7
The sound of heavy bells tolling woke Ronie up, and she saw bright light already streaming through the thin curtains over the window.
Blinking and rubbing her eyes, she sat up, checking around the room in a haze of sleepiness as she wrapped herself in the cloak she was using for a blanket. Very quickly she spotted the black-haired swordsman fast asleep on the bed nearby. Eight hours had passed, and the effect of the herbs had worn off, because his sleeping face was pale again and surprisingly cherubic. It put a smile on her own face.
But then the facts sank in: She had spent a night in the same room as Kirito, different beds or not. The realization jolted the sleep from her mind, and her face flushed. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were cold from being outside of the cloak, and took deep breaths until she calmed down. Promptly after, she bolted to her feet.
Ronie walked over to the bed and gently shook her superior’s shoulder, saying, “Wake up. Wake up—it’s eight o’clock.”
It was at that point that she realized all the time-telling bell melodies she’d been hearing since last night were exactly the same as those played by the bells at Central Cathedral.
What could explain that? Why would the bells attached to the Axiom Church in the human realm and the bells in this far-flung dark capital play the same tune? The question fell out of her mind when Kirito mumbled and tried to wriggle farther under the blanket.
“Mmrm…bit longer……”
“No, don’t go back to sleep!” She pulled on the blanket, but Kirito clung hard to the end with both hands, protesting like a stubborn child.
“Five minutes…just three more minutes, Eugeo…”
Ronie gasped. She let go of the blanket and put her hand over her mouth, stepping backward.
Kirito’s best friend, Elite Disciple Eugeo, had died nearly two years ago in the fight against Administrator. But to Kirito, his time with Eugeo wasn’t yet the past. Like Tiese, he was still living it.
She snuck back to the couch and sat down again.
Swordswoman Subdelegate Asuna slept in the same room as Kirito. She would probably know his secret thoughts, the deep sadness that he kept hidden beneath the surface. And yet she had found a way to stay by his side, always smiling and warm and gentle…
When she got back to Centoria, Ronie would have a proper conversation with Asuna. She couldn’t reveal the secret feelings she harbored, but the two of them were united in their desire to help Kirito.
To her surprise, about three minutes later, as promised, Kirito sat up. He looked around the room with eyes that were more than half closed.
When he spotted his companion, he yawned hugely. “Morning, Ronie.”
“G…good morning, Kirito.”
“Sorry, slept in a bit…What time is it?”
“The eight o’clock bell just rang.”
“I see. Then we’ll be in time for checkout…er, for the time she wants us out.”
He yawned again and got out of bed, then headed for the window and yanked the gray curtains open.
“Hey, Ronie, check it out. You can see the palace,” he said.
“Really? You can?”
She got up from the sofa to join him. Sure enough, off in the distance and a little to the right, looming over the chaos of the city, was the clear figure of the pitch-black palace, soaring into the sky.
It tore through the morning mist, which was far redder than what she knew back home. Being carved largely out of natural rock, it was understandably rougher hewn than Central Cathedral, but that gave it a kind of beauty all its own. Even Kirito, who was seeing it for the second time, exhaled long and low with admiration.
“Unlike Central Cathedral, which Administrator built with her superhuman powers, that palace was carved out of the rock by mortal hands,” he said.
Ronie marveled at the thought. “How many months—? How many years must it have taken…?”
“They say it took over a hundred years…Well anyway, we should be going. If we take too long, it’ll be noon before we know it.”
“Let’s not forget who was responsible for sleeping in!” snapped Ronie. He gave a mischievous little grin to duck responsibility and began to put the bags together.
Once they had reapplied the cofil-tea solution and paid for their night, they found a city lit red by the morning sun rather than ore lamps.
The inn was over five kilors away from Obsidia Palace, but the walk hardly felt long at all due to all the novel sights.
The road got wider as they approached the palace, and the buildings lining it also grew bigger and fancier. But the number of people walking the streets dwindled, and there was no longer a single demi-human in sight.
Eventually, they came to a river of considerable size—at least by local standards—and a large stone bridge spanning it. On the other side was a big gate, behind which was a gentle upward slope that led to the abnormally sharp obsidian spire that was the palace.
Kirito came to a stop at the foot of the bridge. Ronie asked him quietly, “So…have you figured out how we’re going to get into the castle?”
The swordsman’s face tilted thoughtfully. “Hmm…I don’t think that merely acting like darklanders is going to be enough to get us into the palace…And if we try to fly up to the top of it, the guards are going to see us, so…”
“So you haven’t come up with an answer…,” she concluded.
He rushed to protest. “N-no, I didn’t say that. I’ve still got the secret trick up my sleeve!” he cried, pulling her by the hand down a riverside path to the left of the bridge. As the route to the castle grew farther away, she worried that he was about to suggest they swim across the river and climb up the rocky hill to sneak into the palace.
Kirito stopped at a spot where the river was wider, set the two bags on the ground, and looked up at Obsidia Palace again. The rocky black mountain was about three hundred mels across at the base but nearly twice as tall as that, so it looked more like a tower than a mountain. The majority of the side facing the city was carved into the shape of a castle, with majestic pillars and windows that gleamed in the morning sun. The rear side was still almost entirely raw mountain face, with just one large terrace jutting out, probably as a platform for dragons.
He lifted his right hand and pointed it at the top of the mountain. His finger twitched, as if he was searching for something.
“Um, Kirito…what are you…?” Ronie started to ask, feeling extra-apprehensive suddenly. He said nothing, holding his hand up another five seconds, then nodded as though he’d found the answer he wanted.
He lined up the fingers of that hand into a chopping position. Then he lifted his arm straight up, pulled his left foot back, and dropped his center of gravity. The hand, upright like a sword, began to vibrate faintly and took on a white glow, to Ronie’s shock.
Kirito hadn’t spoken a word of any command. Which would mean this was the Integrity Knights’ most secret power, a force that worked on the very laws of the world, Incarnation. But normally, it did not create any sound or light. How much power was he focusing to make it react this way?
“……Hah!!” he shouted, swinging the hand down with tremendous force.
White light shot forth in the form of a blade edge, much like Renly’s Double-Winged Blades, instantly crossing over a kilor of space and hitting the handrail of a small terrace right at the top of the palace. With her excellent eyesight, Ronie could see little fragments of obsidian falling off the handrail.
“Wait…K-K-Kirito, what are you doing?! You just damaged the palace!!” she hissed, even more startled about that than the fact that he’d thrown an Incarnate Sword an entire kilor. She tugged his black cloak in a panic, but he got to his feet with practiced ease.
“That’s nothing. Mix a little charcoal powder with glue and pack it on, and the marks will disappear…I think. Besides, look,” he said, lifting his hand again to point. She could see a small figure emerging onto the distant terrace he’d just struck. It was too far away for them to make out its face, but the silhouette was slim enough that it was definitely a human. The person noticed the damage to the handrail, then leaned over the edge to look at the world below.
There was nowhere for Kirito and Ronie to hide on the riverbank, even if the palace was over a kilor away. The person on the terrace caught sight of them…it seemed.
The figure put a hand to its mouth.
Ronie only realized that the gesture was a whistle once a gray dragon spread its wings and took flight from the larger launching platform on the rear side of the mountain. The dragon rose as it rounded the side of the mountain, and then it hovered near the terrace in question. The figure hopped onto its back and pointed right at the side of the river where Ronie and Kirito stood.
“Th-th-that’s b-b-b-bad news! They’ve completely spotted us!!”
“That was quick. Very sharp.”
“I don’t think this is the time for idle admiration! We need to get moving, or…”
But her tugging on his cloak proved futile. Kirito grabbed Ronie’s arm and stood her in front of him instead. The dragon was now plunging downward, directly toward them.
Well, I guess I have to do my duty as bodyguard! she told herself, squeezing the hilt of her newly acquired longsword.
Just three seconds later, the gray dragon reached the space overhead and beat its wings to control its descent, and the rider hopped nimbly off its back, landing on the rocky riverside without a sound. Like the two of them, it was wearing a hooded cloak that kept its face hidden from sight.
The person wore no sword, but based on their mastery of the dragon, they must have been an elite dark knight. Ronie stood before Kirito, maintaining maximum vigilance to ensure that she was ready to draw her sword at any moment.
But…
The gray dragon landed after its rider, the ground shaking beneath their feet, and extended its long neck to sniff first Ronie, then Kirito. Then it trilled, soft and friendly, and nuzzled Kirito’s head with the side of its long snout.
“Huh…?” Ronie was stunned. She’d heard that the dragons of the Dark Territory, like those back home, were very proud and standoffish with strangers. It was impossible for one to let down its guard this way around a stranger…But then she noticed the many lance scars on the dragon’s gray scales.
“Oh…is that…?”
But Kirito answered the question before she could get it entirely out of her mouth. He rubbed under the chin of the dragon with both hands and said, “There, there. Good to see you again, too, Yoiyobi. How have you been?”
She would never forget that name. It belonged to a legendary dragon who’d fought bravely on its own against an army of red knights in the War of the Underworld. It was the partner not of a soldier of darkness, but of an Integrity Knight—a person who was another legendary figure, the Silent Knight…
“…Is…is that you…Lady Sheyta?” Ronie asked the hooded soldier.
The figure lowered its hood and said, “Kirito…Ronie. What are you doing here?”
Sheyta Synthesis Twelve.
Among the current state of the knighthood, she was one of the oldest knights after Fanatio and Deusolbert, and according to rumor, her skill with the sword was equal to that of the original commander, Bercouli Synthesis One.
Her divine weapon had been a gift from the pontifex herself. The Black Lily Sword could cut anything in the world, and Sheyta had used it to great effect against the hordes of pugilists and red knights in the war, in a true battle of one against many. But once the war was over, she had left Central Cathedral; now she lived in Obsidia Palace as the ambassador plenipotentiary for the council.
In other words, she was the perfect person for Kirito and Ronie to make contact with—the only problem had been how Kirito would summon her to meet them. The fact that he’d thrown an Incarnate Sword at the castle and the one person they’d needed had come out to investigate seemed more like a planned outcome than a lucky happenstance.
Ronie suppressed her desire to interrogate Kirito, choosing to observe their interaction with bated breath instead.
“I’m sorry to startle you like this, Sheyta,” Kirito apologized, lowering his hood and scratching his head in embarrassment. It was the only idea I could come up with to get your attention…”
The faintest look of chagrin crossed Sheyta’s reserved, beautiful features. “Yes, you did startle me. When I realized that someone had hit the edge with a blade of Incarnation from across the river, I thought that Commander Bercouli had come back to life.”
Her manner of speaking was simple and flat, with none of the daintiness of her sex, but she was wordier than she had been in the past, and the tone of her voice felt softer somehow.
“…But how did you know that I was in that room?” Sheyta asked.
Kirito shrugged. “Because it felt the most dangerous, I guess.”
Sheyta repeated his gesture, looking a bit disgruntled. “I thought that I was shutting off my sword spirit. If you can sense me from such a distance, then I still have much improvement ahead of me.”
This told Ronie at last that Kirito hadn’t been simply guessing about the target of his Incarnate Sword. The gesture he had made with his fingers before the light appeared around his hand must have been him searching for Sheyta’s presence. It was a skill that she knew she could never replicate. But…
“Um, Kirito, if you have such incredible powers, did you really need to engage in what is essentially a child throwing a pebble at his friend’s window?” she interjected.
Kirito turned to her and grinned. “What’s this? Have you been visited by a boy like that before?”
“I—I wasn’t speaking from personal experience!”
“Then maybe you were the one using it to—”
“N-no, of course I’ve never done anything like that!” she protested vigorously.
Sheyta gave them a thin, wry smile and then said to Ronie, “The long journey must have been tiresome. You may rest in the castle.”
She gestured with her hand, and Yoiyobi lowered its body. There was no saddle on the dragon’s back, but that meant there was enough room for the three of them to squeeze on together.
With Ronie in front, Kirito in the rear, and Sheyta sitting between them, the veteran dragon took a quick run along the riverbank and gracefully took off, easily handling the weight of three people and two divine weapons.
With a powerful beat of its wings, the dragon rose rapidly, heading for the top of Obsidia Palace. The guards must have noticed by now, but they would know that it was the ambassador’s dragon, and they hadn’t raised an alarm about the scene.
Within two minutes, Yoiyobi brought them to the terrace, lowered the trio, then cried and returned to the larger platform on the other side of the mountain. When the huge creature was out of sight, Ronie walked over to the obsidian handrail to inspect the location Kirito had struck with his Incarnation. As she feared, there was a chunk over a cen deep missing from the feature.
That’s going to get us yelled at, she thought, looking away—but when she actually glanced down at the sight before her, that brief concern of hers was entirely forgotten.
“Oh…wow…!”
Below her was the entire city of Obsidia. Unlike Centoria and its orderly, radial patterns, this was a city of chaos and disorder, but that just made it seem even more bold and alive.
“Over there, that looks like the ground itself is stacked up in several layers…Oh, and is that a coliseum? It’s huge—Kirito, look!” Ronie said, pointing with excitement.
Over her shoulder, Sheyta said, “There are many other things to see here, and if you have the time, I would recommend some sightseeing…but on the other hand…” She turned away from Ronie and gave Kirito a piercing glance. “I assume you didn’t sneak out to visit for fun. Has something happened in Centoria?”
“That’s right,” Kirito confirmed. He snapped to attention. “Ambassador Plenipotentiary Sheyta, I request an urgent meeting with Commander Iskahn.”
The room leading to the terrace was full of warm, bright light, by the standards of the dark realm. The walls and ceiling were painted a pale pink, the curtains were pale yellow, and the rug was the green of fresh grass. The large fireplace burned rocks instead of firewood, and it was warm enough that if Ronie kept her cloak on, she might break into a sweat.
It was a surprising choice of decoration if this was Sheyta’s room, she thought, but the real answer became apparent to her very quickly.
There was a small bed about a single mel long on the far side of the fireplace, and as Sheyta walked over to it, there was a stunningly warm and gentle smile on her face. She turned and beckoned Ronie and Kirito over in silence. They snuck closer and peered at the bed, where a baby wrapped in a pure-white blanket was sleeping soundly.
It was no more than three months old, with a tuft of soft hair that was dark red; its nose, mouth, and the hands clutched beside its head were all so tiny it was hard to believe.
According to the stories, this baby was the child of Sheyta and Iskahn, the leader of the pugilists guild. It was a girl, as Ronie recalled. She whispered to the mother, “What is her name…?”
“Leazetta,” Sheyta said with a note of pride. She looked at Kirito and added, “I got the first syllable from the Green Swordswoman, Leafa.”
“You did…? I had no idea,” murmured Kirito, smiling as he gazed down at the sleeping infant.
A gentle, comforting silence filled the next twenty seconds, only to be broken by the sound of the door to the hallway swinging open and the world’s worst example of a nasal baby-talk voice gushing forth.
“Lea, it’s time for your yummy-nummy miiilk…”
A young man carrying two trays entered the room. His short curly hair, the golden-red color of fire, was held in place by a simple headband made of silver, and despite the winter season, he wore only a thin linen shirt. He sported short pants and sandals, but the rippling muscles and countless scars visible on his exposed shoulders and arms, along with his gouged-out right eye, indicated that he was a battle-hardened warrior.
In contrast, however, the slackened, goofy smile on that warrior’s face was many times more blissful than even Kirito’s expression when eating a honey pie. It left Ronie aghast.
The one-eyed man eventually noticed Ronie and Kirito standing near the bed, and his smile faded. His thick brows curled upward with suspicion, and his eyes glanced back and forth between them and Sheyta.
Before the man said anything, Kirito raised his hand and said, “Hey, Iskahn. It’s been a while.”
The supreme commander of the Dark Territory and champion of the pugilists guild, Iskahn, flared his one eye as wide as it could open. “Is…is that K-K-Kirito?! Why is your face colored like that…? I mean, what are you doing here?! The next meeting isn’t until March!”
There was an explosive impact that sent the curtains and other decorative cloths swaying. It was clearly a devastatingly powerful punch, but Kirito stayed in place with no more than a slight backward lean, stopping Iskahn’s blow with his one hand.
The pugilists’ leader and the human realm’s swordsman delegate went still, right and left hands connected. Eventually, Iskahn raised his head and smiled. “Good to see you haven’t lost your touch, Kirito.”
“Same to you, Iskahn.”
Beside the men smiling creepily at each other, Sheyta held the trays with ill-disguised irritation. Ronie approached the bed, wondering if the sound had woken the baby. Instead, Leazetta was happily sleeping away without any notice of the clamor that had just happened. She really was the child of the strongest knight and pugilist in the world.
When the guards came, drawn by the sound of the blast, Iskahn pushed them back through the doorway and instructed them to bring two more chairs, which joined the two already lined up by the window. The guards were wary of Kirito and Ronie, of course, but they relented when Iskahn told them not to worry and that he would explain later. That was the effect of either the Law of Power or the trust Iskahn engendered as a leader.
After the guards left, the nine o’clock bells rang, and the baby awoke as if on command, scrunching up her face and crying. Sheyta scooped Leazetta up from the bed and sat down in one of the chairs to give her milk from a bottle fashioned out of phibo-tree nuts, which existed in the human realm as well.
When heated, phibo nuts became as translucent and hollow as glass bottles, and the nipple-like stem even had just the right amount of resiliency and perforation to allow liquid to pass through. For that reason, it was said that Terraria had created the plant precisely for babies. Now that Ronie knew about the real world, it was hard not to take that statement literally—that they really had been created, just by real-worlders, not Terraria.
Sheyta, in a trance, watched Leazetta drink noisily, then lifted her head and said, “Would you like to hold her?”
“May I?” Ronie asked.
“Of course.”
She took the baby with her left arm and the bottle with the right and moved it to the baby’s mouth. Leazetta’s eyes stared at Ronie, gray like her mother’s, but she resumed drinking the milk at once. Ronie had given Berche milk just like this several times at the cathedral, but holding a baby girl felt very different.
“I would have liked to nurse her myself, but the pugilists have their own secret mixture of milk formula,” Sheyta explained.
Iskahn sensed the comment and turned away from his conversation about the latest news with Kirito to say, “You bet. If she drinks the formula, she’ll never get sick, her bones will grow hard, and she’ll be a good, strong child.”
The term milk in the case of this mixture was an ordinary sacred word—a term that did not originate from the common tongue but was understood by all—and referred to cow’s or goat’s milk heated to skin temperature and mixed with certain medicinal elements specifically for infants. What that mixture consisted of varied by family and region—thus, Sheyta’s reference to the secret formula. Ronie often heard that mother’s milk was best, as Sheyta had said, and perhaps it was true, but if it weren’t for phibo-nut bottles and milk mixture, it would be far more difficult for busy farming and merchant families to raise babies.
For her part, Leazetta had no complaints about the pugilists guild’s secret recipe, and she drank it down in short order, then burped. She still looked sleepy, so Sheyta took her back from Ronie and laid her down in the bed again.
When she returned and sat down in the chair, her expression had gone from that of a mother to that of a knight.
“So what happened?” she asked, all business.
Kirito proceeded to tell them about the murder that had occurred two days earlier in South Centoria. Iskahn and Sheyta listened in silence, but when the story reached the topic of Oroi, the mountain goblin and murder suspect, they both inhaled. But they did not interrupt, so Kirito continued the story, explaining how he and Ronie had used a “dragon” to fly out of the human realm and reach Obsidia the night before.
“…I see…That’s a hell of an ordeal we’ve put you through,” said the commander, but the delegate just shook his head.
“No, I just wish I could have sent a messenger to warn you first…but I knew that it would be next month before they got an answer and completed the return trip.”
Contact between Centoria and Obsidia at the moment happened through horse-bound messengers who traveled between a series of ten towns and forts. The entire process took a whole two weeks to get from one end to the other. And that wasn’t even taking into account the danger of the many larger magical beasts that lived in the Dark Territory and might attack the messengers.
“True…If only we could find that master skull…,” grumbled Iskahn, eliciting an understanding nod from Kirito.
So it fell to Ronie to ask, “Um, what’s a…master skull?”
“Oh, that. I didn’t know about it until after the war, either. During the War of the Underworld, Emperor Vecta used a Divine Object to give orders to Iskahn and the rest of the ten lords. It was a big master skull and ten slave skulls that went together. When he spoke into the master, his voice would instantly come out of the subsidiaries, no matter how far away they were.”
His explanation left her wide-eyed. “I-instantly…?! If we had such a thing, there would be no need for letters or messengers at all.”
“No, there wouldn’t…But it’s a one-sided conversation from master to slave, so you couldn’t actually go back and forth with just that one set,” Kirito noted.
“But after the war, the master skull and several of the slaves went missing, so even that much is out of grasp for now,” Iskahn explained, exhaling deeply and shaking his head. “But the bigger problem is this murder in the human realm. It’s impossible… The people who go on vacation in the human realm have to take a document forbidding theft, fighting, and killing, in the name of the Dark Council of Five and myself, supreme commander of the Dark Army. I sign every last one of those…so as long as the Law of Power exists, there’s only one person in the entire dark realm who can ignore those orders.”
Ronie assumed that he was speaking about himself, of course. But then Sheyta interjected, “Two people.”
“……Only two people,” Iskahn corrected himself, scowling. The corners of Kirito’s mouth curled upward briefly.
“I agree with you,” he said. “As a matter of fact, the dagger Oroi supposedly used to kill the human housekeeper vanished from the armory. I think it was most likely a temporary weapon, generated with steel elements…though that was Ronie’s suspicion, not mine.”
“Sounds like your pupil’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
“Sh-she’s not a pupil, really…,” Kirito said awkwardly.
Ronie began to wonder exactly what she was to Kirito, but she pushed the thought out of her mind and raised her hand to say, “Um, I was thinking a little more about that…The murder weapon was a re-creation of a mountain goblin dagger that was realistic enough for Oroi to mistake it for the real thing for a moment. So we’ve been assuming the whole time that a dark mage was involved in the incident somehow. But…”
She paused momentarily, looking at Sheyta and Iskahn in turn, and summoned up her courage to ask, “On that note, what is the state of the dark mages guild now…?”
Husband and wife shared a quick glance. Iskahn cleared his throat and answered, “I was going to report on this at the next meeting…Regrettably, we don’t have a clear idea of the current state of the guild.”
“What does that mean?” Kirito asked, his brows knit.
“After the Green Swordswoman slew Dee Eye Ell, a mage by the name of Kay Yu Vee took over. But though I don’t know much about dark arts, even I could tell that she did not have the strength to maintain the guild,” Iskahn said.
Sheyta added for clarity, “Even my skill with such arts is higher than hers.”
“Upon further investigation, we found that when Dee was still alive, Kay was, at most, tenth in the internal hierarchy. Meaning that a whole bunch of the senior membership up and vanished.”
“…Didn’t nearly two thousand dark mages die in the battle at the Eastern Gate? Wouldn’t that suggest they were in that group?” Kirito pointed out.
Iskahn scowled. “I doubt it…They’re as tenacious as magical beasts when it comes to clinging stubbornly to life. If Dee hadn’t fought with the Green Swordswoman, she’d still be alive today. They’re not considerate enough that the top-ten mages would just up and die in battle together.”
He looked back to Ronie and concluded, “So it’s possible that the dark mages guild currently taking part in the Council of Five is just an empty shell. The real strength of the mages might be in hiding somewhere. And that means they might have had a hand in this trouble in the human realm. But…Ronie, was it? You seem to think differently.”
“That’s right. I don’t have the evidence to completely deny that possibility…but I did think it was strange. If the real culprit is the dark mages guild in hiding, why would they need to create a false weapon from steel elements? Wouldn’t they have been able to get a real goblin dagger pretty easily…?”
“…That’s a good point. To a goblin, a dagger with their clan symbol on it is a pretty important item, but they’re still mass-produced cast-iron pieces. You could easily come up with one or two by stealing or buying them from the right person,” Iskahn muttered.
“If the true culprit’s aim is to frame Oroi for the murder and escalate tensions between the two realms, having a real dagger would be a more effective method,” Kirito agreed. “So if they weren’t able to do that, would it mean that the culprit is…someone on the human side…?”
“That would raise an even bigger mystery,” Sheyta pointed out, and her almond eyes narrowed even further. “On the human side, we are bound by far stricter laws than in the dark realm. Murder is a very clear violation of the Taboo Index. So if the person who killed the housekeeper is from the human realm, that would mean they are capable of ignoring the Taboo Index.”
Kirito and Ronie nodded together in silence. That point had been raised in the discussion with Fanatio after the incident as well. Even an Integrity Knight unbound by the Taboo Index could not simply take the life of an innocent citizen like Yazen the housekeeper entirely of their own volition.
“We just don’t know anything for sure,” Kirito murmured, slowly shaking his head. Iskahn bobbed his head, lost in thought. Eventually, he clapped his hands, cutting through the figurative fog surrounding them.
“All right! We understand the situation now. Unfortunately, we’ll probably need to cancel the sightseeing travel business to the human side for a time…”
“Yeah…We’re keeping a lid on the information within Centoria for the time being, but if a second or third incident occurs, even the Unification Council won’t be able to control the situation. I plan to temporarily close off the Eastern Gate and have the visitors currently staying in Centoria return home as soon as possible,” Kirito said, with deep regret. “Also…as for Oroi the mountain goblin…We’re keeping him in Central Cathedral for now, but we can’t let him go right away. He might be able to give us more information, and we might be able to find out why he was framed. Oroi’s from the Ubori clan on Saw Hill. I’m afraid that…”
“I understand. I’ll send an envoy to the Ubori to explain the situation,” Iskahn agreed. He turned his one eye to the window, then looked back at Kirito. “That settles the matter of the tourists going to the human realm…but what about the traders coming here from your side? There’s a caravan of them staying in Obsidia at the moment.”
“Hmm, that’s a good question…,” said Kirito, folding his arms.
As part of the cultural exchange between the two sides, in addition to tourists visiting the human realm from the dark realm, the human side sent its own trading caravans to Obsidia. It was on a test scale for now, with just a few wagons’ worth of goods selected for trading to see what worked and what didn’t, but there were many exotic things here that couldn’t be found inside the human realm, like those illumination ores. The bigger merchants could smell a major opportunity for business in the making, and they were pounding down the door with applications to be part of the caravans.
“…If the responsible party is an organizational power and it has members here in Obsidia, then they could be looking to cause the reverse of the human-killing…Say, one of the human traders killing a resident of Obsidia. But the caravans have veteran men-at-arms and arts-users as personal guards, and they’re not allowed to wander around freely, either…so it wouldn’t be that easy, I’m thinking,” Kirito explained.
Sheyta agreed. “I don’t think there’s any need to cancel the trading business—not right away, at least. The caravans are bringing many valuable medicines and reagents here, so their presence is more welcomed than I might have thought…Just in case, I’ll put a pupil on the caravan while they’re staying in Obsidia.”
“P-pupil…? I thought you were here on a solo assignment, Sheyta…,” Kirito remarked, his darkened face wide with surprise.
With a mixture of concern and pride, Iskahn said, “That’s the thing. Sheyta’s currently both the ambassador plenipotentiary and a guest master of the dark knighthood.”
“Wh-what does guest master mean…?”
“When she went to observe the knights, their young captain challenged her to a sparring match, so she used a borrowed sword—and not even the actual sword, just the scabbard—and beat him raw. Now she’s got her own training hall at the knights’ headquarters.”
“I only have a handful of pupils; less than ten. But they’ve all got great potential,” Sheyta explained.
“Ah…I see…,” said Kirito, who was clearly at a loss for words.
She added, “You should come to the hall and give them a good demonstration.”
“Oh, uh, g-gosh, I’ve barely trained in the traditional styles of swordplay at all…,” Kirito mumbled, trying to edge away with the chair.
Iskahn reached out and clasped his shoulder. “That’s perfect. After the knights, you can come to the pugilists’ training hall, too. There are plenty there who doubt your true ability, and I need you to show them the Law of Power.”
“I-I’d rather not! I’ve changed my mind; I want to be a bureaucrat!”
Oh dear…I don’t think he’s getting out of this one, thought Ronie, enjoying Kirito’s panic.
Kirito and Ronie used Sheyta and Iskahn’s private bath to wash off the dust of their travel, as well as their faces, and were taken to guest rooms on the same floor of the palace. Their unannounced visit was explained to the rest of the staff as an urgent envoy party.
It was not mentioned that Kirito was the swordsman delegate of the human realm, so the guards eyed his light armor with suspicion—envoys weren’t typically armed—but they changed their attitude when they noticed the weapons the two carried. Divine Objects were even rarer in the Dark Territory than they were in Centoria.
They took a short rest in the two adjacent guest rooms, then joined Iskahn and Sheyta for lunch in the afternoon. They were guided around Obsidia to the headquarters of the dark knighthood and the pugilists guild by carriage in the afternoon. Kirito was nearly placed into a match with the massive, one-armed deputy captain of the pugilists guild but just barely managed to argue his way out of it by claiming, “I’m only on secret assignment!”
After that, they visited the central market and the great coliseum, but of course, the entire day wasn’t just about sightseeing. Kirito and Iskahn spent much of the trip exchanging opinions about the incident and the cultural-exchange business, and Ronie was ever vigilant in her duty as a bodyguard. Of course, with the elite Integrity Knight Sheyta the Silent along, it was unlikely that Ronie’s services would be necessary.
At that point, a thought belatedly occurred to her. When Sheyta had flown down on Yoiyobi, and over the course of their trip through the city, she hadn’t been wearing a sword. As the carriage trundled back toward the palace, Ronie shifted down the long bench in Sheyta’s direction.
“Um, Lady Sheyta? You don’t have a sword with you…?”
The knight’s eyes narrowed briefly with fond reminiscence. “No. The Black Lily Sword was my first and last blade.”
“…”
Ronie still couldn’t quite fathom what it meant for an Integrity Knight to lose the divine weapon that their heart and soul was fused with. She had no follow-up question, so Sheyta touched Ronie’s hand reassuringly and smiled. “I am no longer Silent. I am Sheyta the Unarmed. And I am very pleased about that…although there are times that I recall the Black Lily and feel lonely.”
“Oh…I see…”
I could never imagine the distant heights she inhabits, the apprentice realized in that moment.
Then it was Sheyta’s turn to ask an unexpected question. “Did you just get that sword?”
“Y-yes…that’s right. I haven’t given it a name yet,” Ronie admitted. She traced the silver hilt.
“I see. Your ties to it are shallow still, but it is a very good sword. Treasure it…because wars might end, but a knight’s battles never do.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Ronie said crisply. Across from them, Kirito and Iskahn looked over in surprise.
Eventually, the carriage passed through the castle town and crossed the bridge to the gate that was the official boundary of Obsidia Palace.
Standing at five hundred mels, the palace was a far cry from Central Cathedral’s height but was still fifty stories, all told. It did not, however, have an automated levitating platform to transport people up and down. The stairs were the only means of getting to the upper levels, but it was said that this also served as a countermeasure against attacks.
The four of them climbed without stopping to the forty-ninth floor, where Iskahn and Sheyta lived. Kirito and the married couple were not fatigued by the trip, but Ronie was breathing heavily for a minute or two after they stopped—a sign that she had further physical improvements to make.
She thanked the three of them for waiting while she collected her breath, but then she noticed that the great staircase continued farther upward. “Um…Lady Sheyta, what is above us?”
It was the supreme commander, not the ambassador plenipotentiary, who answered the question. “The fiftieth floor is the throne room. I’ve only gone in once or twice, though.”
“Throne room…? For the emperor?” Kirito asked.
Iskahn scowled and nodded. “That’s right. When Emperor Vecta appeared a year or so ago, it happened on the floor right above us.”
“C-can we go and see…?” he asked, curiosity written on his face. Iskahn threw out his hands.
“I’d offer, of course…but the moment Vecta died—the moment you killed him—the door to the fiftieth floor was locked up by the Chains of Sealing again, and there’s nothing you can do to sever them. There’s a legend that says you can see the End Mountains and Eastern Gate from the fiftieth floor, so I wish I could go in again…”
The Integrity Knight of whom it was said there was “nothing she couldn’t cut” nodded severely. “I borrowed a sword from the treasure repository to test it out, and I couldn’t cut the chains. I could’ve done it in one swing with the Black Lily Sword, however.”
“Hmm…”
It was clear to Ronie from the look on Kirito’s face that he really wanted to try it with the Night-Sky Blade, so she quickly tugged on his sleeve twice. He picked up the mental Don’t you dare!! signals from her and backed down, but not before one last longing look at the staircase.
“All right. Guess I’ll have to forget about seeing the throne room.”
“I’ll make it up to you, though: We’ll put together a dinner of all sorts of stuff you’ve never eaten before.”
“That sounds fun,” Kirito agreed.
Sensing the conversation was over, Sheyta took a step backward. “I’m going to give Leazetta her milk now. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Oops, I’ve got to go with you. I’ve only seen my little girl’s face once today.”
The two new parents headed off. Kirito waved at them as they went, then took another glance at the stairs to the top floor. Ronie just shook her head in silence.
“I know, I know,” he said, smirking. “C’mon…Let’s go back to our rooms.”
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