Ishura - Volume 9 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9 - Aureatia Northern Outer Ward's Fifteenth City Guard Post

Kia wasn’t staying completely idle while living in hiding.

After arriving in this new city ward, she went in and out of the guard spot overseeing the area, and learned as much of the information circling around Aureatia as she could, just like she had done while infiltrating Iznock Royal High School.

While they were Aureatian soldiers, the city guards tasked with preserving the public peace were under the jurisdiction of the Police Agency. The investigation briefs surrounding wanted criminals, including Kia the World Word herself, were almost always shared between guard posts.

Kia had been able to escape the long arms of Aureatia because of her tremendous Word Arts power, but there had been several instances where she had escaped danger by getting a handle on such information ahead of time.

This is a pretty lousy guard post…

In this regard, the guard spot overseeing the sixth borough of the Northern Outer Ward did not have a very well-suited structure for gathering information.

Whether because of the city’s dwindled population or because maintaining the peace wasn’t often necessary, a city guard stationed here would generally be either an old soldier bent over with age or one who was slightly younger, yet still overweight and in his twilight years, and there was almost never more than one on duty at a time.

It posed a big problem.

If they don’t talk about who’s wanted…what the heck am I going to learn here?!

Aureatia’s wanted criminal system was steadily becoming more and more documentation-oriented. Suspect descriptions utilized photograph technology, combinations of symbols to indicate the crime, and maps showing where they were thought to be hiding.

For a metropolis the size of Aureatia, in order for their wanted criminal system to function, they couldn’t stop at mere word-of-mouth alerts and needed to widely disperse these types of wanted posters.

Likely due to the propagation of this system, in recent years, investigation briefs written down in simple Order script had started to be left in city guard spot as well, but…

Do I really have to read this? Me?

Kia wasn’t great at reading written script. A large majority of the minian races in this world likely shared her woes.

If anything, Kia was one of the more well-educated people when it came to reading and understanding writing. Her home-tutor Elea had taught her how to read and interpret written passages, and at Iznock High School there were more advanced classes that went over learning how to read the Order script and certain aristocratic scripts as well.

However, Kia didn’t engage seriously with such subjects. While she had some interest in history and the natural sciences, the passages written in Order script, in exchange for how easy the characters themselves were to learn, could produce a completely different interpretation of their meaning even when the notation was the same. In any case, it had all been ambiguous, open-ended, and a huge pain for her.

As a result, throughout the city up until now, Kia had mainly gathered information through conversation.

She didn’t even know where these investigation documents were stored in the first place.

“Bleeh… Patrol time, I guess. I’m beat already…” The elderly guard looked at the time and mumbled drowsily.

Laboriously lifting the sword off the wall, he staggered out to go on his rounds.

“Does he even want to do this anymore?” Kia couldn’t help but murmur as she watched the soldier descend the easy slope.

Sitting down in the same guard post chair, there was, of course, no one to challenge her actions.

Kia had reflected somewhat on herself after Acromdo successfully picked her out and was now concealing herself with Word Arts that prevented anyone from perceiving her smell and sound, in addition to her form.

“For now, I should pick out all the documents that might… Oh—keep guard.”

At first blush, it appeared the Word Arts had no effect at all. She wasn’t manipulating bugs or small animals. She was tasking the air, the light—the world itself, so to speak—to keep watch for anyone approaching.

Nevertheless, it didn’t take her any time at all to find where all the documents and the like were stored.

They were sloppily stacked up on the edge of a desk.

“There they are. Is this…it?”

The documents listing a personal description meant that this must be the investigation briefs used to make the wanted notices.

It wasn’t only young girls like Kia who felt deciphering Order script was annoying and complicated. Even the soldiers in the field, who were drilled in reading comprehension, found dealing with official written records troublesome and complicated, and there were many cases where they were left lying in full view with no precautions against information leaks, particularly out here on the outskirts.

For the older generation in particular, like the guard who just left, many had lived their whole lives without ever coming into contact with the concept of written script.

I can’t read the script, but it should have the picture if it’s the real deal…

Hastily flipping through the stack of papers, she found the face she was looking for. Kia the World Word’s face.

If Kia’s face was recorded in these documents, then she could be positively certain they were investigatory briefs from the Police Agency.

“Perfect… Copy.”

A mirror image of the bundle of papers in Kia’s hand was compiled out of thin air and appeared before her.

Each piece of paper and the information recorded on them was an exact copy.

Looking at it from another perspective, not relying on conversations for information meant that she could read all the information recorded in these reproductions from the safety of her hideout. As she departed the guard post, she casually flipped through the bundle in her arms.

Then, when she saw the portrait on one of the pages, her fingers stopped.

“…Elea?”

Returning to the ruins at the foot of the mountain, she first decided to disclose all the information to Uhak and Tu.

“Elea the Red Tag? This is her? She’s real pretty, huh!”

Tu the Magic had both hands on the floor and was gazing at the collection of official documents spread about.

Though, in her case, it seemed more like she was less interested in the actual content of the documents and more just the suspects’ portraits themselves.

“She’s my teacher. In the fourth match, she tried to let me escape…and I thought she got captured by Aureatia at that point. But if her info’s bound up with all this stuff…”

“There’s a chance she might still be on the run.”

“…Right. None of the wanted posters circulating around town ever showed Elea on them, of course. But Elea’s really important—she works as one of Aureatia’s…something-or-other, so I’m wondering if maybe Aureatia doesn’t want everyone to know about what she did, either.”

“But you don’t know if these documents are about her being a wanted criminal or not, right?”

“Right. So, I’d like some help deciphering these if possible…”

Kia looked up to gauge Tu’s reaction. Tu was flipping the pages over and then back again.

Though Kia was the one asking for help, she hadn’t done so with much hope in mind.

Tu the Magic was who she was, and even if Uhak the Silent could decipher it for her, there was no way to convey the information to her.

“Eh-heh-heh, sorry. Maybe if I was a bit smarter… I only really picked up a bit of the Order’s script while playing with the kids, and I haven’t done any sorta studying before. The stuff Izick taught me was all too complicated, so I forgot. If I knew it’d come in handy, maybe I should’ve taken Flinsuda up on her offer to give me an in-home tutor.”

“I mean, I can’t read this writing either, okay? We can’t go ask someone else for help, either…”

“Hey, Kia! Do you know what sort of wanted poster’s out there for you?”

“Hm? I mean, I saw that in the last town I was in, so… I think it accused me of attacking the royal palace and foul play in the fourth match, and anyone who gave Aureatia my location would earn a bounty. Oh, but it said that the citizens weren’t supposed to attack me or capture me. No idea what that’s about, though…”

“So, in that case, that same sorta stuff has to be written here, right? If you know enough of the Order’s script, you can probably find it!”

“I mean, sure, maybe, but my whole wanted poster is totally… Oh, I get it.”

What Tu meant was to pick out the shape of the passage.

In one of the classes she hadn’t really paid attention to, she remembered being taught something similar.

Passages scribed by the same writer would often get recycled. Just by changing a single character of Kia’s crime of “Attacking the Royal Palace,” it could be changed to say “Attacking Merchant Shops.” The Order’s script was difficult because the same single character could have multiple meanings, but Kia understood enough to pick out the difference between “Royal Palace” and “Merchant Shops.”

In which case, they could identify the context’s point to “royal palace” and “merchants” in separate passages as well.

From there, one by one, they puzzled out the passage containing information on the search for Elea.

“How’s it going? Seems like you can figure it out, right?”

Maybe Tu isn’t actually that stupid at all.

Tu would often jokingly talk about her own stupidity, but she may have actually been a much faster thinker than Kia. At the very least, it would’ve taken Kia several days to arrive at this method of decoding the passages.

“Studying this stuff drives me crazy, but…I have to do this.”

“I’ll help out, too. This Elea woman’s really important to you, right?”

“…Thanks.”

When Kia imagined the life Elea must be enduring, she felt like she had to do something fast.

At that very moment, Elea might be exposed to danger, and Kia could already be too late. Even when she thought to defy everything and go to save her, she couldn’t help remembering the events at the royal palace grounds and the terrible result she had brought about.

It seemed like taking action, and not taking action, would equally produce the absolute worst outcome possible. She needed to gain information to determine how she was going to act.

With countless passages in front of her, she continued to work by trial and error.

Naturally, these documents were written in a way to ensure that the city guards could understand them with the little education they received. It certainly wasn’t an impossible endeavor, even with just Kia and Tu.

It was just past midday when Tu put forth a proposal.

“Hey, how about we call Uhak over here, too?”

“Uhak’s an ogre, right? Can he even read…?”

“But doesn’t he seem like he’d be smarter than me?”

“Hmmmm…”

Kia crossed her arms and pondered.

Uhak the Silent was far more cooperative than Kia had imagined when it came to daily life in their hideout, but that didn’t mean she had fully warmed up to him, either.

Still, Kia thought that she was being really friendly, comparatively speaking.

Normally, there would be far more pressing problems with an ogre living together with a child.

Kia just happened to have her invincible powers and no reason to fear an ogre’s violence whatsoever, and thus could remain unafraid of him. If anything, Kia’s frame of mind saw her as watching over him to ensure he didn’t go into the town below and cause trouble.

According to what Tu had told her, Uhak was—in a turn that was far too much to be pure coincidence—another hero candidate like them, and somehow managed to completely erase the hyphal labyrinth that Tu had tried to conquer herself.

It was all far too suspicious. While he may have been able to wield some power just like Kia, Uhak couldn’t use any Word Arts whatsoever, and despite how supposedly strong he was, he spent every day cleaning, tending to the garden, and doing other forms of menial labor.

“I mean, I guess it’d be fine to let him read a bit… He’s pretty calm, so I doubt he’d rip the paper or anything.”

“Woo-hoo! Okay, I’ll got get him! Heeeey, Uhak!”

Tu vigorously tromped down the hallway.

“She’s so loud…”

Kia smiled, exasperated.

When she thought about it, not only did she not know much about Uhak, but she also wasn’t fully aware of Tu the Magic’s personal history, either.

Tu herself claimed she was a mimic, but it was a race Kia had never heard of before.

Kia understood just from Tu’s physical capabilities that she had to be a construct, but it was mysterious how her outlandish tenacity and her carefree attitude unbefitting a weapon were at odds with one another.

“I brought Uhak, Kia!”

“Don’t run up the stairs.”

The noisy footsteps returned. Tu had immediately pulled Uhak over to them.

Tu the Magic may have been tall for a woman, but Uhak was a considerable giant among ogres as well.

He practically took up the entire hallway himself, and the old stairs would probably break just by him going up and down them. Kia had needed to preemptively reinforce those areas of the stairs herself.

Uhak looked down over the documents while standing.

The ogre was as still and silent as a statue.

Tu appeared to really value Uhak’s good nature and earnestness, but the impression Kia got was that he was a bit absentminded and spaced-out.

“Hey, so Uhak? We’re trying to read the writing on these papers.”

Tu explained everything rapid-fire, like a child talking to their parents.

“And so, we’ve managed to figure out this one means ‘wait’ and this character is ‘special.’ Do you know at all what’s written here on Elea’s documents?”

“…Well, Uhak?”

Uhak stared down at the scattered paper documents.

His irises were colored gray, bordering on white, and it wasn’t clear if they were out of focus or not.

Finally, his thick finger pointed, in order, to several characters on the documents.

“Wait…”

“We’ve got a clue!”

Tu was overjoyed.

“You really do understand then, Uhak! Look! The characters being used here are different, but the pauses in the passage are practically the same…and we’ve got that rule you picked up on, that the symbols mean what sort of crime and punishment they get!”

“Hold on. Okay, so this character means ‘locked up,’ so…”

The work continued into the evening.

However, the clues Uhak pointed out to them dramatically sped up their decoding.

Neither Kia nor Tu felt like they had given Uhak enough of an explanation, but it felt as if he had sympathized with Kia’s emotional state and showed her the way forward.

“…I’ve got it.”

At the end of their work, like untangling a mess of threads, finally, they successfully deciphered the information about Elea.

Kia had gotten wise to the fact in the middle of their decoding work already, but strictly speaking, this was neither an investigation brief nor a wanted notice. They were documents concerning a criminal’s crime and their punishment.

“Elea…is said to have committed foul play and rebelled just like me, but has already been dealt with… But her punishment…”

If Elea had been captured, just what sort of suffering was she enduring?

This was what terrified Kia most of all.

“The punishment is…‘special’ and ‘wait’…! There’s no map, but on the southeast outskirts, there’s a residence…or a facility, and for ‘four small months’…‘going outside’ is ‘forbidden,’ so…of course, thank goodness…”

Kia’s voice was hoarse.

There hadn’t been any indication of tears up until that moment, yet her throat grew hot, and they burst forth all at once.

Elea the Red Tag was safe.

While her punishment definitely wasn’t absolved, it was a far more promising result than the worst outcome Kia always imagined.

“Thank goodness… I’m so glad…”

“…Kia.”

Tu hugged Kia as she sobbed, gently rubbing her back.

The next morning came.

After crying herself into an exhausted sleep, Kia woke up very hungry and made enough breakfast for two people with her Word Arts before eating all of it.

“I decided to wait.”

Kia resolutely declared after finishing her meal.

“Sure, it really rubs me the wrong way that Elea’s being treated like she did something wrong, but…at least, if I wait just four small months, then she’ll be able to be freed the proper way.”

“You sure? Don’t you want to meet with Sephite and get all your crimes wiped clean, too?”

“Me? I’m totally fine. Being chased down by Aureatia doesn’t scare me at all! I wanted to meet with Sephite and find out if Aureatia was trying to invade Eta, but… I figured that’s not something I need to do right this minute, either.”

Kia smiled nonchalantly.

She might have been right, and the Aureatia army might not have posed any threat to her at all.

For a while after they had met, Tu was amazed and astonished by everything Kia did and had peppered her with questions nonstop. She previously believed that Izick the Chromatic had to be the greatest Word Arts user this world had seen, but even for someone who had been so ignorant of the world as Tu the Magic, seeing the very young Kia the World Word easily utilize Word Arts powerful enough to reshape reality itself was shocking enough to destroy her entire sense of values.

Kia’s Word Arts really are amazing. If a little girl like this is totally beating him with her Word Arts, then Izick really doesn’t have any good points left, does he…?

Nevertheless, the reality was that there was some part in Tu that had apprehensions about this tremendous, unproportionate might. While Tu herself had proposed infiltrating the royal palace, if Kia ever got a different idea, one accompanied by brute force and destruction, Tu felt she might ultimately have to put her life on the line to stop her.

“I think I’d be a bit relieved if you did plan on waiting. I mean, Kia, when you’re by yourself sometimes…you’ve always had this really pained and worried look on your face.”

“Me? No way! Obviously, you’re mistaking it for something else.”

“Eh-heh-heh, maybe you’re right… Lots of people have told me I’m pretty quick to assume things.”

However, in the first few days they had been together, Tu’s impression was that Kia was just a young girl.

She’d get sour or put on a brave front, but her inner nature seemed to be that of an artlessly considerate and kind child.

Tu couldn’t allow a child like her to use such an irreversibly serious power.

It almost feels like I’m her big sister, thinking stuff like this.

The thought was a bit delightful.

“What’re you smiling about…?”

“I’m just glad, that’s all.”

“Hey, Tu…it doesn’t bother you what I’ve done? I feel like I’ve talked a bunch…about the whole treason stuff, or about foul play and all…”

“Oh yeah, I guess you did, huh. What did you do?”

“I-I didn’t…do nothing exactly, but…”

“You didn’t act unfairly in the fourth match, right?”

“…No.”

For simple-minded Tu, she didn’t really understand what was considered foul or fair play in the Sixways Exhibition to begin with. Kia simply fought with her omnipotent Word Arts and was suspected of cheating somehow, while on the other hand, Kuze attacked Tu before their match and was able to move on in the tournament without being disqualified.

Were the people who set the rules arbitrarily deciding where the line lay, ensuring they could win? But Rosclay the Absolute should’ve been able to do just that, and he still lost the tenth match.

Winning and losing and stuff is all so complicated. Winning’s not just with strength, but winning with one’s head, or heart, or just through luck… The result’s gotta be from the whole world doing all sorts of stuff.

“Going into the royal palace and putting everyone to sleep…that’s true. But that was just to stop people from fighting and harming each other…! On the way to the palace, I healed all the injured people I saw, and I really just wanted to talk to Sephite, that’s all!”

“But you know that sneaking into the palace was a bad thing. That’s why you feel guilty, right?”

“…Yeah.”

Kia nodded, crestfallen. Kia was a child, but she was probably far more sensible and prudent than Tu was.

She was a child who was able to self-reflect on the meaning and responsibility of her actions.

“Did Elea do that sorta stuff, too?”

“…Probably. Elea…was a really kind teacher. But she still killed Jivlart the hero candidate. Elea did a bunch of stuff that she kept secret from me, so I can’t say with confidence that she didn’t do anything wrong. She might’ve done bad stuff like what Aureatia said she did, or all their allegations could be false. But…even if she did do something bad, once she’s atoned for what she’s done, I want to live with her again.”

“Elea really is important to you, huh?”

“…”

Kia was able to say she’d wait for Elea’s release because, in truth, she didn’t want to use any cheap or unjust methods. Tu figured that if Elea the Red Tag was the one who taught her to be this way, she really must have been a good teacher after all.

“Hey, Tu. Do you think we’re actually bad people? You said you were glad and all, but…do you still think you’d help me if I was a bad person?”

“Yup. If someone’s in front of me, in trouble, and we can get along, then…I just sorta end up wanting to help out. I never really worried if you were actually a bad person or not.”

Tu thought back to the screams from the young men in the Sun’s Conifer that she’d heard on the day Rique died. Whether wrong or right, there was nothing sadder than the idea of a world where there wasn’t a single person who would empathize with someone else’s pain.

There may have been a lot that Tu still didn’t know about this world, but even still, she wanted to save people without distinguishing the right from the wrong. Tu the Magic, after all, was the “Demon King’s Bastard,” created by one of the worst scoundrels the world had ever seen.

While it may not have been a firm conviction she could put into words, letting her heart lead her to judge others couldn’t be a part of saving people as her heart desired.

“Is it all right to go out on watch? I want to see the city.”

“Isn’t it boring to do that every day? You just look out at the town from the roof…”

“I don’t get bored,” Tu replied with a smile. “That’s how I was raised.”

In this district, separated from central Aureatia, it was peaceful enough to think the turmoil of the Sixways Exhibition was all a dream.

Tu wished the world could keep on living in peace like this.