"What are you doing here though? Weren't you supposed to be at the camp?" Luna asked as she stood beside Allen, looking at the dead ground around them.

"Well it's good that I came, isn't it? Though to answer honestly I did not just feel like staying there and hiding while you all were here fighting."

"You have decided to give me a place to stay, after all. You could say I was just giving back the favour," Allen responded.

The plan to use that guy as a hostage has failed completely. However, it's not like it's all gone. It did seem like whoever she was fighting was someone important and it was getting hard for her to deal with him alone.

Since I ended up helping her out it is for the best I guess. This way it drastically increases the chances that they won't suspect that I'm an enemy spy without me having to do much work.

Just have to pick my words carefully.

Allen thought to himself, deciding on the story he had to put forward and the role he had to play. After all, he couldn't just tell her that he came here to level up.

"If you put it like that then yeah you did end up helping me out. Still, it could have been fatal for you, that was not a normal opponent," Luna replied.

"Luna!"

A voice that was weak and strained called out from across the crater while the two of them were talking.

They both turned. It was Eunice. She was limping toward them with her hand pressed against her side. Her purple hair was a mess and her armor was cracked and burnt black.

Luna rushed to her side in an instant.

"Eunice! Are you fine?" she asked, a sense of worry clearly visible in her voice.

She quickly looked her sister over. Eunice's clothes were torn and she had a dozen cuts and bruises, but the wounds didn't look life-threatening.

Luna let out a long breath that she didn't realize she had been holding. Her shoulders slumped with relief.

"I'm fine," Eunice grunted, looking at Luna as she put weight on her leg. "Just got thrown around a bit. What about you?"

Before Luna could answer, the environment around them suddenly changed.

The deep shadow that had covered the battlefield vanished in an instant and bright, warm sunlight flooded the crater, making them all squint due to the sudden overflow of light.

Allen looked up. The sky was empty. The giant floating island which had covered the sky till now was simply gone, as if it was never there in the first place.

"What the… where did it go?" he asked, a little confused.

But Luna and Eunice didn't seem too bothered about it. They looked up at the empty blue sky and a look of pure relief washed over their faces.

"It's gone," Eunice said with her voice weak but thankful.

"He's gone."

Allen didn't understand a single bit of what she meant by that. Something with a mass this big had just vanished into thin air and they were not bothered with it.

Come to think of it, it had also appeared instantly just like that, he thought to himself.

I guess I'll have to ask them about it later. It looks like teleportation, but it would be kinda troublesome if that huge thing was able to teleport like that anywhere it wanted.

Luna's focus snapped back to the battlefield.

"The highlander… we ended up giving enough damage to him that he retreated it seems. This may be our chance," she said, her voice filled with a new energy. "Should we press the attack? We can break their main camp now."

Eunice's expression fell. The relief on her face was replaced by a deep and painful sadness. She slowly shook her head.

"No."

"What do you mean, no?" Luna pressed. "Their morale has to be shattered! Otherwise they'll be rejoicing and claiming that they have defeated us!"

"Our orders were to retreat, Luna," Eunice said, her voice low and heavy with regret. "We have no new orders."

She gestured to the empty and silent crater around them.

"And even if I were to agree with you for a moment… who would we attack with? Rach and his men… they were here. They held the line, just like I told them to. They…"

Her voice broke. She couldn't finish. Her eyes looked glassy, her face pale as she looked at the scorched and empty ground where hundreds of soldiers had stood just minutes ago.

But of course, she couldn't cry. She was a knight after all. Things like this happened all the time. If she wasn't even prepared to be able to deal with this then she wouldn't be worthy of standing on the battlefield.

"They're all gone… because of me," she whispered to herself. Her voice was full of a self-hatred that was painful to hear.

Then in a moment she closed her eyes for a moment and let out a breath, before opening them again and looking at Luna.

"There are no soldiers here to support our advance. Those who were here have deceased due to the attack of the highlander and the rest have already retreated back to our camp."

"While I know you are fully capable of attacking the enemy outpost by yourself, there is still a lot of risk involved. Already two things have happened which we didn't account for, so I think we should proceed with caution," she explained, her voice firm.

This time there was nothing in her eyes. She was only explaining the objective observations to Luna and deciding the best course of action. Nothing less nothing more.

Luna understood. She put a hand on her older sister's shoulder.

"Fine, I understand," she said.

Eunice just shook her head in agreement. Luna then turned to look at Allen who had been standing a bit away from the two, trying not to make the situation awkward for them.

After all, he was the only one with the least amount of context for whatever the hell had just gone down.

"Let's go back to the camp," Luna said, her voice soft but firm. "We need to report to Lishia. We'll figure out what to do next after discussing it together."

Eunice gave a small and almost invisible nod. Then following Luna's advice the three of them began walking toward their military outpost, away from the glassy crater which had now turned into a graveyard for the corpses of thousands.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.