Isaac noticed the subtle delay.
He could tell what was happening even without hearing anything.
Gael was clearly having a heated telepathic exchange with the vice general and officers above.
From the way the soldiers shifted their stances and looked toward Gael, the argument was probably not a short one.
Another minute passed.
Then the vice general on the ridge finally gave a reluctant gesture.
The mages lowered their spell circles. Archers relaxed their bows, and the soldiers began to withdraw from the edges of the cliffs.
It didn’t happen all at once, but gradually the ridges emptied.
Soon, the valley returned to its earlier quiet state.
Only the three of them remained.
Gael let out a small sigh as he rolled his shoulders.
"Sheesh. They worry about me like I’m a kid," he said.
He looked at Isaac again.
"So. What is this special information? And why are you so open about sharing it?"
"We are from the future."
For a moment, Gael simply stared at him.
Isaac continued speaking as if he had just stated something completely ordinary.
"We want to work together with the Sword Empress to stop the apocalypse. Of course, the people from the Ladder of Heaven don’t know that we plan to defect to your side."
Gael’s gaze flickered.
This time, the reaction was much stronger than before.
He had expected many possibilities. Hidden intelligence, some military movement, perhaps even a trap.
But this?
A small chuckle escaped him.
He shook his head slowly.
"Do you have any proof—"
His voice stopped mid-sentence.
Golden flames suddenly burst into existence.
They erupted around Alice like a living aura, swirling outward in bright arcs of light. The flames didn’t burn the ground or the air around them, but their presence carried a heavy pressure that filled the entire valley.
Alice stepped forward calmly.
In one smooth motion, she grabbed the handle of her battle axe and swung it lightly to the side.
The golden flames followed the movement.
For an instant, the air trembled.
Gael’s eyes widened.
"You are a noble one?" he said.
Then his gaze sharpened.
"And that..."
His relaxed smile disappeared completely.
"That was the master’s Art."
A terrifying aura exploded outward from him.
The wind itself seemed to pause for a moment under the pressure.
"How do you know that Art?" Gael asked.
Alice rested the axe on her shoulder.
"We are from the future. Isaac and I are the Sword Empress’ current disciples. This Art is one of the reasons we were chosen to come to the past. It was a surefire way to prove our allegiance," she said.
Gael didn’t answer immediately.
He stood there quietly, staring at the fading golden flames around Alice.
He didn’t want to admit it, but a part of him had already started believing them.
The technique Alice used was unmistakable.
That Art belonged to the Sword Maiden.
Very few people could hope to replicate its core principles without Sword Maiden teaching them.
Still, Gael forced himself to stay cautious.
There were always other possibilities.
Maybe they had learned it through some unknown method. Maybe they had seen it once and recreated it through sheer talent.
Both explanations sounded absurd.
Yet they were still more believable than someone traveling from the future.
After a while, Gael let out a breath.
"Alright. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt."
He crossed two of his arms.
"But this much isn’t enough. You’ll need to give more proof, go through our lie detection abilities, and explain how exactly you came to the past—"
"We can’t tell you anything about the method of time travel," Isaac cut him off.
Gael raised an eyebrow.
"Why not?"
Alice answered this time.
"We don’t know the exact reason. But the one who helped us said that revealing anything related to the method would create time paradoxes."
Gael’s brows furrowed.
Honestly, he wanted to say they were making things up.
But he also knew the concept itself wasn’t unreasonable.
Anything involving time travel could potentially create paradoxes.
That idea wasn’t exactly difficult to understand.
Especially not for him.
After all, he had read quite a lot novels about time travel.
It had started as an accident.
One day he had noticed the Sword Maiden reading strange books during her free time. Out of curiosity he had taken a look himself, and before he knew it he had become completely hooked.
Stories about heroes, time travel, reincarnation, strange worlds, and impossible situations.
Of course, that was not something he would ever admit publicly.
If the Sword Maiden found out he had told someone about her habit of reading romance novels, she would probably drag him through hell. Again.
Just remembering those training sessions made Gael shiver slightly.
Alice blinked when she noticed the sudden reaction.
Isaac also looked at him with mild confusion.
Gael quickly coughed and straightened up.
"Anyway," he said. "We’ll now check for more proof. As for the lie detection test, we can handle that back at the base."
Isaac nodded. "Then I will—"
"No," Gael interrupted him. "You don’t need to show anything."
Gael’s smile returned, though this time it looked slightly mischievous.
"I’ll check it myself."
There was actually a very simple way to confirm whether someone was truly the Sword Empress’s disciple.
It had an almost perfect success rate.
Gael reached into his spatial ring.
A moment later, he pulled out a bat.
Just a simple wooden bat.
But the moment Isaac and Alice saw it, both of them instinctively flinched.
Their shoulders tensed, and they took half a step back without even realizing it.
Gael’s grin widened.
That reaction.
He knew that reaction very well.
Even if someone tried to imitate it, it was almost impossible to replicate perfectly.
The bat itself wasn’t special.
It was only a fake.
But every disciple of the Sword Empress knew exactly what it represented.
Even just holding the fake bat for the first time had made his hands tremble so badly that he nearly dropped it.
It had taken him several years to stop reacting to it like that.
And the real bat?
Gael immediately pushed the memory away. He did not want to think about the real one.
"That’s proof enough!" Gael said with a laugh.
He casually tossed the bat back into his spatial ring.
Then he disappeared.
One moment he was standing several meters away.
The next moment he was right between them.
Before Isaac or Alice could react, Gael wrapped two of his arms around their shoulders and pulled them both close.
"You can call me big brother. All of us disciples are siblings who’ve gone through the same hell, after all!" he said cheerfully.