CHAPTER 10 – EMPATHY

Translator: Homia

Elise made a flower crown by picking each violet with care.

When Arsene came, she jumped out of the second-floor window of the tower and ran away, then arrived at a small flower garden.

Her own little garden, a long way from the manor.

Even if it was called a flower garden, it was just a variety of flowers blooming, but one of Elise’s hobbies was to choose the flowers she wanted and make her own pretty flower crowns.

There was a small smile on the girl’s face as she glanced at the completed violet crown.

“Hehe, it’s pretty.”

At the moment, Elise recalled Arsene’s purple eyes as she looked at the violet petals.

A boy with a peculiar constitution who doesn’t feel aversion toward wizards.

She heard the story, but after hearing it, she couldn’t meet him even more.

This is because every time she saw Arsene, she remembered her disgraceful behavior.

Waving sticks with paint on her face, and threatening people by chanting false spells, now that she thought about it, it was a stupid thing that would never happen again.

“It’s annoying.”

Elise rolled around the flowers a few times after throwing the violet crown.

She wanted to meet and talk to him. And she didn’t want to meet him at the same time. Two thoughts collided.

With such a dainty concern, she held the locket of the necklace that she usually wore.

No, she was trying to hold it.

“…huh?”

Feeling nothing, she looked down and saw that only the necklace string remained, and the part of the locket that was supposed to hang underneath had disappeared.

Only the metal ring that seemed to have been pulled and stretched was pitifully dangling.

“Huh? Oh, no, wait…”

She quickly leaned over and swept the ground where she had been lying, but her rocket could not be found.

Elise started crying.

Arsene, who came out of the tower, went to Elise.

Since his shocking first meeting, Arsene has never had a proper conversation with Elise.

He ran into her once or twice while passing by and looking for the tower of the wizard, but whenever he ran into her, Elise ran away in a hurry without saying anything to him.

The funny thing was that she didn’t just run away.

There were times when she was sneaking glances at Arsene, hiding as if she didn’t want to be seen by others, such as sticking her head behind the door or over the wall.

She looked like a cat that observed its opponent without running away or approaching, feeling both wary and curious about what it saw for the first time.

Arsene assumed she was very shy because of her age.

Actually, he didn’t think of her as cumbersome, it was also pretty cute to see the little girl doing that.

“Have you seen Miss Elise?”

“She just went out that way.”

The main gate guard pointed to the village below. Arsene nodded and moved down the hill.

‘The lord’s daughter goes out as she likes, but no one cares about it.’

Thinking about it for a moment, there was no one in the territory that would harm Elise.

The fact that the lord’s daughter was a wizard was well-known, and everyone would recognize Elise was a wizard at one glance.

As he walked down the road from the main gate, he saw the market area.

“Ripe apples! Two coins for one ripe apple!”

“I have fresh vegetables!”

“These are items from the northern Air territory from last month! Take a look!”

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The market area, located just below the manor, was quite crowded.

Arsene felt awkward every time he saw people living casually like this.

Because it was in stark contrast to the devastating life he had been living for the past 10 years in the fortress.

‘I don’t know how so many people live here.’

He didn’t know the exact size of the Beluan territory, but it felt too small for a place where that many people could eat and live.

Where does the food that feeds the vassals inside the manor, feeds the common people, and even exports them to nearby fortresses come from?

With such doubts, he asked the merchants the location of Elise.

They didn’t know who Arsene was, but responded politely and kindly to the boy, who was dressed in high-quality clothes with the pattern of the Beluan estate.

“I saw her going down that hill earlier.”

The last place Arsene arrived at after hearing the store owner’s words was a small hill with various miscellaneous flowers.

It was a space that felt like a strangely isolated flower garden, obscured by the surrounding buildings and terrain.

In the middle of the flower garden, a girl with short black hair was sitting.

“Miss Elise.”

He called Elise from a distance, but he didn’t hear an answer.

Arsene approached Elise carefully, trying not to step on the flowers.

When he got closer, he saw Elise sitting with her eyes red and full of tears.

“Miss?”

At Arsene’s call, tears rolled down Elise’s eyes as she turned her head.

“I lost it, my necklace…”

She covered her eyes as if trying to stop the tears, but the sniffling continued.

When he heard that, he looked down at Elise’s neck and saw an open ring stretched in the middle of the necklace.

He could tell right away that there was supposed to be something like a locket hanging on that ring.

“How big is it?”

“…this big.”

Elise, who had been sniffing, slightly opened her thumb and index finger to express the length of the locket.

‘Certainly, that’s not easy to find here.’

“Isn’t there any magic to find the necklace?”

“I don’t know that kind of magic. And magic… I’m not good at using it yet.”

“We can’t help it then. Let’s look it up together. I’ll search this way, and you can search that way.”

As he calmly began to search in the flower garden, Elise rubbed her face, wiped away the tears, and began to search the other side.

He thought it would be more comfortable to just pluck out the flowers, but he struggled with patience.

After searching for a bit, there was something rattling, so he took it out and found a small silver locket.

“Miss, is this it?”

“Huh? Oh! That’s right! That’s it!”

Elise, who rushed in, grabbed the locket as if snatching it from Arsene’s hand.

The girl, after opening the locket with a clicking sound, closed it again with a sigh of relief.

“Is it something important?”

“Yes. It’s what my mother left me before she died.”

“That’s a relief.”

Elise nodded in agreement without saying a word, and tried to close the ring after putting the locket back.

However, the gaping ring did not close easily.

Arsene pushed Elise’s hand away and grabbed the rocket, unable to watch her squirm with her tiny hand.

Using the knight’s overwhelming force, the ring was tightly interlocked in a circle, as if it had been like that from the start.

“Okay, that’s enough, right?”

Elise unconsciously stroked the part that touched Arsene’s hand.

Then, she asked him a question.

“…are you sure I’m not disgusting?”

Arsene burst into laughter when he saw Elise’s wide-open eyes.

She had a cute face, but he couldn’t hold it in because she had been crying for a while and looked at him with big swollen eyes.

“Ah, yes. You’re not disgusting. Really.”

“Really, really, really?”

Asking that, Elise unknowingly grabbed Arsene’s sleeve, and she flinched at the act.

Because she remembered her childhood, when she was younger, she once clung to her brother to play, and then he kicked her mercilessly, screaming.

But Arsene held Elise’s hand unperturbed.

“Yes, it’s fine, Miss.”

Children are sensitive to the opinions of others.

Not everyone loathed Elise and couldn’t get close.

Like a maid who cared for her, and her father.

Some of the people who have been with her for many years sometimes patted her head and held her hand, but Elise always read the indisputable disgust in their hands and faces.

A gaze that seems to be looking at something physiologically unacceptable.

The warmth of the touch, which did not contain disgust, seemed to warm her cold, hardened heart, not her hands.

“…something like this, it’s the first time.”

“You have Sir Luden.”

“Luden is scary. He always yells, and he just scolds me for not doing well.”

Luden was a wizard and a teacher who could take care of Elise, but he was also a man who had never been loved by others.

He didn’t know how to comfort and treat a child warmly.

The only way Luden knew was as a wizard, as a teacher, to discipline his disciples fiercely, and to a young girl, it was only frightening.

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Nevertheless, Elise always went to Luden’s Tower to learn magic.

All she could get in her little world was disgust from everyone other than Luden.

Because even yells and scolding were sweeter than disgust.

“Sir Luden was looking for you, by the way. Come and learn how to fix a sword.”

“I don’t want to learn. Magic is fun, but hammering is hard. My hands hurt. Making a flower crown is more fun.”

Saying so, Elise picked up the violet crown that had fallen on the floor.

Because some time had already passed, the flowers and grass looked a little withered.

For a while, Elise arranged the flower crown without saying a word, then spoke in a solemn voice.

“Last time, that… I’m sorry. It was wrong. I won’t do that again.”

“Like using that paint…’”

“Don’t talk about that!”

‘You brought it up yourself…’

Arsene only thought about it and nodded to show his understanding.

And he brought up a question he had wanted to ask for a long time.

“But why did you do that?”

When asked by Arsene, Elise shut her mouth and held her feet.

Some time passed in silence.

Soon after, Elise answered in a quiet voice, as if whispering.

If Arsene wasn’t a knight, he wouldn’t have heard it.

“Because it’s not fair.”

“What?”

“It’s not fair, because I’m hated for whatever I do. Rather, it’s unfair if there’s no reason to be hated.”

At that moment, he remembered a saying he had heard in his previous life, ‘If someone thinks of you’re a jerk, give them a fu*king reason to think so’.

Not exactly because of that feeling, but Arsene could understand Elise’s behavior to some extent.

“I understand.”

Sometimes you just need empathy rather than words of advice.

Instead of saying that it’s not right or that she shouldn’t do it, Arsene just said he understood and hugged her tightly.

That was enough.

In Arsene’s arms, a quiet sobbing was heard.

“We’ve got a long-term expedition.”

At Palato’s words, Arsene put down the sword he was wielding.

Sweat gushed out of his body, as it was a heavy enchanted sword, incomparable to a normal one.

“Whoa… long-term expedition?”

“I’m going to your hometown, the Krata fortress. Krata fortress fell and the rhinoceros’ horn supply was cut off. We’re going to check out the looters’ group that destroyed the fortress, and if possible, we’re going to catch some lone rhinoceros and get some horns.”

“Ah, if it’s the rhinoceros’ horn…”

A giant horn the size of an adult’s upper body, which was saved as a trophy that Sir Lenock had hunted himself, came to his mind.

Every time those came, he asked where they were transported, but he never imagined that it was an item supplied from Krata Fortress to the Beluan Territory.

“I’ve seen one before, but what is it for?”

“If you grind the horns of the rhino and sprinkle them on the ground, the plants grow incredibly well. The bread, vegetables, and fruits we eat all grow thanks to the horns. If it’s not continuously supplied, how can we support so many people with the size of our territory?”

One question that he had been curious about while looking at the market has been solved.

He knew that the materials from the monsters were used for all kinds of purposes, but he never imagined that the horns were used like that.

“By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them grow crops using those horns in Krata Fortress. There was always a shortage of food there.”

“Because there was no sorcerer. The horns have to be processed with magic, but the effect disappears quickly and we can’t store and sell them, so we can only use them in our territory.”

He never thought the wizards would come out here again.

Clicking his tongue, Arsene picked up the heavy sword again and repeatedly swung it.

“Anyway, there are three knights participating this time, me, Dame Genovia, and Sir Entir… and you are also included. Since you have experienced the raid yourself, it might be helpful.”

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“Was this Lord’s decision?”

“Of course, no one can move a knight without the permission of the lord, and you are a knight.”

“I see.”

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow, so finish your training in moderation this afternoon and get a good night’s sleep.”