“Hehe, it’s been five years since we last saw each other, hasn’t it? Caesare,” Elahan said.
“Saintess...”
The headache he’d forgotten about returned after five years. Caesare placed a hand on his forehead and let out a long sigh.
The Eighth Elahan was forrly known as Acht. Among all the Saintesses throughout history, she was by far the most free-spirited.
From the mont she could walk, she was constantly roaming around the temple, and once she began to speak, even the most patient priests would break into cold sweat from her chatter. What made it stand out even more was that the previous Saintess, the Seventh Elahan, had been a rigid, reticent type.
“It indeed has been a while. Have you been well?” Caesare asked.
“Yes!”
“I feel like I only just heard your appointnt ceremony had concluded, and here you are already. As energetic as ever,” Caesare said and smiled wryly as if he’d resigned himself to it. “Well then, please co in. I get a feeling that this isn’t sothing we should talk about at the entrance.”
“Thank you.”
Elahan stepped over the threshold of the church first, and Khan followed behind her, his face clearly displeased. If she hadn’t randomly grabbed him, he never would’ve co back to this city. He’d escaped the fox, only to run into a tiger and circle right back where he started.
The two of them sat on opposite ends of the sofa in the reception room, and Caesare began to speak while bringing in three teacups.
“Saintess Elahan,” Caesare called as he poured tea from the pot, looking her directly in the eyes. “The Church’s headquarters has issued a directive to all branches. Do you know what it is?”
“No.”
“It concerns your unauthorized departure,” Caesare said in a stern voice, like one delivering a rebuke. “They instructed us to locate you, determine your destination and intent, and—if possible—consider detaining you.”
Khan swallowed dryly at the serious tone. The Holy Church, for all its power and scale, rarely moved directly. This was even more so the case for the Grand Church. That’s why the Holy Iron Inquisitors typically operated independently.
The Grand Church usually granted each branch significant autonomy and expected them to handle matters on their own. And yet, now they were moving all branches to search for the Saintess—and even contemplating her detainnt? Just being next to her was enough to make Khan’s spine shiver.
Elahan, however, only smiled brightly at the news, and seeing that, Caesare’s stiff expression relaxed into a bitter chuckle.
“Wow! That’s quite the mission!” she said.
“Well, the fact that it was labeled a ‘directive’ probably ans it was mostly formal. Their true purpose was likely just the first two.”
“My destination and intent, huh?”
“I do have a couple of guesses...”
Even if no one else knew, Caesare did. It had been he who told Elahan about Leon the Hero. At the ti, he’d only wanted to encourage her, trapped as she was in the Church headquarters, unable to see the outside world until her ascension. He hadn’t expected that story to ignite such fierce determination that she would set off to find him.
“You’re tracking the Hero’s path, aren’t you? Since you’ve co to Blaine, I suppose you plan to visit the Academy next, then head to the mountains?”
“As expected of you, Caesare. You know so well.”
“Well, I’ve been with you since you were little.”
The orphaned Saintess Elahan had been raised by the clergy of the Church’s headquarters in place of her missing parents. They were all her mothers and fathers. Among them, Caesare had been assigned as her teacher when she was about three, guiding her in scripture and history.
“You were quite the mischievous child, even at that age.”
She used to scribble all over the holy texts—essentially historical artifacts—and draw indecipherable pictures.
Once, she played hide-and-seek and disappeared so thoroughly the cardinals themselves had to search the temple. They eventually found her fast asleep inside the kitchen cauldron, which made everyone laugh.
Elahan’s face flushed red at the mory as she snarked, “Why are you bringing up stories from when I was a toddler?!”
“No reason. Just... you haven’t changed.”
Understanding the implied aning a beat later, Elahan’s face twisted.
“You’re calling a child, aren’t you?!”
“Well, I am an elf. When it cos to humans, we tend to judge their age by what’s on the inside rather than the outside.”
“Oh, if that’s what you ant... wait, no! Are you saying I’m a kid inside and out?!”
“Impressive.”
“What is?!”
Caesare calmly folded his hands with a smile, satisfied at his successful tease.
As a final nail in the coffin, he added, “The Goddess says that self-reflection is the first step in spiritual growth. Looking in the mirror and questioning yourself is the mark of soone truly fit to be her staff. You’re proving yourself quite well, Saintess.”
“Ugh! Caesareee!”
Having lost the exchange, Elahan threw her fists at his chest in frustration, but Caesare only kept smiling. To a parent, a child remains a child even after they’re grown. Five years apart hadn’t changed the relationship between Elahan and Caesare.
“U-umph...”
Her tiny fists, however, now carried dozens of tis more force than five years ago, and Caesare had to hold his breath just to keep from groaning.
If he didn’t, he might’ve let out a pitiful yelp. Luckily, there was no one else around except...
Oh, no!
Only then did Caesare rember Khan was also in the room, and he turned to him with dread. Just imagining how the thug might mock him was mortifying, but Khan’s expression... was not what he expected.
Wait, is that... sympathy...?
That wasn’t a look a thug—soone who made a living stomping on others—would usually have. Every ti Elahan’s fist landed, Khan’s rough face softened as if resonating with so deep emotional bond.
Caesare neither understood nor wanted to understand what he was feeling.
Elahan finally lowered her fists, gave a shrug, and said with a sigh, “I can never win against you, Caesare.”
Now that she thought about it, she had never once succeeded in teasing him. Caesare was calm by nature, and beyond his skill and long life as an elf, he had accumulated vast experience.
Whenever theological debates broke out over scripture, it was often Caesare who stepped in to resolve them.
“If it’s you, Caesare, then I’m sure you’ve already guessed why I ca.”
Her eyes shimred with both trust and expectation, and Caesare nodded in affirmation.
“You wish to learn more about the day of the prophecy?”
“Exactly!”
“I thought so. There are hardly any written records left regarding the Day, so only soone like , who’s lived a long ti, would rember anything about it.”
The words of the Goddess—her oracles—were divided into two types: doctrines, which guided the faithful on their path, and revelations, which prepared the world for impending disasters.
Naturally, the day of the prophecy they were referring to belonged to the latter. The birth of the Hero and the descent of the Holy Sword. These were signs that a calamity lood that could not be overco by their power alone.
“A ti of chaos is coming,” Caesare declared. “Monsters will begin appearing in abnormal numbers and patterns, people will grow restless in response to fear and rumor, and those with ambition will exploit that unrest to stoke the flas of war. Criminals who once hid their faces will show their true colors, and cults long buried will resurface to plunge the world into disorder.”
“A ti of chaos...”
“Yes. The City Swallowing and the exploitation of vampires in Rubena, resolved by the Hero, were rely fragnts of what’s to co. Countless more crises, yet unknown, are surely taking form even now.”
In history, there was a term called “Golden Age.” It described a ti when everything reached its peak, when all went well—a period where both prosperity and glory coexist.
A ti of chaos was the perfect opposite of that. Perhaps it could even be called a dark age—when every injustice, every crack in the world, every negative trend festered and boiled over all at once.
“Be prepared, Saintess.”
It was the Hero’s destiny to challenge and overco that darkness. And since she had chosen to stand beside him, Elahan would have to confront the storm of that era head-on. Not doing so was simply not an option.
Elahan’s eyes lit with firm resolve as she said, “I’ve been prepared for a long ti.”
As if in response to her determination, golden light shimred beneath her robe. That sacred radiance seed to imbue her words with divine energy.
“The mission that has failed for three hundred years and through seven Saints—I will complete it. This ti, with the Hero by my side, I will save this world.”
Thus resolved the strongest Saintess in history, Elahan.
***
A sword and a Titan both made the sa sound.
“Hmm...”
“Hmm...”
They were seated a short distance away, gazing in the sa direction. Naturally, their line of sight led straight to Leon.
“He’s almost there... almost,” El Cid observed.
Kasim, sitting beside him, responded, “Even this pace... His progress is remarkable. Rushing further might cause complications.”
“No, if there’s anyone who can handle it, it’s this kid.”
El Cid hadn’t started Leon’s psychokinesis training on a whim. He was soone who only acted once he’d seen real potential. The problem was that no one else could see what he saw. Until the project succeeded, everyone assud he was just spouting nonsense or going mad.
“Even before he could use Aura, this kid was swinging his sword with sheer Willpower. He kept training a body that had already reached its limit. His ntal strength hasn’t changed much from a year ago. It’s still imnse.”
“He’s too good for a rubbish teacher like you,” Kasim said.
“What the hell? I’m too good for him, thank you very much.”
“I really don’t know about that.”
Kasim turned his head, refusing to entertain El Cid’s self-praise. There was nothing more irritating than soone who bragged and actually lived up to it.
Since El Cid’s boundless confidence never faltered, it was like yelling at a wall. It was better to focus on the only brother in suffering he’d ever had.
Brother, huh...
Who would’ve thought that after more than three hundred years, he’d end up with a sworn brother? It had been ridiculous enough when El Cid got sealed inside a sword, but now Kasim was teaching a brother of a different race? His long life as the Giant King felt like a joke compared to this.
At that mont, Kasim, still keeping his eyes fixed on Leon, noticed a faint distortion in the air around him.
“Rodrick!”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got eyes, too.”
“Do you really? Where are they?”
“Don’t bother. You won’t be able to stab them.”
“Hmph.”
It was a bizarre exchange, but their expressions were deadly serious.
A strange phenonon began to stir around Leon, along with a peculiar hum in the air. There was no physical force that could be asured. No mass, no heat, no pressure.
And yet the atmosphere warped. Sunlight from the ceiling curved unnaturally, like it was flowing around Leon’s body as though bending through a droplet of water.
“Hoh...”
It was a kind of spatial dominion. The most independent state of existence in the world—a territory extended from one’s own body as the axis.
In martial theory, the concept of unfolding a microcosm in order to touch the macrocosm referred precisely to this level. This was the first step toward transcending physical law, and at last, Leon had set foot in that realm.
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