The Imperial border where the giant magic stone had been besieged.

Allerik, orb in hand, kept turning the words of squad leader Tesetan over and over in his head.

“I changed my mind. Tell them we’re going.”

“...Strange.”

No matter how much he thought, he could not make sense of it.

He listed more than a dozen perfectly reasonable reasons why they should answer the muster order — and yet Tesetan had not budged from where he stood.

“You said Berugon isn’t the only one trapped in the subspace?”

“Yes?”

“I’m asking, is the leader of that newly formed mercenary squad trapped there too?”

The moment he heard that the King of the Dead was trapped as well, the squad leader immediately changed course.

“Get ready.”

“...What?”

“You said we had to go. Get ready. We leave at once.”

The change was so sudden that even the usually unflappable Allerik was completely thrown.

Ribia, however, was displeased.

She stalked behind Tesetan and kept pestering him.

“Leader, maybe it would be better to just let the King of the Dead die? I mean, that Basto Paerix looks like a fine fighter.”

“......”

“If the King of the Dead dies and Agavert falls apart, we can take Basto for ourselves. Right?”

But Tesetan did not answer.

He only packed his weapons in silence, his face serious, as if lost in thought.

Even now.

“All right, prepare the teleportation portal!”

“Take all weapons and equipment that need servicing, just in case!”

Watching his squad bustle about, Allerik shrugged his cloak on.

“At least we’ve removed the risk of being struck from the Imperial Council or the Church Order. I suppose that’s something to be glad about.”

Still, when Tesetan behaved so inexplicably, something unpleasant usually followed.

Meanwhile Tesetan himself stood leaning against a boulder split in two.

He absently stroked the sword hilt and recalled something recent.

“Father, father—!!”

He thought of a voice.

Several days had passed, but the voice had not yet faded from his memory.

“Fatherr—!”

It happened when he left Pearlcity.

At first he assumed some child stood alone on the quay, crying bitterly.

The voice was so loud it drowned out ship horns and the crash of waves; he thought the child must have unusually strong lungs.

“I wondered how on earth the child had gotten separated from his parents.”

But soon something felt odd.

The screaming child was not looking at anyone in particular; he seemed to be looking straight at him.

When their eyes met, the youngster pressed his lips together and trembled all over. That image still lingered before Tesetan’s eyes.

“...Who was he calling that to?”

Who did the child call “father”?

The first sensation was almost irritation.

But soon that feeling gave way to bewilderment, which made it all the more ridiculous.

Tesetan normally felt nothing when encountering people.

Yet here he suddenly felt a strange unease because of a bawling child.

This feeling was unfamiliar to him.

So he simply turned away and never looked back toward the harbor.

He would regret that later.

Even after the ship had long since left the harbor, Tesetan kept thinking of that child. Eventually he asked Allerik.

“...Do you happen to have a hidden child somewhere?”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“Not me, for sure, so I thought maybe you have one.”

“What?”

Of course Allerik looked at him as if he had heard nonsense.

Tesetan stood on the stern, face into the wind, and reflected.

Perhaps the child had simply been mistaken.

Maybe his lost father looked somewhat like me.

Then the child would be an orphan.

Although... his face had been fairly dirty.

But even if he was an orphan, wasn’t it dangerous to stand alone on a quay?

What if he slipped and fell into the sea?

These were thoughts not at all like him.

And the anxiety was not like his.

After roughly ten thousand hesitations, Tesetan reluctantly made his way to the captain’s cabin.

The ship’s sole communication artifact was kept there.

He intended to contact the Imperial Council and ask them to pass along an urgent message to Pearlcity’s governor.

Tell them there’s a child wandering the quay; have someone remove him.

Of course, it seemed excessive to contact the Imperial Council, with whom he had no particular ties, over such a matter...

“But I can’t leave it as is.”

What if the child fell into the sea?

When he entered the captain’s cabin, the captain willingly handed over the communication artifact.

And, clearly pleased by the encounter, began to chatter.

“To be honest, I never thought I’d see Tregava’s leader up close. By the way, leader, did you also see that King of the Dead?”

“The King of the Dead?”

“Yes. They say Agavert and the King of the Dead came to Pearlcity. That mage who handles necromancy. I only learned just before we set sail.”

Tesetan slowly lowered the communication artifact he held.

The captain chuckled and continued.

“One of our sailors I sent on an errand saw the King of the Dead. He says it’s a real child. Hard to believe it’s just a disguise.”

“...Is that so.”

“Yes! A very small one, hair nearly white. And get this: she was wearing Agavert’s uniform and even managed to put their name down for a hotel bill.”

At that moment something clicked in Tesetan’s head.

The group of strangers he had met at the hotel.

And the clothing they wore...

The child’s robe.

He smiled quietly.

“...What a type.”

Leaving the captain’s cabin and returning to the stern, he felt as if someone had bonked him on the back of the head.

At the same time a strange curiosity arose within him.

“Looks like she’s really mad.”

Those were his own words.

Spoken in a tavern in Pearlcity only a few days earlier.

“But why didn’t I realize it?”

He already knew the King of the Dead walked about as a four-year-old girl.

And that the mage was an oddity.

“Father!”

And yet—

“Can someone fake it that convincingly?”

Tears streaming down cheeks.

A voice so full of grief it made the listener uneasy.

Tesetan smirked and stared at the boundless sea.

A mage of the King of the Dead’s caliber could not help but know who he really was.

So he had done it on purpose.

He had known Tesetan was Tregava’s leader and done it anyway.

“...Strange way to fight for the initiative.”

An image surfaced before his eyes — the child staggering on the pier.

Crying in sobs.

Desperately calling for father.

“...Caught.”

Tesetan smiled and, without realizing it, gripped the stern rail.

A few days later, news of Agavert reached him again.

They had besieged the first magic stone that rose from the sea and then headed for the Popullos Weapons District.

At the same time, new reports began appearing in the bounty offices across the Empire.

Among the hundreds of mercenary squads, Agavert had taken thirty-ninth place in the rankings.

That meant their siege of the magic stone was already being noted, even if unofficially.

“Leader! Everything’s ready.”

Hearing the report, Tesetan emerged from his recollection.

“I was just thinking about when we’ll meet again.”

He had not expected it to happen so quickly.

“Let’s go.”

When he rose, a huge magic circle flared up before him.

Allerik stepped closer.

“We’ve wasted a lot of time. As soon as we arrive we’ll have to visualize the subspace immediately.”

Countless kinds of magical beasts existed in the world.

Among them, the hardest opponents were the so-called stealth-type creatures.

Magic beasts like Krazar attacked from invisibility.

So the primary task in fighting them was to manifest their true form.

Essentially, that was why the # Nоvеlight # Association had asked Tesetan for help.

“Can you activate 'that eye' right away?”

“I can.”

No sooner had he said that than magical and sacred power burst from his sword, as if it had been waiting for the moment.

Tesetan possessed one of the rarest and most powerful abilities in the world.

It was called the Eye of Heart.

A third sight that could be summoned by the vibration of two opposing energies, and the first sword strike Tesetan had honed since the day he decided to become a mercenary.