"Ha, ha, ha, I’m looking forward to traveling with all of you." Andrea said with a wide smile on her face.
I really didn’t want to take her along, but there really was no other choice since she insisted on coming.
With her status as the third princess of the Abel Kingdom, it really made it hard for me to reject her.
Especially since King Abel XIV even requested that I take care of her.
King Abel XIV was one of those legendary characters from when this world was still a game, so he was not someone that I could get on the bad side of. I still needed his favour in the future for certain events after all.
However, adding Andrea to our party really wasn’t good since she was a warrior just like me.
This completely threw off the balance of our party after all.
The party that I had created was one with one tank, one warrior, one supporter, one DPS, and one healer. The fact that Andrea was added in as a second warrior meant that she was competing with me for the warrior position.
There was no doubt that we would overlap in our positions and our powers, so there had to be some serious overhaul to the party formation to deal with this.
Just thinking about it made my head ache, but there was nothing that could be done now that she had already been accepted into the party.
I just had to suck it up and think of the best formation for us.
At the very least, it seemed like she got along with the rest of the party.
Though the group that I chose was one that was easy to get along with since that was also one of the things that I had focused on.
"Just don’t hold us back." Amy said with a snort.
It seemed that Amy was the only one that didn’t get along with Andrea even though Andrea did what she could to get closer to her. It was as if there was some kind of invisible wall behind them.
It even seemed like Amy looked at Andrea as if she was some kind of enemy...
But I chose to ignore this.
It hadn’t been long since we set off from Bristol City, but I suddenly called for a stop.
The others were confused by this, but I didn’t mind them as I looked at Amy.
When she saw me looking at her, she didn’t respond right away as she narrowed her eyes to look forward. It was only after a moment of silence that she turned back and gave a nod as if she was confirming something.
Once I saw that, I said to the others, "Stay close to me. There’s no telling what will be ahead."
All of them had confused looks on their faces, but seeing how serious I was, they just followed behind me without saying a word. Though it was clear that they didn’t treat this as seriously as me.
It didn’t take long before we arrived at our destination.
Seeing what was in front of us, the others couldn’t help feeling even more confused.
"Oh, travelers! Our carriage was stuck on the side of the road because of a monster attack. Can you please help us get our carriage unstuck?"
The one that called out to us was a merchant.
What was on the road in front of us was a group of merchants that had clearly encountered some kind of accident that had caused their carriage to fall off the road. There were even horses that were injured on the side that seemed like they were still afraid of something.
Seeing this, the other members of our party looked at me and Amy with surprised looks as if they didn’t expect our senses to be sharp enough to hear this.
In the end, it was Andrea who went forward with a smile as she said, "No problem, we’ll be happy to help you."
This was her nature as the princess, she wanted to help the people of her kingdom.
The rest of the party went forward as well as if they wanted to help the merchants.
That was except for me and Amy.
Instead of letting them go forward, I raised my hand to stop them from approaching the merchants.
Andrea and the others looked at me with confused looks, but I didn’t even look back as I started heading towards the merchant myself. Then before any of them could react, I suddenly pulled out the hero’s sword before charging at the merchants.
I raised the hero’s sword high up above my head and prepared to swing it down at the merchants.
"Hero, what are you doing?" Andrea shouted when she came back to her senses, but it was already too late.
The merchants on the other hand reacted as soon as they saw me pull out this sword.
Or rather, it was better to say that they reacted the moment that they saw the light coming from the hero’s sword.
There was smoke that came from these merchants and they raised their hands as if they wanted to stop me. When I came close, they suddenly released black energy from their hands that came out at me as black lances.
As soon as they saw this, the rest of the party knew what was happening and didn’t hesitate to draw out their weapons.
But it wasn’t as if these black energy attacks could do anything to me.
The light that came from the hero’s sword was too strong for these black energy lances to break through.
So the merchants immediately rank back while still releasing this smoke from their bodies.
Andrea and the heavy knight that I recruited took this time to charge forward to back me up.
When she came over, she asked, "What are demons doing in the borders of our kingdom? How did they sneak in?"
"This isn’t the time for that." I said while preparing my next attack.
Andrea had a complicated look, but she gave a nod and focused on the demons as well.