Chapter 177 - Those Who Realized (3)

“Then I shall see you at dinner.”

“Understood.”

After Alon offered his final farewell and left, Karmakses III sighed and rubbed his chest in relief.

“Whew...”

A king, nervous merely from speaking with a nobleman.

Anyone who heard would give a disbelieving laugh at the absurdity, but the thought that Marquis Pallatio might be an incarnate god had frozen him stiff.

... Of course, whether the marquis really was an incarnate god remained unknown.

Having thought that far, Karmakses turned his gaze.

“So? What did you find?”

It was time to hear the truth from Teira, who claimed he could identify incarnate gods.

And then—

“... Are you all right?”

Karmakses III could not help asking.

Teira, who had shown little interest even when Marquis Pallatio entered, was now deathly pale, as though every last ounce of energy had been drained from him.

At Karmakses III’s bewildered expression, Teira sighed and struggled to speak.

“I am all right. It is just that I saw something a little—unbelievable...”

“Something unbelievable?”

“Yes. Something even I cannot possibly understand.”

Something he could not understand?

As Karmakses III’s brow furrowed, Teira took several steadying breaths before finally saying,

“... To give you the conclusion first, Marquis Pallatio does appear to be an incarnate god.”

A brief silence followed.

Karmakses’s voice cracked.

“R-really?”

“Yes. I saw it clearly with my own eyes. He possesses the same power as the incarnate god I encountered in the lizardmen’s land. But the unusual thing is...”

“... The unusual thing?”

“There were four spheres.”

“... What exactly does that mean?”

Teira composed himself and considered his thoughts, then began explaining the situation.

A little while later...

“... So, according to you, the incarnate god you saw in the lizardmen’s land had one sphere bound in chains, whereas Marquis Pallatio had four such spheres?”

“Yes.”

“... What does the number of spheres signify?”

Teira shook his head at Karmakses III’s question.

“I am sorry, but I cannot give you a precise answer to that. After all, that was the only time I had seen an incarnate god...”

“... Then what can you conjecture?”

“What I can conjecture is—”

Teira paused, looking Karmakses straight in the eye.

“The more spheres a being has, the stronger they are.”

“The more spheres?”

“When I was in the lizardmen’s land, I once saw the warrior said to be the strongest there. He had two spheres.”

“Though they were ordinary spheres, like those seen in normal humans, rather than spheres with chains,” Teira added, lowering his head.

“Of course, my conjecture may be wrong, but judging by that, I suspect the number of spheres represents strength or talent.”

“... Strength or talent. Then, as you say, Marquis Pallatio has four spheres where the incarnate god you saw had only one...”

As his muttering trailed away, the tension in the room mounted further.

“... If my reasoning truly is correct, it means he may be even stronger than the incarnate god I saw in the lizardmen’s land.”

“...”

At the shocking truth(?) that followed, Karmakses III’s mouth slowly fell open.

####

Immediately after his audience with Karmakses III...

‘... Why on earth did he want to meet as soon as I arrived?’

Alon found it odd that Karmakses III had gone out of his way to summon him to the audience chamber to arrange dinner.

Normally, rather than meeting him like this, the king would send someone to coordinate the time.

Though, strictly speaking, it was less an arrangement than a unilateral notice telling him to attend dinner at a specified time.

In any case, his puzzlement at the sudden change in procedure was short-lived.

THUD!

“Mentor!”

Seollang made a noisy entrance atop the carriage roof.

The moment Alon’s carriage reached the guild building, she had leaped straight down onto it from the rooftop.

“I would have come upstairs if you had waited inside.”

“Then we can go up together!”

Seollang thrust her face toward Alon, her eyes sparkling. Then she perked up her ears and looked up at him expectantly.

Recognizing the now-familiar signal, Alon pressed her ears down gently.

Seollang merely beamed without saying a word.

At the sight, a small smile escaped Alon without his quite realizing it, and he patted her head.

As he headed upstairs into the building, he felt relieved.

‘I was worried about what to do at first.’

Around the time he reached the desert, Alon had remembered something he had forgotten while preoccupied with his inner world.

On this visit to Coloni, he would have to answer Seollang’s marriage... proposal, which he had been putting off all this time.

Belatedly, he wondered what he should do, but soon regained his peace of mind.

Even after he arrived in Coloni, Seollang had not said a word about it, although she acted even more affectionately toward him than before.

He had been puzzled briefly, but the thought that Seollang might finally have learned to distinguish liking from love filled him with a certain pride.

To anyone watching, her change was growth itself—a child gradually becoming more emotionally mature.

Once inside the guild, the two continued catching up.

Then Seollang, who brought a fatherly smile to his face without effort, suddenly glanced toward the window and paused.

“... Hm?”

She turned back to Alon with a bright smile.

“Oh, Mentor! I’ll be out for a little bit!”

“Where are you going?”

“I have something to do at the royal castle too!”

“Well, off you go.”

“Okay! I’ll be right back, Mentor!”

CRACKLE!

With a flash of lightning, Seollang dashed off into the distance.

Alon watched her with the eyes of a father seeing his daughter off to play, until Evan called to him shortly afterward.

“My lord.”

He turned his head.

“What is it?”

“Oh, remember what you mentioned last time? I picked it up.”

“The investigation is finished already?”

“Well, it’s been a little over a month since you asked. Apparently, that gave them plenty of time.”

Alon immediately unfolded the paper Evan handed him.

“Hmm...”

“But, my lord...”

“What is it?”

“Why are you investigating them? They don’t really have anything to do with us, do they?”

It was certainly understandable that he would be curious.

The list Alon had asked Evan to obtain detailed organizations and secret societies operating covertly within the allied kingdoms.

Before the original story began, they kept so quiet that even their locations remained unknown. Then, around the time the Five Great Sins began crawling out one by one, they emerged alongside them and plunged the allied kingdoms into ruin.

In other words, they had yet to make a proper appearance, so Evan had every reason to wonder.

At times like this—

“This is, well... that.”

“That, then.”

“Yes, that.”

He gave the same answer he always did.

“Right... Well, I figured you’d say something like that.”

Evan shrugged as though he had not expected much.

“Did you?”

“Well, sometimes you do things I don’t really understand.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“I am, but isn’t there some reason you can’t tell me?”

“Hmm...”

It was less that he could not tell him than that he was not confident he could explain it, Alon thought. Evan added,

“Well, if it’s difficult to explain, you don’t have to. Hearing one or two things like that wouldn’t really change anything anyway.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course. Just because I don’t understand what you’re doing doesn’t mean you’re up to anything strange.”

Just as the peculiar trust in those words filled Alon with an unexpected sense of pride, Evan slipped into a mischievous smile and whispered,

“My lord.”

“What is it?”

“If another raise happens to be coming, I’d be delighted.”

“You just ruined the moment.”

“Tsk. Guess I should have brought it up a bit later.”

Evan’s face was filled with a good-natured grin.

Soon, he said his farewells and left the room.

Silence settled in.

[“Mew...”]

Alon gathered his thoughts as he stroked Blackie, who had been left exhausted by Seollang’s relentless adoration(?) until a little while ago.

‘What I need to consider now are the enemies who will destabilize the allied kingdoms... and the apostles.’

The enemies who would destabilize the allied kingdoms could simply be dealt with.

Even if they had yet to reveal themselves, they were still active beneath the surface. Buying information from the Information Guild would make it easy enough to eliminate them.

The real problem, however, was the apostles.

‘At first, I hoped I was worrying over nothing—’

But the moment he confirmed that even Rine was entangled with an apostle, Alon became fairly certain.

All the children he had rescued had already become involved with the apostles in some way before he saved them.

That meant apostles could appear before the other children too, leaving him troubled.

‘... If only I could find out where the apostles are.’

Unfortunately, that was impossible.

Alon did not even know who the apostles were in the first place. And through his last two battles and his information gathering, he had realized they scarcely showed themselves unless they were trying to awaken a vessel.

In other words, whether at the Information Guild or elsewhere, there was no one who could locate the apostles—at least, no one around Alon.

‘Then all I can do is fend them off whenever they come... Is there really no other way?’

Only Alon’s deep sigh echoed quietly through the room.

####

That night.

After spending some time pondering without reaching any particular conclusion, Alon headed to the royal castle to enjoy dinner, as Karmakses III had invited him to.

‘... Today, I can attend dinner, meet Kailas, and then meet the dragonkin right afterward to collect everything I was promised.’

Passing through the now quite familiar royal castle, Alon entered the dining hall Karmakses III had prepared.

But the moment he stepped inside, a question came to mind.

Seollang, who had left a few hours earlier saying she had business at the castle, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where did Seollang go?’

Her seat was empty.

Alon tilted his head, then turned and bowed to Karmakses III.

“I greet the King of Coloni.”

His greeting was the same as always.

And yet...

“Ah, you have arrived, Marquis Pallatio.”

Karmakses III addressed him with an exceedingly incongruous deference, though Alon had heard it once before.

As Alon straightened, a trace of puzzlement too faint for anyone else to notice crossed his face.

“Please, take a seat.”

“...???”

... It was the beginning of an utterly incomprehensible night.

####

Elsewhere, on that same blue-moonlit night...

Staring blankly at a street without a single light, Rine unconsciously murmured the words Alon had spoken earlier that day.

“The past is, after all, the past...”

Repeating the words she had already recited so many times, she found a faint smile forming without her realizing it.

In truth, hearing those words had not brought any great change to Rine’s heart.

The past still frightened her, terrified her, horrified her.

No matter what Alon had said, to her, the “past” was nothing but memories she wished to forget.

His words had therefore not reached the depths of her heart.

The past still tormented her.

Yet there was one reason she had been able to smile then.

Alon’s expression.

An expression he himself seemed barely aware of.

But there was no doubt.

His face had not worn its usual impassive look—

‘He looked worried.’

Concern anyone could recognize.

For her.

To Rine, that was something profoundly happy.

... So happy that she wanted all the more desperately not to lose it.

She did not want the burden of her past to sully their present relationship.

And so...

[“No, I don’t even need to tell you. You only need to choose. You’re clever—you already know perfectly well, don’t you? That there are far more hidden spaces in your Library.”]

Once again, Rine recalled the voice of the apostle of Greed.

A voice she did not even want to think about.

Yet one that perhaps had shown her a path forward.

“...”

A voice that had told her how she could crush even the burden of her past and move ahead.

For a long while, she gazed at the blue moon.

But her eyes, filled with its blue light, shone with a clearer, deeper blue than anything else.

####

In the remote outskirts, quite far from Coloni...

There, where nothing but desert stretched in every direction and finding anything at all seemed impossible...

“Found you.”

“!?”

Draim, the elf who had been trailing Alon Pallatio all this time to guard him, stared at Seollang in shock, his throat helplessly caught in her hand as golden lightning crackled around her.

“So it’s you?”

“You’re the one secretly spying on Mentor.”

“Ghk—!”