Immediately after that, Saviz, Cyril, Kurtis, and I set off for Starfall Forest. No saints accompanied us, so if anybody got hurt we’d have to rely on healing potions.
It was a bit reckless for Saviz to do something like this with only three knights and no saints in tow, but if he needed this to sort through his thoughts on saints, then I supposed it made sense that he wouldn’t want them to join us.
Along the way, Cyril said Saviz regularly went out to the forest to hunt. “He’s been too busy to do so lately, so the tea party being postponed presented a good opportunity.”
Since the tea party with Hyacinthe took priority over everything else, it effectively cleared his schedule.
“This is merely my opinion,” Cyril continued, “but I believe Commander Saviz finds using his blade helps sort his thoughts when worries or doubts are weighing on his mind.”
Looked like my assumption was right. Hunting monsters was Saviz’s way of blowing off steam.
I glanced at him from the side. Not a hint of emotion in his placid expression, but I had a feeling he was thinking about saints.
The instant we dismounted, Saviz proceeded straight into the forest without a beat of hesitation. He’d previously defeated a flower-horned deer here, a B-rank monster, in a single strike. Normally, it would take thirty knights to hunt a B-rank monster, but Saviz could handle it all on his own. Still, he could stand to take a little more caution…
Or so I thought.
Only thirty minutes later, I understood just how little Saviz required moderation. He was exceedingly strong. There was never an instant we, the knights assigned to guard him, had to lift a finger to help him cut down the monsters that assaulted him.
We didn’t travel very deep into the forest, so we only encountered monsters of C-rank or lower, but the way Saviz dispatched them while hardly lifting a finger left me in awe.
For the longest time, I thought Cyril was the strongest person in the knight brigades, and he probably was, but recently Kurtis displayed a surprising strength as well. Watching Saviz now, though, I had to wonder if he could equal either of those knights.
“Maybe he’d be even stronger than Captain Cyril if he had his right eye.”
Having only one eye limited Saviz’s field of view—a considerable handicap when it came to battle. The fact that his injury held him back had to infuriate him. Any knight who could stand at the top of the knight brigades was someone who yearned for strength. A little more could be the difference between defeating one more enemy or saving one more ally.
With such thoughts in mind, I met his gaze.
“What’s the matter? Do you feel like using your sword as well?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. You’re so strong there’s no need for me, or anyone, to do anything. I was just thinking, if you had both eyes, wouldn’t you be even stronger?”
If he wished it, I would heal his right eye. Restoring a lost eye was simple enough, after all. With some assistance from Charlotte or Priscilla, I could even do it without revealing I was a saint.
“I have no need for a right eye,” he said flatly. His expression didn’t shift in the slightest.
“I see…” I said neutrally. Modern saints were far weaker than the saints of the past, so he might’ve believed there was no way to restore his eye and, not wanting to ask for the impossible, claimed he didn’t need it. That was very like him, being the realist he was. A man like him in a position of power couldn’t voice his true desires so easily. But I got the impression none of that was the real issue. To me, it seemed he genuinely believed he had no need for his right eye.
Come to think of it, three hundred years ago there was a knight who was intent on not having their scars healed. It taught me that everybody has their own history and circumstances, and not everybody wants to go without injury or illness.
“Shall we return to the castle? Considering how long it will take to secure Cerulean, we should probably head back now,” Saviz said as he checked the position of the sun.
I knew he was trying to change the subject, but I said, “Good point, Cerulean seemed pretty hesitant about going to the tea party. I doubt he would go against something you told him to do, though. At most, he’ll probably hide somewhere.”
“You understand Cerulean well.”
“Do I? I mean, I’m a fully grown adult, so I can’t say I completely understand the feelings of a child. I can tell the two of you are rather close, though.”
Members of royalty could sometimes be rather distant from one another, like how Saviz and his mother Hyacinthe seemed. The two brothers got along well, however.
“Your parents must be pleased to see their sons getting along,” I said cheerfully. It was just Saviz, Cyril, Kurtis, and me here, so I assumed it was safe to talk about the two of them as brothers.
“I wonder about that,” Saviz mused. “It wasn’t like they had me with those expectations in mind.”
Ah. Right… The most important duty for the royal family was maintaining the family line. On the off chance something happened to the heir, somebody else had to be around to take over. Logically speaking, that was what Saviz, the second son, was for.
Cyril himself had told me how his mother said a measly duke family didn’t need a spare. Clearly, she believed only royalty needed to worry about the family line to such an extent. It was a completely ordinary thing to expect.
But what did Saviz himself think of being the “royal spare”? Most would chafe at being viewed as an emergency replacement. Humans wanted to be needed on their own merits, and I’d like to believe Saviz’s role as commander of the knight brigades fulfilled that need. But that was a position he would vacate soon. Ever since Cerulean received the Blessing of the Spirit Lord at nineteen and began regressing in age, Saviz had probably begun preparing himself to part with his post. It wouldn’t be long before Cerulean ceded the position of king so Saviz could live up to his duties as a spare. I’m sure he felt the irony of his circumstances.
As though to confirm my hypothesis, Saviz muttered, “I’m told that when I was born, the queen dowager took one look at me and said she had no need to bear any more children.”
I could only pray his mother spoke those words out of love because she saw him and was satisfied with her efforts. I didn’t want to believe she could be so cold as to suggest her duty to the royal family had been fulfilled by bearing two sons, but the cynical look on Saviz’s face suggested that was exactly what she’d meant.