A Villainess Should Be Strong

"Hmm... I guess that's a problem I don't know about yet," Estelle yawned, remembering that she was about to sleep before she boarded the ship. "And.. I don't really want to brood over it that much right now,"

"This ship.. I can make it go really fast, but I want to take a little nap. I will set it to a moderately fast speed," Estelle said, receiving a nod from the other two in turn.

Estelle then soon relaxed and fell asleep within no time.

As time passed, fifteen minutes went in a blink of an eye, and they successfully arrived at the supposed place.

Estelle was woken up by the two. She looked from the turtle's transparent shell, and frowned upon seeing some of the worrisome places.

"This is the damage prevention you have been talking about? That fire... and the one over there,"

Although it wasn't as noticeable if you didn't look it from the perspective of where they were right now, clearly the problem wasn't contained at all.

"It has been going on for more than a day. Our stationed magicians couldn't put it out, and the elite soldiers are all stationed far from the borders. Thus.. our first task is probably to put the dangerous disasters out first. Let's land there, Estelle," Aleksei summarized.

Estelle nodded in agreement, driving her turtle and aiming it at a safe place where they can land near the site.

Once they got out the ship, they were immediately greeted with a stench. It was the stench of rotten flesh, burning objects, and a mixture of other displeasing smells. Trails of blood could be seen dispersed sporadically on objects.

"I really don't have a good feeling about all this.." Estelle took a deep sigh as she managed to prevent herself from feeling sick. She cast magic over herself to help ease her feelings.

Just the greeting that welcomed them was already this unsettling.

They walked through the lush forest. They landed in the outskirts of the disaster, but they were now approaching the dangerous points. The nervousness over what awaited them rose.

A few steps turned out to be all that it took for them to be reminded of what they were against.

Right then and there, the group met the first casualty on the scene. The victim was already dead, but the condition he died in was extremely gruesome.

His body was mutilated into two pieces, with his guts spilling out of his abdominal area and bugs crowding around the horrid corpse. His legs burnt to a crisp, and his bones could be seen protruding out of the skin.

Estelle immediately covered her mouth because she felt her stomach churn. Although she wasn't as sensitive to deaths anymore, terrorizing scenes like this still affected her massively.

She turned her head away, wanting to forget about the sight that was now imprinted inside her pitiful mind.

"..I will take the initiative to give him a proper rest. Cremation is the best form of respect we can offer him if he's already in this state," Frey walked towards the dead man, crouching as she raised her right hand and formed a blue fireball.

She swiped her hand above the man's entire body, and he then became engulfed in said fire. His body burned at a fast rate, and with Frey's maintenance and care, his corpse was soon amounting to nothing but the ashes.

Frey accumulated the ashes to one spot, then used her Wind Magic to blow the particles away and into the air. To tell the truth, she was also not accustomed to seeing this kind of wretched body, but she had seen it before. The cruelties people can do.

The savages that were threatening her home land, she would make sure that they suffered under the same conditions they put their victims through. They acted inhumane, and went on a rampage inside another's land. Brute outsiders.

Precisely because of people like them, tensions between countries existed. Because people like them caused havoc and riots within another's territory, one would build a sense of reluctance and prejudice when initiating with another race.

Not to mention, there was also the very thing that made Alfheim just as seclusive as Sylvania, the country of the Spirits. They were once wronged by the hands of imbeciles, which were a collection of various races that brought terror into their space.

Frey thoughtfully clasped her hands and offered a prayer to the fallen man before standing back up. She was also there when major tragedies happened.

When it happened, she laughed cynically. Because they were promised Unity. Unity between the countries, with Elysium being the center of it all. That they would all have an amiable relationship and not the wars that ensued out of nowhere, implicating all the countries whether they were willing or not.

What Unity?

Clearly, the best case of scenario was when they all lived and minded their own business without mingling with each other. Alfheim was able to thrive even without the interference of others because they were self producing and fulfilled their needs without having to borrow another country's assets.

The rest of the group followed Frey's example and offered up a prayer. They then swallowed the incident down and did not mention it anymore as they proceeded to walk forward, going towards the disaster's main sites.

The group worked together to conclude the imminent disasters. The fires, the stray bandits and criminals, the tragic leftover corpses that were all left behind in bad states, they had seen it all and cleaned everything up.

By this point, whoever was orchestrating this entire ruckus should already be aware of their arrival, but something was not right.

The enemies they had faced, none of them were really exceptional. To cause such a huge chaos, just bandits and lower criminals wouldn't have been enough. They suspected that a higher authoritative being was behind it as a mastermind, they just had to locate where this special enemy was.

They cleaned the scene rather easily, but it did take time since they were thorough and careful with their deeds.

As they were going through the forest and performing their duties, time naturally passed.

"Let's take a short rest here," Aleksei leaned against a tree trunk and said nothing more. He immediately crouched down and sat comfortably. "We don't have a due date for this job, I think rushing won't do us anything good,"

The others were more or less thinking the same thing except for Estelle, who still wanted to go forth. She wasn't tired.

"...You three can have a rest. I think I'm going to go peek deeper into the forests.." Estelle said, receiving sounds of agreement.

She turned around and left after marking the place the group was resting at. "If you are done with your rest, come and find me. I will leave traces for you to follow,"

"En, take care. Give us alerts if something happens," Frey said, warning the girl.

Even if Estelle was powerful, there were many situations that would put her at a disadvantage, the most prominent ones being traps she can't fight back from.

Estelle nodded, her expression serious as she knew that they were not playing around. The enemy they were facing were possibly just a lure to make them lower their guards down and think that the perpetrators weren't all that mighty, but that should not be the case.

If it was, then the problem would've been solved much earlier than this.

Estelle left the group and scoured inside the forest, climbing up a tree and looking over the area.

"Let's see..." Estelle stood on a tree branch, her steps light as she jumped from one tree to another while scanning the area. She took care of messy scenes, sweeping it up and noting down things.

It was as if the lower class enemies were building up a staircase, stages to the final boss. Like they were purposefully scattered that way and made to stand in their respective areas.

If not, the alerts that their comrades had died should've reached them through some sort of communication method, but they didn't pay any heed to that.

Estelle thought about this matter with suspicions looming over her thoughts. What would their motives be? Clearly, if it was to demand something from Alfheim, they would be more aggressive.

But instead of doing that, they did nothing but ask for a ridiculous amount of money and keep the disaster to the specified areas, as if gatekeeping over them.

It was like they were trying to lure the attention to this area on purpose without really trying to cause any damage or gain anything.

Estelle was able to clear the area with ease, but she stopped after feeling a strange atmosphere.

She squatted and halted her movements, sensing the entity that was now entering her senses.

[This one is different.] She thought internally.

There was another entity, several levels higher than what she had faced.

This one was enough to make Estelle's wariness skyrocket.

However, that wasn't all.

One turned to two. Then three, four, five, and so on.