What about me?! You always, always do things yourself! You plan things yourself! Never with anyone!"

  "That was because I needed to have Eonea by my side!"

  "I'm already here!" Ifira yelled back. "We've been friends for so long and yet you never relied on me once, why can't you think that you also need me by your side?"

  "Because you already are?" Rontress cupped Ifira's cheeks and wiped a tear with her thumb. "You idiot, I don't need to worry about you leaving my side because I know you never will, you'll always have my back."

  "You're replacing me though." Now hiccups went between every spoken word that Ifira says, it was strangely endearing seeing her like this. "I know it, soon you won't be my friend."

  "Nope, I'll always be your friend. I promise." She embraced her friend with more force than necessary. "I will never leave you, Ifira."

  "You promise?"

  "I promise." Rontress let go and patted Ifira on the head. "Now let's go, we still need to talk to your mother about sending a small number of our military to fight for Oberlon."

  "Okay." The tears staining Ifira's cheeks were wiped clean with her sleeve, it was like they were never there.

  Rontress didn't know how to react to Ifira's sudden outburst, she never expected her friend to react so heated honestly, she's come to believe that Ifira wouldn't be the type of person to get affected by something like that but she was wrong, the villainess wasn't as invincible as Rontress thought she would be.

  The two of them were in an awkward state of silence throughout their walk, this did not change even as they entered the study of Ifira's mother.

  "What brings the two of you here? Did it have something to do with the crown's visit?" This woman, why does she always like to play dumb? "I understand that the news may be stressful but you resolved it in the end no? What use would coming here be?"

  "We're here to talk about deploying the Murk Men." Rontress cut to the chase, she sat down in front of Ghorise's current leader and the head of Ifira's family with the kind of comfort that comes from doing this a thousand times over.

  "They don't have their mages yet though." Euthiel argued with sensible words, too bad logic was thrown out the window yesterday. "Wasn't your plan to show off the discipline we are capable of giving our soldiers? What happened to that?"

  "The royal family happened." Ifira answered for Rontress. "I think Rontress wants us to deploy our soldiers prematurely so that our enemies think we're weak, after all, they were trained to work with mages in mind."

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  "And a lack of a mage wouldn't show their true value." Euthiel finished that particular idea. She nodded. "I can see why you would want to do something like that, but have you thought about the consequences?"

  "Yes, we reveal our cards too early, showing that Ghorise now has a military would make other higher nobles cautious, but that's the point." Rontress calmly retorted. Again, Ifira already said that the real value of their army wouldn't be shown in this particular deployment.

  "Do you have a group in mind?"

  "I'd say that I wanna choose Karuiz's group but no, I'd rather not. He's gonna be in reserve for the time being, let's just choose some random battalion and throw them into the front lines."

  "Their death would be a waste of resources and manpower." Ifira pointed out.

  "Yes, but the alternative where our enemies boldly move against us without taking caution will kill far more soldiers, I just want them to hesitate and slow down, that's all." Technically, there's another solution to this problem, and that's Rontress and Ifira going to the front line themselves.

  However, their real strength is a trump card Rontress wishes to keep hidden, she knows that Ifira is a powerhouse that requires the strongest people in the world to beat because of her past life, everyone else however thinks that Ifira is just an abnormally strong human and that's it.

  Rontress wants them to keep their wrong assumption of Ifira's strength and only wants to reveal the truth when she's left with no other choice.

  'They'll want to kill us more if we show our true strength now, actually, they might even prioritize us over the royal family.' That's the kind of world bending strength the two of them possesses. 'We are the bigger target, I can never forget that.'

  "Will that make them hesitate?" Euthiel voiced her concerns over the plan. "Won't doing this encourage them even more? If I was in their position, I would nip Ghorise in the bud before it grows even stronger. I imagine they'll be concerned once they see the effectiveness of our soldiers during war."

  "They won't, rumors of us having a wizard will spread like wild fire soon, even if the Murk Men aren't that numerous—" which isn't true, Rontress mentally added. "— they'll still think that the wizard by our side will turn the tides of battle."

  "Is Bylor actually a wizard?"

  "Yes? You've been working with him for years now, how can you not know this?" Rontress tilted her head, what did she think he was?

  "Well he's fairly secretive, so I assumed he's trying to hide the fact that he doesn't possess a magical class and is just relying on a powerful sub class to get by."

  "No, he has a magical class." Ifira piled in and corrected her mother. "He's shown it to me when I asked."

  He did? Rontress frowned, Bylor never did that for her.

  "Did he now?" Euthiel sighed. "Okay, we're sending soldiers to fight against Jhivan, that's settled."

  "So it is." Rontress was glad that Euthiel agreed, she wouldn't have forced the woman if she didn't want to deploy Ghorise's soldiers. "Now for the other thing, I want to talk to you about asking some of Alfenheim's more popular actors and actresses to come here, don't tell them why, just tell them to come."

  "I'll do that, can I ask you why?"

  Rontress stopped moving, her body going rigid halfway through standing up. Since she decided to make the actors' shackles subtle, lying would be ideal here. "I just want to interview them."

  "For what?" Really? Euthiel is curious for even that?

  "The princess and I made a deal, she lends us griffon carriages, I spread news around." Well not news, but gossip about the actors. Rontress decided that telling the kingdom what's happening within it will be part of the plan now, the princess didn't need to be consulted.

  "Must be tiring."

  "Not really." Rontress smiled, of course Euthiel would assume the news will have to be written down. But this is not the case.

  "What will the news be about?"

  "For now? Things happening locally around Flotol will be the main topic, I hope to expand it and put events happening across the entirety of Oberlon to paper though." But she doesn't have journalists. Yet. "Parts of that will involve the daily lives, quotes, and drawings of our actors and actresses."

  "I see. Good luck with that."

  "Thank you."

  Walking out of the room with a silent Ifira in tow made Rontress worry about their fraying relationship, unfortunately, she couldn't focus on it for long enough to come up with something because a soldier ran up to them just as they came out of the mansion.

  "Mistresses."

  "Yes?" Great, what is it this time? Rontress was putting on a light smile but she's pissed, she's no stranger to work but she really needs to focus on something else right now!

  "We have something we want to show you. It's important."

  "Something important?" Ifira murmurs, she turns to Rontress and the two of them locked gazes. The panic and paleness of the guard was something to be concerned with. "Show us then."

  With a nod, the man led them to one of the estate's guard houses, they entered the tower and went into the depths of its basement. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, a man opened a wooden door reinforced by iron bars, giving entry to one of the harshest prisons within the territory.

  Here, powerful criminals are kept in chains: adventurers with far too many levels, a passing mage, or a bandit leader who's gone unchecked for several years.

  Rontress ignored all of them even as they glared at her, she couldn't be bothered to give them a glance, she's beaten them once, doing so again wouldn't be difficult for her. Unsurprisingly, none of them stared at Ifira, they know that the ones who did never lived.

  "Here he is mistresses." The guard stopped in front of a cell, kevlar chains rattled within, the walls shook with the prisoner's every struggle, their enchantments no use against the force it was exerting.

  Rontress eyed the battery next to the door and her eyes widened. "The bar's full? How long has this thing been struggling?"

  "He hasn't stopped ever since we put him there 3 hours ago." Three hours?! This thing has only been there for three hours and already maxed out the mechanical energy trap installed on the cell?!

  "We can rest easy that the room will kill him once he's escaped at least." Even Ifira was frowning. "Well, he is stretching it a bit, what is this thing?"

  "Its..." Rontress paled, giving the prisoner a closer look made her realize that this isn't some artificial mutation, no, the features are far too symmetrical for that. "It used to be a man at least."

  Four limbs, wide lips, front facing eyes, and front facing knees were the only things that made it even possible for the creature to be recognized as a man. It had no nose, its skin was too pale, and its mind too animalistic for it to be thought otherwise.

  The creature had no clothes, allowing its chiseled muscles to be seen in all their horrifying glory. It also has no sexual features that can be seen, the entire thing's body is blank, actually, it also had no hair anywhere on its body, the skin is too smooth, pair that with its coloration and the damn thing looks like it was carved from stone.

  "It looks like a statue."

  "Hah!" The guard laughed, he was so scared before this, what happened? Did he think he's safe now that they're here? "That's what the others said when they first saw it too! We got ambushed by the damn thing, almost took one of us out!"

  "How'd you subdue it?"

  "The team's trapper made something to slow it down, after that we hit it on the head with hammers over and over again."

  "So this thing can faint." Rontress nodded, this means most of its bodily functions are still being done on the brain. "Good to know."

  But the human mind is too complex, if it becomes animalistic, it frees up mental space. What is that freed space used for? Its creators knew what they were doing, obviously, so what did they use the extra mental space for?

  "Has this thing cast any spells?"

  "Not as far as we're aware, no."

  "Oh okay." Nodding, Rontress finally came to the realization that this thing was holding back. It wanted to come here. "They have information on us."

  "It was holding back, then?" Ifira came to the same conclusion upon hearing Rontress. "I knew that something this strong couldn't have been beaten by the guards without casualty."

  A sword manifested on Ifira's arm with a flick of her wrist. She opened the cell and walked inside, the monster continued struggling, it screamed at her but Ifira was unphased.

  She raised her sword and slashed sideways.

  A head falls to the ground, it rolls once, twice, three times before stopping. Rontress crushed it underneath her boot.

  "Pick up the body and bring it to Bylor." She says. "Ifira, let's go?"

  "Yes."

  Well that's one problem solved, whoever sent it must be seething right about now.