"Uhhh... Tsk. My body feels cramped? How did I manage to sleep like this?" Soren woke up only to see himself in a rather weird sleeping position. His entire body felt cramped and also pretty sluggish, while he wasn't in as much pain, he noticed that his helmet had fallen off and his face and hair was in full exposure. Soren didn't bother putting it on immidiately because it wasn't necessary since he was way out of the town, but he would have to return by tomorrow.
After streching for a couple of minutes to let his blood flow in his body, he left his room and went to find Lavenza to tell her that they should prepare soon enough to leave, but after entering the living room, he saw Lavenza and Lumious sleepkng together on couch with a couple of books on the side. Soren didn't pay much attention to that thing, so he decided to let her rest a bit more, since they will be taking quite some time until they get back in Crystalia City. Until the two of them had to leave, Soren decided to sort through his stuff to make sure that there wasn't anything missing and decided to get himself ready to leave.
After a couple of hours, Leana woke up and saw Soren already wearing all of his armor and weapons on him. The armor itself had a few torn parts on the arms, but aside from that, it was holding pretty well, despite the abuse it had during against Torque.
"Leaving so soon?" Leana asked curiously.
"Well I have to, unless I want to fail my quest." Soren answered back in a casual manner.
"Then you'll probably want to know your current position. Here, use this. It should be able to help you quite a bit." Leana spoke with a calm tone on her voice while taking out a map from a nearby drawer.
"Thank you." Soren answered back with a respectful voice before he took the map to read it. After reading it for a bit, he now knows their current location, as well as the way back, thanks to the fact that the map also shows the main roads, so he can use those for a safe return, albeit a bit longer that taking the direction straight to the city. That distance would be around the level of marathon races for pros, but considering his increased status, Soren thought that it shouldn't be a problem making that distance within a few hours.
After around 20 minutes, Lavenza woke up and Lumious woke up as well right after her and once the two of them woke up, they saw for Leana and Soren eating breakfast.
"Hey, if you were going to eat, you could have woken us up as well to eat." Lumious said with a pouty expression.
"Reny~?" Lavenza looked at Soren who was wearing his armor and looked like he prepared for battle.
"We will be leaving in a bit Lavenza so eat up, because once we leave, we will be making our way back to Crystalia City post-haste, so there will be almost no time for rest, until we return." Soren explained to Lavenza while he was eating breakfast.
"Kyuu~." Lavenza nodded before she started eating as well.
After eating breakfast, it was time for the two of them to leave. The four of them were outside of the cottage and Soren spoke first:
"I guess this goodbye now. Thank you for taking care of us." Soren said happily as he bowed his head downwards a bit.
"It's the least I could do for help the one who sent that rotten mutt to the depths of oblivion." Leana answered back with a casual expression.
"Take care mister Soren and promise with me that we will play again in the future." Lumious spoke next while getting close to Soren.
"Promise Lumious." Soren then rubbed Lumious' head with his hand.
"Take care you two."
"Goodbye." Both Leana and Lumious said that while they waved their hands.
"Farewell."
"Kyuuhu~." Soren waved his hand while Lavenza was waving her tail like a hand and after those farewells, the two of them made their way towards Crystalia City. It would be a long way back, but it would guve them ample opportunities to complete their mission on their way back and as luck had it, a Salt Slime appeared.
"Just shoot it down Lavenza. Your water balls should deal a decent amount of damage on most enemies, so you should be able to take them out fast by yourself." Soren said before they decided to start their battle. The reason why he said that was because he was still injured and wanted to avoid battling, so he had to have Lavenza fight solo for the day. Thankfully, all monsters during daytime were Tier 1 monsters without a lot of power, so all of them died within a couple of exchanges between them and Lavenza.
After around three or so hours, they kill a sea serpent which was the last monster they were missing to complete the mission. With 6 different monster corpses and a salt core with a couple slime bottles, they have the necessary things they need to compelte the quest, so both of them were pretty happy with the fact that they managed to complete the quest. And after a little bit of time later, they make it to one of the main roads that leads straight to Crystalia City.
"Well, from here on out Lavenza, it will be a straight way towards Crystalia City. Stay close to me because there could be carriages or vehicles passing through this path." Soren said with a careful expression while pulling Lavenza towards him. After that, the two of them made their way down the long path towards Crystalia City.
After a couple of hours passed that the two of them were swimming, a carriage was passing by this path. Soren and Lavenza saw that carriage, they went to the side to avoid getting into an accident. As the carriage was passing in front of them, Soren saw that this carriage was being moved by big sea horses and the carriage was rather colorful and fancy, for a normal carriage.
'Probably crappy nobles who are rushing towards their golf games or something useless like that.' Soren thought to himself with a rather discusted expression while remembering the event from the Summoning Day. He still couldn't believe that those guys would throw so many excuses, because they didn't want to help pin down an assailanf, even though said assailant wasn't anyone malevolent, but rather a member of the church. After that, Soren shook his head a bit, so he could take the negative thoughts out of his head and kept moving on.
After swimming for around half an hour, the duo reached an encampment where a fancy carriage was stopped and a few guards where standing and moving things around. Soren then recongnised the carriage as the one from before and proceeded to hide behind some trees after grabbing Lavenza and pulling her close to him.
The two of them also saw that among the guards, there were also some mermen wuth fancy clothing, 2 mermaids, one older than the other and a young merman to be precise. The older mermaid had long red hair, yellow eyes and a shiny yellow tail, the younger mermaid had slightly longer blue hair, green eyes and a shiny blue tail, very similar to Soren and the young merman had blue hair, yellow eyes and a blue tail.
Soren was suprised that he saw another person with very similar characteristics as him, but then he remembered the importance of these characteristics. They were either members of the Longinus family or one of the Arch-Priestess' children, so Soren decided to sneak around the encampment so he wouldn't have to deal with them.
As he was swimming slowly and quietly, he heard a couple of voices coming close to his location. Those to voices were deep and masculine, so Soren figuted out that those were a couple of guards, but they had to hide nontheless and thankfully there was a big boulder that they could hide behind it. As those two were swimming around, Soren heard pieces of their conversation.
"...And then she said, that isn't my boy, it's a shellfish." The first guard said with an excited voice.
"Yeah, yeah. You have already said that stupid joke twice already." The second guard said with a tired voice.
"So, what do you think of the reason stopping just an hour away from Crystalia City?" The first guard asked in a casual manner.
"The reason letting herself to take a breather? I think it's just pure hogwash. Also look away for a bit." The second guard said seriously.
"S-Sorry." The first guard said nervously as he turned away. "Anyways, I have to agree on that one, I mean, why stop suddenly? I will never understand our employers."
"We just take orders, that's all. Now, let's move. We shouldn't be absent for long and we will be moving again soon enough." The second guard spoke seriously after turning around.
"Fine. Anyways, do you want to hear about..." At that point, the two of them weren't close enough for Soren to hear them clearly.
"Hmmm... That was some useful information, for sure." Soren said sarcastically.
"Let's just move it Lavenza. The last thing I want is to be found by guards while I'm sneaking around." Soren spoke seriously before him and Lavenza left theur hiding spot and made their way around the camp and then got back into the main road, but they were ahead of the people from the carriage from before. As the two of them were swimming down the road, a man wearing a black robe and hood, who was hiding behind a tree, saw the duo leave and then disappeared into the shadows.