"Why the hell does he have to be able to do everything? I’m supposed to be the wing guy, he’s stealing my whole schtick!"

Dakota wished she could pat her brother on the head to console him.

As they followed the trajectory of Solomon’s massive body, Everett had spent the entire trip bellyaching about their oldest brother’s capabilities.

Raizel hadn’t heard a word. Unlike the others, he was not an undying immortal man capable of pushing past all of his exhaustion with nothing but a thought.

And since cultivating aura was also out of the question, that meant Raizel had been fighting for days on end, compressing eight hours of sleep into a twenty-minute nap on horseback.

At the moment that he felt safe and secure on the back of Scorn, Raizel completely passed out.

He snored like a silverback gorilla, draped over the shoulders of Nila.

With his body so blatantly close to hers, it should have come as no surprise just how flustered the young elf had become.

As a result, Dakota was the only one really listening to her brother’s complaints.

Everett turned to her, his eyes only a few seconds away from shedding tears.

"Be honest with me, sis... His wings are cooler than mine, aren’t they?"

Dakota had never thought of her older brother as adorable until this very moment.

"Well... He turned into a dragon, so..."

Everett felt a pang of jealousy in his heart.

However, Everett was not a man prone to sitting on the sidelines. If his brother could do something, then he saw no justifiable reason why he should be unable to do it as well.

Closing his eyes, he dug deep into the recesses of his body, searching for any bit of energy that he might have had left.

He finally felt something—a small spark, barely noticeable beneath all of his exhaustion.

"RAAAAAHHHH!!!"

Everett turned his head to the sky as he roared, pulling out the last remnants of his energy.

An audible gust of wind passed behind Everett’s back, accompanied by a sour smell.

"..." His face reddening, Everett slowly put his mask back on.

"Pfft!"

Dakota laughed so hard that she nearly fell off her horse. Trauma joined her master in laughing merrily, making Everett even more embarrassed.

"S-Shut up! You didn’t hear that! I swear on my family’s life, if you say anything about this to anyone, then-"

Everett’s hand acted on its own, plucking an arrow out of the air just before it grazed his forehead.

His blue eyes flared hatefully.

"Oh, man... Just when I thought we were done with all the fighting."

At some point, the horsemen had been surrounded.

Women appeared in the trees without a sound.

Each of them was tall, muscular, and intense. They wore animal hides tied with beads and the skulls of ferocious creatures. A red, clay-like paint swirled across their skin, turning the women into even more beautiful works of art.

Everett, despite nearly being shot, was in total heaven.

"...Guys, I’m certain we aren’t immortal anymore, because at some point, we died and went to paradise." He murmured.

"They are pointing arrows at us." Dakota raised her brow.

"I’m literally fine with that."

"Slut."

"Fine with that too."

Nila ignored her siblings as she smiled at the large women with a strange familiarity.

"By Muria ... You are Amazons...! M-My Aunt told me tales of you all the time when I was young! She said that the Viikar tribe was full of the greatest warriors to ever draw breath!"

The Amazons silently glanced amongst one another.

Suddenly, Nila looked back at her brother with a smirk.

"And for your information, Amazons are hermaphrodites."

"So they want me to be their man for a night? That’s fine by me!" Everett had grossly misunderstood.

Nila could tell that her brother had no idea what that word meant, and she contemplated bursting his bubble.

But ultimately, she decided that it would have been far more amusing if she let him find out on his own, so she turned around without saying another word to him.

"Hey... I know you said Yari told you about Amazons... Did she ever say anything about them hanging around Dark Fae...?" Dakota pointed above her head.

"Of course not, why would you... Oh.."

The scene above nearly caused Nila’s jaw to go slack.

Hovering in the air, as silently as a butterfly, was an entire swarm of dark fae.

This was more than enough to make Nila go on guard. She drew her sword from her hip, and Raizel woke up instantly.

Unfortunately for him, it was for nothing.

There was a heavy thud as an Amazon woman leapt from the top of a tree and landed directly in front of Nila. The spear she carried was nearly twelve feet tall.

"Vous... Vous venez de parler de Viikar. Comment se fait-il que vous connaissiez ce mot...?"

Nila’s elven was excruciatingly rusty. All of the attempts that her aunt had made to teach her when she was younger had ended with her taking bites out of books.

She scratched the back of her head awkwardly. "Uhhhh....."

"She’s asking how you knew the word ’Viikar’ just now. It’s not a word you could just hear as an outsider, so she’s understandably very confused." Raizel yawned.

Nila was baffled. "H-How do you know that?"

Sleepy-eyed, Raizel smiled at her and winked.

"It’s a part of your heritage... I’m the kind of man who could never live if another man knew more about you than I did. So I’m something of an expert."

There was that feeling again. An itch in the chest followed by a surge of warmth in her cheeks.

Nila couldn’t stand it. She didn’t know what this dead-but-not-dead person was trying to do to her, but she had endured enough!

"H-Hey, Nila!?"

The young elf grabbed Raizel by his shirt collar and hurled him towards her brother. Everett caught him in a princess carry on instinct, only to drop him once he realized.

"He’s riding with you from now on!"

-

Back in Komen, an old, haggard individual was wobbling through the streets of Eirbane on a cane.

He seemed to fade into the background, noticeable by no one save for the animals.

Everyone else was too busy chattering. And there was only one word that seemed to be on all of their lips.

Horsemen.

It was a term he had never heard before. But as he listened to the stories, the old man began to feel more and more nervous. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He tried contacting his servant an excess of twelve times. Every attempt was made in vain.

The way he was now, he didn’t have the time or the strength to make it all the way to Ilim.

It was a good thing that a man like him always kept multiple irons in the fire...