Chapter : 08
Louise Hwezel. True to the nature of a jaguar, the head of House Hwezel had an excellent running speed.
He said that he had been searching the entire capital of the Delphiam Empire since dawn in order to find Kallian Winyak, and that a little while ago, he had faintly sensed Winyak’s mana downstream along the Delphineu River.
So we had rushed all the way here. I looked down at the jaguar I was riding with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.
“Are jaguars naturally bad at smelling things?”
[Enough with the nonsense. If you’re going to be a nuisance, get off.]
Louise Hwezel sounded irritated.
Was he sulking just because I had ridden him a little?
“You’re more narrow-minded than the previous head of the family…”
[What?]
“Nothing.”
Kierges and Hwezel both had their roots in the Delphiam Empire, so compared to the other Transcendent Houses, they had more opportunities to encounter each other.
The previous head of House Hwezel’s transformed form had been a lion. He hadn’t shown me any particular interest, but he had let me ride on his back several times. So surely I hadn’t been particularly disliked.
He favored Alphien more than me, but I was the only one he let ride on his back!
Ah, I miss seeing the heads of the families after all this time. I wonder how everyone has been doing since I died.
I wonder if my teacher, Head Regina, is still healthy and well.
“…Sigh.”
I sighed as I reminisced about the past. This wasn’t the time to get lost in old memories.
I gently scratched the black jaguar behind the neck.
“Try smelling again, Head of the Family. If he’s not here, let’s head straight to the Delphiam Imperial Palace. Somehow, I think the Imperial Palace is a more likely location than here… Huh?”
A tingling sensation shot through the ring finger of my left hand, as though static electricity had discharged from it. The activation word of a spell echoed through my mind.
[Roshien.]
It was Kallian calling my name.
The location information generated when the activation word manifested flowed vividly into my mind.
It was directly beneath us.
I immediately abandoned every thought I had been entertaining until then and slid off Louise’s back.
Then I jumped down through the entrance to the dark sewer.
“Just how old are you that you can get lost in the capital!”
I found Kallian a little way from the sewer entrance, and the moment I saw what he looked like, I began bombarding him with scolding.
“Where did you sell all your guards? How can the heir of Winyak be wandering around a foreign country completely alone? What were you thinking?!”
Of course, it did sound rather strange to say that the heir of Winyak needed guards, but Kallian was a special case.
My little brother still needed someone to protect him!
Overwhelmed by my forcefulness, Kallian cautiously glanced at me.
“S-sorry… Rosi, were you worried about me?”
“Do you seriously have to ask that?! How on earth did you end up coming all the way down into this drainage channel?!”
Even the slums where I’d lived until I was nine after reincarnating hadn’t smelled this much like shit!
“Are you okay? You’re not hurt anywhere?”
Fortunately, Kallian looked fine on the surface. Aside from his clothes being more disheveled than when he’d gone out last night, there was nothing—
I stopped there and was horrified.
‘Wait. Isn’t that the most important part?!’
His jacket was nowhere to be seen, probably given to someone else to wear again, while the hem of his shirt had come completely untucked from his pants, and a couple of buttons had been undone.
His hair was messily disheveled, as though someone had ruined it.
On top of that, his reddish-orange eyes were filled with an unstable aura, and the skin beneath them was red, as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night.
My heart pounding with anxiety, I tugged on Kallian’s sleeve.
“What happened from last night until now?”
“……”
“It’s okay. Tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
Kallian didn’t answer. He merely stared down at me.
I waited patiently. Even if I was his beloved little sister, it must be difficult to talk about something like that without hesitation.
That was assuming, of course, that something truly horrible had happened to him.
It felt like several minutes had passed before Kallian finally opened his mouth.
“He grabbed my arm without permission, so I firmly refused.”
“And then…?”
“But he wouldn’t stop… He eventually dragged me down here to this secluded place. So I struck him in a vital spot.”
Exactly as I had instructed him to do.
Kallian glanced down at the knight lying unconscious at his feet.
“And then he ended up like that…”
The man was practically a mangled mess. Naturally, my expression hardened as well.
I’d been wondering whose son that guy lying over there was. So he was an attempted sexual assailant!
Kallian hesitantly continued.
“I managed to knock him down somehow, but he wouldn’t get back up. And I didn’t know the way out… So I was waiting here until someone came.”
“That’s all? Nothing else happened?”
“At least, not that I know of.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the soft jelly that was my little brother hugged me tightly. Then he grinned and rubbed his cheek against the top of my head.
“I was getting worried because I had no idea how much time had passed. Then I heard Rosi’s voice. I called out just in case, and you really came!”
“Of course I did. I told you I’d come if you called.”
“Yeah, thank you. My treasure. You’re the only one who would come looking for me.”
That’s right. Who else do you have besides your big sister?
I patted him with a sigh, but then the knight lying at our feet groaned painfully and twitched.
I looked down at the trash who had nearly taken my Kallian away from me with utter contempt.
I could tell just from his uniform and the brooch pinned to his chest. In fact, I’d even seen him on my very first day in Delphiam.
He’s the commander of the Delphiam Imperial Guard.
Kallian moved closer to me and whispered softly.
“I did well, right?”
“Of course you did. You did great, Oppa.”
Now it was time to clean up the aftermath. That part was my responsibility.
I suddenly pointed toward the entrance and shouted.
“Oh! What’s that?!”
“Huh? What’s what?”
While Kallian looked in the wrong direction, I quickly inscribed a runic character onto the man’s forehead.
“Rosi, there’s nothing there.”
“Oh, I must have seen it wrong.”
Good. Done.
I casually pretended nothing had happened and grabbed Kallian’s hand.
“Let’s go now. Someone else will come collect this man.”
“Should we? But he’s an imperial knight, so we should at least send him back up…”
“He’s no knight. If we go back right now and report that the Emperor’s knights tried to harm the heir of Winyak, who do you think is going to be torn apart?”
We didn’t really need to worry about Delphiam’s opinion, but if we carelessly stirred things up and they ended up declaring him missing or something, I’d only feel uncomfortable about it.
‘Head Oen told me to behave myself.’
So I behaved myself and only planted a little brainwashing.
The effect would certainly be reliable, so that man wouldn’t dare come anywhere near Kallian again!
I hurried along with Kallian.
There was no way I could leave our soft jelly in such a narrow, filthy place filled with a horrible stench any longer.
“Come on. Let’s go back, wash you in some warm water, and get you some proper res—”
[Look at you two, having fun.]
A reproachful voice stopped me before I could finish.
The beast’s body, which had been hidden in the darkness, emerged beneath the dim light.
Before I could even blink, its form changed.
The young head of House Hwezel, a boy with black curly hair and dark skin, glared at Kallian.
“The Winyak aura is vibrating this strongly from somewhere deeper inside. And you’re saying nothing happened? At least make it sound believable.”
Winyak aura?
I instinctively turned my head.
Deep inside the sewer.
“Uh…”
I’d been so distracted by Kallian that I hadn’t noticed it until now…
I let out a dazed groan.
There really was something faintly detectable in the darkness.
“It feels like… sword energy?”
I muttered absentmindedly and raised my head to look at Kallian.
That’s when I noticed it.
The reddish-orange eyes staring at Louise Hwezel had gone completely emotionless.
“……!”
A chill ran down my spine before I could stop it.
Sword energy.
One of Winyak’s signature Transcendent abilities.
It was the unique energy of House Winyak, created by channeling the power of the stars into the blade and amplifying and converting it into a new form of energy known as sword energy.
The disciples of Winyak could acquire it through hard work as well, but compared to the power manifested by the direct descendants of Winyak, who were blessed by the stars, the results achieved through acquired mastery were pitiful.
In other words, the heads of House Winyak and their heirs were the most skilled wielders of sword energy on the entire continent.
Head Oen, naturally, could use it, and so could Kallian.
Therefore, there would be nothing strange about him using sword energy against the commander of the Delphiam Imperial Guard.
But the reason the back of my head suddenly felt so cold was…
‘Kallian, why does he look like that?’
I was left speechless by the emotionless expression on Kallian Winyak’s face.
He was a boy who always seemed to have a smile hanging from either his eyes or the corners of his mouth.
His eyes would be smiling, or his lips would be smiling, or both would be smiling.
Whenever he looked like that, I would feel that calling him an incarnation of an angel wasn’t merely an embarrassingly excessive compliment.
But right now, I couldn’t bring myself to attach the sacred title of ‘angel’ to him, not even as an empty courtesy.
Could Kallian really glare at someone like that…?
