Moonlight - Miya x Alucard (Completed)

Chapter 42

While chaos began to break in the castle grounds,, a figure moves swiftly among the shadow in the castle.

Though wearing a bright-colored outfit, the hood kept the figure's face hidden. As the figure stride across the empty halls of the castle, sounds of scattered footsteps that echoed from not so far away raised the figure's guard.

Natalia leaned herself on a wall, shadow almost covering her completely. She listened closely to the footsteps, as if trying to analyze its cause and its direction based on their pace. But even without detailed analysis, their cause should be pretty obvious.

Back then, as soon as they saw the troops sent by the Abyss entering the castle ground, Natalia waste no seconds and make her way into her chosen direction with haste. She knew that the hemisphere shield that was casted by the empire would not be able to hold for long. At least, not this time.

"Someone had already planted an insider inside the castle," Natalia said to herself as she moved with nimbleness along the shadow. "With that in mind, getting some of their troops inside the castle through a hidden passage wouldn't be as hard." This information of hers started from mere speculation at first; months before she joined Granger in his search to find Alucard. Although she had left the Church of Light due to personal reasons, she was still able to access most part of the castle.

Therefore, she started a secret investigation to confirm her speculation. It all started when she noticed weird movements of people getting inside and outside the castle. The war preparations have been initiated months before the estimated date of the war. Surely enough, there will be a lot of figures going in and out of the castle to deliver materials that are needed for the war.

As trained as she is, Natalia was able to recognize weird movements in the castle. She suspected that that was when the Abyss had installed an insider to spy on the empire. However, she had underestimated the ability of the insider. It turns out whoever the Abyss sent as a spy for the Moniyan...was smarter than she thought they will be.

After the sound of people have calmed down, Natalia began moving again. She was heading close towards the basement floor. As her expectations would have it, her ears began to capture the sounds of heavy footsteps rounding the basement floor. With careful steps, Natalia peek into the basement and saw a couple of Orcs talking with a man.

Natalia recognized the man immediately. "He's the messenger that came from the Northern Vale earlier! I thought he was sent to the royal infirmary back then. The fact that he's here, talking with the Orcs..." Eventually, Natalia got the answer right away. She couldn't believe it herself at first, but now she understood everything.

"Huh. I can't believe I didn't even suspect him a bit back then...he must be one of the Abyss's most skillful insider," Natalia collects her thoughts as she continued to eavesdrop on their conversation. However, they were talking in a language that she could not understand - so she could only observe their movements.

She glanced at a pathway behind the man and the Orcs he's talking to. It's one of the hidden passageway of the castle, only used in case of emergency escape for the royals. Only few people know about this passageway and even fewer have an access to it, so the fact that this insider could find out...shows that he must've had a certain connections to the higher castle officials.

That also means that he wasn't really bewitched back then. He was only playing along in order to get rid of suspicion; which could also be the reason why he managed to left the throne room despite being put under a 'curse'. Now everything makes sense. Natalia gritted her teeth. She should've kicked him harder back then - maybe then he would've broke his spine or something and not being able to move anywhere.