Faced with the officer's seemingly respectful but actually wary questioning, Calia immediately gave the answer she had prepared long ago.
"I am the youngest daughter of Duke Wycliffe, Artoria Wycliffe, and this is my teacher, Mr. Sandor. We originally set out on a knightly pilgrimage, but this disaster suddenly struck, forcing us to suspend our journey and seek a way home. Meeting you was merely an accident."
Calia had her reasons for calling herself Artoria Wycliffe.
Artoria was the name of her favorite protagonist from the stories of female warriors and female knights that Ye Ting had told her, while Wycliffe was the surname of her maternal grandfather and of Terenas's queen's family.
As the daughter of Queen Lianne Menethil and the niece of the current Duke Wycliffe, Calia naturally bore a seventy-percent resemblance to her uncle. She was not afraid of being recognized by using this false name.
But to the soldiers before her, all her careful preparations were like casting pearls before swine.
Though he was the commander of this group, Oniens himself was nothing more than a country bumpkin from Andorhal. He had heard of Duke Wycliffe's great name, but had never heard of anyone called Artoria Wycliffe. Thus, he could only pretend to inspect the two of them before nodding and warmly inviting them to travel together.
At the very least, these two did look like genuine nobles rather than mad cultists of the Cult of the Damned. With the Scourge spreading everywhere, humans had to be more trustworthy than the undead, right?
Oniens comforted himself with that thought, then led the group onto the road home.
Unlike the centralized ancient Han Chinese, medieval Westerners lived in a true feudal age. Their lands were not governed by a developed bureaucratic system, but by one military lord