"You can share anything you want with me."
Vestian spoke to a girl with black hair and black eyes, resting on a bed with her body covered with a blanket, her expression pale, and her eyes filled with nothing but tiredness, his emerald eyes flashing with a red glint.
"I am here for you."
His hands, thin and soft, gently held hers, which were lying atop her chest, sending a jerk through her body as her eyes snapped toward him, a lively light shining within me.
Thomas standing at the back just smiled as he stared at the things happening.
'Divine touch...'
He muttered inwardly as he saw what Vestian was doing. It was an ability that heals one mentally almost in an instant with a touch of Vestian.
It was a pretty broken ability if one looked at it from a healer's perspective because the mental trauma one suffers is the hardest to heal. People never recover from a severe mental injury, but for Vestian, it was an easy feat.
Right now, they were both in the medical ward, talking to the only girl who survived the attack from Lucious, only surviving due to Vanessa's help, but recalled nothing of it.
All she remembered was being attacked by Lucious before everything went black and cold. In those last moments, she—a child who had never left her house before—saw her friends melting and shrinking under the attack of the archbishop, leaving her terrified. Even the mention of that incident made her break down, but Vestian, who could heal almost any mental trauma, knew how to deal with it.
That is why, instead of Thomas, Vestian was the one healing. Thomas, in the first place, just came along as a show of power and to protect in case something unforeseen happened.
"Did you start recording it, Aunt Alenia?"
Alex, on the other hand, holding a colorless orb that was shining with blue color, standing on the other side of the bed, face-to-face with both Vestian and Thomas, spoke, his gaze fixed on Vestian and the girl, who, with a dazed expression, started speaking.
"W-What do you want to know...?"
The girl's voice broke a bit as she seemed to be struggling to speak for some reason.
"Yes, Your Highness, I am."
Alenia, with her eyes squinted, staring at Vestian with a cold glint in her eyes, answered Alex's question, pointing at another colorless orb, just much smaller than the one Alex had, flashing continuously.
It was a recording device, a costly one at that, which is said to be impossible to be tempered with, taking everything in from the moment Vestian approached the girl.
"What do you see?"
Alex, however, noticing the strangeness in her behavior, turned to look at her, his expression serious as he knew that if she had that kind of reaction, she had probably seen something.
"Your Highness, he's using the same thing he used on me. The girl, however, is unable to resist it." Alenia replied, gritting her teeth.
To her, that girl was the only person left alive during the massacre, and although she knew about Vanessa's personality and knew that Vanessa didn't care much about this girl, she, as a person with a kind heart, couldn't see the girl going through something like that.
She, due to some tension between her and Vanessa, was yet to be made aware of Alex's plan, because if she knew, she wouldn't be feeling bad for the girl as she was going to die anyway.
"I see..."
But Alex, who could pretty much guess that Vanessa had yet to tell Alenia about the girl's fate, didn't break the news to her and just nodded his head, his eyes squinting as he saw Vestian frown as he heard the girl's answer to his question.
"All I saw was my friends having their bodies sucked dry or cut in pieces before my vision darkened."
The girl spoke with a smile, but her body for some reason kept trembling.
If one were to hear her words, one would wonder if she was the same girl who was having strokes just by the mention of that incident. Now she was talking about it with a smile, but Vestian wasn't satisfied. With a deep red light shining in his eyes, he spoke again.
"There was nothing strange you saw at that moment? Did Lucious not seem to be forced or something?"
Vestian's tone grew forceful, his hold on her hand tightening. He needed something out of this. He came here by calling in one of his favors, as this incident was going to have a grave consequence for him during the election of the next pope.
"I-I think the archbishop did it willingly. He was showing devilish symptoms from the instant young master Alex's status was revealed."
The girl, smiling as she had been for a while, staring at Vestian without blinking, replied to his question without hiding anything. She didn't seem to care about the pain—something that had her body wincing. It was as if she didn't care about it at all.
Her words, however, made Vestian shoot up from his seat. With his eyes wide, he gripped her shoulder, looking deep into her eyes, an expression of disbelief painting his face.
"What did you say?" He questioned hurriedly.
Vestian couldn't believe that he would find gold while searching for metal scraps.
Thomas was the same. He was shocked, as they might really be able to get their hands on something that could help them contribute more than they had lost due to the Lucious incident.
This girl knew Alex's stats!! People were willing to pay a hefty price just to know this thing. It didn't matter whether Alex awakened shit abilities, talent, and other things; just being aware of it was all people wanted.
The emperor himself was not out of this list because Alex's name alone carried enough value, or more like his mother's name.
*Crack*
"I-I think the archbishop did it willingly—" the girl replied, her smile faltering a bit as she could feel her shoulder bones cracking; her body was not strong enough to sustain the full strength of a two-star knight.
Yes, Vestian was a knight, or better said, he wanted to become a paladin, who followed the knight path. He was still looking for a skill that could contribute to pushing him closer to becoming a Paladin, but that didn't mean he wouldn't start his body strengthening.
The only thing that differentiated the knights and the Paladins was the set of skills; without it, they were both the same, so Vestian was progressing in knight cultivation.
"No, no. I want to know more about the last part—" Vestian, however, shook the girl's body a bit, his eyes shining with ominous fiery glint, trying to make her understand his point forcefully, ignoring the fact that he was breaking the girl's body.
But fortunately for the girl, Vestian wasn't alone in the room.
Thomas was there, and although he was a bit confused by the sudden outburst from the same gentle Lord he followed, he soon broke out of it and rushed forward.
"My lord! Snap out of it. You will kill the girl—" Thomas exclaimed next to Vestian's ear, pulling the guy back, breaking him out of his reverie, and making him realize what he had done.
But suddenly, a strange sense of crisis gripped both of their hearts as the next instant...
*Step**Step*...
The sound of steps echoed through the room as Alex walked toward them, making both of their senses blare in alarm.
'When did he arrive?!'
Neither Thomas nor Vestian could sense Alex's presence; it was as if he popped out of the air, but it was his next words that made them realize that things were about to get really serious.
"What is this? I was looking for an individual concerned about my well-being—so much so that they rushed here without delay—yet all I see is someone skulking about another's home, imposing upon a defenseless girl who has yet to recover from her trauma."