All-Heavens(?) Ian Sharing Group! (Taking Tomorrow Off!)

—I am a dog.

The elderly man walked along the somewhat weathered flagstone avenue. Marquis Barton, wearing a hat to conceal his identity, strolled through his own city. Looking around at the clean, orderly streets and the leisurely pedestrians, a thought involuntarily popped into his mind.

—An old dog patrolling his territory, coming out for a walk every now and then.

Lowering his gaze, Marquis Barton heard the melodious sound of an organ not far away. On a street near the sea, a bard had set up his stand and hung his sign, playing with complete concentration.

He was quite a capable bard. Over the years, Marquis Barton had often concealed his identity and inspected the cities of the Southern Ridge, but only a handful of bards could, like this one, play different tunes on different instruments every day.

The stand was somewhat rusty. Passersby stopped to watch, and the old marquis also paused to listen for a while before silently leaving.

Dog was not a derogatory description.

In Terra's culture, dogs symbolized loyalty, responsibility, friendship, steadiness, and intimacy.

Dulinbo's vicious hound, the Eastern Territory's sharp-fanged knight, the Landkeeper's watchdog... people praised Barton Henriel's loyalty and sharpness. No anomaly could escape his nose.

He could always most accurately seize every spy sneaking into the Southern Ridge, and always tell at first glance who was not "loyal."

Yes, he could tell.

He could tell that the handsome white-haired boy had not the slightest thing to do with loyalty.

A descendant of the exiled Chehalorvo Family, a knight from Harrison Port, the land of exile—he had never received any education related to the Empire from childhood to adulthood. To say he was loyal to the Empire, one would have to be blind-eyed and muddle-headed to get the words out.

Yet he had