Inside the luxurious mansion, the merchant who had been waiting outside—dressed in the fine silks of a noble—was led into the drawing room by a servant.
A portly man sat on the sofa, hunched over documents spread across the table. He was poreing over them with such frantic, bug-eyed intensity that he resembled a particularly flustered shrimp.
"No... but why?"
A trace of utter bewilderment leaked from his muttered self-reflection.
The servant who had brought the guest in turned and left without a word, closing the heavy doors behind him with a click. Such a cold, indifferent attitude would have made anyone else doubt the servant's loyalty or consider immediate dismissal.
Neither man in the room cared. In fact, the merchant made himself right at home the moment he sat down, pouring himself a cup of tea. His relaxation was visible to the naked eye.
"Stop staring at it, Andre. I've confirmed it on my end. The second son of the Spencer family is indeed looking for a small creature that resembles a miniature Tob High Forest Tiger."
The merchant paused, a look of sheer disbelief crossing his own face. "And according to our investigation, the reason the Spencer boy is doing this is almost certainly because of Princess Calca."
He shook his head slowly. "By the Wind God... why would You bestow Your favor upon someone from a land of heretics?"
This man, Ibn, was a secret high-ranking priest of the Slane Theocracy and a member of the Windflower Scripture—the unit responsible for espionage and intelligence. His faith in the Wind God and his loyalty to the Theocracy were beyond reproach.
And yet, men like them had never received a direct sign from the Wind God. Instead, in a country that—from their perspective—practiced a distorted, near-heretical version of their faith, a "Favored One" had been born, receiving direct revelations from the Wind God.
Most importantly, it was their Wind God!
How were they so sure? Because of that "small feline."
They knew exactly what the Wind God worshipped in the Holy Kingdom represented. When the Windflower Scripture first heard rumors of a "Favored One" appearing in the Holy Kingdom, they were merely curious and skeptical. Divine favor was usually the claim of charlatans. However, when a nation as large as the Holy Kingdom made such a claim officially, it usually meant there was weight behind it.
As the intelligence arm of the Theocracy, they had immediately opened an investigation.
What they found didn't just worry them—it left the entire Holy Kingdom branch of the Windflower Scripture in a state of collective existential shock.
The divine favor was real. That was world-changing enough. But more importantly, they discovered that the Spencer boy was looking for something akin to a Divine Messenger.
That "small feline"—the cat—had once been the Divine Messenger of the Six Great Gods six hundred years ago. It was a creature that simply did not exist naturally in this world. Aside from the high-ranking members of the Theocracy, almost no one knew of its existence.
So how did Calca know about it?
The answer was blindingly obvious: Divine Revelation.
When that conclusion was reached, every Windflower agent in the Holy Kingdom wanted to scream at their deity: O Great One, has the desert sand blinded Your eyes? Can You not see that the statues she prays to don't even look like You?! Why are You blessing her?!
Thinking about it made Ibn want to burst into tears. His faith had faced its most grueling trial yet.
Fortunately, he had pulled through. The logic was simple: the Princess's actions proved that the Wind God truly existed and was active. In times like these, one's faith had to be at its strongest!
We, the faithful, should not ask things of the Gods; we exist only to serve them, Ibn chanted internally.
Andre, the portly man sitting across from him, finally looked up. His face was flushed red, as if he had been holding his breath for an eternity. He managed to choke out a single sentence:
"Ibn... the Six Great Gods protect all of humanity. The Holy Kingdom is also under their protection."
Ibn looked at his old partner of many years and had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. You're really just going to ignore the fact that the statues look completely different, aren't you?
Then again, perhaps the statues here were just another "aspect" of the Wind God from ancient times? The Theocracy had recently been circulating the doctrine that "the Gods have a hundred faces," preparing to "restore and correct" certain ancient statues.
After all, the statues from six hundred years ago were far too "human." They didn't look like distant deities; they looked like living, breathing people. While the inner circle of the Theocracy knew the Six Great Gods had once been powerful mortals and not "gods" in the literal sense, the nation needed them to be divine.
Ideally, the other five should be more like the God of Death, Surshana—terrifying, eerie, and radiating divinity. Especially since Surshana's first follower, Rufus, was still very much alive.
If word of this gets back to the Theocracy, it's going to cause an absolute riot, Ibn thought.
He began reciting prayers from the Wind God's scripture in his head. Regardless of whether the Six were "gods" in the past, now that the Wind God had performed a literal miracle through Calca, he was a god.
Ibn knew that both he and Andre had reached a level of piety they had never experienced before.
Calming his heart, Ibn asked the critical question: "What do you plan to do?"
Andre went quiet for a moment. "We wait for orders. And in the meantime... we act as the situation dictates."
They had already compiled their intelligence and theories regarding Princess Calca and sent them back to the Slane Theocracy. Now, they had to wait for the capital's response. For now, nearly all the resources of the Windflower Scripture in the Holy Kingdom were focused solely on her. Because of her status as the "Favored of the Wind God," their stance toward her was... complicated.
The silence in the drawing room was shattered when the door burst open. The previously ice-cold servant was now trembling with a look of fanatical zeal.
"The Favored One! The Favored One has moved!"
Andre and Ibn sighed in unison. This was the problem: sometimes, too much religious fervor was a hindrance to spy work.
"What happened?"
"The Favored One dispatched the six guards she recruited from the Priest Guard yesterday! She sent them out of the city to gather intelligence on the Abelion Hills!"
"The Favored One surely intends to pacify that land occupied by demi-humans!" the servant cried out, his voice bordering on the manic. Even in his frenzy, he didn't forget to hand the intelligence report to Andre.
After all, Andre was the Chief of the Windflower Scripture in the Holy Kingdom.
Andre scanned the report and couldn't help but point out, "It says here they're also supposed to gather info on the routes leading to the Re-Estize Kingdom. How can you be so sure she—"
Halfway through the sentence, Andre was met with a look of pure, judgmental scorn from his subordinate.
He shut his mouth. He wasn't going to win this argument.
Looking over the details, Andre finally sighed and handed the papers back to the servant. "Find a way to make contact with those six guards. Give them all the intelligence we have on those areas."
"Yes, High Priest!"
The servant practically vibrated with excitement as he rushed out of the room.
Left alone, the two old spies shared another long sigh.
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I'm not the Queen Greatsword. (70 Chapters, Ongoing)
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