However, a question always popped up at the end.

Why.

Why on earth would she want to help him?

Why would she want to help Bercheria?

“It doesn’t make sense.”

Lakrahan stood up from his seat.

After holding the wedding ceremony tonight, it seemed he would have to tighten the security around Bercheria.

“Bercheria!”

As he opened the bedroom door, he froze on the spot.
The spot where Bercheria should have been was completely empty.

Keeo-yok!

The man riding atop Muha clearly had a masculine appearance at first glance.

His muscular, dark skin was vividly exposed, even through the minimal clothing he wore despite the winter weather.

Bercheria looked up at the flying Muha and the man, her head tilted.

“This can’t be…”

Someone can control a divine beast at will?

The man’s actions seemed to suggest just that.

Muha moved as if it were a toy, fully under the man’s control.

Every time he gripped the nearly bald feathers on Muha’s head and shook them from side to side, Muha obediently changed direction like a docile sheep.

Muha slowly descended in a glide, eventually landing gently in front of Bercheria.

The flapping of its wings ripped up trees and grass, sending them flying through the air.

The wind was so strong that even Bercheria, standing in front of it, struggled to stay upright.

Barely maintaining her stance, she watched as the condor’s massive feet touched down.

The ground shook, and the man who had been riding Muha leapt to the ground.

“……”

Bercheria observed him cautiously as he approached.

He had an exotic appearance she had never seen before in her life.

His dark skin evoked a sun-scorched beach on a hot summer day.

It felt as though he was walking alone in a tropical night, despite the cold weather.

As the distance between Bercheria and the boldly approaching man narrowed, she opened her mouth, still tense.
“Are you the one who sent me the note?”

The man who came up close suddenly embraced Bercheria tightly.

“What are you doing…!”

Bercheria froze, her hands reaching into thin air.

The unusually large man held the petite Bercheria in his arms and exhaled deeply.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

His fervent voice made Bercheria momentarily wonder if she’d forgotten a long-established relationship with him.

“…Who exactly are you to do this?”

At the sound of Bercheria’s voice, he startled and let her go.

“Ah, right. I haven’t introduced myself yet.”

The man knelt on one knee and lifted one arm forward.

The muscles in his flexed arm and the tendons crossing over it were strikingly clear.

“I am the Earth God who protects the Kingdom of Kontana.”

Bercheria’s eyes widened gradually.

The Guardian of the Kingdom of Kontana.

The Earth God, Dikfer.

Dikfer lifted his mysterious silver eyes and looked at her with a seductive, soft gaze.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time. My Bercheria.”

Bercheria looked at Dikfer, her eyes full of bewilderment.

“The Guardian of the Kingdom of Kontana…”

He rose from his kneeling position, brushing back his wild, long hair.

“Yes, I am that Dikfer. Bercheria.”

Bercheria still seemed incredulous, turning her gaze toward Muha behind him.
“That’s right. Your Muha’s name… Ah, belated as it is, the name that Bercheria gave really suits the child remarkably well. It seems he quite likes it too.”

Bercheria’s open mouth simply could not close.

“Muha is a divine beast that I personally brought from the crater of lava, so it’s not difficult for me to understand his feelings.”

“Are you talking about when Muha was an egg?”

Dikfer pulled up his rosy lips into a healthy-looking smile.

“Stumbling upon you while bringing that egg back, it was destiny itself.”

Muha’s mother was originally a phoenix.

The phoenix mother fell in love with a condor and laid a single egg.

Dikfer, the deity of the Earth, possessed the ability to detect life’s energy.

Whenever hybrids or life forms with other peculiarities appeared in the world, he assessed whether they would bring harm or benefit to humans and acted accordingly.

It was a sort of wholesome hobby for him.

“From the time Muha was in the egg, he was destined to be a divine beast.”

Divine beast births were extremely rare, so he was cautiously transporting the small egg.

Suddenly, the egg slipped from his hands and seemed to disappear into the elongated tower as if it had been waiting for this moment.

At that time, Dikfer, who was riding on the back of the mother phoenix, went to find the egg and met Bercheria.

A young girl, crouched alone in the narrow tower, crying.
Seeing the powerless child crying as if about to die was so heart-wrenching that he couldn’t bring himself to approach, and instead observed her from a distance for some time.

He hadn’t even considered that the child could be Bercheria at that moment.

Unable to take the egg from the girl, Dikfer decided to leave everything to fate and left the tower.

“I returned to the Kingdom of Kontana as I was, and, as Bercheria knows, the times that followed were breathless. I was overwhelmed just purifying the blood that flowed upon the Earth.”

At that time, Dikfer felt so cornered that he wanted to exterminate all humans.

Despite washing away the blood of sinful humans again and again, they continued to kill each other, hate, and strangle.

“Then, not long ago, I heard the voice of the Absolute God.”

The Absolute God.

It was yet another moment when his opinion was intervening.

“The Absolute God gave me a command that felt like destiny itself.”