Chapter 65 :

Episode 65 - Kidnapping

Looking once at the city gate leading into the capital in the distance, then once at the faces of Ratel and the child, Jing let out a sigh.

In conclusion, Jing, Ratel, and even the child had all safely broken through the mercenaries and knights surrounding them.

Without a single injury, at that.

What had allowed them to come out so intact was neither their swordsmanship nor their quick footwork.

“You crazy bastards! Do you even know what you’ve done?!”

With a complicated heart, Jing looked down at Gael, who was shouting at the top of his lungs, the greatest contributor to their escape.

With his arms and legs bound, Gael seemed unable to properly grasp the situation, and he was glaring at Ratel and Jing as if he would kill them, demanding that they untie him.

* * *

“They are sinners who stole the imperial family’s power, and those who shelter them! Capture the child alive, and do whatever you want with the rest, whether you kill them or spare them!”

At Gael’s order, everyone surrounding Jing and Ratel gripped their respective weapons and took stances as if they would charge at any moment.

All the people who had been doing their best not to get involved with Ratel had finished preparing to attack them without hesitation.

“It will be difficult to face them all while carrying the child. Ratel, I will break through one side, so take the child and flee in the meantime.”

Jing whispered to Ratel, who stood beside him.

“There is no need for that.”

From Jing’s perspective, it was a kindness to take on the difficult task, but Ratel’s refusal was firm.

“Then what are you saying you will do? Do not say something insane like fighting while carrying the child on your back.”

“I know that much too. I would not do something that insane.”

Leaving Jing wondering what he was going to do, Ratel stepped forward without hesitation.

“Aaaagh!!! You madman! This is kidnapping!”

And without hesitation, he showed something that was not insane yet somehow insane: he snatched Gael and used him as a shield.

Jing had many things to say, but because the effect was outstanding, he had no choice but to swallow his nagging and follow behind Ratel.

* * *

Gael, who had been captured without even getting to resist once, kept shouting as though his throat did not hurt.

“You lunatics! This is the first time I have ever been treated with such humiliation! How dare you, how dare you......!”

At Priest Gael’s words, which he could not even bring himself to finish, Jing deeply sympathized.

Of course.

Living as a temple priest in Abiran, he would never have been treated like this.

That was why, even in this situation, he probably did not imagine that they would truly harm him.

“If you want your mouth torn open, keep shouting like that.”

Nor had he probably ever heard such a rough threat.

At Ratel’s sincere recommendation, Gael finally stopped shouting.

“Y-you think you will be fine after doing this? Touching a priest is a grave crime. It means you would have no excuse even if you died right now. Soon, the temple knights will come looking for me, and then all of you will be dead!”

Stopping his shouting did not mean he closed his mouth, though.

Watching Ratel’s expression, as if he might immediately carry out his warning, Jing cut off Gael’s words.

“Priest Gael, we did not bring you here because we intended to harm you. The situation was so urgent that things turned out this way, but.......”

Even though Jing spoke politely, the anger in Gael’s eyes did not fade.

“What on earth is your reason for doing this? Even if you kidnap me and demand money, in the end, warrants will be issued for you everywhere, and you will live your whole lives as fugitives! Do you want to live without a single place to set foot in this country?”

Despite being irritable and sharp-tempered, he was someone who, thanks to his status as a priest of a small village, had only a handful of experiences hearing harsh words from others, so he lost his temper without any tact.

“Fascinating.”

Though he was soon cut off by someone’s calm voice.

Gael stiffly raised his head and looked at Ratel, who was looking down at him.

“You are bound so you cannot use your limbs, and there is not a single person to help you.”

Pointing out Gael’s situation as if it were truly fascinating, Ratel tilted his head crookedly to the side.

“Where exactly does that courage come from?”

Thanks to Ratel, who gently taught him that he could be killed without even a mouse or bird knowing, Gael completely shut his mouth.

However, Jing also agreed with Gael’s opinion to some extent.

“Ratel, there is nothing wrong in what this priest has said. We cannot keep running away like this, can we? We must take this child back to his family too.”

“There is no need for that. Anyway, those who know nothing will prioritize capturing this man and the child. They will come to catch us without going to that village. And you.”

At Ratel’s call, Gael flinched and raised his head.

While faithfully obeying Ratel’s order to keep his mouth shut.

“Normally, when children like that appear, where are they taken?”

When Ratel pointed with his chin at the child on Jing’s back, Gael rolled his eyes and opened his mouth.

“Th-that is......everyone knows they should be taken to the temple in the capital. They go there, examine various things, determine whether the child truly stole the power or not, and then......deal with them.......”

“Wait, then are there more cases like this?”

“Did I not tell you? This entire world is full of things that were made.”

Ratel answered as if it were nothing, but for Jing, it was a story he had never heard in his life.

The fact that there was not just one commoner child born with God’s power, and the fact that all of them were dealt with by the temple—every bit of it was something he was hearing for the first time.

‘Since when? Since when had things outside my common sense been happening as if they were natural?’

“So our destination has not changed.”

Ratel briefly cast his gaze toward the walls of the capital visible in the distance.

Jing thought his eyes seemed somehow foreign.

Even when people look at the same thing, different things are reflected in each person’s eyes.

Usually, new things are reflected more greatly.

Whether that takes a more beautiful form or a more imposing one differs from person to person.

But the capital Ratel was looking at did not seem to be either.

“We will enter the capital. It should not be very different from other villages there either.”

* * *

“You may wait here.”

The priest, who had maintained a blunt attitude, spoke as if giving an order.

The young duke, having changed into the clothes the priest had handed him, stepped into the room.

The things he had worn from the ducal residence had already been removed.

Now, the only things left to the child were the pair of gold rings Tollin had carefully handed him.

Following Tollin’s request that he keep at least these if possible, the young duke did not hand over the pair of rings hanging from his necklace to the priests.

The child checked once more the location of the room the priest had guided him to.

As Tollin had said, it was the second room away from the prayer room.

There was a high chance that the clothes the priests had collected, as well as the luggage Tollin had packed for him, were being stored in the room beside it.

That also meant Tollin’s advice to protect at least the rings if possible had been right.

Without realizing it, the young duke fiddled with the rings hidden tightly inside his clothes.

It was an ordinary action that could have looked like he was straightening his clothes, but the problem was that it irritated the priest’s eyes as he was about to leave after finishing his guidance.

Whether the persistent gaze following the heir of the sinner Feedus family was faith, or whether it was an inferiority complex left behind by his past as a noble, no one could know.

“What is that? Did you perhaps hide something inside your clothes?”

Speaking sharply, he roughly grabbed the back of the young duke’s neck before the young duke could even answer.

Flustered by the unimaginable rudeness, the young duke unconsciously slapped the priest’s hand away roughly, but the priest had already discovered the necklace hanging around the child’s neck.

“Did you not hear that you cannot wear anything until before the ritual? Did the sinner Feedus also commit the sin of not teaching his son even that?”

With an oddly excited air, he spat out the verbal abuse.

The young duke felt flames rising in his eyes.

From the moment they first met, this man had maintained an unnecessarily sharp attitude even toward Tollin.

The young duke calmed his anger and opened his mouth.

“This has been passed down through my family for generations, so it is the same as part of my body.”

“Are you saying you will not follow the temple’s rules? As expected, a sinner is......”

“I understand that the reason one changes clothes before performing the ritual is to keep away impure things before being reborn as a citizen of Abiran. All the heirs of the Duke Feedus family have undergone the ritual while carrying these rings. Are you saying now, priest, that the Duke Feedus family’s heirloom is impure, and that the priests who performed the rituals for our ancestors until now carried out impure rituals?”

Fortunately, the lie Tollin had prepared flowed quite naturally from the young duke’s mouth.

The priest seemed displeased that the young duke had refuted him without being overwhelmed in the slightest.

Judging by how his glaring face was gradually turning red, it also seemed he had simply lost face because he could not find words to refute him.

If he said yes, it would be exposed that he had picked a needless fault, and if he said no, it would be like admitting that the priests of previous generations had been wrong.

“It does not matter how the Feedus family did things before. What matters is that from now on, the young duke will no longer receive such special treatment. Hand over the ring at once.”

In the end, what he chose was unreasonable stubbornness without logic.

His voice, raised with excitement, rang out loudly.

The young duke wanted to refute him further, but causing a commotion was not the result he wanted.

As the priest said, the child slowly removed the necklace from his neck.

And while watching delight rise in the priest’s eyes, he removed one of the two rings from the chain.

The priest followed the movement of the dazzlingly shining golden ring with his eyes as if entranced.

Reading the greed coloring his face, the young duke held the ring out before him.

“What are you doing right now?”

The priest, who belatedly came to his senses, asked.

“I will entrust one of the two to you, priest.”

“What absurd stubbornness are you speaking of? Hurry and hand over the other one too.”

With a snort, he snatched one ring from the young duke’s hand.

“I said I would entrust it to you, priest, so it does not matter when you return it.”

When the young duke said that, the priest’s body, which had been reaching out to snatch the remaining ring, flinched.

“You are the only person in the temple who knows that I have it. That means that no matter when you return it, there will be no one to blame you.”

An heirloom passed down for generations in that Feedus family. It could not help but be tempting.

“I cannot concede any further than this either.”

The young duke’s face, twisted as if bitter, also gave him a sense of pleasure and satisfaction.

The priest thought for a moment.

A moment so brief that the word was not wasted.

Because deep inside his pocket as he left the room, one high-quality gold ring was secretly shining.

The door closed, and Plin Feedus, left alone, lost strength and sank into the chair placed in one corner of the room.

“There was so much I did not know.......”

At the feeling of all the strength leaving his body, a sigh came out on its own.

After Duke Feedus passed away, Tollin had kept the young duke from going outside as much as possible, except for the bare minimum of external activities.

Because of that, the young duke was not used to such blatant gazes of hatred.

The priest’s eyes, glossy with greed, had also been quite a shock.

The priests in his memory had always been kind, elegant, and people who restrained their emotions.

The young duke looked down at his clothing, which had become even lighter after giving away one ring.

His body had grown lighter, but his heart was heavy.

The despair that had briefly passed across the face of the man who had chosen his clothes and accessories with a serious expression came to mind as well.

Priest Vesper had called Tollin a sinner.

If it was the sin of the Feedus family, then the one who ought to take responsibility was naturally himself, who had inherited the blood of Feedus.

But since his father had passed away, the person carrying all obligations had been Tollin.

The one who should have returned to the mansion to be judged was not actually Tollin, but himself.

However, even if there had been no coercion from Priest Vesper, he did not know whether he would have truly been of any help.

Perhaps he might have made things worse.

Because he had repeated too many mistakes until now.

The version of himself who had given the wrong answer before the Second Prince, the version of himself who had always only relied on Tollin and Jack, the version of himself who had made everything a mess—they continued to overlap.

Even the ring Tollin had given him at the end, he had only managed to protect one of them.

Judging by how rough their treatment was, the clothes and ornaments the priests had taken also did not seem likely to be handled properly.

As the young duke thought about the whereabouts of the things Tollin had chosen for him at the end, he slowly rose from the chair at a question that suddenly came to mind.

Why did Tollin emphasize the temple’s structure so much?

It was a part he had simply overlooked because of the series of events that had struck in a frenzy.

Rather than the order of the ritual or etiquette, Tollin had repeatedly recited the structure of the temple to the young duke.

At some point, Tollin or his father had emphasized something in a similar way.

In other words, as if, as if.......as if on some day when they had made him memorize the escape route in the ducal residence to prepare for an unexpected moment.

Plin moved toward the door as if startled.

No, he tried to move.

Tap!

Tap! Tap!

He would have, if a small sound of something striking the room’s window had not caught his feet.

Like a child startled while doing something bad, the young duke stiffly turned around and checked the identity of whoever had knocked on the window.

Though he lost his strength at once when he discovered a being that was ambiguous to call someone.

A small squirrel was knocking on the window with its tail.

“Squeak!! Squeak squeak!!!”

Rather irritably.