Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 896: A Pair Of Infiltrators

Finally being allowed the luxury to step away from the chaos, Raven sat inside Maria’s room with Tia and Robin sitting in front of him. Not knowing what to do with them, the hero kept rubbing his temples while Maria kept shouting at her daughter for sneaking onto the ship, especially since it was attacked not too long after she’d arrived.

”You could’ve gotten injured, Tia Ran Ex ’Thania!” Screaming at the top of her lungs, Maria had at this point used up all of the girl’s title to reprimand her. Ran Ex’Thania, daughter of Athenia–the land, not the goddess, as well as a ’Phordite, to the point where the dejected look in Tia’s eyes was replaced by confusion. ”Why would you come here? Didn’t I tell you to stay home?! I can only use illusion magic, and neither you nor Milo has any knack for magic besides the basics!”

”That’s not true!” The young woman snapped right back, her eyes narrowed with determination to stay. ”I can use curses! I’ve always been able to!”

Raising an eyebrow as the two quarrelled amongst themselves, Raven’s attention was brought to the curses Tia mentioned. Having never seen her using her magic himself, the hero wasn’t aware of the girl’s hold on magic–only Mel and Amedith were a little familiar with it. They’d been subject to one of her curses long ago, but the news of that event was never made public.

”Shut up! If someone knew that a princess could use curses, we’d be doomed, Tia.” Turning her gaze to Robin, Maria squinted sharply. ”And you, bird woman, why would you let her come here? Don’t you know that she can get hurt?”

”I-I tried to warn her but–”

”I made the decision myself, okay!” Cutting off Robin’s stammer, Tia got off her hair and glared at her mother. Stepping forward with her hands folded, she got really close to her face and yelled. ”You are the one sticking around with my fiancé! As far as I’m concerned, it should be me on this ship and not you, mother!”

As the two were nearly growling at each other, Robin tentatively reached for Tia’s arm and slowly pulled her away. The girl who looked like a girlie boy, especially with her breasts pressed flat by wrapping bandages around her chest, was far from the ideal mediator to settle the quarrel. For Tia, Robin was the friend whom her parents had passed her off as a boy to get her married into royalty, and for Maria, she was–at the moment–a nuisance.

Her eyes turned to Raven with a desperate look, asking for help. However, breaking eye contact with her, the hero decided to think for a while longer, as sending Tia back would only work for a while, as she was bound to try and come back.

’Ideally, I would send them both back.’ Thinking back to his troubles in Lululalia and how overwhelmed Robin had been after she was asked to help him and his party learn more about the rebellion and the duke, Raven knew that Robin was far from fit to go on this journey. As for Tia. ’She simply doesn’t know what we’re up against.’

Glancing up at the ring on Tia’s fingers–the same ring they’d used to teleport into the ship and was stolen from Viola, he wondered if taking it away and dropping them both back should be the solution to his problems. But before he could utter a word, a knock came on Maria’s door and broke the silent tension in the air.

”Who is he, Mistress Helga?”

”Do not call me Mistress!”

Before the door could even be attended, two female voices bled into the room. One was familiar, the other was not. Quickly shifting his attention to the others, Raven gestured for Tia and Robin to move to a corner of the room before having Maria open the door for whoever Helga had brought.

As the door opened and the two women stepped in, one made of flesh, the other of flickering light with flashes of darker lines within herself. A tad more than a bit confused, Raven snapped his fingers and conjured two sets of dark chairs.

”Must be important if you brought me a guest,” he said, gesturing for them to take a seat.

While they settled before him, Raven couldn’t help but take in the peculiar set of clothes on the guest’s body. She was wearing a dark pink dress with more frills than any he’d ever seen in a single dress. As for her starred wand, it gave him the impression that she was a mage much like him and Tia. Whether that stands true or not remains to be seen.

”Sooo...” Shrugging his shoulder, he shifted his attention back to Helga.

Taking a deep breath and sighing with a flicker of defeat, Helga began explaining who the woman was and why she’d been brought to him. Already the two had discussed Bellona, Nerva, and the rest of the problems troubling them. For Nerva, however, the foresight wielder had few answers as her future was far too unpredictable since she was a being more ancient than the concept of time itself in this world.

Bellona, on the other hand, was far more comprehensible. Initially, even Moeria was under the impression that Bellona was dead, but after learning that she’d lived, it took her half an hour to decipher her next move with respect to the message sent to the hero on that gilded blade.

”The goddess’s desperation will make her comply, and if my calculations are correct, she will most certainly die in a battle against Nerva. Same holds true for us; we will die in a battle against both, but without direct aid from an elder god, no amount of current godly allies can defeat both Nerva and the demon lord.” Taking a moment of pause, Moeria closed her eyes. ”Unfortunately, it seems, this girl Aurora, daughter of June and Aradin, is taken by Nerva–the mother of monsters, to be her chosen. Which, going by my data bank, is exclusive to mean ’The demon lord’.”

Just as Raven suspected, fate had played a cruel hand for them all. Without the help of Bellona, a goddess who will most likely try to kill them once Nerva is dead, was a necessary ally, and the reason behind Nerva taking Aurora and playing tricks with Raven’s children was to contort them into tools of her nefarious ploys.

”So, miss foresight. What should we do?” Leaning forward in his chair, Raven intertwined his fingers and stared at the holographic projection. ”Side with a goddess that will kill us? Make an enemy of the so-called King of the end of the world by attempting to free her? Or just waste so much time that we can’t save the children?”

”Memory capacity of this unit is limited,” pressing a finger to her chest, Moeria opened her eyes. ”I would require a direct connection with your goddess’s shared foresight and multi-thought processing, along with a biological body–a human one, I must add! I will not be a monster or some other amalgamation!”

Only understanding half of what she said, the hero looked at Helga.

”She means to say that she needs a real body and a more powerful conduit like a god to make those calculations.”

”Yip~.” Smiling at Helga with a sideways look, Moeria sighed. ”I can find a way to infiltrate Nerva’s domain and rescue Aurora. The two things I require are a real human body and a connection with a fae mother.”

Leaning back in his chair at the mention of the fae mothers, the hero wanted to know how Moeria knew about them when even Athenia didn’t have that knowledge until not too long ago. However, refraining from changing the topic, he gave her a nod and added.

”Leave the fae mother side to me, and potentially Will-O. As for the human body, Ditsy and Mono were working on a biological body for what I can only assume is the iron queen’s wish to visit her parents’ home world.”

”Mono Aurarelia?”

Once again, Raven-eyed Helga, upon Moeria, recited the name back as if she knew the person personally. This time, however, the valkyrie simply shook her head.

”How do you know her?”

”I do not know her, but I have records about her parents. They came from Gaia just like me.”

Patting his thighs, Raven got off his chair and stepped forward. Looking down into the hologram’s eyes, he nodded with the words.

”Well then, there’s our bargaining chip to get that body for you instead. Knowledge about her parents’ home world, she will jump at the opportunity.” Holding his hand forward, the hero offered her a hand, but Moeria looked at Helga instead before returning to the radio’s metal box.

Shaking the box in front of her, Helga took Raven’s hand and explained.

”You can’t touch her until she has a real body. Now let’s go to Mono and figure this out.”

”W-wait!” Grabbing Raven’s shoulder, Maria forced him to turn. ”What about Tia and Robin? What’s your decision on them?”

Glancing over at the two, the hero gave it a moment’s thought before deciding that sending them back and dealing with Tia’s attempt to escape back in again and again was absolutely not worth the trouble.

”Let them stay, but they’d better teleport back at the first signs of trouble.” As the smile took over the girls, and although as soon as Raven would be gone, another lecture from Maria awaited them, being given his permission to stay was more than enough to lug them along.

As for Helga, Raven, and Moeria, the three wasted no time and were off to the iron queen’s lab. A body for information, but why a human and a human alone was Moeria’s request? Raven was curious about the request but wasn’t exactly sure–if only he knew how the lord of death feared those mortals. The base of every other humanoid creature on Atlaris, and the path to ascending to become a greater being for the offspring of monsters.

Pure unfiltered potential, and the iron will to do anything if they so desired it. Moeria had seen it first hand back when she was given foresight by Aphrodite, and now, after coming back to life a second time, a human body was the only thing she wanted. Both to surpass her limits through sheer stubbornness of will and...to sate her perversion left behind by the influence of Aphrodite. Perhaps it was mostly for the second reason, but who could tell, really?