Chapter 202
Chapter 202
Three days went by, and while waiting for Adela’s arrival, Leon’s party tried searching for any weakness in the Gateway City’s defenses. However, the barrier maintained by the Grand Mage had not a single flaw.It wasn’t a defensive barrier per se, so breaking it by force would’ve been easy, but entering without being detected was next to impossible. In the end, the three decided to wait quietly.
“It’s today, right? The day she said she’d arrive,” Leon asked Elahan.
“Yes. She said she’d be joining us a little after noon.”
Elahan’s Revelation wasn’t limited to moving her staff with divine guidance. She could locate a person’s general whereabouts as long as they possessed some divine energy, and though she could only receive messages one-way, she was able to catch brief fragments of communication.
It was the same principle as prayer. No matter where in the world it was offered, it would reach the Goddess’s ears. As someone blessed directly from birth, Elahan could faintly borrow a fragment of that power.
“Kyeeeck!”
A sharp cry suddenly tore through the sky. It was a wyvern. All three rose to their feet at once.
When flying in groups, they were ranked A+, and even alone, they were considered A-rank monsters. Hardly a threat to Leon’s party, but if the city noticed them because of it, that would spell trouble. That was a likely possibility if the watchtowers also held observatory spells in addition to the detection spell.
Should I take it down from a distance? No. That’s too risky.
They could kill it easily, even without Grand Chariot. Elahan or Karen could bring it down with a single throw. However, because the barrier detected fluctuations in energy, they hesitated to make the first move.
Meanwhile, the wyvern drew closer. Its movements made it seem as though it had known their location from the start. It hovered above them, staring down from the air.
“What’s this? I don’t feel any hostility,” Karen said, tilting her head.
“Indeed. It looks like a wild wyvern, but...” Elahan agreed, frowning slightly.
Just as they said, the wyvern had flown straight toward them yet made no move to attack or even threaten them. For a creature known for its ferocity and violent temper, the behavior was bizarre. It was as if its only purpose had been to reach this place.
Then, El Cid’s voice echoed in Leon’s mind.
—Incoming.
What? What’s coming?
Before he could get a reply, something jumped, and a small shadow dropped from the wyvern’s back. The impact was accompanied by a loud boom!flipped the ground, sending thick clouds of dust bursting in every direction. Had they sensed any hostility, they might have mistaken it for a smoke bomb.
“Hup!”
With that single shout, the dust was blasted apart. It was similar to a lion’s roar—a voice technique that turned vibration into a shockwave.
And in that instant, all three of them widened their eyes. Standing before them, where the dust cloud had been just a second ago, was a child.
A tiny girl with light brown hair and bright green eyes stood, her gaze wide and alert. Her appearance was adorable beyond words, though her drowsy summer-afternoon expression that resembled a donkey didn’t quite match it.
After briefly glancing over the three of them, the girl turned toward the wyvern still circling above and yelled in a loud, clear voice.
“Hey, brat! You’re taking me back, too, so don’t even think about running off! Try flying away again and I’ll smash that thick skull of yours for real this time, you hear me?!”
The wyvern trembled, screeched in panic, and quickly flapped its wings toward the nearby forest. The girl—Cardinal Adela—watched it disappear with an annoyed scowl.
“Ugh! Cold-hearted lizard-bird. You’d think spending a week together would make it at least a little affectionate! Next time it whines at me again, I’m starting with a good punch.”
Her tiny fists clenched and unclenched as the air around her distorted faintly. Anyone watching might have thought it cute, but only until they noticed the space itself warping around her hands. Leon’s group certainly did.
Only Elahan stepped forward with a faint, amused smile, greeting, “It’s been a while, Cardinal Adela.”
“Oh! My lovely little Saintess! How have you been?”
Adela turned around and beamed at her. Her smile was pure and childlike, so bright and innocent that it tugged at every paternal and maternal instinct in sight.
Leon almost smiled back before catching himself. His instincts as a Hero were screaming a warning. Adela grinned, catching the shift in Leon’s expression instantly.
“Well now, sharp one, aren’t you? Starting to like you already.”
Before Leon could even reply, Elahan quickly stepped between them, blocking the cardinal’s view.
“Cardinal Adela, please don’t be so insolent toward the Hero! And why did you come here on a wyvern, of all things? You’d have been faster just running on your own!”
“What do you think? My legs are too short for efficiency. What takes you ten steps takes me twenty. And now that I’m old, all that running makes my joints ache.”
Hearing something a senior with all sorts of joint problems would say coming from someone who looked about ten years old left Elahan speechless. The gnomes lived their entire lives in the form of children. From the moment they reached adulthood until the day they died, their appearance never changed, and that made it nearly impossible for other races to guess their age.
“Or wait, could it be that my little sweetheart wanted to see this old granny hobbling down the road, huh? That's it?” Adela teased in a patronizing voice.
Elahan snapped her head away and replied, “Of course not! And please, that way of speaking really doesn’t suit you. Can you go back to your normal tone?”
“Oh my, just look at you. Putting on airs because the Hero’s watching? Though rumor has it that my little darling here used to sing about the Hero all the time during her training days at headquarters! I barely ever visit, but even I memorized the lyrics!”
“Eeeeeek!”
Elahan shrieked as her long-buried humiliation was exposed. Adela cackled gleefully and shot Leon a sidelong glance.
Catching that look, Elahan’s face turned bright red. No further confirmation was needed.
Still, she waved her hands desperately. “I never did that! Not once! Cardinal, please take it back!”
“Sorry, but I swore before the Goddess Herself to always speak the truth~.”
“Liar!”
“My, such a loud voice. If your predecessor could hear you now, you’d be getting quite the lecture. Ah, right. You failed the etiquette training three times, didn't you?”
The mention of her predecessor—the former Saintess—drained the color from Elahan’s face.
“P-please don’t tell my mother...”
“Then behave yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Having silenced Elahan completely, Adela turned to her next targets—Leon and Karen. Both intrigued her greatly.
Adela circled Leon with quick, light steps, inspecting him from head to toe with an exaggerated hum.
“Let’s see here. So, this generation’s Hero is... Hmmm... hmm... hoh... interesting... mmm... good...”
She examined him like an art critic, looking, touching, even sniffing, before finally breaking into a bright laugh.
“Perfect! Full marks! That plain, clean-cut look suits you perfectly!”
“P-plain...?” Leon muttered, deflated at the innocent remark.
Adela patted his back cheerfully and said, “What? Disappointed because I called you plain? Don’t be. That was a compliment.”
“A compliment...? Are you sure?”
With a smile as pure as her face, Adela nodded.
“Of course. I don’t like flashy types. Paint yourself in gold just to look impressive, and you end up looking cheap instead. It’s the same thing—if you’re truly great, you don’t need to scream it out loud. A shiny wrapper doesn’t make the candy inside any better.”
Despite her youthful looks, the gnome’s lifespan was longer than a dwarf’s and slightly shorter than an elf’s. Adela had seen centuries’ worth of life, and her insight into people was sharper than any blade. Experience, after all, became instinct after ten years and a way of being after a hundred. Cardinal Adela was a living piece of the Church’s history.
“And the one hiding behind you...”
When Adela’s sharp eyes turned toward her, Karen felt an invisible pressure and instinctively stepped back. Adela continued, unfazed.
“You carry a strong scent of blood. I won’t judge you for your past, but paying off that karma will be a long, painful road.”
“I’m fully prepared for that,” Karen replied.
“Good! If you have the resolve to march forward through such a long, treacherous road of hardship, then this Adela the Rampage has no choice but to believe in you!”
Her voice was quiet yet resolute, and when Adela closed her eyes with a soft, satisfied smile, there was warmth in her expression. At the heart of the Holy Church lay mercy, the guiding hand of the Goddess that gave even sinners a chance to walk the right path again. Just as Caesare had turned a blind eye to Karen’s past, Adela now chose to acknowledge her as well.
Clapping her hands once, Adela shifted the topic.
“Well then, let’s leave the introductions at that. We can talk more once we’re over that wall. Karen, was it? If you used to be an assassin, I imagine you’re familiar with infiltration work. Care to brief me?”
“Ah, well, um...”
With the casual authority of age, Adela inserted herself into their ongoing strategy session as if she’d been there from the start.
“...that’s the situation,” Karen finished.
“I see. So, it’s a barrier by a Grand Mage. Not for defense, but for detection, hmm
? In that case, sneaking in would be difficult indeed.” After listening to Karen’s report, Adela nodded once and hopped lightly off the rock she’d been sitting on. The motion was so childlike that the three barely managed to hold back their laughter.
Whether she noticed or not, Adela started walking ahead without looking back, saying, “Well then, come along. It’s about time we head in.”
Elahan asked cautiously, “Cardinal, do you perhaps know a side path?”
“Side path, huh,” Adela muttered, thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”
***
With Adela joining them, Leon’s group of three became four. Within minutes, they had reached the outer perimeter of Portroi’s walls.
The walls stretched high and long, matching the city’s vast scale. To some, that sight alone would inspire admiration, proving the might of the Empire. To others, however, the sheer size revealed an unavoidable weakness.
That weakness was vigilance. The wall was simply too long. Even with guards patrolling by the book, there would inevitably be blind spots, leaving areas beyond anyone’s line of sight. If someone spent days or weeks studying the soldiers’ movement patterns, it wouldn’t be impossible to reach the wall unnoticed.
But this is where things get tricky, Leon thought and glanced up at the towering walls before turning to Adela.
“Your Eminence, are you sure there’s a way to get past the Grand Mage’s barrier without being detected?”
“Of course! Have a little faith in me.”
Adela flexed her tiny, nonexistent biceps before stepping past the others and approaching the wall. Just a few steps more and she’d touch the barrier’s detection zone. She stopped precisely at that invisible threshold and raised her hand.
“Magic isn’t all-powerful, you know. In the end, magic and Aura are both just forms of energy. And all energy—heat, sound, everything—comes from vibration. Once you get down to the microscopic level, it’s all the same phenomenon.”
The gnomes were naturally sensitive to such vibrations, so much so that they could hear a needle drop from hundreds of meters away. So, what happened when that sensitivity was trained, sharpened, and refined to its utmost limit? Adela was demonstrating the answer.
Aura rippled from her small fingers, moving in a pattern so complex that even Leon couldn’t begin to follow it.
“Barrier magic works the same way. It forms a kind of membrane that senses foreign contact across its surface. But if you can match its frequency exactly, you can pass through it without triggering anything.”
Leon found himself staring wide-eyed. He couldn’t help it.
Through the Stigma of the Observer, he could see her hand slipping past the barrier’s surface, penetrating through it without resistance. The membrane didn’t shiver or crack; instead, her entire body began to phase smoothly through to the other side.
“How’s that? Simple, right?”
It left Leon, Karen, and Elahan utterly speechless.
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Heehee, kidding, kidding!”
Seeing the three of them with their mouths agape, Adela grinned mischievously and flicked her hand. The section of the barrier she had touched wavered, and a circular opening spread outward, just large enough for a person to pass through.
Leon’s group didn’t hesitate; they slipped inside one after another.
“So, the next problem’s the wall itself, huh? Well, that’s not a big deal. If it’s just a physical obstacle... hup!”
They didn’t even have time to stop her. Pressing her palm against the wall, Adela let out a sharp cry. A deep humming sound erupted in response, a short, intense resonance filling the air.
“W-what was that?” Karen exclaimed, startled, and the answer came immediately.
The spot where Adela had placed her hand collapsed in on itself, creating a hole roughly a meter across. No—that wasn’t quite the right description. The solid, stone-reinforced wall hadn’t been broken or shattered—it had crumbled, as if it were nothing more than packed dust.
It wasn’t destruction. It wasn’t pulverization. If it had to be put in words, the best way to describe it was disintegration.
El Cid murmured in awe, —Ultrasonic vibration... To control Aura with that level of precision? I may have underestimated the gnomes.