Bartosa ran without any sense of direction.
His foot caught in a bush and sent him scrambling forward on all fours, and at some point one of his worn leather shoes slipped off and vanished without a trace, but he did not even notice. His mind was completely dominated by a single obsession: he had to get as far away from this terrifying place as possible, right now.
It was only when Bartosa reached a fork in the road that he finally managed to stop. Having paused to weigh the two directions, even if only for a moment, he at last began to recover his reason little by little.
Before him now stretched two roads, one to either side: a stone-paved road leading toward the square, and a rough dirt road leading away from the territory.
‘I should head west, obviously. First, I need to get as far away from the lands of the Imperials as possible! Then, if I slowly make my way south while avoiding people……!’
Yet even after reaching that conclusion, Bartosa somehow could not bring himself to step onto the dirt road. The final conversation he had shared with Owen earlier kept circling through his mind with strangely persistent force.
—There’s actually something I’ve wanted to ask you for a while. Why do you keep taking me around with you?
To the question…