No Duties, Only Rights
They had worried about who the Saintess would meet.
Arcelia Lumencia.
"Oh my…"
"This is impossible."
She had been extraordinary from the moment she was born.
"Hmm?"
"How can there be divine power like this…"
"Could she truly be an incarnation of the god himself?"
The priests of the Order stood clustered around a small child, watching her with rapt attention. They murmured under their breath, as if they could scarcely believe the sight before their eyes.
The child tilted her head.
"?"
She was only a few years old—barely old enough to speak properly.
And yet the divine power pouring from that little body already surpassed that of most high priests.
"Could Saintess Athena, who once stood beside Hero Carius, have been like this?"
"This is a blessing from the god."
"She might even… surpass her."
Still reeling from the shock of seeing her for the first time, the clergy could barely string their words together.
"Um."
"Y-yes, child? Speak."
"Can I have some bread?"
Arcelia herself simply blinked up at them, with no idea what all the fuss was about.
"Of course you may."
"Naturally—bring more bread at once!"
"Really?"
She only smiled brightly, delighted that they would fetch her more bread.
"We must protect her at all costs."
"I agree."
"I had been fretting that the current Saintess had no worthy successor… but of course, the Lord had a plan all along."
Only moments earlier the priests had been beaming at Arcelia. Now their eyes had turned deadly serious.
To them she was a treasure that had to be safeguarded by any means necessary.
If her existence could be summed up in a single phrase, it would have been this:
The future of the Holy Kingdom.
Nothing else would have fit quite so well.
Chomp, chomp.
"Hehe."
"……"
They could feel it. Inside the body of that brightly smiling child, munching away on her bread, lay a potential they could not even begin to measure.
Which was precisely why she had to be protected—from desire, from politics, from war… from every dark thing the world had to offer.
"It's yummy."
Perhaps even from herself.
It had all happened in an instant.
"At this rate… they'll find us any minute."
"……"
"I told you not to worry, didn't I?"
Ria scratched her cheek with a faintly sheepish smile.
Watching her, Juhan was, of course, not the least bit less worried. If anything, the situation had gone from bad to worse.
…Is she serious?
He had never imagined anything like this.
She had just roasted that enormous magical beast into charcoal with a single beam of light—and now she was telling him not to worry?
What even was that? It doesn't make any sense.
Until a moment ago he had been running through every possible theory about her identity.
She looked wealthy, yet she didn't carry herself with stiff formality. She didn't radiate any special aura, and she hadn't shown any remarkable power either.
I figured she was some noble's daughter at best.
But after what he had just witnessed, Juhan had already ruled out every possibility but one.
"Juhan?"
"……"
No way. This woman…
It was truly, genuinely absurd. But if the woman he had been traveling with all this time actually held the two-syllable title now forming in his mind…
He swallowed hard.
He had gotten himself tangled up with the wrong person. That was the only thought left in his head.
"Ah—they're coming."
Whether or not she noticed his turmoil, Ria simply smiled the same gentle smile as before.
Clop, clop.
The sound of hoofbeats grew steadily closer.
Just as expected, it was not one or two riders. Judging by the dozens of hoofbeats thundering toward them, it sounded as though every Holy Knight in the vicinity had been scraped together and sent after them.
Whoosh—
Boom!
And then a familiar Holy Knight dropped from the sky right in front of Juhan and Ria.
Hiss…
Had he leapt from some impossible height? Velkras, the Holy Knight who had crossed an unimaginable distance in a single bound, quietly took in the sight of the Saintess.
He pressed one hand to his temple as if the world were spinning.
"…Saintess."
The moment that word left Velkras's mouth, Juhan felt ready to faint on the spot.
You've got to be kidding me.
The woman I've been dragging around this whole time… was actually the Saintess?
He could not believe it. If she had introduced herself as the Saintess from the start, he would have snorted and brushed it off.
But the Holy Knight standing before them—Velkras—had just confirmed it with his own mouth, like a final nail in the coffin.
"……"
Now he had no choice but to believe it. In truth, there was nothing left to believe or disbelieve. The divine power she had just displayed could not be explained by any possibility other than "Saintess."
"What were you thinking, vanishing with nothing but a single letter left behind?"
"…I'm sorry."
Velkras was already scolding the Saintess, demanding how she could have simply slipped away without so much as a word of warning.
"Do you have any idea how terrified I was?"
"…Yes."
"I mobilized every Holy Knight in the area."
"…Yes."
"I even commandeered the soldiers of Enton Village on my own authority. I'll have to explain myself to the baron later."
"…Yeees."
With every reprimand, the Saintess's voice grew smaller and smaller.
"What if something had happened to you?"
There was no clear subject in Velkras's words. Exactly what—or whom—had he been so afraid for?
At last he pressed his fingers hard against his brow and leaned against a nearby tree, looking dizzy. In the end, the only thing he could still bring himself to say was this:
"Still… I'm glad nothing came of it."
"……"
Ria simply hung her head, with nothing left to offer in reply.
Only then did Velkras's gaze shift from the Saintess to the young man standing beside her.
He furrowed his brow slightly, as if trying to place a memory, and muttered under his breath.
"You're the one who…?"
A brief silence followed.
Juhan knew by instinct. If the woman next to him did not speak up right now, things were about to become extremely troublesome.
"W-wait a moment."
Ria must have sensed the same thing, because she hurriedly stepped between the two of them.
"This man hasn't done anything wrong."
"Pardon?"
"If anything, he was protecting me."
"Protecting the Saintess…?"
Ria—no, Arcelia—began making excuses on Juhan's behalf, insisting he had been looking after her.
A question mark practically floated above Velkras's head. That reaction was only natural.
Does she mean he handled dealing with people for her?
From Velkras's perspective, that was the only way to interpret it. Raised like a precious jewel inside the Holy Kingdom, Arcelia had always been clumsy when it came to dealing with people.
She simply did not know how to turn anyone away coldly—even when the person in question was a scoundrel trying to use her.
"Anyway, it's true. Juhan hasn't done anything wrong."
"……"
Velkras did not actually believe this young man named Juhan had been trying to exploit the Saintess. He already had a rather positive impression of him, and he had never once known Arcelia to lie.
The problem was that he had no idea what he was supposed to say next.
But Arcelia's words were not finished.
"So, you see."
"Yes?"
She took a step forward and addressed Velkras directly.
"Would it be all right if I asked you for a single favor?"
"…A favor, Your Holiness?"
Asking whether she might make a request of him. Velkras's eyes widened slightly in surprise.
This was the first time Arcelia had ever asked him for anything.
She was the sort of person who endured discomfort without complaint and insisted she was fine even when she needed something. That was simply who Arcelia was.
"…Yes. Please, command me."
"I would like to grant one of Juhan's requests. Could you help me with that?"
"This young man's request, you mean?"
"The truth is…"
She stepped closer to Velkras's side. The two of them glanced briefly at Juhan, then began speaking in voices low enough that only they could hear.
What now?
The conversation did not last long. They soon stepped apart again and both turned to look at Juhan from their respective places.
"Juhan."
Arcelia's eyes urged him to say what he wanted.
"Is there something you desire?"
Velkras's gaze said he was at least willing to listen.
"……"
Receiving those looks, Juhan did not answer immediately.
I mean… I haven't exactly thought about it…
He had never bothered to consider what he ought to extract from this situation. From the beginning, he had only been moving to forge a connection with this woman.
After a fleeting moment of thought, the answer that left his mouth was a single word: status.
"Uh… s-status?"
Lately he had been thinking it would be nice to have some kind of proper identity. Even just traveling to another region, explaining his origins and purpose every single time would not be easy.
An adventurer's plate only really gets you recognized elsewhere if it's at least Silver or higher.
And raising an adventurer rank that high in a short time did not look simple either.
"Status?"
"Status?"
He had blurted it out without really meaning to—without any great expectations.
"……"
"……"
For some reason, Arcelia and Velkras exchanged a look. Then, as if the same idea had struck them both at once, they gave each other a small nod.
A faint smile had already begun to curl at the corner of Arcelia's lips.
"Juhan."
"Yes?"
"Since you're an adventurer, you wouldn't want to be tied down to one place, would you?"
"W-well, yeah?"
Juhan nodded for the time being. It was less that he hated being tied down and more that the moment he belonged to any particular faction, troublesome business was bound to start piling up.
But Arcelia took both of his hands in hers and spoke.
"Juhan… have you ever heard of a Pilgrimage Knight?"
She was asking whether he knew what a Pilgrimage Knight was.
"A Pilgrimage Knight?"
Of course it was the first time Juhan had heard the title. He had only learned about Velkras's rank of Stigma Knight a few days ago.
A knight? Is she about to tell me to join the Order?
At first he wondered if she meant for him to enter the Holy Kingdom. If so, he fully intended to refuse.
"It's a rank granted only to those within the Order who have shown exceptional faith and achieved no small number of feats."
Perhaps she had sensed his suspicion. Arcelia continued explaining without pause.
"You would officially belong to the Holy Kingdom, of course. But true to the name, as long as you don't cause any major incidents, the Holy Kingdom won't interfere with you."
"……"
What on earth was she trying to say, circling around it like this?
"On the contrary—you'd be able to travel anywhere under the Order's radiance, without being lightly dismissed."
Having said that much, Arcelia leaned in close, as if she meant to whisper something into his ear.
Everything she had said so far had been mere window dressing. What she was about to tell him in secret was the part that truly mattered.
And the words she quietly delivered to Juhan were these:
"It's a position with no duties… and only rights."
"……"
Even hearing it with his own ears, Juhan almost doubted them for a moment.