Chapter 9
Arilleti managed to tear her eyes away from the pané (bread bowl).
Glenn Hezeite, sitting across from her, had been watching her with a meaningful look for a while now.
I have more to say here!
“Uncle (Ajusshi).”
“I won’t answer unless you call me Uncle (Samchon).”
“How are you going to cut off the princes’ heads when you don’t even have wood to light the furnace?”
“Cut off what?” Glenn looked flabbergasted. “Who taught a child such cruel words?”
Arilleti ignored him and worked her brain furiously. Without much deep thought, information about the Hezeite territory began to surface one by one:
- The Hezeite territory is very poor.
- The northernmost region where the Hezeite territory is located is regularly swept by snowstorms. During the snowstorms, the territory people cannot leave their homes, but conversely, outsiders cannot enter, making the entire territory an excellent ironclad fortress.
- However, due to that very isolation, the Hezeite territory is inevitably poor. As it is already a cold region, being cut off from the outside world means they are easily isolated and likely to freeze stiff.
- So, how do they sustain themselves? Hezeite is a family that receives a stipend from the Imperial Family for their service in subduing monsters in the border region. The only assets the isolated Hezeite has, lacking fertile land or trade cities, are their veteran knights and private soldiers, and they run the territory with the stipends earned by employing them.
Summary: Simply put, if their relationship with the Imperial Family sours, they will starve!
The gold chest the expedition team fiercely protected this time was precisely the annual stipend issued by the Imperial Family.
However, the Hezeite Count family supported the 3rd Prince instead of the 1st or 2nd Prince, incurring the scrutiny and suspicion of the other princes.
While they lacked money and their territory was tucked away in the frontier, the military power of Hezeite could not be ignored—this was the very point Arilleti herself had argued. That’s why Hezeite was always the number one target for removal by the princes.
But judging by this attack, the 1st Prince’s side must have been wary of Hezeite for a long time, even without Arilleti’s counsel.
“Aril, you’re drooling.”
“Why did you choose the 3rd Prince?”
Glenn stopped smiling slightly. “How do you know that, too?”
“It’s obvious.”
It wasn’t a hard fact to deduce. If Hezeite hadn’t taken any action, why would the Empress bother sending her Knight Commander to eliminate the Junior Lord? Clearly, some conversation must have taken place between Glenn Hezeite and the 3rd Prince, Rastian Federka, at the Imperial Castle. In the past, this was also around the time Hezeite first reached out to the 3rd Prince.
‘And three years later, they completely and publicly side with Rastian.’
It was an act of self-destruction that she could never understand even in the past.
“Is she really a Sage who sees the future…? No, there can’t be two Sages with the same power.”
“Huh?”
“No. Never mind.”
Glenn, who muttered something skeptical, shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, to answer you, it’s probably similar to the reason why I picked you up.”
“…”
“You get punished if you ignore a child in danger.”
Arilleti stared intently at the young man who was roughly wiping her mouth with a napkin.
On the face of the young man, who was still young and fresh, the face of a familiar man was overlaid: the Marquis, with a much more solid and heavy impression.
My past.
But now, a vanished future.
“My Lord used to have eyes just like yours. It’s not even funny, the way these kids still have milk on their lips.”
“What do you mean? Stop talking nonsense, and kill me now if you’re going to. This will be your only chance!”
“Oh yeah? Then go, little one.”
“What…?”
“Run far, far away, without looking back. And never return to the Bertel Imperial Family. Understood?”
“…”
“Go find your own life, Arilleti.”
The memory of the past made her flare up in anger.
That’s why you were destined to lose repeatedly—because you kept saving every child in danger, you foolish man.
Arilleti, forgetting to act like a child, mumbled fiercely. “Why do you have no sense? That’s why you let me go back then, you pathetic Uncle (Ajusshi).”
If he had killed me then, or at least captured me, no one knows how things would have turned out.
Glenn Hezeite was too kind-hearted. With that, he could never win. He wouldn’t even be able to issue a duel challenge, like in the first timeline. Even if he did stand on the dueling ground, he would fall listlessly, like in the second timeline.
I don’t want to let him die so pointlessly.
“If you hadn’t been there, we would have been annihilated at the Gringen Bridge. I don’t have a family to support, so my death would be the end of it for me, but Roel has three children. Tanesa also has a grandmother living with her.”
Uncle Dunken said so, didn’t he? They all have people they must protect?
Arilleti stabbed the pané with a fork.
“This can’t go on anymore. We need a plan.”
“A plan? A plan for what?”
A plan to prevent their destruction, what else!
The fundamental problem of this hopeless territory began with that snowstorm outside. A natural disaster that blocked all routes of escape.
‘If there is no road, I’ll just make one.’
She finds what is there. And she creates what is not. That was Arilleti’s other iron rule.
Glenn observed the child staring at him with blazing eyes, utterly fascinated.
‘She has this side, too?’
The child who had been drooling, looking like she wanted to drown in the pané, suddenly took on a very serious expression. Her deep eyes looked straight at Glenn. Now, the gaze was one that looked at the most pathetic person in the world.
‘I thought she was a shy kitten, but sometimes she looks like an eighty-year-old elder.’
The depth of sorrow and melancholy in those turquoise eyes was not something a child who had just turned five should possess.
Arilleti chewed her pasta diligently. She thoroughly ate the bread from the lid to the bowl. Before long, Arilleti, with a noticeably round belly, jumped down from the chair.
“Follow me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To pay for the meal.”
“I’ll follow you if you call me Uncle (Samchon), Sage.”
Am I doing this for my own good?
When Arilleti made a face like she had bitten into excrement, Glenn burst into cheerful laughter. Her emotions were so clearly visible on her face; it was endearing to the point of killing him.
‘Sometimes she seems like a Sage, and sometimes not.’
If she truly is the Sage of the White Forest, he absolutely must keep her in Hezeite. A hundred years ago, Sages were often cruelly exploited and discarded. Glenn recalled the child who shivered under his interrogation, her tiny shoulders trembling.
‘She’s too young to endure the world’s greed.’
Glenn’s own iron rule was that a child should be a child.
He felt sorry for the 3rd Prince, who was timid for his age, and told him to call if he needed help. And he couldn’t pass by this child, who had eyes filled with the sadness of an elderly person about to pass away.
Those fiercely lonely eyes.
Perhaps because his younger sister, whom he lost long ago—whose face, name, and even gender he did not know—might have had eyes like that.
“You must always remain neutral, Glenn. Always stand one step back from the mortal world and observe. Never interfere with matters that can sway destiny. You will surely pay the price…”
‘Well, Mother. Even if I have to pay the price someday, right now, I want to live by human principles.’
So, should I play along with this Sage for once?
The young man, who quickly masked his lonely eyes, followed Arilleti as she scurried away.
