She always spoke as if she could disappear at any moment.

When was it that I first realized this?

“Have you been fighting with nobles again, Cail?”

Ah, yes. When I returned after fighting with young nobles who were insulting her.

“I’m sure they provoked you first. But you can’t fight like this every time.”

Thinking I was being scolded, I lowered my head, but she grabbed my chin, lifted it up, and said with a slight smile.

“I’m not scolding you, Cail Aleret.”

“……”

Unable to meet her gaze directly, I slightly blushed and rolled my eyes away.

“I can protect you from any disadvantages they might cause you now because I’m here, but you need to think about when I’m not around.”

She said this while personally applying ointment to the wounds on my face.

A burning heat rose wherever her soft fingertips touched, but Cail, who would normally have tried not to miss even the smallest warmth of her concerned gaze and touch on his skin, couldn’t focus on it at all.

It was because questions kept rising in his mind, making him dizzy.

Why do you speak like that?

As if you’ll disappear someday. As if you’ll become someone who no longer exists…

But I was her servant. Questions were not permitted to servants.

So he couldn’t bring himself to ask and just quietly stared at her face.

***

Cail quietly stared at her face, just like in the past.

The woman with straight black hair instead of luscious pink wavy hair had a different face from the one in his memory.

In place of the cotton candy-sweet pink eyes and glamorous features, there were red eyes that seemed capable of bewitching people, and captivating features that somehow exuded a languid and sensual atmosphere.

Though her impression was completely different from the past, the upright and lovely soul felt beyond those eyes told him that the woman in his memories and the one before him were the same person.

Always beautiful, always shining from the highest place, and thus always revered, Your Majesty.

Jella. My one and only master. The only warmth that ever reached this lowly slave.

“…You’re trying to disappear again.”

Cail brushed her cheek with the back of his rough hand. She awkwardly rolled her eyes in response.

“Um, yes. No? No, I’m not?”

Her appearance was so lovely that a faint smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

How are you always so lovely?

Perhaps that’s why I cannot simply resent you.

You, who cruelly made me kill you with my own hands.

“I will… never forgive you.”

At the sudden memory of that day, Cail bit the tender flesh inside his mouth hard.

The metallic taste of blood burst in his mouth and went down to his lungs.

“You’re lying.”

She was like that back then, too. On his twentieth birthday, she deceived him by saying she would grant him one wish and placed the shackles of a covenant on him.

As if it were something only she could fulfill, she deceived him with such sweet words and ultimately left.

And that wasn’t the only time.

From before that. Perhaps from the moment they first met, she had been nothing but deceitful to him.

Telling him to become a knight.

Learn the sword and become a knight to protect her, she said.

After bewitching me like that, you actually intended to have me kill you with my own hands…

The moment his thoughts reached that point.

The energy he had been desperately suppressing leaked out again, surging uncontrollably.

“It’s true, I really never intended to disapp…”

Thud.

Cail dropped his head onto her shoulder as she rambled on with excuses.

Never intended to disappear?

Lies…

Lies…

All lies…

She was someone who could leave at any time.

Someone who could leave so cruelly without a single regret, without looking back.

That fact pierced his heart painfully, and he couldn’t control the surging energy at all.

The moment his resentment and destructive desire, which he couldn’t bring himself to express to her, turned toward everything in the world except her.

“Please…”

Cail clung to her like a child who had lost its mother and whispered in her ear with a sorrowful voice.

“Don’t disappear again. Jella.”

BOOM!

A thunderous noise erupted from behind.

“Wait. Did that mountain just fly…!”

“……”

As he raised his head, their eyes met. She stopped mid-sentence in surprise and swallowed her breath.

Her small Adam’s apple rippled slightly. It was so cute he wanted to bite it… Was he going insane?

Ah.

Cail suddenly realized that his state was somewhat unusual.

‘Is this the precursor to magical power going berserk that Helasio mentioned?’

He had never been this unstable in the five years since accepting the dragon, but since meeting her again, his mind had been constantly agitated.

Thoughts and desires he would never dare entertain normally…

No, let me correct that.

Thoughts and desires that had always been piled up in a dark corner of his mind, but which he would normally have suppressed and ignored, kept trying to surface.

His face was reflected in her eyes. That face, covered in the blood of assassins, openly revealing his dark desires toward her, was horrifying.

He hated showing her this side of himself.

So Cail, without realizing it, covered her eyes with his palm.

Don’t look at me, Jella.

I’ve always been inadequate and pathetic before you, and now I’m even horrifying… Please don’t look at me, Jella.

Cail instinctively felt that it would be dangerous if he didn’t release the magical energy that had been building up.

“This peaceful world achieved through your death…”

His insides churned and his mouth opened of its own accord.

“So I don’t destroy it with my own hands.”

His inner thoughts spilled out freely.

BOOOOOOOM!

With a thunderous noise, a beam of light flashed and fierce winds shook the earth.

A brief silence passed.

Cail exhaled a deep breath.

As his breathing gradually calmed, the wild energy that had been shaking the world slowly subsided.

Even after releasing it, his thick palm that was still covering her eyes was trembling slightly.

Soft hands wrapped around his rough palm. She slowly pulled down the hand that was covering her eyes.

Their eyes met again.

“You, that just now was magical…”

“Yes, I became able to use it.”

Caught between the desire to avoid her gaze and the contradictory desire to keep looking at her, Cail spoke calmly.

Her eyes widened.

“What? Since when?”

“Since you…”

Cail spoke through gritted teeth about a moment he didn’t want to mention.

“Since you left.”

“……”

“It just happened.”

Cail looked at her with a bitter smile.

“But, Cail. That just now…”

Jella, who was about to say something to him, drew in a short breath and closed her mouth firmly.

It was because Cail was looking at her with eyes that seemed about to cry.

“…I’m sorry.”

He whispered, suddenly tightening his left arm that had been wrapped around her waist. As a result, Jella, trapped in his embrace, could no longer see his face, but…

“I’m sorry, Jella. Please don’t ask.”

Why did she feel as if his expression was visible right before her eyes…

Jella blinked slowly with a dazed expression in his arms.

***

“Hehehehe.”

Arne tilted his glass of red wine and let out an eerie laugh.

“By now, the assassins would have killed that woman and stolen the Holy Grail.”

He thought everything had fallen apart after the Order collapsed and Yuria fled, but to recover the Holy Grail so easily. He really seemed to be lucky.

“The approach was wrong from the beginning. Yuria was a failed card from the start.”

Having somewhat objectively analyzed his own mistakes, Arne grinned and picked up a medicine bottle placed on the table.

It was something he had received as a free gift when visiting Jella’s pharmacy today.

He hadn’t heard the proper explanation, but it seemed to be medicine to take after drinking alcohol.

“Establishing the Order was also too narrow-minded. There are many ways to deceive people besides religion, aren’t there? For example, this handsome face.”

That woman at the pharmacy today also seemed to have fallen for his handsome face.

Judging by how she had placed this in his hands with a flushed face full of excitement, calling it a new drug she had developed.

“She was quite pretty, that woman. Too bad. If she hadn’t stolen the Holy Grail, I would have treated her better.”

Arne thoughtlessly picked up the medicine bottle and emptied it into his mouth.

The rather sweet taste wasn’t bad…

“PUHECK!”

Suddenly, he spat out what was in his mouth. Along with the terrible, burning pain as if his esophagus was being scorched, red blood was vomited out.

“That crazy woman, trying to kill me… KEUHEOK!”

Arne kept spitting blood and then collapsed with a thud.