'Still, I gotta say, the nobles in this world aren't as weak as I had expected.
None of the older ones I met when I was still at the Duke's residence was below level 100, with the majority of the higher ranked ones surpassing level 150 and approaching 200 too.'
Those were his thoughts as he appraised Suzanne and discovered that although she wasn't a master-level existence yet, she was already level 110.
'This dungeon may be a bit too high level for her but with the assistance of the other five, it's possible for her to pull through.'
As he was thinking that, Suzanne was talking with Eliza, having recognized her due to seeing her with Laurene once when she had gone to Dungeon City Merdin some months back.
"You are Eliza Lane, right?"
"Yeah, why do you know my last name?"
"Well, to be honest, besides having seen you before, there are more than just quite a few nobles who are aware of you."
"Haaahh?!"
Suzanne chuckled a bit upon seeing Eliza's shocked reaction before going on to explain what she meant.
"Well, it's kinda Sir Evan's fault."
A few weeks earlier, the Emperor suddenly appointed a new noble to be in charge of the Geto Barony, also sending in a bunch of 'relief packages' to the main city of the territory.
This drew the attention of many nobles and they began to investigate the Geto barony to see what about it had drawn the Emperor's attention.
Due to this, the information about Xakon's attack spread from just the southern empire to the rest of the country.
People found out that a 'Winged Humanoid Monster' had murdered the knights of the Geto Barony, before going on to bomb the adventurer's guild building, killing hundreds of people and injuring dozens more while the guild master was away.
Digging deeper, it didn't take long for news to spread that one of the people responsible for defeating this 'Winged Humanoid Monster', was the son of the Prime Minister who was said to have disappeared months earlier.
An eyewitness report stated that after the adventurer's guild building had exploded, someone had engaged the culprit in battle for a few minutes before Evan appeared and joined the fight.
Afterwards, some knights appeared alongside someone who seemed to be a mage and helped Evan and co to defeat the monster, saving the lives of all the potential targets of the culprit who in this case were the inhabitants of the city who had been unable to evacuate.
Evan's presence and the fact that knights belonging to the princess' guard detail were present made curious nobles search for more details and it was only a matter of time before the names of all the parties involved were discovered.
Both the names of the knights and the names of the priestess who arrived at the scene together 'with' the knights.
Now it has to be noted that before this, Eliza's name was already known by some nobles due to the events of more than half a year ago when Evan had absconded from the Ducal Residence.
People were curious to see the reactions of those who were related to the missing Prime Minister's son and those who were with him in the few hours before he disappeared. Reactions of people like Evan's family, Ralphie and the Royal family members who visited the Eris Residence on that day.
As such, they had snooped around (practically stalked) Laurene who was rumoured to be engaged to Evan for her reaction on the matter.
Sadly, Laurene did not give them the reaction they had wanted, as the princess had actually carried on with her daily life like normal as if Evan's matter had nothing to do with her. She even started frequenting dungeons a lot more than before and began recruiting skilled alchemists from all over the country.
Still, these people who could be said to be the equivalent of 'paparazzi' in Aidos, continued watching Laurene for a while.
It was during this time that she met and befriended Eliza, something that they found out easily as she didn't try to hide her friendship with Eliza in the first place.
As such, Eliza's name had come up when the nobles were trying to discover who this new 'friend' of the princess was and if she had any special identity.
Now, her name had come up once more among the names of people involved in the Geto City indecent and her arrival with knights of Laurene's guard detail caused heads to turn towards her.
From the people who had observed Evan and Eliza's interactions within the few weeks they spent in Geto after the incident before leaving, it was then revealed that the two knew each other before the incident.
This then placed Eliza in the spotlight as the nobles wondered just who this 'Eliza Lane' was, seeing as she was somehow friends with both the Princess and the Prime Minister's son.
On a side note, the Duke had taken advantage of the incident and had tweaked a few of the rumours about it pertaining to why Evan was there and somehow made people believe Evan's reason for 'disappearing' was related to the incident and in one way or another.
He had somehow made it seem like Evan was there to prevent the incident from escalating and to prevent further loss of life due to the actions of the 'Winged Humanoid Monster' who had murdered the original Baron Geto and his family.
This had also inadvertently brought people's attention to the fact that Evan was strong enough to take out Xakon who was able to kill off dozens of full-fledged knights.
"I see, so that's what happened after we left."
Those were Evan's words to himself after listening to Suzanne's not-so-short explanation. Eliza on the other hand heaved a sigh of exhaustion upon thinking about how she had gotten the attention of some very troublesome group of people.
"And here I thought that there would not be much attention on me until I reached Bultom to deal with the Dullahans.
? That Geto Incident blew up more than I had expected."
"Well, it was impossible for it not to do so when the emperor appointed a new noble. He hasn't done that in years."
Evan gave a nod of affirmation in response to Suzanne's words, after which Eliza tapped him on the shoulder and spoke.
"It's funny how all of this somehow ended up originating from you 'disappearing' from home."
"When you think about it that way, it somehow does."