“Hm, of course not. Anyway. The reason I called you here is not only to subdue demons, but to find the black corruption crystal.”

“Black corruption crystal? Does such a thing exist?”

“Exactly this. This is the crystal.”

Helbert pointed to a glass bottle that had been on the table.

They thought it was a fancy decoration due to the luxurious appearance of the glass bottle, but inside was a weightless, floating, black stonelike thing.

Lion turned the glass bottle upside down,

“I’ve traveled around the black corruption zones for quite some time, but I haven’t seen anything like this, how did you….”

“Hmm, I can tell you now. A fingerjointsized crystal appears randomly in the forest, and it takes a month to pollute, the starting point is vague, and touching the crystal only vaporizes and disappears.”

His words meant that the chances of finding it were almost zero.

But then, was the reason to find this to eliminate the black corruption?

Like Lucia’s internal question, Lion asked first.

“So, if we remove this, will the black corruption disappear?”

“No. If you remove it, the corruption’s progression will slow down, but it can’t be stopped. But the hopeful thing is, if we find this crystal here, it’s the second one, so we can conduct various experiments.”

The General began to tell the story of traveling around the empire to find the black corruption and collect the crystal for the last few years.

He had discovered it several times, but it vaporized and was lost, and recently, he had contained the crystal in holy water.

From his experience, there is a special demon wherever this crystal is, which is quite tricky, so Lucia, a Sword Master level, was needed.

And although the research hadn’t really started with only one crystal, there seemed to be hope that they could stop the black corruption by digging into the origin of the crystal in the future.

But Lucia knew the future, and there was no such hope in the future she knew.

There was only the sacrifice of the Saint.

At that moment, looking at Lucia, who seemed lost in thought with a skeptical look, Helbert said,

“Lucia. It’s true that this continent is having a hard time now. But if this becomes an opportunity for the citizens of the Empire to live prosperously even a little before the Saint appears, shouldn’t we work together?”

Lucia looked into the eyes of the shrewd grand duke, Helbert, who always seemed to understand her heart.

He was calmly persuading her as he did when she was young.
The look in his eyes made Lucia suddenly think that there might be the hope she had missed in the future where the saint was saved.

Anyway, unless the life of the saint was rooted in this land, the time it would take for the soil to come back to life might be hard even for a century.

“Well, then I’ll go back to the palace now. I worry that the Lion commander might imagine something strange if I go.”

“Commander Helbert……!”

“Ha, ha, ha! Move out of the way if you don’t want to be teased anymore. I have something to say to my daughter before I leave.”

He spoke jokingly, but there seemed to be much to ask from his serious look.

‘……Has this moment finally come?’

Helbert, the godfather, was the number one person who would come running if she had a child.

Looking at him, Lucia began to think uncharacteristically about how she could easily get through this moment she had been worried about.