Chapter 91 91: Trickery



Elric noticed a new person trying to get involved with the group.

Now, he didn't know what others thought, but people like that were whack most of the time. He could tell from experience. There was a time he was in middle school and he used to play around with some people. Back then, a lot of men and women alike would try to get involved with his friend group and then confess to him.

It was so damn annoying that he stopped having any friend groups eventually. Sleeping was a better use of his time anyway.

But those were people from a different world that didn't really understand the difference in stature between them and him.

From what Elric had seen, people of this world sure knew to pick their battles.

He had been confessed to by a total of zero guys and zero girls in this world!

And that must speak for something.

That said, that this guy was coming here could only mean one thing in Elric's mind. He wanted to confess to somebody in this group.

Who could it be?

Elric narrowed his eyes and looked at everyone.

And honestly, he couldn't tell.

It could be anyone. Claude was at risk since he was fun, Erika was at risk since she was fun, and Tiana was at risk since she was an elf.

"Elf."

The guy twitched at Elric's words.

He had just finished introducing himself to Claude and asking for his own name.

That was it! He had all the proof he would need now.

He had no idea why Erika tried to hit the back of his head. And he would have totally dodged if he weren't sleepy. Totally.

"Shush it, are you trying to sell Tiana out here?" Erika whispered.

"No, I am only trying to protect her."

"So... um, Leres..." Claude spoke. "You seen any robed guys around these parts?"

"Robed...? There's one right there."

Elric gasped.

This bitch.

He was still at it!

Elric covered Tiana by standing in front of her. He remembered a WikiWhat article he had read about confronting Beluga whales.

And so, he T-Posed.

His gaze firm his arms strong, Elric poured his soul into the T-pose.

"Um...?"

"N-not that one," Claude muttered, just as confused as the other person about what Elric was up to.

"Well, I did meet some robed people earlier..." he said. "They lured me into this forest and then disappeared leaving me to my death. But those guys were probably working for fish, you don't want to get involved with them."

If he could, Claude wanted to bang his head on a giant boulder right now and burn his own gray matter.

Why.

Just why couldn't he be with normal people?

"In the forest, right? I'll get to it."

"No no no!" Leres suddenly grabbed Claude's hands and stopped him from going in. "You don't want to, it's all a large fish psyop that this is a forest! It's actually a place that fish use to feed on people. I even found an altar dedicated to some silver fish!"

"Oh god, what did I do to deserve this?"

Maybe.

Maybe this guy was more cracked in the head than Elric? No, that didn't seem plausible. That was a level of cracked in the head that even gods who were fixing eyesight and lifelong injuries weren't able to fix.

It would be a spit on their face if someone could go worse than that.

Then, he must be at least half as bad as Elric.

And Claude neeed not be reminded just how bad half of that was either. If people could be crazy on a scale of zero to ten, then Elric was a solid fifty-four million.

This guy being half of that already made every last word of his to be distrustable.

"You know what, Leres? You're right. They can't be in here if they left you here, right? Would it be leaving you here if they were here too? Won't it be accompanying you then?"

"Right right! You get it."

Claude would have socked this guy long ago had he not been the one being praised in all of Soleda as a hero. As the person who was one of the pillars of the destruction that had happened there, he didn't feel it right to go ahead and thrash their hero without any discretion.

"Whatever, then. Have a good day.'"

"Wait! Wait wait!"

The man stopped him again.

"What now? You bumped into us. All done."

"You can't leave me alone here. What if there are fish?"

Claude tilted his head.

"I mean, I can't leave YOU alone here."

"We can do without baggage."

"You can't—"

Claude chopped the back of Leres' head and the man fainted.

"Good job, Claude!" Elric cheered. "This fucker was eyeing our Tiana."

"He was?!"

Claude was surprised once more. He took a rope and tied the man to a stone and then the group of them left anyway.

Who cared about some random guy?

The group then continued on their trek, looking for the place where Tiana had said she had found the lions and had left the robed ones at.

Leaves rustled. The dirt below was kicked up through their steps while the sounds of stones and bushes shaking around came repeatedly.

The path was completely ruined by the incline, and the growing roots seeping wide into the ground just added on to it, making their trek more difficult than it had to be.

They continued through the path for a while before the sun overhead started to fall.

It wasn't like they were good at it in the first place, but they still couldn't really find any traces of the two robed folks. It was all a large loss.

"Let's take a break for now," Claude said.

The group agreed. Setting up camp here was going to be helpful in the long run.

The camp was set deeper into the thicket of trees with a fire and tent set up quickly. The sun went down and only the sounds of the birds and the crickets remained in the night.

The group all sat around the small fire and together watched the fire for a while.

At that time, Erika and Claude stabbed a stick through some meat and let it roast around the flames.

It was going to be a long run through, and they had brought enough food to last them for a while.

They all sat in silence for a while, as if they were all out of topics to chat about.

Then, Claude spoke up.

"Should we go into the forest though?" Claude asked. It was the place that this man claimed was somewhere that the robed figures led him to and a bunch of human sacrifice took place.

"I don't know, I've never been here," Tiana said.

"Never huh? Where did you live anyway, Tiana? Isn't this near the forest where they say the elves lived?"

"I don't know," Tiana answered with a wry smile.

"Don't know?" Elric pressed on. "Where did you leave from then?"

Claude thought that it was a very strange question. What did living at and leaving from had different about them?

But the question wasn't completely lost on Tiana.

"I left from a forest."

A lot of Elric's suspicions were cleared out.

"Those robed men weren't taking you away," Elric muttered.

In the crackling of the flames, he had discovered something that he didn't yet.

"You are a sly one, aren't you?"

Elric's words echoed over the place.

"What are you on about now, Elric?" Claude asked, though not in a way to insult Elric at all. Tiana flinched when she saw the look of absolute trust on Claude's face.

She looked over to Erika in hope, but that was useless too.

Erika had learned to trust them all a lot.

"Hah... I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't," Elric muttered. "As if you haven't been tricking us all along from the start."

"That's... not true at all..."

"Ok, my bad," Elric sighed. "I made it seem too malicious. You two, she has no intentions of whatever you fear—"

"You don't have to tell us that," Claude said. "We all know she was hiding something and that it isn't anything harmful."

"We trust Tiana. We are just curious about the point that you're trying to make here."

Elric grinned and looked at Tiana.

Indeed.

He trusted her just as much as these two.

She was the only one who would try to call him by his title. Who was he to trust if not Tiana?

"You're right," Elric said. "She has been hiding something, but not in the lines you're thinking. In that sense, she has been tricking us because she only told us what she needed to to get us to think this way."

Tiana clenched her fists and looked down.

"This Elf... was never being taken away by those guys, but was being taken back."