In the afternoon, a group of knights arrived at the adventurer's guild of Luka town, surprising the adventurers in it.
When the guild master came over to ask them about what they needed, they held up a painting of Evan and asked if they had seen him.
Evan was fairly popular in Luka during the few weeks he spent there so a lot of the adventurer's present could recognize him.
They all turned their gazes to Eliza's party as they had been with him the day before.
"U-m! He said to tell the knights that came asking for him that he was going south."
"Eliza!"
Eliza relayed Evan's message and her party members scolded her. They seemed to think Evan was wanted as a criminal or something similar and by knowing his whereabouts they could be suspected of colluding with him.
"He said south? Are you sure it's the same person?"
"Y-yes, he was slightly taller than you said he was but it was definitely him. He had a scary sword and a spirit, or rather two spirits with him."
The party leader spoke up this time. Although he was slightly scared, he did not want to offend the knights nor endanger his party.
His reveal of Evan's spirit companions evoked surprised shouts from the adventurers, they seemed to think that was why the knights were looking for him.
The Knight who asked the question sighed and looked back at the other knights, before speaking to one of them.
"Go to the south gate and confirm this quickly."
"Yes, Sir Thompson."
The knight who gave the orders, Ralphie waved his subordinate off and sighed to himself for the nth time today. He turned his gaze back to Eliza and studied her for a moment, only looking away after a few seconds.
"Thanks for the info.
Seriously, why the hell is the young duke giving me so much stress. I should be on leave right now."
He kept on grumbling to himself as he walked out of the guild, but those who heard his grumbles were left in a state of shock.
'Young Duke!'
They all remembered the news of a duke's son who ran away from home that was strangely spread at a fast rate.
A Duke was the highest rank of nobility that none of them ever believed they would ever encounter.
That was precisely why they couldn't believe that very same duke's son was the blood-thirsty kid they just met a day ago.
Eliza was the most shocked of them all.
'He was a duke's son!! And I was disrespectful to him!! What if he took offense? He might have me executed!!!'
Fortunately, here fears would not come true because Evan was quite interested in her, or rather, her healing skills.
◇ ◇ ◇
The weeks turned into months that went by as quickly as ever and the search for Evan led by Ralphie, one of the ten great swordsmen of the Great Western Empire and the Captain of the Duke's knights, continued, although the search party was visibly exerting less effort to locate him.
As always, the searches were fruitless as planned, although they gained information that Evan had spirit companions and was most likely a spirit contractor, that was all they gained.
He always seemed to know when they were about to reach him and left wherever he was a few days earlier or even the day before.
One time, he left nearly an hour before they arrived, leaving a message with the city lord telling them that he got bored of that city at the last moment so he left immediately.
He also said that the next time they should move faster if they want to have any chances of getting to him.
Although they searched the perimeter around the city, they unsurprisingly found no traces of him at all, this led them to believe that he had some sort of teleportation artifact that could take him long distances.
This also confirmed the theory brought up by the empress that he had a shadow spirit with him, one that could use a fairly high rank of shadow movement.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, they were half wrong and half right.
While he indeed possessed a shadow spirit that could use a high-ranked shadow movement skill, the distance he could move with it depended on his and Kuro's magic power.
Luckily for Evan, he had also gained a teleportation skill of his own.
Although he could only teleport distances he could see and as far as his magic power could take him, it was still a handy skill to have.
He could also support this skill with magic stones when necessary.
It allowed him to run away from the knights once when they went undercover and entered the city he was in at separate times like normal citizens.
He would have been caught if he didn't see a knight that he recognized wearing a farmer's hat and driving a run-down carriage.
Evan quickly went to the highest point in the city, the top of the church tower, and used the skill to teleport outside the city walls.
He then used Kuro's shadow movement to go further as he had exhausted all his magic power and magic stones on hand after that teleportation.
Luckily, they did not search the surrounding forests so he was able to rest for a while before continuing on his journey to the next city.
As for how he knew when they would arrive, it was naturally because he had eyes in the sky looking out for him.
The 'eyes in the sky', in this case, belonged to the goddess Artemisia, who urged him to go to the 'Spider Nest' as fast as possible.
◇ ◇ ◇
While he did plan to keep in touch with her, Eliza surprisingly contacted him first.
She began apologizing repeatedly for being rude to him, this led him to figure out that she must have found out about his identity.
It took three days to finally convince her he was not annoyed, he also gave her advice on how to use her healing skills better and suggested she learn some close combat techniques (preferably mace wielding so she could wrap a barrier around the mace to increase is power) to protect herself.
She was promoted to a D-rank adventurer and decided that bragging to him about it was the best course of action.
She also went to the Dungeon of Pride, 'Graveyard of The Arrogant' and successfully cleared a few floors together with her party.
There was a time she called him to seek comfort as one of their party members perished during a dungeon raid, Evan sighed remembering how much she cried then.
Their contacts continued for weeks and they had reached the stage where they could be comfortably called friends, albeit long distanced ones.
She was still slightly stiff when talking to him as all things considered, he was still the son of a duke.
He told her that he'd need her help sometime in the future and that she should be stronger by then. She asked when this was but all he said was that he'd come and get her when he was ready.
[I heard you never went past the 4th floor.]
"Tsk, where are you?"
[H-Hmph, I'm already on the 13th floor. I'm different than you.]
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