Law of Space and Time

Chapter 43: Hidden Maiden

Erwin was panting heavily as he sized up the person that he had just dragged out of the secret room. Even though the person's hair was extremely disheveled and their face was almost entirely smeared with blood, Erwin's eyes were sharp enough to tell that it was a girl.

The girl looked up at Erwin with a pleading expression while opening and closing her mouth over and over again to bite at the cloth gag in her mouth. It was clear that she had something to say, but she looked like she was so feeble that she didn't even have the energy to speak anymore.

Erwin hurriedly untied the cloth strip that was gagging her mouth.

"Hurry... My father... is still in there," the girl said in a feeble voice, barely able to string together a coherent sentence.

"There's someone else in there?" Erwin was quite surprised to hear this.

Thus, he pulled out his staff and ventured into the secret room again before taking a look. Initially, he failed to spot anyone else in there, but upon going a little deeper, he saw a middle-aged man lying in the deepest part of the room. Without looking closely, one could easily miss the presence of the middle-aged man like Erwin did the first time.

These Skycourt Kingdom mercenaries are so strange. Why did they choose to tie up that little girl instead of a fully grown man? Erwin was quite perplexed.

At the same time, he was wondering why the middle-aged man was making no sound. Only after making his way over to the man did he understand why this was the case. As it turned out, the man had already fallen unconscious, and it seemed that he had been unconscious for quite some time.

With the light glowing from the top of his staff, Erwin could see that the middle-aged man's body was riddled with wounds. Some of his wounded flesh was already beginning to fester, and he couldn't even tell whether the man was still alive or not, so it was no wonder that the Skycourt Kingdom's mercenaries had chosen not to tie him up.

In contrast with dragging a little girl out of the secret room, it required far more effort to drag an unconscious middle-aged man out of the confined space. Erwin had the workout of his life lugging the man out of the secret room, feeling like it was more physical exercise than he had done in his entire life prior to this point combined.

Dragging the little girl out of the secret room had only resulted in his robes being drenched in sweat, but dragging out her father was such a grueling workout that he almost fell unconscious!

A feeble smile appeared on the little girl's face at the sight of her rescued father, and she turned to Erwin with a grateful expression.

Her forehead had been bleeding profusely this entire time, and Erwin couldn't help but wonder if the little girl had been knocking on the floorboard with her head just now.

He heaved a sympathetic sigh as he rose unsteadily to his feet, then cast an advanced healing spell onto the little girl before untying her from her bindings. As for the middle-aged man, he was going to require more treatment than just a spell or two.

"How did the two of you end up confined in there?" Erwin asked with a curious expression as he untied the little girl.

After receiving the healing spell from Erwin, the little girl's condition displayed clear improvement, and she finally had the strength to speak.

"My father and I came from the north. We flew this airship over the mountain ranges so that we could purchase stock in the south, but we ran into that accursed Heavenly Star mercenary legion on the border of the Skycourt Kingdom. They immediately wanted to steal our airship, and all of the manual laborers that we hired were killed by them, leaving only me and my father left," the little girl explained in a sobbing voice. "My father did everything he could to protect me, so they beat him into this state. I don't know if he's going to be able to survive these injuries."

So this airship doesn't belong to those Skycourt Kingdom mercenaries, they stole it from others as well, Erwin thought to himself. Looks like this mercenary legion and the Wolf Moon mercenary legion are birds of the same feather. In that case, this is a rather troublesome situation. After we chase the Skycourt Kingdom's mercenaries away, what's going to happen to the airship? If we take it, wouldn't we fall into the same categories as the Wolf Moon mercenary legion as well?

"Before I dragged him out of the secret room, I checked his breathing, and he's still breathing faintly through his nostrils. As long as his external injuries aren't too severely infected, I should be able to save him. I'll go get some magic potions. Hopefully, they'll be effective for your father," Erwin consoled in a gentle voice.

"Is that true? Please find a way to save my father!" The little girl was looking at Erwin through teary eyes while biting down onto her own lower lip. "You're such a powerful magician, you'll definitely be able to find a way to save my father, right?"

"Powerful magician? How can you tell that I'm a powerful magician?" Erwin asked with a puzzled expression.

"I saw what you did through a gap inside the secret room. You beat all of those no-good Skycourt Kingdom magicians with just a single attack! You're the most powerful magician I've ever seen!" The little girl wasn't sparing with her praise in the slightest. "If I hadn't seen you take care of all of those Skycourt Kingdom magicians, I wouldn't have tried to attract your attention by banging my head against that wooden door."

"You saw me through a gap? What gap? I didn't see anything down there," Erwin said with a befuddled expression.

"I told you, this is my father's airship, only my father and I know where the gap in that room is," the little girl said with a hint of smugness in her eyes. "I can see everything those Skycourt Kingdom magicians are doing from inside there."

"Wouldn't it have been a good idea for you to install a mechanism that can allow you to open the door from the inside? If you had done that, then you wouldn't have had to bang your head against the door like that," Erwin said as he looked at the blood on her face.

"That compartment was used for storing our precious belongings. How was I supposed to know that I would get locked up in there someday?" the little girl sighed with a resigned expression.

"I guess that makes sense," Erwin replied with a shrug.

"By the way, what's your name, big brother?" the little girl asked as she looked at Erwin. "You saved me and my father, so we have to repay you for your kindness."

"My name is Erwin Friar," Erwin replied. "If you want to repay me for my kindness, then you can just give this airship to me. However, I have to warn you in advance: there's no guarantee that I'll be able to save your father. Whether he makes it through this alive will depend on his luck."

The little girl's eyes widened with shock upon hearing this. Not only was Erwin not refusing repayment from her, he was going so far as to ask for their airship, and that came as a complete shock to the little girl.

Erwin remained silent with a smile on his face as the little girl deliberated about what to do.

After some contemplation, the little girl seemed to have made up her mind. "Alright, I can't go back on my word. I said I was going to repay you, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. From now on, this airship is yours, Brother Erwin. Regardless of whether you can save my father or not, this airship will act as repayment to you for rescuing us."

"I enjoy working with straightforward people like you. Given how decisive you are, you're going to be a great businesswoman in the future," Erwin said, and even though he appeared to be making a joke, he was truly quite impressed by this little girl. "Don't worry, I was just kidding around with you. I have no need for this airship of yours. However, the Effer Kingdom and the Skycourt Kingdom are at war during this moment, so you have to lend me this airship during this special time period. To put it more accurately, you're lending your airship to our mercenary legion. As for your father, I promise that I'll do everything in my power to save him, but I really can't guarantee whether I'll be able to save him or not."

The little girl really was a very decisive person, and seeing as she had already verbally granted the airship to Erwin, she was no longer regarding it as her property. Thus, no matter what Erwin said, she wasn't going to take the airship back. In comparison with the loss of the airship, she was much more saddened to hear that Erwin wasn't sure if he could save her father or not.

"Come on now, little girl, we don't have time for you to mope here," Erwin said with a resigned expression as he looked at her dejected display. He had no time to waste here as he had to oversee the battle that was still raging on down below.

"My name is Christine, Brother Erwin," the little girl said with a pout as she put away her depressed expression, clearly rather displeased by Erwin's lack of sympathy.

"Alright, nice to meet you, Christine. I was serious when I said that we're only borrowing this airship. You are still the true owner of the airship, so I suggest you come out and take a look. If we don't continue to let it fly on its original course, it's going to crash into a mountain soon," Erwin warned, and at this point, he had already emerged onto the deck outside and was looking at the Feony Mountains, which were not far away in the northwest.

Ever since the original pilot was thrown off the airship by Erwin, the airship had been flying on autopilot the entire time.

"What!?" Christine immediately rushed out of the pilot's room in bare feet upon hearing this. The blood all over her face presented a startling sight to behold, but she paid no heed to that, and she immediately caught sight of the mountains up ahead, upon which she instantly drew a sharp breath, then hurriedly began to operate the airship with the levers on the control panel.

However, the airship had been modified by the Skycourt Kingdom's mercenaries, with hundreds of metal plates equipped to its exterior, so it had become far heavier than before, thereby making it significantly less maneuverable.

In this tense situation, Erwin cast his gaze toward the magicians of the Four Winds mercenary legion on the mountain to the northwest, and an idea suddenly sprang into his mind. He cast a voice amplification spell onto himself, then yelled, "Lanyon, gather all of the magicians and get them to unleash spells onto the underside of the airship! Hurry!"

Lanyon was initially already going to lead all of the magicians and archers down the mountain to unite with Larwood, but he noticed that the airship that Erwin was on hadn't changed directions at all this entire time. Thus, it occurred to him that perhaps something was wrong, so he decided to stay put in the end.

Upon receiving that order from Erwin, Lanyon immediately led all of the magicians to a location that was directly ahead of the airship, then began to unleash spells toward the bottom of the airship as instructed.

A string of loud clangs rang out from the underside of the airship as its metal exterior was struck by all types of spells.

"Make the underside of the front of the airship your primary target, and focus all of your spells on one spot," Erwin yelled toward the magicians down below.

"Understood!" Lanyon relayed Erwin's instructions to everyone else so that they could work together effectively.

The metal armor equipped onto the airship was able to ward off all of the oncoming spells, but it was unable to prevent itself from being lifted upward by the magic energy imbued within the spells. In addition to that, Christine was also helping their cause by piloting the airship from the inside, and the airship finally began to elevate a little as its underside just barely cleared the tip of the mountain down below.

Both Erwin and Christine heaved a long sigh of relief upon failing to hear the sound of the underside of the airship scraping over the tip of a mountain. They were standing on the deck with no way of seeing what was happening down below, so they could only gauge the situation by sound.

Lanyon and the magicians of the Four Winds mercenary legion down below were clapping and cheering joyfully, while Erwin was feeling a little embarrassed. The situation had only become so perilous because he hadn't taken the time to learn how to pilot the airship. If he had done that, then this would've been entirely avoidable.

"He's always getting up to one shenanigan or another. If he's not doing something dangerous or flashy, he wouldn't be Erwin anymore," Larwood sighed in a resigned voice. He was leading all of the mercenaries of the Four Winds mercenary legions toward the east, and he had naturally also witnessed the perilous sequence that had just unfolded.

"That's the Erwin that we know and love, for sure," Kaiba chuckled beside Larwood.

"Jeez, that was way too close! He almost completely demolished that airship," Chase exclaimed with a relieved expression.