ng, I bid goodbye to everyone and left first while Adair followed closely behind. When we reached an area devoid of people, I turned and asked directly, “How are the Leaf Knight’s fencing skills? Be truthful.”

Hearing this weird question, Adair frowned a little and replied with euphemism, “Just a little better than yours..”

“Don’t compare him with me!” I was a little agitated now.

If Leaf’s fencing really is just a little better than mine, then it’s really, really lousy. At a time like this, I don’t want to consider things like if I’ll lose face or not. Bringing someone who has really lousy fencing skills out with me would be bad since it is related to the important matter of meeting the God of Light much earlier or not!

Adair then replied sternly, “Yes, Knight-Captain Leaf’s fencing skills are not bad.”

This reply was a little too vague. Frowning, I continued asking, “What if he were compared to you?”

“A little worse than mine, but the gap between our skills isn’t that big.”

Oh! Immediately I stopped frowning. If that’s the case, then it must be really good. Adair’s fencing skills should be ranked among the top ten in the Holy Temple at least! Looks like I can rest assured and take Leaf along with me now..

“Captain.”

“Hmm?” I responded casually.

Carefully, Adair said, “About what Ed said just now, please don’t take it to heart. He always speaks without thinking, with his mouth running faster than his brain. He didn’t really mean what he said. As you know, he has always respected and been in awe of you.”

“Oh!”

Suddenly giving a bright and brilliant smile, I looked at Adair who seemed to be at a loss as to what to do and said, “I would have forgotten about that if you hadn’t mentioned it. Since you, as vice-captain, have reminded me, then before Sun leaves, may my dearest brothers from the Sun Knight Platoon have a special training session that is as harsh as the God of Light’s bright radiance during the summer!”

“..”

Adair’s expression looked as though he was considering repenting of his sins before the whole Sun Knight Platoon.

“Sun? Sun?”

Returning from my own trail of thoughts, I saw a tiny black spot fly past my eyes, accompanied by an annoying buzzing sound. Without another word, I swung my right hand..

Slap!

Leaf stared at me blankly with huge eyes.

With an extremely calm expression, I “plucked” my hand off Leaf’s face. With my palm open, I then explained to Leaf, who had just received the swift slap from me, “There was a mosquito.”

Leaf looked down at the red mosquito specimen on my white glove while I looked at his left cheek. Not only has his cheek obviously turned bright red, it’s swollen and there’s even a trace of blood near his mouth.. Maybe I’m about to be the first person to successfully agitate the Leaf Knight?

“I see.”

After a long while, Leaf finally looked up and said with a smile, “Luckily Sun killed the mosquito for me; if not, I’m afraid there would be a swollen spot on my face from the mosquito bite right now.”

“..”

There is no swollen spot from a mosquito bite, but the whole half of his face is swollen now. Giving a gentle smile, I replied, “Brother Leaf, you’re just too courteous, this is part of Sun’s responsibility.”

“Hehe!” Shading the sunlight above his head with his hand, Leaf then praised, “The sunlight is just so bright today, the way the light hits Sun’s hair makes it sparkle prettily, as if it’s made of gold. Can you give me a few strands of it?”

“If I remember correctly, hasn’t brother Leaf taken Sun’s hair many times before already?”

“I’ve used them all— No! I mean I accidentally lost them all,” Leaf replied with an apologetic face.

“I see. Then this time, Sun will give brother Leaf a little more in one go!”

In order for Leaf to fully forget about the slap I just gave him, I decided to be extra generous this time! After all, the hair will just grow back; it’s not anything precious.. Although the fact that Leaf always loves to ask for my hair is really strange. I’ve heard of cases such as pedophilia, fetishes and such, but the case of a fetish for hair is really rare. Oh right! Not only hair, he asks for my nails sometimes too.

As most of the times he asked me for hair and nails were just after I happened to have done something that might have annoyed him, I could only hand those things over meekly.

I grabbed my Divine Sun Sword, pulled it out from its scabbard and placed the shining sword blade near my head, ready to cut..

“Sun! You are going to cut your head off!” Giving a sudden scream, Leaf was horrified and snatched the sword away from my hands. “I’ll do it so please don’t hold the sword. You nearly scared me to death..” he said as he swung the sword swiftly.

I didn’t feel a thing, but a lock of hair was suddenly in his hand. Carefully holding the lock of hair up, he asked, “I cut a little more, is that alright? I believe that along the way, I will need to use it frequently.. I mean, along the road where sunlight shines brilliantly, I will frequently need to take it out and hold it under the sunshine. It will definitely be very pretty as it sparkles.”

I shook my head to show that I didn’t mind. Looking at it now, it seems that Leaf’s fencing skills are indeed as good as Adair described them to be. For the rest of the trip, everything should be just fine. Even if anything were to happen, I can now rest assured as I push Leaf out to block the attacks! So cutting a little bit of my hair off doesn’t matter much; it would even be alright if you wanted to cut all my hair short!

Keeping the few strands of hair, Leaf performed a healing spell on his swollen face. After all, it was just an external injury. Although it appeared rather serious, with just a minor healing spell Leaf’s swollen face returned to its initial state instantly.

Just then, I suddenly realized there was no one else around me anymore. Urgently I asked, “Where is His Excellency, the Son of the God of War?”

Leaf carefully explained, “Just now the warpriest found a few people waiting in ambush up front, so Mike brought everyone along to scout the area. Before he left, he mentioned that the archer and cleric should just remain here.”

Oh, I see..

Wait, with ‘archer’, he’s definitely referring to Leaf. With such a huge bow behind him and the few quivers of arrows, only a blind man wouldn’t be able to recognize him as an archer. But just who is he referring to with ‘cleric’?

Expressionlessly, I looked around. The warpriest wasn’t there; only Leaf and I were left.

I stared at Leaf and Leaf stared back at me. “I think it must have been a slip of the tongue when Mike referred to you as a cleric,” he tried to explain evasively. Leaf’s voice became softer and softer as he explained, “Or maybe he made a mistake with your career. Eh, maybe he thought that anyone who can heal is a cleric? Or maybe..”

I mentally rolled my eyes. You too used a healing spell just now, so why didn’t he mistake you for a cleric? Obviously, the Son of the God of War said that on purpose!

When Leaf and I first arrived at the palace in the Kingdom of Moon Orchid after some rushing, we were met with a pervading sense of gloom throughout the entire palace from the moment we stepped inside. This nearly confused me into thinking that the news we had received was wrong and that we were actually here to attend a princess’ funeral, not a wedding. If only I had known this earlier, I would have brought the Hell Knight along after all!

The Son of the God of War stood to one side without any warriors beside him at all.

The queen of the Kingdom of Moon Orchid sat on the throne, not moving an inch.. If I were wearing that gown that appears to be heavier than a set of armor, I wouldn’t move an inch either. What’s more, there’s a crown on her head that appears as if it’s only suitable for being displayed in a gallery, not for putting on one’s head.

A thin layer of veil covered the queen’s face. The veil was very thin, so one could still partially recognize her facial features. Although she already had a daughter old enough to be married, she still looked as if she were in her early thirties. She maintains her skin well.

The queen is just like our king; she almost doesn’t need to speak a word. But obviously, this woman’s ability to rule is definitely greater than that of a man’s. My king has to at least signal to his trusted knights with his eyes before one would jump out to convey the message for him. This queen didn’t even move a single eyelash before two female knights behind her jumped out and started explaining the situation to those of us who came from the Church of the God of Light.

The female knight was very wordy, so repeating her words would be annoying. Not to mention that I immediately forgot what she had just said, so I wouldn’t be able to repeat them anyway. So, in short; the princess who was going to marry the Son of the God of War had been abducted.

“The princess has been abducted?”

Although I looked shocked on the surface, I was actually feeling rather suspicious about the whole situation. If it were a prince that was abducted, then it would still be understandable. After all, princes always run around going on adventures, wooing hot chicks, challenging others and so on when they have nothing better to do, making them very abduct-able! But how and when would a princess, who never sets a foot out of the front door, get abducted so easily?

Also, what can one get from abducting a princess?

If it’s for the throne.. Under the precondition that there’s a prince, the princess doesn’t have the right to succession at all, so abducting her is practically useless.

If it’s for hot chicks, then one can definitely find someone prettier than the princess just by walking two circuits around the town. After all, there’s an abundance of hot chicks in this world. No matter how beautiful this princess is rumored to be, that is just “among all princesses” that she’s considered pretty. If one were really to compare a princess with all the beauties in this world, then probably not even one out of all the princesses on this whole continent would be able to get into the list of top hundred beauties.

If money was the target, why didn’t he just abduct the palace’s gold safe instead since he had the ability to abduct even a princess? Abducting a human is so much more troublesome!

Hence, in conclusion, normally the only one who would be bored enough to abduct a princess is the so called demon king in legends.

As to what I believe, the only reason that the demon king would ever want to do this kind of tough, lousy job would be because they’ve either forgotten to get a brain, or they just want to become more famous!

Don’t tell me it was really the doings of the demon king? But I hadn’t heard anything about the appearance of the demon king recently.

As I was making all kinds of wild guesses in my head, the queen, who hadn’t moved at all, spoke. “Sun Knight, I have one request of you.”

I was shocked. The queen had opened her mouth to request something of me personally, and that just meant one thing.. Something bad was going to happen to me!

However, even though I knew that something bad was about to happen to me, I still had to give an unperturbed expression and reply seriously. “Your Majesty, if I, Sun, can bring you even the slightest bit of the God of Light’s radiance, I will do everything I can and put in my best effort.”

Still expressionless, the queen said, “I want you to rescue my daughter.”

Hearing that, I immediately turned in confusion to the Son of the God of War who standing there fuming. I was just one step away from saying something like, “What’s your wife being abducted got to do with me?”

Then, with a cold “Hmph,” that damned Son of the God of War looked at me and said, “I have no choice; the princess’ rescue team is still short of a cleric for healing.”

I’m a holy knight, damn it!