My lips involuntarily pouted due to Felitz, who wasn’t being helpful despite being brought along, but it might have been for the better.

Felitz is oblivious and his thoughts are all over his face, so if I kept him by my side, he might reveal to Niel that I’m the culprit who’s been attacking those heroes.

I strolled through the forest, my horse’s head aligned with Niel’s.

Since Niel had said that I alone was sufficient for close protection, his knights were following at a distance.

Clop. Clop. Clippity-clop. Clop.

The sound of hooves echoed through the quiet forest path.

‘By the way, Cail is nowhere to be seen.’

There had been a lot of talk about the three heroes gathering in one place, but Cail was nowhere to be found.

‘Well, that’s good. If Cail had come in the midst of this commotion, it would have been really chaotic.’

While I thought it was fortunate that he wasn’t here, I was still somewhat concerned.

‘But why isn’t he here? Is he unwell? But when I last saw him yesterday, he didn’t seem particularly unhealthy.’

It was while I was deep in thought.

“You’re thinking about someone else.”

Niel spoke to me from beside.

“Uh, huh? No, what?”

I unconsciously mixed informal and formal speech in my response.

However, instead of pointing that out, Niel looked down at me with an elegant smile and said,

“Please focus on me.”

“…?”

“I can’t interfere with Miss Jella’s heart, but haven’t I bought Miss Jella’s time for today at least?”

“What? I just agreed to be a guard, didn’t I?”

When I questioned, he just smiled gently.

‘What’s this.’

Feeling strangely uncomfortable, I looked ahead again.

Clop. Clop. Clippity-clop. Clop.

Being alone with Niel like this suddenly reminded me of my past life.

When I was eight, just returned from the Holy Kingdom, and he was ten. We were engaged due to an alliance between our families.

For the next 10 years, he kept the seat next to me at every boring event.

We often came together to this forest, which had long been used as the imperial hunting ground.

And we would always quietly stroll down the silent forest path like this, wordlessly, with our horses’ heads pointed in the same direction.

If I were with Yupheon or Cail, there would have been at least some small talk.

But Niel, who had been mature since childhood, wasn’t very talkative, and when we first got engaged, he tried to speak to me a few times, but noticing that I wanted to keep my distance, he just quietly stayed by my side like air.

However, I didn’t dislike the silence with him.

To be more honest, I quite liked it.

Niel was quick-witted, so he never bothered me, and always made me comfortable.

So during the time we were engaged, I had to meet him once a week out of obligation, but I really enjoyed that time.

Niel never interfered with whatever I did, and I could use him as a shield to have time to myself.

In my childhood, when I couldn’t be completely at ease under my uncle’s watchful eye, it was the only time I could breathe freely, throwing away all the dignity of being a princess and whatnot.

‘But where did all that perceptiveness go?’

Niel Alpenhayer had always been a mature and perceptive man, but he never showed that perceptiveness to Jella Irene.

The fact that he kept giving me requests even when I was clearly putting up walls with my whole body proved that.

‘Well, is it because I’m that competent?’

Of course, even I thought it would be very difficult to find someone as competent as me.

‘The sad fate of a talented individual…’

As I rolled my eyes to look at him, our gazes met.

I don’t know how long he had been looking, but his languid eyes that had been staring at me deepened when our eyes met.

‘Ugh.’

I pretended not to have looked at him and stared straight ahead again.

A low laugh lingered in my ears.

***

At the entrance of the hunting ground.

Yupheon was humming a tune while checking his arrowheads.

“Damian.”

He called for Damian while examining the sharp arrowheads with his eyes.

“Yes, yes?”

“You seemed excited earlier?”

“Yes, yes, what?”

Damian inwardly flinched but tried to feign ignorance and asked back in a clueless manner.

“When I was being grabbed by the collar and shaken by that beauty, you had quite an excited expression on your face, didn’t you?”

Damian’s face immediately turned pale.

‘H-how did he know? Does he have eyes on the back of his head?’

Of course, he wasn’t excited at all.

It was just that seeing the great Pope of the Holy Kingdom being helpless against some woman was a bit surprising and… slightly satisfying.

“M-more importantly, will you be alright? You said you’re going to kill the Emperor today. But that terrifying underworld sister is guarding the Emperor.”

Damian subtly changed the subject.

Fortunately, Yupheon went along with his topic change and let out a deep sigh.

“That’s why I’m not alright.”

He started applying a suspicious-looking substance to the tip of the arrowhead.

“What is that substance…?”

“Insecticide.”

Yupheon answered with a grin.

“…”

Damian felt like he shouldn’t ask any more questions.

So, trying to change the subject again, he blurted out whatever came to mind.

“Oh right, I heard that Lord Cail Aleret arrived a little while ago.”

“What?”

Yupheon, who had been staring at the arrowheads all along, suddenly raised his head and turned to look at Damian.

His eyes flashed brightly.

‘Oops, was that not right?’

Damian scratched his head.

***

A few hours earlier.

Although the hunting festival had already begun, Cail was still in his room.

Far from being ready to go out, he wasn’t even dressed.

Just this morning, the Emperor’s messenger had sent a request for him to join the final event of the founding celebration, but what did he care about Alpenhayer’s founding celebration?

That crazy pink-haired priest might participate excitedly, saying he would hunt Niel Alpenhayer.

But Cail wasn’t interested.

His interest was solely in one person.

However, a strange rumor had reached his ears.

They said that the culprit who had been trying to assassinate the heroes had appeared at the hunting ground.

‘It’s a false rumor.’

Cail thought with an impassive expression.

The culprit they were talking about was Jella, after all.

Cail smiled slightly, remembering her punching him in the solar plexus on the day they met again.

‘Ah, she was so lovely.’

Those red eyes that widened in surprise when she saw him. That small, cute fist.

In her past life, she had always seen him as weak. Who knew she would beat him with that lovely little fist.

[…….]

Beside him, a black dragon the size of a fist looked at him with cloudy eyes and distanced itself.

‘This guy, he’s been strange lately.’

To go as far as to describe that terrifying fist that knocked him out with one blow to the solar plexus as ‘small and cute’.

‘No. Actually, he’s always been a very strange guy.’

He’s the one who made a contract with me, a dragon, to save that woman, even though she tried to get rid of me.

He’s the one who didn’t care at all about how dangerous the price of contracting with a dragon was, even though he knew.

The black dragon’s name was Helasio.

He was an ancient dragon that had been sealed and slept in Shunaibel’s heart for a long time but awakened in response to Jella’s magic power.

He was destined to die with her when Cail’s holy sword pierced Jella’s heart, but he moved his vessel to that man’s heart by making a contract with him.

Thanks to that, the pure heart that the man had was blackened by Helasio’s demonic energy, but the man didn’t care about that either.

Unlike Jella, who was always wary of the dragon’s power, Cail had no hesitation in using the dragon’s power. To a frightening degree.

Helasio glanced at Cail’s chest.

Black blood vessels were protruding over the firm chest muscles marked with old scars here and there.

‘It’s the natural consequence of using so much power last night.’

Still, he wished he would use his power moderately. Helasio didn’t want the vessel he had worked hard to find to break either.

Last night, that suspicious group was a gang trying to summon Yuria.

And Helasio had an idea who was behind it.

There was only one being who could sway people with such powerful delusion and brainwashing.

But he wasn’t too worried.

Above all, it would never work on that crazy guy… and the other crazy guys like him.

Helasio recalled the faces of those inhuman guys one by one.

The elegantly insane Niel Alpenhayer. The holy lunatic Yupheon Arne. The beautifully crazy Cail Aleret.

Helasio knew them well. Because he had been with Jella since the moment she was born, he knew the three men close to her better than anyone.

The other two guys were just as crazy as Cail Aleret.

‘I didn’t know they would go to such lengths just to save one woman.’

It was when Helasio was shaking his head.

Pause.

Cail’s expression hardened.

He walked towards the open window.

Through his hearing, abnormally developed by the dragon’s power, he could hear the murmuring voices of people walking below.

“You know that culprit who appeared at the hunting ground today? They say it’s not an assassin, but a stalker?”