This woman! To think she set me up! Just who the hell does she think she—

“Oh? You boys think this is all it will take to stop a girl like me, do you?”

“Can it, woman! You two are sitting ducks out here, and roast duck just happens to be our favorite! How could we pass up an opportunity like this?”

This guy acting like the boss of the belligerent bunch . . . Yeah, he’d been at the tavern. I guessed they were mercenaries. They looked like they had been in a few fights before.

“Nadia! And you, too, Rock Valley! Do us a favor and . . . die!”

The boss shouted out his rallying cry and the surrounding men all lunged at us. I held my shield out to defend against their attacks, but . . .

“Now, now . . . I’ve got nothing against children being a bit feisty, but you boys are just plain naughty, aren’t you?”

Nadia spoke quietly as she took the harpoon from her back and began to cast a spell.

“As the source of your power, I command you! Let the true way be revealed once more! Lightning! Strike down and penetrate those before me!”

“All Drifa Chain Lightning!”

Several blindingly bright bolts of highly condensed lightning shot from the tip of Nadia’s harpoon, piercing right through the group of belligerents!

“Gahhhhhh!”

“Arrrghhh!”

She was fast! She moved like she had been in quite a few battles. And the flashes of crackling lightning moved as if they had a mind of their own, jumping from one belligerent to another and striking the whole bunch down.

“This piddling bunch is all that came? That’s no fun, now is it?”

The men stood there twitching with their heads thrown backward for several long moments. Finally, they fell to the ground, their eyes rolled back. The way they looked . . . I’d seen this before! That monster that they had been serving up at the coliseum back when I first met Nadia had the very same look!

“I’m not . . . finished!”

“Oh?”

One of the men that hadn’t been wounded as badly as the others stood up and rushed at Nadia. Was I being completely ignored? Well, I had no obligation to help Nadia, and as far as I could tell from the way she moved, it didn’t look like she needed my help, either. Nadia quickly spun her harpoon around and thrust it hard at the man’s chest while taking a firm step forward.

“Gah!”

It connected with a loud thud and the man went flying, disappearing into the darkness of the alley. Shortly afterward, the sound of his body smashing into a wall echoed out . . . followed by silence.

“I guess that’s it, isn’t it?”

As if to signify an easy victory, Nadia twirled her harpoon around before returning it to its place on her back.

“I guess that explains it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Pretty much.”