Miriette appeared back in the ballroom of the royal castle together with Ettemi and Oemir.

They were the first to return – or so it seemed.

“…there really is no one here, just as I thought, but… something must have happened…”

Miriette pointed out, looking around until her attention focused on the second hole in the wall, this one with a view of the city below the royal castle.

It certainly wasn’t there before they all got teleported away, so it meant that someone was left behind and fought with someone else.

The problem was, it was impossible to really say who fought with who, and with no one to tell the tale anywhere around, it was anyone’s guess…

“Hmm…”

Although the flashes of light on the outside that looked just like lightning bolts but with no thunder following were a hint.

“Ah, grandpa came back too~!”

“Oh?”

Ettemi cheered out turning towards the hole that Horeo created using Arisu – or another Cherro – making Miriette look that way too.

And indeed, only a few moments later the dark-blue-haired man walked in carrying two variant magicians.

Mirenne and Roiso that he was holding under his shoulder like an unconscious sack of potatoes, and Metavicero who was clinging to him with both of her arms and legs – because of the difference in size, her legs were wrapped around Benevirau’s chest while her arms locked around the man’s head.

That also meant that he had most of his head stuffed between the pristine white-as-snow breasts that could easily match the size of his whole head.

“Young lady Espine, Ettemi, Oemir, it’s good to see you all in good health.”

Benevirau muttered in a relieved voice muttered by the orbs of white.

“Same to… you…? I guess? What happened to the girls? Was there someone else using mental attacks besides Kiroterell?”

Miriette answered with hesitation, furrowing her brows seeing the state that two-thirds of the dark-blue-haired man’s group was in.

“Not at all. It’s just that we flew back here and it must have been their first time.”

Benevirau tilted his head to the side while putting the unconscious acid magician on the floor and propped them against the wall.

“Hold on – you can fly? I thought that your powers extended to controlling the weather by finely adjusting the moisture in the air, not that you could actually affect your own body to such a degree… how exactly have you dealt with the low oxygen levels and the gravitational force?”

Miriette raised her brows and spoke up, crossing her arms before putting one hand to her chin and asking with curiosity.

“As for me I create a barrier around myself and whoever is with me so that the pressure can balance out and not cause our blood to boil or something worse.”

She added her own take, being the most experienced person for the subject in the room.

“I… I just brute force it with water jets… I apologize.”

The dark-blue-haired man raised his brows, completely lost about the actual science that was behind Miriette’s spells, and admitted slightly embarrassed.

He even blushed – although he might have been blushing from the start, that’s beside the point.

“Oh. Ohhh… that explains why the girls are like that. Metavicero looks like she would need more than just a get-well kiss to shake that off.”

𝓞𝗏𝓵xt.𝗇𝓔t

“…kiss…?”

Miriette raised her brows and looked at Benevirau with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment before looking at the acid magician on the floor and the snow magician still in the water sage’s arms – funnily enough, at the sarcastic mention of kissing, Metavicero flinched and raised her head a bit, looking expectantly at Benevirau’s face.

“We… we will discuss that matter at another time. Do we have any information about Zoemi?”

Despite not being able to see the expression on the white-as-snow girl’s face, Benevirau could feel her gaze against his skin and hurriedly hanged the subject after a bit of a stutter.

He wasn’t panicking though – the topic he picked was very much relevant.

“About that…”

Miriette made a worried expression and turned toward the two corpse puppet sentinels behind her.

“Dad is fine – he is fighting with the bad guy.”

Ettemi looked back at the platinum-haired girl and answered sulking a little bit.

“We told him that we will help, but he ordered us to stay away. It felt weird dad never shouted at us like that.”

Oemir added looking to the side, kicking up the air also distressed about the situation.

“He sounded like dad but also kind of different…”

Ettemi nodded, rubbing their forearm before pulling up the lacy glove that started slipping down.

As the talk seemed to get stuck at a dead end, another pair appeared in the ballroom in a flash of murky light.

Elsby, with her dress, crumpled as if she was put through a wringer, and a jet-black humanoid being of darkness with murky black eyes, hugging her protectively.

“Zoem…! No… who are you…?”

Miriette perked up at the sight of the being of darkness thinking that it might have been Zoemi in his armor, but almost immidately backed off realizing her mistake.

“Immeri!”

“Immer, did you try to talk with dad too?”

Although the others were confused and on guard, the two corpse puppet sentinels approached the being of darkness and asked them in worried voices.

“I did… he told me to stay away. I was sure that he will take you with him though…”

The being of darkness who turned out to be one of the remaining sentinels looked down at the short corpse puppet and nodded in confirmation, although their voice was rather grim.

“We thought so too! But this whole thing is weird!”

“Yeah! Why did the king send us all to different places than he was supposed to? Why did he split us up in the first place?!”

Oemir and Ettemi clenched their fists and shook their heads fuming with anger.

“About that… I believe he didn’t have much choice – the presence definitely had a hand in this too.”

Miriette sighed and spoke up, waving her hand dismissively, steering the annoyance of the sentinels away from the gold-haired friend of hers.

“…if you say so, mom…”

“Where is he anyway?”

“…?”

The corpse puppet sentinels immediately listened to her and got back into sulking – Benevirau raised his brow at the word mom used to address Miriette but didn’t say a thing as no one else seemed to be bothered by it.

“That is a very good question.”

The platinum-haired girl pointed at Ettemi and furrowed her brows.

“I would say that Horeo could easily be called the strongest amongst us all here – except for the little ones, although I am not completely sure about that… It could be that he had dealt with whatever opponent he was faced with and went straight to Zoemi to help him. Who knows, he could just straight up be teleported in the same place and they are working together to defeat whatever opponents they have.”

Miriette pointed out as she began to pace back and forth because standing in one place doing nothing while Zoemi was out there putting himself in danger was making her anxious and angry.

“Speaking of which, who did you fight with? I had someone Kiorterell-like try to possess me but I sent him sorry as crawling back. Meaning I didn’t actually kill him though.”

She added, filling the others in.

“What do you mean by Kiorterell-like?”

Benevirau asked, trying to get his head away from Metaviro’s breast but the snow magician was immediately closing every gap of space that he created.

“He was trying to possess me as I said, but when we got back he looked just like that Geroizen guy that we encountered in the Perserios territory… unless… now that I think about it, could it be that Kiorterell possessed Geroizen’s body and uses is as his host?”

Miriette explained, and in the middle of her own sentence she figured out the answer.

“That might be the case… having him alive and in the wild will be a problem… As for us, we fought and dealt with Kirissu, Sveothirllo, and Krantha. Although only the first two were a problem because Krantha was already almost dead.”

Benevirau agreed with Miriette’s assessment before telling the achievement of his group.

“We killed six, although we didn’t ask them for names.”

“They were annoying so we eradicated them in one super cool attack~!”

The two corpse puppet sentinels cheered out proudly, joining in on the reporting.

“I…”

“We killed Oktria.”

Immeri began speaking, but Elsby spoke over them despite having her head against their chest and having her words be muffled.

Even if someone didn’t know about the relationship between Elsby and Oktria, judging by the tone of voice the report was delivered made them stay respectfully silent.

“Alright… I believe that I caught a glimpse of other Ghosts getting eviscerated in the flash of light that teleported us away, so if my guess is correct Zoemi and Horeo are fighting against Cherro and Carcassuss, more or less. Maybe with the runaway Kiorterell too… Anyway, it will all be over the moment that Horeo will lure his opponent to an open space, so we can relax. He will never let Zoemi be harmed.”

Miriette declared, breathing out in relief.

“How can you be so sure about that…? I can’t be sure about Cherro, but the commander is not an easy opponent. He is less of an assassin and more of a full-on brawler that has access to some stealth spells.”

Elsby asked but didn’t move even an inch away from Immeri and just raised her head slightly to catch a glimpse of Miriette’s figure.

“He can be whoever he wants, Wrath of light at full power can level cities in a heartbeat. Your former comrades will not even know what hit them.”

The platinum-haired girl snickered and boasted about the power of her friend as if it was her own.