Volume 1, Chapter 25
“Where are you going?”
He had barely taken a few steps into the forest when a cold voice came up behind him. He turned to find a pair of suspicious blue eyes fixed squarely on him from several paces back.
It was Jin, the Varzian vice commander.
Since Seherbian had joined Varzian, those eyes had followed him constantly—so persistently, in fact, that they had started to feel almost obsessive.
“To pee.”
“We set up a makeshift latrine in the barracks. Why go out of your way?”
“It’s more comfortable outside.”
“......How shameless.”
Unlike the excuse he had given, Seherbian stayed where he was and looked back at her calmly. The expression said: Go on, if you’ve got more to say. In truth, Jin’s accusation of shamelessness was not only about his refusal to use the latrine.
“Ten days, total.”
Her distrustful gaze met his tranquil eyes the color of sunset.
“In all the time you’ve been with Varzian, you haven’t gone to the restroom even once.”
“You were counting that?”
“......I simply noticed after watching you for a long time.”
His admiring reaction only made her feel awkward, so Jin hurried to add an explanation.
“You were suspicious from the start. That sacred power of yours was far too vast to belong to an ordinary priest.”
Ah. She was a knight trained in holy arts.
From the beginning, Jin had been suspicious of Seherbian.
Knights trained in holy arts could sense sacred power, and she had been keeping a constant watch on the priest the commander had brought with him because the sheer amount of sacred energy she felt from him was absurd for a human being.
“You climbed that brutal mountain path without a single scratch. The beasts never came anywhere near you. Not even the leech beast that clung to every single member of the company as we passed through the valley.”
Suspicion had deepened into doubt, and doubt had hardened into vigilance.
Unlike the naïvely trusting Airen, Jin had always been wary of anyone who approached Varzian.
And every person who had caught her instincts had, without fail, had something rotten hidden under the surface.
“There’s no way a human could do that. Priest Sevi, what are you?”
Jin set her expression in stone and asked again, her voice dropping lower.
“No, are you even a priest?”
“Hmm......”
Seherbian scratched his cheek.
She had hit the mark.
He never went to the restroom when he ate, and he had faced beasts at the front lines without ever once being attacked.
Even the wyvern, a top-tier beast, had behaved with such obedient deference.
Jin, who had already been suspicious, clearly did not believe the sacred-power excuse that had managed to satisfy everyone else.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I said I just save it up for ten days and go all at once, would you?”
“That would not be human.”
Jin frowned at the ridiculous theory. Since it had been a joke he knew wouldn’t land, Seherbian folded his arms and laughed.
“Sharp eyes you’ve got there. So then, Vice Commander, what exactly are you suspicious I am?”
“......”
Jin couldn’t answer right away. She drew in her breath, which had begun to quicken.
Someone who had hidden their identity and infiltrated Varzian should not have been this untroubled. That very calmness only made her more tense.
After a long hesitation, Jin parted her dry lips.
“A priest with such enormous sacred power it’s as if he’s been blessed by a dragon.”
“Yes.”
“Could you be......”
Jin’s usually ice-cold voice trembled faintly.
“Winter Bell’s Guardian?”
“Oh......”
Seherbian let out a quiet murmur of admiration.
With no real evidence and only intuition to work from, Jin’s deduction had come surprisingly close to the truth.
Of course she’d never think I was Winter Bell himself.
But Winter Bell’s Guardian?
The situation had become rather amusing, but at this point Seherbian found himself briefly in thought.
Should I just say yes?
When he left Blanconia, Seherbian had had no intention of revealing his identity to anyone.
Outside the Dragon Temple, he wanted to meet people as an ordinary person, not as Winter Bell. A priest was the perfect role for that, since it explained away his sacred power.
The problem was that he had never expected to be suspected this quickly, so he hadn’t prepared any other convenient lie.
“Why are you silent? Don’t tell me the part about coming from Blanconia was a lie, too?”
“Hmm......”
Long ago, dragons had once lived among people and led ordinary lives, too.
Seherbian found himself a little envious of that ancient freedom, preserved only in the inherited knowledge he had received. He uncrossed his arms and smiled with a sigh.
“I did come from Blanconia.”
“Then!”
“But you’re wrong.”
Confusion spread across Jin’s face.
Then Seherbian rejected her conclusion in a firm voice.
“I’m not Winter Bell’s Guardian.”
“If you’re not the Guardian, then how did you obtain that sacred power?”
“Well......”
Clink!
At that very moment, an urgent telepathic voice rang in Seherbian’s mind.
Warning. A flock of green wyverns is approaching rapidly from the rear.
“Huh?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Today, I’m getting to the bottom of this.”
Jin could not hear Mimir’s telepathy, so Seherbian’s pause only looked like a feigned distraction to her.
But he had already withdrawn his attention from her entirely and was looking at the white staff.
“How many?”
Confirming number of individuals. 10... 55... 105... total 124.
“A lot. Sounds like the whole group is migrating.”
Yes. They are even carrying non-flying juveniles. Fear responses have been confirmed in several individuals. Presumed to be fleeing from something.
With the vice commander pressing him from every side, Seherbian still answered Mimir with complete composure. His brow furrowed.
The green wyverns were abandoning their nest and running?
Under normal circumstances, that would never happen. And he remembered the story he had heard before crossing the mountain range without difficulty.
“Hey, where exactly are you paying attention to in the middle of our conversation?”
“A volcano.”
“What?”
Jin, just about to voice her irritation, stopped short. It was a strange word, but she knew it was not entirely unrelated.
Restricted passage area.
The volcano is behaving suspiciously......
All nearby villagers have been evacuated.
The reason Varzian’s members had been forced to take the treacherous road through the wyvern nest instead of a safer route was precisely that.
Could it be?
The moment a bad feeling brushed past her ear—
“Get down!”
The priest, who had been answering her questions with easy composure all along, rushed at Jin and yanked her hard by the hand.
“......!”
She could have broken free if she’d wanted to, but Jin followed him and dropped flat into the grass.
And right after that, she had to be grateful she had listened to her instincts.
KWAAAAAA!
A tremendous gust tore through the dense branches overhead. The night had already fallen, but in an instant the sky above was swallowed by so many shadows it felt as though darkness itself had come crashing down.
Lying face-down, Jin could only lift her head. She was so stunned she couldn’t even think to brush the leaves sticking to her face away.
“The wyverns......!”
A flock of wyverns filled the night sky.
Heat roared beneath their outstretched wings, and the shrieks they unleashed shook the entire mountain.
Only for a moment did the shocking sight hold them in place. Then the wyverns sped past them in a blur, flying so fast that they were nothing more than a passing shadow. Since they were not hunting, they had truly only skimmed by.
As Jin let out a relieved breath after confirming their camp barracks were safe, Seherbian held out a hand.
“Sorry for shoving you so suddenly.”
“......No, I’m the one who should thank you.”
Taking the priest’s hand, Jin got to her feet and expressed her gratitude. Aside from her suspicions about his identity, Seherbian’s help had always been excellent, and she would not deny that fact.
Seherbian looked up at the now-cleared sky and spoke again.
“Even the gentlest creatures aren’t going to appreciate being seen when they’re frightened.”
“Frightened?”
There was a reason that had driven a top-tier beast—no, an entire flock of more than a hundred—to flee their home.
Following his gaze, Jin looked up at the sky and said, “The volcano is about to erupt.”
“Yes. Green wyverns are weak to heat, so they have no choice but to move their habitat.”
“An eruption big enough to force them to relocate?”
Jin muttered in a grave tone, but Seherbian replied with calm practicality.
“Don’t worry. The effects won’t reach this far to the edge.”
“I see...... No, how do you know that?”
The priest remained suspicious.
He had sensed the wyverns’ approach before Jin, a veteran who had rolled through battlefields for years, had even noticed anything.
And the fact that he knew a volcano would erupt even though they were far beyond the range of the signs was suspicious beyond measure.
Jin tore her gaze from the sky and turned back to him.
Fwoosh!
In the next instant, something flashed, and before she knew it, a white staff was in the priest’s hand.
Jin stared, certain her own eyes were deceiving her.
“J-just now, the donkey turned into a staff......?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Seherbian gave a light wave of the staff, completely unbothered by her stunned stammering—an uncharacteristically unsettled display for the normally cool vice commander.
“Wh— no, where are you......”
“I’m in a hurry, so I’ll explain later.”
Behind his smiling face, something unfurled.
Flap!
They were wings, like a wyvern’s. With a single beat, Seherbian rose high into the sky.
Jin stared blankly at the empty space where he had vanished.
Only the sound of a bell tied to the staff lingered like a dream, ringing softly in her ears.
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