"The Lich was disguised in a Royal Knight’s Armour."
The brown-haired elf tugged a lock of hair behind her ear, only for white to bleed through, streaking the strand like snowflakes.
Disguise unraveled like flower petals, and her hair returned to a snowy white, her elven ears rounding out as her features softened.
l glanced over the Saintess, now dressed in white pajamas. "That must have stained the King’s na a little."
"Oh. It is more than that." The Saintess chuckled.
Their golden eyes locked with each other, pajamas matching except in color of pink and white, as starlight faintly glimred off their smiling faces.
Like a late-night girly talk, if not for the conversation.
A teasing thought stread into l’s mind before she muttered. "Is it about the spies? Could using as bait have helped you identify them?"
"Identifying them is never the issue, l."
The Saintess tapped her lips with an index finger, a slight grin hidden beneath it. "Nyrel was ever an arrogant yet distrustful familiar. Even the spies had explosive runes implanted, in case sothing went wrong."
"Damn." l leaned onto the rail of her chair, cheek sinking into the wood in an idle musing. "Then did you detect them using mana?"
l recalled how Samantha also patted her head to detect if any cult magic sprouted from within her. Could the Saintess do sothing similar?
As expected, the Saintess nodded, her eyes curving. "Sothing similar to that."
With a graceful twist of her wrist, the stars within the wall realigned.
l glanced up, her golden eyes trembling as constellations collided and reassembled, slowly forming a round shape.
Its skin was pale, bathed in the soft breath of moonlight seeping through the repurposed wall.
"As you can see, this summon and the other two summons outside are my domains."
The Saintess cupped her cheek as she crossed her thighs, smirking. "A couple of hours ago, not long after you entered the realm, a small rebellion occurred in the other two ."
A flicker of surprise crossed l’s face, yet the Saintess’s calmness soothed l’s shock into nothing , as if the rebellions were but a minor inconvenience.
The Saintess continued with a relaxed voice. "Yet Nyrel couldn’t have known I was onboard myself, let alone capable of detecting all her like Gluttony or her Master Pride."
l humd, reconsidering Nyrel’s ability in the ga.
As the inheritor of mastery from Pride, Nyrel had cleverly displaced her runes, anchoring them to individuals’ minds through other .
The result? The couldn’t be manually deactivated by any ans.
But if soone can trace the runes’ links to their hosts, the spies reveal themselves imdiately.
l further asked. "So prior to this, you already knew who and where every spy was?"
"After they were onboard, yes." The Saintess’s eyes curved. "All that’s left was careful arrangent of my own troops, and placing Saria in ours to sneakily watch over any spy from our Whale."
"But this place has been strangely quiet so far, hasn’t it?"
"That’s the point." The Saintess chortled.
"The other two whales’ little rebellion has been swiftly corrected by my Knights. Nyrel may have expected casualties to embarrass , but alas, she couldn’t have known I already detected them onboard."
The Saintess continued with a soft smile. "Best of all, since my little cleanups in the Holy Knights, all the spies were confird Royal Knights, which allowed to hold rights over them and their commanders. Very convenient."
l rubbed her cheek idly against the rail, recalling how eerily quiet the corridor had been earlier.
"It’s the opposite, l." A serious glint crossed the Saintess’s gaze. "Those two little rebellions were but a diversion."
"Diversion?"
"Yep. Diversion, or an attempt to give an illusion that the issue was resolved."
The Saintess raised a finger as if teaching. "Picture Nyrel, who didn’t expect I was onboard, knowing who and where every spy is, if sudden incidents occurred in the other two whales, what would have happened instead?"
l tilted her chin up, her pink hair spraying over the chair. "Hm... I’ll expect the Knights either cancel the trip outright, or keep them under wraps and continue it. Most likely the latter."
"Why?"
"Reputation." l frowned. "None of the parties’ reputation would be unhard; it would have been an attack initiated by Royal Knight Spies, that the Holy Knights failed to detect, atop a Saintess’s summons."
"Exactly." The Saintess’s features grew tender, as if more proud of l’s analysis than the potential consequence happening. "Nyrel’s always more egotistical than perceptive, but she’s not completely senile."
l made a face at the Saintess’s mockery, before noticing a bloodlust surging in her expression as she spoke. "She knew clearly that with how Gluttony was onboard, the kidnapping would have been sensed."
The Saintess held up one finger.
"So she pursued two objectives, assuming her spies went undetected. First: to severely damage our reputations. Or at the very least, thoroughly humiliate us with spies’ rebellions."
Then the second finger.
"Second, to hide the fact that there were spies within this whale now, by distracting us with the aftermath of the rebellions, whether it is handling the casualties or cover-ups."
l’s eyes widened at the layered objectives, as if two chess masters were battling against one another.
Except, from the Saintess’s calm expression, this ga had already been decided.
"Then," l’s voice grew a little heavier. "If I’m not mistaken, and assuming that kidnapping is their final objective..."
A golden glow seeped from the Saintess’s skin, an unspoken rage simring beneath her serene expression.
The Saintess stared at l, her teasing and eased tone subsided just as quickly as her golden mana. "You guessed correctly."
She took a deep breath. "After all, we’re still in the sky. There are artifacts to teleport you across Realms, but it is much more convenient to capture you while on the ground."
In other words, the spies in this whale were supposed to attack after l and the others landed.
By then, Nyrel assud everyone would believe the danger had passed, making it the perfect ti to strike.
All to capture poor old .
l shuddered to herself, barely containing the excitent of being in a movie-like scenario.
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