Elsa just watched with a smirk. "The burden seems to find the purity of children less... offensive to your soul, Master. Though, perhaps you should watch out for—" She didn't finish. Because the mothers saw the kids doing it. Then the grandmothers. Then the young village ladies who looked like they wanted to marry the air I breathed.
"THANK YOU, GREAT PROVIDER!" a woman wailed, throwing her arms around me.
DING![WOMAN'S DEVOTION: +200 VP]
Then another. And another. It wasn't just a goodbye; it was a high-speed farming session. I was being hugged, patted, and thanked by a hundred people at once. It was a mosh pit of holiness. My "Phobia Meter" was redlining, but my "Bank Account" was going Interstellar.
DING! DING! DING-DING-DING!
The notifications started echoing in my brain like a broken slot machine. It was a cacophony of points. I was vibrating. I was terrified. I was becoming a VP billionaire. I looked at the floating numbers in the air as I was buried under a pile of grateful villagers:
[2,000 VP... 4,500 VP... 6,800 VP...]
"Too... many... feelings..." I gasped.
I looked up at the sky, seeing the ghost of Venus laughing at me from the clouds. The irony was palpable. I had spent everything to save them, and now they were paying me back with the one thing I couldn't handle: Affection.
The counter hit a staggering [8,000 VP].
My brain finally reached its limit. It was too much joy, too much physical contact, and way too much chemical dopamine from the system. I felt my knees buckle. But as I went down, I didn't feel the usual horror. I saw that number—8,000—and a slow, creepy, triumphant smirk spread across my face.
I can buy a tank, was my last conscious thought. I can literally buy a Leopard 2A7 main battle tank.
I fainted into the arms of the village, a hero covered in dirt, tears, and a smile that probably made everyone think I was having a holy vision. In reality, I was just dreaming of the "Military Grade" tab in the System shop.
*****
The heavy wooden wheels of the carriage ground against the parched earth, but the sound was no longer lonely. It was followed by the fading echoes of a hundred voices chanting a single name like a prayer.
Inside the coach, the atmosphere was thick with a reverence that bordered on the holy. Herbert and Barnaby had moved with a frantic, desperate grace when Arthur collapsed, their hearts leaping into their throats. They had seen him face assassins and mages with a terrifying, cold brilliance, but seeing him broken by the simple, tearful embrace of a child was a sight that moved them more than any display of lightning ever could.
Elsa sat by Arthur's side, her silver hair casting a soft, ethereal glow over his pale features. She worked in silence, her hands moving in rhythmic patterns to soothe the "Divine Burden" that still pulsed through his veins. She looked at him—this boy who looked like a twig, a fragile reed in a storm—and felt a lump form in her throat.
He gave it all, she thought. He reached into the very fabric of his divinity and emptied his stores for a people who had nothing to offer him in return. She knew the cost of magic; she knew the toll of the soul. Arthur hadn't just fed them; he had bled his own essence into the dirt of Oakhaven until the land itself sang.
Up on the driver's seat, Barnaby gripped the leather reins with white-knuckled intensity. He had been a royal messenger for more years than he cared to count. He had carried scrolls that started wars and decrees that ended bloodlines. He had walked the gilded halls of the palace when the Queen was still a wide-eyed child who used to chase him through the gardens, tugging on his tunic and asking for stories.
He remembered that innocence. He remembered a girl who cared for the birds in the courtyard. But that girl was dead, buried under the weight of a crown and the cold paranoia of a throne. The woman she had become was a predator, hunting the very miracle that could save her crumbling world.
If only she could see, Barnaby thought, a stray tear carving a path through the dust on his cheek. If she could see the boy who cries for his enemies and faints from the love of the poor, she would not send hounds. She would send her crown. He realized then that he was no longer a messenger for the Queen. He was the guardian of a god who didn't want to be worshipped, and the weight of that dignity made his chest swell with a pride no royal crest could ever provide.
Behind them, guarding the rear, Herbert rode in a silence that was equally profound. His loyalty had been forged in the fire of his own healing, but it was being tempered now by the sheer brilliance of Arthur's heart. He thought of the High Mages he had seen Arthur turn to ash, and then he thought of the way Arthur had looked at the empty bowl of the starving woman.
Arthur wasn't just a tactician or a master of relics. He was a disruptor of the cruel status quo. He was the only person in this god-forsaken land who saw the "neglected" as humans.
The Queen wants a weapon, Herbert mused, his hand resting on the hilt of a sword he would now gladly use to challenge the entire Royal Guard. But she has found something much more dangerous. She has found a soul that people will die for, not out of fear, but out of love.
The three of them—an exiled elf, a disgraced messenger, and a broken warrior—formed a silent, unbreakable circle around the sleeping boy. They were no longer just traveling companions. They were the vanguard of a new world, protectors of a light that was too bright for the darkness of Athens to extinguish.
As the carriage crossed the border of the drought-lands, the green grass began to fade, but the resolve in their hearts only grew. They would reach the South. They would protect the "twig" who carried the strength of mountains. And they would never, as long as they drew breath, allow the Queen to touch the boy who had taught them how to hope again.