A sphere of red light appeared in the middle of the clearing.

The flash lit up everything around it for a fraction of a second before fading, and from inside that sphere Mark and his subordinates appeared.

Mark was the first to open his eyes, and the first thing he saw was blue sky.

The second thing he saw was that all around them, in every direction, there were soldiers.

Hundreds of them.

’What the hell...’

They wore dark blue uniforms with silver details, and every one of them had a drawn weapon aimed directly at Mark’s group.

Behind the first line of soldiers were archers with arrows already nocked and strings pulled taut, ready to fire.

And behind the archers, further back, was a group of what appeared to be mages, hands extended forward with small magical circles glowing in their palms.

The place where they had appeared was not a beautiful empty meadow.

It was a military camp.

There were carts, tethered horses, extinguished campfires, and improvised structures that made it clear the camp had been there for quite some time.

Seeing the situation they were in, Mark quickly turned to look at Rose.

"Rose..." Mark said in a very low tone.

"Yes, Master?"

"Weren’t we supposed to appear in a clearing with nothing around it?"

"Yes, that was the idea, Master," Rose replied in a somewhat embarrassed voice. "The last time I passed through here this was an empty meadow, there was absolutely nothing but flowers and grass."

"...And how long ago was that exactly?" Mark asked, looking at her fixedly.

Rose hesitated for a second.

"Hmm... about fifty years?"

"Huh?"

"Maybe a little more."

"...Rose."

"Yes, Master?"

"Are you telling me your information is half a century old?"

"...When you put it that way it sounds worse than it is, Master."

He stared at her and Rose held his gaze with an expression that was clearly one of guilt.

In the end Mark decided that arguing about it at that moment was probably not the best idea, and fixed his eyes on the soldiers surrounding them.

"Wait a moment... I’ve seen those uniforms before," Alice said, frowning from behind Mark.

"You recognize them?" Mark asked, turning to look at her.

"They’re soldiers of the Eldia Empire," Alice said, her green eyes fixed on the blue and silver banners waving over the tents. "That insignia is unmistakable."

"Eldia?" Aria said from the other side of Mark with an expression of total confusion. "But isn’t Eldia right on the ocean on the western side of the continent?"

"That’s correct," Alice confirmed.

"Then what the hell are they doing here?" Aria said, looking around in disbelief. "We’re in the south — this is practically halfway across the continent."

"I don’t have an answer for that..." Alice replied without taking her eyes off the soldiers.

"Master..." Ely said, stepping a pace closer to Mark with her hand instinctively moving toward her sword. "What do we do?"

Mark didn’t respond to Ely’s question right away, because at that moment his attention was on something else.

He had noticed that the soldiers surrounding them were not silent.

Despite the raised weapons and combat stances, there were murmurs passing from row to row, spreading among them like a wave.

"Hey... isn’t that Grand Inquisitor Alice?" one of the soldiers said.

"What? What are you talking about?" another replied.

"Look at her carefully, the dark blue hair, the green eyes, the inquisition uniform... she’s identical to the descriptions in the accounts."

"That can’t be... what would the Grand Inquisitor be doing here?"

"And the other one... the one with the long white hair..." said a soldier, pointing toward Ely.

"No way..."

"Is that...?"

"The Knight of the Dawn, Elyndra Ashford."

"Impossible... wasn’t she supposed to be missing?"

"Look at her! I’m telling you it’s her!"

"What the hell are those two doing here?"

The murmurs grew louder and more agitated with every passing second. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Mark heard every word, and with each one he felt the situation getting more and more complicated, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

’Damn...’ Mark thought, clenching his jaw. ’This is exactly the kind of situation we came south to avoid.’

The whole point was that in these lands they’d be able to move freely without having to worry about the inquisition, the clergy, or anyone who might recognize Ely, Alice, or any of the others.

’Just great, absolutely great,’ Mark thought with irritation. ’I should have seen something like this coming...’

He was buried in those thoughts when a loud, authoritative voice rose above the murmurs.

"Silence!"

At the sharp voice, all the soldiers’ murmurs cut off at once, and from the first line of soldiers stepped a young man with blonde hair, roughly the same age as Mark.

His armor was slightly different from the others’, more elaborate, with silver engravings running across the chest and shoulders, and a short dark blue cape hanging from one shoulder.

Seeing him, Mark quickly deduced that this man was probably a high-ranking officer.

The man stopped a few meters from Mark and looked at him with a sneer on his face, almost as if just looking at him disgusted him.

"How did you get here?" the man said in a tone that clearly dripped with arrogance. "You appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my camp, so you’d better have a good explanation."

Mark didn’t respond and simply looked at him with a furrowed brow.

"Fine... if you won’t talk willingly, we’ll have to do this the hard way," the officer continued, raising a hand toward his soldiers as a signal to attack. "Capture them and interrogate them, then kill all of them, you know we can’t leave witnesses wandering around."

"B-but sir, do you not know who they are?" said one of the soldiers nervously, looking at Ely and Alice.

"Huh? Why the hell should I care who these nobodies are, we’re hundreds and there are only six of them," the man said, visibly annoyed. "So obey or I’ll execute you and your families myself for treason."

"...Understood, sir," the soldier said in a quiet, resigned voice.

Mark watched the officer turn and walk away from the area while the visibly nervous soldiers prepared to attack.

’I suppose the situation is already beyond reversing...’

He let out a heavy sigh, and when he raised his gaze again his expression had changed completely.

"...Kill them all" Mark said in a serious voice without a trace of doubt.