CH 72

When he didn’t budge, Seo-yoon stood up from her seat. Jace wanted to stop the saintess from going—to pull her back and bring her to his side once more. However, he held himself back for Ciel’s sake. He wanted to feel the same ecstatic sensation that he had tasted.

“I will help you, Duke. Now, please hold my hand.”

Seo-yoon was the one who initiated contact with Ciel, who she felt had a different charm from the crown prince. Feeling his long, hard hands trembling as she spilled her guiding energy into him, she laughed inwardly.

She was already anticipating that Ciel’s expression would change soon, just like how it did with the crown prince.

“…Huh?”

But… It’s strange.

Obviously enough, she felt her energy flowing towards him the moment she started guiding him. But it felt weird.

At the strange sensation that she had never felt before, Seo-yoon’s face gradually hardened.

It was the same with Ciel. Bracing himself from the abhorrent guiding that he would be subjected to, he bit the flesh of his cheek and waited.

However, he felt the woman’s guiding energy leaking out soon enough. His expression became relaxed.

Strangely, Seo-yoon’s energy would not flow into him at all. It was as if a powerful wall was standing tall between them.

Perhaps it was because he was full of his wife’s guiding energy?

Thinking back on his stay at the Closch Barony, Ciel was not the only one who felt regretful about leaving. Apart from him, Aiden also felt a strange sense of security enveloping him.

It even reached Aiden to that extent. Irene’s energy was extraordinary.

Not knowing why her guiding wasn’t working, Seo-yoon stopped the flow. No, to be more precise, she had to stop because she could no longer continue. She ran out of energy at this point.

“Ugh.”

As she felt her head spinning, she reeled. The only one who was surprised to see the saintess like this was the crown prince, and he immediately ran to her side.

Ciel was lost in thought in his recollection of Irene, and so he belatedly noticed the situation around him in the present.

“Saintess!”

“…Ah, Your Highness, I’m so dizzy.”

Seo-yoon felt resentful, but she did not reveal it. Was the duke higher in rank compared to the crown prince? Was that why her energy as a C-Class Guide wouldn’t reach him?

She wanted to get to the bottom of this, but unlike Korea, this world didn’t have any quantification machines.

She buried her face in the crown prince’s chest to hide her expression. He felt shameful about it, but he felt relieved by this. Nonetheless, he hid this and called for the doctor loudly.

“Bring a doctor and a priest here right now!”

Meanwhile, Ciel did not get up from his seat. Merely watching the crown prince and the saintess as if he was an unrelated audience, he rose to his feet belatedly.

“I’ll return later.”

Before he could hear the crown prince’s permission, Ciel hurried out of the office. As he walked down the hallway with quick strides, he grabbed a passing attendant and told him,

“Bring in the priest who accompanied the Saintess here. Immediately.”

“Yes, will do, sir!”

Briefly watching as the attendant hurried away, Ciel turned and entered a part of the imperial palace’s garden.

With his mind occupied by the sensation he had just felt, he walked without direction.

“Is it because they have different levels? But since she’s the Saintess, she’s supposed to be S-Class…”

He had no doubt in this memory. He remembered being measured at the same time as her in the past.

“Then, it shouldn’t be the difference in their levels.”

He had mentally prepared himself for this encounter, but that woman’s guiding didn’t work on him at all.

What in the world was he supposed to think of this? In the past, he recalled how much he had been immersed in the newfound sensation of being guided by the saintess.

“It’s different from the past. And what changed since then was…”

Mumbling to himself, he found only one difference from the past.

No. He thought of Irene herself.

“Is it because she guided me?”

It shouldn’t matter who was guiding him though. He had also been guided by other Guides back in Korea.

But then, he recalled one such Esper he met in the past.

He was an Esper who was so exceedingly exhausted that he couldn’t even lift a single finger anymore, but he persistently looked for his own Guide.

The other Guides around him had been worried because his condition was dire, but no matter how much they tried to guide him, he couldn’t accept their energy at all.

Mystified by the Esper’s condition at that time, Ciel asked the saintess about it, and she replied,

[ He’s imprinted. If it’s not from his imprinted Guide, he won’t be able to accept other people’s guiding energy, no matter how much they try. That’s why you have to be careful about imprinting. ]

At that time, he was still unaware about the saintess’s true nature because it hadn’t been long since he came to Korea.

He could recall that moment with stark clarity due to one thing: he had been so shocked by her derisive laughter and cold voice.

As he was walking aimlessly, he stopped in his tracks all of a sudden. A single word pierced through his mind and robbed him of all of his nerves.

Imprint.

What if they had imprinted?