The Daughter of the Demon King studies magic restlessly!

Chapter 38 - Investigation!

Back on Felicia's perspective, the hero party continued to trudge along unaware of the massive vortex hidden underneath the seemingly still waters of the Beast Folk Territories.

Traveling through the forest was both easy and difficult at the same time. With the power and convenience of magic and other extraordinary powers, the usual problems when traversing wooded areas are mainly resolved. But that does not mean that traveling around here was smooth sailing either. 

For instance, the large prevalence of various flying insects that constantly barged in and interrupted their travel rhythm. 

"Ugh, I wish that insects like these could simply all burn and die!"

Irritated by the constant annoyance, Wendy blurted out her inner most thoughts while helping to fight off the current assault from the aerial insect plague. 

Casting water magic over and over in quick succession while paying attention to keep up with the others and maintaining her mana pool was a rather menial and mind numbing task. 

Thankfully they would soon reach the final landmark they would travel to today and the map states that the area would be quite open which was more conducive to their team combat. 

"Thankfully you could remind us when a swarm like this is approaching Fel! Normally facing such a situation Mellie would always have to keep her guard up to heal and cure us in case we were infected by an unknown disease by these insects. Although it still means that I have to be on bug repellant duty..."

Wendy continued to complain on how much of a pain the situation was as she continued to keep those bugs away from all of us. 

"Sorry I don't have any way of my own to help deal with these bugs. If only I learned something that could help for a situation like this..." I apologized but she quickly comforted me instead.

"It's alright Felicia! I was just voicing my own thoughts. You are getting more serious and cautious it is almost unnerving! You are still trying to find your place in the team and among us so it is only normal to not be able to help with everything!"

Although she said that, I was feeling quite bad overall since if it were my mother...

Before I could continue that thought my mind was interrupted by a soft and gentle tap on the head. Turning to look at the one who did it, I saw that Mellie had somehow snuck behind me and gently started to stroke my head. 

"We all think that your current changes are quite welcome, but our team has been through a lot already. We have been adventuring together for quite a few years and you are not the only member that we had brought in. There is no need to blame yourself for any problems and situations we encounter."

"Really?"

Constantly comforting me while patting my head, I eventually slowed and calmed my breath which leaved the other three all slightly exhausted. 

Once they had left the area and cleared the threat, the other members of the party quietly had a little chat where they all asked each other if they knew what had happened to cause her to reach such a dependent and vulnerable state.

"Really, why is it that almost every member we bring in have such distinctive patterns? Either they are related to trouble or they become a handful to handle. Now we have one with both traits!" Glaring at the team leader, Vanessa bored holes into his body to which he nervously agreed to. 

"It is rather strange that we all have seen that we each can prove that the changes that she has gone through weren't because of us. So I wonder what triggered her?" Wendy asked while tilting her head. 

On the side, Mellie simply went along with everyone's questions and followed along with their wants as she began to think back to that prayer that she had done before. At that time, she had noticed her arrive and was confused on why she was there and what she eventually thought, but none of that really mattered. 

With the abilities and possibilities within that name of hero, anything is possible. Turning her gaze to his figure, she began to think back to those records within the church once more. It has been studied that heroes all indeed have similar abilities and traits. Among them is a special sense for good fortune that can only be negated by that of the Demon King.

Thus if he is willing to take care of her, it is either because she is suspicious and needs to be kept under close examination or she is completely safe. 

Judging from his personality, the chances of the latter are much higher. 

And so she had no reason to not trust this mysterious instinct. After all, looking into that girl's eyes all that could be seen was yearning and an eagerness to prove herself.

She wondered how that girl treated her for Felicia to grow like this? 

Well, that is assuming that demons teach their children like how we do so. 

After a while of chatting with no conclusion, the team stopped their conversation halfway because of her return and some news that was quite important to hear. 

"I found some traces of beast folk wandering this road!"

After hearing that, they all went and followed her as she lead them to where she found some artificial traces of people cleaning their tracks. Some suspiciously cleared areas that hid footprints slightly larger than that of a human.

"Seems like the guys under that lion man also use this road as well." Felicia said as she waited for the others to think about the situation for a second.

"Should we hide if we find people from that side? Or should we show up openly and tell them our situation?" Wendy inquired as Luke stood in place contemplating. 

The others also gave their suggestions and thoughts and eventually he made up his mind and decided that we would go into hiding. 

"Since he was attacked and kidnapped in his own territory, we can presume that collaborators that worked with him might also be around there as well. In addition, the path that he gave us leading to his territory may also be used by others in that camp and thus is likely guarded by that perpetrator as well. We are in the dark now so we should keep this advantage in order to find out who exactly is potentially working with the Shadow Fang and that Doctor to cause chaos in this territory." Luke answered.

With his decision, we started to hide our tracks better and thus took a longer time to get to our destination than before. It seemed like that decision was the right one as the group of us while in hiding had discovered that there were a lot of people secretly hiding in this route over to the area. 

Seeing this, it almost felt like the lion man had set up a trap to catch us, but if that were the case why would the route be this lowly guarded? Also how would he have sent a message to do this so quickly had that been the case. 

What was more likely was that now that the lion man was gone and away, that the force either behind or connecting the doctor and shadow serpent are in control of that territory and that hiding in place was indeed the right strategy. If we were found we would likely be facing continuous attacks with all evidence of the people working there and any tricks likely moved and erased before we could get them. 

"So are we going to sneak into the base now?" Felicia whispered quietly. 

Although we were sneaking along in hiding, we were close enough to find that the last landmark before reaching the fortress that the lion prince was guarding was in visible view. Thus we should determine the plan on how to infiltrate and investigate what was happening here. 

"We just need to get in and secure evidence of some sneaky business going on. once we do, we can return and head towards the capital so that we can inform that prince so that they can resolve this problem among themselves." This response was said by Vanessa and seeing that no one made any objections it seems like the decision was set. 

And so they traversed quietly past all the obstacles in their way and once they reached closer they found the first sentry towers blocking their path forward. The area was rather open as the trees around the towers were all chopped in order to clearly observe the area around them.

What was rather strange was that we had not heard from that prince that there would be watch towers along the way, but I guess that he also likely did not expect that we would try to sneak in. If the place was thought to be guaranteed safe than I guess there would be no need to inform us of this? But also, with the power of extraordinary abilities the effectiveness of a regular watch tower would simply not be so practical. 

"How do we evade the search of that watch tower?" Felicia whispered. This time there was a longer pause before Wendy took a glance and noticed something rather odd about the sentry tower.

"Are those... humans?"

When she said that, she pointed towards the base of the tower. Sure enough, when we looked there were indeed humans there and they looked suspiciously tired and weak. From a distance we could clearly see that their eyes were sunken in and that their clothes could barely hide the ribs shown through their skin. 

Seeing humans like this made the party squint. Since this was a territory of beast folk, why were there humans here? And why in such bad condition?

But they then walked along and entered inside the wooden sentry tower and so we could not see what was going on there. 

"Can we go and see what those people are doing here?" Mellie asked the party.

After a moment of thinking, Luke agreed with that sentiment but that left one big problem in their hands.

"How do we get in without alerting the guards of our entry?" 

After a moment of silence, the others could not think of any way that was not violently breaking through and had to resort to once again looking to Felicia for an answer. 

"Yeah, I can lend my stealth cloak once more."

"Sorry that we have been constantly asking for it even though we said we did not want to rely on your assistance so much." Luke said apologetically. 

"Normally our adventures would be in human territory where in the worst case scenario Mellie and Vanessa's identities would be more useful, but here in beast folk territory flaunting their identities here would simply be courting death." Wendy quietly added on the side. 

She agreed with the sentiment as it was rather obvious that having a high profile group like the hero party in ones nation with an unknown purpose would indeed scare even the demons away. So after handing the cloak over once more the team was once again huddled together as Luke lead the team ahead as Mellie and Vanessa stuck close to him while Wendy and Felicia stood in the back. 

Under the cover of the cloak, the team slowly headed towards the tower where the group found that the humans looked to indeed be in bad condition. But only coming up close did they notice that the situation was much worse than it seemed. 

"They are being controlled." Mellie quietly whispered. Although her voice sounded calm, being near her the others could feel her growing anger at the situation. 

While the others were not as angered as she was about the situation, they still showed disgruntled expressions. 

Now that we saw this situation, there was indeed a big problem in this area that we needed to find answers for. So the team trekked on more steadfast as we knew that this time we had to be careful. With these humans in this position, if they were spotted than the enemy could easily use these ready made hostages to bind our hands to make an easy escape or trap that could lead to a troublesome situation soon. 

And so we hid around the controlled humans to enter inside the tower to find a rather blood boiling scene for any human to watch. In the tower there were a large group of humans being controlled and commanded to work to build up these towers while a bunch of large pig like beast folk laughed and mocked them on the sidelines.

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