3
There is a word, nilin.
In ancient Chinese folklore, on the neck of the mystical, legendary being, was a single inverted scale that wasn’t to be touched, called the “nilin.” Touching it would incite the dragon’s rage, and all who did would assuredly be killed by the dragon.
Based on that folklore, the phrase to touch the nilin became a metaphor for bringing up a subject that should never be discussed.
Of course, Emilia had no way of knowing the folklore and origins of terminology from a different world. Her goal in touching that white scale on the dragon’s neck was to disrupt its concentration as it flew around, trying to shake her off.
However…
“Aaaaaaah!!!”
Emilia cried out as the world spun around her. She had been hurled clear, as expected. However, the weightless feeling this time was even shorter than last time when she had fallen onto the dragon’s back. Stopped by something hard, Emilia immediately tried to control herself and rolled.
Quickly standing up, she looked all around her.
“ ”
Fortunately, there was no sign of an imminent attack bearing down on her. That was natural. Since Volcanica was far, far above her, looking down at her with incredible vigilance.
“ GGHHH!”
Apparently, Volcanica really hated having that white scale touched, because it was writhing high up in the sky.
Seeing it crying out as if to crush the sky between its jaws, Emilia’s eyes widened.
“Puck seemed to like it…”
Scolding herself for assuming that that meant Volcanica would like it, too, Emilia checked her arms and legs.
After she’d been flung around so violently on Volcanica’s back, her blood flow had been a little off-kilter. At some points, it had felt like it slowed to a crawl, and her eyes almost blacked out as blood stopped reaching her head, but Emilia had just barely managed to hold on.
And confirming that, Emilia noticed something.
“Ah! This is…”
Looking around, she realized she had reached a point even higher than the first floor.
The six pillars that should have been around her were nowhere to be seen, proof that Emilia had reached somewhere higher—in other words, this was the true top floor.
That fall off Volcanica’s back had brought her here.
The highest floor of the Pleiades Watchtower, a place no one had ever reached before…
“Hooray! It was worth it!”
With a humble reaction that didn’t seem to match the scale of her achievement, Emilia put her hand on her chest and immediately ran to the center of the highest floor.
Volcanica was currently writhing up in the sky but would undoubtedly return soon. Before that happened, she needed to help Subaru and the others by passing the examination.
“Please be a problem I can understand…”
Volcanica forgetting about the examination had been a huge problem, but Emilia meant whether the first floor’s examination would be one that she could personally solve or not.
Fearful of that, Emilia raced to the center of the highest floor. And reaching the base of a pillar that stretched from there up to the heavens, she gasped.
It was there. Something different from the six pillars down below. On the center pillar on this highest floor, there was a mysterious distinguishing feature.
It was…
“Someone’s…handprints?”
A black monolith stood at the base of the central pillar on the Pleiades Watchtower’s highest floor. And on it were unmistakable handprints.
Six handprints of varying shapes and sizes.
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