Things about the female knight in black stockings

"Who can blame me for being so charming since you were little? I play with you every day, so it's normal for me to have feelings for you, right?"

"So you just won't admit that you're a pervert too, right?"

Tia couldn't resist Valensa's persistent rubbing against her, so she could only angrily reach out and pinch Valensa's soft flesh hard again:

"What a shameless idiot... Hmph, sometimes I really wonder if the 'evil' in your 'evil god bloodline' is the same as the 'evil' in 'silver evil'! Otherwise, how could there be such a fool as you who is both sentimental and lustful?"

"Well... hehehehe."

Valensa didn't argue anymore, she just kept hugging Tia and rubbing against her.

"Okay, okay, stop rubbing... My skin isn't as tough as yours, if you keep rubbing, you'll rub my face raw."

Feeling a little weak from Valensa's hugs and rubbing against her, Tia cleverly pushed Valensa away gently before things escalated to the point where they both couldn't control themselves, and continued with their previous conversation:

"Although most of the people who participated in the design of the duel barrier were unwilling to reveal information to me, hard work pays off, and I finally found a breakthrough."

That guy was even one of the lead designers of the core of the Duel Barrier, and the most trusted deputy of the sage in charge of the project. I've already signed a formal contract with him. If we can help him figure out one thing, he'll hand over the entire design of the Duel Barrier and give me his own research notes from when he participated in its construction.

"If I could really get my hands on the blueprints and development notes for the duel barrier, I think I wouldn't even need to ask Friggia for help; I could figure out a way to fool the duel barrier myself."

"If that's the case, then that would be wonderful."

Valensa smiled and nodded, but she wasn't overly excited. Instead, she calmly asked:

"But if he's offering so many good things, his conditions must be quite demanding, right?"

"Hmm...it shouldn't be too difficult, right?"

Tia thought for a moment and said:

"That guy is over 30 now, and his family is pressuring him to get married... He has a childhood sweetheart, and they have a very good relationship. Although they haven't held a wedding yet, they've been living together like a real couple for a long time. He originally planned to go back to his hometown with his sweetheart to hold the wedding once he finished his current research project."

"..."

Valensa's expression immediately turned strange.

People who say things like "I'll go back to my hometown to get married after XXX is over" are very likely to run into trouble.

Tia has been playing various video games for over a year, so she knows this famous meme, and her expression becomes very strange:

"And then, not long ago, his lover got into trouble."

"problem occurs?"

Valensa raised an eyebrow:

"What happened? Is he really dead?"

"do not know."

Tia shrugged:

"That's why he needs our help to investigate the truth."

Before Valensa could ask any further questions, Tia gave a brief account of what had happened.

Although the headquarters of the Sage Council is called the Sage Tower, not all residents of the tower are sages.

While many of the sages in the Sage Tower are descendants of those who inherited their skills within the tower, many others are ordinary spellcasters who joined after advancing to the Radiant Rank and choosing the Sage path.

Before advancing to the Radiant rank, these spellcasters, whether as adventurers or engaged in other work, rarely go alone; they usually have one to three fixed teammates.

These spellcasters' fixed teammates usually join the Sage Council after the spellcaster joins, becoming the sages' right-hand men and forming a powerful Radiant Rank team with the sages.

The sage's assistant who signed the agreement with Tia was named Mord.

Morde's teacher was a wild sage who joined the Sage's Tower with his teammates. He lost his fertility due to excessive addiction to magic when he was young, and had only Morde as his apprentice, whom he treated as his own son.

The two half-elves who joined the Sage's Tower with that wild sage were a man and a woman. They formed a family and had a daughter named Lily, who was Mord's childhood sweetheart.

Morde inherited his teacher's talent in research and has been engaged in the development of magical items in the Sage's Tower for many years. Although his magic power is not weak, he is not good at fighting and may lose to someone two levels lower than him.

In contrast, Morde's lover Lily is highly talented in combat and has inherited the abilities of both her parents. She is an excellent ranger knight who is also skilled at tracking and often carries out hunting missions issued by the Sage's Tower.

Lily also participated in the Sage's Tower's pursuit of the necromancer Savat Landon, joining the pursuit team as a scout and a combat-type sage.

Lily is a combatant in the Sage's Tower who is often active on the front lines. As her lover and a magic item developer, Mord naturally equips Lily with the latest magic items.

Besides providing all-around assistance to Lily in battle, those magical items also contained some of Mord's personal motives.

Because Lily is a half-elf girl with fair skin, a beautiful face, and a great figure, and she is often away on missions, Mord is very worried that Lily will meet bad men.

So, in some of the magical items that Lily was equipped with, Mord secretly implanted a function that could monitor Lily's health and whether she was having an affair.

Fortunately, although Lily had been harassed and pestered by men while on missions over the years, she had never done anything to betray Morde and remained indifferent to the men who harassed and pestered her.

Until this time.

Although Mord knew that Savat Landon was an extremely dangerous person, he felt that with the combined forces of the Sage's Tower, the Church of the Sun, and the Witch's Forest issuing a warrant for his arrest, and with the pursuit team led by a combat-type sage, and Lily herself being very cautious, nothing should happen.

Unexpectedly, late at night six days ago, while Mord was in a light sleep after finishing a day's research, he suddenly received two magical signals. These two magical signals both came from functions he had secretly implanted in Lily's magical artifacts, respectively indicating that Lily was in a life-threatening crisis and a crisis of chastity.

Mode was extremely worried and immediately tried to contact Lily, but he couldn't reach her no matter what he tried.

The next morning, just as Mord was about to go to the hunting team to check on them, he received a message from Lily. Lily said that nothing had happened the night before and that Mord shouldn't worry.

Mode also wanted to be less worried, but he was a wise assistant.

Compared to human emotions and language, Mord trusted magic circuits more; he didn't think the problem lay with the function he had secretly implanted in the magical artifact.

Mord believed that something must have happened to Lily and was very worried.

But after Lily took the initiative to let Mord know she was safe, she disappeared again, and Mord couldn't contact her no matter what he tried.

Mord was merely a research-oriented sage assistant, and he and Lily were not officially married. He had no authority to inquire about or interfere with the hunting team's affairs, and could only worry helplessly.

Just then, Mord found out that Tia was inquiring about the principles of duel barriers.

Although revealing this trade secret technology would result in severe punishment from the Sage's Tower, Mord was more worried about his childhood sweetheart.

Besides, as long as the violation goes undetected, there's no need to worry about punishment from the Sage's Tower.

So when he learned that Tia's technical principle for creating the duel barrier was only to help Valensa cheat in the match and not to do anything big, Mord gritted his teeth and signed a contract agreement with Tia.

Tia will try to help Mord find out what happened to Lily, and Mord will hand over the design blueprints and research notes of the duel barrier after he knows about Lily.

"So, our next step is to investigate this ranger knight named Lily?"

After listening to Tia's explanation of the whole story, Valensa thought for a moment and said:

"This shouldn't be too difficult... This pursuit of Savat Langdon is a joint operation by the Church of the Sun, the Council of Sages, and the Witch Forest. The hunting teams from the three parties should be in contact."

"Tomorrow, I'll ask Sister Ellie to contact the church's hunting team to see if they can pinpoint the location of that ranger/knight's group. Then we'll go directly to her and ask her."

"That is indeed a feasible solution, but..."

Tia first smiled and affirmed Valensa's plan, then changed the subject:

“If Lily herself really has a problem, going directly to her might alert her... or we might be fooled by her superb acting skills, and even if she has a problem, it will be difficult for us to find out.”

"That... is true."

Valensa thought for a moment and nodded slightly:

"Even the sage's assistant, who was the Ranger Knight's childhood sweetheart, only vaguely sensed that something was wrong with her, but couldn't find any concrete evidence. So it's highly likely that we two, who didn't know the Ranger Knight at all before, will also find it difficult to discover any suspicious points."

"Boom..."

Valensa puffed out her cheeks again as she spoke:

"Natia, how do you think we should investigate?"

"It's very simple."

Tia chuckled softly, stretched out her hand, opened her palm, and gathered magical light on her palm, soon constructing a projected map of the eastern region of America.

A point on the projected map flickers with a soft white light.

"Let's go investigate here first."

Tia pointed to the point on the projected map that was flashing white light:

"Whatever exactly happened to Lily, it should be related to the night she faced both a life-threatening crisis and a crisis of chastity. This is the place where the magical artifacts on Lily transmitted magical signals to Mord when the incident happened, and there may still be some clues left there."

"Okay, let's go check it out tomorrow."

Valensa immediately agreed to Tia's proposal.

After discussing business and deciding on the next steps, the first half of the night was naturally spent in intimate conversations between the girls.

During her heated conversation with Tia, Valensa vividly recounted her experience of being defeated and bound by tentacles in the Anese realm, almost truly succumbing to its power.

She didn't hide her fear at the time, and took the opportunity to cuddle and act coquettishly in Tia's arms. She also didn't hide the strange excitement and anticipation she felt at the time, and looked at Tia with the same excited and expectant eyes while telling the story.

Tia didn't have tentacles, so she could only rummage through her storage space and find a soft rope to replace them. Based on Valensa's memories, she tied Valensa up tightly to simulate the scene where Valensa almost lost and fell into despair.

This time, however, there was no Ereshkigal cutting the ropes to save Valensa with the Blazing Sun Sword, nor was there any so-called counterattack plot, and the new CG of the female knight's defeat was successfully unlocked.

Although this new CG wasn't a real defeat, but just a fun role-playing game, Valensa and Tia had a blast... If they hadn't had to go out to investigate the next day, they probably would have played all night.

The next day, just as dawn was breaking, Ereshkigal entered Valensa's room, forcibly dragged Valensa out of bed, and ignored the fact that Valensa was only wearing black stockings and that Tia, who was also only wearing white stockings, was fast asleep in her arms.

Valensa naturally complained incessantly, but Irene argued that as a paladin favored by the sun goddess, it was Valensa's duty and obligation to offer devout prayers every day at sunrise.

That makes perfect sense. As a formal paladin, there is indeed a custom of praying to the sun goddess first thing in the morning.

Valensa always did this, except that she would only offer her prayers according to custom after she woke up naturally.

The idea that one must pray at sunrise, as Ereshkigal did this morning, has been around for a while, but it's not a mandatory requirement. Besides, Valensa has been staying at the Church of the Sun these past few days, and this is the first time she's been forcibly dragged to the prayer room at dawn.

This is clearly Ellie deliberately messing with her.

"Uh, that..."

So after about half an hour of routine prayers, Valensa asked with a wry smile:

"Did I make you angry yesterday, Sister Ailei? I can apologize, but at least let me know what I did wrong, right?"

"Hmph, you have the nerve to say that?"

Irene's face immediately turned red:

"I know your fiancée just came back from the Sage's Tower, and you two haven't seen each other for days, so it's normal for you to want to get intimate... But couldn't you have kept it down? You could have put up a soundproof barrier! Do you know how many sisters didn't sleep well last night and came to me to complain about you? No wonder you were able to catch that perverted serial killer Anesse as soon as you arrived... You really are a pervert! A complete pervert!"

"what?"

Valensa was stunned and stammered, "..."

"Sister Aileen, you...you all heard that? No...doesn't my room have any soundproofing magic? The rooms I stayed in in Gondia and Arant clearly did!"

"There are indeed rooms like that here, but..."

Irene rolled her eyes at Valensa, clearly annoyed.

"You're only staying in a standard room, which you chose yourself, haven't you forgotten?"

Chapters 121-123: Do Not Drive Dangerously!

"Ah this..."

Valensa stared blankly for a few seconds, then opened her mouth weakly but made no sound.

This is indeed the case.

Valensa knew that she and Tia usually made noises at night that disturbed other people's sleep, whether they stayed in hotels or the Sun Church. So when choosing rooms, they would always prioritize those with soundproofing.

However, when Valensa checked into the Sun Church in Mosantina, Tia happened to be at the Sage's Tower inquiring about the dueling barrier for her. Valensa, wanting easier access, chose to stay in the guest room, and then forgot about it after Tia returned, resulting in…

Alas, it's all over, the shrew is doomed!

Sure enough, during breakfast in the Sun Church's dining hall, many priests and paladins were secretly pointing at Valensa and Tia, covering their mouths and chuckling.

After figuring out what had happened, Tia was also extremely embarrassed and angry, and she vented all her anger on Valensa, pinching and stomping on her with her hands.

Unfortunately, no matter how much Tia vented her anger on Valensa, it couldn't change the fact that the two had already partially died in the Sun Church in Mosantina.

I can't stay here any longer!

Valensa naturally shared this thought. Since she still needed to investigate Lily's matter, she and Tia said goodbye to Ellie after breakfast.

Eresh didn't try to stop them, but asked Valensa and Tia what their plans were next.

Considering that Ellie had been the captain of the paladins in Mosantina for many years and was quite familiar with the entire eastern mountain range of America, Valensa briefly explained Lily's situation and even pointed out the location of Lily's accident on the map for Ellie to see.