“Shall I get others for you as well?”

Bellota couldn’t answer his brazen question and awkwardly averted her gaze. She wasn’t mentally prepared to face Seiden yet.

“No. That one is enough.”

Bellota reached out to take the book, intending to leave the library immediately, but Seiden wouldn’t allow it. Just as Bellota’s urgent hand was about to touch the book, Seiden lifted it up as if teasing her.

Thanks to this, Bellota’s grab missed, and she finally frowned at Seiden. His relaxed face was staring intently at her. As their eyes met, Seiden slowly opened his mouth.

“May I ask why you’re avoiding me?”

The casually spoken words were an excessively direct question. Bellota’s face flushed hot at his question. Seiden had already been certain that Bellota was avoiding him.

While it would be difficult not to know that, for him to be so direct like this…… After biting her lip hard in contemplation, Bellota seemed to make up her mind and gave a calm and rational answer.

“I don’t like that you’re getting caught up in strange rumors because of me.”

Even at those words, Seiden’s expression didn’t change. Bellota looked at Seiden with slightly firmer eyes and said,

“So please explain those rumors yourself. Since I can’t do it.”

“……”

“If we leave things like this, the situation will get worse. If that happens, everything we did to clear up the previous rumors will become meaningless. So please don’t let untrue things……”

“Who says they’re untrue?”

Seiden cut off Bellota’s words sharply as she was pouring out what she had been hesitating to say all this time. At those words, Bellota’s breath caught.

Seiden added while persistently staring at Bellota,

“Not true…”

Bellota’s eyes wavered in confusion at that brazen answer. A slow and firm voice continued.

“All the rumors circulating in the capital are true.”

Thump. Bellota felt something inside her sink distantly. Yet the voice that gripped her heart and wouldn’t let go didn’t stop. She needed to tell him to stop. Stop. But Bellota’s stiffened lips wouldn’t move.

“I harbor impure thoughts about you, Saintess.”

Bellota’s breath stopped at Seiden’s confession that was finally uttered. However, Seiden, who had just spoken such tremendous words, merely stared at Bellota quietly, to the point of seeming brazen.

After everything that had happened, Seiden had made a firm resolution. That he would not let anyone take Bellota from him. He had decided to humbly accept that he could no longer do otherwise. That he was selfish to his bones, lustful, and shameless. Therefore, no matter what happened, he would protect Bellota with his own hands and guard her side forever. He would definitely earn that right and make it so that not even God could cast him aside.

Seiden’s low voice continued.

“So now I can no longer be satisfied with holding you just once a month.”

Bellota’s lips parted at the audacious confession that strangled her breath. Seiden didn’t take his eyes off that lovely face for even a moment.

“Every night, I want to hold you, to see your face as you surrender to me until I’m sick of it.”

Of course, even if his entire life was consumed just looking at Bellota’s face, he would never tire of it.

Even though the latter thoughts weren’t added, Bellota’s face colored with shock.

“Sir Seiden…!”

Finally coming to her senses, Bellota cried out in surprise and covered his mouth with both hands to prevent Seiden from uttering any more words. Worried that someone might have heard this terrifying confession, she looked around, but fortunately, they were the only ones in the library. But still, how could he say such things……

As Bellota stood frozen, not knowing what to do, Seiden firmly grabbed her hands that were covering his mouth. He pulled her light body that seemed about to collapse, and hid between the tall bookshelves. Pushing Bellota against the wall, Seiden looked down at her startled face and quietly murmured.

“So right now, to the Saintess,”

Those deep red eyes were focused solely on Bellota.

“I am confessing my love.”

The end of his tender voice scattered as it touched Bellota’s lips. At Seiden’s confession, Bellota’s heart sank even deeper. Everything she had tried so hard to ignore crumbled without resistance.

“So all the rumors are true, and there is no reason for the Saintess to avoid me out of guilt for those rumors.”

Seiden’s face showed that this was his only dissatisfaction. Not caring at all about any other rumors.

Even as Bellota’s footing was falling into a distant abyss, Seiden’s audacious revelations didn’t stop.

“Though it seems this hasn’t become a rumor yet, but every night I pray to God with tears…”

A disbelieving sigh escaped through Bellota’s lips at those shameless words. Tears? With that face that made one wonder if he had ever shed a single tear in his life, yet so shamelessly…… Though he was the Holy Knight Commander, she couldn’t even imagine Seiden shedding tears while praying to God. Yet the shameless man before her continued speaking in a calm voice.

“Asking Him to give you to me.”

Bellota’s face burned hot at the explicit confession. Her thoughts that had been neatly arranged like books on a shelf seemed to be thrown into complete disarray. Finally, finally like this……

Bellota’s heart painfully constricted before falling emptily, over and over. Bellota realized that she and Seiden had finally reached a point they should never have touched. Because of his confession just now, she could no longer deny Seiden’s feelings. Those feelings that she had sensed long ago but tried desperately to ignore.

Bellota looked at Seiden with eyes that somehow wanted to cry. Seiden’s red eyes were focused solely on her without the slightest waver. Every time she saw those eyes, her carefully maintained composure seemed about to crumble helplessly.

So Seiden, the Holy Knight Commander of the Kanbremes Grand Temple, Seiden Blackwood, was now confessing his love for her. At that clear fact, her heart that had fallen to her toes surged back up, and she felt it jumping thump, thump. The space between the large bookshelves was so quiet that if she didn’t say something right now, Seiden might hear her heartbeat.

Squeezing her eyes shut before opening them again, Bellota moved her trembling lips to answer.

“Such prayers…… He won’t answer.”

Even at that weak denial, Seiden’s expression didn’t change.

“Probably not.”

As if he had already expected this, Seiden merely murmured calmly. His firm eyes that showed not the slightest disappointment continued to gaze at Bellota Rosebeth.

“So I’ll have to achieve it myself.”

At those brazen words, Bellota truly lost all words. She stared blankly at Seiden, speechless. The shameless holy knight lifted her frozen hand and personally placed in it the book he had pulled out earlier. When Bellota dazedly received it, Seiden gently raised his eyebrows at her, then turned and walked away as if nothing had happened.

Thump, thump, his heavy footsteps faded away as Bellota stared blankly into space. Her heart that had somehow risen to her throat now fell dizzily again and faintly writhed at her feet.

Thump, thump, thump. What coursed through her heated pulse was certainly not antipathy.

“……”

Bellota lifted the book he had pulled out for her and covered her heated face.

* * *

After making an absurdly easy confession, Seiden left the library and stopped in place, swallowing a sigh. It was too simple a confession compared to how much he had agonized over it. He had never thought he would convey his feelings this way. No, he had intended to keep these feelings to himself until his death.

But now he couldn’t turn back. He was undeniably in love with Bellota now, and his desire to let her go had disappeared as if it had never existed. So what he needed to do was clear. Find the Demon God Book as soon as possible. For Bellota, and for himself.

As Seiden was walking back toward his office with a serious face, thinking about something,

“Commander!”

He saw Felton running toward him from far away, calling him with a serious expression. Seeing this, Seiden’s eyebrows hardened. Based on everything that had happened so far, Felton running with such a voice and expression was not a good sign at all.

“What is it.”

Since he couldn’t avoid Felton anyway, Seiden asked directly for the main point without any preamble. Felton also didn’t waste time and went straight to the point.

“Orders have come from the imperial family. They say they’ve discovered what’s believed to be a source of demonic energy near the Rubble Mountains in the north.”

Seiden’s eyebrows twisted at those words.

A source of demonic energy was like a kind of spring where demons had concentrated their power long ago, using that power to move monsters and continuously generate them. These sources were scattered throughout the continent and hidden secretly, sometimes literally buried underground, and sometimes a monster would serve that role instead.