The Daughter of the Demon King studies magic restlessly!

Chapter 26 - Waiting

Getting woken up in the middle of the night, I groggily wipe my eyes as I tried to wake up from my sleepy state. A little while earlier I had been woken up by Wendy but I wanted to rest for a minute first. 

Shaking her head with a sigh, she then left to help the others. 

After finally deciding to get up, I entered the mirror space to find something to help me clean up. Fortunately, due to such a wide breadth of knowledge that Alice and her clones have obtained, they were able to make magic equivalents to the conveniences of technology in our previous world. 

In fact, this level of technology had indeed been present in this world in the past. It was just that such magic technology was either kept to the rich and powerful of their era and afterwards some demon kings had happened to attack those kinds of places so the technology was eventually lost from the human world. 

But not from our Demons though. As the information and mentions of them have been found in library after Alice read about them. The Demon King Castle merely had not adopted it due to tradition so there are actually places where you can find similar technology. Of course, they have been given their own demonic twists so everyone who has encountered them only expected them to be altars of some kind and only fighters would generally enter places like that. 

So this technology has either once again been hidden by the strong or rich, or is just fully lost. 

None of this really matters to me as I simply had a bunch of 'junk' here that the other clones and main body have discarded. When the clone responsible for making all of this stuff saw me going out of my way to rummage through them, she simply sighed and patted my head. 

But that really didn't dissuade me from still finding stuff to help me from time to time. 

After I finished washing up in the mirror dimension, I stepped out of the thin mirror of water that I had made to enter as the floating mirror of water fell back to the ground and then disappeared. 

I had recently just obtained the most elementary level of water magic just to create a thin mirror for myself recently. Before I had to always carry a mirror with me which made the other members a little confused when they entered my room to see a large standing mirror inside my tent. Facing their questioning and then accepting gaze one last time I eventually caved and used water magic to generate water while space magic flattened the water to a thin disc like shape. 

Stepping out of the tent, I saw that the rest of the hero party was all huddled together by the campfire and so I headed over there myself.

"Look who finally decided to show up. Don't you know we are on an escort mission? At least eb prepared to wake up directly when called." Vanessa smirked before looking back to continue polishing her shield.

"It's not like we haven't done missions like this with party members worse than this. Wasn't your brother even worse than Felicia?" Wendy retorted with a snort. 

She simply responded with a click of her tongue as she continued her polishing. 

Luke had been keeping watch over the camp carefully on the side while Mellie was surprisingly brooding in the corner. Although I was surprised, seeing the others not coming to cheer her on, I guess the problem is probably about the church so I decided to keep my thoughts to myself for now. 

Turning on my perception, I was able to watch over the whole camp and then finally noticed that something was a little off.

"Huh?"

"Did you find anything?" Luke asked casually. 

It was a little strange. I found some rather conspicuous traces not far from our base camp. It looked a little familiar but I simply could not get what exactly it was. After some time recalling, I finally noticed what I had forgotten to tell a while ago. 

"Oh, right! There was one thing I was supposed to tell you all at the previous camp, but I got a little excited. Last time, I noticed one of the members of that adventurer's group making marks on the trees. It would be considered normal if they weren't making the marks while we were already camping and near our camp. I saw similar markings just now as well."

Hearing this, Luke told me to bring him over to see the marks himself. Agreeing with his idea, the others stayed to keep watch over the area and I started to walk over there, but noticed a keen line of sight in my direction.

"There seems to be a line of sight watching the area around the mark. I will try to evade their sight, but this might take a while." I said to him. 

"Don't worry about all of that, just head straight there. If they stop us halfway, then we know that there is something fishy going on. If they don't and we see the markings then it would be even better."

Alright, if you say so. 

So I headed straight over there. When we were near the edge of the camp, we were then called and stopped by one of the members of the group.

"Hey, where are you going?" They asked. I noticed that this person was not the one making the marks. Either they were also in on the plot or maybe that guy sent a clueless friend over to muddy the waters and keep himself hidden. 

"I felt like I saw something in this direction fly by so I wanted to check it for myself. Just in case, Luke here came with me to help if there really is something here." I responded. I made sure to keep an eye on his subconscious movements and saw no obvious signs of lying next. 

"Oh, my friend said they patrolled the area just now since he said he had some insomnia. There should not be anything? He is one of the scouts in the place after all." They replied. 

Hmm, they really don't want us to check the place. Or at least the guy who informed this guy did not. Maybe we can use the excuse of patrolling around the whole perimeter to start here? 

Before I could ask, Luke had already asked for me. 

"Oh if that is the case, then my friend here might have just been seeing things. Just in case, would it be fine to just use this area as a warm up to start scouting the whole perimeter? After all, we do indeed have to check around and scan the place anyways."

This time, the guy did not stop us so we were able to head over and investigate. I noticed that the line of sight had disappeared while that guy had arrived, but then reappeared after he left for some time. 

I knew that that guy had not been the one eyeing us due to the different direction the sight came from and my own spatial awareness. I would have found him moving abnormally to enter the place I noticed the line of sight from, but there was no such movement. 

Rather unfortunate was that the eye watching us was from quite a distance away and before they were always covering themselves up carefully so I could not detect any info before. After all, my perception is only at a simple level and I have no way of doing something like an x-ray to see what was on the inside. 

But that did not matter. Simply their existence and the fact that their eye is on me is also a sign of proof. Of course, it would be for the best that Luke sees the signs made as they may clue him in to whatever conspiracy is happening. 

And so we patrolled the area. Because the eye was on us, we did a roundabout search and after reaching the area that the mark was located I lead Luke a distance away from it and with his senses he could read the symbols. Although he did not say anything, I could feel his mood shift as he tightened his grip on his sword for a second. Then he released that grip and we left the area. We then patrolled all around the perimeter. 

We had to at least show this much so that some of the worries of the guys hidden would be lessened. But this trip felt quite exhausting as Luke was in quite the bad mood while patrolling with me. It almost made me want to download some extra strength but I eventually shook myself out of that state. 

As we were heading back to the camp, the eye on us had long since disappeared but we still followed through just in case. Once we arrived at the camp, Luke had quietly whispered to the other members to first not make much reactions. 

Hearing this, their eyes grew solemn for a second before quickly vanishing. Then he quietly relayed his findings to them.

"I found the mark that Felicia was talking about. It was the mark of the Shadow Serpent."

Although they did as he said and made no change in their expression and even chatted quietly amongst themselves, it could not hide the tension I could see here at such a close distance.

Once it is no longer our turn to keep watch, I will ask someone about this. It feels rather uncomfortable to be left out on such a big thing after all. 

The rest of the night passed quite simply as we handed the final shift over to another team and all entered the carriage for a private conversation. 

"Did you check that no one is listening in on us?" Luke asked. 

With my perception, I could not find a soul anywhere near us so I nodded. After which, the rest of the team all melted like puddles of water in exhaustion.

"So, who are these people?" I asked.

"The Shadow Serpent are a group of rather new minions who follow the orders of a traitorous Shadow mage. No one has seen their leader, but they have shown magic at the level of Intermediate. Since we are being targeted by them and with how strong this team is, we might be dealing with a professional mage assassin." Wendy said. Her words helped to clarify why the team was having such a headache. 

With the strength that Luke had revealed and the strength of everyone else in the hero party, if it were a simple head on fight then they would long be annihilated. The problem is that this guy usually remained hidden in the shadows and before someone strong enough to deal with him arrived, he would be long gone. 

Maybe this might be a chance to take him down?

After knowing of this information, the rest of the trip would be spent on rather high alert as the hero himself decided to scan the surroundings every once in a while. 

It was not that he did not trust my perception, rather it was the fact that he felt like he should do something and was starting to feel a little restless waiting.

This wait ended up taking until late afternoon the next day to finally come to fruition as I found some traces of people heading this way from a distance using a void eye. 

"Hey Luke, about this direction quite a while away there is a group of people slowly inching closer!" I whispered in the carriage. 

With a snap, he activated his own detection methods in that direction with his eyes suddenly glowing a golden yellow with vertical slits. This was a rather different spell that I have not seen him cast so I was quite curious. 

"Target has been confirmed. Alright guys, I calculate that they will be arriving in about 20 minutes so buckle up and start your preparations." Luke said after staring for a few seconds.

The others hearing this all got to work changing into their real magic equipment. Of course, this was mainly them putting armor or robes on top of their casual clothes so there was no welfare seen for the hero or Felicia this time.

Compared to the array of different tools and armor that the others equipped,  Felicia seemed quite shabby in comparison. In order to somewhat compare, she took out a special robe and staff from her storage ring as a disguise for her real equipment. 

Although these pieces were said to be a disguise, they would not be considered bad compared to the others here, it was just that its appearance was not as flashy. 

With these two pieces of equipment, who would doubt the capabilities she had? So they would likely deal with her as a normal mage and not be prepared for the comprehensive nature of her Space Magic. 

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