While the attack on the girl and her escorts were happening, Kazuya and Julia keenly observed from the shadows. Of course, it would appear to be that they had stumbled upon this scene so they did not know why these groups of people were fighting.

"Looks like an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt," Kazuya whispered to Julia.

"This…" Julia could only nod as there was no way that she could lie to him.

Her slave status, as well as their soul contract, made her unable to lie. The moment Julia even considered moving her lips to lie to him caused her body to feel a bit of pain to warn her of the consequences if she had continued.

"Looks like they've made quite the preparations for this. Whoever that girl is, she might be that important to have these kinds of preparations made for her." He extended his senses in the area and commented.

It was obvious who the escorts were protecting and who the masked men were targeting. However, Kazuya wasn't impressed. The impression that the girl left him was that she was brave but reckless. This made him reluctant on revealing himself because he wasn't particularly good in dealing with this kind of person.

"What do you intend to do?" Julia flinched the moment she saw the metallic weapon appear on his hand.

"Those trainees are wearing uniforms that have the duke's crest on them. I may not have decided to be your kingdom's hero but I am not someone who will ungratefully not help after being taken in by the duke."

Since Julia's senses were not as strong as his, he told Julia the location of those concealing themselves.

"What should I do with them?" she reluctantly asked.

"Kill them. I only need one alive." He replied nonchalantly. "You take care of the ones on that side and I'll take the ones on this side." He instructed.

"Shouldn't you—"

"Stop delaying and do it. I won't ask you if you know who they are right now but, you better engrave the fact that you are my mine and no one else's in your mind." Kazuya didn't mince words as the situation on the other side escalated.

"I…" she shuddered as her eyes met with Kazuya's serious glare. "…Understood."

Julia knew the girl's ident.i.ty. How could she not? That young girl was the only one who was ever compared to the former master Julia thought she would serve her whole life. The hero would have been much more enthusiastic at saving even the subordinates who were suffering if he knew that these people were protecting Duke Elrich Eberbach's one and only daughter.

Julia bit her lip and quietly dealt with the people who were concealing themselves. She didn't forget to put up her hood so these people wouldn't recognize her.

Surely enough, the hidden a.s.sailants kept their eyes on the situation with the target. The fight had already come to the point where the group should be planning to break through and escape. Even though that was unlikely, their commander had a.s.signed them to hide so that there wouldn't be any mistakes.

"Huh?" one of them that had been resting on a tree branch noticed a tremor behind him. 

"h.e.l.lo~" the smiling boy immediately cast a sound-insulating spell.

"Who the fu—"

*BANG!*

"As your comrades' said, dead men don't need to know." He grinned and moved on to the next target.

There shouldn't have been a need to leave even the leader alive because Kazuya knew exactly who these people were. Since Julia was with him, if he wanted her to remain oblivious to his knowledge about Edea, he had to take necessary steps.

"Heok!"

"Guhhhgg!"

The ambush team, to prevent any loose ends from escaping, died in the shadows while the battle in the open had intensified. With Kazuya observing, even he had to admit that even the trainees' loyalty towards the duke was quite admirable.

"It is… done…" Julia quietly approached Kazuya with a pained expression.

"You've done well. You were able to carry it out without being noticed even though you aren't used to it." He feigned ignorance. "There may just be some hope for you yet." He smiled.

"…" Julia opened and closed her mouth but was unable to say anything in response. She continued to stare at him as Kazuya raised his arm.

He pointed his gun towards the ongoing battle. The girl had started breaking through the a.s.sailants. There were two capable men moving to intercept her desperate attempt to break away from their encirclement.

"(Would he save the girl or would he save the people who were struggling to buy their master time with their own lives?)"

"Seems like I have to put in some effort for this…" he sighed and raised his other arm.

"Wh!?" Julia covered her gaping mouth.

This guy already had a weapon that ignored and even pierced through Alicia's barriers but now he was taking out two? Julia felt the sound insulating barrier expanding as multiple shots were fired towards the masked a.s.sailants.

Guns were lethal weapons to people on earth. Not only were the smaller ones easy to conceal unlike swords or bows, bullets traveled faster than arrows. To people on earth, that was the norm; to people in Edea however, due to mana, while weapons from earth like firearms were still a threat, it would only apply to capable people who have their guard down.

"Looks like the girl got away safely." Kazuya grinned as he looked at the chaotic path that was left by the girl's powerful rush. "Hopefully, she doesn't kill the horses we left in that direction."

Julia's body trembled as she looked at Kazuya's back that now looked bigger to her all of a sudden. She didn't know if it had been on purpose, but the duke's daughter had been forced to change her escape path after reacting to the two enemies who tried to block her path.

The duke's daughter was now going towards the path where they had left their two horses.

"(Did he do that on purpose?)" Julia wanted to deny it but her instincts were telling her that her guess was correct. Kazuya was a person that is a lot more dangerous than he lets himself out to be.

"I'll leave checking the girl's companions to you." He nonchalantly walked towards the battle's aftermath.

"Yes…" Julia fixed the hood she bought and walked behind him.

"Heya!" Kazuya greeted the masked leader casually.

He was met with hostility after admitting to the fact that he had silently taken out the subordinates who were supposed to have been more than enough to handle their task.

"I'm not expecting an answer but I'll ask just in case, who are you?"

"You dared to kill my subordinates without even knowing who you were dealing with!?"

"It doesn't really matter to me who you are, what position you have or who you work for. I suspect that girl from earlier belongs to the household I hold some grat.i.tude with so I wanted to confirm who their enemies were if I could." He smiled at the masked man whose bloodl.u.s.t had been expanding with each word from Kazuya's lips.

"Count yourselves lucky. Your pain would have lasted for days if I didn't have to chase that girl." The man quickly attacked.

*BANG!*

"!?" the masked man halted immediately s.h.i.+fted his momentum towards the side to dodge the bullet.

"As expected, a capable person is able to dodge that." Kazuya smiled looking impressed.

"Judging from that strange weapon, it seems the duke has been having deals with other places. I will have you spit out everything you know!" the man's expression under the mask changed.

He wouldn't have thought that the Zweifel kingdom's hero was standing in front of him right at this moment. The masked man and his subordinates secretly left the capital in preparation for intercepting the duke's daughter so the recent news about the hero hasn't reached them.

"hmm?" Kazuya looked at the back that appeared in front of him. "What are you doing?

Julia had no choice but to step in front of him. From that single exchange, she was able to judge that even with his soul weapon, Kazuya was currently at a disadvantage against this person.

"I confirmed one survivor among the escorts. I don't have any prowess in healing so I think it would be better if you took a look at them. Let me handle this person."

"Is that so?" he hadn't expected her to move without his order. "It's fine if you end up killing him then." Kazuya walked towards the survivor.

*CLANG!*

Julia's sword immediately met with the dagger that was struck towards Kazuya.

"It would be in your best interest if you left your boyfriend girlie. I don't like killing women but doesn't mean I won't." the masked man warned.

"(It's not like I have a choice!)" Julia wanted to angrily retort.

"Then die!" not wanting to waste any more time, he attacked intending to end it in a single strike.

"(He's serious! This is 'Decapitating Shadow'!)" Julia braced herself.

She didn't have the large s.h.i.+eld she carried around when she was on duty. She supported the sword by pacing her arm against the flat side of the blade and enhanced both her self and the blade to take on the blow.

This was not her first time encountering this technique. This was an extremely fast strike that was used by those with enough agility and cunningness to pull it off. There had been a hidden blade under the sleeves of the masked man that would immediately spring out if the initial strike was blocked. These were one of the skills that most royal knights needed to train against before they were placed on duty to guard important people.

"!?" The man was immediately startled at Julia's stance. He wanted to back away the moment Julia's concentrated mana started materializing itself into a s.h.i.+eld through the sword that rested against her arm. Unfortunately, he didn't think that she would come up with a way to stop him as he had moved with full confidence.

*CLANG!*

"You!!! You're a Tisdale!? Are you bet—" the man's words were cut off after feeling something.

Darkness slowly consumed his ability to see. Numbness and powerlessness spread across his whole body. He couldn't think about anything else but the blood that he could feel flowing from his forehead.

"(Ah… the kid with the strange weapon…)" he felt the cold uneven ground before all life disappeared from his body.

Kazuya shot his gun the moment he noticed the man put all his attention on Julia. He didn't want the man to mention anything about their relations, so he didn't hesitate to get rid of him. He had his own plan on dealing with Julia and he didn't want anyone to mess with the way things were at the moment.

"For an a.s.sa.s.sin, he had quite a loud mouth," Kazuya commented before holstering the gun.

"…" Julia stared at the dead body in front of her and thought "(If you were going to kill him anyway, why didn't you just shoot him when he didn't know we were here!?)"

Julia sighed. She was about to sheathe her blade when she heard a sound.

*clink*

It started from a crack. It spread throughout the blade until the weapon couldn't hold itself anymore. She turned to Kazuya in shock for answers, but he was already ignoring her while treating the only survivor who had already fainted.

Julia felt a bit embarra.s.sed. She walked up to face this enemy on her own yet, she couldn't get rid of him just by herself. She couldn't make excuses that her equipment was insufficient because she already lost the privilege to use any of her previous ones ever since she had lost her status as one of the royal guards.

What she wasn't aware of was, Kazuya was currently not ignoring her because of her failure. The fact that he saved the life of one person who he thought about killing for years had bothered him. Though he had intended to a.s.sist her in the fight, actually doing it made him get mixed feelings about it.

"(I did not expect the promise I had to make with Natsu-san would make things this complicated.)" he sighed.

"Hero…" Julia approached called out.

"Can you gather the bodies?" he prevented her from talking to him at the moment.

Julia nodded and started gathering the dead bodies of the ones that they had taken out in the forest. Though the risk for these corpses to turn undead was small because of the beasts in the forest, it was better to get rid of the corpses for the sake of those who would come looking for these men. Julia was aware of this and didn't object.

"What are you doing?" When she came back, she found the hero holding another strange contraption on his hand.

Kazuya had taken off the masks and held the device in front of the corpses which intrigued Julia. She approached him and saw that the small device was like transparent gla.s.s from the front. It showed what was in front of it despite appearing to be opaque from the backside.

*pasha* *pasha*

"I may not know who they are, but someone might." A clicking sound was heard whenever he pressed on the screen.

"What is this contraption?" Julia couldn't help but ask curiously. She knew that this must have been one of the devices that were from the hero's world.

"A device mainly used for communication. Well, the communication part doesn't work in this world so I'm using another feature." He showed some of the photos he took and startled her. It was like memory projection magic. The only difference was that it looked much simpler because there was no mana involved.

Kazuya grinned as he observed that Julia had yet to realize the most important part of what he was doing. He crouched down on the corpses and started checking their equipment and belongings. He was gathering evidence as well as taking his spoils of war.

"Take whatever you think you can use. We will sell whatever we don't need when we get back to the capital."

Julia frowned. Though these men appeared to be mere bandits, underneath their disguises were equipment that was usually hard to get.

"What? Do you think you're still a royal knight? Do you think that collecting spoils of war is something dishonorable?" Kazuya gave a displeased expression. "I know it's still your first day working for me. You probably still haven't had the time to accept reality but, I'll let you know." Kazuya stood directly in front of her with a serious look.

"Your life is mine. Not even the King of your kingdom can make me dissolve our agreement."