Chapter 43: Into the castle

At the front side of the castle there's a large entrance with wide-open doors, the visitor's entrance, a lot of people are going in and out, most of them seem to be tourists coming to visit the castle. As for me, I know that the queen will probably be in one of the restricted areas, but it should be easier to sneak in there if I'm already inside.

However, when I'm about to enter, a guard stands in my way.

"Excuse me, isn't this the visitor's entrance?"

"Yes"

"Well, I'm a visitor, can I enter?"

The guard looks up at me for a moment.

"No"

"What!? Why not?"

"Miss, could you please take off your mask?"

"That man over there is also wearing a mask and you didn't stop him"

"I'm sorry, it's my duty to make sure that no suspicious people enter the castle"

"I'm just a normal traveler, there's nothing suspicious about me"

If I take my mask off it's going to be even worse, isn't it...

But there are other people around here who are more suspicious-looking than me, this is a clear case of discrimination! Why would he think that I'm the one who's not just a normal visitor!?

I mean, he's right, but still...

"Well, never mind then, I'll leave"

I'll have to find another entrance to the castle that I can use...

"Hey Luna, come over here"

Nera is over there calling out to me, she's wearing a cloak with a hood to hide her face.

"Why did you come here?"

"I was thinking... if you are going to confront my mother, I should go there with you"

"Are you sure? This could be a bit dangerous"

"There's nothing to worry about if I'm with you, and I know the inside of the castle! I can even take you to a secret entrance!"

I suppose that I could use her help... and it's true that this is her problem in the first place, so I understand why she would want to come with me.

"Very well then, tell me how to get into the castle"

Nera takes me to a narrow street not too far away from the castle and places her and on one of the magic circles on the floor, then she opens a piece of the mana circuit as if it was a trapdoor, revealing an air tunnel underneath the surface.

"Not a lot of people know about this, I often used it to escape from the castle when I was little"

We enter the narrow tunnel closing the entrance behind us, a mana circuit surrounds the tunnel, preventing the water from coming in and blocking the view of the outside, and from the outside, I assume.

"This feels like crawling through a plastic tube"

It's funny to think that we're under a city floating on the sea. It doesn't take long for us to reach a staircase, I wonder if this is already inside the castle, after reaching the top Nera opens a door and then...

"Wait, opening that door just triggered an alarm"

"What!?"

It was a silent alarm, but nor silent enough to stop me from noticing. However, before we can leave, two knights in full armor are already running at us.

"Luna! Those are elite knights, we need to... eh!? What are you doing!?"

I wrap my arms around Nera and cast a spell to protect her.

'Ghostly armor'

She now seems to be wearing a semi-transparent black armor, 'ghostly armor' is normally considered to be one of the most powerful and useful dark magic spells that only some of the best mages can use, it sets the toughness stat of the target to 800, making normally frail mages very difficult to hurt, however, since my toughness is already above 800, when I tried to use it on myself it actually went down...

"Stop right there intruders... wait, is that the princess!?"

I probably should make them sleep before things can get awkward.

'Mind void'

However, the knights stab their own hands slightly to prevent themselves from falling asleep, it's a good thing that not a lot of people use that trick because it makes this spell kinda useless...

"A dark mage? Your cheap tricks won't work on us!"

And then they start swinging their swords at me.

"Woah!"

"What!? How are you dodging all of this!?"

Perhaps I should take advantage of my speed stat more often when facing weak enemies, dodging attacks like this is a bit fun...

'Shadow bind'

"Ugh!"

If everyone guarding the castle is this weak there should not be any problem, but I should not count on that, and it's better to not get into unnecessary fights so we should run away from here before someone else shows up.

"Let's go Nera!"

"Yes! At this time my mother should be in her room, come this way"

After getting through a long hallway we get to a large room with a bunch of columns and... nothing else really.

"Eh, Nera, I don't think that we should have come to this room"

"Why not?"

"Because this place looks like it was designed specifically to have a big fight"

"What are you talking abo..."

Before she can finish her sentence, a bunch of figures wearing all black start flying around the room, they are jumping in and out of the cover of the columns, flipping and spinning in the air while throwing knives at us. Then, they all land in front of us after doing a backflip in perfect synchronization.

*Clap clap*

That was amazing! I cannot help but give them an applause. That said, none of their knives were able to pierce my skin or Nera's armor.

"Those are royal assassins, be careful, they are merciless and very dangerous"

Well, they don't really look all that dangerous to me.

'Shadow bind'

All the assassins dodge the ropes by doing backflips that I'm not sure are necessary but are certainly cool, I try sending the ropes at them in different ways to see what other tricks they can do.

They certainly have a lot of variety, dodge rolls, side jumps, tossing each other around... and as they dodge they keep counterattacking with knives, guns, and bombs, these guys are great! I could catch them by speeding up the ropes or making more of them, but I want to see more of their performance.

*Clap clap*

"Ahahah! That was a great act!"

"She's making fun of us..."

"No, no, no! I'm serious! Well, you don't seem to be all that good at fighting, but if you were to join a circus I'm sure that you would be really popular!"

"That's it! Let's take her down!"

Eh!? Why did they get so angry? I was praising them!

'Shadow bind'

Now that they've lost their cool they're no longer able to dodge, I guess that the show's over...

"Wow Luna, I didn't think that you would also be good at psychological attacks"

"What's a psychological attack?"

"Never mind"

We decide to hurry up and leave, if we stay for too long in one place, more guards will end up showing up.

In the next room, four large white humanoid figures stand in our way, and it seems like they are going to attack us!

"Those are salt golems!"

"Salt golems? That's dumb, golems should be made of metal or, if you can't, rocks"

"Don't underestimate them! Salt golems are..."

'Shadow lance'

They were destroyed with just one attack, as expected, they were very brittle.

"See? Just because you live on the sea and have a lot of salt around does not mean that you should make your golems out of it"

"But this is the Agua kingdom! Salt golems are a symbol of our country, nobody else has them"

"Yeah, I know, everyone wants to be unique and special, they all go 'we live in the forest so we'll make wood golems' or 'we live in a wheat farm, so we'll make wheat golems', but in the end, the standard golems are the standard for a reason"

"Well, yes, but... salt golems can throw salt at the enemy's face!"

"And rock golems can throw rocks, what do you think is more effective?"

"..."

Nera is looking down with a sullen expression, I hope that I didn't hurt her pride or something, I couldn't tell before but she really seems to like her country, but I still had to say that or she would keep thinking that salt golems are a good idea.

In the room after that, there's a terrible stench, both I and Nera cover our noses but that doesn't help much, what could they possibly have inside of the castle that smells this bad?

"Ugh! Where does that smell come from?"

Oh, that must be it, there are two piles of dead and rotten fish that seem to be... walking to us? They have a vaguely humanoid shape, wait, don't tell me...

"Luna! Those are fish golems! You need to watch out for..."

"Nera, no"

"Fish golems can..."

'Shadow lance'

When the golems explode I get a few chunks of fish on me, ugh, I hope that the smell doesn't stick...

"But fish golems..."

"No, just no"

forli