Akome Leaves, Dragonblue Thyme, and of course, Redhill Moss.

  They were the three most essential ingredients to aid people with Alexa’s condition. For a good while, the Defense Forces essentially refused to hand over dozens of pounds worth of these extremely rare herbs.

  Well, not just rare, it was, at this point, apparently impossible to acquire.

  Learning that in the past few months, the Defense Forces had been pushed back badly in the Northern Front, with at least twenty thousand casualties in total, was quite eye-opening to Alexa. She was directly affected by it too, because it meant that any harvesting operations were impossible.

  Unless she wanted to sacrifice thousands of men for that purpose, of course.

  At the very least, the deal was finalized, and the Royal Guard took custody of the herb supplies, Alfred’s men to be specific. His mages now stored and preserved these herbs in the Monile Palace’s magical supply depots. They were even testing if they could grow it—though that was a bit tricky.

  But that wasn’t what mattered for now for Alexa.

  For the past few weeks, Wilhelm had been personally testing Alexa’s tolerance again for the three herbs, before concocting a customized aiding elixir just for her, this time, to form her second magic circle.

  She had studied studiously in water magic for this reason. She coveted that affinity, greatly.

  She already had fire magic, which was neat at temperature control, but she wanted to combine it with water. Why? Because she could do ice magic using fire and water affinities. Water to provide, well, water to freeze, and fire to drop its temperature near absolute zero.

  Apparently, that would create such powerful ice magic spells, and Alexa thought it was quite cool. She even tried to replicate it a bit with glyphs, but unfortunately, Wilhelm was more specialized at using glyph magic for fire and wind magic instead, and of course, light magic to a lesser extent for healing.

  Water, earth, and shadow weren’t his forte, so his instruction manuals and improved glyphs didn’t cover those affinities.

  Therefore, Alexa sought to cover it instead by getting internal magic circles set to those affinities!

  “You look quite lively today, Lady Alexa,” Adele pleasantly greeted as Alexa stepped out of the Monile Palace.

  She was dressed well, as expected of royalty who would have another great day in magecraft.

  “Of course,” Alexa twirled her twintails a bit as she beamed. “I’ve been waiting for this after all.”

  Then, Alexa curled her fist.

  “All the work I’ve done, was all for this. Now, the day when I’ll be rewarded for my diligence has arrived. How can I not celebrate this? O-hohoho—”

  “Get on the carriage, woman,” Wilhelm rudely interrupted.

  Alexa naturally pointed angrily at him as a response, shouting, “Damn you, peasant! Don’t ruin my morning!”

  But otherwise, everything else went well this morning. Besides, that earlier exchange was rather routine at this point, simply because Wilhelm always refused to learn manners, and Alexa still tried to un-peasant said peasant.

  “Hmph,” Alexa looked to her side as their carriage moved forward. “That guy, I swear, even on good days, he’ll ruin it for no reason.”

  Adele giggled a bit.

  “That’s just Sir Wilhelm, I suppose,” Adele said. “For someone knighted to serve the next Empress, he sure refuses to act his part.”

  “His crude behavior needs a lot of fixing,” Alexa said, irritated. “But, he’s just too busy with the missions I give him, I suppose…”

  “That, and you seem to enjoy yourself when he makes fun of you,” Adele pointed out.

  “What makes you think so?” Alexa asked, now doubly annoyed.

  “Nothing. You just…you seem quite a bit more gloomy when he’s absent and there’s no one making fun of you.”

  “Please, that’s simply because I’m enjoying harmony.”

  “Whatever you say, Lady Alexa.”

  “Hmph.”

  They were en route to Arlen City in the Schengen Region. The Arlen Dungeon was one of the dungeons she cleared months ago with Phoebe, Wilhelm, and Alfred, and it was the most important one at the moment, because they managed to locate the finest ancient mana condensers down there.

  It was why, before Alexa left, she informed Countess Helene von Stuttgart, the lord of Arlen, to keep a good watch of said artifact. She’d been receiving a constant stream of weekly reports from Lady Helene since then, mostly about how she was throwing money to keep the area around it safe, well-cleaned, and well-maintained.

  The last time her letter reached Alexa, Lady Helene said that the adventurers renovating the ritual room were almost attacked by a powerful minotaur, but luckily, a party of S-rank adventurers was nearby, and they dealt with it easily.

  Indeed, about that, Alexa had been briefly talking too with the Adventurer’s Guild because she wanted them to figure out solutions about the Demon Horde. They had a lot of powerful individuals with them, many of them seemingly roleplaying as heroes.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  But, they seemed to refuse the idea of having to send adventurers against demons. So she tried a different approach—courting them to her side to gain their support.

  Unfortunately, they remained adamant about being neutral. It was annoying, but she'd have to just accept it. This time around, they weren’t going to be escorted by Wilhelm’s men, but instead, they would be escorted by three adventurers, so there was an opportunity waiting.

  They were S-ranked, they said. Thus, Alexa waited patiently. She wanted to talk to these people and figure out why they wouldn’t like to fight demons. After all, young men without class or magic or whatever fought them—so why wouldn’t they?

  +++

  “Your Highness, it’s an honor—!” The cleric in front of Alexa bit her tongue, and thus, the knight beside her groaned.

  “Geez, Celestine. You have to learn how to talk better than that,” an armored man chastised behind the healer.

  “I can’t believe we’ll actually work for royalty!” An excited young boy with a wizard’s hat said afterward too.

  They were the three adventurers who would escort Alexa, Wilhelm, and Adele.

  Alexa truly felt out of place here. While the Royal Guard and military, like Wilhelm, were a paragon of professionalism, these adventurers always seemed…too much of a hodgepodge?

  “I miss the shieldguards,” Alexa muttered, deflating a bit.

  “Even I know that’s a bit of a rude thing to say,” Wilhelm laughed beside Alex. “Anyhow, you three, I expect you to cover us. As you well know, we’ll be conducting a simple formation ritual for Her Highness here. We go in, we do the job, we go out. That’s it.”

  “Say, why isn’t the Royal Guard here?” the knight gruffly asked. “Been there ages ago. What, have they degraded since I’m gone?”

  “No, not really,” Alexa frowned. “While I do admit that the Royal Guard isn’t up to my standards, because they suck at fighting demons, they aren’t slouches either. They’re just…extra busy.”

  “She throws them to a million missions in the countryside,” Wilhelm bluntly explained.

  “H-hey! That’s supposed to be classified information, Wilhelm!”

  “You’re literally bragging to the peasantry about every good act your knights do to the people.”

  D-damn you. I’m just farming opinion points!

  “I see,” the knight grinned. “This ought to be interesting then.”

  “It’s a cleared dungeon, so I don’t know about that,” Adele declared on the side.

  Alexa felt like her friend just jinxed this day for some reason.

  Soon, they descended into the dungeon. As was usual, there were some monsters here and there that the adventurers with them could easily deal with. Unfortunately, Alexa was adamant about practicing her fireball spells.

  So she occasionally joined here and there to throw spells at the mob creatures. Of course, she didn’t get any levels from it, but practice was practice! If she wanted to defeat Henry the troublesome bastard, she’d need to make sure her spells landed accurately.

  So she practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until one time she burned herself a bit and the cleric, Celestine, had to intervene.

  “You’re not too hurt aren’t you, Your Highness?” the cleric asked, as she slowly healed Alexa’s burn wound on her hand.

  “No, not really,” Alexa hissed. “Light magic sure isn’t that great, huh?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve heard you’re a close friend of the saintess,” the cleric mumbled. “She has ‘holy magic’, doesn’t she?”

  “I suppose?”

  “I’ve heard it's wonderful,” the cleric said, smiling. “They say, her magic is so flawless, no disease, curse, or injury is beyond its scope, and that she can heal dozens of people simultaneously. That, and holy magic doesn’t hurt like light magic.”

  “You sure sound like a fan,” Alexa mumbled, feeling that light, characteristic ‘burning’ pain that was a side effect of light magic’s healing properties.

  Immediately, the cleric’s eyes glowed.

  “Of course I am!” she seemed ecstatic, as she finished healing Alexa. “Practically every healer I know is following the miracles being done by the lady saint!”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep!”

  “Right. Say, what do you think then about Phoebe’s mission of fighting the demon horde?”

  The cleric tilted her head to the side.

  “Hmm…I suppose it’s noble? And I wish her the best.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Is there anything wrong, Your Highness?”

  “Will you be interested in joining her?”

  At that, the cleric looked down, shaking her head.

  “Dealing with demons is a suicidal act,” the cleric said. “No. Unless someone dragged me to fight them against my will, I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “I see.”

  Alexa was quite disappointed. She’d asked the former Royal Guard knight turned adventurer too earlier, and she asked the same of the mage boy who tagged alongside them. All of them had the same answer.

  “Dealing with demons is a suicidal act.”

  Alexa already fought them, against her will, yes, but she managed to defeat them. So she somewhat struggled to understand why people of this world were so scared of them.

  Even after Perlenstadt, recruitment numbers for the Defense Forces continued to plummet, and unless another round of compulsory conscription was enacted, they’d be losing too many irreplaceable bodies.

  Then again, I do have a skewed view anyway…

  When she did fight demons after all, she had Phoebe and Wilhelm by her side. Practically, they were the two most lethal nightmares of demons that walked this world. Still, this was going to be an eventual headache for Alexa, considering she’s trying to find ways to court the Defense Forces further.

  And the way she was planning to do that, was to give them more material and manpower support. She wanted to prove herself as an Empress who would be able to stalwartly defend mankind, so that she could, perhaps, take their strength and fight off Henry.

  But this approach seemed harder said than done.

  “We have to go down faster,” Wilhelm declared, after he chugged a hefty drink from his canteen. He looked down at Alexa. “This time around, you should do less practice.”

  “B-but—” Alexa pouted.

  “No buts,” Wilhelm shook his head. “Monster spawn rates seem to be returning to normal now, and with how deep the ritual room is, we might run into trouble soon. That, and you injured yourself.”

  “But it’s fixed now!”

  “Do you want your water magic affinity?”

  “Of course, you dummy!”

  “Then double time. Up, up. We gotta keep moving.”

  That quickly managed to break Alexa’s stubbornness, and soon, the group delved deeper, with Wilhelm and the adventurers now taking a more active role to speed things up.