Chapter 462: Escaping the Duchy No.4

– Step.

A foot sinks into the damp soil.

The grains of earth gather and push together under my weight.

After I lift my foot, they ought to sink from the force, but some force lifts them effortlessly.

The footprint etched in the ground vanishes like a ghost the moment I step away.

“Merciful Mother Earth erases even the traces left behind by your tread, as if she never saw them.”

Snap.

A branch I brushed past breaks and droops.

But only for a moment.

A fresh sprout emerges from the broken spot and quickly stretches out into a new branch.

The thick canopy of leaves and limbs grows even denser.

“Nature, in her abundant vitality, mends the forests ruined by beasts.”

Earthweaving and Druidism.

I erased our tracks using remnants of two different Divine powers.

Watching me use the power of a Divine, Hilde pointed in protest, clearly feeling wronged.

“This is cheating! You’re just stomping around going ‘Here I am!’ and wiping everything clean with Divine powers! I’m walking carefully, step by step, doing my best! This is so unfair!”

Unfair?

I used Earthweaving to erase footprints and Druidism to regrow plants, what’s unfair about that?

If you feel wronged, I do too.

I pointed at her and replied.

“At least I’m using the power of the Divine. You’re doing all of that with Qi alone. That’s the real cheat here. Divine power is supposed to be superior, so why is Qi outperforming it?”

“You got your Divine power for free! My Qi came from over a decade of training and real-life experience! Of course, ‘I’ feel robbed!”

“Oh please. A Divine is the culmination of a once-in-a-millennium genius blooming like a flower in the long sediment of human history. And you think a few years of training can compete with that?”

“You didn’t even bloom that flower yourself!”

“I’m the King of Humans. Anything humanity achieved is practically my accomplishment. If the king wants to use something, what’s the problem?”

“You’ve been missing-in-action this whole time!”

Once we reached some brush thick enough to hide us, we dismounted.

We’d set things up so the horse could keep running on its own, but of course, a riderless horse wouldn’t keep charging down a trail forever.

Not that it mattered.

We could hide our tracks.

Even the mere possibility of our trail continuing elsewhere was enough to work in our favor.

“The biggest problem was the tracks you’d leave behind, or rather, how ‘I’ was going to erase them. Thank goodness! ‘I’ was seriously debating whether I’d have to carry you and run!”

“Oh!”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh’?! If your stamina didn’t run out, ‘I’ wouldn’t even consider it!”

“So if I collapsed, you’d carry me? Wow. If I ever have a daughter, she won’t be half as filial as you, Hilde.”

“Well, my filial piety is running dry, you know?”

“Filial piety is a depletable resource now? If your ancestors heard that, they’d be rolling in their graves.”

“You have ancestors now?”

Nope.

No ancestors.

No daughter, either.

Whether depleted or not, Hilde’s filial mine can’t be developed.

She’s not my daughter, after all.

– Nod.

That self-proclaimed daughter (and older than me, at that) grumbled while keeping up the act.

“A well has to be a little wet if you want to draw water from it. If you want more piety, you’ve got to fill it up now and then.”

“Right. Well done.”

“Wow~ so rewarding~.”

While Hilde was grumbling, I caught a faint thought drifting over the ridge.

One of Baron Zenryu’s direct Neonates—an elite member of the Order of the Black Knight.

Before he could spot us, I quickly reached over and clamped a hand over Hilde’s mouth.

“Mm? Mmmpf?”

“Shh. Get down!”

Hilde tilted her head in confusion at first, but it didn’t take her long to sense the ghostlike presence drawing near.

No need to explain.

I grabbed her and lay flat against the ground.

Silently, vines sprouted at my command, curling up to shroud us in a thick veil of leaves.

Soon, that ghostly aura drifted right past our position.

As if we’d planned it, Hilde and I both held our breath.

Vampires don’t have the sharpest senses.

They see better in darkness and have an exceptional nose for the scent of blood, but they’re not particularly sensitive to other smells or faint body heat carried on a breath.

Then again, that’s not really incompetence.

If Hilde and I hadn’t been pressed so close together, even normal humans wouldn’t have found us in that thicket.

Still, it’s a bit of a shame.

A Qi Practitioner would have sensed us.

Not that it’d matter, I’d just have to burrow underground.

The vampire’s presence grew distant.

Once I was sure the gap was safe, I retracted the vines and slowly got up.

Hilde, crouched like a cat atop me, was still tracking the fading aura.

“Well, well. Impressed yet? Time to get up.”

“You really are amazing, Father! ‘I’ think my filial piety just refilled a little!”

Placing a hand on my shoulder, Hilde slowly lifted herself up.

Peeking around, she muttered curiously.

“One pursuer? Hmm… That kind of search pattern’s practically pointless.”

“Pointless? We nearly got caught.”

“That’s not the important part. The important part is they missed us.”

Hilde rose to her feet slowly and said.

“A good pursuit is about numbers. You need enough to maintain a dense perimeter so no one can slip through. The moment doubt creeps in—‘maybe we passed them’—the pursuit is as good as failed. And looking at this, they clearly don’t have the numbers for that.”

Of course not. This is the Duchy of Mist.

Aside from its far north and south, it barely sees sunlight.

The land is lush with grazing pastures and resources, but it lacks the population to support a large force.

Sure, they could gather some, but still.

“The Duchy probably doesn’t want to risk injury to its humans. They’re too valuable.”

“The problem is thinking that way in the first place! There’s no such thing as a risk-free investment! You want results, you’ve got to commit!”

“Spoken like a good little Military State soldier. God, I hate that country.”

“Oh? For all your talk, it’s the Fallen Dominion and the Duchy that got smashed, not the Military State, right? The couriers from the Military State are still kicking, aren’t they? Your mouth says no, but your body’s honest!”

Hilde grinned.

Anyone listening would think I go around smashing countries.

All I ever did was peel off clothes that didn’t fit.

“They passed us once already. The perimeter will probably spread out more from here. We haven’t gone farther than they have, but the net is looser now. Might be safe to rest a bit. How’s your stamina, Father?”

“Still kicking. Better to keep moving through the night.”

“Someone’s chipper all of a sudden. Not quite the frail man I’ve been watching all this time, huh?”

…It’s true.

I’m using less strength.

Normally, when you move for a long time, the same muscles get overworked, and it becomes painful and exhausting.

But right now, it feels like something invisible is surrounding my body and helping me move.

Not only that, but I can clearly visualize how my blood is flowing and how my body moves, it’s being drawn directly in my mind.

Is this the power of a Divine?

It’s not a perfect comparison, but in terms of Qi, it’s like having reached mastery in Gam Qi Arts.

Of course, unlike real Qi Arts, I don’t have the stamina to project it, so compared to a true Qi Practitioner, I’m still way too weak.

“Is that Qi arts? It seems a bit different from what I’ve seen until now. Were you hiding your strength this whole time, or did you learn something in the Duchy?”

“It’s a secret. No comment.”

That’s mostly true, but I didn’t feel like explaining, so I brushed it off.

Hilde pushed her face in close and protested.

“Why? Since when are there secrets between us?”

“Asking about someone else’s Qi Arts is considered rude, you know. And besides, you’re way more secretive than I am, Hilde.”

“Me? In what way?”

“Well, let’s see. You use Qi, Transformation Art, and even Holy Power. You were in the Crusaders, and through a prophecy, you became one of the Six Star Generals of the Military State, working in secret, no less! If you wrote that all down in an autobiography, people would think it was a dissociative identity case. Isn’t that more suspicious?”

The autobiography metaphor was just my personal feeling.

I mean, even if someone’s lived their life acting, if their voice and actions change every time, I’d lose my mind trying to read it.

“Aha~. ‘I’ didn’t know you were that interested in me, Father! ‘I’ thought you were the hands-off father type, but now ‘I’ feel a little touched.”

“Hands-off or not, I never raised you. So why are you calling me ‘Father’ instead of your actual dad?”

I finally asked the question that had been bugging me the most.

Hilde just gave a sly look and walked ahead of me.

With her back to me, she answered.

“If I’d had a father, do you think I’d call you Father?”

Ah, playing the sympathy card by implying she never had parents, huh?

Too bad. I’m the King of Humans.

I was born from nothing, like the species itself.

A natural orphan.

That kind of pity doesn’t work on me.

I casually asked about her background.

“Do I resemble your father?”

“No. You don’t look like any of them.”

“Them?”

Why plural?

Then I remembered what I’d read earlier.

Hilde’s mother was a courtesan.

If she got pregnant without realizing it, it’d make sense she wouldn’t know who the father was…

But still, that doesn’t explain why I’m being called ‘Father.’

She never gave a reason!

No matter how I rack my brain, I can’t come up with a clear explanation.

Not even Hilde herself knows exactly why she calls me that.

Was it because I saw through her disguise in an instant?

Then she should’ve called Yuel “Mother” too!

But she didn’t.

She just did it without a reason!

Anyway, since I figured this out through Mind Reading, I can’t be the one to bring it up directly.

What should I say in response to her cryptic statement…?

“Why do you refer to your father in the plural?”

“Hmm~. Want to guess?”

The reason she refers to her father in the plural…

A normal person without Mind Reading would definitely be curious.

That’s it.

I voiced what came to mind.

“Pardon me for saying this, but… was your lady mother, well… a fan of cocktails…?”

By the time I realized this probably wasn’t the right thing to say, it was already too late.

Hilde abruptly turned and stepped right up to me.

Her body pressed close, and then pain shot through my foot—she had stomped on it.

Afraid the pursuers might hear, I couldn’t even scream and had to swallow the pain.

Hilde whispered in my ear.

“Even if it’s the truth, there are certain things you just don’t say~.”

…You’re the one who started it!