Chapter 23 · The New Sprout Festival (5)

It was close to a miracle that I learned in this life that Paeon was my biological father.

In my past lives, I had always failed to read the letter my mother had left when she handed me over to my adoptive parents. My adoptive mother had read it once and thrown it in the trash. Getting hold of it with an infant’s body was too difficult a task.

But in this life, the moment my adoptive mother threw it away, I screamed with all my might. Startled, she flinched, and the crumpled paper missed the trash can, bounced off, and rolled under the dresser. I remembered that well, and when I became able to move on my own, I took it out and read it.

The letter contained my birthday, the name Asha, and a message saying not to sell the locket necklace but to give it to me. And yet those damn people of that household had always sold off even that cheap locket necklace! Though my mother had placed a powerful barrier spell on it so that only I could open it, making it practically useless to anyone else.

Fortunately, perhaps because they thought no thief would come all the way to a deep mountain village to steal things, they had carelessly stored the jewelry box in the corner of the bottom drawer of the dresser, and as soon as I learned to toddle, I smuggled the locket out while they were away. It was the first time in ten lives that I had walked upright that quickly.

Inside the locket was a very small stone, and I recognized at once that it was an image stone. As soon as I calmed my pounding heart and infused the stone with mana, a familiar voice flowed out.

“Please bless your daughter.”

I couldn’t see the owner of the voice, but it was unmistakably my mother. When she held out the newborn she was cradling, a dazzlingly handsome blond man carefully took the swaddled baby. The man’s red eyes, looking at the baby, seemed anxious, afraid, and somehow sad. After gazing intently at the baby for a long while, he very slowly brought his lips to the baby’s forehead. And he quietly whispered words I couldn’t understand. They were probably holy words.

The image ended there. I was so shocked that I couldn’t move for a long time. The man was someone I knew well. Wasn’t he the one who had taken me to the royal palace time and again? The cold, frightening, sharp-natured man I hadn’t dared to speak a single word to.

I was so dumbfounded that I cried for days. I cried so much I made myself ill. My fever raged and I couldn’t move my body. The family seemed to be hoping I would simply die, but somehow I survived. I suppose I couldn’t die because it was so unjust.

Wrapped in fierce betrayal and rage, I watched that image over and over and made a deep resolve. In this life, I would make this man protect me. But it wasn’t easy. He, whose heart seemed to be made of stone, wasn’t merely indifferent to me—he seemed to hate me. I thought I would end up dying without ever properly making use of him, but…

He came to save me. He did.

I didn’t know whether it was coincidence or something else, but he came to save me before it was too late.

In my tenth life, at long last.

◇ ◆ ◇

Paeon’s mission today was to find the slave traders who had become the king’s greatest headache.

He knew neither their name nor the identity of their leader, but they were a highly organized group that had been causing trouble all over the country for years. It was only that, having poured all their forces into the war, they hadn’t been able to crush them properly. On a festival day in the capital, when people crowded the streets like today, they would surely show themselves in search of prey.

But before he could even carry out his mission, an incident that would turn the royal palace upside down had erupted.

The disappearance of Princess Anastasia. Even with Dinitas joining in, five full divisions combed the area around the plaza, yet the princess was nowhere to be found.

“Commander, are you certain that hairpin belongs to Princess Anastasia?”

“…”

At Shellman’s question, Paeon gripped the hairpin as if to crush it.

If the princess had been taken by the slave traders.

His heart churned with an anxiety he had never felt in his life. He had faced countless enemies. Yet now he was gripped by a fear greater than when facing an opponent he believed he could never defeat.

“Commander! Where are you going?!”

Paeon ran without thinking. Praying desperately to catch even the smallest clue. One block, two blocks, ten blocks. When he had run madly far from the plaza, one block after another.

His keen ears caught a faint commotion. Something collapsing, breaking, and people shouting. Was it the usual drunken brawl common during festivals? But an intense intuition pierced through him, telling him he had to go that way. He didn’t know why. He simply followed that intuition and ran without hesitation toward the sound.

And…

The moment he saw her dangling by her hair on the street, he heard something snap inside him. Blood surged, and a turbulent whirl of emotion choked him, and at the same time, without a single thought, he charged.

Whoosh!

Pure white light crushed the hulking man. The man writhed, unable to rise.

“Damn it… the temple’s dog again!”

He walked toward them, one step at a time.

“Papa…”

A faint voice, as if about to break, reached him. But he couldn’t bring himself to look at Anastasia properly, so he simply stood there, glaring straight at the man.

Seeing her had always been painful, and seeing her in such a ruined state was even worse. Her tangled hair and crumpled clothes looked exactly as they had when he first met her again. How he had wanted to flee from that spot then.

“Worse than slaves… kuh, bowing to power… without even freedom, noble bastards who lick the boots of…”

Tanian barely forced out his breath and struggled, but he couldn’t move at all, as if a giant hand were gripping him. Powerful mana rippled from the ring on his writhing hand. Each time a dark purple energy flowed from that ring, the divine power pressing down on him thinned slightly.

“Kuh…!”

But when Paeon raised his hand, the pressure doubled, then tripled. Soon the stone in his ring crumbled away uselessly.

“Hiii…!”

Tanian’s face went pale.

“Hey, why don’t you join hands with us? Hah, hah. We… can give you freedom, mister. Everything you’ve never been able to enjoy, kuh, we can give you all of it…”

Desperately, he tried to win Paeon over, knowing he was an existence utterly beyond his reach.

“God? Do you really think a god like that exists? Kuh!”

Crack—the sound of his bones breaking rang out. Even the street beneath his body began to crack.

“Kraaagh…! Aaaagh! Aaagh! P-please, save me!”

“His Majesty granted me the authority of summary judgment, but,”

Paeon said quietly in an emotionless voice, crouching before him.

“Ending it in one blow would be too great a mercy.”

He was looking down at him as if at a filthy pest. Tanian was terrified by that gaze, yet defiance rose in him too. He couldn’t bear that a free man like himself was being treated as an insect by someone who had willingly made himself a slave.

“You bastard…!”

As Tanian forced his hand up, there was a bang! A bursting sound rang out.

“Kraaaaaa!”

Blood sprayed from his hand—no, from where his hand had been. It was one of the prana transformation techniques, one that perfectly destroys a part of the body.

“Divine power is a waste on you.”

He seized the nearly unconscious Tanian by the collar and lifted him.

“You certainly said, ‘Just take a few hits. If you die, well, that’s that.’”

Then he threw away his sword and raised his fist.

“I’ll return those words to you exactly.”

Crack!

Tanian’s head snapped around under Paeon’s fist, and a groan of agony rang out. Thwack, thwack! His face was mashed to a pulp, and though he had already lost consciousness and his eyes had rolled white, Paeon did not stop punching.

How much time had passed?

“P-Papa!”

At the tiny voice calling him, he finally came to his senses and turned his head.

“Papa, th-that’s enough. I think… he’s dead.”

Anastasia, pale with terror, was looking at him, trembling. He flinched at his own reflection in her eyes.

The face of a killer. Nothing like a holy priest who served God—ugly and consumed by madness.

It was as if he had gone back to the past. To his boyhood, which felt so very far away, before he had met Princess Beatrice…

“Princess, I will heal your wounds.”

He hurriedly pulled himself together and tossed the rag that was Tanian aside.

“No! Not Asha—do this sistew and hew mothew fiwst. They’we weally badwy huwt. And I don’t know what happened to Wizen and Awk, so pwease hewp them quickwy too!”

Anastasia cried urgently and tugged at the hem of his clothes. Just then, several knights appeared.

“Good heavens, what on earth happened here?!”

They were shocked at the sight of the fallen men, Paeon, and the princess.

“The slave traders’ base is over there. Two apprentice knights are fighting, so help them and wipe them all out—not one must escape. I will heal these people, take the princess somewhere safe, and then join you.”

“Yes, sir!”

At Paeon’s quick orders, they ran toward the tavern without looking back. And he too went straight to the fallen girl and her mother and began healing them. Whaaah—a pure white light enveloped them. Their wounds closed in an instant, their earthen faces gradually returned to normal, and their breathing steadied.

“Phew… thank goodness.”

Only then did Anastasia relax, the tension leaving her, and she sank down. Seeing that, something surged up in Paeon’s chest again.

“Why did you do this?”

It was a voice chilling enough to raise goosebumps. Anastasia flinched and looked at him with eyes full of fear.

“…”

“How many times has it been now? Do you think the princess’s life is something you have several of? Why on earth! Why do you keep causing trouble!”

When he shouted, tears welled in her eyes.

“I-I’m sowwy.”

She knelt and apologized.

“I’m sowwy fow awways scawing Papa.”

“I’m not telling you to beg my forgiveness!”

At Paeon’s blood-vomiting shout, Anastasia wiped her tears with her sleeve and answered.

“Hngh… I’m weally sowwy… But, but… pwease don’t hate Asha.”

This wasn’t what he wanted. No—he couldn’t even tell what he wanted. He was simply furious beyond reason. But the words ‘don’t hate me’ were so shocking that he was left speechless. And without meaning to, he muttered,

“How much… how much have I…”

Paeon flinched and swallowed the rest of his words. If he spoke them aloud, it felt as though they would gain power. As though it would become irreversible.

“Papa, Papa is huwt too.”

Anastasia, who had been quietly watching him, crept over and lifted his hand. His hand was covered in bruises and blood from the fierce punches earlier.

“Wook at this. Youw hand is aww bwuised.”

“Is that important right now—”

“It’s impowtant! I hate it when Papa huwts.”

At her words, spoken seriously with a face whose tears hadn’t even dried, he was dumbfounded.

“A wound like this…”

Just then, a tiny white light glimmered, and the wounds on his hand melted away.

“See, you did weww. Papa is so smawt. You wisten to Asha weww.”

She clutched his hand tightly and smiled brightly. He said nothing for a long while. His eyes seemed unable to believe what he had just seen.

“…?”

When he just stayed dazed for a long time, Anastasia, startled, waved her hand in front of his face.

“Papa, what’s wong? You seem bwoken.”

He looked deeply troubled and uneasy. His red eyes were wavering this way and that.

“Awe you huwt somewhewe else? Awe you just weally shocked?”

Only after a long while, as if he had made up his mind, did Paeon open his mouth in a slightly cracked voice.

“The princess… used divine power.”

“What?”

“The princess used divine power.”

Anastasia asked back, bewildered, and he said again with a rigid face,

“Huh? What do you mean? That can’t be.”

She didn’t understand him repeating strange words like a parrot—what on earth did he mean by divine power?

“The princess… used it. Just now, it wasn’t I who healed. The princess healed my hand.”

“?”

She still looked as if she had no idea what he was talking about. To Anastasia, it sounded like the sun rising in the west or rain falling from a clear sky.

She had already manifested mana. So how could she use divine power? He had never once seen a person possessing both forces at the same time.

“Papa, youw jokes awen’t funny. But I didn’t know you could make jokes, Papa… No, in this situation, a man wike you wouldn’t be making jokes.”

Anastasia babbled on in disbelief, but Paeon paid it no mind and drove the point home.

“…It seems the princess has manifested divine power as well.”