Her comment had been offhand, a tease and nothing more. She hadn't expected Reinhard to take it seriously.
"I won't disappoint you, Lady Felt."
His expression held no trace of humor or deflection. He meant every word.
While they spoke, Gojo had already carried them a considerable distance, rising above the cloud line.
"All right, get going and get back quick. Once you bring people back, we've still got the Witch Cult to deal with."
"Don't worry. I can't promise much about other things, but when money's involved, I'm nothing if not motivated!"
Felt's conviction on this particular subject was ironclad.
Gojo watched the two of them disappear into the distance, then dropped back to the ground.
"Now we wait." He yawned and settled onto a thick root that jutted from the base of the tree, stretching his legs. "No idea how long Reinhard and Felt will take."
"From the Royal Capital to here, even pushing hard without rest... half a day, probably?" Subaru offered.
"Should be around morning." Betty tilted her head, thinking it over. "Too bad we're still a ways from Arlam Village, otherwise Meili could keep searching."
"No rush. We've got plenty of time."
For once, Subaru wasn't anxious. Emilia was safe in the Royal Capital. Nothing to worry about there. And after watching Gojo erase the White Whale, his confidence in what came next had solidified into something unshakable. The Sin Archbishop of Sloth was terrifying, sure, but only to someone like him. Against Gojo, the man wouldn't last a minute.
"Big Bro, once we go back, I'll definitely find them this time!" Meili piped up, still rattled by Gojo's earlier threat. The moment the topic came up, she jumped at the chance to prove her worth. "I already covered a huge area. It'll go way faster from here."
"Then I'm counting on you, Meili." He leaned against the trunk, voice light and breezy. "Besides, studying isn't so bad. Even if you quit the assassin business someday, at least you won't starve. Most people don't even get the opportunity."
His tone was casual. Meili heard it as a death sentence. Her face went pale.
They waited beneath the tree for roughly an hour before three dark specks appeared on the far horizon.
Gojo spotted them long before anyone else. He squinted, confirmed the identities, and his eyebrows climbed.
Reinhard. That much was expected. Felt sat perched on his shoulder, also expected. But the knight was flying. And clutched in his free hand dangled a broad, armored figure that could only be one person: Marcos Gildark, Knight Commander of the Royal Guard.
"He actually pulled it off?"
The words came out half-whispered, edged with disbelief. When Reinhard had left, the man couldn't fly. Gojo had personally carried him above the clouds because he couldn't. That had been, what, an hour ago? And now he was soaring through the sky like he'd been doing it his whole life?
Going from zero to mastery that fast wasn't talent. Talent still required a learning curve, however compressed. Even Gojo, prodigy of the Gojo Family, once-in-a-millennium genius of the entire Jujutsu world, could acknowledge that much. Reinhard himself had said he couldn't use magic.
"Betty. Is there anything in this world besides magic that lets a person fly?"
"Witch Factors, Divine Protections, all sorts of things. How do you think the White Whale stayed airborne?" She gave him a look. "Don't tell me you didn't know that."
"That's not the point. Look over there."
He placed both hands on her head and rotated her toward the approaching figures.
"You're telling me Reinhard, a man who can't use magic, learned to fly in the time it took him to make a round trip? He couldn't do it when he left."
Betty stared at the sky. Her mouth opened, then closed.
"A Divine Protection would be the only explanation," she said slowly.
They locked eyes, and the same deep confusion reflected back from both.
"Divine Protections can be innate or acquired, right?"
"Mm."
"And most people only ever have one?"
"Mm."
"So wanting a specific ability and having it conveniently show up... that doesn't just happen, does it?"
"Mm."
Three questions, three affirmations. Silence swallowed the conversation whole.
"Maybe it really was a coincidence?" Betty ventured after a long pause.
Gojo slid her a sidelong glance. "You don't believe that any more than I do."
"It seems our knight friend has some interesting secrets."
Before he could say more, Reinhard touched down with Felt still on his shoulder and Marcos in tow.
"We're back, Gojo."
"Faster than I thought possible."
Gojo brushed dust off his clothes and walked over.
"See, Reinhard?" Felt hopped off the knight's shoulder, preening. "Next time, can you carry me like this instead of making me dangle from Gojo's hand?"
"Keep making demands and next time I'll ride on your back." He grabbed her cheeks and stretched them into a ridiculous shape before she could protest.
Meanwhile, Marcos had no interest in their bickering. He'd spotted the whale's remains from the air, and the moment his boots hit the ground he was already running toward the carcass for a closer look.
"Why'd you bring him along?" Gojo asked Reinhard, curious. "I figured you'd just come back with Felt."
"You're heading out to deal with the Witch Cult, so I thought it best to have the Knight Commander here to stand guard. We don't want anything happening to the whale while we're gone. The rest of the knights will arrive soon, and having their commander on-site will make coordination easier."
Reinhard explained it cleanly, though he left one reason unspoken. His grandmother had led the previous generation of knights into battle against the White Whale, and they had failed. That failure had become a wound the Knight Order still carried. Bringing the carcass home wouldn't erase it, but it might offer some measure of closure. They could at least say they'd played a part.
"So we can leave now?"
Gojo blinked expectantly.
"Yes."
Reinhard smiled as he watched Marcos examining the whale, the Knight Commander's composure visibly strained by what he was seeing.
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's move!"
"Hold on." Felt raised a hand. "Reinhard, your Knight Commander's reliable, right? We're not going to come back to the Royal Capital and find out someone else claimed credit for the whale?"
Bounty money was at stake. She wasn't taking chances.
Reinhard laughed. "Lady Felt, you needn't worry. The entire Knight Order already knows Gojo killed the White Whale. Nothing like that will happen."
"What are you even worried about?" Gojo waved it off. "Right now, in the entire Royal Capital, whether it's your rival candidates or anyone else, nobody has the guts to pull something like that."
He grinned. "And if someone did? That's just an opportunity. We take it back and make them compensate us on top of it."
Where Reinhard was diplomatic, Gojo was unapologetically brazen.
"Actually, that does sound pretty reasonable."
Felt didn't know much about reliability, but she understood the word compensation perfectly well. If that was on the table, she had nothing to worry about.
"Knight Commander." Reinhard turned to Marcos. "We've received intelligence regarding the Witch Cult. Lady Felt will be leading us to engage them. Could I ask you to hold this position?"
Surprise flickered in Marcos's eyes. They'd just brought down the White Whale and were already going after the Witch Cult?
"Do you need reinforcements? If you can wait for the rest of the knights to arrive..."
"That won't be necessary." Gojo shut it down without hesitation. "Better to move fast. By the time the knights get here, we'll probably already be done."
Their group was small, but that was the advantage. Flight, warping, teleportation. They could move however they wanted, whenever they wanted. Adding a regiment of knights would contribute nothing to their combat strength and drag their speed through the floor. If something was too much for him and Reinhard combined, a few dozen knights wouldn't make the difference anyway.
Marcos accepted the refusal with a level nod. "Go. I'll handle things here."
With the Knight Commander stationed at the site, there was nothing left to worry about. In all of Lugunica, Marcos ranked among the strongest fighters alive.
Everything settled, Gojo grabbed Subaru and Meili and launched into the sky. Betty needed no assistance; she followed under her own power. Felt, predictably, gravitated straight to Reinhard.
Sitting on his shoulder beat dangling from Gojo's grip by a wide margin.
"Hey, Gojo, why aren't we teleporting?" Felt twisted around, the wind whipping her golden hair into a chaotic mess that made her look like a disheveled puppy.
"You don't mind the hassle, but I do." He shot her an irritated look. "Reinhard can fly now, so why would I bother with all that? You think I'm an Earth Dragon?"
"Oh, right." He shifted course, drifting closer to Reinhard with Meili and Subaru in tow. "Reinhard, you couldn't fly when you left. How can you fly now? Don't tell me you actually 'worked on it' and succeeded?"
The question had been gnawing at him. Better to ask than let it fester.
"Of course, if it's something you'd rather not answer, that's fine too."
He knew Reinhard wasn't the type to lie. If this touched on something sensitive, there was no need to force it.
"It's not really a matter of effort." Reinhard smiled. "I simply gained a new Divine Protection that grants me the ability to fly."
"A Divine Protection?"
Gojo and Betty exchanged a glance. They'd guessed right. But the confirmation only deepened the mystery.
"Was it a coincidence?"
"No." Reinhard shook his head. "You might call it... the world's favoritism. When I genuinely desire something from the bottom of my heart, it tends to manifest as a Divine Protection."
Dead silence.
Not just Gojo and Betty. Felt, Subaru, Meili, everyone within earshot went slack-jawed.
"Did I hear that right?" Felt stared at Reinhard, stunned.
"You're saying you can just... get whatever Divine Protection you want?"
Subaru's mouth hung open, unable to close.
"It's not quite that extreme," Reinhard said. "But that's not an entirely wrong way to understand it, either."
His confirmation dropped like a stone into still water. Every person present fell silent.
High above the ground, the only sound was the wind rushing past them in flight. Nothing else. No one spoke.
After a long moment, Gojo broke the quiet.
"The world really doesn't play fair, does it? This isn't favoritism. It's spoiling you."
Before crossing into this world, as the generational prodigy of the Gojo Family, the kind of genius that appeared once in centuries across the entire Jujutsu world, Gojo had always carried an unshakable confidence. It held steady against enemies and allies alike, never wavering, never dimming.
But Reinhard's words had left even him momentarily speechless.
Divine Protections were blessings bestowed by the world itself. They came in countless varieties, granting abilities that could reshape a person's entire life. For an ordinary person to receive even one was a stroke of luck so extraordinary it might as well have been winning the lottery. A single Divine Protection could change everything.
And Reinhard?
This wasn't the world showing affection. This was the world wrapping him in a blanket and refusing to let go. Whatever Divine Protection he wanted, he received. The sentence barely even made sense. It shouldn't have been something a human being could say.
"Spoiling me, huh?" A bitter smile crossed Reinhard's face. "If I had the choice, I wouldn't want this ability at all. When I was five years old, this power is what caused my grandmother to lose the Divine Protection of the Sword Saint during her battle with the White Whale."
...
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