“W-What? Isn’t he a teenager?”
Raha stared at Hayden, his eyes blinking rapidly, opened so wide they felt like they might pop out.
He wondered if the title of the youngest Margrave was given not just because of his age, but also due to this youthful appearance.
For a moment, he stared intently at him, finding his looks young enough to pass for an actual adolescent.
Then, suddenly remembering he was naked under a single blanket, he hurriedly reached down to cover his lower half.
In his haste, coffee spilled from the cup in his hand.
But in that split second, sand poured from Hayden’s hand, straightening the tilted coffee cup and catching the coffee right before it could crash onto the floor.
Miraculously, the liquid coffee floated and sloshed in midair, completely untouched by the sand.
It looked so magical and fascinating that Raha let out an exclamation of awe without realizing it.
“Wow…”
“…”
Hayden used the sand to put the floating coffee back into the straightened cup, then handed it to Raha and spoke.
“The sand didn’t touch it, so you can drink it.”
“…Ah, thank you.”
‘That startled me. His voice sounds young, too… Wait, how old was the Margrave in the original novel?’
He couldn’t recall exactly, but since the novel itself was a 19+ BL novel, there was no way he wasn’t an adult.
Even if that weren’t the case, someone who wasn’t an adult couldn’t inherit the position of family head, so that alone meant he couldn’t be a minor.
Even so, looking at Hayden, who was pretty enough to make anyone doubt his adult status, Raha couldn’t help but think it was incredibly impressive for someone with such a youthful face to be guarding the border region of the Monster Forest.
“The reason I sought out the High Priest in such a hurry is because I need to receive treatment right away.”
“…Pardon?”
Clearly, after Raha had come to the Grand Duke’s castle, he was told that Edrion had taken over the treatment of the other element masters.
Teore had no reason to lie, so that had to be true.
Raha couldn’t understand why Hayden had come looking for him instead of getting treated by Edrion.
“I stopped by the High Temple early this morning to receive treatment from the new High Priest, but the new High Priest couldn’t manifest the light attribute properly.”
“…Pardon?”
“I don’t know the reason either. For now, I must return to the border region as quickly as possible for my subordinates, who are fighting monsters even at this very hour.”
Hayden, stating that they should skip the detailed explanation since time was short, reached his hand out to Raha.
“Please treat me quickly.”
Raha stared at the outstretched hand for a moment.
Then, loosening his grip on the blanket, he took Hayden’s hand.
Instantly, the light attribute inside Raha’s body flowed rapidly into Hayden.
Checking how messily tangled Hayden’s attribute waves were, Raha knit his brows automatically.
‘He definitely should have been treated by the real Raha last time, or was he not…? If he’s in this state even after receiving treatment in the first place, it seems like he uses his powers a massive amount compared to the other element masters.’
Well, that actually made sense.
The man practically lived in the border region and fought monsters like he was eating regular meals, so it would be stranger if his attribute waves weren’t tangled to this extent.
‘If the waves are tangled this badly, it must hurt even just standing still.’
According to the original novel, an unbearable amount of pain was supposed to rush in during the entire process of a rampage.
In particular, the pain was said to multiply depending on how tangled the waves were.
In the original work, details about whose waves were more messily tangled never appeared separately—it had only described general facts like that—so Raha only realized just now that Hayden was someone who used his attribute exceptionally more than the other four element masters.
For some reason, Raha felt a surge of irritation, feeling like grown adults were pushing dangerous work onto a young kid while living peaceful lives themselves.
Of course, the other four element masters were also busy managing their own territories and moving around to save villages attacked by monsters whenever they had a spare moment.
So, he knew very well that Hayden wasn’t the only one suffering.
Even so, because of this adolescent appearance attached to a body that was just incredibly tall, Raha kept feeling displeased.
Because of that, Raha channeled an excessively large amount of the light attribute into him.
Hayden looked at him as if slightly surprised, but Raha didn’t offer any particular explanation for his current actions.
When the original Raha performed treatments, he hated empty silence like a disease, so he used to talk about this and that in front of Hayden, annoying him quite a bit.
Hayden, whose mind was completely filled only with tactics on how to fight efficiently, tried his best to let Raha’s chattering go in one ear and out the other.
However, when the talking became excessive, it was loud enough to cause a throbbing headache, so there were countless times he just left mid-treatment.
Since Raha had already seen those details in the original novel, he resolved not to rub him the wrong way if possible.
But then.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Since he wasn’t talking, Hayden questioned him as if demanding to know why.
“Pardon…?”
“Didn’t you always ramble about this and that during treatments?”
“Ah… well, I’m trying to restrain myself. You dislike it, don’t you?”
When Raha spoke with an awkward smile, Hayden’s eyebrows twitched up in a strange manner.
“I have no memory of ever asking you to restrain yourself.”
“Ah, right. It’s just that I simply don’t want to do that anymore, so you don’t need to mind it.”
“…Why is that?”
“Pardon?”
“I am asking why you no longer wish to ramble about trivial stories like before.”
When he chattered noisily, the man hated it because it was noisy, and now that he wasn’t chattering, the man wore a dissatisfied expression because he wasn’t chattering.
‘Good grief, I don’t know which tune I’m supposed to dance to.’
Raha barely swallowed the sigh that naturally threatened to escape. He focused all his attention on quickly channeling the light attribute to untangle the knotted waves.
“Didn’t you say it makes you dizzy?”
While Raha was focusing on the rampage suppression treatment, Hayden asked.
Raha couldn’t help but wonder why this guy was casually doing the very thing to him that he used to hate having done to himself.
‘Wait, wasn’t the Top who hated talking during treatment to the point of glaring fiercely this guy?’
To say he wasn’t, the detail was stamped too clearly in his memory.
Hayden had definitely received quite a bit of stress because of the Raha who babbled throughout the entire treatment.
“Pardon?”
“You said it yourself, High Priest, that you get dizzy if you channel too much of the attribute power.”
“Ah…”
It seemed the original Raha had indeed said that.
He had been entirely frantic about staying even a little bit longer with the Tops to find out the progress of the relationship between Blizan and Edrion, so it made sense.
‘Well, it’s not like he lied about it.’
Except for the fact that the original Raha liked Blizan fanatically, was deeply obsessed, and threw tantrums at Edrion, he was actually a very decent High Priest.
He never neglected studying his own abilities, and because of that, he knew exactly how to perform treatment so that both he and the element masters could receive it comfortably and stably.
“Yes, it’s fine. I can just rest right after the treatment is over anyway.”
“Are you sleeping here, with Teore?”
“…”
At Hayden’s question, Raha stared blankly at him.
He hadn’t expected this kind of question, so he felt quite flustered.
