Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 251
Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 251
“Anyway… since I’ve confirmed that no trouble has arisen, I will finish things as quickly as possible and return.”
“Yes, Family Head. Please do not worry.”
Rickshel, who at some point had stuck close to Lion’s side, answered with a resolute tone.
“Take care, Grandfather.”
Instead of bowing, Lion stretched out a hand and waved.
He’d learned his lesson after toppling over several times.
“…! I shall return as swiftly as possible!”
Grandfather seemed to have taken it differently.
In Petrick’s eyes, his already pitiable grandson must have looked like a child bravely waving his tiny little hand while holding back the sorrow of parting.
Click!
In any case, Petrick left the room faster than ever before.
Then it fell quiet, as though he had used his teleportation magic immediately.
“He could have done it here, but…”
“Perhaps he judged that having his magic touch you would be dangerous, Brother.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
After all, only Lion knew that this was a penalty.
‘Grandfather really has changed a great deal.’
You might even say he’d mellowed considerably.
In any case, it was a good thing.
For himself, and for Rickshel.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go through some trouble for me.”
“Trouble? That’s out of the question. If you need anything at all, please tell me, Brother.”
“Hmm, then could you tell me what Priest Licht is doing at the moment?”
“Ah, I can inform you of that straight away.”
He could inform him straight away?
Had he already located Licht by then?
“Priest Licht has not left his room for days.”
“Not left his room?”
Because of something he’d done, Lion immediately asked again.
‘Could the apple pie really be that powerful?’
There was no way.
Even if someone slept a long time, it would be at most about a day.
Especially for a priest of Licht’s level, the effect would obviously diminish even further.
It should have been barely a nap.
Besides, hadn’t they heard that he had woken up?
‘…Which means he fell asleep again.’
“A prophetic dream?”
When Lion showed his doubts, Rickshel nodded.
“As expected, Brother, you reached the same conjecture as I did.”
“Hm?”
“As you have guessed, Priest Licht seems to be experiencing a phenomenon similar to the Archbishop’s.”
A phenomenon similar to the Archbishop’s.
Meaning he was falling into a long sleep.
‘Now that I think about it…’
What dream had the Archbishop had?
Though they had met within a dream, Lion could not know what kind of dream the Archbishop had dreamed.
And clearly…
‘They say that when a priest dreams a prophetic dream, they must confirm its cause.’
Had the Archbishop ever done such a thing?
It seemed not.
“Hmm…”
Lion pulled old memories from his head.
It was from when he had raised an alternate-character priest in <In the World>.
To be honest, the priest was not a character Lion had been particularly fond of.
He’d equipped the character with items to some degree, but he’d grown tired of it and quickly set it aside.
Yet one fact remained.
That was the starting story of the priest character.
Even Lion, who usually skipped the opening, remembered the rough beginning.
In summary,
it was the process of an ordinary priest who, after dreaming a long dream, went to verify the unease that stemmed from that dream in person.
In any case, for a priest, the act of confirming that dream was that important.
“Have you ever heard that the Archbishop goes around verifying ‘dreams’?”
“You refer to prophetic dreams.”
Rickshel lowered his eyes, gathered and summarised the vast information in his head, then answered.
“Though it was said that the recent imperial palace incident is connected to turbulent times, if we consider the period during which the Archbishop was asleep…”
There was indeed a gap.
‘Moreover, what that being is aiming for…’
Asteri.
…No, he had a strange feeling it was his brother.
However.
‘This is not information that my brother in his current state needs to know.’
At the very least, it would be better to tell him after he had returned to his original form.
So Rickshel judged, and kept his mouth shut.
“If we consider it?”
“I do not know.”
“…”
Lion’s expression instantly turned sullen.
“Little brother. I’ll say it again: I haven’t actually become a baby.”
“It really is because I do not know, Brother.”
Only then did Lion realize.
Ah, with a shrunken body, persuasion simply did not work.
He supposed he would do the same.
No matter how logically a tiny Rickshel spoke, in Lion’s eyes he would just look adorable.
“Fine. Understood.”
In the end, Lion decided to give up cleanly.
In this form, causing trouble was difficult anyway.
Above all, wasn’t the true penalty the inability to use abilities and the block on growth?
Nothing to be done.
“Then let’s talk again once I’ve returned to normal.”
“Thank you.”
“So I can go now, right?”
With a hup, Lion jumped down from the toddler chair.
Rickshel recoiled at the sight, but in truth, a young child’s physical abilities were rather excellent.
It meant that while balancing was a little difficult due to the weight of the head, he was capable of this much.
“Where do you intend to go?”
“Anywhere is dangerous as things are, so I was going to stay near Nature and Pooch.”
-Right. You’re a human, so you’re already weak, and now that you’ve shrunk, you must be far weaker.
-My heart nearly dropped, you know?
Tiamatrak, who had been staying quiet because of the conversation until now, began to chatter again.
“I see. Understood.”
With that answer, Lion’s body floated up into the air.
His view, which had suddenly grown higher… no, returned roughly to its original height, and Lion thought for a moment about what was happening before he finally grasped it.
Rickshel had scooped him up into his arms!
“Aren’t you busy?”
Lion tried to deflect with words and obliquely express his refusal.
“It is the most important task.”
“If you carry me around like this, people might misunderstand.”
“Misunderstand?”
“Ordinary people wouldn’t think that I’ve shrunk, would they?”
“Ah.”
Rickshel realized what his brother was worried about.
The nobility were thoroughly versed in information about the archmage family, House Asteri.
While they were objects of envy, there were also many nobles who wished to disparage them.
A representative case was the Empress’s father’s house, House Lepisent.
If word of them going around like this reached their eyes and ears, a strange scandal would arise.
“If that is the concern, you need not worry.”
Rickshel smiled gently and took Lion in front of the mirror.
Eyes full of mischief, hair clumsily tied.
And the overall impression at the moment was…
“Anyone in the mansion who sees you will know it is you, Brother.”
“…”
“And I believe the misunderstanding will be directed at Brother rather than at me, though I will thoroughly silence that.”
…So that was how it was.
“Let us go.”
“…Fine.”
In the end, Lion had to suffer the indignity of being carried around the mansion, bounced in Rickshel’s arms.
‘Oh, my fate.’
It was, in a different sense, a perfect punishment and penalty…!
* * *
Meanwhile, a lively commotion was unfolding in the mansion.
“Hoo…”
The priest Licht, without stepping outside his room, let out sigh after sigh.
“What on earth is this…”
Licht covered his face with both hands in bitterness.
For some reason, his heart seemed quite troubled.
Only after sighing a few more times did he offer a prayer to God, as if atoning.
“To have definitely dreamed a dream, yet remember nothing at all.”
It was impious toward God and against the code of a priest.
‘This is the first time I’ve dreamed such a long dream.’
After completing the sanctuary, the number of prophetic dreams Licht experienced had grown quite large.
No, to be more precise, it would be correct to say that the length of the dreams had increased.
Before, they had been scenes like a single picture, but now they mainly consisted of dreams like a short play or a brief fairy tale.
Each time, Licht confirmed the prophetic dream in person, and thanks to that, he could prevent accidents great and small.
But—
Was it because he was outside the temple?
Or was it because this was the archmage family, House Asteri?
When he awoke from his long sleep, all of the dream’s contents had evaporated and disappeared.
Because it was an impossible event, Licht intended to immediately convey this to the Archbishop.
Yet, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
‘What if it is because I am by Lord Lion’s side?’
Of course, there was no basis or reason whatsoever.
He was called God’s Messenger.
He dared not study that.
If it were Lady Ann, the Academy Head, she could apply various theories to this situation, but right now Licht was entrusted with an important task at House Asteri and could not.
And…
‘If I tell Lady Ann, it will certainly reach the Archbishop’s ears.’
If Licht’s hypothesis matched point by point, the Archbishop would undoubtedly try to bring Lord Lion to the temple by whatever means.
That was something that must not be done to Lord Lion.
And—
‘The Archbishop must be in the thick of things right now.’
The phenomenon of not remembering the prophetic dream was something he had to resolve himself.
Otherwise, he would have to wait a long while with this unpleasant feeling.
‘That won’t do.’
‘Was it not a divine revelation?’
“…Right. I shall resolve it myself.”
To do that, first he ought to go and pay his respects to Lord Lion.
Had he not fallen straight asleep while eating apple pie the other day?
He suspected that it might have been a prodromal symptom of a prophetic dream.
Surely Lord Lion must have carried him away with that delicate body; he worried whether Lion had fallen ill from the strain.
‘Now that I think of it, it has been quiet for a while.’
Not only the occasional explosions that used to be heard before, but he also had no memory of hearing Lord Lion’s voice.
‘Even if I’ve kept to my room, still…’
Something was definitely different from usual.
“As I thought, I must go and see him.”
If Lord Lion were indeed unwell, he could at least offer treatment with his own meager divine power.
Furthermore.
Swish.
Licht glanced furtively at his luggage bag.
“I must give him that as well.”
Inside the bag, the holy water cultivated in the sanctuary was packed full.
To be honest, this sort of private diversion of holy water was not permitted, but Lord Lion fully deserved to receive it.
‘I couldn’t have done it alone.’
The matter of completing the sanctuary, that is.
So even though he had packed the holy water quite noticeably, many people had turned a blind eye.
The Archbishop had even asked ‘will that do?’ and prepared an even larger bag for him.
“I hadn’t been able to deliver it because circumstances were not favorable, but I must give it to him at this opportunity.”
Licht lightly shouldered the bag full of holy water and left his room.
And immediately—
“Um, pardon me, but I must ask where you are going…”
He came face to face with a knight who, at some point, had been standing guard in front of his door.
The red-haired knight, seeming quite shy, asked his destination in a low voice.
Licht, without suspicion, was about to state his destination…
Then he realized who this person was.
‘The knight who came with Lord Rickshel at that time.’
He remembered clearly that he was Lord Rickshel’s personal guard.
But why was that person standing guard here?
‘…Are they wary of me?’
As a priest who had come to a prestigious mage family, it was natural to receive such treatment.
Yet, until now there had been no restrictions at all.
Which meant something must have happened.
Coincidentally, at the very moment he had dreamed a prophetic dream he could not remember.
Having grasped the situation, Licht smiled with a composed face and answered.
“Could you guide me to Lord Rickshel?”
He said that he wished to meet Rickshel, not Lion.