727 Guilt

Blue, Helena, Alex, and Bonnie were all sitting in one of the rooms in the only tavern in the Mantis Lair. It was a small place, and they only had rooms with two beds, but right now, they had to deal with this together. They had a tablet set up in front of them and were waiting for Peter to pick up the call.

"He's doing this just to be an ass," Bonnie huffed.

"Yeah, probably," Alex glanced at the cameras that were inside a drawer in the corner of the room.

They had already confirmed with the guild representative that they should call him, but it's been over two minutes since the annoying ring started, and nothing. Another minute went by until he finally picked up.

"Oh, hello. Apologies, Martha had a question about our printer. Now, what can I help you with?" Peter appeared on the screen eating a piece of strawberry shortcake.

"Asshole," Alex mumbled.

"We found Hera," Helena spoke up.

"Oh, lovely. And how long will it take for you to capture her?" Peter asked as he took a bite of his cake.

"Forever. We tried to capture her, but she died inside a dungeon," Blue replied. She tried to pretend to be okay, but by the end of the sentence, she had already slumped back against the bed.

"I hope you have more proof of it than your word. Otherwise, we will have problems," Peter said with a smile.

"Yeah, we have the files from the camera. I checked. It caught her death," Bonnie was stone-faced. She refused to let him see her break.

"OK. Send it to me."

Bonnie pressed a few buttons and uploaded the file. Thankfully, despite being in a room with little to no infrastructure, the connection here was good enough that the upload was almost instant.

Peter looked to the side, clicked a few things, and watched the video. No one spoke for around 15 minutes while he made sure everything was caught on camera, "Well. If it was just her falling into the clouds, I would doubt your words, but Blue was smart enough to get some proof. I understand why you weren't able to get a better shot, but this should be enough. It was clear that this woman was crazy. This video will work great when we release it."

"You are going to show that to people?!" Alex gasped.

"Of course. We need to show that people who commit crimes are punished and terrorists are dealt with accordingly," Peter nodded, "But, you did what I asked you to, so your names won't be related to this. I'll make sure to distort your voices in the video and frame the shots so none of you shows up. We can't have people knowing the faces of our bounty hunters, can we? Oh, I just transferred your pay. And don't even think about refusing. The guild will always give people the rewards they deserve."

"Fine," Blue huffed, "So are we done here?"

"For now. Yes. We will discuss how you will be reprimanded internally, and I'll get in contact later," Peter took another bite of cake.

"Reprimanded? Why?" Alex frowned.

"You all murdered an explorer. She might have been a terrorist, but killing someone should never go unpunished."

"You are a piece of shit," Blue snarled.

"Thank you for caring, but I'm taking my coffee. I believe it won't take long for me to take out any shit in me," Peter raised a cup in a toast before taking a sip.

"Blue," Helena grabbed the controller's hand before turning back to Peter, "And where should we drop off the cameras? Any guild chapter?"

"Oh, those things? You can just trash them. They are very old models and were already set up to be disposed of. We had to take them out of the trash to give them to you. Now, excuse me. I have things to do. We have a birthday party in the office today," Peter waved and ended the call.

The four of them groaned and walked over to the cameras. Grabbing them, they all went outside and fired some spells to break those damn things before tossing them into the only garbage dump this room had. They all walked back to the room and started checking everywhere, just to make sure that the cameras didn't leave anything behind. When they were confident that they were truly alone. Helena pulled out a black safety cube and triggered it.

"I think we are okay now," Bonnie said as a small orange beetle jumped from one of the pouches in her waist and turned into an almost 2-meter-tall armor they knew very well.

"So, I think things went rather well," Lurize smiled.

"Me too. When you said you had a way to show her body, I was expecting an illusion or something, but that felt very real," Blue nodded with a smile, all the stress and anxiety of the last few days leaving her body.

"Tell me about it. I wasn't expecting Hera to lean in the crazy so much," Alex chuckled.

"She made a good crazy. I'm not going to lie," Helena smiled.

"To be fair, she does have several voices in her head," Lurize's joke made everyone laugh, and that was something they all really needed.

A couple of weeks ago, after Peter forced this task on them, the group reached out to Becca for help. Thankfully, they were already working on a plan to help Hera. Like they all had agreed to, Lurize would go out of the dungeon once per week to talk with the person they sent to give him some information. Hera slowly became aware of what the guild was doing, and they were already setting up a plan for her to vanish.

What was a bit odd for the people helping Hera out was how willing she was to 'die.' According to Lurize, she had a way to just disappear right away. The problem was that without showing the guild that she was gone, her friends and family would constantly be harassed by them. The Empress asked if they knew anyone who worked in the movie industry. More specifically, someone who worked with practical special effects and could share a blueprint for a realistic body double for horror scenes. It took a couple of weeks to get it, but eventually, someone shared a blueprint that could work. During that time, they also became aware of what was going on with Blue and the others, but they could use that to their advantage. With Becca as an intermediary, they started to organize the timeline.

It wasn't suspicious to have the reporter helping, thanks to everything they set up. First, her bracelet was taken out of Gear Shift Nexus five days after their escape. Four people were there, each taking a few bracelets while leaving Hera's behind. By then, some of the spies in the guild already told them she had been identified. Since it was common for Becca to disguise herself when working on a story, the guild didn't suspect her all that much. After all, even if she took a similar path to Hera to get there, she only arrived days later. Or at least, that's what the guild believed. Because of her job, fame, and a couple of issues with stalkers, Becca had a special bracelet that could deactivate the tracking for a while. This meant that, ever since she started traveling with Hera, the guild was completely unaware of her location. There were several things that could override that permission, such as a prison break, but before that happened, no one knew where she was. After the escape, they tried contacting the reporter, but she didn't reply and later explained that she was deep undercover for an investigative article on the Last Line of Defense. But because of the prison break, her contacts vanished. That was her excuse for taking a long time to answer the guild's call, and everyone seemed to accept it. Not only was she trying to find out more about the terrorist, but she also got close. Her failure was only due to circumstances beyond her control.

This allowed Becca to play the spy almost perfectly. Getting information from the guild and helping Helena and the girls find where Hera could be. All the while, she also could hear what was going on with the Empress through her elven contacts. She wasn't the only one trying to help. Lysandra and the elves, Sylvi and the triton, Hornet and the dwarves, Nethe and the children of the sky, and Eirik together with the beastman were all looking for ways to assist Hera. She saved people from all the races and even uncovered what the guild was doing with the people there. Not to say they were doing that only as a thanks, but every race felt that if they didn't help her, they would be no better than humans. That's why any information Hera asked for was given to her. The elves and dwarves were even a little upset that she had ways of escaping her predicament on her own. That would mean they would have to thank her in a different way.

That's how the plan came together: Hera would pretend that her mind was gone and let Blue and the others 'kill her' only to have Nimbus waiting down below to catch her and leave the area while dropping her body double from a great height and letting this version of her be the dead body. Since the Empress was very careful about sharing information about her legacy, no one knew the extent of her abilities. And Nimbus was supposed to be a mount that could glide but not fly. Only two people who were not involved in this plan knew about it. The first was Becca, who helped set everything up; the second was Eridan. Hera didn't want to let her father think she was dead again, so she took that risk. However, he wasn't aware of everything, just that he should ignore what the guild said. Even if they said Hera was dead, he should only believe that when Helena or one of the girls confirmed it.

After finishing their talk, Lurize smiled under his armor and hugged everyone," Thank you for helping Hera."

"You don't need to thank us for that. We would do anything for her. We love her," Helena smiled.

"Even more than you, big guy," Blue joke-punched Lurize's arm.

"From what I understand, that is literally impossible. Isn't it?" Bonnie tilted her head.

"I… honestly don't know. I mean, the legacy makes us care about her and gives us the desire to protect her, but I'm not entirely sure if it makes us love her," Lurize crossed his arms.

"Interesting… We might study a bit to figure that out later," Bonnie suggested.

"I think you will have a lot of things to study the next time we see each other," Lurize chuckled.

"That's true. Any idea how long it will take?" Alex asked.

Lurize shook his head, "I don't know. Hera said she would wait a few days before going to the doorway, and then it is whoever long the whole process will take. She suggested that you guys wait in Crydonia. There is a hotel room set up for you guys. I say hotel room, but it's more like a villa from what we are told. The palace is called 'Winter Palace and the reservation is on Livy's name," Lurize explained.

"And will we know how Hera looks?" Helena had a worried expression.

"Not really. But I don't think it will change all that much. That wasn't the feeling I got from it. But we will still be with her," Lurize said as they finished their conversation, and he returned to his beetle form before flying through the window back to Hera's side.

The Empress would have to wait another week after getting 'killed' before leaving the dungeon. Just to be safe. But then, she would head to the closest doorway and call Tara. After what she saw, being a human wasn't sitting well with her, and apparently, only a Naga could open the path to their homeland. Seeing no benefit in holding on to her 'humanity,' there was no reason not to accept the ascension and become a true Naga. Especially since she would keep her legs.