'What are the chances it's him?'
Sarah sat down on the ground, holding the struggling kid in her arms and passively watching how the events progressed.
It was obvious from the moment the mercenary appeared, but he bore no ill will towards her.
And then, there was this strange, young man, standing over the unconscious mercenary with the snatched sword in his hand.
The kid in Sarah's arms suddenly grew even harder to pacify, using every bit of her strength in her attempts to slip out, her big, red eyes permanently locked on the young man's back.
Sarah gulped her saliva down and looked at the kid that clearly had no wish to remain in her hold any longer.
Just her first guess, regarding the young stranger's identity, was a stretch. But as she refused to let this struggling kid go… Sarah felt obliged to assume another possibility. Because to her best knowledge, the kid in her hands…
'She's a damn incarnation of an unclaimed god!' Sarah's insides screamed out at the very blasphemous act she was committing right now.
Restricting the will of the god's incarnation that was on a mission to fully awaken its true deified realm?!
What she was doing, was on par with trying to stop the Mother Goddess from fertilizing the very world they were living in! Or prohibiting the Father God from restricting the mana from running amok, confining it in the crude form of stones, and developing a divine realm of magic!
An incarnation of an unclaimed God.
A whole divine realm that was on its way to appearing, enriching the very fabric of the world around.
Still, the kid in Sarah's arms wasn't the only thing present on the scene. And as the princess raised her yees…
The young man turned his head and looked in Sarah's direction.
"Are you two okay?" he called out, sweeping his eyes through the alley… Only to quickly end up locking them on the princess's face.
The hints were small… but they were there.
From how unnaturally long his stare was, just a bit longer than a passing glance yet way shorter than a fleeting observation.
Then, there was the tiny wrinkle that appeared on his forehead when he slightly raised his eyebrows.
'Can he recognize me?!' Sarah freaked out.
There were only a selected few elites in the entire world that could break through the illusion she created! And not even one of them could do so without using mana dust on their own, as opposed to what this stranger was doing right now!
In the end, though, Sarah never got to ask or even guess the answer to her question, as the young man was forced to turn his head away, redirecting his attention to the new threat.
And just like before, the two mercenaries that emerged from the other end of the street simply swept their glances over Sarah and the kid in her arms, only locking them on the young man and the body at his feet.
'Wait, isn't this all but a misunderstanding?!' Sarah suddenly freaked out even further.
If the outwards appearances were true, then this young man stepped in, thinking the first mercenary was trying to harm the two of them!
That was also why the first thing he did after the fight was to look back and check their situation!
But now, with a fainted mercenary on the ground, the situation escalated too fast for Sarah to even open her mouth and produce her voice.
The mercenaries railed up, one of them standing guard while the other reached for a whistle.
Before they could do anything, though, the young man was already charged. If not for the lightning-fast reaction of the guarding mercenary, this young stranger could silence the mercenary at the back before redirecting his attention to the one at the front.
If only…
Sarah gritted her teeth when the noise of metal cutting metal mixed with the high vibrato of the whistle.
She could do nothing but stare at the young stranger's desperate struggle, already doomed to failure once the mercenary raised the alarm.
'His skills are easily on par with higher tens,' Sarah judged, genuinely amazed by the display of combat prowess. 'But why isn't he using…'
Sarah jolted on her knees, unknowingly tightening her embrace over the kid's shoulders.
Her recent memories clicked with her present reasoning.
'Right, wasn't he a fifth rank?'
As unbelievable as it could be… There was a great chance that this young stranger was exactly who Sarah and Mera were looking for!
The fact that she was holding a damn deity's incarnation in her hands was a high ask for Sarah. But to acknowledge that this strange swordmaster was the very mercenary they were so desperately looking for?!
Sarah grits her teeth, her soul hurting over how far of a stretch of plausibility this situation would have in the scenario she just pictured.
It was simply improbable for all of those coincidences to happen at once, bringing the most unlikely host of people together at this one particular moment, in this one specific place.
And yet, as the princess looked down at the kid still relentlessly struggling in her arms, she simply couldn't refute the realization that dawned upon her.
The signs were all here. All the tells she was taught to be on the lookout for when taking the hermetic course of infant deities back at the imperial capital.
Sarah raised her chin and took a look at the young man again, this time with a slightly changed expression.
'He's obviously the one she's so desperate to reach,' Sarah thought, not even blinking when the man unleashed his wrath and finished off his opponents, no longer bothering with the appearance of trying to hold himself back.
The young man raised back to a proper, standing position before taking a second to breathe in and out a few times. He even closed his eyes and pulled his head to the back, as if trying to look at the sky in spite of having his eyes closed.
After taking a few breaths, he lowered his head back and opened his eyes, turning them towards Sarah for the first time since he first looked at her.
The not-so-distant noise of tens of shoes hitting the flagstones of the street announced the near arrival of the mercenary reinforcements.
The young man continued to glance at the princess…
'No, he's not looking at me. He is looking at the incarnation…' she thought, gulping her saliva down as she no longer could refute the improbable yet extremely likely scenario. 'And that would make him be the apo…'
"Run," the young man spoke softly, before turning around to face the host of mercenaries that just appeared at the other end of the street.
He lowered his center of mass and grabbed tightly at the handle of his chipped sword, no longer paying the princess or the infant deity any attention.
And then…
"It's him!" a low yet powerful, guttural voice filled the air as a mercenary from somewhere in the middle of the group that arrived shouted from the bottom of his lungs. "Bring me his head!"