“Thank you for saving me…. Thank you so much….”
Atel prostrated herself and bowed to him again and again.
Her disheveled appearance, covered in dirt and scratches, made it painfully clear how desperately she had struggled to stay alive in this place.
Atel was a 2-Star martial artist. Even a single skeleton soldier would have been difficult for her to handle.
“Please get up. We're in the same class and the same group. Of course I'd help you.”
“Th-thank you. Thank you…!”
Atel stood, gestured toward herself, and spoke in a rush.
“I-if there's anything you need, please tell me to do it! Your Highness has saved my very life. I'll devote that life to making certain you escape from here. I can take the night watch right now, too. So, please….”
“Calm down. Get some rest first. We can have the soldiers take watch, so there's no need for you to do that.”
“Th-then is there something else you'd like me to do? If you'd like me to serve as your p-personal maid, I'd be more than happy to do that….”
Ex sighed….
“That's an order. Go wash up with Circe first. Circe will make water with magic.”
“I-I obey the imperial command…!”
Utterly overwhelmed at being given an imperial command, Atel hurried over to Circe. Circe glared at Ex for a moment, and he looked away.
He had passed an annoying burden on to her. There wasn't much he could say in his defense.
Despite her irritation, Circe looked after Atel.
The two of them washed thoroughly in a corner with water created by magic. Then, right there, they washed and dried the clothes they were wearing as well.
“Magic is amazing! We can wash with warm water in a place like this, and even get our clothes clean again right away….”
“You know a thing or two after all. Magic was originally created to improve people's lives. It was much later that it became a field of study devoted to exploring truth for its own sake.”
“I thought magic was developed for fighting wars….”
“Then you've been taught wrong.”
Circe and Atel chatted with considerable warmth.
Atel was normally a cheerful person who got along well with others, so she was friendly toward Circe, who wasn't a noble.
Circe didn't seem to find that entirely unwelcome, either. She spoke with Atel with a bright expression on her face.
So Atel had been caught up in this as well….
Atel hadn't been far away when the incident occurred.
She had been fairly close, though she hadn't been standing right beside him.
That made it very likely that other people nearby had been caught up in the teleportation, too.
Ames and Tene had been near Atel, and Lola had been beside Circe. He needed to keep in mind the possibility that all three of them were here.
Ex decided to put together search teams.
Ames and Tene weren't particularly strong, either. If things had gone badly, they might have been seriously injured. If they were lucky, perhaps they had heard the commotion of the battle and come toward it, just as Atel had.
“Teams Three and Four, take one elite each and search the surrounding area. Team Five, search around the place where we fought earlier. If you find anything, report to me immediately.”
With a clatter of bones, the skeleton officers received his orders and set off at once.
Sending thirty skeletons just to conduct a search was an excessive commitment of troops, but it didn't matter very much.
He had more than enough spare soldiers at the moment anyway.
“What's going on? Where are they going?”
Apparently she had already finished washing. Circe approached Ex while drying her hair with a magically created breeze.
Her distinctive purple hair was quite long, so it seemed to take a while to dry.
“I told them to search nearby, just in case. There might be other survivors like Atel.”
“I was just going to suggest that myself. Nicely done.”
“What is Atel doing?”
“She says she's going to cook for us.”
“Cook?”
When Ex turned around, he saw Atel some distance away beside the campfire. With a pot and the ingredients at hand, she was preparing a meal with great enthusiasm. When her eyes met Ex's for a moment, she gave him a timid little wave.
Ex turned back to Circe.
“Is she a good cook?”
“She says she used to make stew for her family back home all the time. Apparently making something tasty with very few ingredients is her specialty.”
“Hmm. We certainly did just eat the food without cooking it yesterday. That jerky was hard as a rock. I nearly broke a tooth. But is this all right? We'll go through our food more quickly if we cook it.”
“She insists she has to repay us somehow for saving her life. If we don't at least let her cook, she'll stay up all night keeping watch and collapse. Then it'll be our job to deal with that.”
Circe had a point.
If Atel collapsed for no good reason, they would only have more trouble to deal with.
If those were the alternatives, he was better off giving Atel something appropriate to do instead.
After saying that much, Circe lowered her voice.
“So, what do you think?”
Her tone had become quite serious.
Ex immediately understood what Circe meant by the question.
“I've seen all I need to.”
“Right? What are you going to do?”
“I'll watch for now. It's best to take care of annoying business all at once. Dealing with it in separate pieces just wastes more time.”
“We're different in that respect. If it were me, I'd have already….”
The words Circe went on to say left Ex thoroughly appalled.
At moments like this, he could truly feel that she was Aerial, the sage who had survived nearly twenty years in the hell of the Demon Realm.
If he kept listening, he thought he might start losing his mind. Ex changed the subject.
“By the way, don't you find something strange about the skeletons here? And it isn't just the skeletons. The guardian is strange, too.”
“In what way?”
“It might just be my imagination, but I get the feeling they think and act a little like people.”
He still couldn't understand why the guardian had abandoned the treasure chest and chased him with the sole intention of killing him.
“I thought they were simply undead or creatures made of mana. But it occurred to me that they might actually be something else.”
“Such as?”
“Perhaps they have intelligence, just as people do.”
Circe frowned at that.
“Are you saying the souls of the dead are bound to these skeletons? There are things like liches, so it isn't impossible, but who would do something that insane?”
“What do you think, Circe?”
“Settling a soul into a different sort of body is difficult. Even a legendary necromancer might barely manage ten successful soul bindings in an entire lifetime….”
As Circe said, handling souls was difficult.
That was because souls themselves were protected by divine beings.
Because of that, swordsmanship, magic, and even sacred arts had been studied and developed over time, while the field of manipulating souls remained almost entirely unknown territory.
Even Deuslute, the chief deity of this world, had only barely managed to reincarnate the five members of the Hero Party, and doing so had required an enormous amount of power.
And that had only meant reincarnating their souls, without the stature or power they had possessed at the time. That alone said everything about how difficult it was.
Of course, compared with reincarnating a soul, settling one into another body was a far smaller undertaking. That did not make it a simple technique, however. It was certainly not something they could afford to take lightly.
Ex still did not let go of his suspicions.
“But what if it is true?”
“If every skeleton here has a soul….”
Following a hypothesis she had never considered before, Circe's thoughts led her to a conclusion she hadn't expected.
“…Then who in the world built this place?”
“I wonder.”
Who had built this place?
The history behind this place had taken shape in a gap in the story's plausibility.
Even Ex had no information about that history. It was wholly unknown territory to him.
“If you don't know, who does?”
“Aren't you more likely to know something like this, Circe? All I know is information about the future. I don't know much about the past.”
“It's not as though I know everything about the past, either.”
“Leon completed the Hero's Trials a hundred years ago as well, didn't he? Was there anything those places had in common?”
“Something in common….”
Little by little, Circe brought back the memories of her previous life.
“They were all man-made structures, and they all had clear rules. There were inscriptions in the Ancient Language before you went through the entrances, too.”
“Come to think of it, there were.”
“The only words anyone could interpret were ‘hero’ and ‘trial,’ so we just decided to call them the Hero's Trials….”
When he thought about it, it was a strange business.
Who had gone to the trouble of building facilities like these in remote places across this vast continent, places people could barely reach? And why had they done it?
What's more, clearing one of these facilities drew out a person's dormant talents.
Who had built these facilities intended for the hero?
“Now that you mention it, the Ancient Ruins we visited before were the same way. Who could have built such mysterious facilities?”
At that moment, a thought crossed Ex's mind.
“Circe, do you remember the Ancient Language inscription we saw at the entrance to the Hero's Trial?”
“I do. Want me to write it out?”
Circe drew light across the ground, tracing the shapes of the ancient characters.
“Now that I look at it, they do seem similar to the letters we saw in the Ancient Ruins. Can you read it?”
“Yes, I can.”
As he looked at the inscription, which was about two lines long, its meaning became clear to him.
“It says, ‘To those who come after us: we place here the power to restrain the incarnation of destruction. Pass the trial and become the hero who will prevent the world's end.’ I thought there might be some grand secret, but it's a fairly conventional message.”
“…”
It wasn't useful information.
Ex let out a disappointed sigh.
But while Ex was inwardly disappointed, Circe had a very different reaction.
Her expression was one of outright astonishment.
“What's wrong? You already knew I could interpret the Ancient Language.”
“Yes, I know that. That's not it. Think about what it means for this inscription to exist.”
“…Doesn't it just mean this place is a facility meant to give the hero power?”
“Don't you understand what that means?!”
Pointing at the characters, Circe rejoiced like a scholar who had made a discovery of historic importance.
“The beings who built this facility foresaw the Demon King's resurrection and the hero's descent more than a hundred years ago! They built a place like this because the hero needed greater power to stop the Demon King. In other words, this place is living history!”
“…Well, it has an inscription in the Ancient Language. I suppose ancient people would have built it.”
Circe strode toward the unimpressed Ex, seized both his shoulders, and shook him vigorously as she shouted.
“You don't understand a thing! Do you know why artifacts are magic devices that we can't decipher? Because they're made with ancient magic that today's magic can't reproduce! Ancient magic has tremendous value all on its own!”
Circe took one of her hands off his shoulder and thrust it right in front of Ex's nose, showing him Paison's Leap on her finger. This, too, was an artifact discovered in the Ancient Ruins.
“Ow, don't press on my nose! My nose! Wait, aren't you just using magic as an excuse to get back at me?!”
“Just look at this one. With the level of magic in this era, you'd have to be at least Tier 7 to use teleportation, and you'd need to pour in an absurd amount of mana. But the Blink built into this artifact only needs a reasonable amount. If we could just reverse-engineer it, the level of magic could advance by several generations….”
In any event, her point was that this was a discovery of enormous importance.
Once Ex sorted through that excited explanation, this was what it came down to.
“The people who built this place were ancients who used magic we know nothing about? I suppose there really isn't another way to explain it.”
“If that hypothesis is right, then what you suggested could be possible, too. With ancient magic, they might have managed soul binding somehow.”
“Wow. Ancient magic really is amazing….”
As Ex continued making utterly unenthusiastic remarks and Circe glared at him with murder in her eyes, the two of them gradually drew closer to the unknown secret.
“Your Highness! Circe! The stew is ready! Come and eat!”
Atel, who had finished cooking, called the two of them over.
Judging by her excited expression, she was quite confident in her work.
“Oh, it smells good. Did you put some spices in it?”
“I seasoned it with salt and added some herbs I still had. Drinking herbal tea is one of my hobbies when I have time to relax.”
“Ah, so that was herbal tea you drank in the classroom every day.”
“I never imagined I'd end up using it like this, though….”
The stew tasted remarkably good as well. Ex could hardly believe that jerky and a handful of other ingredients were all Atel had needed to make something this good.
“…This is delicious. When I thought of stew, I usually pictured a jumble of whatever ingredients someone had thrown into a pot.”
“I-it's an honor to have satisfied Your Highness's exceptional palate!”
“An exceptional palate? That's laying it on a little thick….”
The three of them sat around the campfire and quietly enjoyed Atel's stew. With the stew warming them on the inside and the fire warming them on the outside, their bodies soon began to feel comfortably heavy and drowsy. It was a fitting time to bring the day's activities to a close.
“Thank you for the meal. I'd like to have it again sometime. Oh, right. We're in the same group anyway, so I suppose I will.”
“I-I'm honored…! Next time, I'll do my very best to prepare an even more generous meal for you!”
“There's no need to go overboard.”
As they finished eating and began to clean up, Atel asked a question.
“Um…. Your Highness. Despite my lowly station, might I ask you something? I'm poorly educated, so perhaps the question will be disrespectful, but….”
“Ask whatever you like. You did make us some delicious stew, after all.”
“Then….”
After some hesitation, Atel put her next question to him.
“Do you really intend to become Emperor?”
It was quite an audacious question, at that.
“Hmm. That's an unexpectedly bold question.”
“Atel. That's a rather dangerous thing to say.”
Ex regarded her impassively, while Circe narrowed her eyes and stared at her. Atel waved her hands and began babbling.
“No, please don't misunderstand! Now that you've become an Imperial Prince, I think it's only natural for you to have the ambition to become Emperor…! Besides, Imperial Prince Ex is a hero as well! The goddess herself acknowledged you, didn't she? What I wanted to know was….”
Atel drew in her shoulders and timidly began to speak.
“It's only hypothetical, but…. What the Empire would look like after Your Highness became Emperor…. I suppose I can't quite imagine it…?”
“Could you give me an example?”
“F-for commoners like me, I think anyone would be fine, as long as we can earn our living each day without fearing for our lives. But if…. If the n-nobles could turn us into slaves overnight on a whim, take away our freedom, and leave us worrying about how to survive….”
It was almost as though she were asking whether Ex would be that kind of Emperor.
“I think…. That would make me sad….”
After that, she watched Ex's expression and waited for his answer.
Ex, too, thought carefully as he put his answer in order.
Ex couldn't tell what Atel had in mind when she asked him that. Whatever she was thinking, it was a bold question to put to him.
Once his thoughts were settled, Ex answered with a faint smile.
“I said it quite clearly. Anyone who would follow a ‘new order’ should follow me. Naturally, that is for the sake of a better world. The Empire will change, and everyone will have to adapt to those changes. Those who fail to adapt will be left behind.”
“…”
“Well, the people who have a great deal in their hands won't be pleased with those changes. If you tell them to put down the things they've already grasped, how many of them are going to listen? But those who refuse to listen will have their hands cut off at the wrist. Then they'll have no choice but to let go. If they don't like that….”
A crooked smile appeared at the corners of Ex's mouth.
“They'll have to make sure they kill me before I become Emperor. They'll need to do their very best to assassinate me, just as they're doing now.”
In an instant, the atmosphere that had been warmed by the stew and the campfire turned cold.
“Y-you mean assassins were responsible for bringing us here? H-how could they commit such a sacrilege…!”
“Yes, it is sacrilege. But I….”
Ex spoke as he stood up.
“I will humbly accept even that sacrilege. I suppose I need to be able to bear at least that much if I'm to become Emperor of the Dritania Empire.”
At that answer, Atel's eyes brightened, and she prostrated herself flat on the ground.
“I-I spoke out of turn! How could I dare to question Your Highness's intentions? I was the one being utterly disrespectful! Please, cut off my head and absolve me of my offense…!”
“I forgive you. Let's get some rest for tonight. It's grown quite late; it must be the early hours of the morning already. More to the point, Circe and I are both starting to get sleepy.”
“Y-yes!”
When he looked beside him, Circe was nodding off with her eyes almost shut. Ex's own eyelids were trembling as well.
It didn't take long for the three of them to settle down for the night.
Ex and Circe fell asleep almost as soon as they lay down.
Atel, too, quietly closed her eyes inside a fresh sleeping bag.
An unbroken silence settled over the place that had been so lively only moments before.
A considerable amount of time passed.
The skeleton soldiers were making their rounds in places the three sleepers could not see, keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding area. There were quite a number of them on patrol, so anyone trying to slip into the camp would find it far from easy.
Tsk. Tsk.
Amid that strict vigilance, a strange sound could be heard.
It sounded almost like the cry of a rat.
At the sound, someone stirred and rose within the small, precarious pool of light cast by the campfire. The only people near that fire were Ex, Circe, and Atel.
The one who had risen was Atel.
“…”
With an uncharacteristically grave, rigid expression, Atel got to her feet without making so much as the rustle of clothing.
She turned her head and looked at Ex and Circe.
Both of them were deep asleep.
Their sleep was so deep that even Circe, who was sensitive to the slightest sound or change, failed to wake.
It was an unnaturally deep sleep. They wouldn't have noticed even if Atel had come right up to their faces to inspect them.
“Of course they wouldn't. I used a sleeping drug.”
Atel moved her lips ever so slightly.
Tsk. Tsk.
The same sound as before could be heard. The ratlike cry was a sound Atel was making herself. At that signal, two unidentified people emerged from the darkness and approached the campfire, revealing themselves.
They wore black masks and black clothing, meant to let them melt into the dark.
Anyone who looked at them would know they were assassins.
“This looks like it'll be easier than I expected.”
Atel addressed them with a peculiar smile.
“We finish the job here today. The Imperial Prince dies.”
–TL Notes–
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