Chapter 181: Pursuit
Chapter 181 The Chase
Even after dark, the streets of Nisborough were still bustling, and as a commercial city, it boasted a relatively colorful nightlife for the era.
It wasn’t until after 9pm that the pedestrians on the streets gradually dispersed, each going home to rest.
A procession drove out of the back door of the church and headed straight down the street to the north gate.
This procession consisted of a carriage pulled by two horses and 30 knights, 10 of whom were fully armed and heavily armored, while the other 20 were armed with swords and other weapons even though they were dressed in ordinary clothes.
The procession quickly reached the north gate before being stopped by the guards watching the city gates.
The leading knight was nervous for a moment, it couldn’t be that the news had leaked out, right?
He maintained his composure on the surface, ”What is it? I remember that the north city gate is still accessible at night, right?”
“Lord Paladin.”
The guards recognized the other party as someone from the church and their attitude became incredibly respectful.
“There is a noble from the Duchy of Eton who has been kidnapped in the city, and we have been ordered to check the vehicles and chests of passersby.”
An angry expression appeared on the knight’s face:
“Nonsense, do you think our holy servants would do something like that?”
“No no no! Of course I wouldn’t dare, but this was ordered by the higher-ups, we can’t do anything about it.”
The knight blew his beard and glared, “You ……”
“What happened?”
A man who was also dressed as a guard and had sleepy eyes walked over.
“Captain, the people from the church won’t let us inspect!”
Upon hearing the word “church”, the young captain immediately winced and his head suddenly cleared up.
The knight looked at the junior captain with a baleful gaze.
“In the car sits a special envoy from the Holy Capital, tonight there is an urgent matter to go to a church outside the city, the special envoy is overworked during the day, and is now taking a nap in the car, if we disturb this lord, humph!”
This sentence is full of threatening meaning, the small captain heard this and immediately threw a slap on the guard’s face.
“Blind your dog’s eyes! The Paladin Lord’s caravan is also something you can check!”
A trace of reluctance flashed across the guard’s face, but he still hurriedly apologized.
The junior captain said to the knights with a fawning face, “Hehehe, please don’t take it to heart my lords, this brother of mine is new and doesn’t know any better.”
Then he shouted at his men, “Release the line! Release!”
The knight gave him a look that said, “I’m glad you know what you’re doing,” and without bothering to say a word, he pinched his horse’s belly and continued on his way, and the caravan behind him also moved with him.
The squad leader grabbed the guards and went to a corner to count them down.
“You crazy! Dare to check the church’s wagon? If they label you as ‘suspected of witchcraft’, even we might be in trouble with you.”
The guards looked aggrieved, “Captain, are we going to let them be so arrogant?”
“Hmph, don’t be in a hurry, I heard some rumors, it is said that the Convocation ……”
The junior captain and the guards muttered in whispers.
……
The church’s procession quickly moved away from the city of Nisborough, and gradually there were no more lights on either side of the road, and the trees began to multiply.
“Captain, are we really doing the right thing? Isn’t it against the holy teachings of the Lord of Light?”
Seeing that there were no more people in the vicinity, a young Church Knight couldn’t help but voice out the question in his own mind.
Secretly imprisoning a noble maiden, no matter how one thought about it, it wasn’t the right thing to do.
The person called the captain, that is, the leading knight, let out a sigh.
“I don’t know if it’s right to do this either. But I was raised by the church, and if it wasn’t for the church taking me in, I might have starved to death on the streets when I was 10 years old.”
“So, as long as it’s an order from the church, I will carry it out without hesitation.”
The knight who asked the question fell silent, not knowing what to think.
The party continued to move forward into a dense forest, and the people lit up torches to illuminate the area.
Along the way, apart from the sound of the horses’ hooves and the bumping of the wagon, the whole night was silent.
Suddenly, a cracking sound rang out, and something seemed to be shooting towards them in the darkness of the night.
A knight in heavy armor only felt a strong force hit his body with a thud and was almost pushed off his horse.
His mind instantly realized that the team was under attack.
But the first wave of attack was not towards the people, but the horses under the knights’ straddles.
The sound of arrows and crossbows entering the flesh rang out in succession, and many of the warhorses were hit, and then launched into a frenzy, carrying the knights on their backs as they ran wildly through the dark night without a head!
These knights immediately rolled over and rolled down to the ground, returning to the vicinity of the carriage.
The captain let out a yell, “Enemy attack! Close in on the wagon!”
“What kind of person dares to attack the church’s team?”
A response came from the darkness, “If you want to cross this road, leave the money you have on you!”
The captain secretly hated, “Those losers from the city guards, they can meet bandits on the road so close to the city!”
Immediately a second wave of crossbow arrows struck, this time the target was people, five people on the church side were hit by arrows and fell to the ground.
A few knights threw the torches in their hands towards the perimeter with vigor, under the illumination of the firelight, they saw see see silhouettes in the surrounding woods.
“There are people to the west! There are people to the east as well! Hughes, you lead your men to the west, Haun and your men stay behind to watch the wagon! The rest of you follow me!”
The captain quickly gave the order, and the knights quickly split into three groups.
These church knights had been trained in martial arts since they were young, but had not gone through a systematic military education, they just relied on a fervor in their hearts, believing that they were invincible under the blessing of the Lord of Light.
Ambushed on the side of the road were precisely the Etonian guards summoned by the Grand Duchess, all of them changed into a black dress and carried strong bows and crossbows.
However, because of the darkness of the night, the hitting rate of the arrows and crossbows was greatly reduced, and the effect was not as good as expected.
Seeing the Church Knights lunging at them, the guards drew their weapons and engaged them in close combat.
They couldn’t show too much interest in the carriage, or else the other side would probably take Her Highness Fanny as a hostage, so they pretended to be bandits who were robbing the road.
There were 35 Etonian guards who came to set up an ambush, and to be able to become the guards of the Grand Duke and his wife, their hands were naturally no match for each other, and they gradually gained the upper hand by virtue of their superiority in numbers.
After ten minutes of fierce fighting, the church knights who rushed out had already suffered a small half of casualties, and the knight captain shouted, “Haun, we’ll pester the enemy, you guys run!”
The knights who stayed in place and the horsemen on the cart jerked their whips hard and galloped northward, not caring if there was still an ambush on the road in front of them at this time.
Just as they secretly prayed in their hearts that there was no second wave of ambush ahead, they were greeted with a cruel reality.
Another group of people – about 10 people, intercepted them, their number is so small, even with the coachman a total of 6 people, the other side has disdained the use of sneak attack means.
“Church goons!”
The leader of the opposite party cursed them thus angrily, he put his hands together, and a white light suddenly lit up and crackled between his two palms, as if there was lightning brewing in them.
“Wizard!”
The Church Knight named Haun shouted in shock, and the four men under him also panicked that they had encountered a sorcerer in the wild without any preparation. “Don’t panic!” Haun shouted, “Kill the bastard who is doing the spell first!”
He rushed over first.
“O Lord Almighty! Bless us with victory over evil!”
The other four knights also followed Haun in his charge.
Once the knights had some impact speed, another of the blockers brought his hands forward and mouthed the words, “Wall Shroud Technique.”
Instantly the five knights on the opposite side of the road were like hitting a stone wall, their crotch horses hit their heads, while the knights also fell off their horses by the huge recoil, and two of them directly fell unconscious.
“Hmph! A bunch of fools who bite at the sight of a hook! Slaughter them.”
The one who had done the spell earlier disappeared the light from his hand and spat at the fallen knight.
The people around him immediately rushed to the knights who were knocked around and finished them off one by one.
The two spell casters from earlier discussed in whispers:
“I didn’t realize that the Duchy of Eton had even detected the news, these losers in the church can’t even keep it a secret. What to do? Isn’t it better to just hand the people over to them.”
“No, it’s better to follow the original plan, hey, we’ve prepared a few more tidbits!”
“Alright, let’s do as you say.”
The group then made their way towards the wagon, by now the front driver’s seat was empty, the driver had long since taken advantage of the chaos earlier to bolt, perhaps hiding and shivering in a bush somewhere nearby.
They weren’t interested in the driver though, they were interested in the people in the wagon.
But then something happened that surprised them.
The two horses pulling the carriage actually made a U-turn of their own and galloped over in the direction of Fort Ness.
“What’s going on?”
“After them!”
A bunch of people ran back to untie the horses they had tied to a nearby tree and mounted their horses to chase towards the carriage, but by now the carriage was already far away from them.
At this moment, the driver’s seat of the carriage suddenly flashed with blue light, and the figures of two women flashed out.
“How long can the effect of the Light Feather Technique last?”
“It can last for half an hour!”
Hearing Lardy’s answer, Helen’s heart was a little jittery: half an hour was too short.
Why would a second wave of people appear on the road? Moreover, the other party’s target was obviously her sister as well, at least two of their group were witches, could it be the wave that kidnapped her before?
In front of the carriage, they encountered the previous Etonian guards, there were only 10 of them left, and they were dashing along the road, it looked like they had already finished fighting with the church knights.
Seeing the carriage rushing from the opposite side of them, the guards couldn’t help but be a bit puzzled.
Only a female voice could be heard shouting, “Someone is chasing us from behind, stop them!”
It was the voice of the Grand Duke Consort! Although the two females on the seat were masked, they couldn’t mistake this voice.
It was too late to ask the Grand Duchess why she appeared here, the 10 guards let go of the carriage and held the road in a tight formation, waiting for the so-called pursuers that Helen was talking about.
After continuing to run for half an hour, the effect of the Light Feather Technique disappeared, and the speed of the carriage dropped by a large margin all of a sudden.
What made their mood even heavier was that the sound of horses’ hooves behind them once again sounded.
Especially Helen, most of the guards she had summoned were in peril, and a huge guilt lingered in her heart.
“Another distance to run is the city gates!”
The two women were overjoyed in their hearts, rushing into the city the pursuers wouldn’t be able to do anything to them.
However, they didn’t want to suddenly the horse pulling the carriage suddenly lost its hooves and almost fell, and the carriage also suddenly lost speed.
The land below was undergoing an amazing change, the original hard road surface turned into a large quagmire.
“Mud swamp technique! Damn it!”
“Hokage, we can only fight them face-to-face and hard!”
Lardy and Helen quickly got out of the carriage and dribbled through the quagmire while fighting back their nausea, luckily the quagmire wasn’t too deep or they would have gotten stuck in it and wouldn’t have been able to walk.
The pursuers were soon upon them.
“Haha! I didn’t expect that the shot of Mud Swamp Technique that was supposed to be a chance shot would hit the target, today must be my lucky day.”
The leader of the pursuers laughed out loud.
“The two beautiful ladies, seeing how fast that carriage ran just now, it must have used some unknown method as well, right?”
“Let me guess, Light Feather Technique? Or the Acceleration Technique? Oh no, acceleration techniques can only be applied to the human body, so it must be the Light Feather Technique!”
Lardy asked out loud, “Who exactly are you people? What was the intent of what you did tonight?”
“I’ll ask you in return. Who are you? And what is the purpose of robbing this wagon?”
“We are friends of this child, of course we want to save her back.”
The pursuers burst into another fit of laughter, “We’re here to save her too!”
Helen shouted angrily, “Nonsense! Say, was it you who kidnapped Fanny in the first place? Fallen wizards!”
“Fallen wizards? What are you then? Aren’t you the same as us?”
“Who is of your kind!”
The leader of the pursuers shook his head, “I don’t want to be your enemy! Witches should unite against the oppression of the church! So I advise you all to hand this little girl over to me, and I will guarantee her safety myself. Oh, by the way, want to join us and join the family of witches.”
Helen was about to speak, but was stopped by Lardy, who asked, “The family of witches? Are you some sort of secret society?”
“A secret society? Sort of, but soon it won’t be considered a secret.”
“What is the name of your organization?”
The leader of the chasers seemed to hesitate for a while before finally saying, “The Secret Society! Have you guys heard of it?”
“The Secret Society?” Lardy was shocked in her heart, it was this organization again.
“You said for us to hand Fanny over, what do you need her for? Make her a witch too?”
The leader of the chasers shook his head, “To tell you the truth, we were indeed the ones who kidnapped the Duchess in the first place, and we didn’t kidnap her to make him part of the organization, she’s just too small now.”
“However, if you want to know, you will have to submit to us, we are open to all wizards of our kind.”
He pulled two scrolls from his arms.
“Let’s make a pact, one bound by the use of magic, you join us and we promise not to lay a finger on little girls.”
Lardy and Helen looked at each other, those two scrolls were certainly unusual.
“And if we refuse?”
The leader of the pursuers answered them coldly, “Then you will die!”
(End of chapter)