Stella Raphtalia
"Come back safe, Oppa Klein—!"
"Don't forget to buy us toys on the way back!"
Replying to the children waving at me from afar, I stepped out onto the street.
Stella, with a giant bump swelling on her forehead, and me silently pretending not to notice it.
We were walking side by side because we shared the same destination, but it was an unbelievably awkward scene.
"So."
It would take at least two weeks to reach Felician even at the fastest pace.
There was no way we could keep traveling in this awkward silence the entire time, so I spoke first.
"You're that priest bastard's... I mean, Father Garrison's disciple?"
At the question, which repeated what Sister Miriam had told me before our departure, Stella's expressionless face tilted slightly in a nod.
"He is my guardian, my teacher, and my adoptive father."
That lunatic Garrison had adopted a daughter?
I genuinely couldn't imagine it.
"And what did that priest say?"
"He said you are the seed of Archimond, so if you do anything suspicious, I should kill you."
"Haaah..."
Just thinking about that insane priest made my already complicated feelings twist even further.
A disciple of Garrison assigned as my watcher.
Honestly, I'd feel more comfortable traveling with one of the Pope's Holy Knights instead.
At least then I could simply kill them at the appropriate time.
'They really have no intention of letting me go peacefully.'
When Garrison didn't appear, I thought I'd finally gotten the chance to head to Felician quietly.
But now I ended up with a surveillance escort attached to me.
Honestly, she was even more troublesome than the Pope or Palliman.
"So what exactly counts as 'suspicious behavior'?"
"A standard?"
Stella repeated the question, thought for a moment, then shrugged lightly.
"He told me to judge for myself, so I plan to kill you based on my own judgment."
"Ah... I see..."
A teacher who ordered her to kill me without giving any proper standards.
And a disciple calmly announcing she'd kill me right in front of the target.
Neither of them were sane.
"Oh! Young Master!"
"Coo-coo—!"
As we arrived at the central plaza, Arin and Aul—who had been sitting by the fountain eating something—welcomed me warmly.
"Did you wait long?"
"Yes! But it was super delicious!"
As Arin ran over to me, I wiped the food stains from around her mouth.
"I keep telling you not to eat so messily."
"Hehe~!"
Looking at the pile of skewers stacked beside the fountain, the corner of my lips lifted.
They had suffered enough ever since the reformation center, so this was my own small gift to them.
Seeing their happy faces, it seemed the present had been worth it.
"Since we'll be traveling together, let me introduce you. This is—"
I turned my head to introduce Stella to Arin, but—
"...?"
The woman who had been standing beside me only moments ago had vanished without a trace.
"What the hell? Where'd she go?"
As I searched the plaza for any sign of her—
"Young Master. Over there."
Arin pointed toward one corner of the plaza with her tiny hand.
"Come on, come on! Place your bets! Turn your money into more money!"
A shabby table surrounded by a crowd of people.
Street peddlers had gathered there, and a dice gambling game was in full swing.
"That's a street gambling table. Why would she—"
The moment I looked closely at the gathered crowd—
"What the...? Why is she over there?!"
Among the people crouched Stella, staring intently at the dice.
"Oho~! That's unfortunate, Sister!"
"..."
Pushing through the crowd and stepping inside, I found Stella staring at the dice with a blank expression.
The die in front of her showed a six.
But the dealer's die showed a three.
'If the numbers match, the challenger gets triple. If they don't, the dealer takes the money.'
A simple game commonly found on the streets rather than in proper gambling dens.
"One more round."
Stella raised one finger with a grave expression, and the man burst into laughter.
"Hahaha! You're spending big today, Sister!"
'Today?'
My expression twisted strangely at those words.
First there was a nun addicted to cigarettes and alcohol.
And now gambling addiction too?
'She's really got the full collection, huh.'
While silently lamenting the clergy falling into worldly corruption,
the two men tossed the dice back into their cups once more.
The dice rolled around noisily before finally coming to a stop.
"Alright, let's reveal them! One, two, three!"
At the dealer's shout, the cups lifted upward.
"...."
Once again, Stella ended up donating her money to the dealer.
"Hahahaha! What a shame, Sister~!"
Watching the grinning man sweep the silver coins off the table, I let out a dry laugh.
'This is rigged.'
The strange angle of the dealer's hands while mixing the dice, and the subtle movement of the cups.
After seeing that, I was certain.
And she was falling for tricks from amateurs running a street stall.
That meant she was catastrophically bad at gambling.
"One more game..."
"One more game my ass. Get up already."
The moment I interrupted Stella before she could raise another finger, the crouching nun looked up at me.
"A nun's salary can't possibly be that high. Are you seriously planning to lose it all here?"
I spoke with disbelief, but Stella simply shook her head.
"Don't worry."
Then, instead of looking ashamed, she answered with a strangely confident expression.
"I'll win it back."
"...Excuse me?"
...Wait a second.
What exactly did this nun just say?
"Win it back?"
As I processed her words, my expression became increasingly bizarre.
"Hold on. Don't tell me..."
Muttering that, I hurriedly reached into my inner pocket to check its contents.
"Ah, you've gotta be kidding me... seriously..."
The place where my money pouch should have been—
was completely empty.
"Think of the money I lost just now as an investment."
Holding up the very money pouch that should have been inside my coat, Stella confidently gave me a thumbs-up.
"I'll repay it at double or triple the amount."
And hearing that, I could only cover my face with one hand.
Ah.
Ah, for fuck's sake, my head hurts.
"What kind of nun in the entire world gambles with someone else's money...?"
What had I said earlier again?
That neither of them were sane?
I take that back.
This woman was far beyond that.
Stella Raphtalia.
The nun who would be traveling with me...
She was far more insane than I had imagined.
***
"Hahahaha! That's why you should've kept a better eye on your wallet, sir!"
Watching the merchant burst into laughter, I could feel the Archimond inside me boiling with rage.
Even if it was a rigged game, the logic here was simple:
If you got fooled, it was your own fault.
And even if I explained that she had gambled using stolen money, there was no way anyone would care.
'To think the great Archimond would get his wallet stolen...'
The necromancer who once plunged the entire continent into terror had now become someone getting pickpocketed by a nun.
The absurdity of it left me speechless.
"No, seriously—what happened to your own money that you had to stick your hand into my pocket?"
When I asked in disbelief, Stella answered confidently.
"You remember when I took a nap in prison?"
"Yes."
"I got caught, so I'm not getting paid this month."
"...!"
I covered my face with my palm.
If the reason they chose this woman to accompany me wasn't surveillance but assassination—
then I could confidently say that bastard Garrison had found the perfect candidate.
Why?
Because at this exact moment, I genuinely felt like I was about to die from stress.
"Still, this is pretty strange."
While I stood there holding my pounding head, the gambler jingled the coins he'd taken from Stella and looked at me.
"You look like someone pretty skilled with a sword, sir. Didn't you notice?"
At his words, Stella also nodded and calmly added:
"The Pilgrim is far too careless. What I did was more like preventive education—"
"Shut up before I file a lawsuit under the name of House Leinrant."
I snapped at Stella, who continued saying outrageous things without the slightest shame.
First meeting? Formality? Manners?
Forget all of that.
I was the victim of theft here.
'Well, technically it wasn't even my money to begin with, so it's not that big a deal...'
It was money I'd extorted from a bank director anyway.
Losing it wasn't the real issue.
'The real problem is something else.'
What bothered me more was what the gambler had pointed out just now.
Watching Stella casually eye my wallet had only heightened my caution.
'I never noticed.'
Not when she stole the money pouch from inside my coat.
Not when she vanished from right beside me without a sound.
Everything had happened without me realizing a thing.
'So her being Garrison's disciple wasn't an empty claim after all.'
She possessed abilities similar to Garrison's, but the way she used them was completely different.
Not overwhelming force, but silent infiltration that erased her presence entirely.
Rather than a clergyperson—
she moved more like an assassin.
'Considering compatibility... she might actually be even more dangerous than Garrison...'
Just as those thoughts crossed my mind—
"I won!"
A cheerful voice rang out from one corner of the gambling table, making both Stella and I turn our heads.
"H-huh...? W-wait, how...?"
Arin was crouched down with a radiant smile, while the gambler stared blankly in confusion.
The two dice on the table both showed six.
"Young Master! Look!"
Arin waved excitedly at me with a huge grin.
"What the—where did you even get money to play this?"
I asked while staring at the pile of coins stacked in front of her.
"This mister told me to try it!"
"...He did?"
Arin pointed innocently at the gambler.
"He said if I ran out of money, I could just ask Young Master for more!"
"S-shh! Shhhiiit!"
The man panicked and tried to stop her too late, but the damage was already done.
"...Ah. Is that so?"
Looks like while I was busy dealing with Stella, he'd completely mistaken me for an easy mark.
Trying to fleece me by luring a kid into gambling.
Crack.
At Arin's words, it felt like the thread of reason I'd been barely holding onto finally snapped.
"N-now, sir, that's not what I—"
The man instinctively realized he'd stepped on a landmine and tried to smooth things over with an awkward smile.
"Fine. Since it's come to this, I might as well recover the principal before leaving."
Saying that, I sat down in the seat Arin had occupied and picked up the dice.
"...?"
"What? Aren't we starting?"
At my words, the gambler's expression became even stranger.
Judging by his face, he'd probably expected me to pull a sword or something.
But House Leinrant had its dignity.
I wasn't about to draw steel over something like this.
'Besides, the best way to crush a gambler is with gambling.'
Thinking that to myself, I placed a single gold coin onto the table.
Gasp—?!
The moment the gold coin clinked onto the gambling table, spectators flooded in almost instantly.
"Whoa, now that's...!"
"A gold coin! A real gold coin!"
An imperial gold coin bearing the face of Emperor Merdir.
Probably the largest wager this little gambling stand had ever seen.
"S-sir?"
The gambler swallowed nervously and addressed me.
"If I win, it's triple. Right?"
The moment I said that, the gambler grinned widely like a fish thrown into water.
"With this many witnesses watching, no taking back your words later."
At his provocative tone, I raised one corner of my lips.
"You should be the one worrying about running away."
After saying that, I rolled the dice around lazily inside the cup.
After all, I came from the back alleys of Heidelberg, the capital of Winterfall.
I'd played more street gambling games filled with dirty tricks than I could even count.
"Alright then. Let's do this. Roll."
READ MORE CHAPTERS HERE : https://beastnovels.com/