Amber Sword

The Elf Girl hugged her head and squatted down with a yelp of pain, and Brand finally reacted. He immediately turned back to look at "Otarais" and asked, "She's Otarais, then you are?"

"She just likes playing pranks. I'm Otarais." The Elf Sister answered domineeringly, completely unreasonable.

The Elf Girl's tears were already spilling out; she felt so wronged she just wanted to sob. Since when did she like playing pranks, and how did her name get taken away as well? But she didn't dare say a single word of this—she could only clutch her head and silently cry.

"Then who exactly is she?"

"She is… um… Soya."

Brand actually already had the answer in his heart.

He had long suspected something was off: when the Elf Sister talked, she often used equal terms with the King of Flames, the Great Sage Fanzan, and even Elrant. As a Knight of the Wind Queen, that was a very abnormal thing. Secondly, would the Blade Knight Otarais really master the inheritance of the Wind Queen Nine Luminaries? He very much doubted it.

It was just that Brand truly found it hard to believe that the legendary figure from the stories would be the Elf Sister who lived with him day and night, teaching and supporting him with all her heart, occasionally even throwing little tantrums. The "Otarais" she gave him the feeling of was more like a big sister from next door, not the cold, distant hero of legend.

This answer really shattered his expectations a bit too much.

His expression remained calm as he pretended to be puzzled. "Soya? Isn't that the 'Wind Speaker'? If I'm not mistaken, Lady Suoya is supposed to have rare Black long hair, and she certainly wouldn't be this young."

"Otarais" glared at him fiercely with her pair of violet-blue eyes.

Brand pretended not to see. "Also, Otarais, didn't you die in the Gray Swamp! I only just remembered—how would you know the details of the last battle with the Dark Dragon?"

"Because I told her!" she replied viciously.

"You told her?"

"You…" The Elf Sister finally realized she'd let something slip again, but this was a bad habit she still hadn't managed to fix even after over a thousand years.

"I don't want to see you for the rest of today, Brand! Get far, far away from me—go as far as you possibly can!"

The Elf Sister threw down those words and then vanished right in front of him. From the look of it, she really was angry. Brand sighed; the answer was indeed as he had guessed: "Otarais" was "Saint Ausor."

Which meant she was the Sage of the Wind Elves, one of the four Saints of the Saint War—the Wind Queen.

Nemesia watched all of this. Until the Elf Sister snarled one last line at Brand and then disappeared, she just stared blankly for a moment, then calmly asked, "Did I do something wrong?"

Since most of Brand's communication with the Wind Queen Saint Ossor was carried out through consciousness, she hadn't understood what was going on. Brand shrugged. "It has nothing to do with you, Lady Nimesis."

It was just someone lashing out from embarrassment.

...

The real Otarais from history sat properly and primly, eyes brimming with tears as she looked at Brand. Brand could only comfort her helplessly a couple of times. To think a heroic soul of the mighty Saint War could actually be bullied into crying by the Wind Queen—this older sister really did have a nasty personality.

Only then did he turn back and explain the matter of the Soul Imprint Ring to Nemesia—of course, without mentioning anything about the Wind Queen. After all, Nemesia had already seen the scene just now; if he kept trying to cover things up, it would only make her more suspicious. It was better to brush it off with seventy percent truth and thirty percent lies for now—the key was that the identity of the Wind Queen's heroic soul was far too sensitive, and Brand had no desire to be hunted down by the Wind Elf.

"So this is the inheritance of the Wind Elf?" Nemesia appeared quite calm after listening, and didn't pursue the question of identities. "But why would it end up in the Human World?"

"Strictly speaking, it's the inheritance of the Mist Elf," Brand replied. "After the Silver Fire went out, today's Wind Elves are no longer the same clan as in the Saint War. The Holy Seal falling into the outside world isn't without cause either."

Nemesia's eyelashes trembled slightly.

"You said a person can't put on two Wind Queen's Rings, right?" she asked again.

"The key point is that even if you do, it's meaningless. A single inheritance contains knowledge beyond counting—for most people, even a lifetime wouldn't be enough to truly grasp it. Things like the Holy Seal Ring aren't the more the better—if you greedily chase after everything, you'll only ever skim the surface." Brand answered using the Wind Queen's original words.

"So you're not going to take it," Nemesia asked. "Can you give this ring to me?"

Brand was taken aback for a moment. In truth, he'd wanted to save it for Frey. But then he thought about it: although Otarais's title was Blade Knight, her teacher Soya was the famed Divine Archer of the Mist Elf Clan, and by the looks of it she herself used a bow. It might not really be suitable for the future Valkyrie.