Chapter 71 — In which they bring light (4)

*Is it just me or does everything taste like oranges?*

*More like a lemon I would say.*

*Ah… No, the trauma is resurfacing…*

*What are you talking about?*

*Huhu, you youngster wouldn’t know. Hundreds of years ago, our Am’s brother was experimenting…*

*Please don’t remind me about it. The only thing you need to know, kid, is that there was a lot of citrus and fire involved, and our Am had to ask for our help, because it got a bit out of control.*

Amara tactfully ignored the voices in his head slandering his brother and checked on the situation, while completing another set of dance steps.

Most of the captives already disappeared in the forest, and the few that were left behind were helping those who were slower and weakened to get out and would soon also vanish completely in the darkness.

As for the mages, their confusion turned into terror, as not only their mana didn’t work properly, the things that shouldn't be able to burn were easily turning to ashes like pieces of paper.

Rather than chasing after the captives or trying to face the unknown opponent, they reasonably decided to retreat.

‘It appears there are no people from Flavun. Or from Gemma.’

The variable Amara was the most worried about were non-mages from the sister state, Flavun, or from the neighbor country Gemma, as they would be less affected by his herb mix.

Thankfully, the tense relationships between all parties not only affected politics and diplomacy, but also made it hard for the siblings’ invisible opponent to create an outpost with mixed origins.

‘Next time won’t be that simple…’

The higher-ups would immediately realize that someone is targeting them and strengthen their defenses.

And not only that, Amara won’t be able to burn down everything as simply as today the next time.

This time he relied on the nature powers and common sense.

The nature itself possessed some spirituality, making it possible to be used by priests to perform rituals, just like they used gods.

But the power of nature, as it lacked consciousness, was rather weak and hard to control.

It also didn’t have an established ‘worship’ system to strengthen its influence on the world, so its scope and usage was limited.

There was one advantage of nature powers though.

People believed in them regardless who they were.

It was common sense that things fall down, and that ice is lighter than water.

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And that fire burns down things.

The mages were people who understood principles behind those natural laws better than anyone else, but it also meant that even if they knew how to break them, their ‘belief’ in them was stronger.

Amara messed up with their perception and mana operations to create a gap for him to dig into.

When something started to go wrong, a mage would naturally fall back to the old rules and try to deal with the situation through them.

But today Amara was also ‘playing’ by those rules.

What he asked gods related to fire was to lend their power to the nature and strengthen the power of ‘common sense’.

For a short moment, the rule ‘fire burns things down’ became a rule unbreakable even by spells.

Amara, who was channeling that power to fire through the dance, was also able to control it enough that it didn’t burn anyone.

‘But it’s too power costly…’

The gods who lent their powers to fire today would be severely weakened for some time.

They will have to rely on their devotees to recover.

And Amara won’t be able to repeat that maneuver.

But he took the risk with exposing himself and gods to danger for a reason.

‘It’s a gamble, but if I succeed…’

Today belief in ‘common sense’ won, but the next time perhaps the belief in the ‘Dancing Fire’ will win.

If the rumors spread, and Amara is successful in creating a legend, he would be able to utilize ‘All-burning fire’ even without gods lending him a hand.

Amara, who saw both the captives and mages disappear, finished his dance and stepped out from the fire, which didn’t burn him thanks to gods’ protections put on him beforehand, and headed towards his two subordinates, who were waiting.

Just as Amara stopped in front of them and was about to open his mouth, the communication stone in his pocket trembled.

Amara received a message from Geod, who was left at the temple, to watch out for trouble.

[!!!]

Some serious trouble had come.

*-*-*

The head priest of the Universe Temple, Rasin, was walking down the temple’s corridor with some ‘urgent’ documents in his hands.

His objective was to check on the saint.

‘They seem to be suspicious that our little saint is sneaking out.’

Rasin frowned.

In fact, he didn’t dismiss such possibility.

As someone who watched over the saint since he was young, he knew better than anyone else that if that kid puts his mind to it, he could easily slip out.

The escape of the prisoner put him on high alert, but he had no evidence.

Besides, there were two other, more suspicious suspects.

One was the prisoner himself, who even ‘they’ didn’t know the exact history and identity of.

The second was the newly appointed attending priest, Phlox.

She was snooping around the temple, trying to get information out of slaves, when bringing them food.

Though she appeared to clearly hate the prisoner for trying to kill her saint, Rasin wouldn’t put it past her that it was all an act.

‘Besides, he completely shut down after that incident…’

When Amara was younger, he had sporadic incidents with his ‘overflowing benevolence’.

Those sporadic occasions ended after a certain incident.

A noble guest from a distant country, who visited the temple, brought a pet with them.

It was a large black lizard. A ‘dragon’ the guest said, but Rasin didn’t really believe him. He saw real dragons from Gemma after all.

But the young saint seemed to pity the poor creature and secretly freed it.

Unfortunately for the saint, the creature didn’t seem to be very smart, as it returned to its owner.

The guest, who believed that the creature desecrated the holy place by walking freely like this had the lizard killed in front of the saint.

Amara must have been deeply affected by this, because the ‘benevolence incidents’ didn’t occur ever again.

When Rasin, who reminisced about the past, was about to turn around the corner and enter the corridor leading to the saint’s bedroom...

Clank!

A loud sound stopped him in his tracks.

He turned around, only to see a small body trying to quickly skitter away, with something large and very suspicious in his hands.

“Young excellency Laven, what are you doing here?”

When Rasin called out, the child froze.

“I’m taking a walk.”

Laven hesitated for a moment, and then answered.

But strangely, he didn’t turn around. His back was facing Rasin, and hiding from Rasin’s eyes what Laven was holding in his hand.

“Young excellency… Excuse me, but do you mind turning around?”

The child very slowly turned around.

Rasin fell silent for a moment. Stupefied.

“Young excellency, please tell me it’s not a bottle of ritualistic wine in your hand.”

“…”

Laven didn’t reply.

Rasin sighed and massaged his temples.

‘When did this brat turned into a child alcoholic?’

He suddenly felt he was too old for this, as he prepared to give the eleven year old preaching about alcohol abuse.

*~*~*