I ended up spending a day and night in the healing ward of the stadium. The healers wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with me before letting me leave. While the tournament ended before I could even get to fight Gesel and the rest, at least none of the people I cared about got hurt. I did, however, take a very big lesson from all of this. I should never react without judging the situation first. With my current skills and high intelligence, you would think I would already understand all of this. My analytical abilities were already very high, so I should have been able to judge the situation better and come up with a more appropriate way to deal with Fanmari.
While she may have been an assassin, she may have been able to live a life outside of such a dirty job with the right help after she had done time for her sins. Of course, I do know that such thinking is naive, to say the least, but I am someone who sees a young girl and hopes that maybe they can be saved from the life they were dragged into. I could be just sticking my nose into other people's business as well. I mean, she could have chosen the life of an assassin, or maybe she was forced into it, I do not know. I did not know her. I only knew the look in her eyes, those eyes that showed so much regret.
Even though she was here to kill me, I still think there could have been a better solution. I just never thought it would have affected me the way that it did. It seemed the difference between a soldier fighting a war and bandits who are doing dirty deeds compared to a young girl my age affected me much more than I would have expected. This was a major flaw and something I will need to work on. Not that I have a way to train it. It's not like I can run to a village and start slaughtering all the teen girls I see. That would make me the bad guy. And the last thing I want is to become the bad guy.
Because I am sure that damn hero idiot would suddenly show up waving his sword yelling: 'Die Demon Lord! I will banish you to hell!" Only to be slapped away by my second form. Then he would have some kind of magical breakthrough that would make my hp bar so low that my third form would kick in, replenishing my health. Well, maybe not, but the idea of it all sounds kind of fun.
But I, for one, do not plan to turn into some kind of strange monster that no one knows anything about. Fantasies aside, while things did not end the way I would have wanted them to, I still planned to thank everyone who helped me. And I just so happened to have a certain event coming up that would be perfect for a nice party with everyone. But first, before that, I needed to talk with Sei and Sir Derek.
A little while later, I was sitting in my living room. Annie had served tea and set down snacks. Sophie was sitting at my side while Sei and Sir Derek were sitting across from me. Runa, on the other hand, said she had things to do and ran off. She did, however, tell me she would be back to face off with the sly cat.
"So what exactly happened after I passed out?" I asked. I never got the chance to talk about this as it seemed to be something that was supposed to be kept hush hush. Even if it did cause an incident, it was not something the kingdom wanted everyone to know about, so the story was mixed up a bit and the assassins were blamed on the Norian kingdom.
"Well…. We took care of the assassins and had their bodies disposed of. All except the young girl assassin. We made sure she would get an appropriate burial. While the old guys mean nothing to us, we are not as heartless to send a young girl to lie in a nameless grave. Luckily we knew her name." Sei replied. I felt a little relief that she was able to gain a bit of peace after death.
"As for the ones behind it, well, it seems your good old friend the count is one of them as well as a few other nobles who all have connections to each other. It seems the assassins guild was given a high price of ten thousand gold for your head." Hearing Sir Derek reply with a chuckle and a look of approval about my current bounty, I am not sure how I feel about it. Ten thousand gold was like gaining a billion dollars for a commoner. It was no easy task, but for a bunch of nobles, especially those who dealt in dirty deeds, they could easily get that amount of gold.
"So I should expect more people to come and assassinate me?" I asked.
"This I can not be sure of. Sadly there was not enough evidence to single anyone out." Sir Derek gave me an apologetic look.
While I know there was not much I could do about it if they did send more assassins at this time, I was kind of hoping we could put some of them in jail. But I guess without proper evidence, there is no way to arrest a noble. I guess you could call them slippery snakes. I let out a sigh as I sat back with a cup of hot steaming tea in my hand and took a sip. I took a moment to collect my thoughts. "I will be making some barrier pendants for those around me, including my family. Sei, any chance you can get someone to send them over after they are made? One will be made for both Adel and Prince Lance as well."
"No problem! With a pendant inscribed with your barrier, nothing will come to harm them. I will show you how to make one that will auto activate when they are in danger." Sei replied with a bright smile. But her words caught my interest. A barrier that auto activates when someone is in danger? I had never even heard of such a thing before.
"Ah! You did it now, Sei. Our serious conversation is now ruined because you piqued her interest." Sir Derek said with a chuckle as he sat back and threw his hands up into the air.
I guess it only took one night at the camp fire to realize I will lose myself in magic. But I still pursed my lips and glared at him as I said: "We can finish our discussion first…'
