Chapter 171
Chapter 171
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 171
Chapter Title: Winds Before the Rain
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Wind blew.
The humid air, carrying the scent of earth just before rain, wrapped around Shahaad's body once and swirled.
Feeling the damp air cling to his skin, Shahaad paused his swinging sword and lifted his head.
"Are you planning to call it a day?"
"My knees ache, and it looks like rain."
His aide, who was handing him a towel, let out a hearty laugh at Shahaad's words.
"You're saying the same thing as my grandmother?"
"Lately, my clothes feel shorter every time I wake up."
Shahaad wiped the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead with the towel, joking around.
A lighter body than his peers among the noble ladies, feeble stamina—those were now things of the past.
Now, his eye level was nearly even with his aide's. His frame was still lean, but that was just because his belated growth spurt hadn't fully caught up yet.
He'd probably end up taller than most knights once his growth phase finished.
The aide smiled as he took back the familiar towel, recalling how Shahaad had once looked like the bare branches of a winter tree.
"Another report came in today."
"...How amusing."
Shahaad's tawny eyes scattered a hazy light, blending with the slowly setting sunset.
After fully deeming Ceria an enemy, Shahaad had chosen perfect concealment.
A search began, alongside total control of all information about himself.
The intelligence gathering that followed filtered only the crucial details and delivered them straight to him.
Yet reports like this arrived every single day. This meant Ceria's faction had deep roots, and there was a wealth of related information.
On top of that, there was a growing reason why extracting information had become even more vital lately.
'No idea what trick Ceria pulled.'
It was that Ceria had manifested a Trait.
As far as Shahaad was certain, Ceria had nothing noteworthy beyond a Trait presumed to be a seal.
Otherwise, with the other siblings' Traits blocked by seals, she wouldn't have failed to stand out for over a decade and still claim the Crown Princess position.
No, it wasn't that she hadn't ascended—it was that she couldn't.
Until just recently.
"It's confirmed that Ceria's manifested Trait is mana-based, right?"
"Yes, Lord Shahaad."
After a quick shower, Shahaad dressed and walked briskly.
At first, he'd honestly thought it was a ruse. Otherwise, the utterly incompetent Ceria until now had no reason to suddenly reveal her abilities.
But judging by the current circumstances alone, it was clear Ceria had acquired a powerful Trait.
'Because she seems as eager to try it out as I was when I first gripped a sword.'
She was acting like it was a mistake, but that had happened three or four times over the past two or three weeks.
Ceria herself might be holding back and letting slips, but in a situation where the imperial family had pretended for nearly twenty years that no remarkable Trait inheritor had appeared, three or four slips in under a month didn't add up.
'No, should I praise her patience instead?'
After the Trait seal broke, convulsions wracked the body to the point of twisting, vomiting up everything eaten until only bile remained.
She might have stronger endurance than Shahaad himself, who had swung a sword with that frail body in overwhelming joy and ecstasy.
"It seems Innocent's words are reliable. What do you think? Including that they're targeting me."
"It would be best if I stopped checking them any further."
Shahaad skimmed the report and passed a few pages to his aide.
"You're the only one who suspects them this much, even after signing a divine contract, Iel."
Shahaad's aide, Iel, replied as he read the papers.
"A divine contract isn't omnipotent. To begin with..."
He lowered his voice midway through the report.
"Even gods aren't omnipotent."
If they were, there wouldn't have been a Pantheon to begin with. There would only be one true, sole god.
"Just as I joined hands with Innocent, it's certain Ceria has allied with the Holy Saint Church."
"Otherwise, they couldn't have passed off that saintess statue's price so smoothly. We poured over half our intelligence personnel into it, and all we barely confirmed was whether the saintess statue actually exists."
Shahaad rubbed one eye and his cheek with the palm of his hand, now callused enough.
The continent was vast. Without warp gates, traveling from metropolis to metropolis took at least thirty days, and communication relied mostly on human couriers or carrier pigeons due to costs.
Thus, the value of information sometimes exceeded imagination.
Unless one had trained and prepared intelligence personnel in advance, Shahaad—who had only recently gained power—opted for selection and focus instead of gathering intel from all directions.
Allying with Innocent and investing in verifying the information they provided.
"Amusingly enough, right? From that wastrel Adelian foolishly handing the saintess statue to Ceria's side, to its effects—Innocent told us everything."
We invested a third of the gold spent so far just confirming if that was true.
"And another third was essentially costs for digging into the Holy Saint Church."
"All we gained was proof that Innocent's information isn't false."
Shahaad's point—that while one couldn't trust everything blindly, there was no need to start from scratch suspecting lies from the outset—made Iel bow his head.
"I'm always on Lord Shahaad's side. So from today, we'll accept Innocent's information after light cross-verification. And honestly... it was all hard-to-believe content, wasn't it?"
You wouldn't swallow shared information lightly. Most of what they said would be dismissed as nonsense by any ordinary person.
'An artifact that can request miracles, and not black mages or for gaining infamy quickly, but a religion that literally offers humans as sacrifices to gods.'
Iel shook his head. The former was one thing, but the latter made even less sense.
Most gods' power was determined by human faith.
Even the most vile and evil gods needed at least those who acknowledged them and fanatically believed—no need to torture and kill indiscriminately.
Brainwashing with drugs to extract even false faith would be more valuable.
Desiring pain was the way of black mages. They needed black mana born from intense, deeply negative emotions, not faith or devotion.
Pain, anger, sorrow, wrath, despair, shame. Negative, corrupted mana from such sources.
'But for worshipping gods, why would they need that? Not even evil gods want it. Gods desire faith and belief. Worship. But if they want such negative emotions...'
"Could demons be involved? Then the Holy Saint Church might actually worship the Demon King, not a god."
At Iel's words, Shahaad opened his mouth.
"If so, the choice Ceria would make if I started standing out..."
Before Shahaad could finish, the lights throughout the area extinguished.
Pitch-black darkness.
"It's magic."
"But we had countermeasures in place, surely?"
It was as if someone had covered their eyes with both hands—nothing visible.
From not far away came a gurgling sound, like someone spewing bloody foam.
Shahaad and Iel drew their swords, using mana sense to find each other and press their backs together.
"It wouldn't neutralize all the warning and defense spells at once. That would send off completely different signals, so it's probably just temporary disruption followed by a vision-blocking spell."
"Then calculate how long we need to hold out for the knights to arrive, Iel."
"Ten minutes. Ten minutes."
"Chances?"
A dazzling aura began to rise slowly from the sword Iel held, and faintly, an aura clung to Shahaad's sword as well.
"Excluding you, Lord Shahaad—they'd base it on me alone."
100% certain.
The moment Iel said that, the sound of a door opening echoed through the thick darkness.
* * *
"No, why'd you stick your hand in a passing whale's blowhole?"
Everyone assembled thinking a monster had appeared when Rachel flew off in a parabolic arc through the sky, but that was the conclusion.
She'd spotted a whale leisurely swimming up near the surface to breathe and jammed her arm right into its blowhole.
"No, it was right there in front of me—how could I not? But I didn't expect it to blast me like that just from sticking my hand in that big hole!"
"What would you do if someone shoved a finger up your nostril?"
"Kill 'em?"
It just occurred to me—shouldn't "do as I say, not as I do" be entered into the dictionary of idioms by now?
"Rachel, really."
"Thanks to Junior Rachel, I got to see something fun. How was it flying through the air?"
I shook my head at Rachel, who was growling while pointing at her nose, and the others laughed like it was hilarious.
Even the pirates, who kept glancing over, were snickering, so their initial wariness had eased.
But that didn't mean they saw Rachel as a fool for her idiotic stunt—because the moment she fell into the sea, she'd uppercut the whale, lifting its head, then walked back across the water.
Their eyes, which had initially looked down on her as just Elis's guest, had changed a lot.
They weren't ordinary sailors but pirates, so their rough dispositions were inevitable. Crushing them with force without reason wasn't the way.
'But since they're pirates, if I show them solid monetary rewards and that we're no pushovers, they'll be useful at least until I fetch our healer Levi.'
Pirates had no loyalty to begin with. Plus, once Arman grew stronger, they'd need to be eradicated anyway.
'But if Zero can control Elis.'
They could handle the dirty work Arman couldn't easily do, or keep minor pirates in check.
No matter how much I built up Arman, without fully detaching the Southern Sea Archipelago from the Empire, there were limits to expanding forces by quantity rather than quality.
Even eradicating pirates, small-scale ones moving around were hard to police one by one, and they could never be completely wiped out.
So raising Elis situationally into a two-river system was an option...
'And since they're pirates, not navy, they could assemble in an emergency.'
It would come down to a fight between the evil god cult and the continent anyway.
Lost in thought for a moment, I felt a faint vibration. Pulling out the Siren, that chewy rice cake-like thing was trembling.
For those like Kane, Zero, or Alkaid who might contact without reason, the Siren connected immediately, but now it was vibrating, and looking at the mark appearing on its body.
"Arrived, huh."
[—Yes. Administrator.]
The Siren had finally reached the airship in the Spirit Forest.