In the instant she was saved, Leif could almost see a pair of wings unfurling from Natiaveda’s back, a halo glowing over that flawless white brow.
Without thinking, she blurted out,
“Your Excellency… could you be the angel of legend?”
Natiaveda was so startled she nearly dropped Leif.
Aron was entangled by several living branches.
The prophet beast, furious at him, not only pinned him hard against the trunk, but lashed him several times.
Then, just like all those reckless fools who had once tried to force their way into the Moor Forest, he was quickly absorbed by the prophet beast, becoming nourishment to feed the forest.
As for the remaining trainee knights, the prophet beast had no intention of letting them go either.
It ordered the branches to bind them one by one, tightly trussing them up in a way that rather resembled certain cooking styles on the Deya Continent.
The prophet beast was just about to savor its meal when the woman in white robes stepped in front of it.
Natiaveda raised her palm flat toward the magical beast, chanting a complex incantation.
A beam of white light shot from her hand and cleaved the prophet beast cleanly in two.
It was the first time the prophet beast had ever wielded such overwhelming power—and also the first time it had brushed so closely against death.
The power it gained from opposing the lady envoy granted it true intelligence. It could actually speak now.
“This isn’t fair.”
A patch of skin on the prophet beast’s body puckered and wrinkled.
“It was them—these humans with no sense of their own limits, with no reverence. They always want to know things they were never meant to know…”
Natiaveda said,
“But you have devoured too many lives, prophet branch.”
“What humans most need to know… is their own stupidity and incompetence.”
The prophet beast muttered under its breath,
“I’ve already told them the most important knowledge. That’s a fair trade. They should be thanking me… even though I curse them to hell ten thousand times over.”
Natiaveda snapped her fingers toward Leif.
Her demeanor returned to what it had been when they first met: aloof, powerful, untouchable.
With courteous distance, she said,
“Lady Knight, I believe the final blow should be yours.”
Leif trotted over to the massive prophet beast, now chopped in half and rapidly shriveling.
She first bowed politely to the lady envoy.
Then, without hesitation, she raised her blade and brought it down on the prophet beast.
The colossal prophet beast dissolved into a single, gleaming golden branch.
When Leif picked up that golden branch, she could have sworn she heard a faint sigh from within.
Aside from the branch, there was also a small, crystal-clear bead on the ground.
Leif bent down and picked it up.
It was the prophet beast’s crystal core, a golden shade so pale it was almost white.
From Leif’s pitifully vague memories of Knights and Princess, there had been a system in the game where you could socket crystal cores to enhance weapon traits.
Crystal cores would drop randomly when you killed magical beasts.
Low-level beasts had abysmal drop rates, while the stronger the beast, the higher the chance—and the better the quality—of the core.
Their quality was ranked by color: the lowest was black, then better ones were red, then gold, and the very best were white.
Leif hadn’t expected that the prophet beast from her very first quest would actually drop a core—much less a golden-quality one.
It probably had to do with that last mutation of its.
Aside from quality, what truly determined a core’s value were the types of buffs it granted.
Generally, there were ones that boosted attack, ones that increased defense, increased speed, added lifesteal, and so on. There were also some rare attributes, whose effects depended entirely on the type of beast the core came from.
Some crystal cores were practically useless—for example, one that only made flower petals fall around you when you entered battle. Even if such a core were gold or white, it was worth less than a black core that boosted a common attribute.
And a core that boosted common stats still couldn’t compare to one that enhanced a rare attribute.
Leif felt around one of the recessed slots on her blade’s hilt and set the crystal core into place.
She immediately saw the changes in the weapon’s stats:
“Enemy Strong, I Grow Strong.”
Explanation: When the enemy’s attack exceeds your own and your HP falls below 80%, absorb 20% of the enemy’s speed and attack power.
A rare attribute.
Perfect for punching above my level, Leif thought calmly.
Once I hit the level cap, this core will just be dead weight—but that’s a problem I won’t have to worry about for a while.
“Go, let’s go, hurry…”
“Don’t stay here…”
“Too scary… there’s actually a woman that terrifying…”
The shaken trainee knights tumbled down from the trees, each of them bearing more or less some injuries.
Thinking of Aron’s fate and then looking at the two girls again, they were more terrified than if they’d met the Reaper himself.
They clamped their tails between their legs and fled.
Only Gary stopped.
He hesitated, glanced at his departing companions, then still walked over to Leif.
She was standing there with the golden branch in hand, frowning as she traced the patterns on its surface.
“Leif, you… when will you go back to Ed Village…?”
After what he’d seen today, Gary no longer held out any real hope for the answer he wanted, but he couldn’t help asking anyway.
“After I’ve earned glory.”
Leif exhaled, tucked the golden branch into her satchel, and tightened her grip on her sword hilt.
“When I return home in honor.”
“Things like today… that kind of terrifying stuff…”
Gary bit down on his thick lower lip and scratched his head.
“And so bloody, so cruel… there’ll be a lot more of that in the future, won’t there… Is that really the road you’ve chosen, Leif…?”
The trainee knights, seeing Gary hadn’t followed but was instead talking to that damned crazy woman, all called him back in a hurry.
They were afraid if he angered the madwoman, he’d drag them down with him.
Gary had no choice but to catch up to them, but he kept looking back, clearly waiting for Leif’s reply.
“Leif, if you ever regret it, you can come find me!”
Gary called out the location of the Knight Academy.
“If you come find me, I’ll take you back to Ed Village with me.”
—
By the time they returned to where the coachman had dropped them off, less than three quarters of an hour had passed.
The coachman still hadn’t shown up.
The lady envoy and the would-be knight stood side by side.
Unlike earlier, Leif’s attitude toward Natiaveda had improved greatly. It was bordering on reverent.
The lady envoy asked,
“Lady Knight, what’s wrong with you?”
“Your Excellency hid your strength deeply. I’ve learned a lesson.”
Leif lowered her gaze as she spoke.
“I shouldn’t judge by appearances.”
The lady envoy laughed.
“Even so, I’m certainly no angel.”
The atmosphere between them was unbearably strange.
Leif tried to force a smile to ease the tension. She even knew that, right now, she ought to be curious about Natiaveda’s true strength and identity.
But her mind was somewhere else entirely.
The lady envoy’s eyes were fixed on Leif’s satchel.
Through the not-very-thick layer of burlap, the prophet branch shimmered with a seductive glow.
Her gaze shifted slightly and met Leif’s.
Then she noticed the way Leif’s hands were clasped together and trembling.
She understood that Leif’s thoughts at this moment were no different from her own.
“Please, you should hold onto it.”
Leif offered the satchel to her.
“No.”
The lady envoy turned her head away and drew a long, deep breath.
“The temptation of the prophet branch truly lives up to its name. I used to think only the incompetent would pin their hopes on a prophet branch. But now I realize… if it ever fell into my hands, it might never find its way back out.”
“What question do you wish to ask, Your Excellency?”
“…”
Natiaveda hesitated for a while, then answered coolly,
“Since I was young, I’ve often wondered what is truly hidden in the vast universe. What laws govern the changes of sun and moon, the turning of the seasons?
“Most of all, those stars strewn across the heavens—I’ve always loved glittering things the most.
“And now I’ve taken a liking to something that sparkles like the stars, but I don’t know how to catch it.”
—The Lady Knight’s bright, sparkling eyes.
“Lady Knight, what do you wish to know?”
“…It seems Your Excellency is quite devoted to astronomical knowledge.”
Leif smiled faintly.
“But I believe the human heart is even more complex than the cosmos.
“I want to explore the mysteries of human nature, to understand the truest good, truth, and beauty, and how they can be realized on both personal and societal levels.
“Yet among all these, what I especially want to know is… happiness, and the source of happiness…”
—The method for making iced cola.
That was the very first question that surfaced in Leif’s mind.
But she was sure that if she said it aloud, the lady envoy would laugh right in her face.
The other woman loved astronomy so passionately—how could Leif admit that her own passion was… iced cola?
The half-drunk coachman appeared, humming a little tune as he drove the carriage over.
When he saw the two girls, both with all limbs intact, he could hardly believe his eyes.
“Great Temple above, did I drink that much? Have my old eyes really gone this bad?”
When the two girls had gotten off the carriage earlier, they had practically been glued together.
Now, however, both wore distant expressions, each with her own reserved and carefully polite smile.
—
When they finally handed the prophet branch over to the queen, Leif and Natiaveda both let out a breath at the same time.
The queen received the branch with utmost care, then passed it on to the finest instrument craftsman in all of Gino City, whose skill and character were equally renowned, to have it made into a flute.
Yet even so, the sorrow on the queen’s face did not ease.
