“Roan...?”
Raen reacted at once to Bido’s words.
“Uh... Bido, you can feel that now too?”
Even as she spoke, Raen’s expression soon stiffened strangely.
Without realizing it, Raen pressed a hand to her chest.
That cool sensation that had always lingered faintly somewhere deep inside,
that strange sense of foreignness she could never explain in words, but which had always been within her—she could no longer feel it.
Raen’s eyes slowly widened.
“That’s strange...”
Bido looked at her and said quietly,
“Raen. The fragment of the moon you had... moved to me.”
Even as he said that, Bido did not let go for even an instant of the sense stretching outward.
The cold shard was still pulling him in a fixed direction.
Roan’s aura seemed to be drawing closer, little by little,
yet unmistakably.
Bido drew a shallow breath.
He was approaching.
That much was certain.
But at the same time, he could tell.
Roan was not coming straight this way to find him right now.
Raen had said the same before.
That she could feel Roan, but Roan could not immediately find her.
This sensation was one-sided.
At least for now.
Bido traced the flow through the cold shard inside his chest.
Roan’s aura was so dense and vast
that it could be felt clearly, like the bitter cold of midwinter pushing in from far away.
But that did not mean his gaze was directed immediately this way.
For now, it was closer to the fragment inside him recognizing and reacting to the far greater main body first.
The problem was what came next.
If the distance narrowed further—
would it really remain one-sided then?
Bido sensed it instinctively.
For now, he was only the one feeling it first,
but the moment Roan came closer, it would certainly change.
Just as a scattered shard could feel its main body,
the main body would also have no choice but to notice the location of its shard.
From that moment on, it would become a chase.
Bido’s fingertips stiffened ever so slightly.
Not now.
If he faced Roan in this body, he could neither fight nor properly flee.
He could hold a sword, but he could not swing it,
and though his body could endure, he still could not bring out his full strength.
Above all, facing Roan without even fully understanding what this sensation meant was far too dangerous.
Ed asked with a hardened face,
“Bido. How close is he?”
Bido could not answer right away.
It was not a question he could answer with numbers.
There was only one thing that was clear.
The pull that had been vague until moments ago had now become vivid enough that he could not ignore it.
That cold aura was certainly not somewhere far away, unrelated to this Velosa.
Bido slowly opened his mouth.
“He hasn’t... come right up in front of us yet.”
Then he swallowed a short breath.
“But he’s getting closer. Slowly.”
Raen looked down at her own hand with a complicated expression.
The thing only she had been able to do until moments ago
had now completely passed over to Bido.
She seemed unable to believe that fact,
but at the same time, she knew the tension on Bido’s face was not a lie.
Wollyeon said in a low voice,
“Then we don’t have many choices.”
Jincheong also turned his gaze toward the door and quietly adjusted his stance.
Ed already had the look of someone unconsciously preparing to go outside.
Bido was still staring in one direction.
Roan had not discovered him yet.
But that might only be true for now.
Before that distance narrowed any further, they had to move first.
Bido spoke in a low, clear voice.
“We... have to move before he does.”
Ed was the first to speak.
“Even so, we can’t move on our own right now.”
Jincheong immediately followed.
“We have to wait until Miryeong returns first.”
Wollyeon frowned and muttered under her breath,
“What a mess... the Empire and the Moon Demon both.”
The words were brief, but they struck precisely at the inside of Bido’s chest.
Until just before, he had not been Roan’s target.
The Empire had already been after him, but that was the Empire’s affair.
But now it was different.
Now, both the Empire and Roan.
In the end, both had no choice but to come for him.
For a moment, Bido felt a suffocating tightness.
The cold shard inside his chest once again made its presence heavily known,
and the sensation that had been so clear until just now seemed only to confirm that fact even more distinctly.
Raen looked at Bido’s face and then carefully opened her mouth.
“Where on earth is Maho? He’s never here when we need him...”
It was at that moment.
A familiar voice came from outside the window.
“I’m here.”
Raen started and turned her head.
“Maho?”
Raen’s eyes widened for a moment as if dumbfounded, and then she immediately poured out her words.
“Don’t tell me you were secretly listening from outside again? Like some creep?”
Maho slipped swiftly in through the open window.
The moment he lightly stepped on the windowsill and entered the room, he growled low.
“Who are you calling a creep?”
Then he added curtly,
“I can hear everything anyway, even from far away.”
Maho swept his gaze once around the room, then fixed his eyes directly on Bido.
Unlike before, his face now held the cold composure of someone who had quickly grasped the situation.
“This is actually better.”
At those words, every gaze in the room turned to him at once.
Maho looked at Bido and said firmly,
“Now there’s only one person we need to protect—you.”
The words were so decisive that they made the room even quieter.
Soon his gaze shifted to Raen.
“At least Raen is out of that matter now.”
Raen’s expression twisted at once.
“No.”
She spoke almost reflexively.
“I’d rather I—”
But Maho did not listen to the end.
He raised a hand as if cutting her off, then said with an indifferent face,
“That’s not for you to decide.”
Raen’s lips pressed tightly shut.
She looked as if she wanted to argue,
but the look in Maho’s eyes that followed did not easily allow it.
He looked around at the people in the room and spoke in a low, solid voice.
“Don’t get too tense. I’ll handle it somehow.”
Those words certainly sounded confident,
but they were not simply meant to reassure.
If anything, they were closer to the conclusion of someone who had already calculated even the worst possibilities.
Among them, the one wearing the expression of someone who understood the situation least was the medical officer.
After trying for a long while to follow what everyone was saying,
he finally opened his mouth in a trembling voice.
“Wh-what in the world is happening here...?”
Silence settled briefly over the room again.
In that silence, Bido looked at Maho.
Maho was clearly pretending to be calm, but his eyes were not relaxed in the slightest.
And Bido could tell.
Maho, too, knew better than anyone that the current situation was by no means light.
The cold shard once again
trembled ever so faintly in one direction.
Roan would not stop.
The Empire would not back down either.
Bido slowly steadied his breath.
There truly was not much time left now.
“For now, stay here quietly.”
Maho spoke decisively.
Then he looked back at the medical officer.
The moment that gaze landed on him, the medical officer unconsciously hunched his shoulders.
“And you.”
Maho added in a low voice,
“Don’t go outside and let slip anything unnecessary.”
The medical officer nodded several times, as if he had been scolded into a daze.
“Y-yes, understood...”
Maho said nothing more.
After briefly looking around the room, taking in the window, the door, and everyone’s positions,
he walked straight over to the wall and took a spot there.
The place he leaned against gave him a full view of the entire room and the window.
“Guess it’s better if I stay here too.”
The words were tossed out casually, but that one sentence changed the air in the room a little once more.
There was discomfort, but at the same time, an undeniable sense of relief followed.
Just the fact that Maho was inside
meant there was now someone who would react first if anything came from outside.
Maho crossed his arms and spoke without even closing his eyes.
“Everyone hold your positions. Don’t make a fuss for no reason.”
Then he immediately jerked his chin toward Bido.
“Bido. You go lie down now too.”
Bido stood still for a moment after hearing those words.
The sensation that he could still stand on his own two feet remained,
and until just moments ago, the cold shard inside his chest had been telling him that he was different from before.
But that sensation did not mean recovery.
In the end, Bido quietly turned around.
When he slowly returned to the bed and sat on its edge, Raen approached without a word.
Until just now, she had looked ready to rebel,
but this time she did not say anything.
Instead, she carefully pulled up the blanket and covered Bido’s body.
Bido silently accepted the touch.
An uneasy tension still remained in the room.
The fact that Maho was beside them certainly meant they were safer,
but at the same time, it also meant no one could easily breathe.
Even so, for now, staying still like this was the right thing to do.
At least until their next move was decided.