Walking down a rather heavily populated street while twirling her staff like a baton, Charlotte thought about the events of the previous day as she put on a show for no one in particular. Despite her twirling her staff and then throwing it in the air, no one around her seemed to mind, or better yet, no one seemed to acknowledge her existence.

Despite the fact that she seemed to not be paying attention to her surroundings, the truth was that she was capable of sensing the surrounding mana signatures while also thinking about the two girls she met yesterday…

Thinking about yesterday’s encounter, at first Charlotte thought that she had come across a demon and her servant. After all, two girls having the same mana signature was something that should be impossible, and she believed that one of the demon’s had stupidly copied the mana signature of her human servant to blend in the crowd undetected. Deciding to get to the bottom of this mystery, as well as see if she could gain something out of it. Charlotte decided to approach the two.

Once she had approached them, she began to talk casually with them as the older girl tried to hide their identity, Charlotte wanted to see how long their facade would last, but after noticing that the two actually had a transformation ability, she decided to speed things up. After getting the older one, whose name was Alex to talk, she was able to garner from her the incredible truth that she was the ‘demon’ that had ended up summoned from the botched summoning formation. 

Although Alex claimed the little girl next to her to be a half-elf, Charlotte didn’t believe her. Considering the two were able to use the same ability, Charlotte suspected that the little ‘elf’ was actually a demon that had subordinated Alex in order to guide her to the demon continent. After managing to convince them, she was able to get the two to change their forms which brought her even more surprises.

Observing the transformation of the elf girl intently, Charlotte was able to see just how truly incredible the ability possessed by the little girl was as she completely changed her race and mana signature, something that should have been impossible. Just as incredible however, was the fact that Alex was also able to transform herself to a greater extent than Charlotte originally believed. Which only served to prove to Charlotte that Alex was a subordinate of ‘Alice’ who had been given the ability via [Subordination] to help disguise her, with a good probability that Alex might not even be human. 

In order to ascertain this assumption of hers, and answer some other questions, Charlotte roped the two along with her and spent some ‘quality’ time with the two which allowed her to converse with them a bit. However, all that she managed to accomplish after spending the better part of the afternoon with them, was to end up even more confused and uncertain about the situation than before.

The more she talked with Alex and the more time she spent with her, the more she was beginning to believe that she was just a simple girl. It was very likely that the events of the recount Alex had told her where true for the most part. That the botched summoning ended up summoning a normal human girl, although she was still hiding her background for an unknown reason, and that Alex most likely came across Alice in the way she claimed to and thought her to be a simple half-elf. Thinking about things in that way, Charlotte was beginning to think that Alice had managed to trick Alex into helping her and then subordinated her all without Alex being aware of the matter.

But this was something that Charlotte was beginning to doubt the more she looked back on this conjecture of hers. No matter how much she looked at the two, she couldn’t find a single trace of [Subordination] being used, or any other ability to allow the sharing of skills or abilities for that matter. The fact that no trace was apparent is something that should be impossible, and while she could have believed that the ability that allowed Alice to change her mana signature was responsible for hiding such things, after spending so many hours with them she found it hard to believe that SHE couldn’t find a single trace, not to mention Alex’s behavior which didn’t seem to give any hints of her being under any form of outside influence.

This led her to believe that maybe the demon had not actually subordinated her, but had instead tricked her and taken advantage of Alex’s kindness to fool her into following her. But if this was true, then that failed to explain how the two would share such a similar ability without their being a single trace of it. Unless it was truly a coincidence and the two had different abilities with Alice’s simply being more potent.

Even the strength of the two was strange when she thought about it, as the two were far too weak to be traveling by themselves if they were planning to not run into trouble. While it made sense at first that the ‘elf’ was hiding her strength, and that the reason she didn’t talk too much was to avoid arousing any suspicion, as Alex seemed wary at first of her talking to Alice or asking questions, as time went on she had been even questioning this. No matter how much she looked, the little elf girl seemed to be no stronger than Alex, which was extremely weak. If she was a demon sent to bring back the vessel for the Demon Lord, she was a horrible pick for the job. Instead, the more she thought about Alice the more she truly seemed like just a normal elf.

In Charlotte’s mind, there was something that she was clearly overlooking. She had even managed to get the two naked and was unable to find any items on them or their worn down clothes that could implicate them, so the only thing she could think of was that there had to be something else missing that would explain what the hell was happening here.  

It was these thoughts that had been plaguing her mind, and no matter how much she tried to think of a proper explanation, something always failed to make sense no matter how much she brooded over the matter. By this point, she was even beginning to think that if there wasn’t something she had overlooked or some unknown factor that would answer her question, then she might be being played like a complete fool by some world-class acting by the demon-elf and Alex.

Releasing a sigh as she continued to play with her staff and side stepping  through the pedestrians coming her way, while not a single one noticed her pass by them only inches away, Charlotte continued mapping out the city until she felt two suspicious individuals nearby.

Turning her head to look at the direction she sensed the two, Charlotte was able to see two hooded figures that were walking on the street as they appeared to be searching for something or someone. Seeing how they were clearly using something to hide their strengths, Charlotte decided that the two were good targets for her to gather important information and began to walk toward their direction while momentarily putting her thoughts about the two girls to the back of her mind.

Getting directly in front of the two, Charlotte began to walk backwards as she stared intently at an old man with a beard as well as an elven woman with green hair and blue. The two, who were completely unaware of Charlotte, were conversing among one another as Charlotte heard:

“I can’t believe we haven’t found a single trace of Ailya yet. No matter where I look or who I ask, there’s not a single sighting of a half-elf with Ailya’s descriptions that has recently entered the city. Even my elven contacts in this area weren’t able to come up with anything. It’s already been a week since she’s left the forest, she should have already been here, unless she’s heading somewhere else…”

“Now now, don’t be too impatient Liria. Unlike you and me, Ailya shouldn’t know her way here. Even guided by fate, it wouldn’t be too unusual for her to get lost and end up taking a detour. After all, it wouldn’t surprise me is she found some companions along the way.”

“It’s just… I worry about the girl, just thinking about her being all alone… I should have never left her by herself in the forest, even if the guards had chased me to the end of the world, I should have kept running with her in my arms.”

“I’m sure we’ll find her Liria. Look, I found something quite interesting while I was searching for Ailya earlier.”

“What?”

“Remember the two girls I had seen on the outskirts of the forest, the two sisters? Well it appears that they have just recently entered this city, passing through the southeast gate yesterday.”

“And why should we worry about that now? Are you still planning on taking them with you?”

“Yeap, even more so now. I’m telling you, that older girl has to have quite the strong fate with her. Considering she’s here in Dene, it wouldn’t even surprise me if her or even her sister is the other child of destiny. If we track the two sisters down, we’ll most likely be able to find Ailya. And look, despite leaving before us, the two just reached Dene yesterday, so it shouldn’t be rare for Ailya to take longer than us.”

At these words, the expression on the elven woman became a bit more hopeful as she agreed to the man’s proposition and decided to help him in tracking down the two sisters.

Completely unlike the elven woman however, any trace of a smile had left Charlotte’s face, as the gears in her mind were turning as fast as possible while she tried to make sense of the incredible information she had just heard. If what she had just heard was true, then one or even both of the children of destiny would be here in the city. But even more outrageous, was the fact that her mind was beginning to form a rather ridiculous conjecture that even she couldn’t believe…