Chapter 496 - 296: By the Name of the Father, Decreeing the Sealing of Kings
"I knew it, it really is you!"
Paladin Rand looked at the young man not far away, whom he had spent nearly ten years growing deeply familiar with, only to feel utterly strange and unfamiliar in the sudden advent of the Holy Dragon’s revelation. As the young man transformed, someone he only heard tales of—the Holy Dragon’s Son—Rand was shaken but soon gave a relieved smile, his face revealing relaxed joy.
As a Paladin, his perception and wisdom were not so dull. From the time he first entered the Black Mine Pit under a hidden identity and inadvertently met this young man, he sensed the young man’s extraordinary origin.
The subsequent nine years only strengthened his belief that the young man must have an exceptional background, as the knowledge possessed by Illia seemed remarkably vast.
However, the knowledge did not align with the youth’s apparent frailty and powerlessness. How could someone who mastered so much knowledge be merely mortal?
It’s not that mortals are necessarily foolish and the Transcendents are definitively wiser; rather, the realms they dwell in are different, with certain knowledge unattainable by mortals.
Rand’s doubts accumulated until a year ago when he witnessed a group of warriors belonging to the Holy Dragon, who shouldn’t have appeared, descend and effortlessly resolve an Abyss calamity that threatened the lives of all including himself and other paladins.
At that moment, he witnessed something capable of shattering worldly understanding and crushing all transcendents’ worldviews—a group of warriors at an average power level of the Golden Realm besieging and defeating a Legend.
In that instant, Paladin Rand began to suspect the identity of his student, as only he and his student were present during the battle. Rand was sure of his own clean background.
Since the problem was not with him, the issue must be with his student. Especially seeing his student fearlessly searching a Legend’s corpse, Rand became more certain that Illia’s identity had significant issues.