Ashes was walking along the Redwater River, feeling somewhat depressed.
Since the other witches knew that she had come to Border Town to bring the witches of the Witch Cooperation Association away, their attitude towards her had cooled down, a lot, and there was no longer any signs left of the warm welcome she had received last night.
Moreover, she had also noted that most of the witches were practicing their ability in the castle backyard, which showed that Roland had also found a way to avoid the suffering from the demonic bite. Originally Ashes had wanted to use this vital piece of intelligence to show her good will to the other witches, but her plan was unexpectedly shattered right from the beginning. So in addition to telling them the disadvantages and advantages of leaving Border Town, she had nearly nothing else left for persuading them to move.
What surprised Ashes the most was, even though Roland Wimbledon’s appearance had changed very little since the time she last saw him, every gesture from him now contained an indescribable temperament, completely out of tune with the image he previous held of being a dandy.
How could this be? He had previously definitely belonged to the incompetent class, during business appointments he would always think first about finding a way to escape, never standing up for others, and even if the problem was clearly caused by him, he was also too afraid to take on any responsibility. That time when he had thought about harassing her, she only needed to throw him a hateful look, to make him fall to the ground in panic. But she had later heard from Tilly, that he had claimed that he had fallen by accidently, and that the 5th Princess was at fault for it. After all why would she even find such an ugly woman as a guard?
From that time on, Ashes’ view of the 4th Prince had fallen to the lowest possibility ranking.
Previously she had believed that such a type of person would be easy for her to handle, but during today’s negotiation she had failed utterly to gain the upper hand. Especially when the other side suggested a one-on-one competition, she had discovered that her threat of using military force didn’t work any longer, since the other side hadn’t thought about escaping. Instead, it might even have had the complete opposite effect. If she had threatened him at that time personally, in addition to reducing the witch’s positive impression of her, it would not have had any other results.
Ashes sighed, if she just could be as smart as Tilly, every problem that appeared before her could have been all smoothly solved. The moment she encountered a situation such as this, she would surely have been able to come up with a solution to this, right?
If she hadn’t wanted to help Tilly as much as possible, Ashes really would have taken the next ship heading to Silver City and also leave the Kingdom of Graycastle as soon as possible.
Unconsciously, she had already left the area of the town, she was no longer be able to see those green wheat field on the other side of the river, but instead she was looking at the unclaimed woodland.
When Ashes was already ready to turn back, she suddenly felt the fluctuation of magic behind her, subconsciously turning her head, she could barely see a knife heading towards her cheek, taking advantage of her horizontal movement. The magic fluctuation had transformed into a surging billow, and Ashes suddenly felt a piercing pain coming from her cheek, the other person’s systematic and logical moves were clearly nothing like one would expect to come from an ordinary person. Ashes no longer hesitated, completely dumping her passive attitude, to concentrate on avoiding the dagger coming to her from the front, she put all her strength on one foot and catapulted out of the way.
However, the other side just disappeared into thin air, and within a blink of an eye, she had already appeared behind herself, leaving Ashes totally unable to follow her opponent’s movement.
She drew her sword and rotated in a circle. Turning so fast that she created a dull whistling sound with the sword, causing a large amount of dust to raise up from the ground. This attack from her had no dead areas and was able to scoop up any kind of threat, but in front of this unknown enemy she was facing, even this tricky attack of her’s ended in a complete failure. When her swords swept through the attacker’s previous position, there was nothing to be touched.
The dust settled down slowly, while the person again appeared near Ashes, playing with the dagger she was holding in her hand.
It was Nightingale.
“Should I see this as a warning?” Ashes frowned.
“Of course not,” Nightingale said, putting her dagger back to her waist. “I just wanted to see the strength of an extraordinary.”
