All night long, until the sky had grown bright the next morning, she never showed up again. Maybe she felt guilty, or maybe it was for some other reason—or perhaps she was afraid Annie really would egg Tibbers on to carry out some terrible punishment, like a spanking or something?
In any case, the wicked Witch Merlin who had tricked Annie into going to that boring Roundtable Hold never appeared again!
And the strange old man with the iron mask, who looked like a villain and had a terribly foul temper but was pretty good at cooking—especially boiling prawns—didn't dare come back either.
So Annie slept comfortably in that little shack for the whole night. She didn't wake up until around noon the next day, and after leaving behind the pot with the few prawns she hadn't eaten and the giant prawn king that was half burned to charcoal, she started wandering around the lakes and swamps of Liurnia again.
"...Hey."
"Little girl, could you come over here?"
"I've been waiting here for you for a long time..."
Suddenly, after Annie had spent half the day wandering around, she heard someone call out to her in front of a dilapidated church. She had been about to look for a way to the Gatefront and find the main entrance to the Academy of Raya Lucaria.
"Huh?"
(゜-゜)
"It's him..."
("?ヘ?)"
When she looked in the direction of the voice, she soon spotted the strange guy she had seen before in Stormveil—in the Limgrave wilds, that was—the one who had tried to trick her by claiming there were powerful monsters down the mountain.
"Come over here!"
"I think we can have a chat?"
Seeing Annie sitting motionless on the giant bear's shoulder, the strange man in the white mask beckoned to her