What did a powerful fairy look like?
Was it someone like Oberon, the King of Fairies—handsome and proud, passionate and free?
Perhaps. But that was only one kind of powerful fairy.
Another powerful fairy was Kelpie.
Oberon had been gone for a long time, so long that many newly born fairies had never even seen what he looked like.
But Kelpie had always been around.
Still, Kelpie was so quiet, so detached from worldly affairs. Like Oberon, who had not appeared in a long time, Kelpie was not a particularly active fairy either.
If you wanted to find Kelpie, go to a lake near the center of the Fairy Realm. That was Kelpie's "pasture." He lived there, running happily across the lake's surface each day in the form of a water horse. Like an ordinary horse, he enjoyed the wind rushing past his ears and the feeling of letting his hooves run wild.
That was Kelpie: a free and powerful fairy. Few fairies were his match.
Compared to ruling something, governing something, or killing something, what he cared more about was a peaceful life—and whether the water plants that accidentally got tangled in his hair tasted good.
How could a fairy like that possibly be vicious?
Following the trail of magical energy, Fujimaru Ritsuka and the others had arrived near its source.
"What exactly is... that thing? Why does it look like... an egg?"
She frowned, staring into the distance at the thing hanging in the sky.
Robin gently rowed the boat, looking up in that direction alongside Fujimaru Ritsuka and the others.
She opened her mouth, but the words that reached her lips turned involuntarily into a sigh.
She recognized it.
"That is Kelpie. There's no mistake."
She lowered her head, and the movements of her hands stopped. "I