Reincarnated as a Son of the Sword Saint and the Sage

"Ack—!" Christine let out a grunt as soon as my sister dropped her dom to the floor, butt first. From the academy's great hall, I teleported the three of us into the living room of my secret villa within the empire, the one we used as my rendezvous with Elise. Earlier, while I was still holding my sister, I told her that we could not make the prince change her mind no matter what we did. Seeing how bad the situation was, we decided to just get Christine out of here, hence our current situation. By the way, our families were not aware of this plan, and they had nothing to do with it. "Where on earth did you bring me?!" "In a secret villa owned by us, though we are still in the empire." "Isn't possessing an undeclared asset illegal?! It doesn't matter right now; what do you think you are doing, Louise?!" Christine yelled as she was getting herself up. "I am keeping you away from the conflict. You should be grateful we are helping you." "This is not what we have agreed with! We are supposed to be giving His Imperial Highness reasons to break up with that woman as we speak! But why did you drag me out instead?!" "I am sorry for breaking the deal, Christine, but some things happened and changed." Big Sis then sent me daggers for a moment. "But, why..."

"It was evident that Prince Edward had considered you nonexistent and basically did not care about you anymore," she explained. "It is useless to argue with him as he did not want to listen to anything he did not want to believe. I cannot bear to see you suffer any longer, so I came to a conclusion to distance you from the problems. Also, you seem to be on the verge of shedding tears."

"No, I am not....!" "But your body is being too honest, Christine."

Before Christine could finish her sentence, a single tear ran down her face. Afterwards, both her eyes were in tears before she fell on her knees, and then Christine began to break down.

"Why, Your Highness? Why...?" She sobbed, her shoulders gasping. "Why do you choose that woman over me...?" Christine covered her face as she started to weep. She must have been holding her tears back then and released her pent-up emotions when she got the opportunity to. "It's okay, Christine, let it out. Everything's going to be alright." "Why...where did I go wrong? Am I not enough for you, Your Highness...?" To be honest, I thought that the prince was being a jerk here. He already has a perfect fiancee paired with him, but he still chose Edith over Christine. He might have preferences for a woman, and he probably saw those qualities in Edith. Declaring his love for Edith was fine, but pushing Christine away and humiliating her for doubtful reasons was very irrational of him. He could annul their engagement in private with both sides present, but he still chose the unnecessary way of publicly putting her to shame. I pitied Christine for all the things she had been through so far. Whether we would be hated by the students for siding with her side or not, my sister and I still had the conscience not to ignore her. "Hey, Raphael," as Christine was crying while sitting on the floor, my sister then looked at me. "The night is getting deep; could you please prepare the bath before we could rest ourselves?" "Yeah, sure, no problem." "One more thing, please take care of that one." "I know." After that, I left the room, leaving the weeping Christine with my sister to comfort her.

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I walked out of the villa and went outside. The reason I was here was to deal with something my sister and I took heed of after we got here. Earlier, a few moments after I transported the three of us to this palace, we could feel a faint trace of someone's presence directly within the vicinity, which was strange since this place was not only secluded but cloaked with multiple layers of barriers and concealments. Even with my skills, I could not identify who this intruder was.lightsnovel

(No matter who or what you are, I am not letting you escap—)

But as soon as I reached the location—the garden at the back—I found someone I did not expect—someone I knew. The one who just entered this place was a young woman with pink hair and blue eyes. After staring at one of the tulips, she graciously turned around and greeted. "Hello there, Raphael." "Iris?!"

Iris greeted me casually, as if she had not done anything. Nevermind who she was; how did she even locate this place?

lightsΝοvel "How did you get here?" "I used a teleportation spell." "I know that, but how did you manage to know where the other end of the spell was?" "Well, how do I explain it?" she said in a cutesy manner, putting a finger on her pink lips. "No matter how far the location of the other side is, there is still a vague link of thin mana that connects the two points. Maximizing my radar, I managed to acquire the direction to the other point." What she just explained was true. The points of teleportation spells were indeed linked by a line of mana so faint and thin that it was almost undetectable. Instant transportation such as Short Teleportation and Warp had links as well, but the casting time was almost 0 ms for the link to be detected. But Iris used that five-second casting time to pinpoint the direction of the other side of my Long Teleportation, and she was able to locate where we were. The way she located us was somewhat similar to the ones I saw in one of my favorite animes. The lightning boy used his aura and intentionally let himself be hit in order to calculate the location of the sniper. "But the distance between this place and the academy was several hundred kilometers away. Even if you find the direction, finding the exact location is still painstakingly challenging, and the margin of error becomes more significant the farther it gets, making it more difficult." In addition to the distance, a slight dispersion of the angle would ruin the guessing. Not to mention the curvature of the planet; a straight path on the Mercator map could be a curve on the globe. "True, but I was lucky enough to land on the exact location after five tries." "Ugh! Lady's luck on your side." I grunted, hardly believing her geoguessing capabilities. To be able to find our location with just a single hint, Iris must be an incredible individual. Not only that, she was able to hide her identity from me until the moment I reached her. The more I spent time with her, the more mysterious she became.

"But why follow us in the first place? It's not like you are involved in this issue, nor is your family on the Grise's side or royalist." "Doesn't it apply to your family as well since you are not part of the empire anymore? Besides, I am actually curious about what you and your sister will do to Lady Christine."

"...Anyway." I could not give her a response, so I changed the subject. "Now that I know it is you. I think it's fine for you to be here. But we planned to stay here for days, are you alright with that?" "It's fine, I guess?" "Sigh. If you are hungry, just remind me; I will cook for you." Just like that, Iris and I went inside the villa.

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