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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: TushChen
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Elena was visibly shocked. However, I had no intention of making her understand.
“It’s an incident that occurred within the territory of the Deinhart family. The decision lies more with me than with you.”
I spoke to Elena in a firm tone. Elin, holding Elena’s hand tightly, exchanged a brief glance with me, as if secretly exchanging each other’s secrets.
“But the victim is Elena. Can’t we do as Elena chooses?”
Elin replied as if refuting. It seemed that having gained an identity on how to treat others, she had become more confident.
While internally congratulating Elin’s step forward, I countered her words.
“No. Killing a priest who serves a god is a grave sin among grave sins. It means they’ll get the death penalty if caught anyway.”
Then I clicked my tongue slightly.
“I’m just executing it in advance, on their behalf.”
Elena trembled at the cruelty of my words. It was just as I said. However, the death penalty is carried out too humanely. Especially in my father’s era, painful torture hardly existed.
‘It must have been a literary device to let the readers know that the protagonist inherited his kind nature from his father…’
I also support the painless death penalty for most crimes. But this time is an exception. The blood spilled this time was too much to be an ordinary crime. It was unforgivable.
Moreover, this was for Elena’s sake. At the same time, it was also for Elin’s sake. If the Red Snake group were left alive, they would return as a threat later.
‘For some reason, that group kidnapped Elin. And if they find out that Elena is a saintess, who knows what they’ll do.’
I couldn’t guess what exactly they were trying to do by kidnapping a saintess. But as a religious terrorist group, according to the setting I created, they would surely use her to harm someone.
‘If there exists a plan to use Elena or Elin, I have to prevent it from being executed in the first place.’
I felt Elena’s sharp gaze staring at me. It couldn’t be helped.
The ball of goodness called Elena couldn’t understand me, who spoke of death lightly. But even if I was hated or despised, I would do what I had to do.
That was my conviction.
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Night fell. Only the faint moonlight shone under the pitch-black night sky as if a dark curtain had been drawn.
Due to the temporary inability to fly long distances because of mana depletion, reaching the village took quite some time.
Moreover, I had a lot of baggage in the form of Elin, Elena, and Nias, who insisted on tagging along.
“I will monitor if you really harm people.”
This was Elena’s argument. Elin sided with that argument.
“Me too.”
I had planned to take the two saintesses anyway, so there was no problem.
The encounter between the two occurred between the routes to obtain the strongest weapon according to the setting.
Then, it meant that the two would play some role in obtaining or using the weapon.
However, Nias’ line of reasoning still baffles me:
“Ah, it’s still spring and cold outside, so you’ll need me.”
“Why?”
When I asked back in disbelief, Nias grabbed the hem of her skirt and blushed.
“B-because… my body temperature is high, so I can be a heater!”
I smacked Nias’ forehead with a loud snap.
“There’s a limit to being stupid.”
“It’s true! It’s really cold and you’ll need a personal heater…”
Nias clung to me as if to show off. Indeed, Nias, whose body temperature was slightly higher than others, felt hot when she clung to me. Her black hair tickled my chin.
“My body temperature is really high!”
I knew that very well. How could I not know when she clung to me all the time?
“It’s dangerous!”
“I won’t make it dangerous!”
Seeing Nias’ desperate expression, it was difficult to refuse firmly.
In fact, if I could just take Nias and keep her safe, thanks to Nias’ curse, it would be like having an extra life.
Regarding short-term healing effects alone, Nias was superior to Elena and Elin.
I sighed. It was a strategic judgment, after all.
“…Stick close behind me. Run away if something happens. If you get hurt, you’re really dead.”
At my words, Nias smiled brightly with a lovely expression.
“I will! Thank you, Young Master!”
And so, in the end, four of us wandered the village again. Elena wanted to visit the temple near the plaza where the tragedy had occurred.
“It’s better not to go.”
I firmly cut off Elena’s suggestion.
“Why?”
Elena asked desperately. It hadn’t been long since the bodies of people like family had just been recovered.
There was no way they would show a child the horrifically dead bodies, so Elena hadn’t seen them yet.
I could understand the desire to know how they died, but there’s no way this frail human could handle the repercussions.
“No. There will be many soldiers guarding the area, and…”
At my words, Elena glared at me as if provoked.
But I could roughly predict the sight Elena would see if she went there. Countless bloodstains and ghosts. After seeing them, I didn’t want to see Elena trembling in fear and sorrow.
“You’ll cry. You’ll end up whining endlessly.”
“What?”
Elena’s expression cracked, probably quite shocked by the mean words that I had thought up using my head.
“That…”
“There’s no time for that.”
Elena was still unable to escape the shock my words had inflicted.
At that moment, as if protecting Elena, Elin embraced her.
“Don’t say that… It’s natural for a person to cry.”
“Lady Elin. I’m fine.”
Elena said, finding Elin’s attitude a bit unfamiliar.
“No. This kind of thing… needs to be said.”
Although still stammering, Elin was appropriately protecting Elena.
I let out a small sigh of relief inwardly. The situation was flowing as I had aimed for.
I was aiming for the reversal of the relationship between Elin and Elena.
Until now, it was a position where Elena seemed to protect Elin, but I wanted it to be reversed into a relationship where Elin protected Elena.
This was both for the true ending and for Elena’s sake.
There were two reasons in total. First, it would have been easier to satisfy the hypocritical tendency if Elin had been in a position to protect Elena.
Secondly, Elena was bright and intelligent but tended to trust others too quickly. Elin could be cautious about threats on Elena’s behalf.
“Elin. It’s okay now. Th-thank you.”
Elena seemed perplexed by being protected by Elin, her gaze wavering in all directions.
“No. Anytime… I’ll protect Elena. Just like Elena did for me.”
Elena wore a faint smile.
“Thank you…”
I said there were two reasons, but there was actually one more.
This was a situation not long after Elena had lost people she lived with like family. It wouldn’t be strange if Elena collapsed at any moment.
For the current Elena, Elin was the only comfort. Suppose Elin became a pillar on which Elena could lean. In that case, Elena might be able to get through this period without collapsing.
Elin and I exchanged glances briefly. We were in a kind of secretive alliance.
“Anyway, I can’t let you go in.”
Elena still had a dissatisfied expression, raising her eyebrows.
“But still…”
“Instead, I’ll take a look. I’ll tell you as much as I can about what I see inside. You shouldn’t be present at the scene.”
Elena nodded her head, frowning as if swallowing bitter water she didn’t want to.
“Okay, fine…”
And so, before starting the treasure hunt, we decided to visit the crime scene first.
There was something that bothered me, so I had planned to do that from the beginning. I could have bought clairvoyance at the store and examined it, but I had to go and find out directly.
As expected, my father posted quite a few guards near the temple. Since I couldn’t reveal my identity and enter boldly through the main gate, I decided to sneak in.
“It’s close to the square, so hide here. Don’t stand out unnecessarily.”
I warned the three who had been following me closely.
“Don’t even make a sound.”
While Elena and Elin nodded, Nias covered her mouth and nose with both hands. Was she holding her breath?
“…No, you idiot. You need to breathe!”
“Ah, yes! I- I’ll do it… quietly. Achoo.”
Nias pretended not to hear because she was embarrassed that she had misunderstood my words, using her cough as an excuse.
Did she think that would work? When I looked at her with a mixture of dismay and utter disappointment, Nias hid her face in the blanket she carried every day as if embarrassed.
Seeing such Nias, a small laugh escaped me. She was cute, though.
I flew into the sky.
‘Natural Assimilation’
When I reached a certain altitude, I activated Natural Assimilation and turned invisible.
It was an ability that didn’t activate between artificial objects like buildings. Still, I could freely activate it if it was in the sky with no artificial objects nearby.
I infiltrated the inside of the temple through the roof.
The corpses had already been recovered, so they were not visible, but traces of the massacre remained here and there.
Since it was a considerably large temple, a significant number of priests and holy knights were naturally staying there.
There must have been even more, including the priests accompanying Elena. With so many people’s blood spilled, this much was expected.
“But the real question is how they were killed?”
According to their doctrine, the priests of Nephthys receive at least the minimum training to use weapons. The holy knights are even more so.
They were stronger than most knights through a combat style that combined sacred magic and weapon techniques.
Instead, the rarity of the talent to use holy power was a disadvantage, resulting in a small number of them.
Anyway, sacred knights of Nephthys would not easily fall in most battles. Yet they were defeated. Moreover, there were clear signs that they couldn’t even put up a fight.
‘Wait, could it be?!’
I had a guess. However, it was still too early for “that” to come out.
In the unfortunate event “that” turned out to be true, things would take a much more dangerous turn.
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