"You two are still the same as ever, huh?"
Myra's words which she spoke with an exasperated sigh, broke the young hero out of his thoughts, with him shrugging his shoulders and replying.
"You know most of it is on her, right? There's no way you'd expect me to get along with someone who one-sidedly hates me.
Even more so when her reason for hating me is 'THAT'."
Although showing their bad relationship in public was already a no-go, Evan had zero intentions to make things worse by explaining why he wasn't liked by the daughter of the Duke, even more so when the person he was speaking to already knew the reason.
Simply put, Duke Cheverton's daughter was in love with Arnold Del Eris, and she believed Evan's existence was the reason Arnold was deprived of his right as the heir to the Eris Dukedom, as such, she never had a good impression of him from the start.
And since the original Evan Del Eris was a 'no nonsense' person, he didn't take too kindly at being one-sidedly disliked by this other noble girl, so his relationship with her had been sour from the start.
It was a sour relationship that continued even after Evan took over the body almost two years ago.
"You should really give up though, you're never gonna win against your competition. It'd be a waste of time and energy on your part.
And you should know how bad it is if 'I' of all people am the one telling you this."
"Competition?"
In response to Myra's question, Evan rose an eyebrow in surprise with a similar expression on his face as he spoke.
"You didn't know?
She has serious competition. Not just her, but all the others in the same boat with her.
It's the kind they're never gonna win against."
The boy shook his head slowly to express his extreme disappointment in the efforts of those girls to win Arnold's affection; when the teenager had already been claimed, whether he liked it or not.
"Come to think of it, why are you here at this time, Lady Myra?"
"Hmm? I was following my father on his way to the capital; however, we decided to stop here and drop off Lady Cheverton who was visiting before continuing on our journey.
Father also had something to discuss with the Duke so it checked out for him."
"I see."
Evan was about to speak once more but was interrupted by the ringing sound of the communication device in his pocket.
Upon answering it, it turned out to be a message from Amelie telling him that the rest of the Churches' forces had arrived.
"Well…that's my cue to go.
I have to go and deal with the arriving paladins and holy knights.
It's only fair I receive them since I'm the one who basically called them over in the first place."
He got up from his seat as he spoke, dusting his jacket and turning to Kuro who was in Myra's arms.
"Stay with Liz."
"Huh? Where are you going?"
As the black cat nodded in affirmation, Eliza's voice rang out from behind Evan as she walked back towards him from one of the offices in the guild while holding a pouch of coins.
Evan explained where he was going as he accepted the pouch from her hands and tossed it into his inventory.
After which he proceeded to wrap one arm around her waist and pull her close to him, giving her a peck on the lips and whispering something in her ear before leaving the guild hall.
"Oh my.
We have a lot to talk about, Eliza.
A lot."
Seeing Myra's shining eyes, Eliza sighed and resigned herself to her fate, before suggesting that they go somewhere else after seeing the pleading expressions on the knights' faces.
◇ ◇ ◇
Mages Guild Master's Office.
Bultom Dungeon City
Cheverton Duchy
April 22nd
Year 1052
"I'd leave this in your capable hands.
Once again, thank you for coming over Sir Czac."
"My pleasure."
The Grand Mage of the City State of Magic Kasteblum replied to Evan's words with an amiable expression on his face, with the young hero going on to give his thanks to the other senior mages seated in the room.
The person he addressed as 'Sir Czac', was the Grand Mage who led the troop of thousands of battle mages that came over from Kasteblum under the orders of Chief Grand Magus Gavin Josey.
He was a fairly tall brown-haired and-eyed man, who was dressed in dark blue robes with Kasteblum's crest embroidered on them.
Despite looking like he was in his late thirties, the man was actually more than thirty years older than that, however, he aged slower than normal due to the fact that he was a powerful intermediate stage Grandmaster level existence.
He and his troop of battle mages arrived at Bultom City on this fine morning, with Evan leading the welcoming party, before proceeding to take him and the other Senior mages with him towards the Mages Guild where they discussed important matters pertaining to the accommodations, feeding and other logistics concerned with mobilizing large amounts of military personnel.
'Level 390, huh?
With two other level 300 Great Mages and other battle mages with levels no less than 150.
I can see why it would be a problem to arbitrarily invite this kind of force into the Great Western Emprise, especially when it's coming from another superpower nation like Kasteblum.'
The young hero thought to himself, remembering how he was nagged by the emperor the previous night about his actions once again.
After leaving the guild the previous day, he went over to receive the higher-ups of the Churches' coalition force; namely the high-ranked paladin from the Church of Artemisia, Sir Heinr and the other paladins from the other churches of other gods.
The satellite towns around Bultom city had become hosts for the churches' forces that numbered close to seven thousand, with Evan going back to ask Faerora about the Eighth Finger's source of funds so he could loot it after seeing how much was to be spent for the sake of all the troops.
'There's no way in hell he can make the empire spend this much money to deal with him and go scot-free.'
In other news, the young hero had once again become a sensation in Bultom, this time with Eliza also in the spotlight as the battle priestess's actions yesterday, coupled with the recognition of multiple A-ranked adventurers caused her popularity to rise.
And with the influx and outflow of new adventurers and merchants in Bultom City on a daily basis, information about our resident Battle Priestess was already spreading to other parts of Cheverton.
Evan on the other hand, made some people wonder if the boy enjoyed causing a sensation everywhere he went as similarly, word of his interaction with the Crown Prince's fiancée spread almost like wildfire.
His actions of mentioning the 'issue in Osto' and the 'Monster stampede we stopped' got people wondering just what on Aidos the kid could have possibly done there.
A certain guild master named Alok was inwardly cursing as he had a lot of people, mainly other guild masters, contacting him in regards to Evan and Greed's adventurer rank promotion issues, along with the new talk of Evan doing something 'Big' in Osto.
Visit freewe𝑏nove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺 for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience