A Frenzied Pursuit

It took Benjamin about a week to reach the mountain range along the Hori Kingdom's border.

In order to reclaim the "key," The Church spared no expense. Priests, Paladins, soldiers... it was like they had stirred up a hornet's nest. They dispatched who knew how many people, making quite a spectacle of it. The Church even issued a proclamation, declaring that someone had stolen their sacred relic and swearing to recover it at all costs.

Under such a pursuit, Benjamin and Dick had no choice but to become exceptionally cautious in their movements.

I keep feeling that they might have some method to track our general direction, he thought. Those priests have been gathering around us the whole time. No matter how we shake them off, they keep coming back. It can't be a coincidence.

"How would I know?" the System said lazily. "But that leaf underwent special treatment. If they have some way to track it, that wouldn't be strange, would it?"

Benjamin found that reasoning quite plausible.

From a certain perspective, that ginkgo leaf had been refined by The Church into a magical item, containing faint ripples of magic power. They most likely possessed a method of tracking the key, though they might not have been able to pinpoint its exact location.

Thus, Benjamin used a magic-banishing water bubble to wrap the key inside.

To his surprise, the bubble really seemed to sever that faint connection. The priests flying back and forth in the sky immediately became much sparser. The occasional person who flew past looked utterly lost, glancing around in all directions, clearly unable to determine where the key was.

Benjamin breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did he have the chance to speed up and reach the mountain range near the kingdom's border.

"Are you