37. Searching for Katalina

In the late night when everyone was already asleep, even though they had agreed that one of them would stay awake and take turns sleeping.

Someone was seen getting up from their bed and silently walking towards the door of the room. They were very careful not to wake up everyone who was sleeping, and when they were close to the table in the middle of the room, they left a letter for everyone.

The person looked at the letter on the table, clenching their hands for a moment, but in the end, they sighed and walked towards the exit door.

"Where are you going, Katalina?" suddenly Katalina heard a familiar voice that made her turn towards the source of the sound.

Katalina could see Rei standing near the window looking at her, strangely she didn't sense that Rei was there, and before she didn't pay much attention to that direction because she was too focused on not waking the others.

"Rei..." Katalina looked at Rei while feeling anxious because she was afraid everyone would wake up because of them talking to each other.

But what she didn't know was that Narmaya had been awake since earlier because she was sensitive to the movements of others, as she was a swordmaster.

"From your expression, I can guess that you want to do something foolish, so what do you want to do," Rei said to Katalina as he looked out the window.

Katalina hesitated to answer Rei because she knew what she was doing was foolish, but for the safety of Lyria from the Empire, she was willing to do it.

When Furias ordered them to leave and his soldiers pushed them out of the room, one of the soldiers handed a letter to Katalina. The condition for their freedom was for her to return as an Erste Empire lieutenant. Now she wanted to make sure if it was true or not by quietly approaching Furias and asking about it. But before she could do that, she was caught by Rei first.

<Rei PoV>

I still remember this incident... this is where Katalina was quietly planning to leave the crew and return to the Empire because they said they would not try to capture Lyria again.

But that was all bullshit. The real reason was that Vira wanted to have Katalina for herself and keep her close by...

I know that yanderes wouldn't care about anything around them as long as they succeed in possessing the person they like, but seeing it in real life is so annoying...

I could see that Katalina seemed hesitant to answer me, and it seemed like she didn't want to respond to my question...

"Let me guess, you want to go to Furias to ask if what they promised is true or not, but I can see you leaving a letter, so you must already know that the condition for our freedom from the Empire is you going back to them."

I immediately telling everything about what she's planning to do.

"Ah... how did you... know!?" Katalina looked really surprised when she heard what I said.

Of course, I knew because I read it in the game...

"Hahhh... you know that we don't trust the Empire at all right? and that's why tomorrow morning we will leave this island immediately, but here you suddenly want to secretly go back to them"

"I know this is all fake, that's why I have to go back to the Empire so that everyone will not be chased by them again," Katalina answered me, but I could hear in her tone that she wasn't sure about it either.

"And do you believe they will keep their promise? Do you know how many times they have tried to capture Lyria again and sacrificed many primal beasts for their experiments?" I replied to Katalina with a more aggressive tone than before.

Talking about all this really made me angry at the Empire; how dare they exploit my primal beasts for their experiments and use dark essence to influence those primal beasts as well!

"Ughhh!?" suddenly I felt a severe headache, making me hold my head with both hands.

"Rei!? What's wrong with you?" Katalina seemed to want to approach me and check on me, but I raised one of my hands towards her and stopped her.

"Go! If you really want to go back to them! I'm sure as soon as you go back to them, they will immediately try to capture Lyria again." I wanted to stop this conversation and focus on stopping the surge of energy inside my body.

It was like when I killed all those Empire soldiers on the previous island and I had to control this before losing control again.

I didn't know why this was happening when it never happened to me before...

Katalina looked hesitant and wanted to respond to me, but she eventually turned and left the room to go to Furias.

Seeing Katalina leave, I started to try to calm my energy while regulating my breathing.

From what I read, regulating breathing can make someone calm and control their emotions.

So it wouldn't hurt to try now, and maybe it was correct as I began to feel calm again and my energy started to stabilize.

After a while, everything returned to normal, and I opened my eyes to see everyone still sleeping except for Narmaya that already awake since earlier and doesn't want to disturb our conversation...

I sighed and turned back to my bed to go back to sleep because all of this was giving me a headache.

But as I turned to my bed, I saw Narmaya raising both her hands towards me while smiling...

...Huh, so she still wanted to sleep while hugging my head?.

<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >

When I woke up, I could hear loud voices...

They sounded like they were discussing something, but I wanted to go back to sleep because I was still sleepy.

"Rei! Wake up, Rei, don't sleep anymore, this is serious. Katalina suddenly disappeared and left a farewell letter." I could feel Djeeta shaking my body to wake me up.

"Djeeta... let me sleep for a while, my head still dizzy..." I tried to stop Djeeta.

"Rei, come on, we have to find Katalina." Djeeta still didn't give up and continued to try to wake me up.

Because I felt like Djeeta wouldn't stop trying to wake me up, I finally gave in and woke up.

I then found out that while I was sleeping, they were panicking when they found a letter from Katalina and finally decided to search for Vira because she might know something about all this.

I didn't care too much about all this, I just wanted to sleep... my head was still dizzy from last night.

"But why, Katalina..." I could hear Lyria's voice, sounding like she wanted to cry.

Thanks to Katalina, Lyria was able to leave that place and join us all on our adventures, but now Katalina suddenly left the crew.

"She wouldn't just up and leave Lyria behind. So what do you think about all this, Djeeta?" Vyrn asked Djeeta.

"Yeah, Katalina wouldn't just suddenly leave like that. Something must be happening that made her go," Djeeta told them.

"But we better go search for Katalina first, and I'm sure Vira might know where she is."

"Yeah... You're right! I'm not sure if I'll be much help, but I'll try!" Lyria stopped feeling gloomy, and they finally started to go look for Vira.

Hahh... watching them leave through the door, I slowly started to follow them because Narmaya was with them, so I didn't have to worry about their safety.

Not long after, we found Vira walking to a certain direction. Djeeta and the others stopped Vira and asked if she knew the whereabouts of Katalina or not.

"So Katalina's gone, you say..." Vira seemed to be holding her chin, lost in thought.

"Yeah. And since you're friendly with the Empire, we thought you might know what's going on," Rackam said to Vira.

"Albion does provide the Empire with quite a bit of manpower. I suppose you could say we have a strong relationship... But as far as Katalina's disappearance, I'm afraid I have nothing to help you..." Vira said to all of us with a sad look on her face.

Such a fake expression... that's all I could think of when I saw that.

"Look at it this way! Is it really so strange for Katalina to run off with imperial soldiers? That is to say, she was once an imperial soldier too... From my perspective as the Lord of Albion, it'd be in her best interest to return to the Empire," Vira continued her explanation.

"Pfftt" I couldn't help but laugh when I heard that.

But Vira seemed to hear my laughter and turned towards me, staring at me. "Is something funny?"

"Yeah, everything you're saying is quite funny. Do you think Katalina, who was willing to help Lyria so she wouldn't become an experiment for them, suddenly wants to go back to the Empire? Your reasons are really funny," I answered Vira.

Vira looked very angry when I said that; she thought I, an outsider, wouldn't understand all this, but before she could respond to me, Rosetta suddenly intervened between the two of us.

"Alright, that's enough for now. We need to focus on finding Katalina instead of arguing like this."

Vira took a deep breath and tried to calm her emotions before refocusing on the main issue.

"Alright, if you all insist, I will help you find Katalina," Vira said to us.

After that, we started walking out of the castle and into the city to look for Katalina... why are we searching for Katalina in the city?

Wouldn't it be better if we asked Furias about Katalina since he is the general of the Empire?

"Since ancient times, Albion has been home to a special primal beast by the name of Luminiera. But invoking Luminiera requires a true knight... Or rather, the sacrifice of one," Vira suddenly began to tell a story.

"The sacrifice of a true knight?" Lyria looked confused when she heard Vira's story.

"The Empire craves more power, so of course they took an interest in Luminiera. They requested our help in calling it forth. I turned them down since we had no knights who were willing to volunteer their sacrifice...

The Empire made an offer to Katalina: her sacrifice for your safety. They explained the terms of the deal to me and requested my cooperation. I refused, of course... Until the general brought out his new weapon."

Hearing Vira mention the "new weapon" made everyone except me and Narmaya look to the sky.

Narmaya and I then also looked up to see what they were looking at. They saw an Imperial battleship floating lazily in the sky above them. On the battleship is the Adversa weapon, the fruit of the Empire's research on Auguste.

[IMAGE]

"It has the power to destroy an entire island. And as it's my duty to protect the people of Albion, my hands were tied..." Vira clenched her fists tightly and looked extremely angry.

"So as long as that weapon is gone, you will stop being slaves to the Empire?" I asked Vira.

They all turned towards me, looking panicked, except for Vira, who was confused by what I said. "Yes... if the Empire doesn't have that weapon, I don't want to join them."

"Um, Rei, calm down for a moment, don't do anything strange," Vyrn looked panicked and flew towards me, holding my hair.

"Vyrn's right, Rei, calm down first, don't act recklessly," Rackam also said to me.

"Yeah, calm down, Rei, we'll do something later, but not now," Io said the same...

Huh, what do they think I'm going to do?