Chapter 156.4
“Aria…”
To Feld, Aria was a dependable companion, a pretty junior colleague, and even a strangely aged opposite gender until he realized her real age, but now she was like a little sister to him.
Feld had learned something from Viro.
Aria had a steel knife that Feld had used, although she apparently kept it quiet until the insensitive Feld noticed it himself.
This reminded him of a vagrant child he had met in the woods along the road many years before, on his way to pick up a great sword made of magic steel that Feld had asked Galbas to make for him.
Mistaking him for a monster, Feld chased him around, taught him how to survive for a short time, and gave him his own knife for dismantling instead of the one he had broken.
The knife was also made by Galbas, and when Galbas noticed this, he decided to give her a knife of his own design, a knife of magic steel, as a sign of good karma.
Feld said that he had almost forgotten about the knife, but Aria still uses it today without losing it.
Looking back on it now, the easygoing distance he had seen in Aria from the start made him think of her as someone he could trust, as if she were family.
Viro said it was no wonder he couldn’t recognize that the frail vagrant he had assumed to be a boy had turned into a stunningly beautiful girl, but Feld was ashamed of himself for not being able to do anything about the danger of such a girl who was like family to him.