Watching Alice disappear right before his eyes, Leonard forgot that he was still outside and opened his mouth to ask the air beside him:
"Old Man, did you understand what she meant?"
That somewhat weak, aged voice from earlier answered unhurriedly:
"Don't know.
"But you'd better stay a bit further away from that Newly Advanced Saint of your Church."
Regrettably, Leonard failed to detect the abnormality in Palles's tone and pressed on in confusion:
"Why?"
Pallez remained silent for a while. He was choosing his words, because Leonard seemed not to have noticed the deeper meaning in his words—though that was normal.
Thus, only when Leonard grew impatient enough to ask a second time did Pallez speak in a slightly wary tone:
"That Highness... no, that Excellency.
"It looks like this isn't the first time she has said something like, 'Evernight and the Fool are my Blessed.'"
There was far too much information packed into those few sentences. Not to mention that the Extraordinary World generally regarded "Highness" as an honorific for Angels, nor where "Excellency" had come from; after all, the use of "He" alone explained certain things. What Leonard cared about was Pallez's attitude.
Very few beings could make the old man residing within him display such wariness. Before this, Leonard had always believed that only True Gods could earn Pallez's respect.
Only then did Leonard belatedly grow tense. He instinctively backed away from the doorway before carefully calling out a second time:
"...Old Man?"
Only then did Pallez slowly explain what he had said earlier:
"...Considering that no Divine Punishment has descended so far, that at least tells us one thing.
"Setting aside the Fool, whose background neither of us knows, there are at least three possibilities where your Goddess is concerned."
"What three possibilities?" Leonard asked