Chapter 11
“Arilleti!”
Glenn urgently picked up the child sprawled on the dirt road. Blood was profusely staining the child’s pale cheeks and mouth. Forgetting the wondrous miracle he had just witnessed, Glenn immediately ran into the castle with the child in his arms.
The servants were horrified to see the pale Junior Lord and the limp girl in his embrace.
“Oh my goodness, the baby is hurt!”
“Sergio, call Doctor Sergio. Immediately!”
Sergio Annus, the doctor, who was collecting root vegetables in the castle’s backyard, rushed to the child’s bedroom.
“Everyone, step aside. Let me examine her!”
While the doctor carefully examined Arilleti, Glenn’s anxiety mounted.
“Is there any hope?”
Doctor Sergio placed his hand near Arilleti’s nose and checked her heartbeat before shaking his head grimly.
“Her breathing is very weak. She has clearly sustained internal injuries from colliding with some sort of intangible force. It could be an Aura implosion or being caught in a strong Mana storm…”
“The child can see Aura, Doctor. And perhaps Mana as well. Is it possible that the two forces clashed?”
“Excuse me? But it is generally accepted that handling both Aura and Mana simultaneously is impossible, Junior Lord.”
“No, I don’t believe that to be the case for this child.”
Because she is the possessor of a power that encompasses both Aura and Mana. Or perhaps, the essence of power itself. Glenn swallowed the rest of his words.
‘What this child wields is neither Aura nor Mana. It is the power of a higher dimension. Or perhaps the very essence of it.’
A moment ago, Glenn had clearly seen it.
What the girl, standing motionless like a flower bush in the snow, was doing. An energy was swirling and gathering in the child’s tiny hands. An invisible ripple heavily undulated.
When he frowned and lifted his head, Glenn saw three Needles suspended in the air, looking down upon the vast snowfield. They looked exactly like a clock. A massive clock composed of the longest second hand, the slightly shorter minute hand, and the shortest hour hand. Merely looking up at it made his chest feel heavy, as if he had swallowed a lead weight.
The outlandish reversal that followed left him speechless.
This was the great force of nature, which humans could never approach. A power perilous for a mere human body to endlessly wield, thus placing an immense risk on the caster. There was only one such power in this world:
The power of the White Forest.
Arilleti Cardis. This child was the Sage of the White Forest, who had appeared after a hundred years. The successor to the power of one of the four Sages who once stained this land with blood but had since disappeared from the continent.
He had suspected it many times. When the child estimated the amount of Aura in the knights, when he discovered her sneaking off to see Leon Bodapeti, the Empress’s right-hand man. And when she fluently used difficult words that a child should not know, despite her clumsy pronunciation.
At first, seeing her abruptly throw out random prophecies, he suspected she might be a Sage who dreamed of the future.
Now he realized that was not the case.
The certainty settled upon him. If she possessed the power to freely change the present and the past…
‘A Time Mage!’
Arilleti Cardis was undoubtedly the Time Mage of the Worldline.
3. This Territory Will Make It!
The runaway daughter of the traitor, Viscount Cardis. A wandering orphan who competed with beggars over garbage bins in the slum. A skinny chore girl who endured beatings from her master while doing odd jobs at a smelly monster byproduct ingredient shop.
Until she was twelve, before being discovered by the 1st Prince Albert Federka, that was Arilleti’s life.
Until then, she didn’t even know her parents were traitors. All she knew was her first name; she didn’t even know her family name or birthplace.
Her oldest memory was the sound of raindrops wetting the leaves. Tok, tok. She remembered curling up under a bridge and listening to the sound of the dawn rain falling into the stream.
The next memory that surfaced was her mother’s faint voice.
“Always maintain neutrality, Aril. You must never carelessly take sides, and especially, you must never intervene in matters that can sway destiny…”
After that, she lived on the streets until she was eight. During the day, she fiercely competed with her beggar peers, and at night, she huddled close with the children she had fought to endure the cold.
When she turned eight, she decided she couldn’t live like a vermin anymore. She cleaned herself thoroughly at the stream and searched the village for places that needed her.
“Hello. Do you need a delivery person?” “If you teach me the work, I will learn hard. You don’t need to pay me money. Just let me take some leftover food.” “I’m stronger than I look! Please hire me just once, Ma’am. I will work hard!”
But no shop would hire a ragged child who couldn’t read and was as skinny as a winter branch. She only encountered human traffickers who approached her because her hair color was vibrant and she was pretty like a doll.
To protect herself, Arilleti went to the potion ingredient shop that everyone avoided. It was a store that dealt with rare herbs and monster byproducts, the raw materials for potions, and mercenaries would come at all hours to sell monster corpses.
As everyone avoided it, the work was grueling, and the owner was eccentric.
The day Albert Federka discovered her, Arilleti was severely beaten by the ingredient shop owner. The reason was that she had burst a hard-to-obtain monster’s internal organ.
“You stupid, useless girl! After all these years, you’re still so senseless, aren’t you? I should have kicked you out long ago!”
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to endure it, but she felt unfairly treated. Knowing she shouldn’t, Arilleti talked back.
“If it was so precious, you should have moved it yourself.” “What?” “I spent all day carrying 50 boxes up to the third floor, and it’s my fault that I was tired and put it down on the stairs for a moment? It’s your fault for kicking it while you were irritated…!” “What? I tolerated employing you, though you aren’t useful in any way, and now you’re showing no gratitude!”
A hand the size of a cauldron lid flew toward her mercilessly.
She didn’t want to lose that day. The self-esteem that had been constantly trampled for years fiercely flared up like a final spark.
“Don’t, don’t swear at me…!”
At that moment, the ‘Blessing of the Sage’ shone for the first time.
“M-master…?”
Arilleti stared blankly up at the owner, who was rigidly frozen in the posture of swinging his hand.
Just then, the shop door opened as if by a lie.
“He is no longer your master.”
A boy with smooth blonde hair and noble features stood in the doorway. He looked at Arilleti, who was sitting on the floor, with a faint smile.
“We finally meet, Time Mage of the Worldline. I have been waiting for you for a long time.”
He approached without hesitation and offered his hand, looking exactly like a Prince. A righteous Prince out of a fairy tale.
Arilleti was enchanted and took his hand.
That was the first meeting with the 1st Prince, Albert Federka, who was nineteen at the time.
