When they reach the town of Prean, the sun has set, which means most shops and trades are closed by now. Lisa is sighing about being hungry and Snow seems to be whining a lot more than earlier too, possibly from the injury and hunger as well. While Lune is thinking about what food to feed a dragon, Chilve looks around and he says, "go and get yourself a room in an inn and get food for yourselves. Something's not right here."
"What do you mean?" She looks around and doesn't see anything odd with the town, considering it looks like it's operating like how a town usually is, "I don't see any trouble going on either."
Chilve sighs and he shakes his head, "more like an odd scent of some troublesome people are around," he turns to the blonde and pats on her head like a child, "I will be back soon, alright?"
"What about Dr Barry? He did say that I can look for him if I come across any injured beasts even after hours."
"Are you so close to this guy that he allows that?" Lisa just smirks at Lune's surprised look and she seems to be proud to brag about this, "well I helped him out previously and he was so happy that he said he will help me next time. I got my own connections too!"
Chilve takes a quick look around without much movement and he nods, "then the both of you go ahead and look for the doctor first. I will do some investigation on my own before joining you girls."
"Be careful Chilve," he walks away after giving a curt reply and when he is out of sight, Lisa is looking around and points to a direction, "I think it's this way," and Lune's expression doesn't look good, "you think?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you not know where he lives or something?"
"Well, it's been weeks so I'm not sure about the exact location."
And after turning and walking around the town, it seems they finally see a building with the sign of a beast, and Lisa finally exclaims, "I think that's it! Hold on," she sprints towards the door and starts knocking on it, where the door is opened after some time but instead of the familiar face of the doctor, Lisa is confused when there's a gruff looking man glaring at her, "what do you want?"
"Erm, is Dr Barry in?"
"Hah, never heard of this name, get lost before I call the authorities on you!" He slammed the door on her where her nose is almost hit, and she complains to the blonde, "what manners he has! I will surely burn down the place if it's in the middle of nowhere."
"Hold on, did you mistake the place or is this really the one?"
"To be honest, I was very sure of this but when he said that, I started having doubts about my own memory."
'This isn't right. Even if we got the wrong place, I'm sure someone with the title dr will at least be known all around the town.' To confirm her suspicions, Lune checks the building and sees a window, then she tries to peek on the inside through a hole of the curtain inside and she spots something odd while Lisa keeps pulling at her arm, "let's go. Maybe it's another building."
Lune grabs the redhead and before she can protest on how rough Lune can be, the blonde shushes her and points at the window, "Lisa, check this out, I think something is very wrong happening inside," and following her finger, the redhead peeks and sure enough, there's someone tied to a chair while having a group of crooks looking over him and the one that answered the door earlier asks something to the hostage, and after shaking his head, he kicks him in the gut and he groans before fainting.
"That's Dr Barry! The one that gets tied up!"
Lisa's surprise shout alerts the people inside, and they can hear someone shouting, "who's there?!" Before she can do anything, Lune grabs her and they start running away from the building, and before they open the door to look for the intruder, they have hidden themselves behind a crate at a nearby alley.
"Search the perimeter! I'm pretty sure that girls from earlier saw everything!"
"What are we going to do now, Lune? I don't know shit on the level of the crooks. What if they have a high affinity for magic?"
"Let me think," Lune is confident in her combat power, but facing so many at once without Chilve with them is certainly a huge dent in their power, and when she can hear some footsteps approaching their hiding spot, Snow senses the blonde's discomfort and she jumps down from her arms, and starts dashing towards the enemies. This happens so fast that she can't even have the time to process anything that is going on and just blanks out, while Lisa shouts after Snow, "no, Snow!"
It seems there are two that are near them, and before the girls know it, their shouting died down and when they peeks to check what happened, Lune facepalms at the sight of the crooks getting frozen in huge ice blocks with Snow looking proud with her handiwork.
"Come back here!"
When Snow is finally back in Lune's arms, the companions of the frozen crooks are checking out the ice blocks, and Lune asks Snow, "can you like freeze all of them at once?"
She seems to understand and nods, then jumping down from her arms again to the ground, the little dragon rushes towards the group and in just a flash, icy breath comes out from the little one and they are now all frozen, where Lisa whistles at their expression, "look at this guy! He looks like he is going to cry before becoming ice!"
"We should save Dr Barry before the ice melts, come on."
Luckily the guy is still breathing when they get to him, so after untying the ropes, Lisa supports the middle aged man and they walk out from his home, and she looks around, "where should we go for now?"
"Let's look for an inn first."