“...What?” the High Bishop murmured in shock. I ignored him, glaring intently at the feystone as I continued to pour mana into it. The black feystone was turning yellow before my eyes. “...What’s going on?!”
The black faded, and for a brief moment combined with the yellow inside the feystone to make it look gold. A dazzlingly bright flash shone through the many thin cracks, and then the feystone began to crumble like sand. The High Bishop watched the golden dust slip through his fingers, his lips trembling and his eyes wider than ever before as he struggled to believe what he had just witnessed. Meanwhile, I continued Crushing him with mana.
“Myne, what in the world are y— Nguh!” The High Bishop glared at me with bloodshot eyes, then immediately clutched his chest and started coughing blood as my Crushing hit him head on. I started to pile on more mana, but then heard Damuel grunt in pain.
I spun toward him and saw that he was kneeling on the ground, having been hit hard by one of Bindewald’s balls of mana. He must have lost even the strength to grip his shining wand as it fell from his hand and disappeared into thin air. Damuel slowly bent forward, as if following it down, then collapsed onto the ground.
“Sir Damuel?!” I raced over to him. His breathing was ragged and he had fallen unconscious. Not even calling out his name woke him up—all he did was groan.
“Hmph. What kind of pathetic knight can’t even withstand a mana strike of that size?” the toad sneered, letting out a snort.
Damuel was defenseless while he was unconscious. I looked around for help, and saw that of the three Devouring soldiers on the High Bishop’s side, only one was still standing—and even he was just barely staying upright. But this third man was quickly taken care of as Dad grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground like he was dunking a basketball, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he fell unconscious. Dad then sped my way, guarding his limp left arm.
“Myne!”
“Dad...”
Fran had been injured during the fight, and was gasping for air while slumped against the door leading to the Noble’s Gate; the High Bishop was kneeling on the ground and coughing up more blood as his attendant gray shrine maidens skittered around nervously; and Delia was hugging the limp Dirk, frozen in place. The only ones still standing largely unhurt were the count and me.
All of a sudden, in the midst of all the chaos, the door to the High Priest’s room opened. Out stepped the High Priest, despite the fact that he was said to have been absent. His eyes widened at the disaster area in the hallway.
“What in the world happened here?!” Anyone would have been surprised to leave their room to find a bunch of injured people sprawled out on the ground, some of them looking like corpses. But the biggest question I had was why he hadn’t noticed us sooner given all of the noise we had been making right outside his door. That was the most confusing thing about the whole situation.
“High Priest, I am certain that Arno said you were absent! Why are you here?!” the High Bishop demanded, his voice almost a shriek. The High Priest looked at him, completely unfazed.
“I believe that should be self-evident: I told Arno to inform any visitors that I was absent. Since I was in fact not in my room proper, that was not a lie.” That no doubt meant he had been hunkered down in his lecture room. It was completely sealed off from the outside room using mana, which explained why he hadn’t heard us.
The High Priest scanned the hallway, taking in all that he saw. He narrowed his eyes a bit when I met his gaze, so I hid behind Dad. It was probably obvious that I had let my mana run loose.
As I swallowed hard, trembling in fear of being tied to a chair and lectured about the terrors of boiling skin, the High Priest rubbed his temple and turned to the High Bishop. “That is enough about me, High Bishop. I would like you to explain what has happened here. We seem to have a visitor who I’ve never seen before, and I have to ask who he is exactly.”
The High Bishop made no attempt to answer the High Priest’s question, and instead just pressed his lips together and glared back at him. The shining wand had already disappeared from Bindewald’s hand, and he looked at the High Priest with the arrogant expression of a noble.
“Is there any need for me to give my name to a priest? I am here on proper authorization.”
“I would like to see your permit.”
“And why would I bother wasting my time dealing with the likes of a mere High Priest?”
I had thought that the High Priest was a fairly high-status noble from his dealings with the Knight’s Order, but Bindewald was from another duchy and saw him as just another temple priest—High Priest or not. His arrogance was coming out in full force and, seemingly influenced by that, the High Bishop regained his own smug confidence. He stood up and wiped the blood from his mouth, his face contorting each time he coughed.
“High Priest, this is a noble from Ahrensbach. Don’t tell me that you intend to cause a diplomatic incident while the archduke is gone.”
“I believe you are the one who has caused a diplomatic incident. The archduke is absent for the Archduke Conference, which means he is not available to sign any permits for outsider nobles,” the High Priest coldly replied.
The High Bishop faltered and looked around. When his eyes fell on me, his lips curled into a nasty grin.
“H-He was given the permit far
