Kidnapped
Jing sighed, looking first at the city gates leading into the distant Capital, then at the faces of Ratel and the child.
In the end, Jing, Ratel, and the child had all safely broken through the ring of mercenaries and knights surrounding them. And they had done so without a single scratch.
It wasn't their swordsmanship or their swift footwork that had allowed them to escape so unscathed.
"You crazy bastards! Do you have any idea what you've just done?!"
With a complicated expression, Jing looked down at Priest Gael, who was screaming at the top of his lungs—the number one contributor to their escape.
His arms and legs bound, Gael still didn't seem to grasp the reality of his situation. He glared at Ratel and Jing with murderous intent, demanding to be released.
"They are criminals who stole the power of the Imperial Family, and those who shield them! Capture the child alive, and do whatever you want with the rest, dead or alive!"
At Gael's command, everyone surrounding Jing and Ratel had gripped their weapons, bracing themselves to pounce at any second.
Even those who had tried their best to avoid getting involved with Ratel were now fully prepared to attack without hesitation.
"It's going to be difficult to fight them all off while protecting the child. Ratel, I'll break through one side, so take the child and run in the meantime," Jing had whispered to Ratel, who was standing beside him.
"There's no need for that."
It was a kind offer from Jing to take on the harder task, but Ratel's refusal was flat and absolute.
"Then what do you propose we do? Don't tell me you're crazy enough to fight with a child strapped to your back."
"I know that much. I'm not that insane."
Leaving Jing to wonder what on earth he planned to do, Ratel had marched forward without a moment's hesitation.
"Aaargh!!! You lunatic! Let go of me!"
And then, he had snatched Gael up and used him as a human shield—a move that was pure madness, yet brilliant in its insanity.
Jing had plenty to say about it, but because the tactic was so incredibly effective, he had swallowed his complaints and followed closely behind Ratel.
Having been dragged away without even a chance to resist, the priest was still screaming, seemingly oblivious to his aching throat.
"You absolute psychopaths! I have never been subjected to such humiliating treatment in my entire life! How dare you, how dare you...!"
Jing deeply sympathized with Priest Gael's speechless outrage.
Of course. Living as a priest of the Temple in the Abaran Empire, he would never have experienced anything like this. That was probably why, even in this situation, he still couldn't fathom that they might actually harm him.
"Keep screaming like that if you want your mouth ripped open."
And he certainly had never heard such a savage threat before.
At Ratel's deadpan, utterly sincere suggestion, Gael finally stopped screaming.
"Do... do you really think you'll get away with this? Harming a priest is a capital offense! You could be executed on the spot and no one would blink! The Temple knights will be looking for me soon, and when they find us, you're all dead!"
He had stopped screaming, but that didn't mean he had shut his mouth.
Jing quickly cut him off, keeping a wary eye on Ratel, who looked ready to carry out his threat at any moment.
"Priest Gael, we didn't bring you here to harm you. The situation was just so urgent that things turned out this way, but..."
Despite Jing's polite tone, the fury in Gael's eyes did not waver.
"What is your reason for doing this anyway? Even if you kidnap me and demand a ransom, wanted posters will be put up everywhere, and you'll spend the rest of your lives as fugitives! Do you want to live with nowhere to set foot in this empire?"
Despite being a petty, irritable man, his status as a priest in a small village meant he had rarely, if ever, heard a harsh word from anyone. Thus, completely lacking in situational awareness, he threw a temper tantrum.
"Fascinating."
His rant was promptly cut short by a calm, flat voice.
Gael stiffly raised his head to look up at Ratel, who was staring down at him.
"Your limbs are tied so you can't even move, and there's no one here to help you."
Pointing out Gael's predicament as if he truly found it a marvel, Ratel tilted his head to the side.
"Where on earth does that courage of yours come from?"
Thanks to Ratel's gentle reminder that they could murder him and dispose of his body without anyone ever knowing, Gael shut his mouth completely.
However, Jing actually agreed with Gael's point to some extent.
"Ratel, the priest isn't wrong. We can't keep running like this forever, can we? We also need to return this child to his family."
"There's no need for that. To those clueless bastards, capturing this guy and the child is their top priority anyway. They won't bother going to that village; they'll come straight after us. And you."
At Ratel's call, Gael flinched and raised his head, faithfully obeying the silent command to keep his mouth shut.
"Where do they usually take children like this?"
Ratel gestured with his chin toward the child strapped to Jing's back. Gael rolled his eyes nervously before speaking.
"T-that... everyone knows we're supposed to take them to the Temple in the Capital. There, they investigate various things, determine whether they really stole the power or not, and then... dispose of them..."
"Wait. Does that mean there are more cases like this?"
"I told you, didn't I? This entire world is nothing but a fabrication."
Ratel answered nonchalantly, but to Jing, this was completely unheard of.
The fact that there was more than one commoner child born with the power of a god, and that the Temple disposed of all of them—it was all entirely new to him.
Since when? Since when had things so far beyond his common sense been happening as a matter of course?
"Which means our destination remains unchanged."
Ratel cast his gaze toward the distant Capital walls. Jing felt there was something strangely alien about his eyes.
Even when looking at the same thing, different people see different realities. Usually, the unfamiliar looms larger in one's vision—whether it appears more beautiful or more imposing depends on the individual.
But the Capital Ratel was looking at seemed to be neither.
"We're going into the Capital. It won't be much different from any other town anyway."
"You may wait here."
The priest, who had maintained a sullen attitude throughout, spoke as if issuing an order. Having changed into the clothes the priest had handed him, the Young Duke of Fides stepped into the room.
He had already stripped off everything he had worn from the Fides Duchy. All that remained to the child now was the pair of gold rings Tollin had carefully handed him.
Following Tollin's earnest plea to keep them if at all possible, the Young Duke had refused to hand over the pair of rings hanging from his necklace to the priests.
The boy double-checked the location of the room the priest had guided him to. Just as Tollin had said, it was the second room away from the prayer hall.
The clothes the priests had confiscated and the luggage Tollin had packed for him were highly likely to be stored in the room next door.
This meant Tollin's advice to protect the rings at all costs had also been correct.
The Young Duke unconsciously toyed with the rings hidden deep beneath his clothes.
It was an ordinary gesture that could easily have passed as adjusting his collar, but the problem was that it caught the eye of the priest who was about to leave after guiding him.
Whether the priest's obsessive gaze, tracking the heir of the criminal Fides family, stemmed from religious devotion or an inferiority complex left over from his own past as a commoner, it was impossible to tell.
"What is that? Are you hiding something under your clothes?"
Speaking sharply, he roughly grabbed the back of the Young Duke's neck before the boy could even answer.
Startled by the unimaginable rudeness, the Young Duke instinctively slapped the priest's hand away, but the priest had already spotted the necklace around the boy's neck.
"Did you not hear that you are forbidden from wearing anything until the ritual? Has the criminal Fides committed yet another sin by failing to teach his son even the simplest of rules?"
He spat out the abuse with a strange note of excitement in his voice. The Young Duke felt a fire ignite in his eyes.
This man had maintained an unnecessarily hostile attitude toward Tollin from the moment they met. Suppressing his rage, the Young Duke spoke.
"This has been passed down through my family for generations. It is as much a part of me as my own body."
"Are you refusing to follow the rules of the Temple? As expected of a criminal's—"
"I understand that the reason we change clothes before the ritual is to distance ourselves from impurities before being reborn as citizens of Abaran. Every heir of the Fides Duchy has undergone the ritual while wearing these rings. Are you suggesting, Priest, that the heirloom of the Fides family is impure, and that the priests who performed the rituals for my ancestors conducted impure ceremonies?"
Fortunately, the lie Tollin had prepared flowed quite naturally from the Young Duke's mouth.
The priest seemed offended that the Young Duke had refuted his words without losing an ounce of his composure.
Judging by how his glaring face was turning increasingly red, he also seemed embarrassed at being unable to find a counterargument.
If he agreed, he would be admitting he was picking a fight over nothing; if he disagreed, he would be admitting that the previous priests had been wrong.
"What the Fides family did in the past does not matter. What matters is that the Young Duke will no longer receive such special treatment. Hand over the rings immediately."
In the end, he resorted to baseless stubbornness. His voice, raised in agitation, echoed loudly.
The Young Duke wanted to argue further, but making a scene was not the outcome he desired.
As the priest demanded, the boy slowly unclasped the necklace from his neck. Then, watching the delight swell in the priest's eyes, he slid one of the two rings off the chain.
The priest's eyes followed the movement of the brilliantly glittering gold ring as if entranced. Reading the greed coloring the man's face, the Young Duke held the ring out to him.
"What do you think you are doing?"
The priest asked, snapping out of his daze.
"I will entrust one of them to you, Priest."
"What nonsense are you talking about? Hand over the other one as well."
Snorting, he snatched the first ring from the Young Duke's hand.
"Since I am entrusting it to you, it does not matter when you return it."
At the Young Duke's words, the priest's hand, which had been reaching out to seize the remaining ring, flinched.
"You are the only one in the Temple who knows I possess these. This means that no matter when you decide to return it, no one will ever blame you."
An heirloom passed down through generations of the Fides family. It was an incredibly tempting offer.
"I cannot yield any further than this."
The Young Duke's face, contorted in bitter defeat, also gave the priest a sense of smug satisfaction.
The priest hesitated for a moment. A moment so brief it barely deserved the name.
For as he stepped out of the room, a high-quality gold ring was already gleaming secretly deep inside his pocket.
Once the door clicked shut and he was left alone, Flin Feedus collapsed into a chair in the corner of the room, completely drained.
"There was so much I didn't know..."
A sigh escaped him as a profound sense of exhaustion washed over his entire body.
Since the passing of the Duke of Fides, Tollin had kept the Young Duke indoors as much as possible, barring essential outside activities.
As a result, the Young Duke was unaccustomed to such blatant looks of contempt. The priest's eyes, slick with greed, had also come as quite a shock.
In his memories, priests had always been kind, noble, and emotionally restrained.
The Young Duke looked down at his attire, which felt lighter after parting with one of his rings. His body was lighter, but his heart was heavy.
He recalled the despair that had flickered across Tollin's face as he had seriously and carefully selected his clothes and accessories.
Priest Vesper had called Tollin a criminal. If there was a sin committed by the Fides family, the one who should bear the responsibility was naturally himself, the one who carried the Fides blood.
Yet, ever since his father's death, Tollin had been the one bearing all the burdens. In truth, it was he, not Tollin, who should have returned to the estate to face judgment.
But even without Priest Vesper's coercion, he didn't know if he would have been of any help. Perhaps he would have only ruined things further. He had made so many mistakes up until now.
Giving the wrong answer in front of the Second Prince, always relying on Tollin and Jack—his flawed, messy self kept overlapping in his mind.
He hadn't even managed to protect both of the rings Tollin had given him at the very end. Given how roughly he was being treated, it was unlikely the priests would handle the clothes and accessories they had confiscated with any care.
As he wondered about the fate of the items Tollin had chosen for him, a sudden question occurred to the Young Duke, and he slowly rose from his chair.
Why did Tollin emphasize the layout of the Temple so much?
It was a detail he had overlooked in the dizzying rush of consecutive events. Rather than the order of the ritual or proper etiquette, Tollin had repeatedly drilled the layout of the Temple into the Young Duke's mind.
Tollin or his father had emphasized something in a similar manner once before. It was just like, just like...
...just like the day they had made him memorize the escape routes in the duchy's estate in preparation for an unexpected emergency.
Flin walked toward the door as if possessed. Or rather, he tried to.
He would have, if a small tapping sound against the room's window hadn't caught his feet.
Like a child startled in the middle of doing something mischievous, the Young Duke froze, then turned around to identify the source of the tapping.
Though he let out a deflated sigh upon discovering an entity that could barely be called a "someone."
A tiny squirrel was tapping on the window with its tail.
"Squeak!! Squeak-squeak!!!"
And rather irritably at that.