"Why me?!"Rowl Noken silently muttered under his breath.
Just what kind of luck did he have, to be stuck in one of squads sent to search for Holy Maidens?
For some weird reason, out of all the guards who protect the royal castle, he was the only one who was singled out to be placed in one of the Holy Maiden Retrieval Squads.
It was an arrangement he felt was rather unfair, but he did not have the right to refuse.
The official reason was due to needing as many available people as possible, but Rowl could only guess it was due to the other guards wanting to get rid of him.
"I did not have anyone among the guards who I could call my friend, so when they were asked to give up any available people, they pointed at me without a second thought."
"I should have guessed this was going to happen, but I never thought they would go through with it…"
"For the last five years I worked tirelessly as a guard of the castle, and this is the thanks I get? To be sent on a potentially deadly mission!"
Any mission led by a hero is considered to be extremely dangerous, so being placed in a squad led by Knight of Sword did nothing to alleviate Rowl"s concerns.
"Well, at least I am not the only member of the squad, I don"t see anyone at the level of Holy Knights, but they have members of Ignis Corps among them, so that"s something."
Among the Knights of the Holy Order, there is several different Corps, with Ignis Corps being one of the most prominent.
Qualification to join was to have a blessing by Ignis, the Primary G.o.ddess of Fire.
Each member of Ignis Corps had a large red insignia of Fire attached to part of their armor, which made if obvious which Corps they belonged to.
G.o.ddess Ignis was one of the deities who had very many followers, as such, she had bestowed staggeringly large amount of blessings upon humans.
In fact, blessing by Ignis is the most common type of blessing within the kingdom.
Out of the twelve people within the Squad excluding the hero, seven were members of Ignis Corps.
Rowl hesitantly introduced himself to the members of the Ignis Corps who only smirked at him.
Apparently, in their eyes, someone without a blessing like Rowl was beneath them.
"Oh well, at least I tried." Rowl sulked just a little.
"Don"t pay it too much heed." He heard a voice behind him.
"Thinking too much about such things will not do you any good"
"I am not…Knight of Sword!"
He proceeded to immediately genuflect before his superior.
"Call me Verita; we will be working together, so there is no need to be so tense."
"Still, Miss Verita, for me, an ordinary knight to address you, a hero, without showing proper respect is…"
"It is fine." Rowl found himself at loss for words.
It seems like this hero was not the type of prideful person he thought she would be. Ironically, she was easier to get along with than his fellow knights within the squad.
"We are here to follow your lead, Knight of Sword." the other knights within the Squad now proceeded to bow before their leader.
"Yes, it is time for us to depart."
Knight of Sword now proceeded to use the Blessed Stone in combination with a compa.s.s and a map to guide their way.
Now, the direction of their mission was clear.
* * *
They had journeyed for a very vast distance for the last five days, they even exited the Merok Territory, now entering the Racron territory, but the Blessed Stone kept pointing in the same direction.
The blessed Stone in the hands of the Knight of Sword belonged to the Holy Maiden of Water, Lais Lairen, thus it would only show the path to find her.
After walking over such a large distance, everyone was fatigued, so Knight of Sword had everyone stop for the night.
Members of the Ignis Corps were not exactly welcoming to the other knights within the Squad, so the squad was split into two groups, huddled over their respective bonfires.
"Those Ignis Corps members are too prideful, even with a presence of a hero, they dare treat us as though we are inferior to them!" one of the Rowl"s fellow Knights was visibly agitated. "I can"t stand being looked down upon just because I don"t have a blessing!"
"Let it go, it is just fate for some to be blessed and the others to be left ordinary humans."
"That is unfortunately so."
One thing they found to have in common was that each one was an ordinary human without a blessing.
Five of them were in the company of the hero.
They could only look at her with silent envy; after all, she was someone who managed to reach the level that they could only dream of.
Rowl himself felt that the world was not fair when it came to being chosen to be blessed.
"Just so you know, I do not possess a blessing either."
Verita looked at them with her single left eye while the other one was permanently shut with a scar over it.
"You don"t? But then how did you reach the level of a hero without being a demi-G.o.d?"
"Well…While I am not someone who possesses a blessing, I am still a demi-G.o.d, in the strictest of sense of the word."
"So does that mean…"
"Yes, my grandfather was a human; my grandmother was a deity, making me demi-G.o.d."
"I see, so reaching the peak of humanity is still an impossible endeavor for the likes of us, is it not?"
Rowl now spoke up, obvious sense of despair seeped through his voice.
"The Ignis Corps members have a reason to be proud, they may achieve the level of a hero or at least the level of a Holy Knight within their lifetime, but for an ordinary human like me, that is impossible."
"That is not exactly true, I may be a demi-G.o.d, but among the heroes, there are those who reached their level without a blessing or having G.o.d"s blood in their veins, take the Knight of Night and Knight of Combat for example."
Verita now stated the t.i.tles of the two warriors who were heroes despite not being demi-G.o.ds.
"Yes! That is right, if those two managed to reach such a level, it means we have a chance as well!"
"But it will not be easy…"
"Who cares if it hard to achieve, all I care that it is possible!"
"Yeah!!!"
Hearing the overjoyed voices of his companions, Rowl could only put his hand upon his brow in resignation.
"They don"t know what they are talking about. I have trained since I was a child, and now I am close to my thirties, but I still am no more powerful than an ordinary knight, if not weaker. The distance between the might of a Holy Knight and ordinary Knight is too large, not to mention the heroes, who are at least ten times stronger than Holy Knights."
"The most likely scenario I can think of is that we will be attacked by savage beasts in our sleep and everyone but me will be ok. Yep, I will end up becoming bear food at this rate. I have lived my whole life just to become a snack for a hungry bear! Oh, I hope I am tasty…"
Rowl shook his head imagining the grisly fate that could befall him. Each depressive episode was worse than the previous.
But even then, the smile upon the face of Knight of Sword eased his worries, even if just a little.
"Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe the Holy Maidens just got lost along the way…that"s right! Everything will be fine, after all, we have a hero on our side! And when we return triumphantly, I can get my old job back and everything will go back to the way it was before!"
* * *
After the night set, the knights took shifts guarding the camp.
The others went off to sleep, with the Knight of Sword apparently going for a patrol.
Rowl however had to go take a leak among the trees.
After he came back, he noticed something was not right. His instincts were on high alert.
Unlike what many believed, Rowl was the type who firmly trusted his instincts, for he believed that instincts are never wrong.
When he tapped the guard who was on guard duty, his body fell limply on the ground as though he was a broken doll.
Alarmed, he tried to wake up the sleeping knights within a tent only to find them not breathing.
He checked their pulses, not a single one was alive.
"But how, I don"t see any stab marks, what could have caused this…"
But seeing a strange substance leaking out of one of the dead knight"s mouth, he knew exactly what was going on.
"Poison, but when…the soup!" he recalled the soup everyone but a few ate.
"I and three others did not eat it, so they should be alive."
He checked the next tent.
But there, he discovered that the occupants were dead as well.
However, unlike the victims in the other tent, each one had bite mark around their neck.
"What could have caused this? Is it still here? I must warn the Knight of Sword!"
He immediately ran out of the tent, only to hear the sounds of swords clashing upon each other.
It was clear there was a battle going on.
"Knight of Sword! I must warn you! Everyone is…." Rowl found himself stopped midsentence.
Someone stabbed him from behind the neck with what appeared to be a thin, needle-like claw.
"That is as far as you will go, for now that is."
An invisible a.s.sa.s.sin said in a low voice.
A paralyzing poison, with time duration of a few hours, for some reason, Master requested him to leave one knight alive.
Listening to the sound of a battle, snake demon frowned slightly.
"Meros Solros, Camilla truly hopes you know what you are doing."