Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 165: Ducklings behind the mother.

Clara stood there with a conflicted heart. Ozul did not interrupt her thoughts as she took a few minutes before tensely looking up.

“How... how can you be so sure that we have your arms?” She asked.

“That question is meaningless... If the Church does not have my arm, then you can forget about what I said. But if they do have it, shouldn’t it be returned to me?” Ozul explained calmly. Of course, he did not expect Clara to help him get his limbs back. He only wanted her to face the truth.

“But! But the recovery potions help thousands of people all over the continent! How can you take it back without considering those poor lives?!” Clara replied, a little flustered.

In the end, she was more inclined to persuade Ozul not to take his arms back.

“And who are you to tell me what I should do with what belongs to me?” Ozul squinted his eyes a little. She was naive as he expected.

Clara was taken aback by his question. It was true! She had no right over anyone to tell them what to do. As a member of the Church of Light, she could spread the teachings, but forcing someone to do something under the Church’s influence was nothing more than tyranny.

.....

“How can you... The Church is-”

Ozul did not let her finish as she was nervously trying to find words to say something.

“The Church is doing it for the well being of the masses? Using something that belongs to me, hoarding treasures with the potions, and still experimenting on them. So noble,” Ozul said with a tone laced with sarcasm.

“Hey! You keep saying that the Church is doing it for their own good, but what proof do you have for such claims?!” Clara finally could not take it. She had grown up in it and had been taught everything there as well, so she did not like it whenever he insulted the Church.

“Oh? I do not have the proof, but are you that ignorant? The potions that reach the masses are of the worst quality. Have you compared the potion you had, and the mercenaries had?” Ozul asked.

Clara was silent since she had really not noticed anything.

“The recovery potion that you have is a hundred times better than any peasant can purchase. Of course, you wouldn’t know that since you never bought it... But being able to get their hands on the quality such as yours requires the aristocrats to pay with priceless treasures.” He scoffed.

“Those poor, helpless, thousands of dying people... how many lives would they have to work for them to pay to catch even a glimpse of something so expensive?” Ozul added as Clara’s face drew a blank.

After speaking his mind, Ozul sighed. He had really gone out of his way to speak so much.

Staring blankly in the air in front of her, Clara did not resist as Ozul led her out of the room before closing the door.

She was troubled and disoriented. Although what Ozul said perfectly made sense, she could not just suddenly change her feelings about a place and the people with whom she had grown up with.

That was all he could say to her. He knew that she was just a naive princess who had yet to see what people hid behind their amiable smiles.

It was up to her now if she wanted to keep believing in the hypocrisy or raise questions. Either way, he did not care. At least she would stop preaching about helping everyone to him from now on.

Unlike the previous hotel, the room in this one had curtains, but they were in poor condition.

Ozul lay down on the bed and only closed his eyes when he felt that Clara had walked away. Previously she was just standing there in a daze.

It was getting dark, so Ozul decided to sleep. He was not in the mood to read the book anymore now.

Before going to sleep, he spread his senses to observe the room next to his that was occupied by Cyril and Mark.

As usual, those two were drinking, smoking, and chit-chatting. From their merry attitude, no one would ever believe that they were assassins.

. . .

The next day, the group left the hotel early in the morning.

Leaving the town, Ozul led the others again at the same pace as before. He ignored the weird behavior of Clara during the travel.

She was quiet all the way and did not say anything to him after what happened yesterday.

Clara could not face him since what he said did really make sense. However, she could not make her decision solely on his talk.

She wanted to go back and ask herself if what he said was true or not. Until then, she could only awkwardly avoid talking about it.

Clara liked Ozul, and that is exactly the reason for the conflict inside her heart. If it were not someone who had saved her life multiple times, she would have instantly dismissed any of the claims against the Church.

Naturally, Ozul had taken into account that Clara would tell everyone that the arm belonged to him. He had still told her about that because it wouldn’t be much of a surprise for the people of Church.

Emperor Luthien had a good enough relationship with the Church for him to give at least one of the arms to them, so he did not doubt that he had probably informed them about him as well.

At most, they would try some schemes, but he was confident to deal with anything they threw at him.

Cyril and Mark felt the tension in the atmosphere, but they chose to remain silent as usual.

The group traveled for days with the same routine. Ozul switched between sometimes reading the book and sometimes just sleeping during the rests.

Three weeks passed just like that.

The group did not stop in any other city or town on the way this time. Nothing noteworthy happened during these three weeks.

Ozul had asked Mark, who told him that it would probably take another week at max for them to enter the Neutral Lands.

They had to change the direction they had started in after Mark told him that they would enter a city if they did not change their route. This would not have made him change his mind, but Mark informed him that it was also a famous city that people stopped by, following the Neutral Lands’ regular route.

So the group made a little detour around it and just increased their speed to make up for the longer distance.

Along the way, Ozul was happy. No one disturbed him during this time, so he enjoyed himself as much as he could.

Cyril and Mark practically listened to everything that he said. On the other hand, he did not have any confrontation with Clara after that day.

Although Clara felt awkward whenever she looked at him, Ozul was uncaring. He was satisfied with her not trying to talk with him.

They had already left the forest, so there weren’t as many trees as before. They had to run on the ground due to this reason as well.

“Hmm?” Ozul suddenly slowed down as he looked in his right direction.

“Something happened?” Cyril asked with a whisper, but Mark shook his head as he did not sense anything either.

“What is in that direction?” Ozul pointed towards the spot where he was looking.

The question was obviously directed towards Mark since he was the one good with directions and the geography of most places.

There hadn’t been a single city or town that he wasn’t able to name until now. Although a Mage had abnormally better IQ and brain capacity than an ordinary person, it was still a wonder how Mark had taken the time to memorize almost every settlement’s name and location.

And this was not all. He knew the discrete but useful areas of most of those towns or cities as well!

Even someone like Cyril, who was with him almost all day and every day, had to take help from the map to figure out where he was.

“That way? Hm... Oh! There should be Shawell city there at around twenty minutes distance from here,” Mark replied after looking around himself.

Yet again, he knew exactly the name of the city and how long it would take from there and everything. He was like a living and breathing map of this area.

“Anything interesting there?” Ozul inquired. At the end of the day, it all depended on his mood.

“Oh well, there couldn’t be anything interesting that you might find interesting in that city,” Mark replied, hinting at Ozul’s cultivation base.

As the duo thought that Ozul was a Rank-9 Mage, they also assumed that he was way older than he looked. He could probably be hundreds of years old, and they would never know since it could be just a simple technique of such old monsters.

So he concluded that nothing could interest an old monster like him in a small city that wasn’t even mentioned in bold letters on the map.

“Although, it is a city with a decent size,” Mark added before he backed away with Cyril following him.

‘Hmm... whatever,’ Ozul thought as he shrugged. Three weeks just looking at the trees had also bored him a little.

“Let’s just stop at one last city before we arrive then...” Ozul said before changing his direction towards this Shawell city as the others following him like some ducklings followed their mother.