The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Then she finally let go of him. She slid right off his lap and climbed down the edge of the tall bed before she turned around to look back at him.

”I will come back up here every single day.” Aria promised. ”I miss Papa too.”

She gave him one last, heavy pout.

She opened her mouth to say something else. But she just hesitated and closed it again. So she just spun around on her heels and walked quickly out of the bedroom.

Adrian just watched her leave the room. And he let out a very soft sigh.

”Well.” Adrian chuckled as he looked over at Serena and Claire. ”I guess now she is finally starting to keep some secrets from me too.”

The two women just stood there by the wooden door.

”Every child actually does that when they start to grow up.” Claire noted flatly. ”I hid a lot of things from my father. But that was mostly just because he never actually appreciated a single thing I ever did for him.”

Serena looked at the injured knight and then looked straight back to Adrian.

”I told my father absolutely everything.” Serena countered quietly.

Adrian just shook his head. And a wry smile slowly formed right on his face.

”Well.” Adrian said. ”You two were brought up in radically different ways. So it is totally no wonder that you both have completely different answers for the exact same question.”

He laid right back down on the feather pillows and stared straight up at the wooden ceiling. Then he took a deep and painless breath.

”We will be going back home to Oresfall in exactly six months.” Adrian told them. ”Because the exact day my mana veins completely recover, we will pack our stuff up and leave.”

Near the borders of the Avarice Kingdom, two massive armies stood against each other.

On one side stood an elite force of knights. And every single soldier was completely clad from head to toe in thick and heavy full plate armor. But this wasn’t standard issue gear at all. The steel plates were completely different from the norm because they were covered in glowing runic carvings. The runes was carved directly into the metal.

But they were heavily outnumbered.

Because for every one of the runic armored knights, there were at least five men standing right on the other side of the battlefield.

The opposing army was incredibly massive but they looked completely standard. Most of the infantry just wore basic chainmail and hardened leather armor. And the actual knights standing at the absolute front of the ranks just wore generic steel plates. But they definitely had the numbers advantage. Because they were making up a massive alliance formed by several different territories from all across the Crestwall Empire.

General Vekar paced back and forth right on top of the towering stone wall.

He kept his cold eyes locked right on the enemy soldiers lining up in the grassy plains below. He watched them for a few seconds before he finally glanced back down at his own men.

His defending soldiers were actively separated into three standard groups. The archers were already stationed right up there on the wall with him. Down below, the heavy infantry and light cavalry just waited near the massive gates. The infantry was by far the largest group in his army. And the cavalry was basically the smallest.

So Vekar looked right at his archery captain and gave a sharp, downward chop with his hand.

And the exact moment he gave the signal, the archers opened fire.

Hundreds of men violently pulled back the heavy bowstrings of their longbows. They let loose a massive volley of steel tipped arrows. It took them roughly ten seconds to notch, draw, and fire every single shot. But Vekar knew that the firing speed was going to drop drastically as the battle dragged on and severe muscle fatigue actually set in.

That was exactly when his heavy infantry would have to step right out the gates and do the real work.

He looked straight down at the men gripping their shields. And he knew for a fact that a huge chunk of them were going to violently die in the battle today. And the rest of them were going to come back heavily injured.

But that was just how war worked.

Vekar let out a very soft sigh. He turned his head and looked right past the courtyard. He stared directly toward the massive and luxurious mansion sitting completely safely in the center of the territory.

That was exactly where Marchioness Vaneira was currently hiding. She was legally the ruler of this land. But she had never once stepped foot on a real battlefield. She didn’t know the first thing about actively commanding an army or actually keeping her men alive.

Vekar just shook his head. He turned back around to watch the very first volley of arrows hit the enemy lines.

And his stomach instantly dropped.

Because to his absolute horror, the massive rain of arrows literally did nothing. The steel tips didn’t pierce the thick armor at all. They didn’t even leave a single scratch. Because every single arrow that struck an enemy soldier just bounced harmlessly right off the runic plates. The heavy steel arrowheads just slipped to the side and clattered uselessly into the dirt.

The enemy soldiers didn’t even flinch. Heck, they didn’t even raise their shields to block. They just kept marching forward in perfect unison at a incredibly slow and steady pace.

Vekar frowned hard. But he didn’t tell his archers to stop.

The tired men on the wall just kept firing volley after volley. But no matter how many thousands of heavy arrows they dumped right into the opposing army, it made zero difference.

Just a few short minutes into the massive siege, the archers were already getting really tired. Their shoulders were burning and their fingers were bleeding. But they didn’t stop.