And A New Mission (1)

“No!”

“Anyway—because you’re acting like that, I can’t not look. I’ll know as soon as I see it.”

“Don’t do this. What are you doing to a sick person…?”

“But you want to check again too, don’t you?”

“That’s true, but…”

“Then we’ll look. Come on. Let’s go together.”

Camilla ignored Izmilla’s reaction and followed the servants up the stairs.

The servants laid Azadine on the second floor of the chapel, on a bed meant for high-ranking priests. They stripped off his clothes, and lastly, removed his mask.

“Uh….”

Camilla startled when she finally saw Azadine’s face.

“…….”

Izmilla, who confirmed his face again, was just as shocked.

“He’s handsome. That’s no fun. If he were ugly, I was going to tease him.”

“Ahem. Ahem.”

Both Izmilla and Camilla cleared their throats and brought a lamp, setting it beside the table. With more light, they could see Azadine’s face in even greater detail.

Then Azadine opened his eyes. Even as he frowned from the brightness, he was startled by the fact that he could feel glare.

“What? Why are you all in here?”

“Wow. H-His eyes are purple.”

“Hm?”

Azadine touched his face and gave a bitter smile. His mask was off.

And purple eyes—those were Harkonia’s eyes. The messenger bloodline revered them as auspicious: the eyes of the First Leader, the same eyes Arael had. And now they had manifested in Azadine too.

Of course. It was something he had inherited from her.

“Hey. You’re handsome. Hehe. Why were you hiding something this nice behind a mask? Show it off more. Ah—were you afraid you’d get scarred? If that’s why, then fair.”

“…….”

Azadine had never heard anything good about his looks until now. Plenty of people had wanted to see his grotesque appearance—those empty sockets where his eyes should have been.

During messenger-selection training, peers and seniors had deliberately sought him out just to gawk at his face like a spectacle.

Being tormented by seniors was one thing, but being treated as a sideshow even by juniors from later intakes had cut him deeply—deep enough to still haunt his nightmares. And with these two staring at him now, that old pain rose again.

But unlike then, there was goodwill in their eyes.

“Ah. Are you talking about my face?”

“Yeah. Hey—Bishop Akenar seems to dote on you like crazy. Did you show her your face too?”

“I did. She’s my patron, and it felt rude not to.”

“Ahahaha. Then didn’t the bishop fall for you?”

Izmilla jolted and smacked Camilla on the back.

“Watch your mouth. How could you say something so rude?”

“It’s not like I made it up. And I’m warning you—warning. That mask the bishop wears? It’s the one female clergy wear so men won’t get ideas. Why do you think that mask was even made? Because in the past, clergy and unrelated men had… incidents.”

“Saying that at all is irreverent. If someone heard you, you’d be struck down—so stop.”

“Enough.”

Azadine took the damp towel the servants had prepared to cool his fever and covered his eyes.

“I want to rest, so can you leave?”

“Fine. But why cover your eyes?”

“I don’t like this face.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it makes me feel that I’m alive after taking my sister’s life. And I hate it even more when people stare at my face like it’s entertainment. That’s enough, right? Leave.”

Azadine sent the two of them out and lay back on the bed. The fever swallowed him, and he fell asleep with the sensation of dropping into a bottomless pit.

“I’m not leaving, nyah-nyah.”

Camilla said it anyway, but Izmilla grabbed her sleeve and dragged her out.

The bishops’ council lasted three days.

In that time, Izmilla and the prisoners—Camilla and Kuntachi, and Bernard as well—had to endure tedious interrogations without end.

Only when the boredom felt so unbearable it seemed like their minds might burn away—when they were on the verge of going mad—did the bishops’ council finally end.

“Thank you for waiting so long. How are you feeling?”

Bishop Akenar greeted Azadine, now recovered from his fever.

“It was just a cold. I’m fine now.”

Azadine gave a bitter smile. By nature, he didn’t catch colds or minor illnesses. All of the messenger bloodline had been like that—Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon did not allow petty sickness to invade.

But Azadine’s body now was that of a man barely short of death. The grimoires and magical adaptability he had received from Arael made him stronger, but that strength coexisted with a fragility that could shatter at any moment.

It was like holding flaming liquor inside a thin glass cup—never knowing when the heat would crack the glass.

‘My mana is getting stronger.’

Absurd as it was, Azadine also felt the power of the Heavenly King’s Scripture surfacing within him again.

Heavenly King’s Scripture and Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon—these two spellbooks were growing inside him fast, like water plants in midsummer, gaining strength by the day.

But his body—already returned from the threshold of death—could not endure it. That was why blood ran from his nose or eyes, and why fever rose.

‘A life that should’ve already ended—Arael is the reason I’m still alive. I should be grateful.’

Azadine treated even that pain and injury as nothing, and expressed his thanks to Bishop Akenar.

“Thanks to you, Bishop, I was able to rest safely.”

Originally, the Rescue Knights Order had intended to throw Azadine into an interrogation chamber and an underground cell.

But Bishop Akenar had placed him in the finest bedroom of the diocese and assigned her own servants to nurse him. She had stood as a shield, protecting him from brutality.

“By rights, we should reward you. You aided the Order in the pilgrimage band’s crisis, saved the attacked village, and the merit of laying Sir Plank—the Knight of Wisdom—to rest is also great. Coxhall’s magistrate had promised a reward to whoever laid Sir Plank to rest. But the other bishops doubt you.”

Akenar sighed.

“Northern Emperor Cohen Rioneir holds powerful influence over the Rescue Knights Order. As you know, he is a king who came from our Order. It would not be wrong to say the Order produced a king. Within the Order, there are so many who support him…”

“Then regardless of the truth, the other bishops would rather eliminate me.”

“Yes, Azadine. The Order does not welcome you.”

He had known that from the start.

A soulless blasphemer. A slayer of the Divine King.

An outsider among outsiders.

A being welcomed by no one.

“If you join the Rescue Knights Order, they will send you to the Chadra Plateau.”

“The Chadra Plateau?”

“Yes. North of the Hubris Peninsula—a hellish land where the blood of an Ancient God, spewed from Netherstrom, mixes into the rain. That is also why the Order goes on pilgrimage every year to gather prisoners and serfs from various regions.”

A land where monsters spawned without end. Because of this place, monarchs abandoned the Hubris Peninsula’s fertility and entrusted this rich land to the Rescue Knights Order.

“If you give up becoming a Rescue Knight, I would like to offer you the post of Captain of the Coxhall Diocesan Guard. It’s not knighthood, but it’s stable and respectable. Under my protection, no one will be able to look down on you. And even here, heretics, murderers, and kidnappers run rampant—so the duty would be meaningful.”

Akenar offered Azadine command of her private guard.

“And if I say I will join the Rescue Knights Order?”

“Then I will be your patron. But I cannot control the Order’s internal appointments. They will assign you to a penal detachment and send you to the Chadra Plateau.”

Should he become a Rescue Knight and move as the upper ranks who hated him—and likely those under the Northern Emperor’s influence—desired?

Or should he become the private soldier of Bishop Akenar, who plainly showed him goodwill, and remain in Coxhall in comfort?

It was a choice that required no thinking.

“I have already been knighted. I can’t turn around now and claim I’m not a Hospitaller.”

“Even if they send you to a penal detachment because they want you to fight until your strength is spent—and die?”

“Yes.”

“Why? To be honest, the Order as it is now is not a place worthy of someone like you dedicating yourself.”

That was an outburst a bishop should never make. But it was also her unvarnished truth.

The former queen, Akenar—forced into divorce by the king’s tyranny, and made to shoulder the bishop’s seat against her will—had seen the Order’s filth until she was sick of it.

They were a cabal in bed with power—no, power itself. So why?

“I am a sinner.”

“A sinner?”

“Yes. I killed the ones I loved with my own hands, and with my own hands I destroyed a great part of the messenger bloodline.”

“…….”

Bishop Akenar looked as if she had been struck.

He looked young—what could he have endured to speak such words with that kind of weight?

Azadine ran his fingers along the shoulder strap of the ceramite longsword’s scabbard.

He touched the Rescue Knights Order’s emblem: a wheel-cart with three wings.

“If sailors on a night sea take their bearings by the stars, then I destroyed my guide—my stars—with my own hands. I lost my way and wandered… and then I remembered that as a child, I once dreamed of the Rescue Knights Order. In those days, the Order—their teachings—were undeniably salvation to me….”

“But the Rescue Knights Order of today cannot be anyone’s star. And you still choose it?”

“Yes. Please don’t worry too much about me. If it truly becomes unbearable, I’ll run.”

Azadine smiled bitterly. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew the Rescue Knights Order of today was not such a beautiful organization.

Even so, he wanted to live up to the expectations of Sir Plank, who had knighted him.

“Very well, Sir Azadine. If that is your will, then it cannot be helped.”

She said that, then shot him a sideways look.

“Instead, report to me by letter every week. It’s also to protect you from other Order executives.”

“I’m honored beyond measure. Thank you, Bishop.”

Azadine bowed to Akenar with proper respect, then withdrew from the room.