Ishura - Volume 7 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7- Igania Lakeside

Currently, Tuturi and the others were standing a very short distance in front of Igania Ice Lake. They hadn’t actually entered the uncharted land of extreme cold, though they weren’t entirely sure of that.

An intensely frigid and biting air temperature that seemed to reject life itself. The silvery white landscape as far as the eye could see totally prevented her from feeling the border between earth and lake.

The Igania Ice Lake was said to be covered in ice so solid and thick that there were records of gigants safely walking on it in the past. It wasn’t going too far to say the lake itself had been reshaped by the ice into solid land.

On top of it all, this climate had been molded by a single dragon.

Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam now needed to negotiate with that very dragon. Quewai the Moon Fragment standing behind her seemed to be enduring the cold himself, burying his neck underneath his scarf.

“Still not scared, even at a time like this?”

“I mean, I’m still terrified right now.”

When the two of them had nominated themselves to directly negotiate as Lucnoca the Winter’s acting sponsor, no one had raised a single objection to the point that even their opposing faction, Rosclay’s camp, approved of the idea.

Lucnoca was simply too dangerous of a creature to deal with. Tuturi understood that herself.

However, since Harghent was no longer able to fulfill his role as sponsor after shooting down Alus the Star Runner…someone among the Twenty-Nine Officials needed to directly inform Lucnoca of this fact and get her to accept the change.

…Of course, even if Harghent was in perfectly good health, no one could’ve left him to handle it anyway.

Ever since Alus’s attack, Harghent had become a people’s champion, slayer of the self-proclaimed demon king, but from Aureatia’s perspective, it had merely grown more evident that he was someone who couldn’t keep himself from going out of control.

If Harghent continued to be in charge of negotiating with Lucnoca for the ninth match, a temporary fit of madness could very well cause Aureatia to be destroyed. A ridiculous and terrible end.

While Tuturi gripped the heated stone inside her thick coat, Quewai skillfully started a fire and sent up red smoke from a fuming agent up into the sky. As long as it wasn’t snowing, it would serve as a marker for over a day, but this too all depended on if Lucnoca was out and about, noticed their signal, and was in the mood to chat.

Until then, they needed to continue waiting there, no matter how long it took. It was possible that a whole day wouldn’t be enough, and they could end up waiting two to three days. They prepared a bivouac for the longer end of the estimates—six days, a whole big moon’s time.

“Sure hope we can just camp out in this freezing hellhole for six days and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Except if that does happen, our entire trip out here would be a waste of time.”

“Isn’t that better, though? If six whole days go by and Lucnoca doesn’t show any interest in our signal…that’ll mean she’s gotten her fun out of the Sixways Exhibition and isn’t even motivated to appear in the next match.”

“However, Lucnoca’s own intentions are what will determine if she swoops down on the day or not.”

“The strong really are the goddamn worst…”

Tuturi cursed while she pounded the tent pegs into the ground.

He was right. No matter what they presented to her, no matter what they made her promise, Lucnoca the Winter could overrule absolutely all of it on the slightest whim. Should Tuturi and Quewai’s negotiations indeed prove successful, they would still only receive a verbal promise that wouldn’t serve as reliable insurance of Aureatia’s survival.

Intrinsically, the danger outweighed the benefit. There was no safe way of dealing with her besides killing her.

There lay the reason why Rosclay’s camp wasn’t present. On an even more fundamental level, it was also the reason no one besides Harghent had sponsored Lucnoca’s participation.

“What Lucnoca the Winter wants above all else is an all-out battle, taking on the strongest opponents around. As long as we know what she yearns for, there’s still some room for conversation. We have to be in a better position than Harghent was when he convinced her without anything to go off of.”

She had to believe as much, or she couldn’t possibly keep going.

Ignoring that there were no guarantees either way, whether they eventually snuffed Lucnoca out, or tried to use her for themselves, taking over the position of her sponsor could give them a large initiative against the other camps. Her fighting strength alone would become a deterrent against Rosclay’s camp—though that, too, all depended on how Tuturi’s negotiations played out.

“Well, we said we’d do it and all. Gimme a break…”

“Tuturi.” Quewai had been sitting in front of the fire, not lifting a finger to help make camp, when he looked far off into the sky and murmured. “That, up there…”

A dragon.

A graceful and massive silhouette, plainly different from that of a wyvern even from afar.

Both of them gulped at the magnificent figure, hazy in the sky. For both Tuturi and Quewai, this was their first time laying eyes on a real dragon.

As it approached, her gorgeous white scales became vividly clear each time her figure slipped out from the thin layer of clouds.

It was too quiet to even feel terror, so grand it made it hard to move a muscle.

The embodiment of another world’s season of death—winter.

There was simply no other word to describe it.

Such was Lucnoca the Winter.

“Oh, where’s Harghent?” the strongest of dragons said, landing on the ground of ice without making a sound. “I thought that sending up a red smoke meant Harghent had some news for me.”

“…Th—”

It wasn’t that her throat had frozen over.

It certainly wasn’t that she couldn’t find the words. Tuturi always remained more flippant than any other.

However, even knowing full well that only death awaited her if she didn’t say anything, her words wouldn’t come out.

She couldn’t verbalize her thoughts. It might have been reverence toward the fact that a creature like this even existed. A perfect life-form who made the minian races seem like poorly made works of clay stood right before her eyes.

Perhaps it was this race, this single dragon specimen, who was originally meant to reign over the land.

The fact she didn’t began to feel like a terrible embarrassment, even a mistake.

They hadn’t even had a proper conversation. Tranquil, glass-like eyes were merely staring at her.

How…?

Tuturi’s thoughts were in disarray. The sentiment she finally managed to string into words was a minuscule one.

…How…was he able to stay calm when face to face with something like this?

There had been several champions passed down through the ages who were said to have challenged Lucnoca the Winter and perished.

That same Harghent the Still had also hired the services of a no-name mercenary and challenged this very dragon.

He was clearly and obviously out of his mind.

“Wellll? I won’t know anything if you don’t talk to me. Uhoo-hoo-hoo.”

“U-um… Th-there is something we wish to tell you about H-Harghent.”

Tuturi wondered what exactly Quewai was feeling behind her.

She thought he was an indifferent, spoiled, and horrid man, but perhaps he might have been able to empathize a bit with the awe and dread Tuturi was currently feeling.

“…My name is…Tuturi the Violet Foam. A g-great disaster…hit Aureatia…and Harghent got caught in it and was heavily wounded.”

“Oh my, that’s awful,” Lucnoca replied, her voice sounding truly concerned. “He isn’t dead, is he? Minia are so quick to die, so you really should heal him with care… That’s too bad, really. Harghent was such an interesting little minian, too.”

What the hell…was Harghent supposed to be? That man really…

Hopelessly incompetent, weak-willed, fanciful, only ever acting in ways no one wanted.

That same man had managed to have an actual proper conversation with this godlike creature?

“A-as for the effects…from this disaster…the Sixways Exhibition has been p-put on hold. We c-can’t prepare the opportunity for a m-match…you were promised.”

She knew for herself that she had omitted parts of their previously planned explanation in various places, and that her speech had become terribly clumsy.

Was this really okay? It couldn’t possibly be.

Her words, her thoughts, her existence—absolutely everything.

Still…Lucnoca the Winter shouldn’t know anything about Aureatia’s current situation. She hasn’t the faintest interest in minian civilization. She has no grounds to deny that the Sixways Exhibition itself has been canceled…

“That’s a lie, isn’t it?”

A chill.

Tuturi could only hear Lucnoca’s words, mixed with light laughter, as a firmly confident denial.

Even in the piercing frigid air, a viscous sweat poured out from Tuturi’s skin.

“Tuturi? It’s not very nice to tease an old granny like that, you know? Why, I might slip up and believe you were telling the truth! Uhoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.”

“…!”

Tuturi stood, unable to deny her claim or ask her how she knew.

Had Tuturi’s tone or demeanor made Lucnoca able to see through the farce? Had she been able to use logical reasoning to arrive at the answer? Or perhaps it was neither, and she knew absolutely everything with some unimaginable degree of intuition.

“Please forgive us for the jest,” said Quewai, who answered behind Tuturi.

Stop.

“The match is eight days from now. It will begin right as the sun sets.”

It was one of the worst possible outcomes for their negotiations. With this, Lucnoca the Winter was guaranteed to appear at the ninth match. Yet, despite it, Tuturi found herself inwardly grateful for Quewai.

Lucnoca the Winter… Was she really this much…of a monster?

Lucnoca the Winter hadn’t done anything. She had merely appeared, and they had exchanged a short conversation.

Far beyond it, she might have been trying her best to be amicable and interact with them by minian standards as much as possible. This only made her seem even more terrifying.

“You’re going to become my sponsor?”

Tuturi didn’t know which of them her pale blue eyes were looking at, but Quewai was the one who nodded.

“And you are?”

“…Quewai the Moon Fragment.”

“That’s all I need to hear. I’ll make for the Mali Wastes in eight days, before sunset. For Harghent…please give him my regards. Until we meet again.”

Neither of them could say a word.

It seemed that rather than continue the negotiations any further, the most valuable result of all was to finish their negotiations with their lives.

It felt like they were paralyzed. Even while her flapping silhouette faded and went off into the blue sky, they were unable to escape from the lingering effects of her overwhelming presence.

“…Dammit. Quewai… Why’d you tell her the day of the match?”

“Are you saying you would’ve been able to convince her, Tuturi?”

When Tuturi turned around to look at the man, Quewai’s expressionless face was drenched with a cold sweat.

“If we were both unable to eliminate her in an attack or establish a cooperative relationship, then ultimately, holding the match is the only option. Though it does merely serve to postpone the more fundamental problem.”

“Nah…”

Tuturi looked far off into the sky.

Without the figure of Lucnoca the Winter, it was nothing but a cold, quiet, and clear sky.

“…Killing Lucnoca the Winter’s the only option after all. Just having her around means that the minian races will go on living all while constantly keeping her in a good mood… No one out there wants to entertain that miserable thought.”

Tuturi thought that the only option was to kill something that couldn’t possibly be killed.

A monster almost diametrically opposed to the True Demon King—which one was truly the better option?

Far off, a makeshift hut covered in a thin layer of snow started coming into view.

They had walked quite a long distance from the Igania lakeside, and still the biting air remained the same.

The climate didn’t regain some sense of normalcy until they reached the vicinity of the closest settlement, Onuma Hamlet, but getting that far still meant crossing an entire mountain.

“…The negotiations ended safe and sound, then? Quewai’s already back.”

When Tuturi entered the hut, a black, crocodile-like zmeu greeted her.

The self-proclaimed demon king Sindikar was likely the only aviator of the age. It was the extraordinary effort of his long-range airlift that had carried Tuturi and Quewai, as well as the materials required to put up a bivouac to sleep in for a whole big moon’s time, far out here to Igania.

“Uh…does it look like I’m safe and sound?”

Tuturi responded to Sindikar’s questions with a slightly haggard smile.

“You’re still alive. That’s plenty safe and sound enough.”

With a surly attitude, Sindikar drank the soup from the mug in his hand.

“I was observing from afar myself. The fact that that monster didn’t kill you is plenty.”

“Y-you… You were watching us, Mr. Sindikar? No way.”

“If I go up in the air and use a telescopic lens, there’s no distance too far for me to see… Though perhaps it was only a stroke of luck she didn’t notice me.”

“I wonder, really. Even if Lucnoca did notice you, I seriously doubt she’d go out of her way to knock you out of the sky…”

“Yeah.”

Sindikar didn’t seem to hold any particular objection to Tuturi’s remark, though she was seemingly disparaging the mighty self-proclaimed demon king.

“In the end, though, you managed to get in touch with her on the very first day. What a waste of time, bringing all these materials out here.”

“I never knew that your airlifts could carry so much stuff. Does that Craft Golem have the same capabilities?”

“Don’t be silly. I don’t have a clue what sort of design philosophy Kiyazuna the Axle had when she made that thing, but the way it’s built, it’s like forcing a massive piece of armor to fly. I used the mechanical parts as she had them, but by reducing its weight and streamlining its aerodynamics, I made it able to load more cargo than its original armor weight allowed…”

“Impressive.”

Tuturi shrugged.

When she looked in the back of the room, Quewai was already sitting in front of the hearth after arriving back at camp ahead of Tuturi, warming up his chilled body. He didn’t even greet her. A real unfriendly guy, Tuturi thought.

“Sorry to say it, Mr. Sindikar, but looks like we’ve got no choice but to send Lucnoca out for the ninth match. I think that’ll mean you’ll have to come out to the Mali Wastes, too, whether to help fight or to just observe… Think you can do it?”

“I’ll cut down on the Craft Golem’s load weight and redesign it to be even faster. Should take me about four days. In that case, we’ll head back to Aureatia immediately.”

“I mean, we can depart after Quewai finishes warming up. Not exactly a cozy little trip, but…”

Outside the window, Tuturi looked at the giant frame of the Craft Golem, covered in a giant waterproof canvas.

Securing Sindikar’s cooperation to help make contact with Lucnoca hadn’t simply been about minimizing the labor involved in the round trip from Aureatia to Igania nor demonstrating the Craft Golem’s capabilities.

Using still-unknown technologies to shorten what was normally an extremely long travel time meant that they could create proof that they weren’t present in Aureatia. For this small moon’s time, after the eighth match, while Tuturi and Quewai had been working in the National Defense Research Institute, they were assumed to be absent from Aureatia entirely.

“What do you think now, after seeing for yourself, Mr. Sindikar? Think you can shoot down a dragon?”

“…”

The artificial magic tool that Sindikar the Ark had poured all of his superb Craft Arts techniques into making, the Lightning Flute. When the situation truly drew near, they might need to rely on its attack.

“…Let me be honest. After seeing Lucnoca the Winter with my own eyes, I lost confidence as well.”

“Figured. Same here. Made me want to turn tail and run.”

“…”

Sindikar’s rigid lips visibly twisted. Tuturi had never seen him make such an expression before, but it might have been what, for him, resembled a smile.

He had lost his nerve just as Tuturi had, and yet his expression seemed to suggest the complete opposite.

“I’m not running. I can fight for my dream.”

“Dream, huh?”

Tuturi felt as though she had come to understand something.

How had they been able to look directly at someone like Lucnoca the Winter, a being like dreams that have taken form?

The champions of the past, Harghent, and Sindikar all held them, while Tuturi had none.

I guess it must’ve been that all of those others…had an affinity for dreaming.