This time it was the sorcerer who asked.

“I’ve decided to raise this one. Vincent, from now on you’ll call me ‘boss’ every single time.”

The sorcerer suppressed the twitch at the corner of his mouth and thought to himself. ……What a stubborn old-fashioned attitude.

Why on earth did such a young little child give off the air of an adult with an outdated way of thinking.

He suddenly realized that there was not a single trace of childlikeness in Adele’s eyes.

Even Vincent, who had been issuing commands by asserting his noble authority, still had the innocence particular to children on his face.

But she was different. The marks of a long life, as though she had weathered every hardship the world had to offer, showed plainly on her face.

The sorcerer first turned his gaze away from Adele, whose identity remained a mystery, and refocused on Vincent. At that moment, Vincent, who had just been corrected by Adele, was glancing at her sideways with a disgruntled look when she was not watching.

Not that it mattered. The sorcerer examined Vincent’s face from every angle, as though reading his fortune.

After staring intently for quite some time, a sense of unease began to settle over Vincent’s expression. He really did look like a pervert, just as Adele had said. And very much so at that.

Unaware of those inner thoughts, the sorcerer smiled at Vincent.

With his striking good looks, the gentle curve of his lips made him look like a perfect sculpture.

But to Vincent’s eyes, which had not yet fully developed an aesthetic sense, it was the smile of a dangerous pervert.

“It seems we’re fated to be quite entangled with each other.”

Even the words he uttered sounded like something a pervert would say.

Vincent furrowed his brows deeply and made a face of disgust, as though he had just eaten a vegetable he hated.

“I have no desire to be entangled with the likes of you.”

“That’s not something that’s up to me to decide.”

As though displeased by those words about things not being up to him, Vincent continued to voice his complaints and argued back at the sorcerer.

Adele, who had been listening to the entire exchange, tilted her head.

How would he know something like that?

Adele looked at the sorcerer with curious eyes. Historically, how the two of them had come to meet was a mystery. On top of that, the history of the enemy nation had burned away at Adele’s hands, so there was no proper way to know.

The king seemed to want to erase every trace of Vincent, to the point that he had not even left the name of the enemy nation in the historical record.

What was certain was that in the distant future, Vincent, who had gone to the enemy nation, was destined to invade the kingdom alongside that young sorcerer.

Whatever the nature of their relationship right now, there was no doubt that fate had bound them together in a very stubborn and tenacious way.

The start of the war. This was the earliest point that Adele remembered directly.

‘Can this sorcerer also see the future?’

Adele stared intently at the sorcerer with suspicious eyes.

‘Could he possibly know the person who created this story?’

If that were truly the case, should she threaten the sorcerer with physical force to find out just what was going on with this world?

As Adele’s fist tightened, the sorcerer felt a chilling coldness and looked sharply around him. But at the end of that chill, there was nothing but a cute twin-braided child with her fists clenched fiercely.

He did his best to ignore the goosebumps rising on his arms and looked back at Vincent.

“Do you have any thoughts of leaving the kingdom in the future? Your face doesn’t look like one that’s meant to stay in the kingdom.”

That strange chill came again. Adele’s suspicious gaze did not let up. Naturally, the force in Adele’s clenched fist remained exactly the same.

Vincent shouted at the sorcerer’s question as though deeply offended.

“What is that supposed to mean!”

At that outburst, the fist Adele had been clenching all this time instantly relaxed.

She shook her head, wondering if she was being overly sensitive, but then let out a small laugh at the words Vincent said next.

“I am the only son of the Rogato family, one of the most distinguished noble houses in the Kingdom of Pilonia! There is no way someone like me would ever leave the kingdom!”

‘You will leave.’

“And I have no reason to leave the kingdom. No matter what temptation comes my way, I will stand firm and endure.”

‘And it will be because of a woman.’

“No matter what danger comes to the kingdom, I, Vincent Rogato, the next duke, will protect it!”

‘You are the very cause of that danger.’

Adele barely managed to hold back from jumping in.

Vincent, who had declared all of this, turned to look at Adele with a proud expression, then flinched at her utterly indifferent face. He seemed to be hoping for praise. Adele opened her mouth.

“Those words. I hope you keep them.”

Vincent made the most reassuring expression he could muster, as though asking her to truly believe him.

The sorcerer watched that scene and then began muttering darkly about how fate seemed to have changed and so on.

Adele ignored him and tilted her face up toward the sun.

A great deal of time had been wasted.

It was about time to start training.

If it had not been for the sorcerer’s interference, Vincent would have already run several laps by now.

She stretched her body and said.

“Right, enough pointless chatter. You there, per…… no, stop interfering and head back down.”

“Pointless, you say.”

The sorcerer looked at Adele with a sullen face.

The already frail man looked even more pitiful making a face like a sad puppy.

“What are you looking at?”

But that was never going to work on Adele.

Vincent, who had been forgetting his original purpose due to the sorcerer’s interference, nodded his head repeatedly. He had finally remembered why he had come here.

Adele smiled and handed Vincent the wooden rod she had picked up earlier.

The child’s eyes sparkled at receiving a weapon.

He had been growing bored of doing nothing but physical conditioning all week long, and this moment had been a long time coming.

Adele looked at that and smiled to herself. She wondered what kind of effect it would have on his future that these two, who should have met much later, had come together this early.

Just as Vincent had been kept from committing his first wrongdoing.

At that moment, a rustling sound came from the bushes. All three heads turned toward it at the same time.

Just as she thought it probably was not a cat, the bushes shook violently and something tumbled out.

It rolled forward at a slow, leisurely pace. Everyone’s gaze naturally followed the slow movement.

Slowly. Very slowly it moved, until it finally arrived at Adele’s feet and came to a stop.

What had rolled up and stopped in front of Adele was none other than a glass marble of a peculiar color, the kind that children might play with. However, its size was unlike that of an ordinary marble.

Even the sorcerer, a grown adult man, could barely lift the marble while straining with effort. Though the sorcerer’s physical strength was close to zero to begin with.

“What is this?”

Vincent and the sorcerer took an interest in the identity of the marble that had appeared out of nowhere.

The two of them examined the marble from every angle, trying to see what was inside.

Even the sorcerer, who had claimed to be observing the world, seemed to have no sense of what this marble was.

But Adele could not join in their curiosity.

A glass marble.

She had a bad feeling about it.

That glass marble was something she recognized.

It was the kind of marble she had seen in the space where she had realized this world was inside a story. That space had been filled with countless marbles, and Adele had glimpsed scenes related to Vincent through them.

And when the space had begun to collapse, she had grabbed that wretched thing and fallen while clutching it. She had completely forgotten about it afterward, consumed by the idea of educating Vincent.

So why had that marble suddenly appeared at the training ground?

Adele’s heart pounded. An ominous premonition wrapped itself around her.

Thinking back to how the space had collapsed and she had entered the marble, there was a strong possibility the same thing would happen again this time.

But……

‘There’s nothing inside that marble right now.’

If the space collapsed the same way as before, where would she end up being swept into?

As Adele stared at the marble with a hardened expression and did not move, Vincent looked at her with concern.

“Adele?”

“You should call me boss.”

Even in the middle of all this, the matter of hierarchy was non-negotiable.

Belatedly, Adele looked at the marble in the sorcerer’s hand. How had this wretched thing known to find its way here?

It was something that had been nowhere to be found when she had wandered all over the city looking for it.

And what purpose did it have in appearing before her now?

Several questions floated around in Adele’s mind.

“Something is strange about this marble.”

“Can you see that?”