Chapter 59 ………………………………………..
What on earth is all this about?
Fraud, prison escape, and disguising yourself as a priest?
“I’m not disguised. I’m a real priest. You can only arrest me if my crime is clear.”
“A real priest? I’ve never heard anything like that…”
The flustered knight muttered.
It seemed he hadn’t heard that a priest of the Holy Kingdom had entered the prince’s hunting grounds.
I could roughly guess the situation. Shane was probably planning to use an escaped convict to kill me.
The knight scratched his head roughly.
“If you lay a hand on a priest of the Holy Kingdom, you won’t escape punishment. Don’t cause unnecessary trouble and just follow orders—go look for the disguised escaped convict.”
“Ah, I don’t know. I was never told a priest came in. I’ll just do what His Highness ordered.”
He reached his own conclusion.
“You know this? If I take your head with me, they say there’s a reward.”
Perhaps blinded by money, the knight hesitated for a moment, then stepped closer, eyes flashing with murderous intent, as if he might kill me on the spot.
So Shane really intends to kill me.
He’s obsessed with Lancelot and desperately trying to win his heart, so why is he killing me?
Doesn’t he need an omega?
I decided to set those questions aside for now.
This was the time to find a way to survive.
I backed away from the knight.
Behind me was a waterfall.
If I were swept away by that violent current, my body might be torn to pieces.
The knight lifted a finger and crooked it.
“Stop backing up and come here. You don’t want to die in agony, do you? If you fall from there, you’ll be smashed against rocks and drift around until you stop breathing.”
“……”
“I’ll be merciful and kill you in one clean strike.”
I’ll pass on both options.
I neatly folded my hands behind my back.
Then, slowly, I began to move my fingertips, drawing a picture in the air.
“Why don’t you come to me instead?”
“Hey, if you get hit there, your head might fall first. Hurry up before I drag you over!”
It was horrible.
Rather than die at the hands of someone like him, it almost seemed better to fall into the waterfall.
I glanced back.
It was too high. I was still too scared to jump.
At last, the knight came up and roughly grabbed my arm.
“Can’t you hear me? Don’t be a nuisance and—”
At that moment, a hazy smoke rose from my fingertips.
‘It worked!’
It was a method Minerva had used several times to put others to sleep.
I’d carefully watched how she drew her images, but I wasn’t sure I could actually use it myself.
Thankfully, it activated properly.
‘So exhausting…!’
It consumed far more divine power than I expected.
Minerva, who could stand calmly even after using this power repeatedly, seemed all the more impressive now.
“Wh-what are you doing—?!”
Startled by the sudden smoke, the knight covered his nose and waved a hand.
But he had already inhaled plenty of it.
“Ugh!”
With a short scream, he closed his eyes and collapsed to the ground.
Snore!
He even started snoring as he slept.
‘Sleeping soundly.’
He seemed completely out cold.
I thought I could steal his horse and escape.
“Ah…”
But I couldn’t help sighing.
Just when I thought I could breathe easy, I heard the sound of many horses pounding the ground.
Before long, several knights appeared from between the trees.
There were about ten of them.
I resented Shane for creating this situation.
“There he is!”
The knights dismounted and surrounded me. The one at the front looked back and forth between me and the sleeping knight, then spoke.
“Do not commit further crimes. Come quietly with us.”
If I went with them, they’d only hand me over to Shane.
I had already died twice.
Once was in an illusion, but the intense desire to live that I felt as I died—I remembered it clearly.
I will survive.
… I want to live.
The pheromones I had barely managed to suppress began to leak out again.
I tried to steady my mind, but surrounded by knights, I couldn’t completely ignore my fear.
Calm down.
‘Let’s draw one more picture.’
If I used the power to put people to sleep again, I might completely exhaust my divine power and pass out this time.
Still, what did I have to lose?
I refused to die without even trying.
The knight at the front drew his sword and pointed it at me.
“Bind the criminal!”
My trembling fingertips began to move slowly.
I could feel the divine power in my body draining rapidly.
Then—
Before I could finish the drawing, darkness fell.
Like a total solar eclipse where the moon blocks out the sun, everything around us turned pitch-black in an instant.
This wasn’t a natural phenomenon.
I knew exactly what this was.
‘Schwartz’s darkness ability.’
Even if it had been in an illusion, I had experienced it with my whole body—I was certain.
‘Schwartz is here!’
This time, it wasn’t an illusion. It had to be the real Schwartz.
Had he come for me too, not just Shane?
The thought that he only seemed to appear whenever I was in danger sent a shiver down my spine.
The surroundings were completely swallowed by darkness.
I couldn’t even see my own fingertips.
The air smelled like the cold night air you encounter late at night.
“Sonia.”
I turned my head toward the direction of the scent. His voice came from where the cool night air was thickest.
“Do not be afraid. I will protect you.”
Though it was so dark I couldn’t see an inch ahead, I could feel Schwartz standing beside me.
It was strange.
The moment I sensed what must have been his alpha pheromones, my anxiety faded.
Because his words—his promise to protect me—felt true.
The artificially created night was my ally.
But for the knights who were targeting me, this darkness was a bad omen.
“U-uaaagh!”
A sharp scream rang out from within the darkness.
I also heard the sound of something being torn to shreds.
A horrific scene must have been unfolding around me. Amid the dying screams, someone shouted loudly.
“It’s the Duke of Ründmere’s ability! Detonate the spirit stones!”
Flames burst out around us.
They were detonating fire-aspected spirit stones.
As the smoke was swept away by the wind, the area brightened in an instant, and Schwartz was revealed.
“Fire!”
A knight who seemed to be the commander shouted.
“But His Grace is there too!”
“His Grace can protect himself. Aim for that priest!”
The knights who had survived Schwartz’s night quickly regrouped and fired their arrows.
As the knight said, such arrows were nothing to Schwartz.
By layering darkness several times, he could use it as a defensive barrier.
But unlike Schwartz, it was hard for me to avoid them.
‘Please miss!’
With no trees around to hide behind, that was all I could pray for.
I flinched and covered my head as the arrows flew.
‘Huh?’
Fluttering, silk-like black darkness wrapped around me, not Schwartz.
Thunk! Clatter.
The arrows embedded in the darkness fell harmlessly to the ground.
Thanks to Schwartz’s darkness, I avoided every arrow without a scratch.
“Ugh…”
I looked at Schwartz as he groaned beside me.
Several arrows were lodged in his body.
I knew this from seeing it in the Domain of Predators.
Schwartz’s ability was offensive in nature; if he switched it to defense, he could only protect a single person.
‘He’s shielding me?’
I widened my eyes in disbelief.
Not only me—the knights who had fired the arrows looked just as shocked.
“Your Grace Ründmere?”
Instead of answering, he clutched his shoulder and breathed heavily.
Several arrows were embedded in Schwartz’s broad back as well. At a glance, he was badly injured.
Panicking, I babbled incoherently.
“We n-need to t-treat you…”
He needed treatment immediately, but the gathered knights didn’t seem inclined to let us go.
The cool night scent grew stronger.
Just as my omega pheromones would intensify if I bled, Schwartz’s alpha pheromones thickened because of the blood he’d shed.
I could sense his emotions—clumsy, unrefined.
Struggling, Schwartz spoke.
“Are you all right?”
Even while bleeding from so many arrows, he was worried about me.
The fear I felt toward him disappeared.
I shook my head.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
Don’t worry about someone like me!
He let out a small chuckle.
“Now you’re the Sonia I know. You were just screaming and trembling like a mouse—it felt so unfamiliar.”
I recalled the expression I’d seen on his face in the healing sanctuary.
When I screamed in his arms, Schwartz had looked wounded.
That hadn’t been an illusion. It must have been the real Schwartz.
‘So he really came to the sanctuary?’
I wanted to talk to him, to find out how much of it was real and how much had been illusion.
I didn’t want this man to die here.
I glared at the knights in front of me and shouted loudly.
“This man is a member of the imperial family recognized by the Emperor of the Rayntvia Empire! Do you not know that injuring imperial blood is a crime of high treason?”
