Dearest Anonymous, Let Me Be

Chapter 5: ARC 1 - The Lost Princess

Also, there is a mountainous terrain separating the east from the tower and Umi never had the stamina to climb a mountain.

So, West it is!

The West Kingdom is also the closest to the tower among the others. It will approximately take Umi a week's worth of walking on foot with proper breaks for meals and sleep. If there was a horse, it will cut down to a half but she had no horse or the skills to ride one.

So, walk it is!

Along their way, food was never a problem since there are a lot of wild fruits and herbs in this abundant forest. Umi also made sure to rip out the insignia of the Tower of Magic embroidered on her laboratory gown and wore the brown robe she had on her bag, just like how the original Fae did to hide her identity.

The original, after experiencing hell from the tower, feared being recognized as a royal so she ultimately hid her identity, completely left the idea of nobility, and decided to survive on her own.

Well, Umi had her plans. This identity of hers can help her in the future. So for now, she hid the piece of cloth with the embroidered insignia of the Tower of Magic in her bag.

Along the boundary of the West Kingdom, separating it from the Tower of Magic with a deep forest in between, lies a quiet and small, almost a hidden village.

This village is Umi's target as of now. Besides being the closest one from her original location, this small village is the farthest from the capital city and is clueless about the recent matters of the Kingdom since trading with other villages is rare to happen here and naturally, news about the latest events will always be delayed to reach this small location.

The original Fae was clueless and naive. She skipped this village, vigilantly entered a carriage full of goods to be delivered to the capital from this village, and that carriage only delivers once a year. She might be lucky to encounter the rare transportation of goods but the carriage was ambushed by bandits along the way. She was captured and was sold to a slave trader in a nearby town, a more developed location than this village.

Miraculously, she got out of the slave trader's headquarters and roamed around the streets of the town. There, she started to be a beggar for the next ten years while avoiding being caught by the slave traders.

Umi couldn't decide if Fae was lucky to be able to evade the door's death more than once or if she is misfortunate to be at death's door now and then.

Umi shuddered for a while. Well, those things happened to the original but not for her!

If she takes that path of self-destruction, then her foster father would better start crying in front of her grave due to extreme remorse of how stupid her adopted daughter turned out to be!

Examining the furthest hut from the center of the village, the one that is isolated from the other huts and is closest to the forest, Umi hid her small body behind a tree to scrutinize her target.

There, on a distance, she saw an old couple arranging the goods to be delivered to the capital. The old couple exchanged a few words with a few soldiers. One soldier examined the precious herbs from the couple, and after checking its worth, he gave the elderly couple a pouch with a few gold coins inside.

Once a year, this village provides precious herbs from the forest to the capital, including the elderly couple, to be given gold coins in exchange. Those gold coins will be enough to last the people here for a few months.

Soldiers are soldiers. Even if they stayed faithful with their original masters, they will still undeniably serve the one in charge of the kingdom. However, even if the Mad King has already risen to the throne, not all soldiers were his people. Furthermore, this is the West. So the soldiers here are not as bad as the ones in the South where the Mad King is.