"They lied to everyone about Aurora, the hidden records in the church are terrible, they tell and catalog various bizarre experiments that Aurora conducted on various living beings." He speaks with a slight anger.
"Aurora doesn't care at all about the lives of others, I don't know what she was planning to achieve with that, but I just feel disgusted just remembering it, many were experiments to generate chimeras."
"There were grotesque drawings and descriptions of Aurora's failures, she didn't even try to hide it, it was the church that hid this information, Aurora didn't care if she was discovered."
"There were chimeras with pieces of all kinds of races and monsters, they were complete abominations, I don't know how the church can worship someone who did that."
"When I tried to tell the royal family about this, I found out they also knew about it and hid it, they tried to convince me with various things but there's no way I would ever accept this."
"Besides accepting the kingdom's corruption, they did nothing about the church making the people worship Aurora, our kingdom has such a blind faith in her that it's impossible for the common citizens to notice."
"So what I did was steal some items and information from the church to try to reveal the corruption and the truth about her, but I was discovered, which led to the current situation, they're hunting me and even accused me of subversion against the country."
"I was called a criminal and now the whole people think I really wanted to overthrow the royal family and the church, and as you know, the people love them so obviously they didn't believe me."
"Although I am a hero... I'm still just a mere commoner, who according to them is greedy and wanted the kingdom for myself."
When Uriel says this, I realize something, he came to save me much earlier, in the game he didn't even appear, these strange events continue to happen.
"Uriel... why did you come to save me now?" I ask with doubts as Aetheris climbs onto my shoulder. Aetheris doesn't like Uriel, but is less aggressive with him than with Valac.
"I tried to learn more about the church precisely because they didn't let me go save you sooner," what he says confuses me.
'The church didn't want me to be saved? And... he investigated the church because of me? I'm the reason the plot is changing...'
"They wanted me to stay on the front lines fighting the war instead of trying to go after you, but if I did that, I could only go rescue you in a few years... so I tried to investigate more, and with that I also discovered a strange piece of information."
Things are getting more and more confusing, why didn't my family do anything, didn't they care that I was suffering? Didn't the church even care that I, the princess, was kidnapped?
"What did you discover..." I ask in a dispirited voice, just as I had initially imagined, my family doesn't care about me in this world.
"You're not the princess of the kingdom."
"!!!" What he said leaves me in shock, there are so many revelations following one another. I don't know what is more surprising, Aurora's evil, Uriel being treated as a criminal, or me not being the princess.
"Apparently Aurora herself came personally to the royal family and delivered a baby for them to take care of... that baby was you, so the royal family put you in the records and said you were their daughter."
"But I don't know why they didn't try to save you if you were brought to them by Aurora herself."
'That explains my low authority status' if I was never the princess, then I wouldn't have the authority of one.
"Uriel... why don't you ask about my time... in the castle?" I ask him with doubts as we start walking.
"I don't think you want to talk about it... and from the scene I saw... I think I don't need to ask to know it was horrible," he says with a sad tone in his voice. We remain silent for a few minutes as we walk, I don't know where we're going but I follow him.
"Ayla... I think they lied about your status," he begins to speak after we've walked in silence for a while.
"What do you mean?"
"There are items to falsify status, they've falsified part of mine, I don't have any items for you to see your true status, but as soon as I do it'll be good for you to observe."
'My status may be fake... is that why it never changed in the game?' In the game, no matter how much you looked at your status, it never changed, which was quite annoying since Ayla is weak and doesn't get stronger.
"Put this on, Ayla," Uriel says, handing me a cloak to cover my whole body, there's also a hood that hides my face.
"It's a 5-minute walk to the city, although demons have prejudice against humans, they care more about money, so we can spend the night there, but I'm sure the demons are looking for you, so avoid showing your face... and don't swing your tail too much, it's visible through the cloak."
When he says this, I try to do something with my tail, Uriel's words are gentle but serious, showing the seriousness of the situation.
We walk until we see a city, soon we enter a road and go to the gate.
"Halt, identify yourselves," a guard stops us in front of the gate, he is large, his skin is reddish, and he has horns protruding from his head, in his hand he has a spear and his clothes are plate armor and cloth.
"Good evening, my friend, I'm just a lowly human and... his slave who have come to spend the night in the city... you know how dangerous the forest can be at night, after all, there are many monsters."
Uriel hesitates in the way he calls me, but soon decides, I'm not offended to be called that, I know he doesn't consider me that way and just wants to keep me safe.
"Hmm... I don't know, maybe if you gave me a silver coin I'd know if the forest is too dangerous..."
'Damn bastard,' he clearly just threatened us, he said it in a way that left the interpretation vague, but if we don't pay him he won't let us in.
"Of course, my friend, it's veeeery dangerous," Uriel says, putting a silver-colored coin in the demon's hand. Before we came here, Uriel hid Aetheris in the bag and the sword in the inventory, so I think we won't have any problems, after all Aetheris is quiet and won't make any noise.
"...What's in the backpack, it's just a standard inspection but I still need to know," he says now that he's allowed us to enter. I notice a slight greedy look in the demon.
"It has monster meat, specifically [Black Spider] meat," he says with a smile.
"Tsk, those pests... never mind, your backpack is free," the greedy look on his face turns to disgust.
I don't know what a [Black Spider] is, but it's obvious that Uriel did this to keep him from looking in the backpack. It warms my heart to see that he does this to save me and save Aetheris, the fact is that he doesn't owe me anything, and I'm just a friend of his, but he's here risking his life for me, I'll never be able to repay him.
"You can enter... but if your slave gets out of control, you'll be held responsible... and don't open that backpack in the city or you'll be killed," he gives us passage, soon Uriel walks forward and I follow behind.
"Uriel... what is a [Black Spider]?" I ask with doubt.
"They're pests, a type of insect monster, that can be found everywhere, guards normally avoid opening bags that have their meat for a very specific reason."
"Black Spiders are actually quite weak, but when they die, their body releases a unique toxin. That toxin doesn't do much even if you breathe it in, but the effect of that toxin is activated if you look at the spider's meat."
"If you've been affected, and you look at the meat, you'll feel an irresistible urge to eat the spider's corpse, which naturally can be classified as a mental attack, as the meat is poisonous, whoever eats it dies."
"You can resist it with strong mental willpower, but most guards don't have that kind of training, if I hadn't said I was a commoner, he would have called someone to check the backpack."
"But since I'm just a commoner, there's no reason to waste time on that, besides, since the black spider is common, no one suspects if a commoner carries its meat, after all, the guild still pays for it." He finishes his explanation and I'm impressed that he thought of all that on the spot.
We walk through the streets of this city, it seems to be of medium size, completely walled, the houses seem to be from the human kingdom, but there are many demons all around, showing that this territory belongs to the demons.
Some of them give me and Uriel a look of disgust, they clearly don't like humans.
Soon we arrive at an inn, he goes in and I follow behind, he goes straight to talk to the innkeeper, avoiding looking at the demons sitting at the tables. I do the same, after all, if he's avoiding it, something bad must happen if I stare too much.
"Good evening sir, how may I... ah... humans... tell me how I can be of service," the innkeeper speaks politely with a smile, until she notices that Uriel is human, then her voice becomes cold and mechanical.
"I want a room for 1 week," he says calmly to her.
"...It's 1 silver, if you don't have money, I ask that you leave," I don't know how much 1 silver is, but clearly this isn't the price, she's just cheating us, but Uriel pays anyway.
We soon go upstairs to the room and I ask with doubt.
"Uriel, why a week? Wasn't it just for one day?" I say to him as we enter the room.
"Look at this," he shows me a wanted poster, I don't know where he got it from.
"I-It's... m-me..." A wanted poster, he shows a normal image of me and the one of me now with cat parts.
"I stole this from the innkeeper, I don't like to steal, but as soon as I saw this poster I knew I had to show you, look at this reward..."
"The reward is... 1 million gold coins, and a [Pure Demonite] stone... Uriel, what is pure demonite?" I've never heard of that name.
"It's the rarest ore in the world, it's so rare that some say it's just a legend, but it does exist, just a sliver of that ore would be a fortune... and the demon lords are offering an entire one." This shows they are really determined to capture me now that they can't find me with magic, fortunately, even if I sleep or lose consciousness, I don't go back to the castle thanks to the amulet.
"That's why it's for a week, and to throw off any possible pursuers, after all, the first thing they'll check are simple things like lodging, one-day stays will be the ones they'll notice faster."
"Now you can go take a bath first, Ayla, I'll take care of some things in the inventory, I also have to make a list of what to buy for our trip," he says to me while sitting on the floor next to the bed, I decide to listen to him and go take a bath.