"So it really is you?"
Soon, another unexpected thing happened. The female mage who ran away earlier came back on her own! She looked quite surprised.
I didn't understand what she was up to. Didn't they come here on purpose to catch us? Who else would it be if not us? Even though these two soldiers weren't too weak, they were far from being able to really fight us!
"You have no chance of winning! If you just want to catch us to get credit, I suggest you give up soon!"
To protect me and Cyra from being attacked again, Adrian didn't dare go forward. He could only frown and try to convince them to leave.
"Hmph, Memi, don't be afraid of them! I have to admit that guy is very strong, but those two girls behind him are really weak. There's three of us left, we might be able to beat them!"
Seeing the standoff, Apton who was forced back earlier also came out from the corner. He stood next to the female mage with an angry face and shouted at us: "And let me tell you, I won't fall for that dirty trick again!"
"You dare call me weak?"
I was so angry! If I wasn't afraid of being discovered by showing my wings, I would have killed this guy already! True, I couldn't fight him head-on in my normal state, but if you really push me, I won't hesitate to turn him into dried meat!
But wait, aren't there only two of them now? Could the third person they mentioned be...
"Haha! You think we're afraid of you? Let me tell you, your other friend is even weaker than me, and I know where she is. I saw her hide with my own eyes!"
Before I could figure it out, Cyra already jumped in. She had quickly found the third person's location through her light element aura - hiding in a room behind us. It should be another light mage, but she hadn't come out since Adrian's sudden attack.
"Watch me drag her out! Flower girl, you have nowhere to run this time!"
Cyra turned around without another word and marched straight to where the enemy was hiding. She looked very confident. To be honest, the light element aura of this last person was really very weak. If you didn't pay special attention, it was really hard to sense their location. You could say it was even weaker than our wingless state right now.
"Hey! Wait, don't..."
Me and Adrian didn't have time to react, but Memi from the other side suddenly reached out her hand, like she wanted to stop Cyra.
In that moment, I suddenly realized something I had been overlooking - Memi's series of reactions when she last appeared! Could it be that her real identity was...
"Come out, you're dead—"
But it was too late. Cyra was already standing outside the door where the enemy was hiding. She kicked open the door and rushed in with a mean laugh. But soon after, there was a flash of light in the room. Cyra quickly ran out covering her eyes, rolling on the ground in pain.
"Waaaah, my eyes! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
I went to check on her and found that her eyes weren't really hurt. This reaction actually felt very familiar. If I'm not wrong, only "Five Light Ten Color" would have this kind of effect.
Which means, the person hiding in that room all along was actually...
"Cyra, why do you never learn?"
Sure enough, Reed's voice soon came from the room. But then a girl I didn't recognize at all walked out.
"You..."
I couldn't help looking at this person suspiciously. She really was very cute. Even in this dim light she still looked beautiful. No wonder Cyra suddenly "went wild" earlier.
Of course, after careful observation up close, you could see that she also had a layer of disguise magic on her, exactly the same as "Memi" from before. So what we were seeing now wasn't her real appearance.
"What? Even you can't tell?"
Luckily, the other person quickly confirmed my guess. Reed, disguised as a human, rolled her eyes at me.
"The key is, who could have guessed you would sneak in this way?"
I shot back without backing down. The weaker the light element aura from the spellcaster, the easier it is to tell if they have disguise magic on them. So it was even more obvious observing Reed's state than Memi's.
Earlier we couldn't find any news of her in the base at all. We thought our search direction was completely wrong. But now we suddenly ran into her unexpectedly.
"What's going on?"
Apton, who was far away fighting Adrian, saw his companion suddenly start chatting with me. He called out in confusion: "Idini, what are you doing? Hurry up and get away from them!"
"I'm sorry, I deceived you. But you're of no use now..."
But just as he finished saying this, he suddenly got hit hard from behind. He stumbled forward a few steps with a look of disbelief on his face, fell to the ground, and didn't get up again.
Of course, this wasn't Adrian's doing. It was Memi standing behind him, looking just like a cruel villain!
"You must be Mia, right?"
I wasn't surprised by this at all. Since Reed had appeared, who else could this Memi really be? I irritably asked her: "So you already knew it was us. Why didn't you come out earlier to explain? Why did you have to fight with Adrian for so long?"
Basically, this was like flooding your own home!
"So he's the legendary new king of Parristol... oh right, not anymore now!"
Mia looked at Adrian with some surprise. I just remembered that they and Reed had never really met before.
"Actually, before Feliciana appeared, we weren't very sure of your identities either," Mia quickly explained when she saw we still didn't really understand the situation. "After all, there were many possibilities for who the intruders that snuck into this base could be. But Lady Reed insisted it must be you and Cyra who came, so she came here specially to look for traces of you."
"But what's the deal with these people? Aren't they your teammates? Why did you bring them here? Or have you two already joined the Empire army and want to catch us to give to that dog emperor? Then you saw the situation wasn't good, so you want to switch sides again?"
Cyra had recovered by now. She pointed at the people lying on the ground and asked righteously. After going through "Five Light Ten Color" many times, her resistance in this area seemed to have increased a lot.
"Just as I expected, you still haven't grown a brain!"
Hearing her talk nonsense, Reed scolded her with a blank face. But surprisingly, she turned to me at the same time. "And you're about the same. You've already been discovered but you're still using useless escape methods like invisibility!"
"Then what's your method? Could it be..."
Adrian frowned and looked at the humans lying on the ground. He seemed to suddenly understand what they meant to do.
"That's right, we came to bring you identities! Just like how I'm called 'Memi' now!"
Mia snapped her fingers proudly. A strange smile appeared on her face as she gave the answer directly.
...
Their plan was actually very simple. They wanted us to pretend to be soldiers in the base using disguise magic, to get through the strict search that was coming soon.
Of course, in the Empire army's base, every soldier's position is clearly recorded. If we just made up fake people, we would be easily discovered. So these human soldiers lying on the ground became the perfect targets for us to imitate.
"You and Cyra will have light mage identities, like me in the base's magic research department. Some important people you need to know about are..."
After changing clothes, I had a new identity - Tagilu. Then Mia started telling me some simple background and relationships for this person.
On Cyra's side, Reed was in charge of "carefully teaching" her. Her name seemed to be... Niki? Anyway, like me she was a low-level magic researcher. Only this kind of identity could perfectly match our wingless forms.
"Actually, you can get all these details from their brains using memory reading magic. But that magic is quite complicated. Using it in the current situation might cause a big commotion. So just remembering what I tell you should be enough to get by!"
Mia looked at the original people lying on the ground and shook her head with a sigh. You could say this misfortune was their own doing. Since they couldn't resist the temptation to come "hunt" intruders, they might have to pay the price for it.
As for Adrian, my original idea was to have him pretend to be Apton. But considering how easily disguise magic could be seen through on him, we decided to just keep him as he was.