Aravel

Chapter 48

With daylight breaking through the darkness of the night, a group of friends left their shared house with the same goal in mind: to find their missing friend.

"Why are we not going after Kaze again?" Mitsui asked just as they left the house in a somewhat sneaky manner, such as to not rouse the attention of the nearby building tenants.

"Mitsui, I think you know this better than everyone," Yuuji made an exasperated sigh. "How in the world are we going to storm into the palace and get him out? Only the two of us are able to get in and out without being suspected due to our relations with the King."

"What about Noel?" Mitsui pointed at the girl standing next to her. "She is fine too, isn't she?"

"Please, no," Noel shivered in fear instead, shaking her head. "It was a pain to get away from the palace where my dad would be at right now. If I were to return, no doubt he would call for me to join the other searching soldiers looking for Lunaria. I rather be with you guys instead of men in suit all the time."

"Ah... haha... then, I suppose we can't really do anything about it," Mitsui giggled nervously, knowing that her question was already answered for obvious reasons.

"Everyone has their roles?" Sera asked, looking back at everyone for confirmation. "If no one has any other questions, let's go over this one last time."

Being the most experienced in recon and search and rescue missions out of the rest, Sera was going to be the leader. In fact, Rena or Shoko could take the leader role since they had equivalent experiences like Sera but decided to pass it to her since Shoko was more of a solo type while Rena preferred to be led. Following that, they have split their groups into 3. It could have been 4 or more if they wanted to cover a bigger area, however taking into consideration the fact that they might encounter the enemy made them limit the group numbers.

Sera, Rena and Shoko were going to be leaders of the 3 groups. For Sera and Rena's group, both required a frontliner or a tank since they were archers. As such, Chris and Irene were going to be with Sera while Albert and Yuuji were going with Rena. Shoko was pretty much versatile, hence why she had Mitsui and Noel with her, Noel being a strong frontliner while Mitsui being the middle-to-long range combatant.

While the initial plan was to have Shoko run around solo, it was decided to be better to split into groups where each one had a capable leader. It was too dangerous for them to move around in too large a group, since it would have to be 4 person per group if Shoko was alone. The triangle formation, being something that was commonly referred to as a balanced group, was more optimum in this situation.

Since this was meant to be a searching mission, there was no need for fancy armour since it would simply attract unwanted attention from how obvious they looked along with the sound that was made when moving around in them. For people like Yuuji, Albert and Chris, who were all frontliners that wore body armour when fighting, they would be in trouble if not for something that Yuuji and Noel had stolen back from the palace.

Right now, the three of them were dressed in armour that the guards typically wore. It was quite the hassle to smuggle 3 sets of armour of from the palace without being found out, but made possible with Sera lending them a dimension pouch. The pouch itself was enchanted with spatial magic for a larger storage despite its smaller appearance, hence why they could make it in and out without trouble. Needless to say, it was something made by Lunaria for her friend.

"I'm still not really used to wearing these yet," Chris complained, looking down at the suit itself before wearing his helmet.

"Please. You have been saying that for the past hour," Irene rolled her eyes, giving the back of his armour a smack. "You even wore it earlier than Yuuji and Albert."