Chapter 124 :

Chapter 124 - Tag

While feeling relieved by Jing’s repeated certainty that there was at least no need to worry about the two of them losing their lives, Lia could not help but feel doubtful.

“Since you say it that firmly, I do feel relieved......but how can you be so certain?”

“......There is a way to know these things.”

Jing glossed over it while rotating the ankle he had twisted during his physical struggle with Ratel a few times.

The time it took for an injury of this level to recover was only a few minutes.

Ratel, who possessed strength far superior to his own, had to be seen as someone for whom dying was practically more difficult.

Though he was worried that this was why Ratel seemed to have developed a habit of doing even more reckless things.

He could not explain this to Lia.

Because Lia was still someone who would have many things to suffer through if she learned the truth.

“First, for now, we have no choice but to head to Limis. With the boat in that state, we cannot reach the island.”

When Jing changed the subject, Lia looked puzzled, but obediently changed the topic as he wished.

“The problem is that we don’t have a horse. Time is tight, but Limis should be quite far away.”

“That is true. We cannot know what sort of accident Ratel may have caused again......”

Thinking of him acting however he pleased like a foal let loose from its reins, Jing could only think that they had to hurry their steps.

Though it would be a little tricky to obtain something to repair the boat without being seen by the people of the temple.

“But Jing, wouldn’t it be faster to simply ask the people of the temple for help rather than repair the boat by ourselves?”

Lia, who had been following his steps that had somehow grown faster, asked as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her.

“.......”

Jing hesitated to answer because he could not find a suitable excuse.

Because the temple would not obediently let them launch a boat.

They probably would not want the existence of the orcs, which had been kept secret, to be revealed.

Since they urgently needed sacrifices to offer to the holy relic, they might choose to lock him and Lia up.

No, they certainly would.

“It would be better to go to the temple after rescuing Lord Ran and Ratel.”

“Why?”

Perhaps thinking it was an inefficient choice, Lia asked for the reason, but this time too, Jing could not find a suitable excuse.

“That is......”

Rustle.

What saved Jing, who had been driven into a corner, was the presence of someone appearing in the forest.

Jing raised his head and turned his gaze toward the direction the sound had come from.

When Jing, who had been hesitating with a troubled face, suddenly hardened his expression, Lia also grew tense and followed his gaze.

“Is something wrong?”

“There are people.”

“People? Then isn’t that a good thing? We could ask for help......”

“They are not civilians.”

Jing whispered lowly.

After giving a short answer, Jing turned his body toward the direction where the sound had come from, silencing his footsteps.

Lia also carefully followed behind his agile movement.

Lia was surprised once by the fact that Jing could walk so quietly through the bushes, once again when she discovered people who, just as he had said, could not possibly be seen as civilians, and one final time when she realized that they were clearly people from the temple no matter how she looked at them.

Two men wearing armor and one man wearing priestly robes.

It was a familiar combination, if one wanted to call it familiar.

“Listen properly! If anything happens to that thing, it will not end with just your lives!”

The arrogant voice of the priest shouting nervously could also be called common, if one wished to call it common.

The slightly unusual point was that all three of them were extremely frightened.

On the pale complexions of the three hung a deep trace of fear they had not managed to erase.

Jing and Lia could easily infer that the source of the fear was the long something covered in cloth that the knights were holding.

Lia noticed that the scrawny man, who was scolding the knights while his sleeves flapped like a person half-devoured by priestly robes, was reluctant to even touch the cloth wrapped around the object.

“What in the world is that, for the priest to be so frightened?”

Lia asked in a lowered voice.

“.......”

Jing could not say anything.

Because it was an answer far too despairing to put outside his mouth.

Judging by the priest’s cautious attitude and the way the situation was going, what they were transporting was undoubtedly the holy relic he had been searching for.

The problem was the reason they had brought something that should not have been hidden tightly enough even inside the temple all the way here, and with only that number of people.

It was soon revealed that Jing’s very bad premonition had been correct.

At the sound of footsteps coming from the direction Lia and he had walked from, Jing hurriedly grabbed Lia and hid behind a tree.

“Jing, why are you......”

Lia, who had been looking up at Jing with a puzzled face, quickly shut her mouth at the serious atmosphere.

Soon after, one more knight appeared.

“Priest, a boat was found by the riverbank. The sail was torn, and the inside was wet.”

The knights who had found the broken boat lying by the riverbank urgently reported the situation to the priest.

“Were there no people?”

“It was empty.”

“Damn it. Are you saying they all fell into the river and died?”

As if the mere thought gave him a headache, the skinny priest swept a hand over his forehead.

“No, priest. If they had been swept away by the river, there should have been some other traces. It is more likely that Lucha’s sacrifices got off the boat and scattered.”

Jing desperately hoped that Lia had not heard the word “sacrifices”, or had misheard it as some other word, but such a miracle did not occur.

“......Sacrifice?”

The voice muttering that ominous word trembled faintly.

Jing swallowed a groan and looked down at Lia, who had fallen into confusion.

“Lia, there is no time to explain now. But once this is over, I will explain everything you need to hear. So for now......”

“You want me to stay still without asking anything?”

Lia’s bloodshot red eyes already revealed that she had grasped the situation to some extent.

“......For now, I am asking you to watch.”

Before Lia could find words to argue against Jing’s calm voice, a small commotion broke out between the priest and the knights.

More precisely, the priest’s shout rang out.

“Search every inch of the area! Check inside the boat once more! Bring them before my eyes immediately!”

At his command, as sensitive as he could possibly be, the two knights scattered with troubled expressions.

The knight left alone to guard the priest watched the huffing priest’s mood.

“Priest, searching the entire forest with this number of people will be difficult. It seems our paths crossed, so rather than that, returning to the temple......”

“Silence! If that were possible, I would have no reason to be in this smelly, cold forest either!”

After snapping irritably, the priest moved his steps here and there with an anxious face, then soon turned his head toward the direction of the boat as if he had thought of something.

“Fire. Set fire to the boat.”

“......Could you say that again?”

At the priest’s mutter, which sounded as though one screw somewhere had come loose, the knight asked politely.

At that, the priest glared fiercely at the knight.

“I said set fire to the boat. They cannot have gone far. There should be a guide as well. If they sense something is strange, they will come on their own feet.”

“Is there a reason to go that far......”

“I can do worse than this! Do not stand there stupidly and set fire to the boat already!”

At the priest’s shouting, the knight stepped back with an apology.

“The boat is wet, so it will be difficult immediately. Please give me a little time.”

Only then, seeing the knight move according to his words, the priest let out a sigh and began circling the area.

Watching this, Jing gritted his teeth.

He could not just watch things continue like this.

Unless they were going to do the insane thing of swimming to the island, the boat was absolutely necessary to rescue Ran and Ratel.

“Miss Lia, what happens from now on may be hard to believe, and perhaps you may come to hate me greatly. Even so, one thing you must not forget is that I will never harm you.”

Before Lia could follow Jing’s sudden words, which sounded like an incomprehensible promise, Jing began walking toward where the priest and knight were.

Rustle, rustle.

At the sound of his presence, with his footsteps not silenced, the priest and the knight’s gazes turned toward Jing at once.

Unlike the knight, who quickly drew his sword, Jing raised both hands to show that he had no intention of attacking.

“I apologize for startling you.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the tournament winner from Lucha village.”

Jing answered the knight’s wary question.

“The winner?”

At that, the priest’s expression brightened, and he pushed the knight aside before springing forward.

The knight, who stepped back as the priest pushed him, did not release his wary gaze toward Jing and took a small whistle from his chest before blowing it.

At the sight that resembled a hunting dog calling its companions after finding prey, Jing swallowed a bitter smile.

In the meantime, the priest, whose face was filled with a smile of relief, approached with an unpleasant speed and stood in front of Jing.

“Good. Do you have the certificate? Where is the guide? What about the other winners?”

The priest did not seem even slightly interested in why Jing, who had suddenly appeared, had ended up walking through the forest, or why he had suddenly appeared before him.

He merely looked like a weasel with eyes gleaming as it tried to snatch the prey before it.

The problem was that the role of prey did not particularly suit the person standing before him.

“There was an accident while we were crossing the river. Because the river water suddenly struck the boat, the other companions were swept away.”

At Jing’s calm explanation of the situation, the priest’s face went cold.

“So you are saying that only two winners are left now?”

At the priest’s words, which sounded as if he were accusing him for losing his companions, Lia flinched.

The priest, his smile erased, looked back and forth between Jing and Lia.

“Judging by the look of it, it seems there are only two of you...... Then where is the guide?”

His eyes contained a rebuke, as if asking whether only the two of them had survived while leaving the temple’s guide behind.

“No, I am the only winner......”

“The guide fell down on his own and got left behind!”

At the atmosphere that seemed ready to ask for guilt at any moment, Lia cut off Jing’s words and shouted urgently.

If that could be explained as falling down on his own, Jing wondered what in the world could truly be called violence, but instead of correcting Lia’s words, he stepped forward.

“I was not told that the temple would personally come all the way here to meet us. If I had known, I would have hurried my steps a little more. Or was there some reason for you to make your precious way all the way here?”

The scrawny priest glared at Jing, who was asking what urgent matter had made him take such heavy steps all the way here, and silently looked Jing and Lia over with his eyes.

After finishing his observation, he let out a sigh and gestured with his chin to the knight.

Together with the other two knights, who had returned at some point, he surrounded Jing and Lia as if he had been waiting.

“This is a dangerous situation, right? And I am allowed to ask for an explanation, right?”

In the atmosphere that could not be called friendly even as empty words, Lia whispered to Jing.

“It is nothing much. Just something like tag.”

Jing, who dismissed the situation as if it were nothing, indicated the direction where the boat was with his eyes.

“......When I give the signal, you avoid these people and run to launch the boat again.”

Along with an explanation of the rather unfavorable rule that there were several people who were “it”.