Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 111

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Ahhhhh!”
“Move, move!”
“You move!”
“I—I can’t finish last, no way!”
Those rushing ahead came into view—children running like their lives depended on it, wild with desperation.
They were students, nothing but students.
Not a single knight was to be seen anywhere.
“Krahhhh! I’m first!”
“Wow, geez…”
“Hah.”
Every child who crossed the finish line collapsed onto the ground in a heap, having given everything they had.
None of them drew a proper breath—they’d sprinted with such ferocity.
What was amusing was that none of them seemed to care one whit about competing against the knights.
Not a single child paid attention to where the knights had placed.
“Hah… hah…. Who is it? Who came in last?”
“Loia.”
“Pfft!”
“Tch… damn it…. Hah.”
Their sole concern had been avoiding last place, and now they all snickered at the student named Loia, who had indeed come in dead last.
“What about the Elrsia Countess Family?”
[Hmph! Fools! They don’t even deserve to be called knights! Pathetic physique—worse than children! What business do they have calling themselves knights?]
The gap between the children who had removed their Magical Weight Pouches and the knights became apparent at once.
Though the two groups had been running at nearly the same pace at the start, midway through the rocky terrain the knights could no longer keep up with the children’s speed.
Admittedly, the unfamiliar path played a role—these knights trained elsewhere, while the children trained here every day—but still, for them to fall this far behind mere intermediate-level student trainees meant there was something fundamentally wrong with them.
‘I saw this coming.’
She had never expected children to lose to knights who lacked real combat experience and trained half-heartedly.
That’s why she’d made this wager in the first place.
‘I wouldn’t start something I couldn’t win.’
[Here they come.]
Just as Juberios said, figures began appearing in the distance, gasping as they ran toward the finish.
Their appearance had changed completely from when they’d started.
They had all shed their ornate, impractical, and heavy armor—every piece of it.
“Tsk.”
And they were already falling apart after doing this once.
‘And they’re arriving far later than the children, at that.’
Seres clicked her tongue repeatedly at their pathetic display.
“Huff!”
“Hah… hah….”
Just like the children, the knights who had crossed the finish line threw all pretense of their station to the winds and sprawled across the ground everywhere.
“Whew….”
The knight captain, Tailo, was no different.
Though he’d entered first among the knights—at least enough to preserve some dignity—he hadn’t actually collapsed onto the ground like the others; instead, he leaned against a nearby tree, breathing hard and fast.
“Honestly.”
“…!”
Seres approached Tailo deliberately and clicked her tongue for his benefit, as if to say ‘see?’
“You all failed the test.”
“….”
Tailo, still leaning against the tree, lifted his head with a creased, angry expression.
“This test wasn’t fair.”
“Fair?”
“You should have told us the path was this treacherous beforehand. If I’d known it would be like this, we never would have started!”
“Why does that matter?”
“Why does it mat—”
“What matters is that you lost to those children.”
“That’s just—!”
“Enough.”
Flutter!
Seres cut off Tailo’s protest and withdrew a sheet of paper from her breast, unfurling it deliberately.
It was the contract he had signed.
“A promise must be kept.”
“Ha!”
Tailo, the captain of the order, let out a scornful laugh at the sight of the contract.
“And what will you do if we don’t?”
What was a mere scrap of paper? If they refused, what could she possibly do about it?
Still, a knight had his dignity; he had no intention of submitting a resignation letter again.
Yet neither did he have any desire whatsoever to comply with every demand written in that contract.
“Right. What’s a scrap of paper anyway?”
“……?”
He’d expected her to grow angry about keeping the contract, but contrary to his anticipation, Seres quietly folded the document and tucked it back into her coat.
“Shall we have another conversation?”
Seres smiled more warmly than she had in a long while and pointed to a spot with her hand.
In the distance, there stood an enormous tree.
Was she suggesting they go there to talk? Why on earth would she want that?
“Fine by me.”
Captain Tailo chuckled softly. He naturally assumed she was backing down.
Without hesitation, he followed her as she began to walk.
“May God’s blessing be upon you.”
“You seem quite young still.”
“Pity, lad.”
Unlike the knights who stared blankly after Tailo, the children huddled together in a corner all turned their eyes toward him as he grew farther and farther away, their gazes heavy with sympathy.
And soon enough, everyone would understand why.
“Gaaaaaahhhhh……!”
A tremendous scream echoed from the distance.
“What—what is that?”
“What in the world is that sound?!”
“Ugh… gaaaahhhhh!”
“That’s… that’s the captain’s voice, isn’t it?”
“……!”
The knights seated around leaped to their feet and made to rush toward the spot where Seres and the captain had vanished.
But then—
“It would be better not to go.”
“Yeah. If you go, you’ll die too.”
“That’s where our conversation is taking place.”
“Our sister really does enjoy having talks with her body, you see.”
“Yeah. She really loves it.”
And with those words came the voices stopping the knights in their tracks—
“Feel free to go if you want to die together with him.”
“Yeah. Seeing such camaraderie, she’ll probably just beat you all harder.”
The children who had once suggested they take a break from training, gotten dragged off to that place as a group, and received a thorough beating had since given up even dreaming of rest.
The sadder part was that even after being beaten like that, it took less than ten minutes for all their injuries to heal, and they had to start training again immediately.
“Would you like us to offer some advice?”
“…Advice?”
The children turned toward the bewildered knights with unusually serious expressions and added one more thing.
“Never talk back to her, no matter what.”
“Yeah. If you do, you’ll end up like that.”
“Gaaaaaahhhhh……!”
Right on cue, another anguished scream pierced the air.
Gulp.
The knights all swallowed dry saliva at once and quietly settled back into their seats.
Chapter 31. First Income
“Didn’t kill him, though.”
“What are you suddenly going on about?”
Ever since last time, have you been dying to make me out to be a murderer?
Seres gave Kainel, whom she hadn’t seen in ages and who had just casually tossed that remark at her, a look of exasperation.
What is he suddenly talking about?
“The Elrsia Countess Family knights.”
“Oh.”
“They’re perfectly alive.”
“How did you know?”
She must have found out about some friction between Kainel and the Order of Knights, but where did he hear that?
Clink.
In response to Seres’s question, Kainel withdrew something small from his pocket and shook it.
A key that shone pure black, without a trace of any other color.
‘So he went there after all.’
She had already suspected that he would be carrying the Sky Organization’s key.
But it seemed he had never actually sought out the organization while holding that key for all this time—or had he?
‘Going by how the leader asked where the other two keys were, I suppose not.’
But why would he suddenly go looking for that place now?
“Aren’t you going to ask what this key is?”
“What?”
“It’s a key you’re better off not knowing about.”
…….
“Obviously you should be curious about it.”
…This bastard is mocking her, isn’t he?
That annoying curl at the corner of his mouth—yeah, that was exactly it.
Seres knew it well enough. He had already decided she was Grace.
And she had been neither denying nor affirming it, offering no response either way.
It was a strange situation—they both held convictions about each other, yet neither would openly acknowledge them.
“Why did you suddenly go there?”
“Just. I got curious when I saw that thing following you around.”
He wondered whether that place he’d left neglected for so long was still running smoothly.
At his nonchalant tone, Seres’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“So you had me investigated?”
“Not exactly an investigation.”
“Then what?”
“They just started talking on their own.”
…Of course they would, given who he is.
The leader certainly knew his life was worth protecting.
Since she had the key in front of her, Seres asked what had been on her mind.
“Do you know where the other one is?”
The last Black Key that Artia had held.
Since Chaien, the Tower Master, seemed to know nothing about it, it probably wasn’t left in the Arcane Tower.
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t?”
“I never heard about it.”
Hmm.
If Kainel didn’t know, then no one alive knew where the key was.
Where had Alti put it? She surely wouldn’t have just thrown it away somewhere.
‘Come to think of it, he said he had no intention of passing it on to a successor.’
Perhaps he’d stashed it in a Subspace like she had, and taken it with him to the grave.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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