Meanwhile, Amphita shouted to the nearby captain and the scribe who were hastily summoned.

“Summon all the palace healers and priests! Send messengers to the temples in the capital and tell the priests with divine powers to come to the palace right away!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Secretary Aldeine, take care of Princess Asteril and select children who can handle divine powers.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

She sighed as she looked at the door of Asteril’s hastily prepared residence.

All the palace healers and priests in the capital were summoned to heal Asteril. Her condition was critical. The wounds were deep and too much blood had been lost. If she were an ordinary person, she would have already lost her life.

The Highest Priestess, the highest ranking of Demeter’s priests, resided in the Great Hall of Sidhe. The requirements to become a High Priest were primarily based on having exceptional divine or natural powers.

Fortunately, the Highest Priestess’s power was healing, as was Asteril’s, and when she arrived at the palace on an urgent call, she was able to assess the situation.

The Highest Priestess immediately drank a glass of water and opened her divine power with the other priests who came with her to heal Princess Asteril.

“Okay, how is she?”

The Highest priestess, who was kneeling and sitting, sighed, stealing the sweat from her forehead. She had been by Asteril’s side for two days and looked quite tired.

There were many people in Amphita’s audience room. King Amphita, her daughter Princess Kiane, Aldeine, the king’s secretary, Heonis, the captain of the guard, and the acting head of the council.

They all surrounded her with serious faces, waiting for her to speak.

“Fortunately, the wound was not heavily infected. After we stopped the bleeding, the healers smoothly stitched it up. However, she has not regained her strength yet, so we need to keep an eye on her progress. It’s fortunate that the princess has strong natural powers. If she didn’t, no matter how much divine power we applied, it would have been difficult for her to survive.”

“What was the cause of her injury? What did she hurt?”

“Judging by the shape and depth of the wound, it seems like a stab wound.”

“A stab wound?”

“She seems to have been stabbed with a spear that’s about this long. Who on earth would dare to do such a despicable thing to the princess…?”

Amphita’s expression was calm, but the hand holding the armrest trembled with anger. She was so shocked that her mouth wouldn’t close.

The Highest Priestess continued speaking while keeping an eye on the situation.

“Currently, the princess is recovering, but she has a high fever. It seems like she is trying to heal herself while continuously raising her body temperature. She is saying nonsense due to her weakened state. Her whole body is drenched in sweat due to the fever, and we are concerned that she may become dehydrated if this continues. If her fever doesn’t go down by the end of today, it could be a precarious situation.”

“That’s why I called you all here, didn’t I?”

Amphita frowned. Although it wasn’t the Highest Priestess’s fault that Asteril was lying there, she was angry at her attitude of avoiding responsibility.

What had Asteril done to them in the past? Despite being a princess, didn’t she take on all sorts of dirty work for the commoners and show respect and courtesy to even the lowest-ranking priest, going as far as to go to Cocytus?

Even if they squeezed out their life span to save her, it seemed like they were saying that they had done their job after only two days…

“We’ll do our best.”

The Highest Priestess stood up with a pale face, staggering. The king may not understand, but she and the other priests had spent day and night fighting for Asteril’s life.

The Highest Priestess, in particular, was over sixty years old. For two days, she tried her best, and her eyes began to glaze over. But even if she were to die here, she had to save Princess Asteril.

All the priests of Demeter owed her a debt, so it was not an exaggeration.

“Kiane!”

Amphita called her daughter with an angry voice. Kiane slightly lowered her head next to her.

What was the meaning of the princess of the kingdom being stabbed with a spear? Did the allied countries attack Lethe and attack my daughter? Or did that insolent king play with the princess by stabbing her with a spear?

“Where is the man who brought Ril? Bring him to me right away.”

“Well…”

Kiane looked hesitant.

“We’ve been searching for soldiers since yesterday, but we haven’t found him yet.”

“You haven’t found him?”

“Two days ago, the captain of the guard ordered us to secure new recruits, but according to him, a sudden dust storm blew and he disappeared like smoke.”

“Disappeared like smoke? What on earth does that mean?”

“I’ve interrogated him several times, but he seemed like he was possessed by a ghost and was in a state of madness. As soon as he disappeared, the soldiers were released and the entire palace was searched, but they still haven’t found him.”

It was questionable how he had entered the heavily guarded palace in the first place. The captain of the guard blamed everything on his mistake. If Kiane hadn’t stopped him, he would have killed himself.

“He must be somewhere in the palace.”

Amphita muttered, pointing to the maze. The gaze of the king, who was staring into space, seemed complex.

“What do you think?”

“….”

“Does he have any intriguing aspects?”

“His pupils.”

“I’ve seen it too.”

“I’ve seen that eye color before. It’s purple like amethyst…”

Amphita put her forehead on her hand as if digging up distant memories.

“Kiane, you must know about Kore as well.”

“Isn’t she a native goddess who protects Demeter? I know that there are still regions far from the capital that worship Kore.”

“Yes, the people of Demeter have worshipped and followed Kore since ancient times. The names attached to Kore differed from village to village, but they all had the commonality of being a virgin goddess. There were times when people believed that various disasters, including plagues, were the curse of Kore and vandalized the altars and statues of the virgin goddess, but many people recovered their faith by working hard to restore them.”

It had been one of the things that Kiane had not understood for a long time. She thought she should express her opinion now.

“Why do we try so hard to preserve native beliefs, Your Majesty? Is it because you believe that Kore is the primitive form of the Mother Goddess?”

“Kiane, what do you think a god is?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Kiane opened her mouth with determination.

“To be honest… I believe it’s an existence that comforts the lives of poor people. And I believe that even the king should know how to use that existence properly for governance.”

Kiane was an exceptional child in every way. In terms of her cold judgment, she was a perfect candidate to become the king who led the country. However…

“Do you still think that way after seeing him today?”

Kiane couldn’t answer right away.

The King of Haides.

The moment she saw him, she felt like her long-held beliefs were crumbling down.

She had felt a similar feeling when she saw Asteril in the past, but perhaps because it had become dulled over time or because it had become a close presence like a blood relative, the awe she felt when she first met her had faded considerably.

Thus, she believed in her thoughts once again. That a god only existed in the mind.

“Long ago, I too had the same thoughts as you. Kore… It was a story from the first time I met her.”

“Kore… you mean the virgin goddess?”

“That’s right.”

“But isn’t Kore a god? How could you meet a god in person?”

Was it a misunderstanding? The king’s gaze seemed to be filled with sadness.

“Each province had a different name for the Kore they believed in. Do you not know that the city of Sidhe was named for a Kore named Sidhe? And that the most famous of the Kores was a maiden goddess who had as many names as there are mountains in Demeter?”

Kiane was born during a time when worshipping Kore was taboo and when Kore was shunned. She was in the dark about Kore’s history.

“I don’t know very well…”

“There was a woman who was once called the living Kore. She had many names, but the most famous and widely known name was…”

The Gift of Abundance, the Giver of All, the First Woman.

The one who embodied all those meanings.

The one who embodied all those meanings.

“She was Pandora.”

— Continued in Volume III.