“…Was that woman the mage who told you to come see me?”
The moment Jardine entered the laboratory, he was left speechless by the two faces he saw. Given the late hour, he had known there would not be many people around, but he had never expected those two to be the only ones there.
His gaze moved back and forth between the Sapphire Chief Knight and the traitor.
“…The other mages are currently away, so there was unfortunately no other choice.”
Jardine realized that although the Adventurer’s words were kindly meant, they were not the truth. In fact, the Adventurer himself seemed to know that the excuse was not particularly convincing.
“…I see.”
But that was as far as it went.
Jardine suppressed the emotion surging up within him. It was what he ought to do. Whether all the mages had collectively discovered the matter or the traitor alone had noticed it, the fact remained that he had experienced a nightmare.
Moreover, the Adventurer was someone who, for Jardine’s sake, had raced down the corridor in the middle of the night and come all the way to his room. It would be wrong to repay him by shifting resentment onto him instead of expressing gratitude.
Especially when the truth he had deliberately obscured had, in fact, been obscured out of consideration for Jardine.
“Hoo.”
And so Jardine took several breaths and brought his anger under control.
“Rookie.”
Once he had regained his composure, the Sapphire Chief Knight spoke to him. That was far preferable to being addressed by…