Fafnir had been genuinely incensed by the raiders' blatant disrespect toward Jeanne. Even after she had unleashed that catastrophic torrent of dragon fire, reducing the rabble to absolute nothingness, a lingering residue of irritation still simmered within her chest. Her lower lip remained faintly pouted, bearing the classic, aggrieved look of a child who had suffered a monumental injustice.
Yet, the exact moment the words "wonderful meal" left Jeanne's lips, the heavy clouds suffocating the young dragon's heart instantly evaporated. The pathetic, vulnerable look anchoring her features shattered, replaced entirely by a surge of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.
"Yay! Truly?! Where are we going, Jeanne?" Fafnir chirped enthusiastically, her predatory instincts pivoting dynamically toward the feast Jeanne had promised. She looked entirely ready to shovel the entire banquet into her maw at the earliest available second.
To Fafnir's beautifully simple mind, the entire universe contained only two things of absolute, non-negotiable importance: securing food, and Jeanne. Everything else outside that narrow worldview was completely irrelevant.
Granted, the fiery indignation in her chest hadn't been fully purged, but the wretched hyenas who had dared to plot against Jeanne had already been systematically eradicated through their joint efforts. And to top it off, she was being rewarded with a magnificent feast!
Confronted with such a flawless sequence of outcomes, what reason could she possibly have for dissatisfaction? The sheer perfection of the moment filled her soul with a staggering, heavy wave of pure happiness.
"Let us leave this place first!" Jeanne murmured, bending down to scoop Fafnir into her arms before turning away from the smoldering crater. She moved with such blinding, fluid velocity that her silhouette dissolved in a fraction of a second, leaving zero trace of her existence under the absolute shroud of the midnight sky.
A remarkably short duration after Jeanne's departure, the frantic, concussive echo of the detonation finally registered within the frontier settlement. A massive contingent of capable defenders—many of whom had thrown on their clothes in a state of sheer panic—came rushing toward the site to evaluate the anomaly, their expressions uniformly taut with intense anxiety.
This precise reaction was the primary catalyst behind Jeanne's immediate tactical withdrawal. Had she strictly relied on the activation of her own Noble Phantasm, the localized manifestation of purifying flames would have generated zero sound; it would have merely cast a silent, brilliant crimson glow across the wasteland, failing to attract substantial external focus.
But Fafnir's draconic outburst belonged to an entirely different category. The violent explosion engineered by that concentrated sphere of white-hot plasma was loud enough that only an individual with absolute hearing loss could have missed it. Consequently, every single resident capable of wielding a weapon had scrambled to the front line.
The moment the vanguard breached the perimeter and beheld the scene, a collective, paralyzed stupor gripped the entire assembly.
Stretching out directly before their eyes was an apocalyptic, yawning chasm, its lowest depths pulsing with a viscous, superheated sludge that closely resembled freshly churned magma.
What manner of madness had transpired here? Had an active Catastrophe unexpectedly descended upon them?
Gazing down into the surreal, glowing abyss, the assembled crowd found themselves completely stripped of words, utterly paralyzed by the sheer abnormality of the spectacle.
The responding force was by no means a uniform unit; it comprised the local Sarkaz night watch, the heavily armed guards attached to the Sankta merchant caravan, and a smattering of defensive villagers gripping basic timber clubs. Realizing that no immediate hostile army was marching upon their borders, the civilian elements quickly began to disperse, eager to return to their beds.
However, the seasoned veterans who had spent their lives navigating lethal military engagements cleanly picked up on several highly disturbing details. Peering through the shimmering heat waves of the localized magma, they could faintly discern the distorted silhouettes of melted military-grade alloy—and what appeared to be the highly calcified, incinerated remains of biological entities.
Yet, the oppressive darkness of the midnight hour severely compromised their vision, and none of them possessed the reckless courage required to execute a meticulous search around an unstable, superheated crater in the dead of night. Ultimately, they elected to suspend the investigation, resolving to return at dawn to properly map out what had happened.
By their calculations, the superheated core would have safely solidified under the morning light. Who could say what manner of charred relics or metal fragments they might unearth from the cooling slag to reconstruct the violent story of tonight's hidden engagement?
Meanwhile, the local Sarkaz father slipped back through the threshold of his modest home, his fingers still tightly gripping his weapon. Feoria, who had proactively guided little Cecilia into a secure hiding spot the moment the detonation echoed, emerged from the shadows the second she verified the identity of the incoming figure.
"What happened out there?" she inquired, her voice trembling slightly with a layer of deep-seated dread. Her tone carried a fragile mix of fear over a potential breach and maternal anxiety regarding her husband's physical well-being.
Because the interior illumination had been entirely extinguished to preserve their safety, Feoria could only confirm his presence by the faint, pristine glow radiating from her own halo; the exact details of his expression remained completely obscured by the shadows.
Her husband, however, remained fundamentally locked in a state of absolute psychological shock, his mind struggling to process the apocalyptic imagery of the crater. He stood perfectly motionless in the center of the room, staring blankly into space until his wife's frantic voice finally snapped him back to reality.
"Ah... everything is secure. There is nothing to fear," he stammered, his voice tight. "It appears a localized Catastrophe manifested along the outer perimeter... though its reach was remarkably constrained. Let us get some rest; the hour has grown exceptionally late."
In all likelihood, not a single soul within that frontier settlement would ever comprehend that they had spent the evening dancing on the absolute precipice of a brutal massacre. Nor would they ever learn that a nineteen-year-old girl had willfully sacrificed her cherished evening sleep, patrolling the frozen wastes for the sole purpose of guaranteeing their physical preservation.
For an individual like Jeanne, who universally categorized sleep as a non-negotiable, sacred daily ritual, sacrificing those hours constituted an absolutely monumental personal concession!
Yet, Jeanne remained entirely indifferent to whether the populace recognized her intervention. She harbored zero desire to publicize the fact that she had systematically purged a lethal horde of roaming raiders to preserve the peaceful sanctity of their lives; she had engineered the counter-ambush with zero expectation of recognition.
To her mind, the operation was executed purely to ensure that a hard-won family reunion would not be violently shattered by malevolent forces—to prevent a beautiful, fleeting sanctuary from devolving into a horrific nightmare. Achieving that singular outcome was more than enough to satisfy her conscience.
At the present moment, however, Jeanne was experiencing a distinct wave of helplessness regarding the hyper-focused little dragon attached to her side. Fafnir's appetite had been thoroughly stoked by the mention of a feast, yet Jeanne had failed to calculate a glaring, obvious reality: where on Terra was she supposed to locate a proper restaurant in the middle of a barren, lawless wasteland?
Fortunately, there was no practical need to agonize over the logistical oversight. Surrounded by nothing but desolate, rocky crags, even Fafnir wasn't naive enough to assume a restaurant would magically materialize out of the soil—unless Jeanne intended to force her to transition into a pure herbivore.
Instead, the young dragon simply maintained her silent, protective posture beside Jeanne, transforming herself once more into a perfectly quiet, dependable, yet incomparably lethal living accessory. To an outside observer who wasn't actively directing their focus toward her, the child possessed an uncanny ability to completely fade into the background.
As Jeanne navigated the area, her eyes drifting between the jagged horizon and the distant lights of the village, her heightened senses suddenly registered a distinct presence closing in on her position. The incoming entity was generating zero hostile markers or malicious intent.
She didn't need to dedicate a single bit of analytical thought to deduce the identity of the approaching figure. At this specific hour, within this blighted sector, there existed only one individual possessing the specific tracking capabilities required to pinpoint her exact location.
"Mr. Executor. I must admit, I didn't anticipate you trailing me out into the open wild," Jeanne remarked, her eyes locking onto the silver-haired Sankta as he emerged from the dark. The veteran Notarial Hall executor was currently drawing heavy, ragged breaths; evidently, matching Jeanne's pace had pushed his physical reserves to their absolute limit.
In truth, under normal circumstances, Executor possessed zero capability to track Jeanne once she initiated a full sprint. Her raw speed was intense enough to leave him behind before he could even register her movement. The sole reason he had successfully closed the distance was because Jeanne had deliberately halted her advance to evaluate the settlement's posture from the ridge.
"This choice aligns strictly with my own assessment," Executor replied, his cadence returning to its characteristic, clockwork precision despite his physical exertion. "Within this theater of operations, the safety of your person commands a significantly higher priority than that of Cecilia. Consequently, I executed an independent decision to maintain a covert escort around you."
He delivered the clinical explanation without a single mention of the charred remains or the localized slaughter Jeanne had just inflicted upon the Sarkaz raiders. To his mind, the systematic termination of those hostiles didn't even warrant a formal note; it was a completely trivial matter.
This omission didn't stem from an ideological belief that all Sarkaz were inherently expendable. Rather, it was because entities who sustained themselves entirely through the brutal pillaging of civilian sectors—deriving raw pleasure from the slaughter—deserved to be neutralized through whatever merciless means were available. The method of execution was irrelevant.
"Furthermore, you may maintain absolute confidence in the structural integrity of the town's defenses," Executor continued, his tone remaining entirely devoid of emotional resonance—a permanent behavioral trait that defined both his professional and personal existence. "Should a critical security breach manifest within the settlement, my communication array will immediately register the data, permitting me to execute a high-speed interception to guarantee the primary target's safety."
To an outside observer, this unyielding posture represented the absolute archetype of what a true Laterano Sankta should look like. The hyper-expressive, explosive temperament displayed by individuals like Exusiai was merely a colorful anomaly within their society.
Unfortunately, reality was invariably far more absurd than imagination.
"So... am I to understand that you intend to permanently trail my footsteps for the remainder of my stay?" Jeanne asked, casting a look at the silver-haired operative who seemed entirely resolved to function as a permanent, silent guardian.
"Negative. I am fully aware of the reality that I do not possess the necessary combat proficiency to guarantee your physical preservation," Executor responded, offering a literal shake of his head. If one were to compare his personal martial output against the staggering destructive thresholds possessed by Jeanne and Fafnir, his own capabilities were as fragile as a newborn child's.
Confronted with such an unvarnished, brutally honest evaluation, Jeanne found herself entirely stripped of a proper counter-argument. Yet, her intuition warned her that the stoic Sankta was merely framing his words to respect her privacy, fully aware that she preferred to operate unburdened by an escort.
In all likelihood, the moment she spun on her heel to depart, this mute, literal-minded operative would simply resume his covert tracking pattern from the shadows. Even if his raw power prevented him from acting as a primary shield, he could still function as a highly competent asset in a sudden emergency.
"Let us resolve it this way," Jeanne sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose with a look of mild resignation. She had no pressing objectives requiring her presence elsewhere on Terra anyway; she might as well anchor herself to this sector until their mission concluded. "I shall remain within the perimeter of the settlement for the subsequent forty-eight hours. Once your party officially executes its departure, I shall resume my journey to other territories. How does that sound?"
Furthermore, a nagging anxiety regarding the town's stability still lingered in the back of her mind. She harbored a genuine fondness for little Cecilia and deeply desired to shield the fragile child from any threats during this delicate window. Operating as a hidden guardian to preserve her happiness felt like an exceptionally meaningful use of her time.
If an unforeseen disaster materialized to shatter the beautiful, fleeting sanctuary that family had fought so hard to achieve... Jeanne simply refused to let that story play out.
"Come along, Fafnir. We are charting a course back to the village," Jeanne declared, her choice instantly finalizing their short-term itinerary. "Tomorrow, we shall return to that exact same establishment to systematically demolish another round of steaks!"
Hearing the golden promise of tomorrow's culinary agenda, Fafnir's eyes ignited with a wave of absolute, boundless joy.
Executor, meanwhile, felt a distinct wave of relief wash through his mind. Had the Saintess maintained her original trajectory, forcing him to track her unrestricted speed across the harsh topography of the waste, the sheer physical strain would have likely caused his body to collapse along the highway.
Granted, even if his body had given out entirely, his duty would have compelled him to drag his remains forward in her wake until his consciousness dissolved. As for what directives he would execute once Cecilia's escort mission officially concluded? That was a problem he would leave for the high-ranking administrators back at Laterano to resolve.