Prince Rhys was thoroughly fed up. He and Mieu had gone past twenty caves, and not one of them was the cave that they were looking for. They had just reached another cave.
"Ah! Prince, this is the one, I'm sure of it!" Mieu said excitedly, ushering Rhys over to the entrance of the cave.
"It had better be..." Rhys grumbled under his breath as he walked towards the cave with Mieu following behind.
When they got into the cave, a huge rock rolled over the entrance, stopping them from getting back out. Rhys looked around, and saw that the cave was full of monsters! He panicked slightly, then drew his hunting knife from its sheath. Mieu readied her weapon - a glove with very sharp claws on it.
"I was never expecting to fight. But I'll have to, for Maia is in danger!" Rhys said, swinging his knife and slicing the air in front of him.
"To be honest, I wasn't expecting this, either. Come on, Prince! Let's carve up some monsters!" Mieu said, springing forward and slashing two monsters with the clawed glove. The monsters retaliated by jumping on top of Mieu, pinning her to the ground. Rhys wasted no time in swinging his knife savagely at them, showering the cave walls with bright yellow blood.
When all the monsters were killed, Mieu got up and brushed the dirt off herself.
"Only a bit further. My internal detector is going crazy!" Mieu said, pointing to the end of the cave. Rhys went down, and Mieu followed him. There, someone was waiting for them!
"Hello there. I never expected someone to find me here." the person said.
"This isn't a game! A young woman was kidnapped, and I need the Sapphire to get her back!" Rhys shouted, getting slightly annoyed.
"Yeah, so I heard. She's been taken to a town past Shusoran."
"But where? I must know!" After Rhys had finished speaking, the person turned round. In the dim light of the cave, Rhys and Mieu could see that he was wearing a brown vest, a pair of grey pants and a gold belt. He had a cape clipped around his neck with a silver clasp, and he was carrying a long staff with an emerald set in the top. He also had bright green hair that was tied into a ponytail. The front of his hair was a little wayward.
"I'm Lyle. I come from Shusoran." Lyle said. Rhys gasped. Shusoran was a town where the Layans resided, and the prince had been brought up to have a bitter hatred of Layans.
"Are you... one of them?" Rhys asked slowly. Lyle snickered a little.
"A Layan? Well, yeah, but that doesn't make me a bad person. To be honest, I'm sick of this enmity. Anyway, you'll need my help to get into the Layan castles. Their doors will never open to Orakians." Lyle said.
"Well then, I'd better introduce myself. I'm Prince Rhys, who comes from the Chalst Province, the central province." Rhys said proudly.
"And I'm Mieu, a cyborg who would normally only help Orakians... but I'm helping the Prince get his Layan princess back." Mieu said.
"By the way, do you have the Sapphire?" Rhys asked. Lyle took a large blue stone out of his pocket and handed it to the prince, telling him that that was the Sapphire. When the threesome got to the entrance of the cave, it was still blocked.
"Rhys, don't worry, it's nothing old Lyle can't handle! Um, you don't mind me not calling you 'Prince', do you?" Lyle said.
"Not in the least, Lyle. Mieu, I don't mind if you don't call me 'Prince', either." Rhys replied. Mieu acknowledged what Rhys had said, and then Lyle strode towards the rock and readied his staff. He closed his eyes and the emerald glowed. When the glow was almost too bright for Rhys to look at, Lyle opened his eyes and stretched out his free hand towards the rock and swinging his staff backwards.
"Alright, let's rock this rock!" Lyle shouted, moving his outstretched hand slightly to the left. He then told Rhys and Mieu to make sure they stayed well back.
"Heeeeee-yaaaaaaaaaaah!" Lyle screamed, swinging the staff in a wide arc and shooting out a beam of bright green from the emerald. The rock was instantly blown back and thrown over 4 miles away.
"My favourite technique, that one. It can blow anything away." Lyle said, planting his staff on the ground. For information's sake, techniques are this world's equivalent of magic. Mieu was amazed, and she congratulated him. Rhys stood there in awe; he couldn't believe what Lyle had just done.
"How did you... that's just..." Rhys stammered. Lyle told the prince that he had been educated in the field of techniques, and that he had been using techniques for 4 and a half years now.
"That reminds me! I'm programmed to use some healing techniques!" Mieu said excitedly. Now that the threesome were out of the cave, they could now make their way to the Helskiz Province, so that they could get some more clues to the whereabouts of Princess Maia.