Wreath of Lilies, Cauldron of Poison

Chapter 43

Catching up with the Kidnappers

After the three met up, Connie told Nick her plan, earning her the most awkward stink eye that she had ever seen.

“You are going to carry us?!”

“Indeed,” Connie confirmed with a nod while scooping the resigned Martell under her arm. “Now, come on. Perk up your stomach and let’s go.”

“Excuse me, milady, but – AAAAH!!”

Before he even finished his objection, Connie had put her left arm around his stomach. She focused her energy on her toes and burst into a run.

About 7 minutes later they arrived at the scene of the crime.

It was the longest 7 minutes of Nick’s life and he hated every minute of it. He was thrown up, caught, and then thrown up again as she switched between jumping and running.

He felt violated, emasculated, and more importantly – nauseated. He held on to a large tree and emptied his breakfast by its roots.

“This was quite a big fight,” Martell said, looking at the dead bodies scattered about the place. The bodies were those of Church Knights, 2 Calendian Knights, and 5 of the attackers. The latter wore mishmash of armors of unrecognizable origin.

“Bleagh…M-milady. Can we please not do that again? I-I’m too old for that.”

“Oh, but you are not too old to skip a bill?” Connie replied while she stepped over the headless corpse of a Church Knight.

Nick was taken aback. W-what? S-she can’t be that petty, right? What I ordered wouldn’t even put a dent in her purse!

Two luxurious carriages were abandoned in the middle of a dirt road. The luggage had been thrown open and the contents spilled open. Expensive dresses, jewelries, and fine undergarments were strewn on the ground and on the bodies of the soldiers who fell in the line of duties. Stepped on and left where they fell.

“They didn’t take the precious items,” Martell commented after seeing the place. “Yeah, this is a deliberate kidnapping, all right.”

Connie got onto the carriage while Nick and Martell searched around the place. Some parts of the interior were chipped. By the angle of them Connie thought they were from swords. As she looked around the seat, she tasted the scent of flowers. She flicked her tongue and followed the scent to an embroidered handkerchief that had fallen under a debris.

She found that it had the initial H.G. on one edge.

“H.G. Henrietta Greenfield. This is Henrietta’s.”

“I found some tracks!”

Connie got out of the carriage as soon as she heard Martell’s exclamation.

Nick was standing by a set of footprints with Martell crouched beside them.

“3 sets of tracks wearing Calendian boots. And two sets of footprints with smaller sized shoes. Possibly your friend and the Maiden!” Martell said, “These other tracks should be the ambushers! We have to go after them!”

“Alright. Let’s go!” Connie grabbed Martell and made a move to grab Nick.

He stepped back deftly and smiled awkwardly. “You can go first Milady. I’ll be right behind.”

Without saying anything, Connie then began following the footprints. A few kilometers after, they found three Knights corpses. Each had numerous stab wounds that went through their armors.

“They died on duty. No sign of the Maiden and Henrietta,” Connie said woodenly.

Martell found this rather odd. His Mistress threw away everything and ran off to save Henrietta, yet she did not seem as desperate as she should.

“After this is hard, dry soil. There is no more track. But there is the smell of horse dung not far from here. Can it be that they prepared horses nearby? Or is it a Hunter’s horse?”

“You can smell that?” Connie was surprised.

Her acute sense of taste could differentiate the ingredients in a poison or venom, and even the scent of a person in the immediate vicinity. But tracking or smelling that far was not something she could do.

“Just a guess,” Martell said cheekily.

Just then Nick had finally caught up, his breathing was ragged and halting. “Goddess…I’m…not good at…running! I’m a fucking…Paladin!! I’m…not made…for this!”

“If I have something of the target, I might be able to find them.”

“How about a handkerchief?” Connie showed him the beautiful piece of cotton. He accepted it and took a few sniffs before one long deep one. He then took shallow, short sniffs of the air and pointed at a direction to the West. “There!”

Connie once again took the beastfolk boy under her arm.

Nick, who had just managed to gather his breath sighed with a resigned sigh. “Just…just don’t shake me too much.”

A few kilometers in front of Connie and her group, 6 men on horses were galloping through the forest. They zigged and zagged through the forest while chopping and ducking through low branches. They all wore light armors with leather helmets that hid the top of their faces.

“Curse these trees!” one of the men spoke.

“Less speaking!” the man leading the group ordered. Behind her was a blue-haired girl. Gagged and tied to the saddle. Beside him was another rider, this one also had a gagged girl tied behind him. The girl’s hair was curly green.

The riders were ecstatic but at the same time nervous. They had managed to capture the Maiden, losing only the weaker members of their group. The handmaid was an extra that they could enjoy at night. Both beauties of their own right.

“I cannot wait until we get back to our country,” the rider behind the leader said.

“Shut up, you swine!”

The leader of the kidnappers cursed. He was nervous. The plan did not go as planned, and he was someone who could only feel right when things go as planned.

“Relax, Joren. We succeeded in kidnapping the Maiden. All we need to do is go to our appointed hideout and sneak through the border. The hard part is done.”

The leader who was named Joren spat. “We took too long. We should have already arrived at our hideout by now.”

“Things never go as planned, Joren. That’s how life goes.”

“And who is it that let two men escape? They’d have warned the soldiers in Cairula! They’ll send people after us!”

It was supposed to be an easy kidnapping. They had ingested the Strength Enhancer Potion given by their co-conspirators so that they can overpower the escorts. But they did not expect that the Maiden of Water and her handmaid to be so tenacious.

While they were fighting, three of the knights had taken the two and ran away deeper into the forest, wasting them a lot of time. When they managed to catch up, the three sacrificed their lives, killing one of their members.

Even with their protector gone, the two maintained a High Barrier that forced them to wait for more than a quarter of an hour before finally succumbing to the continuous attacks, chugging bottles upon bottles of Mana Potion as if they were water.

Normally he would have retreated at that moment. But he knew that if the Maiden of Water managed to reach the Capital, that would be the end for them. No amount of planning would allow them to infiltrate that place. He took a chance and ordered his people to break through the barrier with all the force they could muster.

The leader spat as he urged the horse to run faster. He had to hand it to them, these Calendian were fierce.

His thoughts were interrupted when one of the riders at the back yelled out.

“Pursuers!”

“Impossible! How could they prepare so fast?! Shit! Go faster! They’ll never catch up to us!”

“There!” Martell pointed in front of them, to the back of a horse galloping in full speed.

“I see them!” Connie said as her legs blurred. “Damn, those horses are fast!”

“Let us down. You can go faster that way!”

“Not fast enough!” Connie lamented.

“Give me my shield. I’ll give you a boost. Just keep running!”

“Brace yourselves! I’m not stopping!” Connie shouted before letting them both go. She opened her Item Ring and tossed Nick’s shield towards him.

Martell curled up and rolled a few feet forwards, dragged by the leftover force while Nick had given up on stopping and kept running to catch the shield. The moment he caught it, he used the momentum of his run to spin midair.

“Heads up!” Nick shouted. “Shield Throw!!”

The medium sized shield glowed white as he let it go, aiming at Connie.

The shield, weighing 50 kilos, spun madly across the air like a tempest. The force of the throw broke through branches thick and thin, not losing speed.

Connie grunted and kicked on the oncoming shield, using the momentum to catch up to the last horse.

She managed to land on the back of the horse at the furthest back and crushed the neck of its rider with a swift stroke of the side of her hand. She grabbed his sword as he began to fall and infused it with her will before using the Flying Sword technique to control it.

“Die!”

The rider to her side led his horse towards her and swung his sword at her torso. She leapt up and spun midair to kick the attacker’s head while letting loose the sword with a flick of her wrist.

The sword pierced the neck of the frontmost rider like the arrow of a master archer. The man could not believe what just happened as he gurgled blood and fell to his death.

“Torgo!!!” Joren shouted in anger when he saw his friend dead. He quickly pulled the rein of his horse to try and get the spooked horse from running away. Which was a fatal decision as it meant slowing down, giving the old monster a chance to catch up.

Connie landed with each of her legs on either horse as they were running side by side and folded her arms together.

“Stop running!!” Connie yelled out as she kicked against the two horses she was on and released waves of Yin Energy shaped like blades with two sweeps of her legs, cutting the horses' legs and dropping the riders onto the ground.

Seeing his followers in such dire states, Joren could no longer tolerate the threat of his pursuer and stopped his horse. He dragged the Maiden off his horse and held his sword against her slender white neck.

Connie walked forward with a relaxed pace as the kidnappers gathered themselves.

“Stop or we’ll kill the Maiden!” Joren said.

“Oh, okay. Kill her then,” Connie answered.