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Leading the night watchers, the several cardinals of the Church came back to Aalto. The city was still sleeping peacefully in the darkness, as tranquil as they left it earlier.

At this time, the red-robed cardinal, Vila Amelton, who was also one of the actual leaders of the Inquisition, suddenly stopped flying. A moment later, she turned to the Canon Holder, "Salvador, go back and find Lady Camil right now. She’s searching for the princess in Melzer Black Forest."

Before Salvador responded to the command, Count Hayward, the vice commander of Violet Knights, burst out, "What happened to the princess?"

"In collusion with the Congress of Magic, Verdi ambushed the princess and tried to kill her. Natasha broke out of their siege and is now hiding in the black forest."

"What?! Verdi!" Rafati and Hayward looked shocked. They could not believe their ears.

The several other noble knights present also looked very shocked. However, the reason that they were astounded was because of the fact Verdi failed.

"Yes. Sard just informed me," Amelton answered shortly.

"I’ll go with them." Hayward’s brows knitted together tightly. Although he looked just like a twenty-something young man, he was actually more than a hundred and sixty years old. Hayward had witnessed countless conspiracies in his life, and now he had a sense of suspicion crawling into his mind. Hayward’s intuition was telling him that the reason that they were sent to Elsinore Lake earlier tonight was much more sophisticated than he thought.

Salvador crossed himself, "Yes, my lord."

"Only truth lives forever." Amelton also crossed on her chest.

......

Following Aaron’s special ability of communicating with the shadows, Tod soon noticed a cluster of Ghost Aloe missing a few leaves.

"I knew they were going to use Ghost Aloe... We arrived just a bit too late." Tod was a bit pissed off, but then he turned to Aaron, "Any idea which direction they went?"

"The shadow told me..." Aaron scrutinized the surroundings carefully, "they’re still around."

"That doesn’t make any sense." Tod fiercely hacked the plant with his sword.

"There’s only one explanation for this." Aaron said to Tod, "They jumped into the river."

Ghost Aloe often grew very close to water, and this cluster was not an exception. Not far away from the Ghost Aloe, there was a running creek connecting to Massol River.

"Then we just have to follow the water." Tod nodded, "They were injured way more seriously than us. We can catch them."

"What if they left the river and went back into the forest again?" asked Aaron, "I’m not a grand knight. I cannot get information from the shadows in the water."

"Well... then just pay close attention to the possible wet plants on both sides of the river. If they left the river, there must be a trail." Tod looked very confident, and the horrible, long wound on his face had almost recovered.

"All right." Although Aaron thought this strategy was relatively time-consuming, he could not think of a better solution.

Then they started to search along both sides of the river.

......

After floating in the river for a short period of time, Lucien and Natasha left the water and went deep into the woods again.

When Lucien carried Natasha on his back again and was about to run away, Natasha reminded him, "Remember to hide our trail."

Natasha’s wet hair was dripping water, and so was his black robe.

"Yes, you’re right." Lucien nodded. He carefully put Natasha behind a tall and thick tree and then started to collect a kind of weird-looking bush that looked like hay to dry them out a bit.

"I’m afraid they can still trace us." Grabbing the plant, Lucien was worried, "This is not enough." Lucien was quite regretful that he never really paid attention to some of the first circle spells which were used for cleaning all kinds of trails when he was doing his magic structure analysis. At that time, he never thought they might be very useful one day.

"They’re powerful knights. I wouldn’t expect that we could completely get rid of them with a bunch of plants." Natasha was analyzing with her clear mind, "I know all the knights who were on Verdi’s side and I know all their Blessings. Neither of them is really good at tracing, however, I can feel they’re getting closer and closer."

"You can feel it?" Lucien got nervous, "I thought I did a good job..."

"You did, Lucien." Natasha slightly patted his shoulders, "I guess that, very possibly, there’s a dark knight tracing us. And I’m thinking... when I recover a bit more, maybe we can try to fight back in order to kill this dark knight."

"I don’t agree." Lucien shook his head, "What if it is Tod who’s chasing us, instead of some random knights? Or what if the dark knight is also very powerful? What if they’re using some magic items to trace us?"

Lucien knew very well that Natasha was a great risk taker, but he was not.

"Well... I hear your many ‘what if’, Lucien." Natasha slightly lifted her purple eyebrows, "I know that any of your ‘what if’ can easily kill us, but do we have another choice? Sooner or later, they’ll find us."

Lucien lowered his head. He knew that what Natasha just said was correct.

"All right... we still have to be more prepared." Lucien looked up at the several faint stars in the sky and roughly estimated their location, "At least we’ll wait until your power reaches the level of an ordinary knight."

"I’m afraid we don’t have this much time." Natasha carefully checked herself and said to Lucien, "Although the worst impact on my body caused by my Blessing is gone, I still need a couple of hours to recover to the level that you just said."

Lucien’s eyes slightly opened bigger as he suddenly remembered something important. Reaching his hand into his wet robe, Lucien took out a bunch of magic ingredients for making potions that he got from the archmage’s storeroom and put them on the ground.

"Can any of these help you?" Lucien was a bit hesitant, "I... I got these from the archmage’s place, to... to sell them for some money."

Lucien was a bit nervous.

Natasha did not really notice Lucien’s awkwardness, and when she lowered her head, a surprised smile appeared on her face, "Aether... and vampire’s blood! Awesome!"

Both Aether and vampire blood were ingredients for a very effective healing potion named Water Song. However, they were just raw materials, so Lucien felt quite worried. "Any side effect?" he asked.

Natasha already grabbed the tube of vampire’s blood in her hand.

"Vampire’s blood... After taking it, I might be bit afraid of sunlight for up to six months, and my blood might feel burning," answered Natasha casually. Then she pulled out the cork of the tube and smelled the blood, "Wow... It’s a high grade vampire’s blood! Good for the archmage!"

"Can you recover completely by taking it then?" asked Lucien.

"Well..." Natasha took a deep breath, "Not really... but if I push myself a bit harder and activated my Blessing again, I might get... probably up to three minutes with the power of a level five knight. After that... I’m done."

"Done!?" Lucien was shocked.

"No no no..." Natasha laughed, "I’m not going to die. I mean I won’t be able to walk at all afterwards, and you will need to carry me all the way home."

"You’d better explain things a bit clearer in situations like that, you know." Lucien almost rolled his eyes.

"Lucien," Natasha became serious, "If Tod was not among them, three minutes would be enough for me to kill the rest of the knights."

"Then, what if Tod is the one coming after us..." Lucien needed to have a backup plan.

"Then I’d cover you by distracting Tod and the other grand knights, if there was any." Natasha said to Lucien, "Meanwhile, you handle the rest of them."

Natasha leaned her head against Lucien’s shoulder to take a rest. Her purple eyes were bright, and her lips were pressing together in a thin line.

"You want to sacrifice yourself to let me survive?" Lucien asked her.

"Of course not!" Natasha suddenly straightened up her back as if she got scared, "I cherish my life a lot. Without Thunder, you wouldn’t be able to face the knights on your own. Besides, I’m not gonna really fight against Tod. My duty will be to distract him. That’s all. And you gotta lend me your sword, Alert."

"That’s too dangerous for you. I don’t agree." Lucien refused Natasha’s suggestion, "You keep Thunder. I have a plan which can possibly kill them all, as long as they have no more than five knights chasing after us, and we can get to the place before they find us."

"What plan? What place?" Natasha was very surprised.

"You’ll see when we get there." Lucien looked at Natasha’s eyes seriously, "I cherish my life a lot as well. Trust me, Natasha."

Natasha confounded a moment, then she smiled, "I trust you, Lucien."