"I've changed my mind."
At breakfast, Artoria was shoveling rice into her mouth while declaring, dead serious:
"My next destination is no longer Gloster. I'm switching to another location."
"Changing destinations is fine and all... but could you not talk with your mouth that full? Feels like you're about to choke..."
Watching her devour her food like a starved beast reincarnated, Guinevere was a little speechless.
"What are you talking about, I haven't eaten since last night—cough cough!"
Before she could finish her protest, Artoria choked violently as a piece of food lodged in her windpipe.
"But in that case, you only missed one meal, right?" Guinevere twitched an eyebrow. "Wasn't she always the type to skip three meals in two days? Why's she suddenly so weak to hunger... Wait, actually, fairies don't even need to eat that much to begin with, do they?"
"But this is Artoria we're talking about," Oberon muttered in a low voice. "It wasn't that she didn't want to eat before—she just didn't have the chance. Now that she can, of course she's not going to tolerate hunger again."
"...Fair point." Guinevere nodded in sudden realization.
"Sigh... Useless," Bavanzi sighed, taking over the conversation when she saw how pathetic Artoria looked. "Anyway, let me explain the rest. Artoria and I discussed it, and heading to Gloster right now isn't ideal."
"Why not?" Oberon asked. "Didn't we agree that Gloster's bell was the easiest to ring, so it made sense to go there first?"
"Well..." Bavanzi hesitated, looking awkward. "According to the simulation, if we go to Gloster, we'll get discovered and killed by Lancelot the Dumb Dragon right off the bat."
"Ah..."
Feigning surprise, Guinevere was just about to respond when Oberon interjected:
"What did you just say?" Oberon asked, looking puzzled. "Why did your mouth move but no sound came out?"
Guinevere blinked. His heart skipped a beat.
Crap. He nearly blew his cover. If it weren't for Oberon—the only one here without a system—as a reference point, he'd have totally exposed himself.
"Eh, no worries. Your opinion isn't important anyway," Bavanzi turned straight to Guinevere. "Anyway, you understand how serious this is, right?"
"Uh, actually," Guinevere raised a hand, copying her tone, "I didn't catch what you said earlier. Could you speak up a bit?"
"Huh?" Bavanzi blinked.
"Idiot!" Artoria had finally managed to cough up the grain of rice and immediately shoved Bavanzi aside in irritation. "Didn't you read the instructions for the fate simulation properly? Guinevere was only temporarily granted memory access for the simulation! After it's over, the simulator wipes any knowledge or memory he got from us."
Then, she reached out and tugged on Bavanzi's cheeks.
"And I told you not to talk about the simulation stuff out loud! The sound gets censored! Now we just look like idiots!"
"Aren't you talking about the simulation right now?!" Bavanzi shot back. "So it's okay for you but not me, huh, you damn shorty?!"
"S-Shorty?" Artoria's eyes went wide. This was the first time anyone had ever called her that.
To be fair, standing at 154 cm, she was rather short next to the 170 cm tall Bavanzi.
"You big dummy! If you hadn't gone off-script first, I wouldn't have even brought this up! Can't you be reasonable for once?!" Artoria was starting to lose it. "So what if you're taller? At least I have a brain! Do you?! You walking debuff!"
"What about it, huh? You smelly wild boar! All you know is eat, eat, eat! You choked yourself talking while eating—how is that my fault?! You useless waste of space! Oh, I get it! You're pissed because I called you useless and now you're just looking to pick a fight with me, aren't you?!"
"BS! If you think you're so capable, how about you clearly explain the situation for once?! I dare you!"
The two of them quickly devolved into a shouting match, arms flailing. Seeing a fight break out again, Guinevere hurried over to break it up.
"Okay okay okay, time out! Look, I don't know exactly what's got you two so mad, but we did catch Bavanzi's last sentence loud and clear. She mentioned that if we go to Gloster, Lancelot's gonna intercept and kill us, right?"
"Exactly!" Bavanzi nodded rapidly. "The stuff I said before that doesn't matter at all! Only some paranoid stress monster would obsess over the first half. The real point is in the second half!"
"Who are you calling a stress monster?!"
Just as Artoria was about to leap at her again, Guinevere quickly grabbed her by the waist and held her back with great effort.
"Can we please focus on the serious part first?" Even Guinevere was starting to lose patience. "Fight all you want later—but get the important stuff out of the way first!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Oberon nodded rapidly from behind. "Like, how exactly did you two find this out?"
"Obviously through simula—"
Before Bavanzi could finish, Artoria clamped a hand over her face and shoved her aside.
"Obviously through my amazing magical gadget that lets me predict the future! Duh!"
"Got it. Go on," Guinevere jumped in smoothly.
Honestly, Artoria's forbidden alchemy was really versatile. Not just functionally—it made for a convenient excuse to explain away anything system-related. As long as no one asked too many questions, they could bluff through it.
And Guinevere would make sure Oberon didn't dig deeper.
"Anyway, thanks to a one-time-use item from before, I was able to catch a glimpse of the future."
Artoria continued bluffing:
"And in all four futures I saw... we were intercepted and killed by the Fairy Knight Lancelot a few days later. She was hell-bent on taking us out—or more specifically, on taking Bavanzi out. But since she's a walking disaster, she figured she might as well wipe out Guinevere too."
"That bad?" Oberon frowned. "So, from what you saw, she's going to ambush us on the road from New Darlington to Gloster?"
"No, not quite," Artoria shook her head. "That dragon is going to patrol the skies around New Darlington with insane mobility and air dominance. The second she spots us, she's coming down full speed to wipe us out."
"Shit."
Guinevere winced.
No wonder he died so fast in all four simulations. If Lancelot's already this serious in the real world, how the hell is he supposed to survive?
"Can I ask what exactly happened in those futures you saw?" Oberon asked again.
"Yes, please. That's crucial," Guinevere nodded quickly. "The more intel we gather, the better our survival odds."
Not to mention, he really wanted to know how he managed to die so fast four times in a row.
"Let's see... I saw four futures in total."
Artoria pressed a finger to her chin, looking up in thought.
"The first time, we got caught off guard and were completely unprepared. She killed us in no time."
"The second time, we had some preparation. We hid back in New Darlington and didn't move for half a month. But we didn't expect that dumb dragon to keep patrolling the skies the whole time. She still found and killed us," Bavanzi chimed in.
That made sense.
Guinevere nodded quietly. So the first simulation lasted 7 days, and the second one a full 18.
"But she caught on to the fact that we were hiding to buy time," Artoria said, her expression darkening. "So the third time, she directly yanked us out of hiding in New Darlington and killed us on the spot."
Guinevere nodded again. That explained why the third run only lasted 8 days.
But then why did the fourth simulation last only 3 days, despite all that experience?
He really couldn't wrap his head around that.
"Then the fourth time," Bavanzi said with a deadpan glare at Artoria, "this pig-headed clanswoman of mine got sick of it and said she wanted to throw hands with Lancelot. So we tried to fight her head-on... and got instantly destroyed."
"Don't pin this on me!" Artoria shot up. "You were the one who said you had some spell that could trade one-for-one with her! That's why I agreed to help you fight!"
"And I wasn't lying, was I? I did trade with her!" Bavanzi huffed. "It's not my fault she whipped out some legendary blade that lets her survive a fatal hit at the last second!"
"It's called the Blade of Siming! How can you not even remember that, you dunce?!"
"What's wrong with being a dunce?! You and your pig clan have no right to talk!" Bavanzi fired back. "Even after I took out her cheat-death blade, you didn't follow up with damage! You just let her walk it off! You're useless!"
"Excuse me?! She had full health when the blade triggered! After tanking your spell, she still had full health! What was the point of your spell?! You traded for nothing! Because you fed her, the rest of us had no chance!"
"Screw you! Don't act like you didn't screw up! I did take out her death-cheat blade! You dare say I was useless... Come fight me! Let's see who's more useless!"
Under the increasingly stone-faced stares of Guinevere and Oberon, the two girls once again devolved into full-blown chaos.
"...Aren't you going to stop them?"
Oberon glanced at the two women as they progressed from hair-pulling to blasting each other with magic.
"...Nah, just let them go," Guinevere said, looking numb. "I'm used to it. Honestly, trying to break them up is a waste of time. We'd be better off thinking of our own solutions."
He sighed.
"But patrolling the sky like that is just plain cheating... We can't exactly dig a tunnel all the way across Britain, can we?"
"Ah—"
Oberon suddenly slapped his thigh.
"Actually, don't laugh, but that's not far off!"
He raised his hand excitedly.
"The leyline caverns beneath Britain—what the fairies call the Vein Corridors—they stretch all across the country! They could lead us straight to another city!"
"And there's an entrance to a Vein Corridor right near us!"
"If we can get in fast enough, Lancelot's aerial advantage becomes meaningless! Even if she follows us, the terrain down there will keep her from flying full-speed!"
Hearing this, Artoria and Bavanzi—still in the middle of their brawl—froze and stared at each other.
Wait... this intel-sharing session was supposed to help them come up with ideas together... but why did it feel like Guinevere and Oberon came up with the solution way too fast?
Didn't this make them—who spent a whole month simulating and still failed to solve the problem—look kind of... dumb?