They had chosen to travel via open flight previously simply because there were absolutely no walkable, structured paths slicing through that dense, primitive primeval forest. From this geographic junction onward, however, the terrain layout was composed entirely of open plains or rolling hills, but they were all completely connected by well-traveled public roads. For Remilia and the others, whose primary underlying purpose on this long trek was to naturally observe the diverse cultures and architectures of this alien world with their own eyes, they wouldn't continue to lazily choose flying as their primary mode of travel over civilized lands.
However, traveling over long distances entirely on foot didn't exactly seem like something high-born, dignified traveling nobility would ever condescend to do in public view. The small group had already thoroughly discussed the logical logistics of purchasing a private carriage the previous evening, so they weren't in any particular hurry to depart the inn at first light. After Sakuya and Meiling meticulously packed away all their traveling gear and personal luggage, Flandre's group boarded the newly acquired vehicle one by one, continuing their steady drive toward the southwest.
As the heavy wooden vehicle officially crossed the outer perimeter of the industrial town, Hong Meiling, who was comfortably acting as the primary driver on the exterior bench, immediately noticed several sharp, lingering gazes watching their departure from the alleyways. She carefully leaned back, keeping her voice low as she notified the group resting inside the carriage compartment.
Absolutely no one inside found this suspicious development strange or unexpected in the slightest. After all, their traveling group of six consisted entirely of women and young girls who appeared completely defenseless and wealthy to the naked eye. Yet, from their high-end tailored clothing to their expensive choice of food and premium lodging at the inn, they had spent their hard currency quite lavishly, making it incredibly difficult for the localized criminal underworld not to harbor intense ill intentions.
News always traveled at breakneck speeds within the confines of such small, isolated frontier towns; though the mansion residents had only stayed for a single evening, anyone possessing an interest in illicit wealth could easily find out that their total spending for that single night was astronomically high. Not to mention, they had casually bought a complete, sturdy carriage and a massive, healthy Camel-beast to pull it without once haggling over the price.
By the exact time they reached the quiet outskirts of the town limits, several armed figures began to openly follow them from a distance. However, those desperate highwaymen probably never would have imagined in their wildest, greediest dreams that these seemingly frail, delicate women resting inside the cabin were each structurally equivalent to an ancient, apocalyptic Tyrannosaurus Rex—perfectly capable of easily wiping them off the face of the earth without leaving a single trace behind.
Remilia's group naturally noticed the clumsy, trailing presence of those pursuing them as well. Far from being alarmed, the Eldest Miss let out a soft laugh and deliberately instructed Hong Meiling to slow the Camel-beast's pace to a casual stroll, ensuring the overconfident thugs behind them wouldn't accidentally lose track of their vehicle along the winding road.
After fully leaving the active borders of the town for about five or six miles, the surrounding landscape became entirely deserted and devoid of ordinary travelers. The desperate pursuers took a wide detour through the brush, running ahead to lay down a coordinated ambush within a small, dense grove of trees running parallel to the path.
There was a very distinct, tactical reason they had chosen this specific spot for their crime. Although localized human activity in this sector of Victoria was much denser than what they had witnessed in the desolate Iron Duke's Territory to the far east, normal civilians still wouldn't dare venture too far away from the protective walls of the mobile cities without heavily armed escorts. Out in the true wildlands, absolutely no one could guarantee they wouldn't suddenly encounter fierce infected beasts or highly poisonous wilderness insects. Once a lone traveler was targeted by nature in this area, it truly was a narrow escape from certain death.
This small grove happened to flank the only viable road heading due west, and its dense foliage provided excellent, natural concealment for a bandit party. A normal person approaching from the outside road would have absolutely no way of discerning that there was a lethal ambush waiting within the shadows. Thus, for the local criminals, it was considered an ideal, highly profitable location for a standard robbery.
Remilia's group, possessing supernatural senses that completely bypassed mortal stealth, easily spotted the armed guys lying in wait behind the logs. To this pathetic display, Remilia simply adjusted her posture on the velvet cushion, saying with a bright, beautiful smile:
"These desperate people certainly know how to pick a scenic spot; they have chosen quite a fine, peaceful graveyard for themselves today. Sakuya, I shall leave this minor cleanup task entirely to you!"
Sakuya Izayoi, who had been sitting calmly beside Hong Meiling on the driver's bench with her eyes squinted in a serene expression, immediately stood up and jumped off the moving carriage the exact second she processed Remilia's command.
"As you wish, Milady!"
With that crisp response, her physical form instantly vanished from the spot with a sharp whoosh of displaced air. Simultaneously, a thick, unnaturally cold layer of pale mist began to rapidly rise from the damp soil within the grove ahead, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to swallow the trees whole.
The heavy carriage came to a complete, gentle halt right outside the perimeter of the obscured grove. Inside the cabin, the passengers sat in complete silence, listening intently to the sudden, explosive bursts of absolute terror, agonized wails, and desperate, weeping pleas for mercy echoing from deep within the white fog.
Flandre's eyes lit up with excitement, and she tried to hop out of the carriage door to join in the chaotic fun several times, but Remilia firmly reached out and held her back by her collar each time.
"Flandre, remember that you are a high-born, proper lady of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Do not spend your entire day thinking about nothing but fighting, bloodshed, and killing."
Hearing her sister's lecturing words, Flandre could only let out a disappointed whine, regretfully poking her small head out of the carriage window instead. She stared enviously at the nearby woods, using her heightened senses to track the swift, terrifying rhythm of Sakuya Izayoi's methodical slaughter inside the fog.
In substantially less than ten full minutes, the screams completely died out, and Sakuya Izayoi walked calmly back out of the tree line. Her facial expression remained entirely indifferent, serene, and professional; not a single drop of blood or speck of dust had managed to soil the immaculate white hem of her maid uniform.
"Everything has been thoroughly taken care of, Milady," she reported gracefully as she walked up to the side window of the carriage compartment.
"Excellent. Then let us continue our journey without further delay!" Remilia gave a light, amused chuckle.
Sakuya hopped smoothly back onto the front bench, resuming her seat beside Hong Meiling, and the vehicle drove directly into the silent grove. The exact second they crossed beneath the canopy, Flandre's nose caught the thick, metallic scent of fresh blood saturating the air.
Sure enough, slumped right by the side of the muddy road, the first bandit lay motionless, his face frozen in a mask of absolute, paralyzing terror. There was a thin, perfectly clean, conspicuous crimson line slicing clean across his neck; he had clearly been dispatched with a single, lightning-fast slit to the throat by the Head Maid's silver daggers.
As the carriage continued its forward momentum down the path, the passengers soon caught sight of the other deceased ambushers scattered through the brush. Some had been cleanly strangled from behind, some had their throats perfectly slit at a precise angle, and others had their hearts cleanly pierced through with surgical accuracy. Counting them all up, there were actually more than ten armed men lying in the dirt.
Such a massive gathering of armed outlaws at once certainly wasn't a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment decision; it was highly likely a well-organized, recurring gang operation that dominated this specific sector of the frontier highway. It was just their absolute misfortune that they didn't expect to crash headfirst into an unbreakable brick wall this time; not a single member of their gang had survived to regret the attempt.
Or rather, if Remilia had permitted Hong Meiling to take physical action just now, some of the bandits might have been lucky or durable enough to survive the encounter with bruises and broken bones. But the one who was explicitly ordered to act was Sakuya Izayoi. As the dedicated Head Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, one of her primary, unyielding duties was to permanently eliminate all external enemies who could even remotely threaten the safety or peace of her masters. Besides, did anyone truly believe a powerful entity possessing an ultimate Spell Card proudly named [Night Fog Phantom Killer] could ever be considered a gentle, merciful soul to her enemies?
Around three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when the gang of thugs who had eagerly chased after the wealthy carriage still hadn't returned to their usual town haunts, the remaining townspeople and local fencing operations began to feel that something was deeply wrong. After all, their targets were merely six seemingly defenseless women; there should have been absolutely no structural difficulty or risk in robbing them blind. Were those guys simply having some prolonged outdoor celebration in the woods with their loot? If they didn't wrap up their business and come back soon, weren't they afraid of the fierce infected beasts that always emerged to hunt after dark?
But at this late hour, none of the remaining townspeople dared to venture out onto the isolated highway to look for them. So, they could only continue to wait anxiously by their doorways.
However, even when total darkness fell over the province, the bandit gang still hadn't returned, and only then did the criminal underground fully realize that something truly cataclysmic had occurred. When a search party cautiously combed along the path the following morning, they only located several heavily mutilated, partially eaten corpses scattered through that specific grove. Every other physical trace of the brief struggle or Sakuya's handiwork had been entirely destroyed by the wild scavengers and infected beasts that came out to feed during the night. Furthermore, Sakuya Izayoi's razor-thin dagger wounds were completely impossible to identify on the mangled remains. Thus, the local authorities could only ultimately conclude that the unlucky gang had simply run into a ravenous pack of wild beasts in the dark and lost their lives as a direct result of nature.
As for Remilia and the others, they had already comfortably arrived outside the walls of the next major settlement on their map.
After cleanly clearing out the annoying pursuers from the road, the carriage's overall travel speed significantly increased. Although driving over this unpaved Victorian dirt road was still undeniably a bit bumpy for the passengers, fortunately, the Camel-beast's stamina was excellent, and their pace remained steady.
Near the break of evening, they officially arrived outside their second major milestone town. Unlike the primitive, stagnant small border town they had departed from that morning, this settlement was a fully operational mobile town. It was considerably larger and far more architecturally complex than the localized mobile modules managed by the Reunion Movement. After all, the Reunion Movement's mobile platforms were originally small, repurposed military or industrial facilities intended for a single, focused survival purpose. A true municipal mobile town was vastly larger than a simple independent module.
Unlike when they were traveling through Zwillingstürme, where they had been forced to strictly follow the rigid schedule and pace of the larger merchant caravan and couldn't carefully study such massive mobile engineering marvels, now that they were acting entirely on their own authority, they naturally didn't care about what specific hour they entered the municipal gates. They took their time, observing the massive hydraulic systems and iron plates surrounding them while waiting patiently in the carriage line. They finally crossed the primary checkpoint and entered the interior city streets just before total nightfall.
"My, this layout is incredibly similar to the Reunion Movement's mobile modules; it is so tightly crowded and narrow!" Remilia noted, peering through the window curtains after their vehicle boarded the main mechanical street.
"That is entirely to be expected from an architectural standpoint," Patchouli stated, pushing up her glasses as she looked up at the towering, overlapping storefronts. "The physical scale of such a mobile town is permanently limited by the exact dimensions of its armored iron foundation plate and cannot freely expand outward like a traditional city. Therefore, all residential and commercial buildings can only be stacked vertically toward the sky. Because of this structural reality, the interior land here is naturally worth its weight in pure gold. In order to squeeze every single ounce of economic value out of every square inch of a mobile plate, the local governing lord would naturally order the houses to be built this incredibly densely packed together."
Patchouli adjusted her glasses once more, a look of deep academic skepticism crossing her face. In her view, the engineering limitations and structural liabilities of these mobile plates were simply far too great. She truly didn't comprehend why the survivalist people of Terra would go to such absurd lengths and spend such astronomical wealth just to build these moving iron platforms. The baseline manufacturing cost and daily mechanical maintenance of these things alone would easily be enough to rebuild several massive, beautiful traditional cities on stable ground.
"I just personally feel that these residential houses are far too densely packed together," Flandre chimed in, looking up at the rows of wooden balconies practically touching across the narrow street. "If a major fire were to suddenly break out in one of these alleys, wouldn't it be extremely dangerous for everyone living here?"