The group entered the teleportation circle. 

As the number of people who would teleport was quite high, they had to use the teleportation circle in groups. A few groups would go first and wait at the destination, then the prince would teleport alongside the people who accompanied him on the road to here, and then the rest of the agents would follow them.

“Haha!”

The prince smiled at Kain and Kairen while stepping into the teleportation circle. The two of them avoided his gaze and only focused on teleporting. Who knew what would happen if someone saw them talking disrespectfully to the prince? Nah, let’s not risk anything. 

OOOO

A light wrapped around the four men and the next second, they were in another location far away from the place they were standing just now.

“Please, this way!”

As soon as they arrived, they saw team leader Dains standing in front of the teleportation circle and gesturing to the prince to follow him. He was walking towards the cars parked outside the teleportation center. The group followed him and walked towards the cars. 

‘But really, this is weird… It doesn’t feel right!’

Kairen never expected that he would once day, escort a prince! It kinda felt like he had gone back in time or something like that. He once again thought that his job really was a strange job.

Just like last time, they got in the car and drove towards their destination. The city where they teleported to was close to the borders, but still, it would take about an hour for them to arrive at their destination, which was a place between the two countries, far away from any nearby cities. 

This was their first destination. They would visit three locations today. All of the locations were far from each other so they had to start moving from early in the morning. 

‘A lot of reporters must be waiting for the prince there…’

Just thinking about the situation made Kairen shiver. Before, he was happy that he was a mage and didn’t need to face those reports as Reyan did in the past two days, but now that he was assigned to protect the price while he was going around, Kairen didn’t think he would have a peaceful day.

Chhhap

“Here!”

Kairen heard a fairly loud and sudden voice. Something was shoved in front of Kairen’s face the next second.

“….”

Kairen looked at the bag of chips in front of his face.

“…?”

He then looked at the person who was holding the bag.

“Have some snacks. There is still a long time left until we arrive so no one will know about this!”

Kairen looked at the bag of chips with a blank face before turning to Kain. He too was staring at the prince with a similar expression to Kairen’s.

“It will take a while for us to arrive there, right?”

The prince shot them a bright smile.

“It’s still early in the morning. I’m sure you also didn’t have the time to eat anything!”

He shook the bag in his hands.

“Have some!”

“….”

“….”

Smile.

As if he was not affected by the awkward atmosphere at all, the young prince smiled even more with a persistent gaze.

Seeing no reaction from the two agents sitting on either side of him, the prince leaned a little bit forward and moved the bag of chips towards Alan who was sitting on the front seat.

“You too, mister!”

Alan raised one eyebrow after seeing the bag.

“Thanks, brat!”

He picked up a handful of chips and stuffed them inside his mouth with a sleepy face.

“Gasp!”

A gasp left Kain’s mouth.

‘He called the prince ‘brat’!’

Kain looked at Alan with a wide-open mouth, then looked at Kairen.

‘Is this man crazy? Does he want to die? He will get all of us killed!’

He once again looked at the man who was lazily chewing chips before staring at the prince with a shocked and scared expression.

“Ah!”

The prince also had a blank face for a moment before his smile got even more radiant.

“Have some more, sir!”

“No, it’s enough.”

“Okay!”

The boy cheerfully nodded and leaned back on his seat. He then looked at Kairen and Kain with an urging gaze as if saying that it was fine for them to also eat now that the rude agent had done it. The two men had no choice but to also grab some chips.

‘Is a prince even allowed to eat chips?’

Kairen tilted his head.

‘And an ordinary chips like this? Shouldn’t their chips be made out of gold?’

Who would think that one day, they would be eating chips with a prince they were supposed to protect.

He couldn’t help but wonder how this boy was supposedly the main reason that two countries with old grudges were working on achieving peace.

Crunch

He took a bite of the chips.

He was really hungry. He was grateful for the snacks. 

After about one hour of driving, they finally arrived at their destination. 

“They are here!”

“Camera! Prepare the camera!”

“Oh, it’s the prince! Are they SMF’s agents?”

“Can you lower your masks?”

“They wear those to conceal their identities what do you mean by lower the mask?”

“Prince! Please look this way!”

‘Oh my god…’

Just as Kairen had expected, the place was packed by reporters. Everywhere he glanced, he could see someone with a camera or microphone approach. 

“This way!”

Kairen followed the team leader while doing his best not to be swayed around by the crowd. The good thing was that the other team members were there to act as a barrier between the prince and the crowd so Kairen only needed to struggle a little bit until the others, the aura wielders, of course, push back the reporters.

They walked for a few more minutes until they arrived at a building. More specifically, a ruined building. They were in a place that resembled a small residential area. There were a lot of buildings and Kairen could also see some cars. 

The building, alongside all other buildings around it, was crumbled all over. The cars were crashed and the trees had fallen on them. When one looked closer, one could even see some red marks on the ground. Debris and broken walls had fallen all over. It was a scene of pure destruction.

“Ah!”

The prince gasped upon seeing the ruined buildings. At that moment, someone in neat closing stepped forward and started to talk with a serious face.

“This place used to be a village. Around 700 people used to live in this place. Their main job was to raise livestock and create various products with them.”

He pointed at the destroyed village.

“Until it was attacked by Bordkly’s soldiers a few months ago and was completely destroyed. Most of its residents fleed, but a lot died as well. The villagers had to abandon their homes and seek refuge in the other villages. Their lives were completely destroyed.”

The man turned to the prince.

“What does the prince have to say about it?”

The prince looked at the village that was destroyed by the soldiers of his own country. He moved closer to the village and looked around. 

‘Ah! It’s that place!’

Kairen got to know about this incident while he was organizing some data for Glenn. The place was attacked out of the blue in the midst of the conflicts on the mascry mines. As much as Kairen knew, they labeled the attack as some kind of ‘incident’ that was caused because of some mere soldiers disobeying their commander.

Hainston demanded a proper explanation, but in the end, only the soldiers were punished and not even an apology was heard from Bordkly.

Even though Kairen didn’t really belong to this country or this world, hearing such a thing still made him annoyed. He turned his head and secretly glared at the prince, waiting for his reaction.

Shhhh

But then, he had to lower his head after hearing a strange sound.

Shhhh

Shhhh

Kairen looked down at the ground. 

Shhhh Shhhh Shhhh

The soil was moving under his feet. 

‘Huh?’

The soil was moving so irregularly that one needed to be stupid not to understand what this meant.

‘The soil dude? He is here?’

Kairen raised his head and looked around. 

‘Where is he?’

He looked at the destroyed village, there was no one. 

He looked behind, looked at the distant mountain, looked at the woods not too far away. But he couldn’t see anyone.

“Kairen, is something the matter?”

Kairen looked at Rai who was approaching him. 

‘Should I tell him?’

They had to report anything they thought was suspicious. Kairen looked down at the ground and moved his hand to point at the shaking soil.

“Ah, Just now the-“

Shhhhh

The soil moved again before he could finish his sentence. 

Shhh Shhh

The faint dust moved around and took some shapes. Nobody could notice the small unfamiliar shapes on the ground. Even if they did, they wouldn’t think that there might be any meaning behind them, except for Kairen.

-Wait.

Because those unfamiliar shapes were letters of his mother tongue.