Elise sent a message to the higher-ups as planned, outlining her proposal in detail (except for the part where Nina was also going, of course) and asking for information on enemy patrols and infiltration routes with the highest likelihood of success.

It didn’t take long for a response to arrive, and said response was just as helpful as the girl had hoped for, pointing out possible entry points for infiltration as well as the times where they would be most likely to work and the areas that merited the most attention in their investigation.

The trio discussed their options and eventually decided on one particular route to follow, which had a river close by throughout a large portion of it (meaning they could potentially use it as a temporary hiding spot), was entirely covered in dense vegetation that would serve as cover, and ended at the middle north of the forest, the heart of the territory currently controlled by their enemies.

Decision made, Elise sent another message to the higher-ups. She didn’t reveal which route they would be following exactly (just in case the information somehow leaked), but said they would be leaving soon. In response, a trio of warriors called Inori, Amanthera and Kana (a foxkin, a deerkin and an owl kin, respectively) came to escort the girl to a location a bit further away from the front lines and the duo of fairy and rabbit finally left on their mission.

They left at night, and the combination of the darkness with Nalia’s stealth spells made them so difficult to spot that none of their allies in the area saw the duo as they made their way to the edges of allied territory and eventually started their incursion.

+0+

As planned, Nalia was hiding inside Nina’s armor, sitting on her shoulder right next to her neck, as there really wasn’t that much spare space inside. She was focused on using spells to hide their presence and detect possible interlopers. She needed to control her magic power very carefully to make it harder to notice as well, so she left the matters of actually moving around completely to Nina, only informing her of what her detection was picking up.

During that first night they managed to cross a good distance, but their travel slowed down significantly after that. As one might expect, they had to go a lot slower and more carefully during the day, even with the cover of the forest. Sometimes the duo was even forced to stop and hide themselves in order to avoid patrolling groups. And while moving at night was easier, going deeper and deeper into enemy territory meant they had a lot more to worry about, so their traveling speed was still relatively slow.

They received a message from Elise in the middle of their first actual day of infiltration, saying that she had reached her destination. They were maintaining their communications, but they couldn’t be as casual as before because the distance was enough to cause a delay. Mostly the two were relaying information about the movements of enemies they could see, so that Elise could inform their allies in turn.

However, when the duo of contract partners had some time to spare while they were hiding, there was the opportunity for them to have actual conversations in order to pass the time, and in one such conversation Elise and Nina were having a serious discussion.

‘Now that you’ve gotten a decent amount of battle experience and training, I think it is a good time to plan out your future path of growth.’ Elise said.

‘What do you mean? I thought I would just need to get strong enough to smash any enemies with raw power.’ Nina replied.

‘Getting stronger isn’t just about increasing your physical strength and toughness.’ Elise lectured ‘You also need to find the fighting style that resonates the most with your path, otherwise you’ll never be as strong as you’re capable of being.’

‘I guess…’ Nina still felt a bit reluctant ‘What do you suggest, then?’

‘There’s two things: First is an idea inspired by my sister Miona. She was a sword user, but her style was focused on following the most simple, most direct and most efficient path to victory, which was why she was called “Straight Sword”. She could use such a style because of how good her perception was, given the special eyes she was born with. You don’t have the same eyes, but you can still train your perception enough to see through tricks and find the best way to apply your strength.’

‘Hmm… I guess seeing through and breaking tricks would force the enemies to confront my strength directly instead of countering it with technique…’ She was thoughtful.

‘Yeah. And the other thing I was considering is a story sister Elen told me. She said that the greatest martial arts style in existence had a branch that boiled fighting down to the purest essentials.’ Elise explained ‘It was called Zero In, because the style was fully focused on closing in on an opponent and unleashing maximum violence at zero range. I believe that sort of focus and simplicity would mesh well with your tendencies.’

‘… That does sound pretty nice. I guess that means I need to put more emphasis into movement skills? It would certainly be annoying to have enemies constantly keeping their distance and throwing potshots at me from range.’

‘Then it’s settled. I’ll start thinking of training exercises focused on those aspects.’ Elise said cheerfully.

Nina could feel something else beneath the cheerfulness, a certain sense of ‘amusement’? Or something of that sort. She briefly hesitated and thought about what they had just talked, trying to figure out if she had missed something. But then she shrugged, feeling like it didn’t really matter since she trusted her contractor. Whatever was the cause of the girl’s amusement, it certainly wouldn’t be something bad for her partner.

It would take a bit of time for Nina to figure out she had been tricked, but by that point she would be able to understand the necessity of it.

(Elise was also having a similar discussion with Nalia, but it was mostly just developing ideas for new ways to use her Dual Wings Magic.)

A few more moments after that, Nina thought of something and decided to ask Elise about it:

‘You said that the Full Awareness Training was something borrowed from your sister Larina, right? What about her fighting style? Wouldn’t it be fitting as well?’

Before receiving an answer, Nina suddenly felt a strange sense from the contract bond. It felt like Elise was laughing. And the reason for that became clear as soon as the other girl responded:

‘The issue is that Larina isn’t a martial artist. She’s a dancer.’

‘… A dancer?’ Nina replied after taking a few moments to process what she had heard.

‘Yes. She was born as part of a traveling troupe of performers. She specialized in dancing as she grew up, and she eventually invented the Full Awareness Training and used it solely for the sake of getting better at dancing.’ Elise said ‘It worked too. Everyone who watched her dances said that they were truly sensational, including me. It was just that with the strength and physical control she achieved, bis sis Larina could also turn those dances into deadly performances. Eventually she also became able to trigger supernatural effects with them, but I digress. The point is, I didn’t mention her because that dancing style doesn’t really fit you.’

‘… Yeah, I believe you’re right. I’m just still trying to wrap my head around all this.’

‘It took me a while to do that, so good luck.’ Elise joked.

+0+

Still, most of the time when the duo was forced to wait in hiding was spent with them talking to each other. They talked about pretty much everything they could think of, their families and friends from their original homes, memorable events in their lives, stories they had heard, things they liked to eat, strategies in battle, their dreams for the future, what they thought about their contractor… Eventually they even started doing word association games to pass the time.

And then, after almost two weeks had passed on their mission, the duo finally found something truly significant. They were at a section of the forest filled with mostly short trees that had yellowish leaves and were moving carefully as there were many enemies in the surrounding areas, to the point where they would be hard pressed to keep going if it wasn’t night.

And they would be moving twice as slowly if that section of the forest weren’t very uneven, with tons of rises and falls that even created pseudo-valleys that the black armor (with the duo inside) could crawl through while being very difficult to see from the sides.

Nalia was focusing as hard as she could, keeping track of the locations and movements of all the individuals she could detect with her passive radar spells (using active spells would almost certainly result in them being sensed), which didn’t have the largest of ranges but were also not as precise, resulting in the fairy needing to work even harder to guarantee that their route was safe.

And so, when she discovered several individuals from around them shifting their movement in short succession, all of them apparently converging on their position, Nalia immediately reacted:

“Stop.” She told Nina and at the same time began casting a new spell.

The rabbit dutifully paused, and Nalia took an extra second of preparation to make her spell as hard to detect as she could (having seen that the enemies weren’t moving fast enough to force her to rush) before using earth magic to pull the armor down into the ground and hiding.

Two seconds later, the fairy realized that she had been wrong and the group of individuals weren’t moving towards their position, but instead to an area that was only relatively close. She relaxed just a bit at that, but still decided to wait before coming out of hiding.

She kept observing those individuals as they gathered together and then began to head towards another place. And soon enough she noticed something unusual: They were moving a bit too slowly. Curious, she focused even more on what she could feel from her passive detection of the area they were moving through and analyzed their movements more closely.

At first nothing else jumped out at her, but after half a minute more Nalia saw the group shift their trajectory very sharply all at once, which was repeated soon after. That was when the fairy became sure of what was going on: That group was moving in a way that was meant to avoid coming too close to the other individuals in the vicinity.

So she made a snap decision. She pulled the armor back to the surface and spoke:

“Change of plans. Turn left and head forward. We’re following them.”

Nina began to do so and asked “Who’s them?”

“A group that just joined together and seems to be avoiding the other soldiers.” Nalia responded.

They were speaking in normal voices, given that Nalia’s stealth spells included sound blockers.

“That’s certainly suspicious.” Nina said as she crawled forward.

“You can get up to go after them.” Nalia told her “Most of the people of that group came from the direction they’re going now, so there’s a relatively large gap in surveillance on this path.”

“There’s no way that wasn’t planned ahead of time.” Nina commented while getting to her feet.

“Considering the group just suddenly gathered together all at once, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

And so the armored rabbit with a fairy on her shoulder followed after the suspicious group. She went decently fast as their tailing soon brought them to an area with only a few scattered soldiers around, which were easily avoided even by the big conglomeration of people, let alone the small duo.

They still had to be careful not to be noticed by their mark, so Nina couldn’t get too close to them, but the still plentiful coverage provided by trees meant the duo was able to get close enough to discover the identities of that group.

They were wolfkin, or at least most of them were. There were three members of that group that seemed to be different types of birdkin, but the wolves counted barely under a dozen and a half members, so they were definitely the majority. Neither Nalia nor Nina were knowledgeable enough to distinguish the specific tribe of the wolfkin, specially at a distance (Nina had lived her life in hiding, after all), but both of them immediately thought of the Oka tribe that had been the first to turn traitor, so that only made them even more curious.

As they went, Nalia also took the time to inform her contractor of what the two of them were doing, receiving a reply that boiled down to “see what you can find out and inform me if anything significant happens”. So they kept going for about ten minutes, still moving quickly but carefully, and then the group they were following stopped in place.

Nina also stopped moving, but then their targets began to move again, but only a little bit before stopping again. It seemed like they were choosing spots to sit.

“We’ll need to take a risk and get closer.” Nalia decided.

She carefully examined the surroundings, trying to find a good route to a position from which they could actually spy on whatever that group was doing, and upon finding a decent position (a tree branch that would be concealed by leaves from the perspective of their marks, was close enough to hear whatever they were speaking and they could get to relatively safely) she informed Nina of it and the rabbit quickly went through the indicated route (dropping to a crouch midway through but still moving decently fast) and managed to climb onto the branch without incident.

Then it was Nalia’s turn. She first channeled her magic very slowly and carefully to weave a spell that would shift the light that hit the armor to make it reflect the color of the tree instead of the black that was its real color. Following that she did a very small wind spell to shift one of the upper branches of the tree enough to create a gap in the foliage through which they could spy on the meeting.

The hearts of both the fairy and the rabbit were beating fast as the conglomeration of beastkin finally came upon view, but they got even faster when they saw that the group had somehow picked up two new members.

They were both bearkin. Which was quite a discovery considering they were quite obviously members of the Sturo tribe. The strongest bear tribe in the forest, which had been resisting the traitors from nearly the beginning. And one of them, a woman who had orange hair and fur of the same color on her arms and legs, happened to be speaking at the time:

“What do you know about the Inishie’s current movements?”

“They are hard to pin down. They hardly ever meet in person with anyone but the tribe leaders. The detection spell developed by the alliance helps, but it doesn’t have enough range for us to track them down precisely.” The answer came from a male wolfkin with jet black fur covering his body.

Nalia and Nina said nothing, but both of them understood the significance of what they had heard. The so-called Strangers were actually known as Inishie, there were members of traitor tribes who were trying to keep them under surveillance, and there were bear tribe members working with them, which had probably been the ones to pass down Nalia’s detection spell to them, most likely obtained from their connections with the alliance.

They kept on spying on the meeting and learning more and more. Those traitor tribe members apparently had doubts about what they had been doing, which led them to make contact with their “enemies”, but their numbers were still too low to change anything. Also, they had been discreetly acting to delay the ritual preparations that were being done while trying to figure out their purpose, and had apparently narrowed the options for where the core of the ritual was down to only three locations. Also, the Inishie were some sort of secret society with members and branches spread across most of the continent. All of that information and more was passed to Elise.

Eventually though, the meeting seemed to be winding down and Nalia asked her contractor if she had any more instructions. The response the fairy got caused her to sigh and think to herself that she really shouldn’t have expected anything else. And what exactly was that response?

‘Establish contact.’