A grin involuntarily appeared on my face. I never expected such a harvest when I put a fragment of my soul on Mia.
I had to admit that Alice is very daring. As a 16-years-old girl, she dares to manipulate people like the Crown Prince and Earl Carson. Furthermore, she dares to talk about killing the emperor in plain daylight.
And the best part of all that is, none of the people in the room realized the wrongness of the situation.
That is why seers are so fearsome. Their ability to manipulate people and see through the fate of the world allows them to reach their goals no matter how difficult it is. Regardless of how much you struggle, in the end, you will realize that each one of your actions were part of the seer's plan all the time.
Worse yet, some people don't even realize that they were nothing that worthless pawns until the day they die.
I think I need to have a word with that girl soon. I don't like when I'm included in her plots.
Of course, for someone of my level, her current actions are nothing more than a child's play.
A truly strong seer can't be traced or detected and can manipulate an entire world in the palm of his hand.
Once I confirmed that Alice's group was not talking anything else of importance, I stopped paying attention to their conversation and concentrated in the outing with my sister and two step-cousins.
"What level of difficulty will you choose?" A staff member asked us politely.
Lena excitedly raised her hand. "The highest difficulty!"
The staff member's cheek twitched. "Your highness, the highest difficulty will have eight-layer enemies. I recommend a lower difficulty."
"Come on, it's just an illusion. Nothing will happen." Lena insisted.
Seeing that, the man looked at me for help. I chuckled slightly. "Follow the princess arrangements. Don't worry, nothing will happen."
The man's face turned bitter. "I understand." He then inputted his mana into the array and arranged the enemies' strength.
By the way, this staff member was pretty strong himself. Not every day you see a tenth-layer practitioner working in this kind of place.
How expected of the Carmell family, one of the three strongest families of the empire and the family with the highest military power.
The staff member then explained to us the game mechanism. The entire array was a labyrinth one kilometer long. Inside the labyrinth, we will face enemies starting from the weakest first-layer monster until eight-layer powerful beast.
The enemies are made of illusions, so their attacks won't truly hurt us. Instead, each time we receive an attack, our consciousness will receive a shock. If the attack is lethal, then our mind will shut down and we will faint.
The goal of the game is to reach the end of the labyrinth in less than one hour. If we faint before reaching the end or fail to finish before the time ends, then a staff member will come for us and take us outside.
Simple enough, but very amazing at the same time. The person that designed this array deserves to be considered a genius. Even for me, designing something like this needs a bit of work.
The girls, mainly Lena and Claire, were noticeably excited after hearing the explanation. Louise had already real battle experience, so she was not too excited. But even she seemed eager to face an eighth-layer enemy, even if it was just an illusion.
After receiving the staff's signal, we entered the array.
Instantly, our surroundings changed.
Instead of the festive ambient of Hidden Cave, we appeared in a dark and moist cave. Our vision was reduced to the minimum and strange noises could be heard from time in time.
To be honest, the atmosphere was a bit oppressive.
Lena and Claire shivered. Even Louise walked a bit closer to me. I looked at them and shook my head amusedly.
Now I felt like a man taking his girlfriends inside a haunted house.
"... How dark." Lena whispered softly and grabbed the hem of my clothes. Claire was even more daring and grabbed my hand directly. When Louise saw it, she wrinkled her brows and shot me a look of warning.
I smiled bitterly. Girl, do you think I'll put my hands in every girl I see?
... Okay, I truly have ideas about this little fairy, but it doesn't mean that you have to be so suspicious.
I decided to ignore Louise's piercing look and continued walking with the girls.
Before walking the first 100 meters, I felt our first enemy.
I had lowered my perception at the minimum to try to enjoy the game, but even so, I was the first one to detect the monster.
However, a look at the monster and I decided to not tell the girls about it.
The three unsuspecting girls continued walking without detecting the presence of the monster. Meanwhile, the rat-like monster crawled slowly through the roof, approaching us with a hungry look.
Then suddenly, the monster jumped towards Lena.
*Screeeeeech!* A scream of hunger was accompanied by a set of razor-sharp teeth. The monster appeared instantly before Lena and opened its jaws wide.
"Kyaaaaa!" Lena cried in terror and jumped back. She hurriedly conjured an ice arrow and shot it...
... Towards me.
I hurriedly pushed the ice arrow away with my hand, but in the next second, a sword was coming towards me. This time, Claire had swung her sword without looking to her enemy.
Moreover, Louise was conjuring a sixth-layer AoE spell in panic!
Girls, do you want to kill me!?
I parried Claire's sword with the pommel of my sword and disrupted Louise's spell with a bullet of raw mana. At the same time, I kicked the rat away.
*Kyuuuuuu...* The rat cried in pain and crashed against the wall. The next second, it turned into points of light and disappeared.
Looking at the three girls, Lena was hugging my arm in fear, Claire was still swinging her sword crazily, and Louise was hiding behind me.
... I can't believe a second-layer rat scared the hell of two fourth-layer practitioners and a sixth-layer mage.
.... By the way, Lena's breasts feel soft.