Chapter 114
Hailon was silent for a moment.
He slowly closed his eyes and opened them again.
Then he echoed back.
“…Me?”
Of course it wasn’t, but Cheshire pretended it was for now.
“Yeah.”
It was something she’d thrown out in a moment of crisis, but it didn’t seem half bad.
Because Hailon couldn’t probe any further.
Instead of asking for specifics, he shifted his gaze elsewhere for a moment.
Cheshire blinked at the sight of him pressing the back of his hand to his lips.
It seemed like a faint blush was tinting Hailon’s face.
The subtle change vanished quickly.
He returned to his usual expression.
But even if his face was impassive, the atmosphere was markedly different from before.
The chill had dissipated, leaving a softness in its wake that made Cheshire feel oddly unsettled.
With just one word, Hailon had softened, though he grumbled bluntly.
“Why did you come all the way here so recklessly? You could have done it the way you always do.”
“Butterflies can’t get into the Holy Empire.”
Whenever she had something to tell him, she’d often create a butterfly and send it flying.
But even for Cheshire, she couldn’t send a butterfly into the Holy Empire.
A butterfly fluttering around in that all-white place would stand out too much.
It would get caught before it even reached Hailon.
Cheshire took a step closer to him.
Anyway, since things had come to this, she intended to ask what she was curious about.
“I’ve heard the Holy Empire experiments on fairies. Do you know anything about that?”
“……”
But as soon as the question dropped, Hailon’s demeanor turned cold again.
He muttered shortly.
“So that was your real purpose.”
Cheshire stared at Hailon with incredulous eyes.
She had no idea why he was suddenly acting like that.
Hailon narrowed his eyes slightly and said.
“It doesn’t seem like you snuck in here because you covet the crown.”
“Ah, well. The crown isn’t really… I just came to take a look.”
She replied offhandedly and glanced at the crown.
The crown, which had been singing merrily, had gone quiet the moment Cheshire touched it.
As if it had achieved its desired goal.
Cheshire fiddled with the dangling dress and speculated.
‘Was transforming me its purpose?’
She recalled the pain she’d felt when touching the crown and swallowed a sigh.
In any case, this was a troublesome situation on multiple fronts.
‘What if I can’t turn back into a child?’
She was naturally glad to be back in her adult body.
She’d been worried about living as a child forever.
But the problem was that this had happened during the Little Saints’ Prayer Assembly.
‘And Hata’s potion might not work properly.’
Since the potion to turn her back into an adult hadn’t worked, there was a high chance the one to turn her into a child wouldn’t either.
Even if she tried it, making the potion took time, so it wasn’t a method she could use right away.
The biggest issue was the men of the Basilian family.
They were in a serious meeting, but they wouldn’t be tied up forever.
‘No matter how long it drags on, it’ll end before dawn.’
Among Kierne and the three brothers, someone was bound to sneak into Cheshire’s bedroom.
And if they realized she was gone…
Cheshire briefly imagined the future and felt dizzy.
“…Regarding that.”
Then, Hailon’s voice snapped her back to reality belatedly.
Hailon gazed at Cheshire steadily and began.
“I did have something I wanted to ask.”
If he started with that nonsense about her being his daughter again, she was ready to just bolt.
But unusually, he brought up a normal topic.
“If there are fairies within the Holy Empire… could you possibly find them?”
Cheshire’s eyes widened.
Hailon peered into her surprised face and continued slowly.
“You’ve probably heard the story that receiving the Holy King’s blessing grants divine power.”
Cheshire was well aware of the tale where a holy knight without innate divine power received the Holy King’s blessing and gained strong divine power to wield sacred relics.
It was also an anecdote that Hilderd had heavily promoted to recruit holy knights.
“That’s not a miracle achieved through blessing. It’s all just stolen from others.”
“…!”
“They’ve gathered those with divine power, stripped them of it, and used it to create exceptional holy knights. It was limited to holy knights until now…”
Injecting another’s divine power was restricted to holy knights, and only those strong enough to receive sacred relics.
Without a sturdy body to support it, one couldn’t endure the process of divine power injection.
“But recently, cases have been confirmed where even weak bodies received divine power injections.”
She knew immediately upon hearing it.
It was Prince Remil.
Until now, no royal in the Hebaton family had divine power, yet Remil had suddenly been born with strong power.
His frail body struggling to wield divine power looked distinctly unnatural.
As if handling something that wasn’t his own.
“To make the body endure during the divine power injection process, they must have mixed in something else.”
“And you mean that something is fairy power?”
Hailon nodded in affirmation to her perceptive question.
Cheshire bit her lip.
“…What if.”
She whispered, gazing at his pristine white holy knight uniform.
“What if the Holy King is behind all this? Then what would you…”
Her voice trembled involuntarily as it escaped.
“Do…?”
Hailon was the Holy King’s sword.
His master was Cyanor, so in a crucial moment, he might betray Cheshire.
But unlike Cheshire, who had asked while suppressing intense emotions, Hailon’s response was calm.
“If he’s committed acts against the will of God, he must be condemned. That’s the duty of an inquisitor.”
“……”
“Lichesia.”
He turned the question back on her.
“Why do you think I’d choose the Holy King?”
“…Because.”
“Just as you placed me first.”
With eyes that seemed ready to devour her, Hailon said softly.
“I, too, have placed you first.”
A very long time ago.
The Black Forest came into being.
It teemed with bizarre monsters, their power so great that humans struggled to oppose them.
The Holy Empire of Hilderd sent elite knights and priests to purify the Black Forest but failed.
The endlessly spawning monsters seemed poised to engulf the entire continent.
In the midst of this, the Basilian family, whose territory included the Black Forest, succeeded in exterminating some of the monsters.
They accomplished what holy knights and priests could not.
For reasons unknown, the power of those with Basilian blood exerted even greater destructive force on the monsters than divine power.
Only those belonging to Basilian could completely repel the forest’s monsters.
Thus, the Holy King of the Holy Empire summoned the head of the Basilian family and commanded him.
Guard the Black Forest so the monsters do not spread to the continent.
Basilian loyally obeyed the command, and in return, was guaranteed the safety of the underworld.
The Holy Empire promised never to interfere in the underworld and tacitly acknowledged Basilian as its master.
However, hundreds of years passed.
“Now, it’s a loss for us.”
The Count Basilian’s family no longer wished to slumber beneath the surface.
They wanted to reveal the secrets they’d hidden until now and make their name resound across the continent.
“Considering all the hardships we’ve endured obeying the Holy Empire’s commands for so long, the compensation has been too cheap. So, shouldn’t we start collecting a bit more from now on?”
Count Basilian, Kierne, smiled brightly as he spoke to his sons.
Belzeon furrowed his brow and replied.
“And that’s the Fairy Queen’s crown?”
“Something like that. Even the Holy King would find it hard to ignore us…”
Kierne trailed off and looked at the door.
Following suit, Belzeon and the twins turned their heads toward the door.
A moment later.
“Cardinal Milliord has arrived.”
The servant announced the arrival of an uninvited guest in the dead of night.
Kierne swallowed a sneer.
He must have sensed something amiss in the conversation between the Holy King and Kierne and come rushing over.
Kierne was curious what nonsense he’d spout.
Whatever drivel he spewed, Kierne had no intention of conceding the victory…
“That adopted child you brought in.”
Cardinal Milliord’s nonsense turned out to be quite intriguing.
“Do you know who his real father is?”
