Chapter 42: The Minotaur?
"We'll need to be extra careful now," Mia whispered to Aiden.
Aiden only nodded knowing that if he made a lot of noise he could maybe get spotted by an enemy.
"Follow me, and I'll guide you to where you'll be infiltrating the empire," Mia said, as she started walking away who knows where.
Aiden didn't even question where she was going as he immediately followed right behind her.
He completely trusted Mia since from the start all she did was help Aiden, she also didn't act weird around him. She had stayed the same from start to finish.
After a couple of minutes of walking in the forest, something was really weird. Not a single monster had been spotted by the two of them.
Aiden had noticed it after walking for a bit of time. He found it weird but didn't think all that much about it.
'They're probably just scared of us,' Aiden thought. He didn't think it was worth telling Mia.
Then, as Aiden was thinking about how weird it was that no monsters were close to them, Mia asked him the same question once again.
"So, are you excited to see how we'll enter the empire?" Mia asked out loud since she was sure that no one could hear them, knowing that the only way for someone to hear them was to have been followed.
But that was almost impossible as the senses of Aiden were highly developed not missing a single sound.
Aiden who was starting to get annoyed, simply asked her how they would enter. "Can't you just tell me how we'll enter?"
"Just take a guess," she said, wanting to play a little bit with Aiden.
"Are we going to be flying inside?" Aiden questioned, as his previous guesses were climbing and disguising themselves into the soldiers they had seen earlier, but Mia always had the same answer, no.
"Ahaha, you're really bad at this! How could we even fly? We don't have weird powers that make us fly," Mia said, making fun once again of Aiden as she hit his arm softly.
It started to become a habit for her as every time she laughed, she would always hit Aiden's arm for no reason. It was quite weird, at least for Aiden who just didn't understand why she would do such a thing.
But for anyone normal, it was clear that Mia was trying to flirt with Aiden, touching him as much as possible.
She started acting this way ever since Aiden calmed her down by patting her head. It seemed that it left quite an impression on her.
"Why do you keep hitting my arm?" Aiden asked, completely oblivious that she was trying to flirt with him.
Hearing him say this made Mia blush immediately not understanding why he would ask that.
'Am I not obvious enough?' She thought a little annoyed. Mia wasn't sure how to reply to that question...so she just blushed...a lot.
"What's happening to you? You're all red. Are you feeling okay?" Aiden asked thinking that some kind of reaction was happening to her.
He really was oblivious to how emotions worked, not even understanding that Mia was just acting shy.
"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry," Mia responded, shyly, thinking that Aiden was kind of mocking her.
After all, why the hell would she think that Aiden didn't even know what blushing was?
"Alright, just make sure you're okay because without you I wouldn't even know where to go," Aiden said, basically saying that her only worth was her guidance to the Upsilon Empire.
'Is he actually thinking that I'm sick? Was he not joking?' She thought, not sure if he was being sarcastic or not. "Don't worry, I'm fine. I'm telling you."
Then, Mia decided to change the subject since they finally arrived at a place where they would both need to use their concentration as a single mistake would mean death.
"Alright, we're close to our way in. From here on out, you'll need to place your feet exactly where I place them as there are a lot of traps around here."
After saying that, Mia took some small steps and long steps.
Aiden did the exact same thing as her. He didn't have much difficulty following her since he already had experience doing this because of his skill [Mind of an Assassin] which was basically the same thing as this.
A couple of minutes later, as Aiden continued making the same movement as her, nothing special was happening that is until a big explosion was heard.
Boom!
Mia immediately knew that something had gotten caught in the traps which were located close to them.
"Don't worry, it's just a mine that exploded, it's probably some monster who stepped on it. Let's go check it out," Mia said as she started changing directions.
"Are you sure we should be going there, will you remember the path to come back here, I'm telling you. I don't want to be the one exploding," said Aiden completely serious.
"Yeah, don't worry, I know this place like the back of my hand nothing will happen," Mia uttered, as she comforted Aiden.
After hearing her say that, Aiden didn't have much of a choice but to follow her.
A couple of minutes later, they seemed to arrive where the explosion had happened. It was easy to spot it since a small pit had been created because of the explosion.
Inside the pit, there was a dead body...and it was fucking disgusting.
It was a monster's dead body inside the pit just as Mia had expected, but it was missing his head and both his arms. Blood could still be seen coming out of the monster's body. It was truly disgusting to look at.
But it didn't shock Mia all that much as she seemed to be concentrating on something completely different.
"Why is that thing here?" Mia said, as she recognized the monster's corpse, it was the minotaur from earlier.