This Princess is an Extra-Chapter 35: Meet in War

Eli narrowed her eyes to study him and there was no doubt in her mind that whoever had done this had taken their sweet time on him. While the rest of his body sagged in a sitting posture with his broken legs sprawled limply in front of him, his palms had been pinned to the wall with broken wooden handle of the spear he once wielded, and each of his every fingers, had been methodically broken, bent at angles that defied the natural shape of a human hand.

He had been left there to bleed and die slowly.

Trembling, Eli did her best to calm herself by taking deep breaths. Thankfully, she had practiced medicine in real life and had seen fair share of cadavers before, which somehow helped her to stay grounded even in this dreadful situation.

"John..." she murmured reading the name on the uniform of the dead body as she walked by it.

She finally reached the area where the blast had occurred. The place was a cell, though its inhabitant was nowhere to be found, and a gaping hole had been blown open in the wall creating an opening that led out to a sheer cliffside, where a narrow path snaked upward into the darkness.

She noticed a few guards standing rigidly with their faces visibly drained of color, gasping and whispering to one another in shaky voices. "H-he... here!...The....dev....". She caught fragments of their hushed voices that she couldn’t be entirely sure of what she heard.

Eli quickly rushed to stand beside Callisto and looked up at him. His jaw was clenched tightly and he was looking onto something with barely restrained anger. But the moment she followed his line of sight and saw what held his attention, Eli’s jaw dropped.

Something was scribbled in red on the intact wall.

["Next time, we meet in war.

Emperor Drayce Vortalis."]

Before Eli could even finish reading the message, without warning, Callisto suddenly bolted forward, storming straight toward the opening in the shattered wall and up the narrow cliffside path beyond it.

"Brother, wait!" Eli called after him, reaching out to him, but his fury was too blinding, in a moment he was already outside disappearing up the treacherous path without a second thought.

"Seal every gate of the capital at once! Be quick!" the white-furred man who was silent until now, commanded sharply.

"A select few of you will ride to the palace and inform His Majesty. The rest shall form search parties and scour every district, every wilderness and every shadowed corner of your capital. Should either of those be found... you are to end them where they stand."

"Remaining pursue your crown prince, with me!" he declared before surging forward, sprinting after Callisto.

"Umm... your highness, we should also take our leave." the guard assigned to Eli said hesitantly, glancing around the ruined cell, the three of them now were the only ones remaining in the blasted chamber.

Eli, who had been staring out at the cold spring night through the shattered wall, lost in her thoughts, looked at him and gave a small nod of agreement before turning to follow. However, she stopped abruptly.

She retraced her steps and moved slowly back toward the shattered wall, and knelt beside the scattered debris. There, half-buried among the broken bricks she picked something soft up.

Tutorial Scenario: Completed! Arlo has been found!

She was still sitting on her knees, looking down, she stared at her hand that was wrapped around dirtied Arlo. She was considering the strange occurrences of events in her head, when suddenly, a soft chime echoed in her ears, and a new window abruptly popped up before her eyes.

"Haa... what’s wrong with this goddamn simulation!?" she murmured in exasperation and her eyes grew wide when she skimmed through the message.

Eli didn’t know what to make of this new message and as if this nights event weren’t enough, her body abruptly stood and she hurried on her feet and rushed toward the guard as fast as she could, she raised her hands and snatched a mechanized crossbow hanging at his belt throwing him off guard.

Scenario starting in five.....four,

"Hey.....hurry, hold me! Hold me!" she shouted in a frightened tone before she even understood what was happening. Once again, her body was moving according to the game’s code, and she turned to leave.

"B-but, Your Highness....." one of the guards stammered, clearly uncertain and hesitating in the face of her sudden, inexplicable words. It seemed a little too late for them to understand her command!

three.....two....,

"Darn it... someone stop me!" were the last words heard from her before she suddenly rushed out through the shattered wall.

one.

Tutorial: Hidden Scenario Unlocked: Shoot the One Who Shattered the Cell!!

***

"I.....I am terrified!" Eli cried in her trembling voice on the verge of tears as she pressed herself as close as she could to the cliff wall. She was forced along a narrow path that wound upward, with nothing but a sheer, deadly drop on the other side. She refused to look down keeping her head turned sharply away from the terrifying view below and toward the cliff wall as her body continued to move against her will.

After what felt like an endless climb, her feet finally carried her off the cliffside and into the cover of a forest, meanwhile, her hand still held the crossbow and she looked incredibly disheveled with her face streaked with smudges of dust.

How was she going to get away from this? She had no idea where she was. All she could see was trees and more trees that never ended. In a distance she heard a wolf-like howl that echoed throughout the night forest which only made her fear spike even higher, and her body once again moved forward.

Moments later, she was desperately clutching on a low handing branch of a tree inside the forest, her both hands were wrapped around it along with the crossbow. "No! I am not letting go! I don’t want to do anything! Damn this stupid company." she cried, tilting her body weight backward and dangling awkwardly as she tried to anchor herself in place. She shook her head violently refusing the invisible force pulling her onward.

To any night creature watching, it must have been an absurd sight of some wild, mud-streaked young madwomen screaming her lungs out in the middle of the night forest.

But the branch snapped with a sharp crack, and she tumbled to the ground with a startled yelp. Before she could even gather her thoughts, her body jerked upright on its own and bolted deeper into the unknown darkness.

Moments later, she was seen riding a horse that her body had forced her to steal from a sleeping merchant caravan in the night forest. Her hand were clutching the reins along with the crossbow. So she was now galloping wildly across the forest, somehow ending up on the opposite side from where she had first begun. All the while her mind was reeling, praying that this madness could stop somehow.

Suddenly, mid-riding, her arm jerked upward on its own, and she released a bolt from the crossbow toward a gap between the trees. She couldn’t even see what lay beyond the wild.

Her horse skidded to a halt as she swerved, thankfully gaining control of her body when they came to an opening in the direction she shot the arrow.

Her eyes frantically darted around everywhere searching for whom she has shot before it settled on him, she saw him again; the golden-eyed man standing at the edge of a cliff with someone beside him, and he had been struck by her bolt which was embedded somewhere near his chest before their eyes met.

Dracye was barely bothered by the shot but was fixated on looking at her, seeing that Eli’s stomach felt like it free fell

His ice cold eyes glimmered with a dangerous light and it chilled her more than freezing temperature. Earlier, he appeared saint-like to her. Although the person she had met seemed like he can’t even kill a man but now that same stunning creature was glaring down at her. The way he looked at her was definitely the definition of the phrase "If looks could kill."

Then, without breaking their eye contact he reached up and snapped the arrow in half as if it was a mere twig. Eli’s breathing came out labored because of sudden rise of her heart beating in her chest.

Suddenly, he closed his eyes and his body tipped backward falling off the cliff’s edge and the man who’d been standing beside him leapt after him without hesitation.

Eli had no idea what she had just done or what had just passed. Her mind raced with disbelief, she never would have imagined shooting someone even if they were just NPC’s. This was absolute madness to someone like her, at least with what she had seen with her own eyes.