Chapter 235: Black-Haired Children

For the first few months after being summoned, Shangguan Wan’er had behaved herself in the castle, quietly studying what it meant to be a Saintess and working hard to prepare for the day she would be needed.

However, everything changed when she met the Prince and fell in love. More precisely, the Prince had fallen in love with her at first sight, while Shangguan Wan’er had merely been brushing him off casually.

"Certainly, there are plenty of corrupt nobles throughout the country who collect illegal taxes to line their own pockets, accept bribes, or discriminate against people and give preferential treatment to those who pay them. The Crown Prince and the Saintess have been traveling around and punishing such people one after another. However, the world also contains something known as a necessary evil, things that may be wrong in themselves but cannot simply be eliminated without consequences." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"Necessary evil..."

"What they are doing may indeed be unacceptable, but there are situations where society has come to depend on such practices. The two of them never considered that side of things at all. For example, there was once a lord in a remote region who collected more taxes than the amount officially set by the kingdom. The reason was that a special type of monster appeared in that region, and the extra taxes were being used to cover the additional expenses of hiring adventurers to hunt them.

"Obtaining additional funds from the kingdom required complicated procedures and took time. Naturally, it also took time for the kingdom to fully understand the situation. The budget could not be approved quickly enough, while the damage caused by the monsters continued to spread. Under those circumstances, the lord had no choice but to temporarily raise taxes so that he could hire adventurers immediately.

"However, the common people knew nothing about the lord’s intentions. They simply complained to the Saintess that the taxes in their region were higher than elsewhere. Since there was no denying that the lord had indeed been collecting excessive taxes, he was punished. What do you think happened to that region afterward?"

"Naturally, the monster attacks would only have gotten worse. But surely they could have discovered the reason by investigating the lord, couldn’t they? And I assume the two of them took responsibility for dealing with the monsters as well..."

"It would have been wonderful if they had. Unfortunately, the two of them simply passed judgment on people on a whim during their travels and left all the investigation and follow-up work to us. By the time we received the report and arrived at the scene, the damage had already spread. The lord who should have been relied upon was sitting in a prison cell, while even the people who had complained to the Saintess about the high taxes were forced to abandon their homes because they could no longer live there safely due to the monster attacks."

"When things like that happen repeatedly across the country, it is only natural for dissatisfaction to spread among people from all sides. At the moment they were punished, the people’s complaints may indeed have been resolved, but an action that produces no consideration for the consequences can ultimately do more harm than good."

Cassian sighed.

"That was merely one particularly bad example. There have also been plenty of things they did that people were genuinely grateful for, so it would be unfair to dismiss everything they have done. Still, after incidents like these accumulated, both large and small, across various regions, a rumor inevitably began spreading among local lords and nobles: ’Beware of the black-haired children.’"

"Over the past few years, the two of them have built quite a reputation throughout the country. At the same time, they have also made plenty of enemies. Although people generally hesitate to openly act against them because of their public positions, they still frequently end up caught in kidnapping incidents like this. Until now, I have been secretly providing support wherever I could, but I have reached the limits of what I can do."

"At the same time, the conflict between the royal family and the Church has also become increasingly pronounced in the royal capital. I have been extremely busy dealing with that situation, and then, quite suddenly, Xiao Tao’s crest, which I had been unable to locate no matter how hard I tried, responded to me. For some reason, it seemed to be heading toward the city where Shangguan Wan’er was staying, almost as though he intended to make contact with her.

"Unable to determine the Hero’s intentions, I decided to take action. I first sent spies to investigate his movements, but they were unable to do so because of interference from a mysterious monster."

Huh? A mysterious monster? Could he mean Mochi?

That night, everyone slept inside Mochi’s Slime Barrier after meeting Xiao Tao, so I suppose there would have been no way for anyone to spy on us.

I did hear a report that someone had apparently poked Mochi before leaving that night. So that’s what happened.

"The following day, the Hero entered Cider Orchard, and I had him placed under surveillance from that point onward. That was when I discovered that my own son had somehow become involved with him. To be honest, I was rather troubled by that. The Hero, whose movements I had been completely unable to track until then, was now traveling together with Viktor. And I cannot exactly claim that Viktor likes me. You could even say that he hates me."

Ah, so even his own father is aware of that. With the way he puts on such a convincing act of being a loving father, I was beginning to wonder whether he genuinely had no idea his son disliked him.

"And then?"

"Viktor, you sealed my crest, did you not? Because of that, I once again lost track of the Hero’s movements. Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to conclude that you had deliberately been hiding the Hero from me all this time..."