### Chapter 126: Change
As the dawn light broke over Alectine City, it started to rain again—because, of course, why not?
Inside and outside the tall northern walls, the massive battle was winding down. The flames that had previously raged like the angriest of cats were gradually snuffed out by the torrential downpour. The dark brown bl**d that splattered everywhere was diluted, and the pungent smell began to fade. Meanwhile, bodies of men and wildebeests were temporarily piled at the base of the city walls, waiting to be carted off for a bonfire scheduled for later.
The canal to the north was still a ghastly red, while at a distance, there were still a few heretics puttering about, valiantly resisting. Inside the city, the chime of clashing swords occasionally echoed where people gathered, but it would soon hush again. The knights wiped bl**d from their swords, conversing quietly, while leisurely tending to the nearby dead heretics.
Some of those bodies belonged to their comrades.
That night, many men, women, children, the good, the evil, the simple, the cunning, even those who had never set foot outside the city… all kinds of people had kicked the bucket.
As sunlight crept in, the grand war had basically wrapped up, but a myriad of affairs still loomed with no signs of winding down.
The residents of the city—those who hadn’t fled to the southern or eastern parts, and the nobles who had sheltered in their bunkers—after an initial high of excitement and relief from surviving the jaws of danger, began to gather in the north again. Most were on a quest to find their loved ones—some had gotten lost in the chaos, while others had scaled the walls and were now unreachable.
The Knights Order had set up a temporary camp in a spacious square north of the city, which quickly became bustling with urgency.
“… Now that the initial victory has been secured, I know you’re all exhausted, and I am too. But the Pope just issued orders for us to search the city high and low for any lurking heretics and to conduct a thorough cleanup of this place,” Isaac the bald-headed guy announced in the white tent, as lights flickered on the table.
Though the captains of his hundred-strong warriors had spent the night awake, they rallied with renewed vigor.
“The exact number of dead heretics here is hard to tally at the moment, but looking at the situation, there are certainly still plenty of them on the run… at least three thousand or more, from out there to in here. Those who have escaped far away, we can’t handle right now, but those still lurking within the city? We’ve got to find them. One we find, one we k*ll.”
“This will be coordinated with the nobles in the city. They’ll organize manpower to work with you. Start from one team to five teams. Later you’ll first take your people to connect with them and relay orders effectively…”
Not long after the Pope’s directions had been issued, they began to take root, and the warriors of the First Knights Order, forgoing even scrubbing off the bl**d from themselves, got on the move. Somewhere far away, Pope Angel, in a rather undignified manner, slumped in his armchair, disheveled hair and all, while assigning various tasks to the clerics of the Faith Organization below him and instructing the accompanying nuns and the Republic’s supply team to prepare post-war healing and food distribution.
I sat next to him, my head bobbing slightly as I tried not to doze off.
After a while, once everyone had left and only two bishops remained, Angel brought up the most pressing issue at hand.
“… We haven’t been able to locate the enemy’s leader, that… Mr. J, the Jester. Right, he’s the wildcard of this circus. I’m sure you all know his threat level. But as this battle has progressed, we were astonished to discover that the leader on this side of the Gate of Truth is a Pope Knight who defected from the church many years ago, and now he’s their sixth council member. But the Jester? He hasn’t shown his face at all.”
“Little Black Charcoal… oh, Miss Silvya. Before the sixth council member kicked the bucket, she heard him say the Jester wasn’t even here… What do you think the chances are that this statement is true?”
“Very high,” said a familiar young bishop solemnly.
Angel clapped his hands, “Good. Given the Jester’s style, if he’s managed to stay incognito all this time, it’s very likely he’s already bolted. And if he’s not here, the thing we’re trying to find won’t be here either. That madman has probably used all the heretics he brought in as bait to lure us in…”
The Pope paused for dramatic effect.
“But, we can’t rule out another possibility. Perhaps the Jester hasn’t left at all and is lurking where we least expect him, intentionally letting us win this battle to push some other… plan.”
“We can’t use normal thinking to assess that maniac’s actions. But no matter how we slice it, whatever plan is worth this grandiose sacrifice that he’s personally seen through has to be… extremely bad news for us and the people of the Western Continent.”
The conversation wrapped up in a blur of half-sleep and half-wakefulness. For the Sacred Church, the urgent matter was still to get on with all the complicated affairs in the city, negotiate with the nobles, tally battle losses, and discuss the even more crucial issue of food supplies.
Naturally, I had little input on most of these matters.
“Little Black Charcoal, go sleep in the back for a bit,” said Angel, scratching his head.
I gently shook my head, “No need.”
After a short rest in my chair, feeling somewhat revitalized, I decided to eat something before seeking out Isaac to join one of the search squads he was organizing. Just as I hazily heard earlier, the Jester might not have truly left; if there’s even a slight chance he’s near or even still in this city… I wouldn’t feel right until I confirmed it myself.
But first…
“If there’s nothing else, I’m going to check on the wounded camp.”
…
Barry stripped off his slightly dented armor and changed into a rough linen shirt.
The burn on his arm had been cleaned and bandaged, yet he still felt the sting as he lay on a makeshift bed of straw mats.
For the young knight, the heavy fighting had temporarily come to a pause. He lay in the noisy infirmary, watching the busy nuns and the unfamiliar yet reliable knights. In his daze, he occasionally wondered if he was still in a dream, struggling to believe that victory had come so suddenly and smoothly, almost as if scripted.
The woman named Lilith hadn’t left his side; she sat beside him on the ground, propping her chin in her hand, her head slightly lowered as if deep in thought.
Having hastily washed her face, her well-cared-for skin and delicate features were on full display again, even in her worn-out state.
“Lili… cough, Lilith,” Barry rasped softly.
The woman lifted her head and looked at him.
“You…” Barry gazed into her clear eyes and suddenly felt nervous. “Aren’t you going to look for your mother? She must be really worried about you…”
Lilith shook her head slightly, “I just told the knights that, if the war ends well and those demons are chased away, my mother should come over with the others. I’ll just wait for her here.”
She spoke softly, still seeming to struggle from the nightmares of the previous night. Her expression was somewhat dazed; her eyes appeared misty, and she was dressed in dirty, tattered clothes, her hair damp and clingy, making her look particularly pitiful.
“Barry, does your wound… still hurt? Maybe you should sleep a bit…”
“No, it doesn’t hurt.”
Barry lied.
The moment he lied, he became increasingly anxious, his cheeks heating up. “Lilith, you haven’t rested properly for a long time. You should sleep, you…”
When he got halfway through, he realized there were many lightly injured knights around with no place to lie down. There was nowhere for Lilith to sleep unless he invited her to lie next to him, which felt decidedly awkward for him, leaving him at a loss for words.
“It’s okay; I’m not sleepy.”
Luckily, Lilith seemed indifferent to his awkwardness. With one simple statement, she turned her gaze toward the tent’s entrance.
Outside the tent’s entrance, there were chaotic footsteps and voices coming from the messy horde.
It appeared someone had arrived, and many knights turned to look. Barry naturally followed suit, noticing a crowd gathered at the entrance, peering in curiously—knights and clerics alike, all craning their necks to see what was up. Just as Barry’s confusion deepened, the crowd parted, creating a narrow passage. Moments later, everyone snapped to attention, their right fists resting on their chests, performing the standard church salute.
Then, under countless gazes, a young girl wrapped in a cloak and dressed in a black skirt stepped in with tiny strides.
“Silvya…”
“It’s Miss Silvya…”
“Word is she’s the one who took down the leader of the heretics…”
Amid the clamor of chatter, Barry’s body tensed, and he half-sat up from the straw mat.
It was Little Shay…
She was here.
The girl had clearly changed into a new dress, and she had tidied up a bit—gone was the smell of bl**d. Her black hair was simply tied back, revealing a beautifully delicate face, like that of a life-sized doll.
That was the face Barry had been fixated on day and night for the past year.
That face quickly merged with the charming country girl he had seen in his memories.
And then, it instantly separated again.
The young knight sat among the chaos of straw mats, hands braced at his sides, his mouth slightly agape in a stiff expression, feeling like he was tautly wound up, watching Shay approach step by step, his heart racing as if it might leap right out of his chest.
She wasn’t moving fast.
A year had passed.
She hadn’t grown taller and seemingly hadn’t matured either. Small limbs, a small body, and a small face adorned with gorgeous, star-like eyes. Throughout the year, Little Shay hadn’t changed much; everything remained as it was the first time they met—her little legs flailing, wherever she went, she attracted everyone’s attention.
She was still her.
However, as Barry stared blankly at her figure, he couldn’t seem to reconcile the current Little Shay with the Little Shay of that time.
It felt like something had quietly changed somewhere along time’s flow at a point he hadn’t seen, hadn’t perceived.
But what exactly had changed…?
Barry thought in a daze. Then, in his line of sight, the girl advanced to the front and stopped in her tracks.
She pressed her lips together, lowering her gaze to look at him.
Barry noticed that behind her, several strong, steadfast Golden Armored Knights were following her. Those armored knights adopt a formal subservient stance, silently standing there with heads bowed, while some were even watching him with considerable interest.
At that moment, beside him, Lilith hastily got to her feet.
This high-born, powerful noble from Alectine City, the lord’s daughter, had been surrounded by impressive people all her life. Yet, at this moment, she stood straight, hands clasped modestly at her waist, and surprisingly felt a tinge of embarrassment in front of Barry’s much smaller sister.
Besides Lilith, Barry noticed that many knights around stood up, even those who had sustained heavier injuries.
As the young knight looked at everyone in the tent rising to their feet, it hit him all at once.
So that’s how it was.
Before him stood this girl, beautiful enough to resemble a fairy tale, and though she was still Little Shay, she was no longer that simple, innocent little girl who used to run around the village a year ago.
Some youthful qualities had quietly faded from this seventeen-year-old girl. Now standing before him was the one who had single-handedly slain demons, striking fear into the hearts of countless villains, known as Miss Silvya…
Pope Knight.
