Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

“I have never seen the sea.”

"Ah?" Lacie was stunned. "What?"

"I said," Charles repeated, "I have never seen the sea."

Without waiting for Lacie to ask what this meant, Charles explained to her in a low voice:

"I was born in a small village very close to Victoria. As you should know, it is not far from the Sea of ​​Forests, but it is very far from the sea."

"Since I was little, my mother has told me that if we start from our village and cross many mountains and then a very broad plain, we will see the sea."

Charles gradually showed a nostalgic expression:

"Most of the people living in that small village are mortals who cannot use magic. For them, it is almost impossible to cross the mountains and plains to see the sea."

As he spoke, he looked at Lacier, at the Witch of Twilight in front of him:

"The warp spells that you can use almost at will are no different from miracles to them. Or rather, most spells are actually miracles in their eyes."

"Most mortals will have difficulty seeing miracles more than a few times in their lifetime. When I was very young, my mother told me that if I was obedient, she would ask my father to go to the nearby city and pay a sum of money to the honorable wizard in the city, and ask him to use magic to take me to the seaside to have a look."

A smile as vague as morning mist appeared on Ciel's face:

"In order to make me behave, my mother described the sea as particularly beautiful. She told me that there was an endless golden beach by the sea, and the sand on the beach was fine and soft, not painful at all when I stepped on it. There were also many small fish and shrimps, which came up to the beach with the tide, but were left on the shore when the tide receded. Then she could take me to catch fish and shrimps..."

"There are many things in the sea that I have never seen before, such as strange fish that glow all over, jellyfish that look like big bubbles, and crabs covered in hard shells that are bigger than my head..."

Charles paused at this point.

The smile on his face was also inexplicably tainted with bitterness:

"But later I found out that my mother herself had never seen the sea."

"My father told me shortly before the disaster that what my mother told me was what she had read in a storybook."

"He didn't let me tell my mother about this, so in addition to the agreement with my mother, he made another agreement with me - if I kept this secret like a man and was obedient, he would take me and my mother to see the sea when I came of age."

"..."

Lacie couldn't bear to listen any further.

She thought to herself, as expected, the cruelest thing in the world is probably to recall all the beautiful and romantic things that happened before the tragedy.

Those things did exist, but now they are destroyed.

She felt sorry for Charles, so she hesitantly moved closer, opened her arms to him, and asked tentatively:

"W-Want a hug?"

Ciel smiled at her and reached out to touch her head.

He was obviously the one who was sad, but he took the initiative to comfort Laciel:

"Don't worry, I'm fine."

Without waiting for Lacie's worried retort, he added:

"You know what happened afterwards. The village was destroyed by a sudden disaster. I was probably the only survivor."

"I don't know who saved me, maybe my parents, or maybe someone else. I just remember that many hands pushed me and lifted me out of the darkness and despair."

"But no matter what, Mom and Dad can't fulfill their promise to me. I have been an adult for a long time, but for various reasons, I still can't make time to see the sea..."

Ciel looked a little regretful.

It was at this time that Lacie suddenly remembered that they had once been commissioned to complete an emergency investigation mission in a coastal city. She remembered that the mission location was actually very close to the sea. In theory, it would only take them a dozen minutes to see the sea.

But why...

Laceel didn't understand, so she simply expressed her doubts:

"We were very close to the sea once, why didn't you suggest going to see the sea at that time?"

After hearing this, Charles was silent for a moment and shook his head:

"The sea is still there, but the person who said he would accompany me to see the sea is no longer here."

"..."

Lacie wanted to slap herself twice.

She shouldn't have asked that!

Now, isn't this just rubbing salt into Charles' wounds?!

In order to make up for her mistakes and cheer up Ciel, the witch made a decision -

She took Charles's hand, looked him in the iron-gray eyes, and invited him:

"Would you like to go to the sea with me?"

But she soon felt that this question was a bit too abrupt, so she quickly followed up with an explanation:

"We have nothing to do right now, and we are not in a hurry to go to Kangkel to gather Joseph and the others... and I have saved the coordinates of the beach here. If I have the warp spell, I can get there by closing my eyes and then opening them again!"

After saying that, seeing that Charles had not given any opinion, she had no choice but to ask tentatively:

"Well? What do you think?"

Charles didn't say yes or no when he heard this. He just stared at Lacier until she was too embarrassed to look him in the eye. Then he whispered:

"No, that's not what I'm talking about."

"Huh?" Laciel was completely confused. "Then what are you going to say?"

"What I want to say is..."

Xia Dun paused, his expression dazed:

"At that time, my mother told me that there was a very big fish in the sea called a whale, and the largest of them was even as big as an island."

"Some storybooks say that sailors on ocean voyages occasionally encounter islands that are not recorded in the nautical charts. But when they land on those islands and want to make a fire to cook, they are horrified to find that the so-called island is actually a huge whale, and they are actually on the back of that whale."

"There is even a theory that the so-called Pangaea is actually located on the back of a sleeping giant whale."

The topic seemed to be getting further and further away and becoming more and more irrelevant.

Lacie was increasingly confused about what Charles wanted to say, but at this moment, Charles' originally scattered iron-gray eyes regained their luster and he focused his gaze on Lacie.

"I suppose," he whispered, "that if a whale can bear the weight of a whole crew of sailors, then the weight of a flying bird must be nothing to it."

"Eh?"

Lacey was stunned.

She felt like Qin Shi Huang who was being assassinated. She was kept in the dark and confused at first, but when the truth was revealed, she suddenly understood the intention of the messenger.

——He was talking about the flying birds and swimming fish that Lao Deng had talked about.

And that's exactly what happened.

Charles continued:

"But you may not be a bird. Even if you are a bird, you are probably the most special kind of bird, almost immortal."

"And I'm not really a whale. I'm not that big, and I don't have the strength to carry an entire island like a whale. I can probably only provide you with a place to stop and rest."

"I understand. I can't even accompany you to the end. I can probably only accompany you for a few hundred years. After that, I will sink into the deep sea, leaving you alone to continue flying alone..."

"But I'm ready—"

The hero told the witch in an extremely calm tone, not as if he was swearing but rather as if he was stating a fact:

"At least, before I die, before I consume my short life, I will stay by your side. I will use my body to support a piece of ground for you to rest in peace."

"No matter how different flying birds and swimming fish are, no matter whether we come from the same world, at least I want to tell you..."

He looked at the witch, his eyes silently burning with an extremely hot flame:

"I love you."

"I have long been prepared to shoulder the responsibility of your long life."

The witch was almost burned into a fool by the hero's flames. Her face turned red and her mind was so confused that she didn't know what to answer. She had to lower her head and let the hero hold her in his arms.

Then, she heard the hero say:

"Besides, we've already been to the sea, together - have you forgotten? After your fake death, at your grave."

He touched her head and smiled:

"I am sitting there, accompanying you. Not far away is the sea that you and I agreed to see."

[To be continued]

-

33. What is Qualification?

Charles talked to Rachel about birds and fish.

Lacey found it a little unbelievable.

She instinctively turned her face away, separated herself from Charles with her arm, and whispered:

"Okay, okay! I know, I know, no need to be so loud..."

Then she complained in a sweet tone without any self-consciousness:

"Why haven't I heard you say something similar to me before? You are such a... If only you had been so honest before I faked my death! I don't know how much trouble I would have saved..."

If Ciel had really revealed his feelings before she faked her death, then the Brave Team would not have disbanded, and the two of them would not have gone to Lentiheim, and they would not necessarily have gone to Diesel.

Perhaps realizing this, Charles shook his head, looked at Laciel seriously, and told her:

"No, those are not troubles. The moments of adventure with you are precious memories to me. I will keep them in my heart."

"Huh?" Laceel could only respond with surprise.

Because she thought of something else——

"What my brother said when Diesel's dream collapsed... Could it be that you have remembered it too? Don't do that! Damn hero, don't remember all that nonsense in your heart!"

But she would never bring up such things on her own initiative. She would just blush and say "oh" guiltily as an answer.

By the way, in order to prevent Ciel, the love-crazy locomotive, from continuing to talk nonsense and killing her, she quickly changed the subject:

"Let's not talk about this... Hey, you went to the White Tower to find Lao Deng, it shouldn't be just to promise Lao Deng that you can definitely give me... happiness or something, right? Tell me the truth, what kind of secret deal did you make with Lao Deng?"

At this time, Rachel, who had managed to calm down and began to carefully observe whether Ciel had any changes, finally noticed something unusual.

Holy sword.

The holy sword that usually hung at Ciel's waist was nowhere to be seen.

Rachel asked:

"No, where is the Holy Sword? Did you leave it in the White Tower?"

"Yes," Ciel nodded, "I handed the holy sword to Ms. Veliden."

"Why? You don't want to give the holy sword to Lao Deng for safekeeping, and then we go to Victoria without taking anything, right?"

Soon, she felt that Charles's action was indeed quite reasonable:

"That's right. The old man named Donald only said that he was waiting for you in Sheffield, but he didn't say he was waiting for the Holy Sword. So we can go there without the Holy Sword and see if those Victorians are impatient."

Charles shook his head.

"No, Ms. Verliden is only keeping the holy sword for me temporarily. When we gather our companions in Kangkel, reorganize the team, and return to the White Tower, she will return the holy sword to me."

"During this period," he lowered his head and looked at the place where the holy sword should be hanging on his waist with a little discomfort, "Ms. Verliden will try to analyze the holy sword."

"what?"

Lacey was stunned.

Did she hear it right? Old Deng wanted to... analyze the holy sword?

Charles saw her surprise and explained:

"I was thinking about this when we were staying in the White Tower and under observation. The witch Xia was able to analyze the fragments of the holy sword. So can we also analyze the holy sword in my hand like her?"

"But I know almost nothing about magic. I... can only use the incomplete forbidden spells that Uncle Elvis taught me to barely control the holy sword."

Hearing what Charles said, Lacele suddenly remembered that when they faced the mad mother in Lentiheim, Charles did not seem to have taken the initiative to activate the holy sword.