Born From A Divine Gamble

At least, they had some interesting company.

Martin was stuck in a difficult situation where he wanted to impress Emp with his talents while staying respectful without revealing the secret of his employer"s ident.i.ty to the two tag along. More often than not, whenever Emp was close to Martin, the mage would shut his mouth and stay nervously silent. Maybe the half story he heard about Emp killing the previous mage was affecting him more than Emp thought it should.

The two sisters didn"t have the same problem at all. They acted as if they"d always been there right from the very first day of the trip. They fooled around and ran about in the vicinity of the wagon as it was pulled on the road by the two horses, they rummaged through Martin"s things to find something interesting until he forbid them to touch anything and they kept asking thousands of questions to Emp, Calla and Martin.

They didn"t bother watching over their two small bags, trusting that they"d be safe in Martin"s wagon and instead, played all day until the whole procession stopped for the night.

"Why are we stopping here? There"s no houses around. Is it truly a village?" Leonni asked dubiously.

"Of course not, we"re just stopping here for the night. We still have a long road before we reach the village."

"How long are we talking about?"

"It should be three weeks at worst. But there"s one or two other villages on the way" Martin answered.

"Three weeks! But that"s so long!"

"What did you expect?"

"We thought we"d be there by now!"

"The trip to Red-water takes more than a month and Dark-glint is halfway there so there"s no way anyone can reach it in a day." Martin denied.

"But what are we gonna eat!" Leonni asked in a panic.

They had not planed for the trip at all and they barely had a snack in their bags. Emp was about to tell them to go gather fruits in the woods around because that"s what he would have done himself. He refrained from doing so because he was pretty sure they"d end up getting lost and more importantly, Calla showed him a pitiful look.

"We have more than enough food so just share ours for now." He said instead.

"Really? You"re the best even though you look like a bad guy." Erin said with a few claps.

He still didn"t think he looked like a bad guy but he didn"t get any chance to complain about it because it was at that point that the girls decided they should help Calla with cooking.

They said it was because they felt bad for just eating it in exchange for nothing but the truth was obviously because they wanted the rumored job of cook. To summarize the results, they weren"t any good at cooking. Apparently, they had never done any cooking at all and just ate whatever they got the way they got it or charred black.

The only good thing that could be said about their attempt at helping was that they didn"t injure themselves. Thankfully for them, Calla didn"t get angry or annoyed at all, Emp had never seen her angry ever before so it wouldn"t be two small girls failing at cooking that would do it now.

Instead, she was happy that the two girls tried. Even thought the two girls turned the whole meal into a failure by dropping a whole bag of spice in it by accident and that the final taste was awful, Calla was willing to let them keep trying the next day.

Next up, they had a problem with how to organize their sleeping area. They had not accounted for five person to sleep in the wagon and the s.p.a.ce was lacking. In order to have everyone fit inside, Martin would have to remove a bunch of his magician supplies from it and set it to the side for the night, ready to be stolen by anyone pa.s.sing by.

On top of that, the first plan was to have Emp and Calla sleep together on one side and Martin on the opposite but with the addition of those two girls, this wasn"t really possible. Even without anything in the wagon, only three people could fit side by side on either end if they didn"t want to get in the way of each other. If Emp slept with his wife than the two sisters would have to sleep next to Martin and they disagreed to do so because obviously, he was a man and they were girls.

Emp would get no peace of mind trying to sleep knowing Calla wasn"t right next to him because if something was to happen in the dead of night, he couldn"t just grab her and escape to safety, he would have to look for her on the other side of the wagon first. Martin couldn"t sleep either because he was afraid that some of his stuff might disappear if it was left without surveillance.

"No choice then, we"ll have to take turns to keep watch over everything." Emp told Martin.

"Me too?" Martin complained.

"Yes you too. You"re being hired to protect a whole village, are you really complaining now about keeping watch half a night? Why did you even accept the job if you can"t do it?"

"No no, I can, I will. I"m just... never mind."

"Can we help too?" Erin asked.

"No, I don"t trust you two at all."

"What! We"re supper trustworthy I"ll have you know."

"Huh-huh. That"s why you got fired from all your previous jobs." Martin pointed out.

"That"s not our fault, those were all accidents!"

"Well I"d rather not have any accidents happening tonight. Just sleep and keep your strength for the trip."

The girls didn"t protest too much and went to sleep as he requested. Emp decided to take the first turn of the watch because he wasn"t sure that Martin would be able to wake him up later if he went to sleep now.

Indeed, after he switched place with Martin later on, he slept like a rock until way past sunrise. By that point, Everyone had already had breakfast and the caravan was moving again. Emp woke up under a pile of things and had to crawl his way out of the wagon and jump out of it while it was on the move.

He walked around and got back in front to see Martin dozing off and Calla watching over the two sisters wasting their time sitting at the front.

"Hi, good morning everyone."

"Hi Emp." They all answered in various degrees of enthusiasm.

"Martin, you should go back in to get some sleep, I"ll take care of everything."

"Uh? Oh, right, sure." The mage answered with his eyes half closed.

If he was like that every day, it would be a long trip for him.

Emp switched place with him and took on the reins while the mage buried himself in his supplies. Keeping the wagon on the path wasn"t hard at all. All he had to do was keep following the one in front, don"t slow everyone down and don"t stray off of the road. It would be the perfect time to start reviewing all the doc.u.ments if not for the two small girls being lazy right beside them. Emp needed to get rid of them somehow if he wanted to keep the secret of his ident.i.ty from them.

Just a year ago, he wouldn"t have cared at all if they heard everything or not but now, he was conscious that he needed to be much more careful with all of that. He didn"t know them at all so they could be spies from anyone and even if they were really just two small and very unlucky girls, he didn"t know if they could keep a secret or not and if they would mess everything up like they apparently often did. He could not take the risk.

"Erin, Leonni, I have important business to talk about with Calla and I don"t want you two to listen so go play elsewhere will you?"

"What sort of business could you even have to talk about? You"re not a merchant after all." Erin complained.

"I"m not a merchant that doesn"t mean I don"t have work to do. I"ve got a bunch of doc.u.ments to review with her." He said as he got the stack of paper out of his bag.

"That"s a lot of paper." Leonni said in an impressed voice.

"Why can"t we stay though? I don"t understand why it matters that we hear it or not. Also, my legs hurt because of yesterday."

"Yeah..." The smaller sister agreed while ma.s.saging her thigh.

"That"s good, that means it"s getting stronger, keep at it. I"ll give you a copper each if you try your hardest to walk now."

"For real! Let"s go Leonni!" Said Erin suddenly jumping on her feet.

"But Erin!"

The big sister picked up her complaining sibling and jumped off the wagon. She failed to land on her feet and rolled in the dirt.

"Wow! Are you okay?" Called Emp, stretching his neck to see.

He wanted them to be out of his way, not hurt themselves or get lost on the road.

"We"re fine! Just a scratch!"

"Don"t go too far off and don"t bother the rest of the travelers all right?"

"Sure, whatever you say."

Erin had answered in an annoyed tone, apparently, she didn"t like being told what to do but seriously, Emp just wanted her to be safe.

Now that everyone was out of their way though, they could finally take a look at the list. There was a lot of them, there were around seventy pages of personal information about a bunch of girls Emp had never met or heard of.

Making a choice between all that was ridiculous so under the suggestion of Calla, they agreed that it would be best to first put aside everyone they really didn"t want to meet yet.

Just by their descriptions, some of them sounded way too scary for Calla, too bold and daring or too violent. She rejected a great amount just by that. The thing with the Muracier"s retainers and va.s.sals was that most of them had been chosen for their martial prowess and att.i.tude on the battlefield. Those were both things that Calla had no need for even though these traits were so common that they were reflected into almost every member of every family a.s.sociated with the Muraciers.

On the first day working on this, they removed almost half of the list just by glancing at the description of everyone"s att.i.tude. The day after they finished going through the list a first time and on top of finis.h.i.+ng to remove those Calla didn"t want to meet at all, they removed a few Emp thought he couldn"t deal with yet. He eliminated this way most of the kids of the branch families, the daughters of Graube himself, cousins from Fortacier or Paroicier and so on.

He had no doubt that they all must be talented and probably good people but convincing the very blood of Graube to stand against their father would be impossible, at least for now. As for the other branch families, Emp didn"t feel strong enough to impress them. He didn"t desire their admiration but if he looked like a useless person, they"d solidify their support towards Graube instead of getting closer to him and Emp didn"t want that.

Just because it was a good opportunity however, he still used their presence on the list to remind himself of their banners and motto.

The Fortaciers had a steel grey fort on their banner, just as expected from their name. They were ranked as barons but did not have more territory than a small lord, like the main branch, they were focused on martial practice rather than the management of a territory. Their motto was; Steel never faltering. Emp believed they were specialists in defensive battles but he wasn"t sure.

Like the Fortaciers, the Paroiciers were barons without lands. Their banner represented a steel grey wall with deep roots and wide supporting beams of wood. The crenelation on the wall was slightly different from the one of the Muracier but they were the most resembling from all the branch families for being the oldest of them all. Their motto was simply; The walls may never fall.

Emp reviewed every house he eliminated like that in order to familiarize himself with them a bit but it took him a good chunk of the day to do and they didn"t progress much in their work.

Then, that night, the second day they were working on this but the third day since they left the city, Leonni rummaged through the supplies looking for kindling and in the dark, mistook the stack of papers stashed not far from it for said kindling. She burned it all down.

Emp only understood what had happened the next day when he started looking around for the papers, unable to find them at all. After a while of looking and asking the others about it, the small girl admitted that she was the one that had burned the papers.

"You burned the whole thing?!"

The small girl ran away from him and shouted the answer in her escape.

"I couldn"t see and I thought that putting more of it in would make it brighter. I didn"t know these were important!"

"I"ve never seen anyone use paper as kindling before! Don"t run away, come back here!"

"Sis! Calla! Help! Emp"s mad!"

Emp felt the need to punish the girl somehow but the clever sisters decided to use Calla as a s.h.i.+eld and hid behind her hoping that she"d be able to calm Emp down. The worst was that they were right, Calla only needed to give him an apologetic look to stop him from doing anything.

He could see the faces of the two girls peeking from behind Calla, at least they seemed worried and regretful. He made a big sigh and gave up on punis.h.i.+ng them. Instead, he asked the other him to go see Blackbull again. Luckily for him, she had another copy of the doc.u.ments, that one, he kept very safely so that it wouldn"t happen again.

Even though everything was fixed, he was still furious and the girls dodged him for a long time.

Emp spent his night watch going through all the doc.u.ments again and removing all those they had eliminated a second time over, using a small candle to read the papers.

Over the next few days, Calla and him progressed a lot in their selection and Emp,despite being angry, kept paying the two girls a copper each everyday simply to stay away from the papers and to not spy on them. The two girls in exchange kept complaining about how their legs and feet hurt from walking so much. Emp wasn"t heartless and let them take breaks and sit at the back of the wagon as much as they wanted. As long as they didn"t come disturb him and Calla while they checked through the list, he didn"t bother with them.

After the initial wave of ma.s.s disqualifications, the work became harder and harder because they had to look at every little information they had and put them or not in a list of possible candidates.

They managed to reduce the list quite a lot after many long talks. The thing was that they didn"t have to limit themselves to a single person, they could take as many or as few as they wanted so it wasn"t as simple as choosing the best. And even if it was, the best on paper might not be the best in real life.

In their list of maybes however, ten stood out among the others. There was the daughter of a count, one of a viscount, two daughters of barons, two of baronets and four of knights.

One of the four knights daughter was named Kaisla Grovgar and was coincidentally the girl Noirantel spoke about. The paper said she had the blessing of the G.o.d Forest. The banner of her father was showing a flower s.h.i.+eld protecting a pine grove and the motto the knight had chosen for himself was; Unfaltering petals protecting groves unbound. Emp had no idea what it meant but most motto didn"t make any more sense than that.

For example, apparently, the Muracier family motto was; The protection of purity is the truth of the battlefield. What was it supposed to mean? What purity where they even talking about? Emp had no way to know since the thing had been written generations ago and no one ever changed it even though they had the right to.

Going back to Kaisla, having a girl with a blessing close-by to help Calla and protect her seemed like a really good idea to him. Because of that blessing, she was the one standing out the most but there were nine others that sounded quite nice and talented. All of their names where well known, if not across a kingdom then at least in the Muracier"s family.

Emp even recognized a few names by himself without relying on the notes from his cla.s.ses with Blackbull.

There was a daughter of baron Sorenthal who owned a kennel of forest spiked wolves and according to the doc.u.ment, the girl raised a few of her own as well and loved them a lot. She never went anywhere without them.

There was also the daughter of a guy named Twain Greathorn who wielded a great-spear made by Marcy. Emp didn"t know if his daughter had some of his martial talent with a spear but the count Greathorn was a well known warrior that had won many a tournament. Whether his daughter was a warrior or not did not matter as simply having her close by would bring fame to Calla thanks to her father.

The whole list went like that, all of them big names whether thanks to the history of their families or their own achievements, all of them were loyal to the Muraciers and each had their advantages... according to Blackbull"s research.

Who knew what was real and what was empty boasting from n.o.bles. The only way to know for sure would be to meet them all in person or at least those that seemed like they might get along with Calla according to the papers.

They narrowed the whole thing to about twenty different young women that might fit the role of Lady-in-waiting and stored back all the papers for good around a week into the trip. Now, the only thing he had to do was to write down twenty letters, apply the Muracier"s family seal on it and send them to each of their families.

Writing the letters might take a while but the hardest part was actually the seal. Emp didn"t have one, Chinui didn"t give him his own and Emp never walked into the Muracier"s home before. To fix this small yet gigantic problem, the duke had to write a letter of his own asking for an official taking care of the Muracier"s business to come over to the school with a spare seal for a secret purpose planned by the great general himself.

Seals were something really important for n.o.bles and barely any were ever made for each family to minimize the risk of fakes and impersonations. Asking someone to come with a spare seal was like asking for someone to send a spare key to the treasury vault by mail. The man would come since the trusted duke Jazay said it was for the great general but he would come with a ma.s.sive escort and it would take a lot of time.

In the meantime, nothing more could be done about this matter. Calla was quite glad she was now free to enjoy the sights and left Emp to store back everything in the bag.

When Emp raised his eyes after putting everything back in place, the two sisters were standing in front of him with strangely nervous eyes. They looked like they had done something terrible again so Emp got a bit nervous.

"What is it? Are you two alright?"

"Yes... We just wanted to apologize." Erin said while twiddling with her fingers.

She was looking at the ground with a guilty look. Emp feared that he had thought right.

"What did you do?"

"No no! That"s not it, we didn"t do anything this time." Erin panicked.

"Then what is it?"

"We wanted to apologize because we know we haven"t been really nice with you up to now."

Emp had not expected that, he let them continue to hear what this was all about.

"We said you looked like a bad guy, we burned down your important papers, we accused you of kidnapping Calla and put you in trouble with the guards, we messed up all the meals we tried to help make and because of us you couldn"t sleep with your wife for a whole week. We know we caused you trouble."

"Also," Leonni added. "we know how much all that food cost and you had to pay to let us in because we didn"t have any money. You even gave us a copper coin everyday even though we did nothing to deserve it."

"You even kept doing it after Leonni mistook your papers for kindling instead of kicking us out. We tried to work at many places and we"ve had a lot of trouble so we know how hard it is to get those coins and the food too, even our own dad couldn"t afford to give any to us. We"re truly grateful and we really want to sincerely apologize for all the wrong things we did."

"We won"t say you look like a bad guy anymore. You were way more kind to us than any of our bosses from before, even though we didn"t deserve it and even though you didn"t know us at all."

"Once we get in that village, we"ll work hard to repay your kindness, we promises. This time, we"ll be hired for some work somewhere and we"ll get enough money to repay you."

Emp felt touched by their sincere words, they seemed like they really meant everything they said and it was very pleasing to hear. Not only because they apologized or because they were praising his generosity but also because he was happy that he was able to help a bit.

Their speech was great to hear, but Emp felt really bad about it, like something was squeezing down on his heart. The reason he felt that way was easy to tell for once. Those few coppers were worth almost nothing to him so he had not felt generous at all giving them away, he put up with the food because it pleased Calla, not because he was especially patient and worst of all, there was no great cook job waiting for them in the village. The only good thing was that if there really was a cooking job, they"d had been rejected right away because of how bad at it they were.

Emp felt guilty, he had just let them do whatever they wanted because he had no relation to them at all but in doing so, he had led them towards a village were they most probably wouldn"t find what they were looking for. If he had told them no and forced them to leave right away, they"d have continued to go from work to work back in Bêtéclair. It wouldn"t have been the best but it would have been better than in Dark-glint were there weren"t that many shops in the first place. If they couldn"t do any hard work like carpentry or hunting, they"d be in deep trouble, there were only so many places there that needed more hands and a typical villager couldn"t afford to pay clumsy hands that messed everything up all the time.

Emp held back his worried pout as best he could and asked them about their plans.

"What will you do if you don"t get a job once we reach Dark-glint?"

"This time we will for sure! We"ll practice hard and make it!" Leonni claimed in high spirit.

"But what if it doesn"t work out?"

Erin made a pout she quickly hid from her sister and spoke with optimism.

"Then there will be someone else that will need us, there has to be. We don"t have enough money and food for the way back, we can"t fail this time. We can"t screw up all the time anyway, it"s impossible! This time for sure, we will get something good, right Leo?"

"Right!"

Erin spoke that way to motivate her younger sister but Emp could see that being older, she worried a lot about what would happen if they failed. If she bought her sister all the way to Dark-glint for nothing, it might be the end of the line for them both and it would be her fault.

Emp felt the need to help them, what would be the best solution? He could just give them a bunch of food and money to go back to Bêtéclair safely with the next caravan but it wouldn"t really fix the problem. Maybe he could find something useful for them to do instead? Erin was right in that they can"t screw up all the time, it"s simply impossible, there must be something they"re good at, they just needed to find out what it was.

Emp looked around in search of Calla to ask her what she thought of this and saw that she was looking at the scene from the wagon with a smile.

Emp froze for a second and then made a smile of his own. The question didn"t need to be asked, she had known all along that it would come to this. She probably wanted this to happen ever since she first heard their story. She was like that after all, she always wanted to help.

Maybe she wanted to go to the end with them because of what he said that night when she gave them those fruits. He had said that he agreed with her action but he was disappointed that she had not fixed the actual problem. That smile meant just that; go on then, fix the actual problem.

Fine, he would help them as best he could. He had the money for it and Calla had his back, plus, he was the reason why they got into a caravan for nowhere. He turned back towards the two girls with a much better expression on his face than earlier. He spoke with a serious tone.

"Alright, I accept your apologies. First, tell me your family name."

"We"re not supposed to use it." Leonni said in embarra.s.sment.

"Look, even though they don"t want you to use it, it doesn"t mean that it"s not yours. Even if you two gave yourself another name, the card wouldn"t lie and it would still show the first one. Whether you get along with the rest of your family or not doesn"t matter, that name belong to you too."

Martin who was just waking up from his morning nap intervened there.

"Just to be technical, they could change their names to something else if they found a high n.o.ble willing to reward them with a new name to commemorate something impressive. The hunting card would acknowledge that like a received t.i.tle and add that new name before the old one."

Was Martin saying that to let Emp know he could give them a new name or just because he liked to expose all the facts? He wasn"t against giving out names but he was certain that he would be simply terrible at naming things or people. Just looking at the usual names the G.o.ds gave, Emp could tell that letting him choose was a bad idea.

"But we"ll never meet a high n.o.ble." Erin said, unaware of his thoughts.

"We"ll never raise any achievements either."

"It doesn"t matter for now, just show me your cards." Emp pressed them.

The two sisters presented their cards and Emp saw that they were named Porter. Funnily enough, a girl from the list had that name too but now was not the time to think about this. Looking at the rest of the cards, the only thing in the list of kills from the both of them were two rats on the harmless column of Erin"s card.

"So Erin Porter and Leonni Porter. I don"t think you"ll ever be good at cooking but, I"ll help you find some work."

"Really?" Erin said in surprise.

"Yes, really, I"ll teach you things I know until we find something you"re not so bad at."

"Things you know? Like what? What is your work Mr. Emp?" Leonni asked.

"Err, for now I"m just a student but trust me, I know a lot more than you. How do you think I got all that money?"

"You worked hard?"

"Yes, sort of, but that"s not what I meant. Look at my hunting card."

Emp hid every information on it but showed off the list of kills.

"Wha! So many things on this! There"s so many cats too!"

"Cats?"

Emp didn"t understand what they meant until they pointed at the picture of a blood-spitter.

"That"s a blood-spitter not a cat."

They did look like big ugly cats and he did call them cats in the past but those where actual monsters.

"What"s the difference?"

"A normal cat can"t kill you, a blood-spitter can."

"But I fought the fat grey cat in Plogat alley before and he won. He was really strong, a blood-spitter thing can"t be much stronger, can it?" Erin complained.

That didn"t sound promising. Even Calla seemed taken aback while Martin just laughed loudly.

"Have you ever seen a real monster?"

The two girls shook their heads.

"An actual bad guy, someone that"s not me?"

The two girls shook their heads again.

"I love how you have to precise that it needs to be someone else than you." Martin chuckled.

Emp ignored him and tried to find the best way to explain the simplest of things to those two girls.

"Then, do you know what to do if you encounter one?"

"You throw rocks at them!" Leonni called excitedly.

"Wrong! Don"t do that, the rocks won"t do anything, a monster doesn"t care."

It might just enrage it in fact which didn"t help in most cases.

"But it worked on the rats in Plogat alley." Erin said in disappointment.

This Plogat alley really seemed like a terrible place... Why were the two of them so familiar with it! Emp ignored that alleyway and pointed at the woodland horror on the list instead.

"Rats are weak, that"s why they show up in the harmless section, you can"t compare them to monsters. That thing I"m pointing at was taller than the walls of Bêtéclair."

"What!"

"No way!" The two said.

"That"s the truth, I was like a tiny bug to it. I would have died if it had hit me even once. The most important thing when you encounter a monster or a bad guy is to make sure you can escape. You need to be able to run away and hide if you need it."

"I guess it might be true but what does any of this have to do with finding work?"

"I"ll try to make you strong, I"ll teach you what I know and if everything else fails, at the very least, you"ll be able to survive as hunters. Most works in the village need physical abilities so what we need to do is make you stronger. We can both teach you how to not die in front of monsters and make you stronger at the same time."

"How?" Leonni asked with curiosity.

"You"ve already had a great start by walking and running so much since the beginning of the trip, now we need to get to something harder. First of all, take those."

Emp grabbed two wooden swords from his bag, a short one for Leonni and a long one for Erin. The two girls seemed really impressed to see two wooden sword appear from the bag and opened their eyes wide in shock.
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"Wow! How did you do that!?"

"The bag is magic."

"I didn"t know things could gain magic powers for being too ugly!" Leonni said.

"They can"t... Its magic powers have nothing to do with its ugliness. Pick these up instead of mocking the bag."

"You want us to play with wooden swords?" Asked Erin, looking at the long piece of wood with a frown.

"No, I want to challenge you to a game of hide and seek."

"How does hide and seek makes us stronger and what are the swords for?"

"Be patient, I"m explaining. Sometimes, your opponent is far stronger than you, in those cases, even in the n.o.ble school, they tell everyone to flee or hide. Right now, everything is stronger than you two so I need you to be the best at hiding and running. I won"t teach you anything else until you can beat me at this game."

"How do we win then?"

"You can win in two different ways, either you hit me with those sword once or you escape me until I decide that you did it for long enough."

"The second one is unfair!"

"Whether you think it"s unfair or not doesn"t matter, I"ll give you your copper coin at the end of the day even if you don"t win. Just do your best, the goal isn"t to win, the goal is to improve."

Truth be told, Emp believed that the first way to win was the unfair one. That age old game was made exactly for this sort of training. Like in real life, if a monster goes after you, there is only two way to live, either you kill it or you run and hide until the monster gives up. This was exactly the win conditions he gave them. He knew it was impossible for them to win against him but at least, they might pick up some good tricks to hide from danger.

The unfair part about the first win condition was that they might waste many tries trying to hit him with those swords instead of running away. They needed to learn that going against a monster with no training at all was just crazy. Emp wanted to let them make the mistake as many times as they needed so that they wouldn"t do it against something that was actually dangerous.

There was a reason why the game was called hide and seek instead of sword play.

"I win if I can grab you, or I make you drop the swords. If I grab you and you hit me with the sword after, you still loose understood?"

"We got it, we"ll win right away you"ll see!"

"Yeah!"

"We"ll see about that." Martin chuckled along with Calla at the back.

"Why are you two laughing?" Erin asked with a frown.

"You"ll see!" The mage called with a tinge of excitement.

It seemed that the Muraciers really had a strong reputation for that sort of thing.

Emp made a smile from the corner of his mouth and explained the start.

"You can do anything at all as long as you don"t disturb the rest of the people here and don"t break anything. You can run, hide in the woods, snake around the wagons, it doesn"t matter, don"t go too far to get lost however. I"ll walk over there and count up to five, after that, I"ll go after you. Are you ready?"

He"d make sure to give the two a ring later tonight in case they messed up and got lost in the woods if they played again another day.

"We are!"

"Go!" Leonni said excitedly.

Emp nodded and walked to the spot he had designated. The smart thing for them to do would be to understand that the first solution was a trap and run right away but they didn"t. They raised their swords and stared at Emp while he counted up to five. They kept their feet close to each other which was a bad sword-fighting posture and they even held they swords over their heads.

Emp said "five" aloud and didn"t give them any chance. Before the two girls had even made a single step towards him, he used a s.p.a.ce step to close in on them and after bending down slightly, wrapped his arms around both of their waists at once and lifted them both in the air.

The two yelped in surprise and Leonni screamed in fright.

"How!"

"You both died." He said close to Erin"s ear."I told you that you"re weaker than everything right now."

He felt the girl s.h.i.+ver under his arm, she was starting to understand.

"I"ll teach you how to stand properly, but first, you need to learn how to keep breathing. The worst I"ll give you is a hug but a monster would have already eaten you alive."

"I-I got it..."

Leonni nodded feebly to agree with her sister, still confused by their sudden loss.

"We"re doing it again until you survive."