At the look in Frostine's eyes, Nico only froze. The amount of anger within those eyes of eternal blue was too much for a mere person like him to handle. However, his knees didn't buckle. After all, even if he wanted to confess to Frostine…
He really had no idea.
Nico could only smile apologetically at the poor maiden. "Frostine, dear, I have no answers. When I remember, I will come clean to you."
"…! You menace…" Frostine shoved him away again, but she didn't behave too cute this time. After all, she was still on the battlefield.
However, before she could make a decision as to what to do next, they caught a glimpse of light coming from the direction of the castle. They both turned to it and saw how the white beams punch through the rippling black sky and shoot down the red ships. The red ships were leaving, and yet the enemies couldn't get their ships airborne.
At those lights, Frostine only hummed. "The castle must have built a machine. The technomancers must have unlocked the lost technology. We should head to the castle to see what they came up with. The streets should also be cleaned."
"Alright—"
"No necromancy." Frostine swung the tip of her bladed staff and pointed it under Nico's chin.
Nico only smiled. He would nod, but the blade would poke him by then. After she put away her staff, that was only when Nico looked around. He saw how the people began to approach them after the demons were driven out.
For some reason, Nico weighed the consequences of speaking to them and brushing them off.
He figured that he shouldn't be proud of helping them, since the original Nico was the reason why these were all happening. He just pulled on the hood of his worn-out and stinky robe before running along, urging Frostine to follow suit.
…
The edge of the kingdom was simply too far from the castle. When Nico and Frostine got close enough, the invasion was already over. After all, the demons were terrified of the white beam. However, it didn't help all that much.
Half of the kingdom was ravaged by the demons because the walls had been breached early on. After all, this was the seventh invasion based on Frostine's narrative. Aside from the rippling night sky, the whole kingdom also seemed to be plunged into darkness.
"How long has this been happening?" Nico looked at the maiden that was only walking next to him. He watched her look around as if she hoped that there were survivors.
"It's been a year," Frostine murmured. "In just one year, most human kingdoms had fallen. The only ones left standing were the once most prosperous breathing kingdoms. However, at the advent of the Neo Nyx, even Kingdom Flonterra had been reduced to this…"
"Wasn't it reversible by then? When I… I failed?" Nico wanted to spit. It wasn't even him, and yet he had to carry the sins of that certain man.
With a subtle shake of her head, Frostine stopped walking. "I don't know. When the princess turned up, she only wailed at the failure. The rest of your people didn't speak much and proceeded to make preparations. As for you… you went missing for a few months before showing up in the streets."
She wanted to reprimand and ask questions, but she would always remember that saying things would be futile at this point. It was all written clearly on her face. "…Nico, now that you have picked yourself up again, will we be able to do something about this?"
"It's best to know what happened there first. Just to make sure I won't do the same mistakes that I had done." Nico frowned a little as he found it suspicious. The rest of the hero's party was alive, and the hero himself received the blessing of the enemy.
Whatever happened in that decisive face-off dictated this catastrophe upon the humans.
"Alright, let's speak with the princess if she is willing to see you." Frostine only nodded. Just from watching her, Nico was getting a feeling that she was quite happy despite the innate anger towards the sins of the other. Could it be because the old Nico refused to fix what he had enabled?
"How are we going to get inside the castle, anyway?" Nico began walking with Frostine again. However, before Frostine could answer, they spotted a few figures moving in the darkness of the night. People were squirming underneath the debris.
At that, Nico and Frostine had the tacit agreement to help the people first. They used their magic and brute strength to lift the rocks and pull survivors out of the rocks. However, there was nothing they could do if some companions were lost.
Nico even had to watch a mother cry for her children. Both of them were under a huge slab, but there was nothing that could have caught the crush of the fallen wall. If he lifted the rock, what if the mother found her children like a pair of red goo stuck to both the ground and the wall?
Not only him, but even the other survivors knew that it was hopeless. The other females were crying with her and hoping to make her accept the deaths.
"Why don't you help her?" Frostine finished on her side and asked even before she could see the full damage. When she did, she only paused a little before looking up at the male again. "Lift it."
"I need your ice to lift this wall. It's too heavy even for me."
At those words, Frostine indeed used her ice to build icicles to lift the wall. However, she was doing so, while one of the icicles was blocking the view of the mother. What shocked Frostine and Nico was that… there were no bodies underneath!
Where did they go?
"Mommy! Mommy!" Cries of the children echoed from a side, and the survivors were shocked. They ran to their mother, who was too devastated to welcome her children properly. All she had in her were confusion. She knew so well that the two children were there.
"You shouldn't underestimate the magi." A deep voice of a man came from the direction where the children showed up. They saw a man in a black tunic and cloak walking towards them. He had two swords hanging from the left side of his waist.
His eyes then met Nico's gaze. "Nico… it's good to see that you now had the courage to fight. The last few times, you hid well like a rat."
Nico only smiled for a second. "I can't keep on doing that, can I?"