"They are here!!" the three girls said in unison when I told them the bad news.
"And they aren’t going away either. We can’t leave with Alicia from the front door." I complemented.
"How many are they?" Diane asked me, a trace of nervousness could be heard in her voice.
"A group of four. Two of them are inside, two at the exit," My eyes were fixed on Diane’s. "They said they are on a mission to rescue Alicia from you, Diane."
"What?!" Diane said, taken completely off guard.
"This is a lie! If it wasn’t for her, I would be dead now. Diane would never do that!" Alicia said in a nervous voice.
"That’s probably the official story they are telling people." I said.
"Official story?" Sarah said, dumbfounded.
"Richard, what do you mean by that?" Alicia asked me with a questioning look. Sarah was looking at me with a pretty similar expression.
Diane was the only one of them that was following my thought process. Her face carried a serious demeanor and her fists were clenched in anger.
"They are framing me." Diane said, trying to suppress her feelings.
All of us were staring at Diane. Alicia’s green eyes looked sad at her best friend, and then at me, looking for answers.
"Richard, can you explain that to me?"
"They are looking for an excuse for what happened. The Silver Fang tried to kill you, but they failed and you escaped with Diane. You girls are the only survivors from that attack, so it’s easy for them to accuse Diane." I stated the facts to them, but it didn’t soften Diane’s expression.
"When I thought that I had cleaned my name..." Diane said, verbalizing her own thoughts.
"Diane..." Alicia said with a sad tone, looking at her friend.
"Diane, I understand how you feel, but getting angry won’t solve anything." I said to her in a firm tone.
"I know that, but..." She thought about saying something, but she stopped midway.
There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about her. I thought that she had her own past problems running through her head. I rubbed my head, thinking about what I should say to her.
"In the end, you are still the princess’ bodyguard," I said to her, deciding to go for the solution. "If we bring Alicia back to the King, we can clean your name once again and expose the treason."
"Richard..." She looked at me with a certain surprise.
"Why such a look? I told you, right? I don’t just want Alicia. I also want you to become my wife, but I can’t do that if you’re executed."
"What a greedy man you are." Diane said, letting a smile out of her.
"Yeah, I’m greedy. There are a lot of things that I want to do. Things that I want to know," I said while gently stroking Alicia’s head. "I want to know more about you too."
Diane didn’t say a thing, but I saw her fair cheeks blushing. Nevertheless, I continued talking. "But I also want the ones behind the attempt to pay. I won’t permit you to pay for a crime that you’re innocent of."
Diane’s face looked more relaxed after I said that, and then the smile returned to Alicia’s face.
"Ahem!" Sarah forced a cough to bring the attention to her. "Good that everybody is happy, but we still need to deal with the Silver Fang."
Someone wasn’t very happy, in my opinion. Sarah probably was jealous of me giving attention to the other two, excluding her for a moment.
"You’re right." I said, going back to our immediate problem.
"You said that they were at the building, right?" Alicia asked me.
"Yeah, they are eating at the tavern downstairs."
"What kind of officers stop their mission to eat where the people they are searching for are?" Diane asked me with a calm expression.
I sighed deeply. "A very chaotic one, I should say. A pretty complicated duo to deal with."
"Do you know them?" Sarah asked in a surprised tone.
"More or less, but I’ve never seen them in person. I don’t think that the guys outside would be a problem, but the other two are another thing."
"What makes them so special?" Alicia asked me with a curious voice, to which I responded while caressing more of her golden hair.
"The girl with glasses is Justine. She is a Mage with high combat skills, capable of fighting using four different elements." I revealed to them.
"F-Four elements?!" Diane asked, shocked by the surprise.
The most common thing is for a Mage to have affinity with two elements at best. Above this level, there are the high-ranked Mages from the capital that work or study at the Royal Academy. Usually, they don’t go to the army, choosing a calmer and safer life there. Stumbling upon someone like her as an enemy was a clear sign of bad luck.
"But don’t worry about her. I’m more afraid of her leader," I explained to Diane. "The problem is her leader. She is kinda scary, to say the least."
"What do you mean by it? What kind of power does she have?" Sarah asked me.
"Erina, the Captain sent by the Silver Fang, is a Gunner."
"Gunner!" Alicia sounded surprised by my words.
"Yeah. An Awakened specialized in guns, but in her case she is special. A long-distance killer. It’s not a class, but I would call her a sniper."
"Sniper... So you mean..." Sarah understood where I was going.
"Mid to low range combat, we’ll have to deal with the Mage, and at high range we have to deal with the Gunner’s lethal shots. And to sum things up, there are the Knights on their side."
I briefly explained their powers. That was a situation that everyone needed to be aware of, the degree of danger awaiting us. The mood in the room was sadder and more pessimistic than before.
Diane closed her eyes for a while, maybe to think about our situation. After a while, she asked, "Do you have a plan, Richard?"
"I do have one," I said to her with a smile. Thankfully, our situation was similar to the book. "Combat is out of the question. We are not prepared to fight on the same level as those two."
"So what should we do?" Sarah asked.
"What did we do when we fought those bandits back in the woods?" I asked her with a playful smile.
"Do you mean... ?"
"Yes. I think we should split up, using the opportunity to leave town." I jumped to the answer.
Alicia and Diane’s eyes opened wide when I revealed my plan.
"I see..." Diane said, still pensive. "We can’t fight Justine, and if we’re still at low range, we’ll have to face the Knights. You’re planning to flee from both of these battles."
"Exactly."
"Hmm. But how will we separate their groups?" Diane asked me.
"Huh? You didn’t figure it out, Diane?" Sarah said in a surprised tone. "We need something that would make it impossible for the Silver Fang to look away."
"And what is that?" Alicia asked. From her looks, she was regretting making this question.
Sarah patted the white-haired woman’s shoulder. "Diane herself, of course."
"Eh?" Alicia let out a shocked sound.
"They are looking for Diane, right? If she ran right in front of the Knights, they would pursue her for sure." Sarah asked me with a smile on her face.
"So I would act as bait." Diane asked, dumbfounded.
"It’s pretty much it. Right, Rick?" Sarah asked for my confirmation.
"You are half right." I replied to her.
"What do you mean by ’half’?" She asked.
"I think it’s better to make two people pass next to them. The second would be an ’Alicia’."
"Me?" Alicia jumped in surprise.
"Richard, I’m an Assassin and a member of the Royal Guard, so it’s not a problem. However, I can’t approve of using Princess Alicia as bait." Diane scolded me in a firm tone.
"Well, that was not my plan. Alicia isn’t in good condition to run faster than those Knights out there."
"So who—" She was ready to finish her question, but it finally hit her. Our eyes turned to our red-haired Swordmaster.
"Me?!"
"You have a good physical condition, better than mine, so you can pull it off. You’ll act as our fake Alicia." I said to her.
"But I’m taller than Alicia, and my hair is completely different too!" She argued against my plan, but Diane started to follow my reasoning, debunking her.
"We can cover your head under one of our hoods. The height doesn’t matter. If I expose myself, they will probably think the person next to me is who they are looking for."
"So what do you think, Diane?" I asked, hoping for her approval.
"I’m fast enough to distract them, no problem. We’ll catch their attention while you and Alicia leave town," she responded in her monotonic voice, but her expression seemed tense. "If we escape from Justine’s range, the one left is..."
"Yeah, that’s the biggest risk of our plan. Once you guys are spotted by the Gunner, she will aim at you."