Princess 1.1

The Valiant Struggle of the Reincarnated PrincessNext on the agenda—breaking the flag of a narcissistic noble brat.George zu Eigel was the heir to a marquis and Rosemary’s future fiancé in the game. Though I stated this rather matter-of-factly, it bears repeating: he would one day be Rosemary’s—as in, my—husband.Ha ha ha... Give me a break!What did I do to deserve pledging my life to that self-obsessed freak?I had half a mind to fob him off on the game’s heroine, but my conscience reined me in. I figured that I should at least try to make him slightly more presentable before handing him over to the shrine maiden. To do that, I’d need to recall his upbringing.Most of the game’s characters had tragic backstories, and George was no exception. George’s mother had possessed a fragile, otherworldly beauty, with silky platinum-blonde hair and eyes like amethysts. But beauty and luck rarely go together, and sure enough, she’d passed away in the game when George was only eight years old.The young child was overrun with grief from the loss of his beautiful mother, but nobody was around to console him. His father, the marquis, fell into despair without his beloved wife; he turned to hard living and paid no attention to his suddenly isolated son. George had an uncle as well, Julius, but this uncle was more focused on desperately trying to pull his brother, the marquis, out of a deep depression.Left completely alone, George continued to search for something to remind him of his mother. He holed himself up in her room and barred the servants from entering.One day, he found his mother in the mirror.As George wore his mother’s shawl over the top of his head, he gazed into the mirror’s surface and saw her—a person that looked identical to his mother, the Lady of the White Lily.However, that figure was none other than George himself.He realized he could see his mother at any time, as long as he had a mirror, glass, or even water—anything which showed his reflection. That moment was the origin of George’s narcissism.Whoa. Like, just whoa.I never expected that pervert to have such a tragic past.In my present life, it was apparent that George’s mother was still alive, but sickly. George and I first met when I was five and he was six; the intention was probably to match us as potential fiancés, but I dropped him early and warmed to his mother instead.Even in her sickly state, she sat upright in her bed and smiled at me. The marquis shot her a worried look from his position by her side, then introduced us.“Please forgive the breach of etiquette, Your Highness. My wife can’t leave the bed. She’s frail, and the change of seasons takes its toll on her health.”“It’s an honor to meet you,” said the beautiful woman. “I’m Marquis Morwitz’s wife, Emma.”“I’m Rosemary,” I said, returning the greeting. I was enchanted by her beaming smile.So this woman gets to be a fragile beauty and possess an innocent smile? That’s not fair! Oh God, she’s just way too cute.At this point I had fallen head over heels for Emma, and I played the future fiancée card in order to come see her as often as I could. Thinking back on it, having a princess visit so often might’ve been a nuisance for them, but Emma always seemed happy to see me. She even called me Mary, and returned my affection by cherishing me like a daughter.Emma, my angel, my goddess!Oh. George. Still here, are you?Over the course of my first few visits, I discerned a few causes of her ill health.First, she had no enthusiasm for eating. And when she did eat, she ate poorly.You like fruits, hate veggies, and want me to believe you’re not a child? Not liking carrots is cute and all, but Emma, you need your vitamins.Second, she rarely, if ever, exercised. It seemed like she often spent her day in bed reading a book or practicing embroidery. I assumed that a lack of exercise exacerbated her poor appetite. On top of that, not eating meant she had no energy, which created a vicious and self-destructive cycle.Third, she saw very little sunlight. She hardly ever went outside, so she spent no time under the sky. Humans need the sun’s light though. I couldn’t remember exactly why, but I thought it had to do with the formation of bones and autonomic nerves, or something like that.Plus, I personally think that being stuck in a room all day is a downer.People shouldn’t roast in the sun, but everyone still needs natural light on their skin.I wasn’t a doctor in my past life, so if her problem was a disease then I couldn’t help, but Emma didn’t appear to be suffering from any serious condition. She was prone to catching colds as the seasons changed, and they often lingered.If her lifestyle is the only problem, then we might be able to prevent her death in two years by increasing her stamina.With that goal in mind, I decided to round up George and his uncle Julius to attempt to improve Emma’s health.I walked around the mansion looking for them and spotted George in a corner of the garden. He stood in front of the beautiful, well-curated white roses that were in full bloom.“George, I’d like to have a little chat, if you don’t mind?” I called out to him.“Of course, what is it?”George tilted his head with a puzzled look on his face. His soft hair spilled over his shoulders. When he took that pose, his delicate good looks, so similar to his mother’s, conjured images of a sweet princess. The roses behind him added to his beauty, making me feel like I was looking at a scene from a shojo manga.He wore a white blouse with baggy sleeves and a lace cravat, along with a well-tailored dark-green gilet and culotte. These and his other clothes marked him as a child of nobility, but honestly, he looked more like a beautiful woman in drag than a boy.When I first met him, I couldn’t believe he wasn’t a girl. I had only known the grown-up—and horribly twisted—George, so I couldn’t reconcile the innocent girlish boy in front of me and the probably-guilty-of-something narcissist that he would grow up to be.His soft, platinum hair was fastened near the nape of his neck, and he had large, violet eyes. One look at his drooping eyebrows and flushed cheeks would leave boys his age vying to protect him.Too bad for them that he’s a guy.In keeping with his dainty features, he was shy; at first, all attempts at communication failed. He would always run away and could put any hamster to shame with his swiftness. Though I could have run after him, I was planning to keep him at arm’s length anyway, so I let him be. Therefore, contrary to the plans the adults made to have us befriend each other, we hardly spoke after our first introduction.The only reason we’d managed to reach a point where we could hold a normal conversation was because of Emma.George was nothing short of a mama’s boy. Every new song that he learned he would sing for her, every pretty flower he found he would give to her, and everything tasty he would share with her. In his spare time, he would sit with her and read. When she was sick with a cold and he wasn’t allowed into her room, he would twiddle his thumbs by her door or in the garden. He clung to his mother twenty-four hours a day.Remember, I only visited the Eigel household to see Emma. But that meant that George and I would inevitably encounter one another, because he was glued to her side. While George usually avoided me like the plague, he couldn’t bring himself to argue when his cherished mother laughed and said, “You two get along so well.”George and I began to talk more and more, albeit awkwardly. I doubted George had spoken to a girl his age before. He often fumbled trying to find the right topic.Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I was never interested in the topics that girls my age usually favored. In my mind, dresses and jewels always played second fiddle to books and pictures. Embroidery and dancing weren’t as appealing as chess and horseback riding.George had a surprisingly strong thirst for knowledge and a powerful curiosity. He would shower me with compliments when I recited the information I’d learned from reading; I could keenly remember the awed looks he gave me when I told him spare trivia about random subjects. His adoration made my conscience twinge—I wanted to appear intelligent, but he seemed to overestimate my actual knowledge of those topics, which was shallow and surface level. My guilt at possibly deceiving him drove me to go back and study those subjects in-depth, until I really knew what I was talking about. The more I learned, the more he would listen to me with wonder in his eyes.Though the Kingdom of Nevel was one of the largest countries on the continent, the world was much bigger than that. Beyond Nevel’s borders were great lands covered in ice, a sight unseen in our temperate country, as well as deserts of endless sand, seas that reflected the sky like a mirror, and forests of colossal trees that scraped the sky. There were countless landscapes that our young eyes had never seen.George had once asked whether we could travel to see these sights, and I’d responded that his journey would depend on his own will. When he’d asked whether I’d go with him, I had responded that I’d go by myself one day. I thought he might shrink back from me because of my bratty answers, which were unfit for a girl, let alone a princess. But for some reason, they delighted him.Before I knew it, George had begun to warm up to me, and began to behave around me in the same friendly way he did with his family.I know he’s older than me, but I kind of like the idea of adding a new little brother to the mix.“Mother’s diet?” George asked.We had seated ourselves in the Eigels’ living room. I rested on the sofa, which was made of elegant, curved mahogany and high-quality leather, and nodded to George.“Yes. I want you to rework her diet around vegetables,” I said matter-of-factly.“But mother finds vegetables...” George said, his words trailing off as his expression darkened.Yes, indeed. I know all about your mom’s hate-hate relationship with vegetables.“That’s why I want to come up with some dishes that even a veggie-phobe can enjoy. Do you have any thoughts, Julius?”I pulled Julius into the conversation, and he lifted his hand to his chin in thought. In contrast to George’s androgyny, Julius was the ideal, mature man. He had well-proportioned facial features, faint lips, and light-brown hair combed backwards. His slightly drowsy green eyes softened the rugged expression of his good looks.“Well, my sister isn’t a big eater,” said Julius after a moment of thought. “I think soup would be the go-to solution, but even that she doesn’t like very much.”“How does she season it?” I asked.“Just a little bit of salt, I think.”I had directed the question to Julius, who was smiling wryly, but before he had a chance to respond, George answered from his side.Only a little bit of salt? I can see why that would exacerbate her veggie-hate.Consommé soup crossed my mind as an option, but I doubted whether this world had consommé. And if we’re making it by hand, it’ll take quite a while.In my past life, cooking had been such a huge passion of mine that I’d joined the home economics club in high school. I’d given consommé a shot once back then, and the recipe had needed a lot of ingredients, time, and effort.I think I got as far as skimming the scum from the top of the soup before I swore, “never again.” Besides, I can’t see us being able to find the same ingredients in this world.“Ah!” I said suddenly, clapping my hands. I ignored George, who was peering at me full of interest, and ran a recipe through my mind.How about a potage?I bet anyone could feed that to a veggie-hating kid and they’d slurp it right up.We could make it without consommé too. An electric mixer would have made things easier, but if we used a strainer, it shouldn’t be impossible. Best of all, potage comes in many different varieties. We could go for pumpkins or potatoes, turnips or carrots. We could even get more adventurous later with tomato gazpacho and cold soups.I wonder if we can get olive oil and wine vinegar?What about soy milk? How many condiments do they have in this world?“Julius!” As I shouted his name, Julius’s eyes shot wide open.“Yes?”I closed in on him. “Do you handle foreign condiments?”Julius operated as a trader because only the eldest son would inherit the title in noble families. Born a second son, Julius had entered the world of trading to test his abilities and found that he had an aptitude for it. He’d steadily built up a customer base by locating products that hadn’t yet broken into the Nevel trading market, like fermented foods from the small countries to the east, or exotic fabrics and thread, woven according to the generational traditions of a clan in the west.In my previous world, I guess we’d call him an up-and-coming young entrepreneur.“Of course. We handle several kinds of tried-and-true ingredients, like salt and sugar, alongside quite a few others like vinegars and oils. Recently, we’ve taken on a fermented condiment made from fish.”Wait, do you mean Thai fish sauce?! Oh my God, I’m excited. I wonder if he has soy sauce? What about mustard? Curry powder?“Would you care to have a look?” Julius peered at me, and he was obviously enjoying the way I failed to contain my excitement. His mature composure, steadfast until now, gave way to a smirk, and his eyes glinted like those of a child up to no good.Where’d that sudden change of demeanor come from? The lighthearted deviation from Julius’s usual personality was almost too cute to handle. Is every member of this family going to overload me with gap moe?“Yes please!” I responded enthusiastically.After that, Julius and I co-opted one of the Eigel family’s unsuspecting chefs and got to work devising recipes.Should we just go with corn? Or maybe potatoes? Oh, but I do like extra-sweet pumpkins.I’m tempted to go with something warm, but maybe cold soup would be easier for Emma to drink.I composed a list of all the recipes I could remember, then called everyone into a meeting.The chef was flustered and hesitant to deal with a princess at first, but we bonded quite a bit as the debate heated up. An argument erupted when he handed me balsamic vinegar after I had clearly explained wine vinegar to him.They might both be made from the same thing, but the refining process is different, so the taste and usage of each is distinct. I’ll die on this hill.We got on fine though, eventually. I felt that the conflict brought us closer, like boys who become friends after beating each other up by the riverside. We were each other’s equals in stubbornness, so I would occasionally blow my lid, and the phrase “ignorant old bastard” almost made it past my lips a few times. I restrained myself though, in the end. Prim and proper princesses don’t cuss people out while giving them the finger.Julius didn’t join in the arguments and instead assumed a mediator role, calming us down when the discussion veered off track. I honestly felt bad that I hadn’t only taken up his time but had also caused him plenty of trouble.The marquis, Lord Morwitz, was taken aback at my daily visits, but he gladly gave his assent when he learned that our aim was to improve Emma’s health.Well, she is the world to him, after all.When George tearfully asked what he could do to help his mother, I set him up with a different task to stop his whimpering. He was to take on an important role: accompany Emma on a short walk every day, if possible. Emma likely wouldn’t refuse if the request came from her cute son.Actually, she’s such a kind person that I doubt she’d turn up her nose, no matter who invited her.The lengths of their walks gradually increased, with allowances for the weather, the climate, and how Emma felt on any given day. The sight of mother and son admiring the flowers and birds as they took their leisurely strolls brought joy to the marquis and the servants watching over them. I noticed the gradual reinvigoration of the garden with new flowers and sculptures, and assumed that it was the marquis’s doing.He really is crazy-in-love with his wife.It also seemed that the corn potage, perfected through hours of hard work, was to Emma’s liking. I had to reach for a tissue when Emma called it delicious.I clasped hands with the chef who’d worked with us and jumped for joy. Then Julius, overcome with emotion, scooped me up and swung me around.All right, let’s calm down a tad, guys.Her appetite and her meals grew larger with time, and Emma’s complexion visibly began to improve. Recently, she had taken to drinking tea with Julius and myself in the arbor at one end of the garden. She hardly ever took ill anymore, even as the seasons changed.This is all wonderful progress, but I can’t let my guard down until George turns eight in a year’s time. I think we’re good though.My joy came out in a smile as I looked at Emma’s rosy cheeks and slightly plump figure. But then, the beautiful woman shone her girlish grin upon me and threw me into a minefield.“So Mary, when will you be joining our family?”“Uhh...what?” I asked, flabbergasted.The shock almost dislodged the porcelain teacup from my hand. I placed my cup back on the saucer to cover my flustering, but thanks to my trembling fingers, this came with an ugly clattering noise.“M-Mother!!!” a beetroot George said. I was seated next to him, and my face drained of color.Crap. I forgot. I completely forgot to break the flag that would lead to my engagement with George!!!I was too caught up in breaking Emma’s death flag to remember.Not just that, but now that I was a semipermanent feature at a possible fiancé’s house, our future was pretty much set in stone. My own stupidity had paved the way for my destruction.“Lord Morwitz and I are always talking about how we can’t wait for the day our family gets an adorable new daughter. He thinks of you as his own, just as I do. Lately, he’s been champing at the bit, saying he’ll have to work with George to make him the wonderful man you deserve.”Oh no, what do I do? I don’t have it in me to tell her that I have absolutely no interest in marrying her son, not when her eyes are full of so much hope.If I had sensed even the slightest hint that this arranged marriage was a scheme to forge ties with the royal family, I don’t think that letting them down would’ve been so hard. But Emma’s smile showed no signs of anything nefarious.I really would love to be your daughter,but no deal. I’ve already decided to pledge my whole heart to the as-yet-unmet guard captain.Actually, if I’m honest, this whole scenario is quite weird—asking me, someone with a mental age of twenty-plus years, to view George, currently seven years old, as a serious romantic option is a little creepy.Just when panic-induced sweat started to coat my palms, a lifeline dropped in from an unexpected direction.“You’re getting ahead of yourself, sister,” Julius said. A spectator until now, he placed his teacup down and plastered a smirk across his face.“Do you think so?”“I do. As bright as the princess is, she’s still only six. How do you expect her to talk about marriage when it’s still so far off in her future?”“You’re right,” said Emma as she turned to me. “Sorry, Mary. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I suppose I was rushing things too much.”“Don’t worry,” I said, greatly relieved. “I’m so happy that you think of me as a daughter.”Even though her words were kind, Emma’s mood sank after Julius’s rebuke. I wanted to apply a hurried patch to the conversation, but after a moment’s hesitation, I made up my mind and started to speak.This might be my only chance to say it, I thought and took the leap.“It’s just, I...umm. There’s someone else.”“Huh?!”“What!”“Well now.”The first to react to my declaration was George, followed by Emma, and Julius was last. George blanched and rose to his feet, Emma’s eyes lit up, and Julius sported an intrigued grin.

“Oh my! What’s he like, exactly?” I had imagined Emma would be disappointed, but she charged in for the details.I guess girls in every world share a passion for love stories.I found myself in desperate straits when Emma shooed George and Julius out of the room and started to wring me for information. I hadn’t actually met the guard captain yet, so I had to fudge the details as I told her. But even as vague as the information was, it satisfied Emma.As I left, she smiled and said, “I’ll support you.” This change of heart surely meant that I had managed to avoid George’s engagement flag. Hopefully.Well, fingers crossed, anyway.A Shock for the Reincarnated Princess“Sister!!!”“Oof.”It happened one afternoon—after Emma’s condition had considerably improved, I was able to spend less time visiting the Eigels and more time at home in the palace, focusing on my studies in earnest.As I walked towards the library, through the cloister overlooking the garden, a blond missile flew right into my chest.“Sister! Sister! Sister!”A mop of bright blond curly hair eviscerated my midriff at full speed. The missile was a full head shorter than me, and his arms and legs looked so thin that they might’ve snapped under strain. A layer of tears shimmered over his large eyes, which were a deep shade of aqua blue.This missile was obviously my little brother, Johan, whose adorable looks were akin to an angel from a religious fresco. His arms were much less frail than their appearance suggested because he mercilessly strangled my abdomen in his embrace.Johan! For my sake, try to hold back a little. I want to keep my internal organs on the inside.“Miss Rosemary! Are you hurt?” my personal guard asked from his position behind me. Alarm had crept onto his refreshingly handsome face.“I’m all right,” I said.Despite his youth, my personal guard was skilled and dependable. The only reason he had not reacted to the hugging assault was because he knew that the missile was a prince.“Johan.”While I was conflicted about how to respond to my little brother, who was clinging to me like a puppy, a stern voice called his name. Johan’s tiny body tensed up.Standing before us was an intelligent-looking and attractive boy holding a wooden training sword—my older brother, Christoph.“Get back here. We’re in the middle of training,” Chris said. His cold tone and disinterested expression packed a punch. Even though I knew that I wasn’t the target of Chris’s reprimand, I was compelled to stand up straight.Unfortunately, Chris’s tactic spooked Johan into clinging even harder.Why are little kids’ hands so strong? Johan, if you don’t let up, your sister’s organs are about to come out and play.Chris sighed and looked to the ground; his long eyelashes framed his downturned, ice-blue gaze.Johan jumps at every little thing Chris does. What exactly is this training that he’s being made to do?“Good afternoon, Chris,” I said politely. “I’m terribly sorry for interrupting your lesson.”I could see that the afternoon hadn’t actually been good, but I thought it best to greet Chris with pleasantries anyway.“Not at all,” Chris said, shaking his head. His face was still expressionless, but his gaze was gentle. “You’re not to blame. Johan has just been in low spirits because he hasn’t seen you in a while.”Apparently, when Johan had spotted me walking to the library, he’d abandoned his training to run after me.That was slightly careless of me. I’d better take more notice of which routes I travel, and when.“Johan,” I said, kneeling down to make eye contact with my slightly shorter brother.“Sister,” he called out to me. Tears formed in his big, upturned eyes.This little boy was so fond of me—I couldn’t help but find him cute. Even if he was needy and a crybaby. And possessive. And annoying.But if I’m soft on him now, nothing will change.“Johan, apologize to Chris,” I said sternly.“Huh?” I could see my serious expression reflected in his wide, surprised eyes.I’m sorry, Johan. But I’ve decided to take a hard-line attitude with you. Things are different from when we spent our days snuggled together, just the two of us. I have to broaden my horizons, and so do you. I won’t be a useless, overindulgent sister any longer.“Chris made time in his busy schedule to train you, and you’ve wasted it. Apologize.”Johan scrunched up his cute face. He released his hands from where they clutched at my clothes, and gripped his trousers instead. The tip of his nose shone bright red from holding back tears.His head still downcast, he began to mutter, “I’m s-sorr—”“I can’t hear you,” I interrupted. “Look up. Look at Chris and speak properly.”Johan froze, aside from letting out a teary sniffle. By my side, the guard’s expression stiffened. Chris looked stunned.I bet they all think I’m a terrifying sister. But I’ve made up my mind to ditch the mollycoddling and become a little monstrous. If they think I’m harsh, that’s fine by me.“I’m...” Johan sniffled again, “sorr—”“Again,” I said, unrelenting.“I’m sorry!!!”After seeing Johan stand bolt upright and yell out his apology, I finally softened my expression.There’s a good boy.I nodded in satisfaction, then turned to Chris and froze. Chris had listened to Johan’s boisterous apology with a strained smile, but it wasn’t him that shocked me.At some point, a figure had walked up behind Chris. He wore a knight’s apparel, and held a wooden sword in his hand, the same as Chris’s. He must have been teaching Chris and Johan how to handle a training weapon.That makes sense, seeing as he’s the best swordsman in the country.He had unruly hair that was coarse and dark, and his black eyes glinted sharply. His masculine cheeks and the outline of his jaw were the same as those in Hidden World’s graphics, but without his beard, he looked younger.No “looked” about it. He is younger.He was tall enough to tower over me, and he had a firm build, with just the right amount of muscle. This wild-looking man stared at me like I was a funny animal.“C-Chris,” I stammered.“Yes? What’s wrong, Rose?”Everything. Please, Chris, tell me I’m mistaken. Tell me that’s not who I think it is.

“Who is that?” I asked.“Oh,” responded Chris. “This is our sword-fighting instructor. He’s a knight serving in the royal guard.”Taking his cue from Chris, the knight knelt before me. He respectfully took my hand and brought it almost to his lips. As his breath brushed across my fingers, I couldn’t help but stiffen up.“I am Leonhart von Orsein, of the royal guard. It is an honor beyond my worth to be in your presence,” he said in the low, sweet voice that had captured my heart.I don’t think I could have made a worse impression, I thought as I trembled. I was overjoyed that I’d finally met him, but also embarrassed that our first meeting was when I was chastising my brother in full-on bitch mode.My long-awaited encounter with the future guard captain had occurred in the worst way possible.“I, uh...” I said, words faltering. The sheer shock of his sudden presence left me dumbfounded and stuck in place.God. I seriously wanna cry.I had resolved to improve myself as much as possible so that I could be ready for the day when we would meet. That was the reason why I hadn’t yet sought him out, despite knowing that he was probably already in the royal guard when Rosemary was a child.Besides, no matter how strong I came on to him, a young girl my age stood no chance. At the start of Hidden World, Rosemary had been fifteen or sixteen, and Sir Leonhart thirty-one. Even at that age, it would have been unlikely for him to have given Rosemary a shot at romance. At present, my prospects were completely out of the question.I told myself that meeting him would only get me down—now, I haven’t just stumbled across him, I’ve also shown him the worst side of myself. It’s over. My romance has bitten the dust before it had a chance to start.“Your Highness, is something the matter?” asked Sir Leonhart.“N-No. I’m quite all right.” I shook my head and forced the tears back.I pulled my hand away from his big palm and took a step back. The suspicious glances stung.“Sister? Do you hurt somewhere?” Even though I’d been harsh to him earlier, Johan gazed at me, full of concern.I stroked his hair to let him know I was okay. He smiled, relieved. My little brother’s innocent kindness racked me with guilt.Sorry Johan.Just as I was trying to change my coddling attitude and take a hard-line approach towards raising Johan, I wavered.Regardless, trying to act like an angel only when around the object of my romantic affections is neither cool nor fair, and is rather deceptive. From now on, I’ll drop the innocent act and play a devilish older sister, no matter who’s watching!“Please accept my apologies for my unsightly display,” I said, composing myself as much as possible. “I’m the first princess, Rosemary. Please look after my two brothers.”I wrestled what I hoped was a smile out of my rigid facial muscles. I couldn’t see my own face, but if I’d managed to produce a non-forced smile, then I deserved a pat on the back.“Unsightly?” Sir Leonhart picked out one of my words and whispered it to himself. For some reason, he looked perplexed. He blinked his surprising long eyelashes a couple of times.“Sir Orsein?” I inquired.“Forgive me,” he said, “but when you say ‘unsightly,’ are you referring to the valiant figure you cut a moment ago?”Upon hearing the word “valiant” I gulped inadvertently. I wasn’t sure what was going on in his head when he chose that phrasing, but I prayed he wasn’t being sarcastic.Otherwise, I’d be heartbroken beyond recovery.I said nothing.Sir Leonhart narrowed his almond eyes and gave a kind smile, apparently finding an answer in my silence.His unexpected reaction left me at a loss for words. He grinned gently as he watched me. “Forgive me. A knight ought to never embarrass a lady. But, if you will pardon my transgression, I would like to say one thing.”“Umm, yes?” I responded, not knowing where his train of thought was headed.“When I saw you earlier, I thought to myself, ‘what a cool princess.’”“Oh!” The moment I understood what Sir Leonhart had said, my skin almost audibly heated to a boil. I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that my face had turned bright red.I mean, even my ears are burning.What should I do? I made my decision to take a tough attitude only seconds ago! Scary sisters don’t blush. Devilish sisters don’t sit around smirking to themselves, carried away by romantic thoughts.Unfortunately, however much I tried to convince myself, my body gave me away. The redness of my cheeks refused to subside, and my facial muscles threatened to break ranks at the slightest distraction. All I could do was look down, lips trembling.Sir Leonhart isn’t to be taken lightly.I was no match for him; he could pull my strings any way he wanted.“Sister.”“Ah! Johan!” I said.I had completely forgotten that Johan was standing there until he called for me. When I snapped my head around to look at him, I saw him staring back at me with a horrid, empty glint in his blue eyes. A chill ran up my spine.Uh-oh. Somebody’s pissed.He’s right to be, though. One minute I’m yelling at him, and the next, I’m going tomato red in front of another man. Why wouldn’t he think I’m trying to make a fool out of him?I’m wicked! I’m loose! I’m a slut! I’m such an idiot!“Why are you blushing, sister?” Johan asked in a voice so cold that I couldn’t believe it came from his mouth.“I, uhh...” The words had fled from my tongue. I’d wanted to apologize, but then I lost my chance to do even that.“Johan,” Chris interjected, probably unable to watch me try to fumble for an excuse. “No more teasing Rosemary.”“But Christoph!”“I do understand how you feel,” said Chris, “but blaming Rosemary is barking up the wrong tree.”“Okay.” Johan hung his head and looked annoyed after Chris’s chastising.S-Sorry Johan. I’m at fault for getting carried away, and now you’re having to hold your tongue about something you don’t think is right. I really am sorry.Chris continued his rebuke: “You should now understand why there’s no point in stomping your feet and keeping Rose locked up.”“Yes,” said Johan.“Then let’s get back to training. There’s plenty to learn.”Uh, Chris, what was that? I don’t think catching a little love fever is grounds to lock me up.I had no idea what Chris was talking about, but Johan seemed to understand. He nodded in response to Chris’s question, and carried a dignified look on his face.I’m feeling kinda like the odd one out here.“Sorry for the wait, Sir Leonhart. Let’s go,” Chris said.“Yes, Your Highness,” said the knight.“I’ll see you later, Rose,” said Chris as he turned to leave. “Apologies for the commotion.”“R-Right,” I replied, still slightly confused. “Good luck with your training.”Chris and Johan walked away, leaving me floundering to understand the conversation. Though Chris had said his farewells before leaving, Johan remained silent and gave only a bow.My little brother might actually hate me now. I did want to get rid of his siscon nature, but I never wanted to push him to the other extreme.Well, I’m reaping what I’ve sown, I guess.For some reason, Johan stopped in front of Sir Leonhart. His large eyes glimmered with a challenging look.A few seconds of silence passed. Eventually, without a single word, Johan began walking towards the training grounds.It might’ve been my imagination, but from behind, Johan seemed slightly bigger than before.

Princess 1.0

Monologue of the Reincarnated PrincessI, Rosemary von Velfalt, was reborn as the first princess of the kingdom of Nevel. Though I began a new life, for some reason, I retained the memories of my previous self.Basically, I’m an otherworld protagonist. Strange, but true.The world into which I was reborn was vast and unfamiliar. It spanned an entire large continent, which was shaped like a bird’s wing, and beyond the mainland were hundreds of islands, both large and small.My kingdom was located on the continent, in the southern portion of the central region. Nevel was a monarchical state, backed by a thousand years of history, and was the second-largest nation on the continent.Nevel’s southeastern region was blessed with bountiful flatlands and a temperate climate. Agriculture thrived there, and the region boasted some of the largest harvests of wheat and corn in the world. The mountainous north was also rich in resources; it was home to the mining industry, where many workers earned their livelihoods from the iron ore deposits found there.A trade route cut across the central heartlands of Nevel, connecting the nation of Vint to the west with the Kingdom of Grundt to the east. Dotted along this road were booming merchant towns.Though primarily famed as a grand and prosperous kingdom, Nevel was held in high regard by other countries for another, odd reason—though it was rare, children with magical abilities were occasionally born in Nevel. This meant that, in Nevel alone, there existed a class of sorcerers.Some claimed that the source of this magic was a demon lord who had long ago forced the world to the brink of destruction, and who now lay sealed beneath Nevel’s ground. Others suggested that Nevel’s millennium of uninterrupted existence was the cause—they believed that the earliest generations had passed the secret of magical power down through the centuries. Though theories abounded, the true reason remained unknown. To most, the demon lord was just a character from fairy tales, and few believed that he actually existed.I was one of those few. To be more specific, I didn’t believe, I knew. I knew that magic and the demon lord existed.To explain why, I’ll have to turn back time a little. As I explained at the outset, I was reborn with the memories of my previous life intact. I’ll never forget the shock I felt when, after dying in a traffic accident, I’d opened my eyes and found myself in an infant’s body.What’s this, a light novel?! I’d tried to shout as someone resembling a wet nurse picked me up. My infant vocal cords hadn’t been strong enough for words though, so my question had come out as a baby’s cry.Despite this confusing start, I grew up quickly, dodging the odd plague here and there, until a different realization rocked my world at three years old. Now literate, I had started to read books and, as I learned the names of my country, my family, and myself, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was possible that I had learned them from the wet nurse and the maids talking, but I wondered why they felt so familiar.Suddenly, I remembered—that otome game. The details of this world were the same as the one in the game I’d played in my past life.What’s this, a light novel?! I almost exclaimed. This seemed to be a recurring question in my life. However, since prim and proper princesses weren’t supposed to make sarcastic remarks, I managed to hold in my outburst.I prayed for it to be a misunderstanding, but similarity after cruel similarity mounted up. Both countries had the same names and the same worldview. There were young boys whose names and faces were identical to the game’s main characters. To top it off, I shared a name with the side character who acted as the heroine’s rival. There were too many parallels to shrug the idea off as simple coincidence.“Well, great.”I sighed from my chair by the window, which was located in the corner of my room—a space extravagantly decorated in the style of the European Renaissance. The fog from my breath on the window dissipated and revealed my reflection: a young girl with a vacant expression. My skin was fair, my platinum blond hair flowed in gentle waves, and the upturned corners of my large, sky-blue eyes gave me a stern expression. I possessed all the dazzling beauty you would expect from a rival character, but despite my comely appearance, I wasn’t straightforward enough to let vanity put a smile on my face.A second, longer sigh escaped my lips. Thankfully the nearby maids didn’t see or hear me; a sighing three-year-old staring off into the distance would have appeared quite surreal.Discovering that this world was the one from the otome game hadn’t left me jumping for joy. Quite the opposite, in fact.The reason was simple: that game was famous for being terrible.I think the title was Welcome to the Hidden World. In the story, a high school girl was summoned to another world as a shrine maiden. Her quest was to defeat the demon lord and restore peace, or something like that.The main plotline was pretty standard, so I didn’t have anything to complain about. The problem was the characters. The “hidden world” in the title didn’t just refer to the otherworld setting, and it carried a double meaning: all of the main characters had a hidden side, a secret nature. This in and of itself didn’t cross any lines, as I don’t have any complaints about a rehashed, slightly cliché setup.No, the big problem was that the suitor characters’ hidden sides, the main selling point, were absolutely pathetic.The second prince was a siscon, and the adoration he felt for his sister bordered on obsession. The noble with a tragic backstory was an unaware narcissist. The personal guard was a self-defeating masochist. The sorcerer was a necrophile. The assassin was gay. Worst of all, the priest, otherwise known as the demon lord and the main villain, was a yandere whose love was expressed through violence. He was so bent on his own destruction that he summoned his archnemesis, the shrine maiden.There couldn’t be a better example of a game trying too hard to be original and failing. If I’d met any of them in the real world, I would’ve turned and bolted away at full speed. They weren’t the kind of people you’d want to have anything to do with.When I started the game in my previous life and began winning over the noble, the first glimpses of his narcissistic nature made my heart sink.The heroine must be an angel, or maybe a qualified defense attorney, to be able to take this dumbass seriously, I thought with a straight face.I suppressed my initial urge to ask the game shop for a refund, and trudged through to the wedding scene at the end. The noble gazed at the heroine in her pure white dress and remarked, “So beautiful. The reflection of me in your eyes, that is.”I rage-threw my controller onto the floor in disgust at that point.Is every writer for this game a complete idiot?! Painting a happy ending only to fade to black with a terrifying final line is a format that only works in horror stories.Using a line like that in a romance game makes a mockery of all the character development up to that point.I tried a different route, and then another. Every single character followed a similar course; there wasn’t an ounce of excitement. The suitors weren’t lovable so much as stabbable. I felt like a guinea pig being subjected to an avant-garde stress test.The people on the internet by and large shared my opinions. Even so, there was a distinct reason why we all powered through without throwing the game away: accompanying the outwardly dazzling main characters were the so-called side characters. Their purpose in the game was just to add texture and flesh out the story, but these side characters outshone the main suitors in every conceivable way, and that imbalance was what made Hidden World so terrible.Since they weren’t main characters, they never received much screen time with the protagonist. A few of them even went entirely unmentioned in some routes. For whatever reason though, they were all hotties that were good-looking enough to rival the main characters. Also, unlike the main characters, they had amazing personalities. They were truly faultless.For example, the first prince was cool and intelligent. The narcissistic noble had a side-character uncle who was a calm and kind gentleman. The guard captain was caring and strong, a man among men. The necrophile sorcerer’s rival was zealous and hardworking. The assassin-turned-waiter was a feminist and a friend to all women. Even the priest’s sister was a stunning beauty with a big-sisterly disposition.What’s the point in making the side characters so much better than the main characters? If I could’ve interrogated the production staff about how it had come to this, I would’ve.In spite of my frustration with the main characters, the side characters kept me playing. The best among them was the guard captain, who happened to be my number one heartthrob and the man who boasted the top spot on the internet’s popularity polls. He left all the main characters in the dust. I suffered through the pain of each disappointing route just to see his smile. However small the chance, I pinned all my hopes on the possibility that, after finishing the main characters’ stories, the guard captain route would become available.Sadly, I couldn’t unlock it. Or rather, there was nothing locked away. His route didn’t exist.I fought on through pangs of despair as the gallery filled up and up. There’s got to be at least one hidden character, right? I thought, trudging onward. But, struggle as I might, neither God nor the production staff led me to the promised land.Tears fell down my cheeks when I saw the “100%” in the corner of the scene-select screen. No new routes appeared for the side characters, even after finishing the game. All that remained was the fact that I had wasted my time playing through every inch of this piece of shit.I’ve never felt so empty. What am I even doing?I wasn’t alone in this feeling. The most well-liked ending, according to the player community, was the normal ending, which also happened to be the one where the despondent heroine snuck back to her own world with all hopes of world peace and romance shattered. So what made this doom-and-gloom ending so popular? His appearance, of course—the guard captain’s.As the heroine lamented her powerlessness, he gently stroked her hair, saying, “It’s not your fault. Go home, live a happy life.”Who wouldn’t fall for him?I lost count of the number of times I screamed “Don’t do it!” at the screen, but the shrine maiden still chose to step into the magic circle, homeward bound and looking guilt-ridden.I might have gotten a bit carried away with my explanation, but the point is that I was reborn into that shitty game’s world, which could only mean one thing: endless amounts of trouble were right around the corner.If I was to live a peaceful life in Nevel, I would have to break the event flags to avoid triggering routes where I would end up with any of my suitors. Though the flags were once just checkpoints in a game, they now carried real-world ramifications that could ruin my new life. I needed to dodge them at all costs.My head hurt just thinking about how I would mollify the six pain-in-the-ass main characters by myself, all without triggering their flags...but there was no other path to happiness.The three-year-old me said nothing, but I took a deep breath, scrunched up my face, and made up my mind.I can do this. I can reach a future where I meet my beloved guard captain.Brothers of the Reincarnated Princess“Brother, I have a favor to ask.”As I addressed him, my brother’s ice-blue eyes widened in shock.He stood in front of a bookcase, which was so large that it dominated the entire west-facing wall of the room. The other walls and the ceiling were adorned with intricate engravings, all done in Renaissance style.My brother’s features mirrored mine in several ways; his silky, platinum blond hair fell to his collar, and his skin was unblemished alabaster. His eyes were slightly upturned, embellished by long eyelashes, and framed by imposing eyebrows. His facial structure was in accordance with the golden ratio, and this symmetry made his face look as if a master craftsman had sculpted it.He was slim, as was typical of early adolescent boys, and he wore a justaucorps, a gilet, and culottes, all in blue to match his eyes. His fine clothes were finished off with a detailed pattern of intertwined flowers and ivy, done in silver thread. A topaz brooch fastened a cravat to his collar, and he held a book in his hands, which were both adorned with white gloves.Every inch of him, down to the smallest detail, just screamed prince. And he was. This boy was my brother, the first prince Christoph von Velfalt.He stood in shocked silence for a moment, blinking his long eyelashes so heavily that they almost made a sound. His stare was intent but contained a clear look of surprise—a rare departure from his usual disinterested expression. He finally closed the thick book in his hands and placed it on the shelf, then walked over to me, stopping just shy of two meters away.“It’s unlike you to come and see me of your own accord.”His phrasing might have sounded insulting, but a peek at his expression revealed that he meant no offense. Truthfully, it was rare for me to approach him. In my defense though, I wasn’t avoiding him because I disliked him.The problem was that Christoph, or Chris for short, was only my half brother. I had a full brother also, the second prince, named Johan. He and I were half-siblings to Chris, and we only shared our father’s bloodline with him. Chris was the son of the king’s last wife, who never fully recovered from childbirth and passed away years ago. Johan and I were the children of the king’s new wife.My mother, the current queen, despised Chris. Whenever she thought of the old queen, my mother would fall into fits of jealousy. Chris could never escape her ire because he was a living, breathing reminder of his mother. Needless to say, our mother took great pains to ensure that Johan and I, her natural children, stayed away from Chris as much as possible.You can act however you want, mother, but forcing your feelings onto your kids is a bit much in my opinion.Even with all of this supposed passion, our mother only had eyes and a heart for the king. She was barely aware of Johan and me, so it was frustrating that she controlled our interactions with Chris. Why was this the only thing she chose to poke her nose into?“Won’t your mother scold you again for talking to me?” asked Chris.“I don’t mind.”“But...”“I’m five years old now,” I said adamantly. “I’m old enough to take responsibility for my own actions.”“Rose,” he started, seeming dumbstruck as he called me by my nickname.What a wonderful person he is, I thought. He could have shown contempt for me as the daughter of the woman who mistreated him, but he never did. Far from it, he showed consideration instead.Are you taking notes, Johan? You could learn a thing or two from your older brother.“I see.” Chris stared at me in silence for a moment, then his face mellowed. He said little, but his eyes harbored a gentle look, like a grandfather gazing upon a grandchild who had grown up.You carry quite the presence for an eight-year-old, brother.“So, what’s the favor?” Chris asked, bringing the conversation back to the main point without prying any further.“The truth is, it’s about Johan...” My words trailed off.“Johan? What’s the matter with him?”Oh brother, I thought. You got all day?Out loud, I said, “I’d like you to find strict, smart teachers for Johan.”At this request, Chris fell silent.Our youngest brother, Johan von Velfalt, was the second prince of the Kingdom of Nevel, one of Hidden World’s main characters, and, to top it all off, a bona fide siscon.In the game, the only person he truly loved was his older sister, Rosemary. She was also the only person he trusted with all of his heart. If she said yes, so did he; if she said no, then no it was. If she pointed to a dark-black crow and called it white, he would swear it was white in a heartbeat. His feelings of love towards his sister were obsessive, to say the least.But it wasn’t really his fault. Why did he turn out that way? The answer lay entirely in his upbringing.As our father busied himself with matters of state, he paid no attention to his family. Our mother was, as I explained before, only interested in the king, except for small incursions where she would stifle her children’s actions. The lack of attention from his parents left Johan feeling trapped, as if he lived in a tiny bubble.The maids assumed from his outward similarity to our proud, high-strung mother that he would take after her in temperament as well, so they kept him at arm’s length, afraid to poke that hornet’s nest.Additionally, every teacher assigned to him owed their status to his mother, so they let him do as he pleased, probably fearing social and political retribution from the queen if they dared to discipline him.Amid all of that isolation, only his sister Rosemary dealt with him head-on.So yeah, it makes perfect sense that he’d start to depend on her.When playing Hidden World in my previous life, I was more ambivalent about Johan’s problems. Of course, that mindset was only available to me because he had been Rosemary’s problem, not mine. But now that I occupied Rosemary’s life, the realization had dawned: There’s such a thing as too much brotherly love.At this point in my current life, my little brother was only four years old and at peak cuteness. He would follow me wherever I went. There was no question that I found him adorable, plodding along behind me like a baby chick. Recently however, his behavior had started to get a little weird. He would often burst into tears whenever I left him, and his jealous disdain towards anyone who approached me was becoming less cute.The final straw was a moment when Johan had lunged at the maid who’d caught me after I’d almost fallen in my room. When he’d grabbed a letter opener from the desk and pointed it at the maid, I’d almost started screaming. Of course, I’d stood in front of her with arms outstretched to block his path, so nothing had come of it. This was the point where his obsessive behavior had crossed a line.I mean, she’s a maid.She’s a woman. And she was just trying to help! What kind of psychopath would attack her for that?No more violence, no more yandere!As I witnessed my brother showing early signs of abnormality, I thought to myself, We’ve got to do something about this boy, quick.Returning to the present circumstances, I addressed Chris: “This isn’t really something I should trouble you with. But I doubt that our father would replace his teachers, even if I asked him.”Chris hummed thoughtfully.The king had few hopes for the second prince. I understood why he wouldn’t want to fuss over Johan when he already had a capable heir, but my younger brother deserved at least a little thought. Johan’s teachers, who only taught lesson plans that would personally please him, were negligent at best.Mother’s just as bad, I thought. She ought to have selected his teachers a little more carefully.“What he needs is someone that he can respect. Someone he will listen to,” I stated clearly. “As long as I’m the only person willing to tell him off, he’ll continue to retreat further from the rest of the world.”And to be honest, I’d like to put the brakes on the whole siscon thing.There was a beat of silence where Chris stood, arms folded, before speaking. “Truth be told, that has been worrying me too.”I saw myself reflected in his eyes, which he had cast downward in deep thought.“I don’t see him very often, but even in those brief moments I can see that he is overly dependent on you.” Chris let out a slight laugh, practically just a breath. “After all, every time you and I meet, Johan glares daggers at me from behind your back.” Judging from the sympathetic look in his eyes, I was certain Johan’s evil stare was replaying in his mind.I felt guilty for being the cause of this friction between my brothers, and wanted to kneel down and beg for Chris’s forgiveness.“Is he hostile with others too?” asked Chris.“Yes,” I said, winding up to relay the full story. I gave Chris a rundown of the time he’d tried to attack the maid, and Chris furrowed his eyebrows in response.“I can understand that he’s desperate and doesn’t want anyone to take away his precious sister, but attacking a maid goes beyond a child’s tantrum.”Yep, I thought wryly, adopting a blank-eyed, long-distance stare. He’s come down with a case of yandere-itis.I had my hands full when he was diagnosed as just a siscon—there is no way I can handle him progressing into a yandere.So much for my mental health I guess.What more could I have done? I tried to stop him, but whenever I left him, he would just get worse! He keeps hounding me, asking if I am abandoning him. Any more and I’ll faint!The moment when the color seemed to drain from Johan’s eyes and they turned glassy, I knew.This game’s broken. I can’t handle this on my own.“There’s nobody around to keep him in check,” I said to Chris, “so he’ll never get better, only worse. If only I were tolerant enough to lead him down the right path. I’m ashamed to say I’m a failure of a sister.” I’d fully expected Chris to chastise me, but I was stunned when he widened his eyes once again.Holding a hand to his chin, he let out a short sigh. His expression was one of great surprise or shock. “I knew you were mature for your age, but maybe you’re a bit too brilliant.”“Huh? Did you say something?” I asked, confused. I couldn’t quite make out what Chris had muttered under his breath, but he ignored my request for him to repeat himself. He put an end to my query and then continued speaking at a normal volume.“Nothing. You’re doing a fine job,” he said earnestly. “You are most certainly not a failure, Rose. However much power and tolerance you possess, there are things that can’t be done alone. That’s exactly why you came to me, right?”I gave Chris a strong nod in agreement, then straightened my posture.Right, time to make it or break it. Let’s do this!“If you’ll allow it, I’d like you to take a firm hand in raising our brother,” I said. “Please, make Johan into someone who will one day stand by your side.”This was the whole reason I’d asked Chris and not my mother. The king would listen to Chris because he was the heir, and with Chris on my side, the prospect of changing teachers wouldn’t seem so bleak. Plus, I trusted my wise and self-disciplined older brother to find teachers that were perfect. With one request, Chris would solve multiple issues, like hitting two birds with one stone. In the best-case scenario, we might even nail bird number three—more frequent exposure to Chris might enable Johan to develop into an honest man.“And you’re really all right with that?” Chris asked in a hushed voice after listening to my request. His implication was clear: Are you all right with not only replacing his teachers, but also sending him to work for me?Once his education started in earnest, Johan and I would no longer have much time to spend together. His path in life would split from mine.In Chris’s eyes, I probably seemed just as dependent on Johan, and he was worried that sending the youngest prince off on a journey would leave me alone and unable to cope. The concern was appreciated, but honestly, not needed. If Chris could get Johan standing on his own two feet, that would give me more space to work towards my own goals. I couldn’t ask for more than that.I might find my little brother cute, but that’s irrelevant. I’m ready for him to become his own person.“Of course—I’m fine with it,” I answered Chris at once. “However far apart we are, I will always be his sister.”Johan, I’ll be watching over you from heav—well, from somewhere, anyway. Grow up to be a respectable man.“I see,” Chris whispered, treating me to a rare, gentle smile.I closed my eyes the instant I saw it. It was beautiful, radiant.That angelic expression is too much for my impure eyes to bear.Chris must have taken the suggestion to our father after our talk, because Johan’s layabout teachers were soon shown the door, and stricter, more professional teachers took their place.Chris himself took a part in Johan’s education, and he didn’t cut the boy any slack. Not one bit.I’m counting on you, little brother. Stick to the right path and grow up to be normal.

Tprg 5.2

Organizing the contents of the letters she’d sent and the replies she’d received in her mind, Agrippina made her final judgment: the last of the candidates for the purge had been selected.
After sending out a great deal of notices to the residents of her county that she intended to inspect the premises come spring, she’d gotten quite a few different reactions. Some were plainly disgruntled, others asked for her to reschedule to give them time to prepare—whatever might they need to prepare, she would have liked to ask—and others still welcomed her cordially.
With everyone gathered in the capital for the social season, some had even gone out of their way to inquire at Agrippina’s Berylin residence. However, she had yet to so much as set foot in the mansion, since she did all of her work from the palace and her atelier; they invariably went home with nothing but discouragement to show for their efforts.
Agrippina, you see, refused every private meeting. Knowing that their objective—namely, bribing her—would be impossible in public spaces, she left them to squirm and fret as they waited for the day of reckoning. Her torturous message was as clear as it was wordless: I will not accept foul play.Her little golden servant wasn’t around; he was busy frantically running around and making last-minute preparations for their tour of the territory. But if one were to get ahold of him, he would have likened the situation to an endless rerun of the last day of summer wherein none of his homework was completed.
At any rate, the conclusion was that a few dozen people were sure to be hanged in the coming weeks and months.
Those who fudged the numbers on their taxes, buttered up government officials, or treated a handful of cantons as their own personal property weren’t all that bad. These were wrongdoings that could be found in any region, and crimes this minor were practically a part of the job; nothing would ever get done if one tried to police these.
However, the flagrant avoidance of taxes, brazen sale of classified information, and unofficial toll checkpoints were unforgivable. Worse still, some had engaged in the expressly outlawed business of human trafficking, and had set up illegal mining operations in the area.
Agrippina couldn’t overlook these: her image as their ruler would crumble. This matter required austerity, and she was prepared to callously trim off the fat without the slightest pang of guilt.
Nobility were expected to be ever noble, and the imperial code of justice spake thusly: Let every penalty atone for one hundred sins.
“But to think,” Agrippina mused with a smile. “I’m impressed that earnestness can survive in a place like this.”
Taking one letter from the stack of papers, the count looked over the critical intelligence given to her by a man who’d taken a drastic leap of faith to do so. His name was Baron Moritz Jan Pitt Erftstadt. In the depths of the corruption and rot that dominated the Ubiorum county, he was a rare fellow, untainted by its evils.
While Agrippina had received many requests for an audience, his alone had been of a different zeal: he humbly requested a moment of her time so that he might personally report an important matter with evidence in hand.
The Erftstadt barony was just as old as the county itself. Before being ennobled, the original Ubiorum had taken in the first Erftstadt as a vassal, and had implored the Emperor of Creation to honor his faithful subject’s service; the two houses had entered the imperial bulwark together.
Although the descendants of Count Ubiorum had fallen to darkness, the virtuous souls of House Erftstadt had held fast to their primordial integrity until this very day. Convinced that the region had life left in it yet, their dutiful service continued, generation after generation.
At long last, the time had come for the baron to call a new master his own. In one hand he held an abundance of hope; in the other he carried the culmination of enduring his peers’ unwithering evil for years upon years while conspiring against them in secret. The final dossier he’d submitted had been passed down from his father, and his father before him: the man’s grandfather had begun collecting proof of his neighbors’ wrongdoings to be delivered “when the good count returns.” Each Erftstadt had swallowed their bile to greet the traitorous rats around them with a smile, and their great suffering had produced evidence to match.
Agrippina had meant to get to this eventually, and now she had a solid few generations’ worth of a head start on her work. Loyalty wrought reward: the new count had a task of the highest distinction to assign to her patriotic baron.
The lady of the county was going to inspect her territory this end-of-winter, and the Erftstadt estate would be her lodging—and this was what had driven her servant to near expiry.
After all, the bulk of Ubiorum’s resident landowners were praying for Agrippina’s death. Being the harbinger of ruin that she was, housing her invited untold dangers; nobody wanted that responsibility. The risks certainly wouldn’t stop at harmless pranks: these rogues would do anything to keep the messenger of their reckoning away. Lighting the mansion on fire was an expected opener; assassins were practically a welcoming envoy; if anyone was feeling particularly skittish, they might raise an army to surround the barony.
The new lord hid nothing. Her appointment was an overt proclamation: I shall use you as bait to sweep away more of the rot at once—are you willing to prove your loyalty?
The baron’s answer was unwavering: Yes, my lord.
His answer was the epitome of a steadfast vassal’s, worthy of praise to the end of time; pleased, Agrippina had set the current plan in stone with a weighty nod.
Her luggage was totally packed, and the blanket of snow covering the capital was thinning every day. Behind-the-scenes negotiations were all done, and what few preparations remained would be finished soon. All that remained was to wait and see how her enemies would react.
“Not that I expect to be surprised,” Agrippina scoffed to herself, tossing the letter into an unearthly pocket of space.
Since the dawn of time, those who found themselves on the back foot of machinations beyond their control had only one hope to escape: if the mastermind and their people died, the matter would be solved. Forever.
Agrippina may have been the daughter of an important foreign noble, but there were ways to remove her without incident. She simply needed to pass on in a way that would involve no legal hearings, by some means emphatic enough to leave no room for debate. And then, no matter how powerful her family was, they would have no means of uncovering an elaborately concealed truth that took place far from home; even the strongest arcane barriers paled in comparison to the protection provided by time and space.
A stray thought brought Agrippina back to an incident report she’d read many years ago: a tale of assassination so absurd that it had gone on to spawn a theatrical comedy. While recalling the details called for more effort than she wished to spare, she remembered that the story had chronicled the death of some count whose enemies had lured a dragon into his territory to blow him away, estate and all. Young or old, every member of his bloodline had been killed.
As tempting as it was to decry the account as a deus ex machina better fit for a tale set in the Age of Gods, the meticulous scheming and believability of the plot had made for a compelling story. Gratifying to watch unfold and utterly unique, the scheme was inherently impossible to litigate, allowing the conspirators to get away with their thrilling revenge story.
That had been the end to a play, of course, but that wasn’t to say there weren’t ways of reducing everything to ash in her own situation.
“I do look forward to seeing what they have in store. I can only hope they stray from the most banal of scripts.”
Gently exhaling a puff of smoke, the methuselah decided to sleep. Her kind could live without it, but the soul was ever in need of sustenance when battle drew near.

[Tips] Aristocrats given the right to manage human resources are allowed full discretion over matters of life and death, so long as their decisions are proven to be rational and lawful. Whether such decisions take the form of rope around a neck or poisoned cups offered in exchange for honor is a topic that goes unquestioned.

The snow had gone, but the chill it left on the earth continued to crawl up my legs as we set off from the capital.
“Mm... Is this really how people manage?”
“It really is.”
There was no lavish carriage to be found, no multiman guard detail. Our journey would be made in the plainest travel wear, and on the backs of Castor and Polydeukes alone.
“This is—how shall I say—horribly uncomfortable. I can’t imagine this is good for my skin.”
“You were the one who told me to prepare travel gear that’d let us pass for commoners.”
“I know...”
The woman dribbling complaints like a leaky faucet was who else but Lady Agrippina, but she looked nothing like I’d ever seen before. Her hair was magically dyed—using the official release of the product Mika had gotten a prototype of—a dull shade of brown, and a pair of mystic glasses made her eyes appear a similar hue.
On top of that, her polished blue-blooded fashion was gone, replaced with hemp travel clothes I’d purchased for cheap from a thrift store. Her rustic top, thick pants, and large mantle had been designed with only sturdiness in mind; each was packed tight with cotton to retain as much warmth as possible. I was wearing the same thing: this was a necessity to keep ourselves safe on the road.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything better? I can already imagine how sore my inner thighs will be if I ride in these.”
“A commoner’s skin is hard and tough. I’ll have to ask that you make do with the magic you’re so talented with—any better than this, and we’ll have to change our story.”
We weren’t role-playing as retired daimyo—although if we had one more, I was ready to be Kaku-san—but rather hiding Count Agrippina von Ubiorum’s identity to avoid any prickly situations that might arise. Plenty of people benefited from Lady Agrippina drawing breath right now, but just as many would have preferred her a trifle more inert; as bothersome as it was, this was our means of evading assassinations and assaults on our way to the territory.
That, and we had a lot of body doubles.
I don’t know what kind of sublime mastery she’d displayed in her negotiations, but the madam had managed to squeeze every penny and every last drop of authority she could out of the Emperor; our decoys were the imperial guard. Each unit revolved around a jager who specialized in disguises or a hexenkrieger who’d mystically altered their appearance placed inside a carriage. Surrounded by a convoy of knights each, our distractions had left the capital a few days prior.
Frankly, I’d failed to see in what universe we’d need to worry about Lady Agrippina being assassinated, but it turned out that this was more a trap to sniff out her enemies than a guarantee of her safety; it clearly wasn’t my place to get smart. From what I could surmise, she’d probably leaked fake intel to suspicious actors to see which of them would bite.
Because otherwise, I couldn’t see any reason she wouldn’t just send a messenger with a location marker for her to warp to, skipping the tedium of travel and the risk of assassination. I felt for the GM, and could see why space-bending magic had been reduced to a lost art. If just anyone could hop around through tears in space like the madam, then something like eighty percent of all problems that might arise in a campaign could be solved before they became issues at all.
Getting back on track, the perpetrator of any attack on our decoys could easily be discerned. The information she’d leaked had assuredly been carefully tailored to make sure she could trace the flow of information back via factors like location and name of inn.
As for us, we were quietly slipping out of the city after all the other teams had left to make sure we didn’t have any turncoats closer to home. According to Lady Agrippina, the list of people who knew of this plan was extremely limited: a select few nobles from the newly formed faction surrounding her, a handful of high-ranking imperial guardsmen in charge of coordinating the decoys, and me and Elisa.
So we should be good! is perhaps what I would have thought if I knew nothing of my own bad luck or my employer’s talent for drawing heat. I already knew that all this planning wouldn’t mean anything, and something was bound to happen—absolutely guaranteed.
Ugh, I hate this. It took a particularly awful set of circumstances to make me wish I were traveling by myself instead. This was worse than being at a bar or baseball game alone with my old boss.
“I’m trying to keep my arcane footprint to a minimum,” Lady Agrippina grumbled.
“Isn’t that a bit much to hope for when your plan includes opening a portal back home to sleep every night so that you can avoid the inns?”
“Please. My arrangements on that front are airtight. I had some Polar Night scholars seal our tent with an order-made barrier. As it turns out, an imperial order and a blank check are motivation enough to make a remarkable product.”
“That sure is something... Just how remarkable is it, exactly?”
“If you stood inside and used your entire mystic arsenal without reserve, I wouldn’t be able to notice from just outside.”
That’s pretty fucking remarkable.
That finally gave me some perspective: she’d ordered me to leave the low quarter without her, lead the horses to some lonely woods, and set up the tent here in the middle of nowhere...only for her to scare me silly when she opened it from the inside and appeared.
Oh, and I’d neglected to mention this, but I was also in costume. My public image had become that of the madam’s sworn retainer; if I stayed in the capital while Lady Agrippina “left,” only to depart on my own at a later date, everything would fall apart. The imperial guard had moaned about how hard it’d been to scrounge up a team of combat-ready mensch with my build and height, but I was willing to chalk that up to the stress talking and move on.
My hair and eyes had been alchemically dyed to match Lady Agrippina’s—to the great displeasure of the alfar—and I could probably fit in perfectly with my brothers and father now. In the past, I’d been mistaken for an adoptee when my mother wasn’t around, seeing as how Elisa and I were the only ones to take after her. Seeing myself like this in the mirror had been a new and refreshing experience.
I bet they’d be surprised to see me like this too.
Alas, Ubiorum county was months away from Konigstuhl on horseback, so I didn’t have any hope of taking a quick detour on the way.
“Hm,” the madam mused, “I suppose I’ll put up an ultrathin barrier on the inside of my clothes—agh, but that’s just a different form of discomfort in and of itself.”
“Then perhaps the best solution would be to make the trip as quickly as possible.”
“You’ve grown quite the mouth—do you know that? Well, whatever. Let’s be off.”
Lady Agrippina nimbly hopped onto Castor without the slightest hint of her usual listlessness. Not wanting to be left behind, I jumped on Polydeukes and followed after her.
“I suppose this marks the beginning of my journey...with this brat of a brother.”
“...Indeed it does, Sister Dearest.”
Ahh, of course. I’d done my best to keep it out of mind, but however could I forget this vital part of our backstory? The two of us were apprentices in the capital who’d just been given leave to visit home: the older sister Julia and the younger brother Alfred.
Funny, isn’t it?
Hide her trademark ears, and the methuselah was easy to take as a mensch; on a purely cosmetic level, maybe calling it easy was understating it. But what this pretext failed to account for was that I would have to refer to her as “Sister Dearest” without wincing in pain or choking on my own laughter—a true challenge indeed.

[Tips] The use of body doubles in times of peace is part of imperial aristocratic culture, but the truth remains that not all nobles need them for all outings. For most, their usage depends on circumstance.

The point-to-point distance from the capital of vanity to the Ubiorum county’s capital city of Kolnia was roughly four hundred kilometers; it was closer to six hundred and fifty along the linchpin highway. The trip was comparable to the journey from Konigstuhl to Berylin, meaning that we could’ve finished it in a few hours on a twenty-first-century Japanese bullet train but instead had to settle for a few months on horseback.
Beasts of burden tasked with ferrying along people and their luggage could usually manage twenty to forty kilometers a day—maybe sixty on a really good day. On top of that, they needed to rest every four to six days of walking, so a solid estimate was around two or three hundred kilometers of progress every ten days...if the conditions were right.
Unlike cars, the restrictions on when horses could perform at their potential were plentiful enough to forget about any semblance of steady, regular progress. Their horseshoes could fall off, their hooves could crack, and they could even come down with a stomachache; the troubles of living could manifest themselves in our very alive mode of transportation. Taking care of our steeds’ health was just as important to our progress as taking care of our own.
Other than that, poor weather could limit our range of travel on any given day; given that we had to keep track of both our supplies and the distance to the next place to stay, this could mean we’d be stuck in one place for days at a time. Combined, these factors meant a one-way journey took three months to complete.
As an aside, a traveler with a particularly high-held nose, picky about their choice of inn and insistent on a large security detail, would need an extra month or two. Not only would the greater number of people slow the operation down, but hotels that could accommodate a giant party of guards, servants, and their horses were few and far between; such journeys were doomed to even more obnoxious routing issues.
An emergency courier swapping out horses at every stop could make the trip in a month, and a drake rider could shorten that into a handful of days, but we had the misfortune of dressing up as normal travelers trying to get by.
Instead, we’d trotted along for the past month without much to note. It had been a peaceful journey thus far. Though the heavens sometimes sprinkled us with snow as if they had suddenly remembered the season or whisked away all sight with fog too thick to see my own nose, these obstructions had been well within our calculations. At our current pace, we’d make it to the Ubiorum territory by our promised date.
We were currently checking into a hotel just before the major city of Braunschweig—a rather foreboding name, I thought—located in the center region of the Empire. The inn’s name was The Golden Birdie, and it was the sort of place a regular worker might barely be able to afford. Instead of being protected by a random bouncer, the guard was a real fighter worthy of his title; the stables were nice and secure.
We’d borrowed a room for two, but Lady Agrippina had quickly slipped into the safety of the tent’s barrier and retired to comfort. I couldn’t really blame her. Mastery of space-bending magic meant that she didn’t have to sleep in this dingy—though I found it rather luxurious—room and could relax in her personal laboratory; why wouldn’t she go back?
“Man, I’m tired!”
Falling backward into bed, I could feel the stiffness built up over a long day on the saddle melt off my muscles. For one sweet second, everything felt worth it—this had to be one of the best parts of any journey. Sans getting home, that is: the eventual return was out of the running on account of being locked up in the hall of fame.
The bedding was wonderful: there wasn’t any question that it had been cleaned since the last guest had left, and the stuffing smelled fresh enough to assume that the owners regularly changed it out. Few things in this world could command as much gratitude as a bed free of fleas and lice.
One night in this room, along with a meal, bath, and use of the stables, cost one libra and twenty-five assarii. Different people would have different opinions on whether that was a good or bad deal, but personally, I thought it was a low price for what they offered. Real scams made me want to grab the innkeep by the collar for being audacious enough to take money for the “services” they provided.
Lady Agrippina went home every night anyway; the only thing that mattered to her was having proof we stayed in an inn, wherever it was. As a result, she had no qualms about settling for a mangy establishment if it was the only one around, and gods, did I suffer.
Ticks, fleas, and crab lice were par for the course, not to mention the time a crowd of those unspeakable vermin scattered out of sight as soon as I opened the door. That night, I’d realized that camping outside would be much nicer, and had sneaked out in the dead of the night to pitch my own tent. Living in the capital, I’d forgotten that four walls and a roof weren’t always better than the great outdoors; I understood that I was the only one who had to deal with the rooms, but would it have killed her to be a bit more considerate?
“Shoot, I can’t kick back all day.”
As tempting as it was to continue snuggling with the bedsheets, I had to clean up. I took apart the madam’s teleportation tent and then stuffed the other bed with some spare cloth to make it seem like someone was sleeping. In the unlikely case that someone came in, I had to make sure our story kept up.
With my forgery done, I decided it was a good time for a bath. The folks running the inn would bring up our supper on their own later, so I wanted to clean off some of the grime of traveling before then. Well, at least, as much as I could in a steam bath without a tub of water.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said to the proprietress. “Is the bath ready to use?”
“Oh, of course. But you know, with how slow business was today, I was this close to not lighting the fires.”
Happy day! Not many people traveled at this time of year; real traffic only began to spring up once it got a bit warmer. Readying a large sauna for the few workers who lived here on days without guests was probably a tremendous waste of money, so I really lucked out.
“Will your sister be bathing as well? The facilities flip between being open for men and women every other hour.”
“Uh... She said she was tired and went to bed, so I think she’ll probably pass.”
I flashed an empty smile and walked away from the front desk. As much as I still hated it, I’d grown used to pretending like that creature was a sibling. Still, I did not appreciate how she’d started having fun with our assumed identities by giving me shit in a manner befitting an older sister, fakeness notwithstanding. Seriously, what was the point of going out of her way to fix my clothes or hair in public, or to wipe my mouth like an actual caretaker? No, wait, I’ll answer that: she was killing time by watching my reactions.
Putting that out of my mind, I headed toward the bath and stripped down in the changing room. Inside, I found a sauna that was much more nicely kept than the price would suggest. The failings of lesser businesses were absent: no slimy floors due to insufficient cleaning, no benches that creaked and snapped at the lightest touch, and no filthy water that made me want to jump in a wild creek instead.
Praise be. In a world where money couldn’t buy honest service, places like these were true godsends. I tossed some water on the red-hot stones on the stove, filling the air with steam. When a white cloud of fog set into the room, I finally felt like I was taking a real bath.
Ahh... This is wonderful. If I had to nitpick, I would’ve liked for it to be a degree or two hotter, but I knew I shouldn’t add more firewood of my own accord, and heating it with magic was out of the question. I’d have to live with it; but hey, the missing heat could always be made up for with a longer stay. After that, the only thing left would be to hit the sack: no caring for the madam meant a nice, leisurely night awaited.
I had spent a while rubbing myself with a birch branch to improve my circulation and scrub out any dirt that came out of my pores when I noticed some other customers arrive at the bath. I heard the door to the room before this one open, and a series of footsteps...
Hm? But there was a distinct lack of rustling clothes. I waited with ears on full alert, and made out that they hadn’t even taken off their shoes in the changing room.
Letting my instincts take the wheel, I crouched down by the entrance with my towel in one hand. I didn’t so much as breathe for the next twenty seconds, totally erasing my presence...until some unmannerly buffoon violently kicked the door open.
Oh, I see. So that’s how you want to play it.
Then I guess I don’t have any reason to hold back.
On the other side of the doorway, the most obvious pack of goons I’d met yet awaited. But before they could bring their guard back up from breaking down the door, I swung my towel straight with all my might, landing a hit squarely in an intruder’s face.
“Gah?!”
Of course, it wasn’t just a wet towel: I’d folded it in two to cradle a burning-hot stone, fresh from the stove. Swinging my makeshift blackjack with a reversed grip, I caved in his hooded face with superheated pain. Judging from the crunch, it was clear that I’d broken more than just a nose.
The combination of scalding heat and forceful impact caused him to collapse, and the ink-dyed short sword in his hand went loose. Snatching it out of the air, I bolted into the changing room—to find two more attackers. Fair enough, I supposed; backup was more than expected.
They wore darkened leather armor and gloomy cloaks that covered their entire bodies. Furthermore, their hoods had been enchanted to hide their faces no matter the angle. These weren’t your everyday robbers: they were career wetworkers, accustomed to swinging blades in the shadows.
Still, the task of taking out an unarmed, unclothed kid lazing about in the bath must have had them feeling safe, because their reactions were several beats too slow. I understood the shock of seeing their companion’s skull rearranged, but this was hardly professional behavior.
“You little—hrgh!”
“What theaaugh?!”
With a quick turn of the stolen sword, I sliced at two hands: one holding a dagger, and the other reaching for a strange crossbow I’d never seen before. These sorts were liable to keep fighting so long as they could move, so I forwent mercy and chopped straight through their wrists. Any hand being used to kill an innocent little boy didn’t deserve to be attached to a person anyway.
As the two of them gripped at their wounds, I bashed in their heads with the back of my sword; just for good measure, I went over to the guy cradling his face and kicked his head like a soccer ball to add three tallies to my score. Unlike the capital’s guards, I could do whatever I wanted to these guys so long as I didn’t kill them.
“Huh. That was a letdown.”
To be blunt, these guys were chumps. After my run-ins with magia and the imperial guard, I’d been trembling over what a nobleman’s assassins might look like. But if this was all they had to offer, then the sauna would be a faster way of working up a sweat. Wasn’t this a bit too easy? I’d prepared all sorts of stuff to counter specialized killers, but it seemed it was all for naught—though I did have to admit I hadn’t expected them to jump me in the bath.
“Hm... Yeah, no, I don’t recognize any of them.”
I tore the hoods off the unconscious men—I made sure to stop their bleeding since it would be a pain to have them die on me—and, as expected, recognized none of them. The dagger-wielder was a werewolf, the backup crossbowman was a mensch, and the first guy...was too mangled to figure out, so I gave up.
Thankfully, it didn’t matter whether I knew them or not. All I had to do was tie them up, and Lady Agrippina would take a little peek into their heads for the rest. The only ways to hide something from her would be to use the same Sympathetic Barriers I and other magia used, or to have unbelievable levels of grit; neither seemed likely.
“...Wait, shit!”
After tying the three of them up, I realized I’d missed something critical: I knew that the madam wasn’t in our room, but they didn’t. And if they weren’t afraid to kill anyone they came across...
I threw on my pants and shoved both feet into my boots without so much as putting on my socks first, then bolted out into the cold. Sprinting back to the main lodge, I realized that my fears had been well-founded.
I had been too late.
“You rotten bastards!”
Inside, the innkeeper and her guard were dead. The proprietress’s body was at the front desk, her face buried in the hotel ledger with blood running down to the floor; her neck must have been cut from behind. On the other hand, the guard had fallen out of the chair by the entrance. His hand was still holding his sword, despite the crossbow bolt buried in his neck. He’d probably risen as soon as the owner was attacked, and had gotten shot for his troubles.
Rage threatened to reduce my vision to a boiling sea of reds and blacks, but I forced it down and ran for our room. As much as I wanted to go over and close the victims’ eyes, the clock was ticking.
On the way there, I passed two wide-open doors. Quiet and lifeless, it seemed those rooms had contained guests who’d met similar fates to the innkeeper. In fact, I suspected the same had happened on the third floor, where the husband of the operation was sure to be resting.
I turned the corner into our hall—There they are!
A group of four shadowy figures dressed exactly like the ones at the bath was huddled around our room. One was fiddling with the lock, so it seemed like I’d caught them just as they were preparing to strike.
You’re not getting away with this. Sure, the room was empty, but I could search every corner of my heart and I wouldn’t find it in me to let them go for what they’d done.
“Huh?! Who are you?!”
One of them noticed me, but I didn’t care; I just hurled the short sword I’d stolen. My Hybrid Sword Arts training included impromptu throwing, and the blade sank into the frontmost enemy as if guided to him by a magnetic pull. Nice and full of oxygen, the resulting geyser of blood was a pure scarlet, sputtering far to coat the well-kept floors in its filth.
Apparently, my attempt to contain the fury in my heart had failed. My aim was slightly off, and the sword had landed right between his head and shoulders, all but decapitating him as it cleaved deep into the trunk of his neck.
Shit—that guy’s dead. I cursed myself for letting him off with a quick death; what was I going to do if he was the one in charge?
But for now, I needed to pull myself together and deal with the remaining threats. These assassins were a cut above ordinary bandits, moving to intercept without delay: no expletives, no surprise, and no care for their fallen friend.
One came at me with a one-handed sword, well suited in length for indoor combat; another carried a smaller dagger made for stabbing. Behind them both, the last maintained his position by the door, pulling out a wand.
You have a mage?! How fucking nice!
Although Hybrid Sword Arts did highlight the ability to fight unarmed, trying to tackle this situation without a weapon was going to be rough. I could tell from their postures and gaits that these were experienced fighters: whatever style of combat they employed, I was convinced they were at least VII: Virtuosic in their mastery. A hotel hallway was practically no distance at all against a savvy opponent. I needed my next weapon, and fast.
So I called for it—the horrific blade who crawled to my bedside every night to sing her twisted songs of love.
“—!”
Crying out in an ecstasy that brought reality itself to the brink of shattering, her wordless delirium was the backdrop to a swift uppercut. In one stroke, an arm was severed, leaving a trail of misty blood in its wake—naturally, it wasn’t mine.
“Graaah?!”
I’d aimed for the slim opening in the vanguard’s armor to cut straight through his right elbow; not even the hardened killer could stay silent after that. He cradled his wound and stumbled head over heels. I bet he couldn’t believe it: I was some half-naked brat who’d foolishly thrown away his only weapon, so why was there a sword in my hands?
The ear-shattering joyful yelps sounding in my mind were of gratitude, for the Craving Blade knew no greater happiness than for a swordsman to need her as a sword.
But the weapon was too heavy to be swung from below—and more importantly, it was too long. The unwieldy zweihander required both hands, and should have been impossible to use properly in a cramped corridor.
“Good girl.”
Her pitch-black blade was as dark as ever, and the illegible ancient writing carved into its sides was no less ominous; yet as the last vestiges of daylight beamed through the window and reflected back as an obsidian glow, the image produced was clearly of a sword that was shorter than before.
More precisely, about the same size as Schutzwolfe.
Let me clarify that this wasn’t a sudden idea I’d come up with on the spot. I’d taken the Craving Blade out for a bit of practice one day—but also because her nagging at night became particularly insufferable if I neglected her—only for her inarticulate screaming to take the vague form of a meditation on love.
If love could only be earned with love, she conveyed, then she’d failed me. But she wanted mine; then it was only right that she demonstrated her passion.
Before I knew it, this accursed blade of mine had learned to fit any form I desired. By failing me, I assumed she was referring to my mortal combat against the masked nobleman. Her claim was that, had I wielded the weapon best suited for me, every cut could have been deeper, closer to being lethal. But none had done the job, and I’d nearly died because of it.
So the sword, in the depths of its adoration, had decided that songs were not enough; actions were needed to prove her devotion. Ever since, she had begun to morph in both length and width.
Nowadays, she could become anything I desired, so long as the final form could be considered a “sword.” Anything from a short sword barely bigger than a dagger to her original, nigh unusable heft was fair game. I’d thought her like a woman changing her wardrobe to suit a new lover’s palate, but who was I to deny that that was indeed an expression of love? Wanting to draw every last drop of attention from your chosen soulmate is a natural wish.
Besides, men were prone to styling up in clean suits and reaching deep into wallets to do the same. Having someone willing to dedicate everything to me in the name of love was a good feeling, and that was no different even coming from a blighted sword that chipped away at my sanity.
The second ruffian pushed past his fallen comrade to thrust his dagger forward, but he was too late. I ducked under his attack, slicing at the back of his knee to capitalize on his overextended leg; hard tactile feedback told me I’d cut through muscles and tendons to reach bone. All his weight had been resting on this leg, and he went flying forward as soon as I rendered it useless.
Letting all that momentum dissipate on impact with the ground would be wasteful of me; I extended my foot ever so slightly to catch his face. Despite not putting any force into it, I could feel the shock of a gnarly collision. My boots had metal plates on the bottoms and tops to prevent damage from traps and stomping, equipping my kicks with a real blunt weapon.
Ouch, that’s a bad angle. He’d lost an eye at best, and might have had his socket pulverized at worst. He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
“Cotton embrace—pinch of lily—a stem of rose, freed from thorn...”
But I didn’t have any time to spare. The mage in the back had his wand in one hand, a catalyst in the other, and was even chanting an incantation. Though he didn’t seem like a magus, those three supplements combined would surely bend reality in unthinkable ways.
So I just need to stop him before it goes off!
I leapt with all my force, closing the distance in a single breath. While I hadn’t touched my Agility in a long time, it was more than enough to cover distances this short.
“...lead these souls to a gentle graaagh?!”
And an attack made with a sword that could grow midswing was sure to reach. The Craving Blade reclaimed her original form, the tip of her edge cutting through the hood and across the mage’s mouth before he could give his spell any more verbal structure. The tiny white fragments riding the wave of blood were the last hurrah of his teeth, and the small chunk of flesh belonged to his tongue.
Only half-constructed, the spell had lost both its caster’s attention and the support of incantation in one fell swoop; it exploded. I jumped away on reaction, only to see a cloud of white smoke envelop the assassin.
I’d covered my face and made sure not to breathe it in, just to be safe. The incantation sounded like it was borrowing a line from a lullaby, so it seemed plausible that he’d been trying to cast a sleepfog—a terrifying spell that put enemies to sleep if they failed a resistance check. It was so broken that GMs concerned with game balance tended to treat it like a lost art, but my old tablemates had been the sorts to use anything in the toolbox; I had experience on both ends of its effects.
These guys sure used some awful tricks. If I dozed off, all my training would cease to matter. The story would be different if I had someone to watch my back, but I would be doomed by myself. Hadn’t anyone told them that it was bad manners to use crowd control on a hero without a party?
Admittedly, there was a chance that my Sympathetic Barrier would have blocked its effects, since it was a spell that affected my state of consciousness. Either way, I was still happy to prevent it from going off at all.
Thinking about it, this was probably how they’d managed to clean out the building without causing a scene. I wasn’t exactly the most sensitive listener ever, but not even I would have idly lounged in the sauna had I heard screams coming from the main building.
Dammit. I might’ve been able to save some of them if I had sharper ears...
But my frustrations and regrets would have to wait; there could still be more assailants lurking around. For now, I would need to apprehend these rogues and lug up the three I’d left in the changing room. Once Lady Agrippina was done pulling intel out of them, we could turn these crooks in to the local magistrate—their deaths wouldn’t come easily.
After finishing the knot binding the assassins together, I figured I should head back into our room. I’d left my Voice Transfer transmitter in my luggage, and wanted to put some clothes back on.
But just as I got up, something came flying through the hallway’s window without a sound.
I didn’t spend a single moment trying to process what the round object was before I tossed it right back out with an Unseen Hand. Immediately after, I shouldered my way into our room, hitting the floor with my hands on my ears and my mouth open.
A few seconds later, an explosion shook me so violently that I could feel my brain shake despite covering my ears. I didn’t know whether it was chemical or magical, but that thing had been a bomb. Isn’t that a bit extreme?!
As it turned out, my hunch that I hadn’t finished off the last of them had been right—and whoever was left was skilled enough to evade my Presence Detection to boot.
“Argh, you bastards! Give me a break!”
I couldn’t tell if the grenade was supposed to kill me or silence the failures for dropping the ball, but if they wanted a fight, I was happy to give them one. This was already a train wreck; what was another twenty or thirty goons? In fact, I’d just been thinking that all the poor innocent folks they’d killed might need some company to lead them back to the gods’ laps!
Pulling my cloak off the wall with a Hand, I slid into it and ran back out into the hall, summoning another invisible appendage to toss the goons into our room. With one foot on the windowsill, I looked around and saw nothing... So they’re above!
“Lottie, boost me!”
“Wha?! Um, ’kay!”
I twirled into the air and called the name of an alf sure to be loitering around somewhere or another. Despite her surprise at the sudden request, she managed to pull it off spectacularly.
Charlotte the sylphid could heed my call wherever the wind blew, and she summoned a gale as powerful as it was gentle to lift me onto the roof. A natural gust strong enough to carry a person would have come with an entire tornado behind it, but her physics-bending fey whirlwind carried me softly upward.
Perhaps that was why I managed to react to the dagger zooming my way.
As soon as I got up, I had to jump to the side to avoid the projectile precisely placed to send me falling back down. It had been a twitch reaction based solely on the dilute, yet palpable bloodlust tickling my senses. A flurry of shingles scattered as I broke my fall and instantly bounced myself to my left with an Unseen Hand—no sooner had I evaded the first round than another callous clump of steel barreled my way.
The follow-up attack split the air as it rained down on me: a rod-shaped dagger specially made for throwing. Had I let myself get comfortable after dodging the first, I would have paid the price now. While a weapon this small wouldn’t have spelled death, I would’ve sustained a serious injury.
My opponent was a genuine threat. Their presence and intent were so thin that I could hardly get a read on them; they were leagues above the oafs I’d mopped up downstairs.
Noticing that they were trying to sweep my landing, I held the Craving Blade close to my frame to block the hit, using the force of impact to buy myself some space. The attack had been so powerful that trying to stand my ground would’ve been suicide: while my sword could take the abuse, my body was better off rolling away the momentum over two or three somersaults.
Come to think of it, getting to take a movement action on a successful reaction made me a really annoying enemy to fight, huh?
Quips aside, I used the excess energy to regain my footing. Turning with the Craving Blade at the ready, I finally got my first good look at who I was fighting, and man, were they hard to describe at a glance.
The profile of their upper body was obscured by a hooded cloak, but the long trunk extending from below was anything but mensch-like. The army of thin legs propping them up pointed to a demihuman—probably either a millipede or centipede.
As the careening sun said its final goodbyes and the divine Father reclaimed His gift of sight, it became nearly impossible to make out even the broad strokes. What little sunset remained only served to cast a backlit shadow, and the only thing I could confirm was that an endless array of legs was poking through the cloth wrapping around their trunk.
This person was cautious enough to keep even their gender ambiguous, but the massive pole they carried was plainly visible. It was every bit as long as their wriggling trunk, and they twirled it around with great elegance as they sized me up for dodging their initial offensive.
This was...problematic. Their arms were long and flexible, and their weapon of choice was longer than anything a humanfolk could wield on our stubby legs. But most vexing of all...
“Hm?!”
...was their unreadable footwork!
Advancing on an abundant set of skittering appendages, my opponent maneuvered in ways that were far harder to anticipate than a fighter resting their weight on two. Legs were the foundation of movement, and usually, watching them and the chest was enough to get an understanding of how a fighter’s arms would move; together, that would suffice to scope out the angle of entry. But here, I had no idea how they’d approach.
Not only did their unorthodox gait free them from having to commit weight in any direction, but I was stuck floundering at how to best dodge or block, putting me on the back foot. Worse still, they stood up tall, flexing their trunk to extend their already-obnoxious reach into something that enabled wide arcs of attack from above.
The unstable footing of the roof didn’t help either: while they scurried up, down, left, and right with ease, I was struggling to take solid steps on the poorly cemented shingles. Every one of their deft steps felt like a mockery of my efforts.
But perhaps their most damnable trait was the raw power their giant frame provided. This utter monster could probably plow through a squadron of regular soldiers with ease.
Shit! You’re telling me a freak this strong was just waiting here in case the first group fucked up?! Gods, it would’ve been easier if they’d just come at me indoors!
The polearm whipped around at rapid speeds, engraving the air with a series of short arcs; but for as flashy as it seemed, their movements were delicacy incarnate. Drawn by the hefty metal spinning around, each curve of motion was simultaneously an attack and an invisible barrier barring my entry. As if their elegance in footwork weren’t enough, they were now skillfully eliminating any potential opening.
I knew we were opposed, but I couldn’t help but be impressed. This was a style of combat that betrayed a keen awareness of their physical boons, and I would’ve asked to see their character sheet for reference had I come across them over the table.
The precision of their attacks was just marvelous. For us on two legs, the great tragedy of offense was that every step introduced brief moments of instability; freed from such struggles, they carefully selected where to place their strikes, always finding the spot that would cause me the most trouble.
They were a genius, deserving of a more splendid stage than the shadows of assassination.
Since the centrifugal force bolstering their swings could crash straight through a half-assed defense, I opted for evasion as I stepped forward and eyed for an opening. Gripping my blade in reverse with both hands, I redirected a diagonal strike aimed for my shoulder. I’d used the same trick when dealing with the batons and spears wielded by the guards of Berylin; instead of suffering recoil in an attempt to knock the weapon away, it was better to gently guide it off its course. Sir Lambert had distilled years of fighting polearms on the battlefield into our lessons, and that pain was hard to forget.
I could tell this attempt had been particularly successful from the resistance against my hands, and I sensed an expression of surprise flash across my opponent’s hidden face. I bet they hardly felt the collision at all.
Now it was my turn to attack. Weapons with reach excelled at controlling space, but they suddenly turned into a weakness if I could get up close. Plus, unlike a lamia, this demihuman’s segmented legs couldn’t curve in every direction: they didn’t have the option of flinging their trunk forward as a whip. And while they could run backward at tremendous speeds, it wouldn’t be enough to shake me off.
Considering the skill of those I’d fought, this person was almost definitely in charge. I wasn’t going to let the biggest archive of intel get away. But just as I began considering whether a severed thumb would suffice, a terrible omen zipped across my neck.
I raised the Craving Blade on reflex. I heard the sharp clang of metal bouncing off metal...and felt the dull pain of something sinking into my gut. Swallowing back a groan, I made full use of my Lightning Reflexes to observe the first projectile gliding through the air: a throwing knife, painted in ash to obscure its form in the dark of night. Just like the first short sword I’d stolen, it was a tool of the trade, tailored for hushed kills.
But my opponent had thrown two.
By layering the second attack into the shadow of the first, they’d managed to hide its course. I’d seen such feats in manga, but never thought I’d see someone actually pull it off, and while wielding a polearm, to boot. The technique had been facilitated by the second set of arms peeking out that had thrown the projectiles while the main pair handled the battlestaff.
Ah, shit. I should’ve known. Had I given it some thought, I would’ve realized that they’d begun this encounter with both daggers and a pole swipe. Since the rod was too long to be wielded with one hand, I should’ve suspected another limb from the very start.
Boy, was I glad I’d grabbed my cloak. Despite its humble appearance, the inside of this mantle was actually lined with Lady Agrippina’s own defensive formulae, making it tougher than a two-bit set of armor. I’d been forced to keep my equipment down to the bare minimum for our trip, and this had been her way of making up for my loss in safety.
AC was prone to being ignored or written off with all sorts of poorly explained excuses, but it was vital to survival. Without this, I might’ve been screwed: from the angle it had hit me at, it could very well have hit my liver for an instant kill.
But just because I’d blocked it didn’t mean that this hurtling clump of steel in my gut didn’t hurt. So, figuring I’d pay back some of the pain, I turned up the engines and began hacking and slashing at full gear; I should’ve known from the start that this wasn’t a foe I could afford to go easy on.
I needed to do my absolute damnedest to kill them, and if they ended up alive after that, then that was a lucky break. Trying to secure anything more would just end badly for me.
The assassin toiled to block with their staff and pulled out more daggers at every turn, but two more attacks just meant two more opportunities to roll for counter actions.
And I, too, had cards hidden up my sleeve.
Trying to put themselves back in optimal range, my opponent desperately pedaled backward, but I stuck fast. Reaching a Hand into the pocket of my cloak, I pulled out the catalyst for my mystic flashbang. I’d hidden a few instances all over; knowing something like this would happen eventually, I wasn’t going to go around unprepared!
But I wasn’t done: passing the dagger that had hit me to another Unseen Hand, I thrust it forward. I mean, they’d gone out of their way to deliver me a new weapon. Wouldn’t it be rude not to make use of it?
The extending Hand was both more precise and more powerful than something soaring through open air. My promptly regifted present returned to its sender by lodging itself deep inside their shoulder. I did unto them as they had done unto me; I wasn’t necessarily trying to copy them, but admittedly ended up stealing their moves— Whoa?! That was close!
Unbelievably, the assassin used the inertia of being stabbed to tilt over backward and whip their legs at me in a kick—though the term felt strangely inaccurate—akin to a cracking whip.

Tprg 5.1

Spewing the most servile thing I could think of, I knelt before the couch she was laying on. I was prepared to submit myself to her whims.
Frankly, I had no delusions of trying to fool Lady Agrippina. She was the kind of playful—nay, mocking enemy found in the back of advanced rule books, whose existence was a challenge to the player: fight her if you dare. What was the point in trying to hide information from a monster that could bring down a full party of maxed-out PCs? If she felt like it, she could strip my soul bare with psychosorcery; an honest apology was a much, much better choice than lying.
“You have my deepest apologies for allowing guests in without your permission, be it only into the parlor as it was. This decision was mine and mine alone, and I am prepared to bear responsibility for it.”
“Oh, my loyal servant. It pleases me to see that you understand your own transgressions. After all, they say a retainer who cannot sense their master’s anger is fated to a short life.”
H-Holy shit. This was why the upper class were so scary: they could mull over the lives and deaths of us peasants as if it were chitchat, sporting the same thin smile and easy tone of voice as usual.
That said, I wasn’t a blithering enough idiot to show up without preparing an excuse—one good enough to convince the likes of the madam, at that. I told her the full story without any omissions or exaggerations: everything from how I met Miss Celia to how we’d helped her escape; the battle from last night; and my meeting and subsequent acquaintance with Lady Franziska.
Lady Agrippina listened to my tale in silence—laughter did not count—until I was completely finished. I couldn’t see what part of my misfortune was so amusing as to leave her gripping her sides in pain, but after I’d retold everything, she simply said, “I shall put it on your tab.”
“...What?”
“I’m saying that I shall let you off with the small debt of a single favor.”
Wiping a single tear from her eye, the madam named a price several times more frightening than a mere fine. Was I crazy, or was handing this woman a blank contract basically the same thing as suicide?
Wait, no. At least with suicide I’d get to die a peaceful death... Still, I supposed this was a better fate than someone of my standing could have realistically hoped for.
“A...favor?”
“Your account was entertaining, and it appears as though everything has been tied up nicely, so I don’t mind. I was able to confirm that you have some sense of your place, as well.”
“Is that truly acceptable?”
“The question of whether it’s acceptable or not is mired in all manner of issues, but consider this: had you handed that girl in, the situation would only have worsened. The grudge of a noble scorned is quite something.”
To tell the truth, I had planned on using that as another excuse. While Miss Celia wasn’t the type to obsess about revenge, there had been a chance that her pursuers were bandits merely masquerading as noble retainers. If I’d let her slip into their hands, who knew what her parents would do to me? Or even if they truly did belong to her house, it was possible that she’d resent me for foiling her getaway and exact vengeance on me after marrying—or so the justification went.
The real Miss Celia was a saint in all but name; I was sure such dark thoughts never even crossed her mind. Still, an enraged aristocrat was more than capable of fashioning guilt for a lower-class enemy to don.
“I should think this conclusion as clean as they come,” Lady Agrippina said. “Though I suppose you did nearly die again.”
“...Yes, well, I’d rather not experience my limbs flying off ever again.”
“I’m sure. They don’t grow back and are challenging to replace, so take care of them, will you?”
I don’t need to hear that from you—I know plenty well they don’t grow back. I was acutely aware that my irreplaceable arms and legs were only with me thanks to Miss Celia.
But come to think of it, who had that guy been, anyway? Lady Franziska had said not to worry because she’d administered him a “healthy dose of discipline,” but that mage had at least been on the level of a College professor. Trying to figure out why he’d been waiting for me—and trying to look cool doing it—confounded me to no end.
He’d appeared with all the pomp and circumstance of an unprepared GM rolling dice to figure out what kind of boss to place at the end of a mission. There was a palpable malice in his placement, as if I’d dodged the true final boss and forced the world to place an unavoidable encounter on my escape route to make sure the climax didn’t fizzle out. I’d seen this sort of thing before: once, my old crew and I had tried to pilfer the precious gems out of some ruin and were on the verge of escaping without incident when we randomly “discovered” that the pillars holding the place up had been crystal golems all along.
Judging from his demeanor, I could tell that the masked nobleman had been toying with me, but not much else. Seriously, why had that broken enemy just been waiting there?
“With that said,” Lady Agrippina went on, “strip.”
“Huh?”
“I said strip.”
Yes, ma’am.
Though her order came out of nowhere, I couldn’t talk back if she was going to insist. He who has wronged was ever at the mercy of she who has been wronged.
I took off the shirt I’d been given at the Bernkastel estate, and the madam stopped me, saying that my upper half would do. She then began to ogle with an unhidden gaze.
Personally, I found my young build lacking and frail, despite my developing muscles. My shoulders were beginning to gain definition, my limbs had started to grow stronger, and I’d long since left my childish potbelly behind; yet I was still far from the virile physique I was so enamored with.
More to the point, though, I’d already checked in the mirror to confirm that my detached arm and legs bore no trace of their gruesome injuries. Not only that, but my run-in with the crank of high rank had seen me tumbling this way and that; my “Daisy Blossom” spell alone had blasted me straight into a pillar. I should’ve looked mushier than a bruised banana, and yet I couldn’t find so much as a scab.
“Hmm...”
However, Lady Agrippina could see what I could not. Her gaze ran down an invisible line where my flesh had once parted. Even when I really put my mind to it, I couldn’t detect any lingering evidence of how reality had been warped; this was yet another example of how much more capable her eyes were.
Gods, it’s so tempting. If I could see the world as well as her, the edge I’d gain in arcane combat would be unquestionable. But a mystic swordsman couldn’t afford to divert points away from physical attributes; I didn’t want to spread myself too thin and end up being lousy at everything.
“The gods certainly do work miracles,” the madam mused. “Not even those flesh-crazed cultists of Setting Sun could graft skin this naturally. From a thaumaturgical standpoint, it is nearly as if your arm had never been severed at all.”
“I didn’t realize it was that impressive.”
“Nerves, arteries, bones and the marrow in them—human bodies are more than mere clay. One can cultivate replacement skins all day, but effort cannot replicate healing this perfect. I can see why those poor maniacs eye the faithful with such envy.”
Gently, Lady Agrippina’s finger reached out and traced the absent scar. Even though she caught me off guard, I remained totally sound of mind. Despite having already experienced a rather embarrassing accident during my trip to Wustrow, I had at least yet to let my preferences drift too far from reputability. Something instinctual in my soul whispered to my body: This one’s a no-go. Despite all the trouble my teen body had been causing me recently, I figured it deserved a bit of praise for its prudence here.
“Ahh, but there is residue of the magical variety: a spell that misaligns bits of space to render anything occupying it into mincemeat. How vulgar. An attack of this sort scoffs at the very notion of evasion and defense... Standard conceptual barriers would shatter instantly. What sort of depraved life must you live to come up with a means to turn mere embodiment into a weakness?”
Amazingly, Lady Agrippina managed to see through the true nature of the formula off the faintest leftover mana clinging to my wound. As impressive as her depth of knowledge was, I was too busy trembling at having been the target of the attack to marvel.
I’d been lucky to only have three limbs twisted off. If what she was saying was true, I should’ve been a reorganized mess of meat; the spell was like crumpling up a piece of paper to crush the stickman drawn on it.
“Mm, I’ve gotten the gist. I’ve memorized this mana signature; that will be enough.”
“What? Are you planning on looking into the person who attacked me?”
“Indeed. Though it isn’t as if I intend to avenge you or anything.”
“I know that much...”
“Call it a personal curiosity. Feel free to make yourself decent.”
A sweet fragrance wafted my way as I put my clothes back on: finished with a quick chore, the madam had decided it was time for a smoke break. I carefully tried to slip my neck through my shirt without letting my hair get caught, but just as I did, a cold voice cut through the cloth to sting my ears.
“It is a stroke of fortune that you’re alive...but I will not tolerate a second ‘all’s well that ends well, happily ever after.’”
The usual play in her tone was gone, and her reproach was not followed by a lighthearted confirmation; this was a warning in the truest sense. I jammed my head through my collar, hair be damned, and quickly got back on my knees.
“I am well aware.”
“Mm, very well. Anyhow, I shall be charging your patron from now on whenever money is involved, so make sure to see through the preparations on that end.”
“As you will.”
“I’m sure you’re very tired, so you may leave for today. Resume your duties tomorrow morning.”
Anger was most terrifying when it came from an ordinarily freehanded master; a happily ever after truly was too much to ask for. Though I didn’t regret my decision, this adventure of mine had come with a steep debt...

[Tips] Arcane limb replacement is an imperfect craft. Newly generated flesh is sure to differ in skin tone at minimum, and requires long hours of rehabilitation to reconnect and retrain the nervous system.
Meanwhile, the faithful cast miracles that outperform these mystic surgeries off the back of spiritualism alone. The magia who dedicate themselves to the arduous pursuit of knowledge often look at priests and the like with unjustified envy and anger.

Whether I was dying or Miss Celia was running for her life, the capital chugged along all the same. The only notable difference tonight was that there were far fewer guards walking the streets. Now that the chaos had subsided—I didn’t want to imagine what had gone on behind the scenes—there wasn’t much point in keeping watch at every corner, so I guessed it was inevitable.
Looking back, I felt awful about how I’d treated the dependable guardians of our city. My back had been against the wall, and I hadn’t been able to hold back as much as I would’ve liked; a fair number of them must have suffered broken bones. The crown offered good benefits, so they wouldn’t struggle to find treatment or get paid leave, but worsening their daily lives came with pangs of guilt.
Gingerly knocking someone out in one hit like some comic-book hero was an exacting task, but maybe that was just my own lack of skill talking. Unfortunately, people were too complex to go down after a single punch to the gut or neck, and smacking their heads was a shortcut to sustained injuries; strangulation didn’t keep people down long enough, so that wasn’t an option either. I could only ask that they lay the blame on my spineless performance and Miss Celia’s immature father—preferably at a one-to-nine ratio.
Speaking of benefits, I’d nearly forgotten. Mika and I had met up at the Bernkastel manor, where we’d celebrated our mutual safe returns and I’d honored her courageous devotion, but I had yet to recognize two of the most important contributors to our cause.
“Ursula, Lottie.”
I whispered too quietly for anyone else to hear, but clearly enunciated their names. A cool and refreshing breeze rolled by, sweeping away the lukewarm night.
Yet as the current faded, it left behind two gifts on my head. I didn’t need to look up; the alfar who had helped Miss Celia escape and whose valiant efforts indirectly saved my life were here.
They’d gone above and beyond for me. Had Miss Celia stowed away to Lipzi instead of calling for her aunt, I would have traded lives with that lunatic in the sewers at best. In the worst case, I could have missed my final shot and been reduced to chum without so much as avenging myself.
And of course, the young lady’s aeronautical adventure wouldn’t have succeeded without Ursula and Lottie’s help. The thing was a top imperial secret that would determine the political, economic, and military future of the nation: a posh girl oblivious to scouting methods was sure to be caught by security immediately without the help of these high-ranking fairies.
Alfar were so profoundly intimidating. If they could be bound to any sort of rhyme or reason instead of committing themselves to whimsy, I could see an entire new school of thought emerging amongst magia, dedicated to forging spells with fey assistance...though it was their unpredictability that made them fey in the first place.
“Here, Beloved One. Aren’t you a tad late with your summons?”
“Wah... I’m tiiired...”
Their voices were downcast enough to make it clear Lottie’s grumbling was founded in something real. I wonder if something happened to them.
“We received quite the earful, you see.”
“Ughhh, we got yelled at for helping too much...”
Apparently, some of the most important alfar had scolded them with scathing intensity. While I’d known that the kings and queens of the fey realm were closer to spirits and gods than the rabble, I wouldn’t have imagined that they’d be the ones directly rebuking these two.
Alfar were supposed to be aware of their own boundaries, keeping their meddling within reason. The two of them had answered my ambiguous request for them to help Miss Celia with enough effort to get them lectured.
...I guess they deserved a proper reward. They were my saviors, after all.
“Thank you both—I mean it. Is there anything I can do to repay you?”
“In that case, look over there.”
Ursula leaned over the edge of my head, and I followed her outstretched finger to see a small clearing. It was an empty area meant to contain fires, just like the one Mika had been waiting in on the day of the parade.
“What say you to a dance? I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep you to myself if I take you to the hill.”
“Sure, let’s dance.”
I made my way over to the square, and another breeze came to whisk away one of the weights on my crown. In its place, the beautiful, full-sized girl I’d first met all those nights ago appeared to greet me.
Her skin glimmered like deep honey under the moonlight, hidden only by overflowing currents of silver that blended into the orphic luminescence. Where the sterling river parted, the wings of a moon moth fluttered, blinking with otherworldly charm.
“Will you please take the lead?” she asked.
“Of course,” I answered.
Captivating, enchanting, and resolute, her vermilion eyes drooped into a smile.
Taking her small, graceful hand in mine, we began to dance. Ours was not a ballroom waltz in measured time, but the free movements of a rustic country swing; we spun around and around, drawing close and stepping away as it struck our fancy. As I twirled the same way I had during the festivals back in Konigstuhl, the svartalf elegantly moved to match.
We gently spun, then hugged and spun back, alternating steps as we faced one another. Locking our arms together, we used each other’s legs as axes to swing around and around. While I had to be careful not to drop Lottie—she was still busy pondering what she wanted—I merrily sustained the dance until beads of sweat began to form on my skin.
Seeing her alluring skin take on a faint blush in this festive mood made me understand the feelings of those who gave into temptation and were spirited away to the everlasting hill of twilight. Even though I wouldn’t go myself, I could tell it was surely a jolly place, free from any suffering. Had I lacked my promise with Margit, my duty to Elisa, or my family, maybe I wouldn’t have thought it such a terrible fate.
“That was wonderful.”
“Yeah, it sure was,” I said. “But man, I didn’t think I’d sweat like this considering how much training I do.”
We’d spent a whopping half hour dancing, and it was only now that I realized I was toeing a dangerous line. If others could see Ursula, then I was going to become an urban legend about some crazy kid dancing with alfar; if not, then I was just a lunatic dancing alone. Either way, an onlooker would call for the guards if they spotted me. While we’d thankfully managed to enjoy our dance without anyone bothering us, that was a bit careless of me.
“A boy’s sweat is a sacred thing,” Ursula said. Then, turning to Lottie, she said, “And what about you? I’ve had my fun, but how long are you going to think about this?”
“Um, ummm... Oh, oh! There’s a lot I want, but I’d like one locky, please!”
“Of my hair?”
I tilted my head, confused as to why she’d want that. But apparently, a blond child’s hair was literally worth its weight in gold amongst fairies.
“Oh, ohh!” Ursula shouted. “No fair! I should’ve chosen that too!”
“No!” Lottie shouted back. “You already got a dancy, Ursula! The locky is Lottie’s!”
“This isn’t fair! You would be dried jerky in that cage by now if it weren’t for me!”
“Nuh-uh! Would not! Lottie was napping!”
Ignoring their yapping back and forth, I untied my hair and cut off a small portion to bundle up for her. Long ago, imperial citizens used to weave decorative cords out of their hair, but modern spinning technology meant that only the poorest still did. I had no idea what she was going to use this for.
“Wow! Pretty! Thanks, Lovey One!” Smaller than the bundle of hair she was squeezing, Lottie happily twirled around while humming, “What oh what should I use it for?”
On the other hand, the fairy of the night was glaring at her friend with murderous envy... This was one of those episodes that would evolve into a grudge later, wasn’t it?
“Okay, okay, fine. Ursula, you can have one too, and Lottie gets a dance.”
“Huh? Are you sure? I mean, I’d be happy to accept if you’re willing.”
“Really?! I get a locky and a dancy?! Yay!”
For me, seeing someone’s mood sour before my eyes was much more taxing and bothersome than doing a bit of extra work. Besides, cutting off a bit of hair and dancing was nothing compared to what they’d done for me. Even if my actions bore more meaning than I knew, even if I was paying a hefty price that I couldn’t yet see, I thought I had a responsibility to repay them for saving my life.
I lopped off another tuft of hair, which pleased Ursula greatly. Then Lottie took my outstretched hand—still small—and invited me to dance. I think opinion may be split on whether or not ours counted as a “dance,” but she seemed content to hold on to my finger and zip around, so I figured it was fine.
“By the way, what are you going to do with that hair?”
“I wonder,” Ursula said. “What will I do with it? A necklace or hairpiece would be lovely, but I’d adore a ring or anklet too.”
“Lottie’s gonna ask for clothes!”
Accessories and clothing? Did alfar have the ability to process human hair into cloth? They sounded like a certain nomadic horse-riding people on the surface, which did not help make them less scary.
Regardless, I was just happy that they were happy. But while I could swing a sword for hours on end, my legs and hips were incredibly sore from just a bit of dancing. Maybe it was because I wasn’t used to it.
With my debts repaid, I was ready to go home and get some sleep...but then noticed that Ursula’s cheery mood had vanished, and that she was staring straight at me.
“...Is there something wrong?”
“I know you’ve given us two whole rewards, but let me say one last thing.”
Two and three aren’t all that different. I nodded her along, and her expression only grew graver.
“The next time you find yourself risking your life in combat, don’t cast us away, will you?”
“Oh...”
She went there. True: had these two been with me, the fight would have gone more smoothly. I might not have even needed a last-minute rescue at all. Magecraft generally only affected targets that the caster could perceive, so Ursula’s stealth could have protected me from attacks; Lottie’s wind would have been perfect for throwing off the hounds’ noses and pushing away the bugs.
However, without their help, who knows what would’ve happened to Miss Celia?
Unable to come up with a response, I stood there in silence. Watching me, Ursula came to her own conclusions and shrank back down with a quiet giggle.
“What a helpless boy.”
And just like when they’d appeared, a passing breeze whisked the alfar away. All that was left in their wake was a sweaty fool still bumbling for the right answer.
What was I meant to do?
My mind spun trying to digest her request, but only one thing made itself certain to me: I would ask those two to help me again if something important to me was on the line. Despite knowing I risked earning their ire, I had more to protect than met the eye if I wanted to stay true to myself.
“Man...”
I retied my hair and looked up at the moon, but not even the ever-shining Goddess of Night would bless me with the answer.

Conqueror 1.7

“The thing is, I don’t actually want the role. If another candidate steps up, I’ll happily step aside.”
“Huh?” Myalo froze for a moment. “B-But didn’t you play a pivotal role when your father was chosen as successor?”
Is someone spreading rumors? That scares me. How’d Myalo ever find that out?
“Only because the other candidate was worthless trash. He might’ve taken revenge on us if we hadn’t completely crushed him there and then.”
“B-But...isn’t your incredible academic performance the result of you working hard to be a worthy head?”
I’m not working hard; I’m being worked hard. Not that it’s all that arduous. I guess I could refuse, but then what would I do instead?
“I’m going along with the arrangement because I’ve got time on my hands. I was originally planning to become the manager of a bird ranch, and I still haven’t given up on the idea.”
“A r-ranch manager? I can’t tell whether you’re serious or making a joke.”
“It’s no joke. You don’t think managing a ranch is a good job?”
Managing a ranch is a great job.
After living in the Ho family’s manor for a few years, I’d started to think that being a knight might not be so bad. I’d even started to hope for it. But even with the passage of time, I was still incredibly reluctant to become head of the family. I’d watched Rook in the role, and it didn’t look like fun. I didn’t consider him unfortunate, but he didn’t appear any happier than before.
On the other hand, we had much more cash to spare, as well as the privilege of being courted by high society. Also, Suzuya no longer had to wash clothes in cold water with her bare hands. But these things weren’t direct causes of happiness. Rook, Suzuya, and I all preferred our old life, I was sure of it. Managing a bird ranch seemed like such a better fit for Rook and me, to the point that I considered us more fortunate back then.
I wasn’t about to abandon my responsibilities after going so far to create this path for us, but if someone exceptionally talented appeared to take my place, I’d happily step aside.
“Uh... Well, yes, it certainly is. But don’t you want the position? You’ll be the head of a chieftain family.”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
My talk with Carol went just like this. All that stuff about, “You were born to a chieftain family and yet you possess none of the dignity of a knight. You’re a disgrace.”
Most boarding students were probably living aimlessly while following their parents’ instructions, so my attitude wouldn’t particularly bother them, but Myalo was the second or third highest-ranking student. He must’ve worked hard to get there. Much like Carol, he’d achieved so much by taking pride in all of his hard efforts. He might’ve even been the top student if I hadn’t been here, so I had to choose my words carefully.
“It’s not that I don’t want the role, it’s just that being a ranch manager felt like a better fit. Anyway, it all depends on my cousin.”
“Oh... Well, it’s really none of my business, but I think you’d be well-suited to headship. And not just because you can study—you’re courageous too.”
“Am I? I think I lack determination.”
If I was courageous, my past life wouldn’t have turned out how it did. I was trash who let authority figures control me, and then I turned into a shut-in because I couldn’t get over being dumped by a woman. Hardly courageous.
“To be honest, the chances of my cousin finding herself a boy like that are slim. More than likely, I will be the head of my family someday.”
That wasn’t to say that there weren’t any boys out there who’d want to marry Sham. There’d certainly be no shortage of men wanting to get together with her for her family’s status, but that was no good. Unless Sham married for love, she’d be unhappy.
The potential groom also had to come from a suitably high-status knight family and needed to possess the unmistakable potential to become a much better leader than me. Also, they couldn’t be trash like Rakunu—I had to be sure that they’d leave Rook his territory and let us live in peace. The odds of someone meeting all of those criteria were astronomical. I doubted that such a person existed anywhere. That meant that the chances of Sham’s husband becoming head of family weren’t just slim, they were close to zero.
Given that I understood all of this, I probably shouldn’t have been telling people I didn’t want to be the head.
“Y-Yes... Indeed...” Myalo’s eyes were glazed over and lifeless.
Why is all this such a big shock for him?
Ordinarily, entering the royal guard would be the most ideal future for someone like Myalo. He’d be so detached from matters of chieftain family headship that he had no need to worry about it. I could only assume that he loved chieftain families so much that the idea of someone not wanting to be in charge of one was unthinkable to him.
“How about we talk about course schedules instead?” I suggested. “It’ll be nice if we’re in the same classes.”
“Y-Yes, let’s do that.”
V
Myalo and I had made and submitted our schedules together, and now it was the following day. I’d spent the night before in the dorm and on high alert, watching out for any attempted attacks from Dolla.
Although it wasn’t a national holiday, the academy was closed. The new academic year would begin when the academy reopened from a long vacation tomorrow, and there’d be an opening ceremony the day after that.
I woke up early and descended the stairs to get breakfast. The smell of fresh bread baking already filled the air in the dinner hall.
But when I entered, something didn’t seem right. There was a strange tension in the air. The mood should’ve been lethargic since everyone had just gotten up, but people were talking excitedly, as though something had gotten them worked up.
I soon realized why. A very conspicuous, blonde-haired girl was having breakfast in the dining hall. It was Carol, the princess. The dorm’s ten-year-old boys were all sitting some distance from her, as if they had no idea how to approach a girl of such dazzlingly noble birth. Nonetheless, they took great interest in her as they ate.
Carol’s gaze met mine the moment I came down the stairs, and she more or less scowled at me. I half expected her to say hello, but she didn’t, so I thought it best to avoid her. I chose to eat my perfectly ordinary breakfast as far away from her as possible. It wasn’t long before I’d finished eating.
I got dressed and ready to head out, taking great care to avoid waking Dolla, who was still sound asleep. I left while it was still early morning and took the same route I’d taken after being sent home the other day. I soon arrived at the Ho family residence.
I hadn’t been told exactly when my family was leaving this morning, so I worried I might’ve been late. Apparently I’d made it just in time, though, because the line of soldiers that were meant to escort Rook and Suzuya home were just about to set out.
“Hey. What’s up, Yuri?” Rook was surprised to see me appear unannounced. He jumped down from the carriage.
“Good morning. I walked here hoping I might see you off.”
“Oh. Did you sleep well?”
Before I could answer, Suzuya called my name as she hurriedly climbed down. Moving so quickly in the long skirt she wore was dangerous.
“Mom.”
“Thanks for coming. Do your best at school,” she said as she hugged me tight.
“I will. And you take care of yourself. Dad, I didn’t have any trouble last night, so I think I’m going to be okay,” I reassured him. I knew my words would put Suzuya at ease too.
“All right,” he replied. “Just don’t overdo it. Though I’m sure you’ll be fine whatever happens.”
“Yes, I think I’ll manage.”
“If it’s too much for you, just come home. It won’t be any trouble for us at all,” Suzuya said.
“I know. Could you let me go now, mom?”
I don’t want everyone thinking I’m some weird momma’s boy.
Suzuya released me like I’d asked.
“Both of you take care of yourselves,” I said while waving them off.
They set off with their procession of guards back to Ho Province.
Since I had the day off, I decided to spend the rest of it having fun.
That said, my only hobby besides taking care of eagles was going for walks, so I was just going to go on a stroll. Rook had already shown me all the impressive sights the capital had to offer, so I just planned to wander aimlessly and explore the various streets.
My brand-new Knight Academy uniform stood out too much, so I changed into some other clothes that I’d packed before I’d left the dorm earlier. I hid the bag I’d used to carry my clothes in a patch of long grass. I managed to slip through the busy front gate while the guards were changing shifts, which left me free to explore the city.
I went along while examining Sibiak’s stone buildings. Despite everything Myalo had said about witches running this place and making life tough for everyone, the royal capital appeared to be thriving. The stores allowed people to enter and leave freely, and food vendors had their wares on display in the front windows. This sort of setup wouldn’t have worked in a crime-filled city. At the very least, law and order here was sufficient for businesses to operate safely.
Either Myalo had been exaggerating—a certain level of order and economic stability was necessary for the witches to ensure their profits—or they feared the queen stepping in if they took things too far. It was hard to guess the answer just from seeing the streets. No doubt I’d come to understand things much better after living here for over ten years.
I was getting further away from the Ho residence as I walked the streets, taking whichever turn took my fancy. I continued for some time. Sibiak had the layout of a planned city, and everything was so neatly arranged that I couldn’t get lost.
I already knew that the streets became less safe further away from Royal Castle Island, especially in the western areas where the slums were located. That was why I headed east instead. More stores began to open for daily business as I strolled around.
A store soon caught my eye—a cutler that sold weapons. My habits over the past few years must’ve shaped my interests. I entered to take a look.
I was surprised to find folding knives out on display. I picked one up and noticed that it didn’t even have a locking mechanism—it folded back into the handle easily when a little pressure was placed on the back of the blade. Such a tool might’ve been useful for turning fish into sashimi on a chopping board while out fishing, but it would be a terrible idea to use this thing in a fight. Even if it was all you had with you, the impractical design meant that you’d need more than a few spare fingers.
Hunting knives were also being sold alongside meat cleavers that a butcher might use. There were no tools with gut hooks; the type used for skinning animals. I imagined those would sell well, but then other stores would just copy the design. I abandoned the thought and left the merchandise behind.
The storekeeper looked concerned about seeing a child wander in to play with the knives, so I didn’t stay long.
I walked a little further and found a store with various large piles of charcoal out front—black, white, and rounded pieces made from large branches. When I got closer, I caught its distinct, powdery scent. I didn’t know much about the stuff, but it looked suitable for daily use around the home. I assumed that the black and white types had different uses.
There was also a store that appeared to sell old clothes that had been re-dyed. Outside, an eye-catching indigo cloth declared, “We Re-Dye Clothes” in white letters. The merchants here were finding ingenious methods to draw in customers, just as they did everywhere else.
I walked further and found a tavern where several burly men sat out front drinking. That made me wonder whether I’d wandered into an unsafe area. There were various other stores besides the cutler, charcoal seller, and old clothes store, but they were all for commoners and their goods didn’t look high-quality. I didn’t feel like hanging around in case someone tried to steal my coin purse, so I decided to stick to looking around the stores in the safer areas until I became more familiar with the city.
I’d been heading to the southeast, rather than the west, but this looked like a downtown area. I turned around and began retracing my steps.
I’d only gone twenty meters or so before I heard a strange racket coming from a narrow alleyway. What sounded like a young girl screamed things like, “Waaaaah!” and “Let go!” Then there was a clatter, as though something had been kicked over. It sounded like someone being abducted.
So that kind of crime happens around here too. How horrible.
My family ruled over Ho Province, not royal territory. Sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong—in other words, around here—would be like getting involved in another family’s business. I decided that rather than dwell on what was happening, I’d pretend not to notice until I found someone to report it to.
But I just couldn’t resist sneaking a glance into the alley where it was all going on. That was when I saw something that could only mean trouble—a mess of disheveled blonde hair.
✧✧✧
“Let go of me!”
“Hey! Cover her mouth!”
Maybe it’s just someone else with blonde hair? I wondered. But no, it was Carol—sparkling brand-new Knight Academy uniform and all. What’s she even doing here? It’s enough to give me a headache.
When I thought about it rationally, I realized that we were unlikely to have bumped into one another if we’d left the academy separately, so she’d likely followed me. What I really wanted to know was what she’d been thinking when she’d decided to do that.
A large hat had fallen from her head, so she’d presumably made some effort to hide her blonde hair. Unfortunately, wearing such a well-tailored hat in a region where barely anyone wore new clothes just made her stand out more. Plus, she was easy to kidnap because she was a child. She might as well have painted a target on herself.
“Ngh... Waaaah! Someone help!”
“Shut it.”
Smack! One of the men—there were four in total—struck her with his palm. It connected with Carol’s soft cheek as she screamed and struggled. He’d hit her full force. It must’ve hurt.
Wow, he got her good. I’ve felt like doing that myself sometimes.
“Mnngh, mnnngh!”
In the short period that Carol had been stunned by the slap, a dirty rag was forced into her mouth to gag her.
Well... I can’t just leave her.
The smart thing to do might’ve been to walk off like I didn’t care, then return to tail them back to their den. But I worried about how the kidnappers might react when they realized Carol was a princess. There was every chance they’d decide to kill her. Abducting a princess and then holding the kingdom ransom was a crime way beyond mere kidnapping. They’d be hounded to the ends of the earth. But the dead tell no tales, so killing her would lower the chances of them being identified.
I might’ve been able to discover their lair and inform the authorities, but Carol could be dead before anyone had time to rescue her. I couldn’t pay the ransom myself either. I’d happily leave it to the royal family to fork over—maybe it would teach them to be more careful in the future—but I’d regret leaving her if she was killed. In fact, I was only guessing that they planned to hold her for ransom. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t a bunch of pedos who just wanted to have their way with a young girl.
In any case, it would be too risky to take my eyes off them while they had Carol.
“What are you looking at, brat?!” one of the men yelled when he noticed me leaning against a wall and calmly analyzing the situation.
Carol noticed me and desperately tried to cry for help. “Mhh!”
“Um, are you kidnapping her to hold her for ransom?”
The man only made a noise in response to my question. “Huh?”
If they weren’t willing to talk to me, I’d have to do some explaining first.
“The truth is, I’m one of that unruly girl’s servants. If you’re kidnapping her, then I’m sure her family will pay the ransom, but if you intend to force yourselves on her, your crime won’t go unpunished.”
“We’re after the ransom,” he answered willingly.
The man who spoke was the one who’d slapped Carol a moment ago. He seemed to be the boss.
He was oddly calm considering this was a kidnapping. Perhaps my lie made him think that requesting a ransom was going to be easy. He regarded me with an unnervingly cold stare. I’d seen eyes like that often among the Ho family—he looked like a soldier who’d made it back from the battlefield. I didn’t fear the others, since they looked like weaklings who were in over their heads. But I wasn’t sure whether I could best this particular man.
Hmm... He’d make a tough opponent. I’d better not fight him.
“Nggh! Mmmmh!” Carol was desperately trying to tell me something. Nothing helpful, I was sure. It was fortunate that they’d gagged her.
“Then perhaps you’ll take me with you? I’m worried about her. You’ll gain a higher ransom if you have us both.”
✧✧✧
“Now tell us who you are.”
They’d bound my hands behind my back, blindfolded me, and brought me here. Now the small-time crooks were interrogating me. Their boss kept his distance.
They clearly had no idea that the blonde girl they’d found wandering around downtown was the queen’s eldest daughter. They must’ve taken Carol for a stupid girl who’d wandered off from some high-class family.
Either they were reluctant to question her, or they worried that injuring her might lower the value of the ransom. For now, I was the one being subjected to a harsh interrogation. They might’ve gone easier if I actually cooperated, though.
“Who?” I echoed. “You know, I think I’ve forgotten.”
“Start talking, kid!” the man smacked me across the cheek, knocking me over.
Jeez, that hurts. Good thing I’m used to pain already. This would’ve terrified me back before I met Soim.
“Mmmmmh!” Carol cried and did her best to scream.
The last thing I wanted was for her to tell them she was a princess.
Come on guys. I’m clearly not talking, so stop hitting me. You know what you need to do.
“See what he’s got on him. There might be something to tell us who he is,” the boss commanded.
Finally.
“All right, boss,” the crook replied promptly. “On your feet!”
With that, he yanked me up from my chair. This was just what I wanted. I’d been waiting for it. They’d searched Carol right away, but since they thought I was a mere servant, they hadn’t checked my things yet. There was a hurdle that I couldn’t deal with until they did so.
“Huh? This is fancy... Hey, he’s rich.”
As the crook searched my pockets, he found a purse and dagger, which he placed on a table.
Now how will they react?
“This dagger... The girl must be one of the Hos,” the boss said.
Wow. He actually recognized my family crest...
A metal fitting engraved with the family crest was inlaid into the dagger’s hilt. Now I knew how to deal with the complications it caused. The royal family apparently wasn’t so concerned about weapons. Carol’s dagger was very well-made, but it didn’t have her family crest on it. It turned out my belongings were more revealing than hers.
“Well, the secret’s out. The girl here is Sham Ho, daughter of the Ho family’s previous head.”
Since I was left with no other option, I decided to make use of Sham’s name. I’d been hoping that I could pass Carol off as a daughter of one of the seven witches, such as the Cursefit family, but I couldn’t have done so too early. If I’d told him that before anyone looked at my dagger, my family crest would’ve contradicted me. That’s why I had to sacrifice my cheek while I waited for their reaction. I hadn’t actually expected these small-time crooks to be familiar with the Ho family crest.
“Then...that makes her Gok Ho’s daughter?”
Huh? He’s heard of Gok? How’s he know so much about my family? That’s creepy.
“Yes, that’s right,” I said.
“But she’s got blonde hair. Isn’t that a sign of royal descent?”
“Her paternal grandmother was born to the royal family. Her mother, too, is a distant relative of the royalty. Lady Sham has royal blood.”
Obviously, this was a lie, but I’d be very surprised if they knew what my family tree looked like.
“Ah... Ha ha. Who’d have thought I was abducting his daughter?” There was a note of self-loathing in the boss’s laugh. I got the impression that he’d known Gok personally.
Those who’d fought under our family and survived in battle could expect to enjoy greater wealth in their future because they’d likely be promoted when the family’s army was restructured. It was hard to imagine why a Shiyaltan veteran would have to resort to abducting people. Then again, it was possible that he was a soldier from the Kilhina Kingdom.
“We’ve gotta eat somehow. Nothing personal,” he said.
“Are you going to do something I might take personally?”
I thought he might’ve let us go if he felt indebted to the Hos, but no such luck.
“No. Just collecting that ransom.”
Carol and I were then imprisoned in a storeroom. There was a window that had been haphazardly sealed shut. Columns of light shone in through a large gap in the woodwork and illuminated the floating dust.
Although our arms were still tied up, our legs weren’t. Maybe they didn’t want the trouble of dragging us around whenever we needed the toilet.
“Why’d you get caught? You could’ve escaped without me,” Carol muttered.
She sat in the corner of the room with her knees raised to her chest. I could’ve explained that they might’ve killed her—or worse—if they’d realized she was a princess, but I figured she was too young to understand.
“You would’ve preferred it if I didn’t save you?”
“That’s not what I mean. You wouldn’t have been caught if you’d abandoned me. And you wouldn’t have gotten hit across the face like that...”
You’ve hit me across the face yourself! Carol did at least appear to feel guilty about what we were going through, so I kept that thought to myself. But why would I abandon her? What type of person does she think I am? I saved her back during the entrance ceremony too. Why does she keep classifying me as subhuman trash? What did I ever do to her?“Because we know each other, kinda. And it’s my fault for not realizing that you were following me,” I explained.
“I-I wasn’t...” Carol buried her face into her knees in embarrassment now that her following me was out in the open.
I figured it was better not to give her a hard time over it. I wanted to say a few things like, at least change out of your uniform, or, use your head next time, but I kept those feelings inside. I’d been bottling up so much lately that I worried I might eventually explode.
“We’ll be all right. You don’t need to get so down.”
“We’ll be all right...? We’ve been kidnapped. Think how much the ransom will be...”
“If all we lose is money, then we’ve gotten off lightly. Anyhow, we might get rescued.”
“Maybe you’re right. My escorts might come looking for us...”
She has escorts? It looked like she was eating breakfast all by herself this morning. Are there secret service members hiding around the dorm? Well, I doubt they’d let the princess go off stalking someone—she must’ve given them the slip.
“Then let’s hope your escorts save us. I’m from a family of warriors, so getting kidnapped and held for ransom won’t be good for my reputation.”
“Oh... This’ll damage your reputation? Sorry...” Carol sounded genuinely apologetic.
“Forget it. Do you know how to fight, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that. Carol is fine.”
“Okay... Carol.”
Getting on first-name terms with her like this feels a little awkward.
“Can you fight?”
“I thought I could... But I froze up when it mattered. It made me wonder what all my training’s been for...”
She’s received training? What kind?
Mine had come from Soim. In my final lesson, he’d made me fight bare-handed against an adult prisoner wielding a staff...although he probably would’ve stepped in if he had to. Soim tended to go to extremes.
“Well, you can’t help that.”
“There’s no excuse... It’s shameful...”
The highborn princess was holding herself to excessively high standards once again. After all, how many ten-year-old girls were capable of fighting with adult men?
“Well...” I couldn’t think of anything to say to console her. There was no denying that Princess Stalker had gotten herself into this situation by following me. Whatever I said would probably do more harm than good.
After we’d waited quietly for a while, we finally heard some noise from the next room. The kidnappers had been talking in hushed voices, but now we heard some movement. First, there was a clattering sound from a chair or some other object hitting the ground as they moved it. Then there was a bang, as if a door had been closed.
“Would you mind getting on your hands and knees under that window there?”
Carol raised her head.
“Huh...? Why?” she asked distrustfully.
“If you’re really sorry for getting me caught up in all this, then get on your hands and knees. And hurry.”
“Guh... H-Hands and knees...?”
“I’m not going to stand on your head and make you apologize. Just do it. We don’t have time.”
“F-Fine...” Carol reluctantly got down on all fours. “This is h-humiliating...”
I stood on Carol’s back, then got on my tiptoes so that I could see through the crack in the shoddily patched window. We appeared to be on the second floor, facing out onto a back alley. When I pushed my face right against the crack, I could just about see what was below us.
I saw the boss walking through the alley. Luckily, I could recognize his clothes.
“Ngh.”
After I got off Carol’s back, I started fiddling with one of my fairly long sleeves. My hands were still tied behind my back, but that didn’t stop me from pulling out something I’d hidden in my cuff.
“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t use princesses as stepping stools.”
The tool—something that resembled a ring attached to a short metal saw—had been sewn into the hem of my sleeve by a single thread. It was designed to help Ho family members escape if they were ever taken captive by the Kulati. I’d heard several stories of people using it to break free after being bound up.
“Give me a moment. Now that he’s gone, I can handle this.”
I broke the string and pulled the small saw out. Once I had it in my hand, I pressed it to the rope that bound my arms and moved it back and forth with small movements. The ring allowed me to apply a good amount of pressure, and I could feel the blade digging deeper and deeper into the narrow rope.
This wasn’t a task that required extreme amounts of time and patience—I managed to break free in about fifteen minutes. The tool had served its purpose.
“How...?” Carol was dumbfounded by the sight of me with my arms free.
“Keep your voice down,” I whispered while working to untie Carol.
“You...this whole time...”
“Every adventure starts with some preparation.”
Getting kidnapped had been just as much of a risk for me as for her, so I’d prepared myself ahead of time. I’d set out feeling confident that I knew how to deal with every scenario within reason, though I hadn’t banked on a member of the royal family stalking me.
“But now what?” she asked. “Can we get out the window?”
“It’s the second floor, so that won’t work.”
We could’ve broken the window open, but the ground was quite a ways down, and the opening faced out onto an alley with nothing but houses around it. In other words, there were no large eaves or anything that we could jump down onto.
“You’re going to fight?” Carol asked.
“Well... Maybe...”
There was still one cause for concern. I crouched down and squeezed Carol’s thigh with both hands.
“Wha—”
Next, I patted her butt. Her muscles were firm, and her lower body was in good shape. I felt sure she could outrun a few ill-trained adults.
“What are you doing?! Blackguard!”
Smack! Carol hit me across the head as hard as she could.
Whoa. She’s making too much noise.
“Does a maiden’s honor mean nothing to you?! Pig!” Her face had turned bright red with fury.
I hurried over to the right side of the storeroom doorway.
“Quick! Pretend your arms are still bound!” I urged while gesturing by putting my own wrists together.
Carol still had just enough presence of mind to suppress her anger and put her arms behind her back.
She was so loud. All I did was touch her butt. Oh, wait...that would make her mad, wouldn’t it?
“Keep it in your pants, you filthy brat!”
One of the crooks clearly thought I was up to something unspeakable. He entered through the door beside me, fuming with rage.
“Huh? Where’s that dirty ra—”
As soon as he’d stepped into the room, I kicked him as hard as I could, aiming for the back of his knee.
“Ngh!”
I didn’t give him time to form words. The kick made him buckle, and his shoulder tilted backward. I grabbed it and pulled him down to the ground. As he fell, I claimed the dagger—well, more of a hunting knife really—that he’d been wearing at his waist. To finish, I plunged it into his thigh before withdrawing it.
“Gah... The little shit stabbed me!”
With the boss gone, his gang of crooks had apparently seized the opportunity to sit down and play cards. Now that one of their members was down, another quickly stood up and came dashing at me. He pulled out a similar weapon from his pocket, so I threw the knife in my hands.
Knife throwing was a special sort of skill, but even a clumsy attempt with no chance of sticking the target would be enough to scare them.
“Hah?!”
The crook used his own blade to repel my knife, but by then I’d already gotten close. I kicked him in the groin before he had a chance to use the weapon he was holding.
“Guh-gaaah!” he screamed and curled up into a ball.
“Carol! Let’s go!” I yelled.
“Hold it, brats!”
There was still one last thug to deal with, but the man who was currently on the ground clutching his crotch had been the one blocking our escape route. The remaining crook had drawn his weapon, but he was too cowardly to charge at me.
When I looked around the room, I noticed our belongings—both our daggers and our coin purses—had been gathered in two neat piles on a table in the corner. They’d been left in plain sight, which suggested that the boss had full trust in his men.
Carol came running out of the storeroom as I snatched up our things, but the man I’d stabbed earlier grabbed her by the leg to stop her leaving.
“Get off me! You lowlife!”
As Carol shouted, I threw an earthen pot toward them, and it hit the man on the arm. He released his grip, setting Carol free.
The coward who’d been afraid to come at me must’ve thought Carol was an easier target, but I threw another sturdy, glazed pot at him when he tried to go for her. I heard it shatter as I unlatched the door and kicked it open.
“Carol! This way!”
“R-Right!”
As Carol came out, I took a handful of coins from my wallet and threw them on the floor. Hopefully, the crooks would stop to pick them up.
Although we’d been blindfolded, I’d paid attention to the route when they’d led us through the building, so I knew where the exit was. I ran down the stairs of what I imagined was some kind of apartment building or warehouse. The exit door was unbarred, so we easily got out.
“Whoa,” a voice said.
I turned right and was faced with the boss who had left just a short while ago. I thought he’d gone to confirm our identities and decide on a ransom, but maybe he’d forgotten something, because he was back already.
“Carol! This way!”
“Wait!” he cried.
I grabbed Carol’s arm and ran along the alley in a direction that took us away from the main street. I’d also made sure to throw the exit door wide open, hoping it would block the narrow alleyway.
We ran for about six meters before arriving at a sharp right turn in the alley. There was a gap between the buildings on the left too, but it was barely wide enough to fit my arm into—only a rat could’ve gone that way. We had no choice but to go right.
But before we continued, I looked back and saw that the door was still wide open.
“Carol, stop.”
“Wh-Why?”
He’s not chasing us. But why not?
If a complex series of branching streets lay ahead, he’d have to worry about losing sight of us. But even if this led to a dead end, there was no reason not to follow. That meant that this alley would probably take another right turn and lead out onto the main street. There we’d find the boss waiting to cut us off.
“We’re heading back,” I declared.
“Are you—”
“I’m sure.”
Carol was hesitant to head back toward the enemies we’d just escaped from, but I didn’t have time to explain it. I pulled her by the arm and ran back through the alley.
After violently kicking the door out of our way, I saw the alley straight ahead of us was deserted.
“Let’s go,” I blurted out before running out onto the main street.
I looked to my left. Sure enough, the boss was on the main street, waiting for us to emerge from another alley.
“Wait! You damn brats!” he cried when he spotted us.
He began to chase after us. I reached into my wallet, pulled out several gold coins, and threw them onto the street.
We ran as fast as we could, leaving a trail of coins in our wake. The boss ignored them as he chased us, but the same couldn’t be said for everyone else. The sharp-eared paupers in the area heard the clatter of gold coins hitting the paved ground. They descended on them in a frenzy, blocking the boss’s path and preventing him from catching us.
I repeated the same trick as we ran. We lost him quickly, but that didn’t mean we were safe just yet. We kept running for as long as we had the energy to.
Carol was the first to give in. “Hah, hah, wait. Wait up.”
We’d made it far. I was also tired and starting to run out of breath. I was a confident long-distance runner, so Carol must’ve trained hard to have been able to keep up with me.
I looked back for signs of anyone following us. “Haah, haah... I think...we’re fine now.”
We’d been following one of Sibiak’s curved streets, heading north, until we reached one of the major streets that radiated out from the city’s center. The region grew safer the further we traveled.
In fact, this was a familiar street. I remembered visiting it with Rook, and knew we were near the capital’s center. We were likely to encounter soldiers from the royal guard here. The risk of being kidnapped was gone.
“Hah... I’m exhausted...” Carol panted. “Is he...still following?”
“I’m sure he’s given up.”
We must’ve run for three kilometers. The sun was setting, so the crooks had very little chance of finding us now.
Up until now, I’d forgotten that I still held Carol’s dagger at my waist. I returned it to her. “Here.”
“Th-Thank you...”
I was just as happy as she was to have my dagger back. I could always make up for money I’d lost later, but the dagger that Soim had given me was irreplaceable.
“I’m starved. Wanna grab food before we head back?” I suggested.
We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we were both fairly hungry.
“E-Eat and then go back?”
It was possibly Her Royal Highness’s first time going out to get food.
“This is all I’ve got left,” I said, reaching into my pocket to produce a silver coin. “We can’t afford a fancy restaurant, but it’s enough to get something.”
“Are you serious? Even after all that just happened?”
“You’ve gotta be hungry too,” I said.
Carol patted her stomach as if consulting with it. “I am.”
“There’s a place over there. I’ve been there with my dad before.” I pointed to a restaurant where I’d once eaten with Rook.
Carol’s blonde hair caused quite a stir when we entered the restaurant, but we were shown to a table—a secluded spot in the back for two—without anyone complaining about our lack of adult supervision.
“Now, what to have...” I muttered to myself.
“I-I’ve decided already. Meat pie.” Carol sounded nervous. It must’ve been her first time after all.
I guess I’ll have the same.
“Excuse me.” I raised my hand and a server came to take my order. “One meat pie and, um...two cups of milk.”
“Yes, sir. One meat pie and two cups of milk.”
“Will this be enough?” I showed her the silver coin.
“Of course, sir,” the server immediately responded.
I already knew from checking the prices on the menu that there’d be change left over from a silver coin, but showing the staff that I had money would put them at ease. They were bound to get a lot of homeless children coming in and trying to eat without paying.
“Very well. Your food will be with you soon.” The server bowed to us and then went to give our order to the kitchen staff.
“You’re...awfully calm after all that...” Carol sounded impressed.
“Calm? I’m still a little jumpy to be honest.”
“Really?”
I was all too aware that I hadn’t settled down yet. I felt light, as though my feet weren’t quite touching the ground.
“I’ve never been through anything as intense as that. I feel good about myself now,” I said.
Carol, on the other hand, seemed down, as if she was still worried about what might happen to us next.
“I see... You sounded confident the whole time. I thought maybe that was an everyday thing for you.”
“As if.” I laughed. What war-torn country does she think I’m from?
“But still, you didn’t panic.”
“Because I knew that only one of those men had any experience,” I replied.
Despite being unskilled, they’d tried to bind me up rather than kill me. I knew that I’d find a chance to run away at some point.
“I see... I’m new to this. All I did was panic...”
She sounded remorseful, but if anything should’ve served as grounds for some soul-searching, it wasn’t her hysteria at being kidnapped—it was her stalking. But I kept that thought to myself.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re lucky no one’s going to be angry with us. Everything worked out great.”
“Uh... A-Are you saying we should keep quiet about this?”
Now Carol appeared to be scared. Everything that had happened had left her feeling guilty.
“You shook off your escorts, didn’t you? Let’s say... Oh, I know—let’s say you got lost while exploring the hidden areas of the academy. It’ll explain why your clothes got dirty too.”
“B-But lying is...”
“After dealing with everything by ourselves, we’d have to be stupid to let ourselves get punished for it now.”
“B-But I don’t think it’s right. My escorts must be searching high and low...”
“Ah... Hmm...”
The escorts assigned to the princess might’ve been some of this kingdom’s most elite soldiers. Fooling them would prove difficult, especially since Carol had been running around the city with her blonde hair exposed.
I didn’t feel like I’d done anything to make them angry at me, but I could still be blamed for going out without permission and then getting myself into trouble.
“Honestly, if we act like nothing happened, I doubt we’ll get in trouble. You didn’t cause problems for anyone.”
“Oh, I think I did.”
“If anyone can be annoyed about that, it’s me, right? You probably caused a lot of fuss, but what’s it matter if your escorts are panicking? If I can get over it, then so can they.”
“Are you sure? Oh, here it comes.”
The same server came back with a tray of food.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Meat pie and milk for two.”
The server picked up the two cups of milk in one hand, placed them on the table, and then did the same for our food.
The large meat pie, which had been cut evenly into four pieces, sat imposingly on the plate. I’d worried that one might not have been enough, but this was going to be filling. It was also still sizzling hot, with clouds of steam rising from its surface. I was pleased to know it had been freshly baked.
“Thank you,” Carol said.
“Thanks.”
The server bowed and then left us.
“All right, let’s eat,” I said.
“Okay. It looks delicious.”
Carol took her knife, cut a small portion off the edge of the pie, stuck her fork into it, and lifted it to her mouth. As you’d expect from royalty, her movements were elegant and graceful.
“This is good. The flavor’s so rich.”
I tried some too and found that it really was tasty. I was glad we’d chosen it.
I was thirsty, so I lifted up the wooden cup, which was shaped like a small tankard, and tried the milk.
Carol was about to sample hers, but she seemed to be having trouble. She tried to drink from it while pinching its metal handle between her fingers, but it must’ve been too heavy for her, what with it brimming with milk and all.
The table manners she’d been taught probably hadn’t included any instructions for drinking from overly large cups. These were probably made to hold beer—they were too big to be suited for a child’s drink.
“Why not just grip the handle properly? I doubt your table manners were designed for tankards.”
“You’re right. I’ll try it.”
Carol fretfully gripped the cup with her hand and lifted it to her mouth. She took a few gulps before putting it back down on the table and dabbing her mouth with a napkin.
“There you go.”
Her manners were as refined as any royal family member.
Before I could compliment her on it, there was a bam as the door to the restaurant flew open. The sound of boots thumped in the restaurant.
“Princess Carol!” someone cried loudly.
I looked up and saw a pale-faced woman—fairly young, but obviously still older than we were—standing over us.
We’d entered the restaurant with Carol’s blonde hair on full display, but I hadn’t expected to be found so quickly. Then again, anyone escorting a princess had to be exceptional.
“Where in the world have you been?!” the woman demanded.
“Uh...”
She looks like a little girl about to cry because she’s been caught doing something naughty.
“I was t-taking a look around the city.”
“Have you no idea how dangerous that is?! Return with me immediately!”
“Please wait,” I said.
“Hm?” The woman looked at me.
“She may be royalty, but wouldn’t it be awfully disrespectful toward me if she were to get up and leave while we’re in the middle of our meal?”
The woman’s face turned into a scowl. “And who do you think you are?”
“It’s not a matter of my status. I’m simply expecting a member of the royal family to show a reasonable level of etiquette.”
“Well, you’ll have to excuse her.” The princess’s escort showed the bare minimum amount of courtesy toward me by bowing slightly.
“I think not,” I said, preventing her from taking Carol away. “Unless there’s an urgent matter or a war has broken out right here, leaving a meal halfway through isn’t something I can excuse.”
“Oh?” She clearly hadn’t been expecting that reply. She stood there dumbfounded.
“This area is quite safe, and there’s no emergency to the best of my knowledge. If there’s no good reason for leaving so soon, then shouldn’t the lady be allowed to finish the meal first?”
“The lady happens to be a princess of the Shiyalta Kingdom.”
“Is she? I’m Yuri Ho, by the way—heir to the headship of the Ho family.”
I took out my dagger from my pocket and laid it on the table so that the Ho family crest was visible.
Carol’s escort never could’ve expected this urchin with dirty commoner’s clothes and a bruise on his cheek to be the heir of a chieftain family. She looked quite surprised.
“I say it once more: I consider leaving the dinner table in the absence of an emergency to be rude behavior. I ask that you wait for us to finish eating.”
The escort just looked at me. She was hard-pressed to respond.
Admittedly, I was talking nonsense and being needlessly argumentative, but I knew that the escort couldn’t disagree if I called something ill-mannered and then backed up the claim with reasoning. Rudeness was subjective; if I acted offended there was little point in explaining why I shouldn’t be.
“Very well... I’ll wait.”
She’d given in. She knew better than to ignore objections from the heir to a chieftain family. On top of that, I was one of Carol’s new friends.
“Actually, I’d prefer it if you could wait outside. It’s hard to enjoy our meal when there’s someone souring the atmosphere.”
For a moment, the escort appeared shocked. But then she simply made a brief check of the restaurant to ensure no one looked suspicious and left without a word.
Everything was peaceful once more.
“See? Tell her you did nothing wrong and she can’t be angry with you,” I told Carol.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“We’ve already had our day off ruined by a bad experience. We should at least enjoy a good meal before we head back.”
“Well...maybe you’re right,” Carol mused while taking another piece of pie.
Royal cuisine must’ve used more subtle flavors, because it looked like she really enjoyed the pie. This sort of simple-yet-tasty dish was ideal for a child’s palate.
Once we’d finished, I thanked the server. “Thank you for the meal. Please keep the change as compensation for the trouble.”
All I had was one silver coin, so that was what I placed down on the table before getting up.
The escort outside had been glaring at anyone who’d tried to get near, so we’d had almost the whole restaurant to ourselves for a while.
“Sorry for the trouble. We really enjoyed the food.” Carol gave the staff a slight bow before leaving.
“You’re finished now?” Carol’s escort asked me as we emerged.
She’d been standing outside as if she was the restaurant’s gatekeeper. There was also a carriage waiting with the royal family crest emblazoned on it.
“Yes, we are. It was a very enjoyable meal. Now, if you’ll escort me home,” Carol replied.
“Yes, Your Highness. Your carriage awaits.”
As she boarded the carriage, Carol turned back to look at me.
“Yuri Ho. Thanks for today. I had fun,” she said to me with a grin.
It was the first time I’d seen Carol smile.

Conqueror 1.6

Some of my fellow knights-to-be aimed to ride kingeagles and become sky knights. Of course, a knighthood alone didn’t make someone a sky knight—a very different curriculum was required. In fact, there were a lot of special skills that were demanded of a sky knight. Fortunately, training in all of those skills would count toward their graduation credits.
But students hoping to become sky knights had a high chance of being rejected. The housemistress explained that those with no prior experience riding kingeagles would need intense training, and they’d be forced to quit the course unless they showed real potential. Presumably, anyone who was too scared to look down while in the air would be kicked off the course instantly.
The remaining credits—the last hundred and fifty—were entirely lectures on general topics which were also common to the Cultural Academy. One hundred and twenty of those credits came from compulsory classes, while we were free to choose how to obtain the remaining thirty.
The former seemed to cover basic education, such as the Shanish language, math, social studies, and history. Even a knight would shame themselves if they didn’t understand a bare minimum amount of culture. There were many choices for our options. Some subjects sounded similar to chemistry, but I imagined they’d simply teach us nonsense.
There was an elementary course on Ancient Shanish too, but I’d had enough experience with that language for one lifetime. Actually, make that several lifetimes. I planned to avoid it even if I lived through seven different lives. In fact, I’d hated reading ancient writings in my past life too.
One of the courses in particular caught my interest: The Kulatish Language. I was surprised that they even had a way of teaching it to us. It was knowledge that could become invaluable at some point in life. Learning the Kulati’s language—the other race of people who inhabited this world alongside the Shanti—could be a major advantage. If this kingdom were to collapse, I could live in hiding in a region ruled over by Kulati, or escape persecution by relocating to a land where my people were safe. In either case, knowing their language would be crucial.
As much as the Kulati were said to hate the Shanti, Eurasia was a big place, and hatred for Shanti didn’t necessarily exist in every region. There could be safe places out there, like remote islands that remained undiscovered.
“Does everyone understand?” the housemistress asked.
It wasn’t clear exactly how much she’d expected us to understand, but my guess was that half the people here were clueless.
“If it’s too hard for any of you, come and see me later. We’ll make a lesson plan together.”
I bet she’ll be making those lesson plans all day.
“Now I’ll inform you of today’s arrangements. You’ll be tested to see whether you can be exempted from some of your compulsory classes. I’m sure some of you have already studied enough Shanish and math to skip the basics, so those students will be awarded the necessary credits.”
Really? I don’t just get to skip those classes, I get the credits for free? Such compassion. Is there a god or a Buddha helping to manage the academy?
“However, applying for exemptions is optional. Make the application yourself, and the course teacher will test you. Those who didn’t score well enough on the exam the other day won’t be allowed to apply. Those who choose not to apply for exemptions, and those who aren’t eligible for any exemptions, please focus on selecting your courses instead.”
I see. They’re making use of our exam results again.
It made sense to set an eligibility threshold as it saved a lot of teachers’ time. Otherwise, they would’ve had to talk to every student.
Excelling at that entrance exam had caused a ton of problems for me so far, but now I was glad I’d done it. My three years of hard work hadn’t been for nothing. Well, except for the ancient Shanish lessons—those were still worthless.
The talk of exemptions and getting free credits was music to my ears. Probably because of past trauma I harbored from my days as a credit-chasing college student.
✧✧✧
“Wow...” the old math teacher said. “It’s hard to believe, but your math knowledge might actually surpass mine.”
“Really?”
Hooray! I had to stop myself from cheering. If he let me skip math and abacus classes, I’d earn a whole thirty credits for free.
“I think you could benefit from some of the specialized courses at the Cultural Academy, but you’ve nothing left to learn from the Knight Academy’s compulsory math courses.”
“Thank you.”
All right. Sounds like I can skip them.
“But your skills with the abacus could use some polish.”
“Oh?”
I’m not good enough with an abacus?
“I’ll be generous and let you skip the intermediate abacus class, but I want you to take the advanced one.”
Despite being called abacus class, it wasn’t just about moving beads around; it also included some of the clerical calculations needed for things like account books. I’d already learned just about everything I needed to know in this area, but apparently not thoroughly enough. It sounded like I’d only narrowly avoided taking the intermediate classes.
By the way, their abacuses weren’t the type used in Japan. They had a similar design, but rather than each row having five disc-like beads with a reckoning bar separating them, each row included nine round beads.
Still, I could consider myself lucky to have skipped half the course. And I’d been made exempt from all five modules of the math course, which was great. All in all, I was able to skip twenty-seven credits’ worth of courses in this subject.
When it came to the other mandatory courses, I was exempt from the entirety of Shanish and all but the final modules of history and social sciences. In total, I was allowed to skip one hundred and four credits out of the one hundred and twenty that made up compulsory education. And for the special Knight Academy courses, I was also exempt from sixteen out of fifty credits.
It all came to a total of one hundred twenty credits skipped. So overall, out of three hundred credits, I’d been given forty percent of them for free. Wonderful.
After being interviewed until late at night, I returned to the dorm. The housemistress was there, looking rather frazzled after dealing with kids all day.
I felt hungry, so I headed to the dinner hall and found Myalo eating some late dinner. All of the exceptional students had undergone a lot of interviews, so he’d probably been busy until recently like I had. I took a well-stocked tray and went over to him.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked.
“Please go ahead,” he replied.
We talked as we ate.
“This system’s great. I bet you got out of a lot of classes too.”
“Yes, I was exempt from ninety-three credits,” he replied.
Ninety-three credits. Amazing.
The curriculum had been designed to help kids who couldn’t write or do basic math catch up with everyone else. We were about the age of a fifth grader, so children who’d studied—either under a governess at home or at a cram school—were bound to be able to skip the first five grades’ worth of courses. I’d expected the smart students with a good education to skip between thirty and forty credits, but ninety-three credits was incredible.
“I knew you were a smart one, Myalo.”
I shouldn’t be so surprised.
“I’m nothing special. How did you do, Yuri?”
“One hundred twenty credits.”
Myalo’s spoon fell from his hand and landed on his wooden tray with a clatter.
Is one hundred and twenty really that much? Well, it’s not like I can lie.
“I should probably mention that I’ve been studying a lot,” I explained. I’d learned from Carol that being overly humble was not a good idea.
I’ll just tell him that it’s because I work hard. It’s true that the only reason I can skip so many credits is because of everything Satsuki put me through.
“I-I see. Well, it’s still impressive. You must have set a new record.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
I’d rather not go around breaking records. I’d feel bad about it since I’m cheating.
“I don’t care about records, but I’ll be glad if I can graduate easily,” I said. “Hopefully I’ll be finished here before too long.”
“Yes. Though I’ve heard that it’s not possible to graduate from the Knight Academy too early.”
Huh?
“What do you mean?”
“Because we have practical classes.”
Ah, those.
Some of the courses needed to be taken in sequence without skipping anything, kind of like how someone couldn’t learn multiplication without learning addition first. It was going to take me years to clear every practical course from beginner to advanced.
“Oh, you’re right. I wonder how many years it’ll take to get through practical classes if everything goes smoothly.”
“Seven years, in theory,” Myalo replied without pausing to think.
He really does know everything.
“Then I’ll graduate at seventeen if all goes well.”
Rook had told me that people normally graduated around twenty-two or twenty-three, so seventeen felt a little optimistic. For example, suppose there was an advanced jujitsu class that required skill on the level of a third-year high schooler. If someone younger were to be permitted to take the course, they’d have a hard time keeping up. They might try to make up for their lack of experience using talent and hard work, but they’d always be smaller than the other students on the course.
Problems of that sort could increase the minimum of seven years to something more like fifteen years.
“I’ve heard that no matter how talented or strong someone is, they won’t be allowed to pass the final practical classes until they reach twenty.”
Oh. That’s way later than I expected.
“Why? Don’t they want us to graduate quickly?” I asked.
“In some cases, graduates are sent off to war as soon as they have their knighthood. So the academy won’t award one to someone who isn’t fully grown, no matter how talented they are.”
“Ah, so it’s like that.”
It would be awful if someone with enough talent to graduate at the age of seventeen could be sent off to die on the battlefield before they’d even grown up. The academy’s compromise was to set a minimum graduation age of twenty. It was bad news for me, because it meant I’d be stuck here longer, but I could see why it was a good policy from a political standpoint.
“Sounds like there’s no point in hurrying,” I said.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” Myalo agreed.
Even graduating at twenty was going to demand a lot of hard work. That said, the number of free credits I’d earned would make everything a lot easier for me.
“Is it the same at the Cultural Academy?”
“Cultural Academy students can graduate at any age. In fact, graduating early is a mark of distinction, so many people hurry to do so. Exemption from courses is much more important there than here.”
That’s interesting.
“You sure know a lot, Myalo.”
“I really don’t. All I know is this sort of boring trivia.”
I wouldn’t call it boring trivia...
“Where did you learn it all?”
“Where...? Well, you could say that remembering all these trivial things is what people from witch families do for a living.”
Really? Well, I suppose that’s what bureaucracy is all about.
“I’ll bet witch families like yours have a ton of history behind them.”
“That’s true. My family is one of the seven witches, after all. I can trace our history back to the days of the empire.”
All the way back to the empire? That’s impressive.
It was possible to trace the Ho family’s roots that far back too, but we were just an average family of farmers in the southern region of Scandinavia in those days.
Back then, my ancestors—whose names had been lost to time—had prospered enough on their farm to become influential within their village. My ancestors grew wealthy, and when war caused the collapse of the empire, the family head’s ambition drove him to use that confusion to his advantage. He fought until our family was the most powerful one in all of the southern territory. Then, when the Shiyalta Kingdom was established, my family scrambled to win the favor of Shiyalta Flue Shaltl—or perhaps she came to them—and they were made the chieftain family of the south.
We were basically just upstart farmers, but that had all happened almost nine hundred years ago. Over the course of a few centuries, any family could go from being upstarts to prestigious. Our family tree only started being recorded around the point that the family gained authority over the region, so we didn’t quite have the honor of being able to trace our history back to the days of the empire.
“The seven witches? I can’t even imagine what they do.”
I’ll bet it’s some important work in the royal castle.
“I assure you it’s nothing pleasant,” Myalo told me.
“I don’t believe that. I know that they handle all the bureaucratic work.”
Unlike fighting or carpentry, bureaucracy was difficult to appreciate because it wasn’t the sort of work you could see in action. Nonetheless, it was indispensable to any developed nation. A small village could be ruled by a single person because one elder could single-handedly keep track of all the goings-on, but a single monarch couldn’t hope to watch every corner of a kingdom made up of millions of people. There would always be a need for others who became the eyes and ears—not to mention the arms and legs—of the nation’s ruler.
“That’s certainly the right answer if the question comes up in an exam, but in reality, they corrupt offices and line their own pockets.”
“They do? I don’t get what you mean.”
Though I’m not surprised corruption exists. Maybe it’s even a given for a country in this era.
“Let me give an example: if they’re in charge of a harbor, they’ll employ a longshoreman to steal cargo from the ships. When it’s the managers orchestrating the theft, there’s no way to prevent it. That means anyone who doesn’t want their cargo stolen has to pay a bribe. It’s the easiest job in the world, the family can simply sit back and let the money flow in.”
“That makes sense...”
A longshoreman was a worker who loaded and unloaded cargo from merchant ships. There were no standardized shipping containers or cranes, so all cargo had to be moved by hand. The royal capital heavily relied upon ships for the transport of goods, which made a longshoreman’s job one of the most crucial types of manual labor in the royal capital. The idea of making it routine to corrupt that sort of worker sounded dangerous to someone like me.
A little deception and bribery didn’t mean the entire country was doomed—such things could never be completely stamped out among bureaucrats, after all—but at the very least, there needed to be periodic purges. Cleaning up corruption would bring down families who relied on it. Given that these seven witches boasted proud histories that stretched back to the days of the empire, it must’ve meant they’d never experienced that kind of cleansing. Various offices must’ve been allowed to rot under their amoral influence the entire time.
“That’s not exactly what my family does. They work in real estate. Not that that’s any better—they’re a blight that does no good to anyone,” Myalo continued.
Boys were treated coldly by witches, which may have explained why Myalo was so willing to insult his own family.
For a smart person, it didn’t always matter what their family’s line of business was or where they’d been born. They’d often find a way in life without needing the approval of their family members. Even if Myalo cut ties with them and was thrown out of the Knight Academy, someone with his intelligence was sure to find a way to get by.
In the case of a certain meathead, if he ever became a wretched vagrant orphan forced to rob stores as a means of finding food, he’d probably just freeze to death by the roadside come winter. The two were nothing alike. Myalo would likely rise to greatness once he found a merchant willing to accept him as an apprentice.
“So that’s the true nature of witch families?”
I’ll have to reassess my opinion of them. I took them for prestigious families of bureaucrats in respectable positions, like cabinet ministers. I guess you can’t always get a good understanding of things just by reading a few books.
“That’s right,” Myalo said. “The Ho family is far grander.”
“You think so?”
I wonder. I guess we’re amazing in our own way. Even Rook, for all his flaws, takes his job seriously.
“Yes. The histories of chieftain families are filled with honor and glory. Witch families act as though they’re special, but they do nothing of benefit to anyone.”
Maybe Myalo’s a fan of my family?
“Well, I appreciate the compliments.”
“You’re next in line to be head of your chieftain family, aren’t you? You have such a wonderful future ahead of you.” Myalo’s eyes almost sparkled. He must’ve really looked up to knight families.
“That’s assuming my cousin doesn’t find herself a good husband.”
That possibility still hadn’t gone away. While Sham was at school, she could fall for a talented and capable prince on a white horse, like a fated encounter from a book.
“Oh, I doubt that will matter. Given how gifted you are, I’m sure there’ll be no need to consider other candidates.” Myalo was showing a surprising amount of knowledge about my family.

Conqueror 1.5

II
“This is Kalakumo, where we are, isn’t it?” the boy asked.
“That’s right,” Satsuki replied as she watched him closely.
He was studying the map with great interest, as if it were the first time he’d seen one, even though such things were familiar to every noble in the kingdom.
“And my husband was fighting here,” she said, pointing to a spot on the map.
The boy grew thoughtful once more, though she couldn’t guess at what he was thinking.
Satsuki recalled yesterday’s events.
✧✧✧
“...Which means, you don’t have to do anything yourself. Just make this false claim tomorrow,” the boy explained.
He had asked to speak to her without his father present and suggested a plan that was similar to a conspiracy. Satsuki truly struggled to understand all the details.
“Oh my... That’s certainly an interesting idea, but I’m not so sure Rakunu would fall for it.”
“Rakunu’s overconfident—he’s always full of himself. He’s the type that rushes into action without a second thought. It goes without saying that he looks down on my dad for abandoning his knighthood, and he probably thinks that I’m just a farmhand too. I’ll just tell Rakunu a lie that he wanted to believe from the start. He’ll think he was right all along so he won’t question it further.”
“I wonder...”
“But of course, he has to think that my dad isn’t on your side during the rest of the council. If we do act like we side with you, he’ll be suspicious when the enemy suddenly comes to his aid.”
Satsuki had been planning to get Rook on her side and then take the initiative in her debate with Rakunu. It was for this reason that Rook’s weak approach had been annoying her. In fact, she’d just been about to give him a piece of her mind. But if she were to follow the boy’s advice, Rook couldn’t confront Rakunu or even be unfriendly toward him.
“Maybe I’m misunderstanding your idea, but won’t it be dangerous for you to go to Rakunu alone? I don’t mean to scare you, but he could do something terrible.”
“Do you think we can win the vote if I don’t do anything?”
“Yes. I can’t say we’re guaranteed to win, but we have the most people on our side.”
“And if we win, what would it mean?”
“Oh...? I don’t understand the question,” Satsuki replied. What’s he saying? If we win, it’ll all be over.
“If Rook wins and becomes head of family, that doesn’t necessarily mean he can do whatever he likes. Would he be able to arrest Rakunu, charge him with treason, and then have him executed tomorrow?”
She hadn’t expected the boy to speak of such unpleasant matters.
“I...don’t know,” she responded.
“I don’t care if it means exiling the whole Ek family. Will dad be able to do it immediately, the moment he becomes head?”
Clouds of doubt started to gather in Satsuki’s heart. Rakunu Ek’s family had ruled over a port town to the south for generations. It had been theirs since days of old, and it couldn’t be easily confiscated without clear evidence of a crime.
It would be possible if the veracity of the wills was clearly demonstrated, of course. But her lack of ability to do just that was what had led to them arguing during the council. Even though Satsuki knew his will was fake, she had no way to make that obvious to everyone else.
It meant that even if Rook was chosen as the head, the charges made against Rakunu would be muddied by unanswered questions.
“If Rakunu returns home only for us to make charges against him later, he might ignore our summons and refuse to vacate his territory. We’d have no choice but to arrest him by force. In that case, I’m worried we might be caught in a civil war,” he continued.
“You’re right...”
Satsuki was forced to agree—what he said was true. If Rakunu refused to comply, an army would have to be raised to force him. Unfortunately, Rook’s lack of a knighthood could be a major problem when it came to raising an army.
There was no way that Queen Shimoné could settle the matter with a royal edict—this was a family affair. Turning to the queen for help would make the Ho family a laughingstock throughout the kingdom, and their rule would suffer for it.
“If it comes to that, would the other lords assist us? If our army had overwhelming superiority, we could crush him in a single blow just like suppressing any other minor rebellion. But what if it risked becoming a drawn-out war? Could we avoid that by reaching a compromise that allowed the Ek family to continue existing?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but...isn’t it too soon to worry about that?”
The boy spoke of problems that hadn’t yet occurred. He seemed incredibly reluctant to leave future possibilities to chance.

It was true that the council was divided and the vote was going to be split. It was also true that having Rakunu executed after that could prove difficult, but there was also the possibility that Rakunu would submit quietly.
Satsuki preferred to deal with one problem at a time. Her hands were already full with the important issue before her today.
The boy seemed to have read Satsuki’s train of thought, because he said, “Unfortunately, we’re dealing with a proud and despicable man. I don’t think he’ll ever come quietly, he seems like the type who’ll stop at nothing. I’m sure he’ll continue to make attacks against you and my dad. And if the Ho family is forced into a war, it’ll be impossible to secure a favorable outcome to insiders and outsiders alike. Are you confident that the local lords would continue to support us in the future if things were to reach that point? It doesn’t matter how well you manage the province—you’re not likely to win anyone over with something like an increase in crop yields.”
Satsuki was getting a headache. In fact, she’d faced nothing but headache-inducing problems ever since Rakunu’s return. She’d assumed that all she needed was to win the vote, but her optimism was fading fast. Now this boy was telling her that her struggles would continue for a long time, whether they won the vote or not.
“We don’t know what might happen until we try...” she muttered, becoming a little irritated. In her mind, however, she could clearly picture the future that the boy described—it would be a narrow victory. Rakunu would oppose it loudly. Gradually, the lords would turn against her. It was all too realistic.
“Yes, that’s true. My dad’s so incredible that he might have a surprising amount of support among the lords. But I don’t think the chances of that are particularly high.”
“Your plan could have the opposite effect. It could make us lose. I can’t simply agree to this.”
If Rook remained quiet during the latter half of today’s council rather than opposing Rakunu, it could sway the vote the other way. The lords would begin to think, Does Rook even want to be head of family? We shouldn’t force him into it if he’s unwilling.
The false claim she’d have to make the next day also gave her doubts. It would certainly be worth it if Rakunu fell into the trap, but if he saw through it, Satsuki would be the one humiliated. Needless to say, that would also impact the result of the vote. It was a dangerous gamble.
“If we win this way, everything will be settled the moment we win the vote. We have a chance to solve all of our problems at once,” the boy said.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree with this,” Satsuki replied.
“Huh...? You don’t have faith in me, Satsuki?”
The boy appeared incredulous, but it had to be an act. It sounded like a genuine question, but he should have known all too well that she had no faith in him.
“No. You’re...awfully young.”
“Ha ha.” The boy laughed drily as if he found something amusing.
The boy’s provoking attitude had begun to grate on Satsuki. She’d been racking her brain for a way to prove that her husband’s will was genuine. She couldn’t go along with this young boy’s rash actions.
“Do you find something funny?” she asked.
“Yes, the whole thing is funny. Don’t you think so too?”
She had no idea what he meant. It should have gone without saying that it was impossible for her to trust a child—one who wasn’t even a quarter of her age—who had no skills.
“Gok decided to take a chance and entrusted the Ho family to me. If you think it was the wrong choice, then why are you even trying to execute his will?”
✧✧✧
And now Satsuki stood here. Everything had worked out the way he’d said. Rakunu was imprisoned in the manor’s dungeon, and her worries for the future had receded like clouds in the wind. In effect, the boy had resolved everything himself.
“Thank you, Satsuki. You’ve been a great help today. Good night.”
The boy bowed to her politely, then closed the bedroom door. It was as though he’d been a completely different person the previous night.
My husband saw something in that boy...
Satsuki had no idea what that something was. All she knew was that her husband hadn’t been mistaken.
“Mom.”
She felt her beautiful daughter pull on her hand.
“Yes, let’s go,” Satsuki said as they began walking through the corridor.
Chapter 3 — Everyday Happenings
I
Three years had already passed since Rook was appointed as head of family, but I was still being worked to the bone.
“You’ll be a laughingstock if you enter the academy in this state,” an old, gray-haired man told me as I lay exhausted on the wooden floor of the dojo.
I’d spent a lot of time with him these past three years. His name was Soim Hao, and he was a knight who’d come out of retirement recently. In his younger days, he’d been an important member of expeditions.
Soim had raised and trained his only son as his successor, but he had died on the battlefield long ago, leaving a son behind. By then, Soim’s grandson was old enough to take charge of the family, but he too had recently passed away along with Gok.
Soim was one of several people who Satsuki had asked to assist with my education following the incident. He was apparently trusting someone else to manage his domain, and since his great-grandchild was five years younger than me, he would otherwise be spending his days idle. Now he filled his time by beating me with sticks and immobilizing me with various holds.
The arrangement worked out well for everyone but me.
Soim was more than ninety years old. Despite his age, the muscles concealed beneath his wrinkled skin had become more refined over the years, even as time weakened them. Those muscles, combined with his well-honed techniques, made him an exceptionally strong opponent.
I reached for my wooden spear once more as I began to get up. It was merely a plain, wooden rod, its tip painted a bright red to represent the blade. It was designed for use in children’s training.
Soim held another wooden rod, but his was wrapped in straw and covered with an animal hide. He was careful not to injure me with his blows, but even a completely hollow bamboo sword could hurt someone. Despite all the padding, being hit with it still hurt.
I was on my feet again. Soim held his staff with both hands.
“Come at me when you’re ready,” he commanded.
I charged at him, thrusting and swiping, then withdrawing. I didn’t hold back as I launched a series of attacks against him, but he dodged or parried every single one.
When I was close to getting out of breath, he used a little extra force to parry one of my blows and instantly followed it up with a foot sweep. My legs buckled under me and I tumbled clumsily to the ground. I struck the ground with my arm—a technique I used to break my fall—so I was uninjured.
Damn.
Obviously, a child’s body was no physical match against an adult’s, but I still felt that his technique far surpassed mine. Even after training hard for three years, I still felt out of his league.
“That wasn’t bad, but you must learn when to retreat. This is what happens when you lose stamina but won’t draw back,” Soim lectured me.
“You would’ve gotten me regardless.”
“Heh... Be that as it may, you’ll always lose, young master, because there’s such a great difference in capability between us. But you need to think—if this were a battlefield, drawing back and holding out a little longer could have given a fellow soldier the opportunity to come to your aid and attack me. But if you were to fall to the ground because of a reckless attack, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
For some reason, this old man liked to call me young master. I found it really embarrassing. In any case, what he was saying was true, so I couldn’t argue.
“You’re right.”
I steeled myself and then got to my feet again. I’d already caught my breath.
“Come at me when you’re ready.”
Shanti knights had a strange fixation with spears. They mostly trained with spears that were as long as their bodies, but that wasn’t all they learned. Spears could be unwieldy, and no sensible person would carry one throughout the day or during their indoor work, so they normally also carried daggers. In the same way that warriors of Japan’s Edo period would generally carry a weapon of some sort, the knights here would always carry a dagger with them when heading out.
The knights also made use of many types of spear-like weapons. For example, people who felt better suited to swinging rather than thrusting could use something resembling a polearm with a curved blade.
The fundamentals of Shanti close-quarters combat consisted of three different disciplines: spear arts (including short spear techniques), sword arts (including dagger techniques), and hand-to-hand martial arts. There were also bow arts and riding arts for those who rode birds.
“Hah! Hah!” I deliberately cried out as I dodged each of the attacks Soim aimed at me with his spear.
I held a wooden dagger in my hand now, and I’d step back at the last moment when he thrust at my legs, or twist my body when he thrust at my face. Somehow, I was able to dodge each attack.
I remained just within reach of his spear, making it possible to evade by stepping back, so dodging each attack as it came was actually quite easy.
He also seemed to slow his approach to match my speed, ensuring he never drew closer.
I held up my dagger with the hilt gripped in one hand. When the spear thrust toward me—just barely missing my chest—I grabbed the shaft with my empty hand.
Spear-bearers hated it when the opponent caught their shaft. Even if the wielder attempted to shake them off, the human arm could put more force into pulling than pushing, so it wasn’t easy to break free. That meant their opponent could get close and stab the spear-bearer while they struggled, which was a common way for them to die despite their apparent advantage.
I was so weak that I wouldn’t be able to maintain my grip for long. By pulling on the spear and using it to propel myself forward, I used his attack as a chance to get closer. Without losing momentum, I swung with my dagger, aiming for the spear’s grip.
Soim had already removed his hand from the spear’s grip, leaving me without a target. He then used his free fist to aim at my hand.
When Soim first struck the back of my hand, it sent a jolt up my entire arm. He’d hit me hard, and I froze up as a result. He took the opportunity to deliver a soft kick to my stomach, sending me falling onto my back. Just as I broke my fall, he thrust the spear toward me, pressing its tip against my stomach. I had clearly been defeated.
After sparring, we ran a lap around the manor together as a cooldown exercise. The day’s training ended with me drenched in sweat.
“I’ll see you for more training tomorrow. Rest well until then.”
“Thank you.”
I was scheduled to receive a lesson from Satsuki after lunch.
✧✧✧
“Listen to me,” my teacher scolded and smacked me on the head.
“Whoa!”
I awoke with a start. Oh, man, I was half-asleep.
“You fell asleep, didn’t you?”
“Uh... Yes.”
“Is this really that boring?”
My teacher, Satsuki, looked unhappy with me.
Of course it’s boring. I can’t believe they expect me to take this lesson after intense exercise and a meal. How could I not fall asleep? It’s heartless to even ask it of me.
“No, I’ll do my best.”
“Now memorize ‘lantern kakikaki winter snow.’”
What...?
“Huh?”
“I just explained this. It’s how we conjugate the verb when the subject is a grandmother.”
In this case, “grandmother” was a linguistic term that referred to aged women.
“You remember how it changes depending on whether the object is a grandfather, man, item, land, royalty, grandmother, or woman, don’t you?”
“Uh... What...?”
As I was barraged by this heap of information, I felt my consciousness starting to slip away again.
Satsuki was determined to teach me Ancient Shanish, and it went like this every single time.
“So we follow the verb with ‘lantern kakikaki winter snow.’ For both young women and old women, ‘snow’ stays the same in both cases, so that’s one less thing for you to remember.”
Uhhh... One less thing out of seven doesn’t make it a whole lot easier, does it?
I was still struggling with the whole idea of verbs that changed depending on the object.
Of course, verbs changed forms in Japanese and English too. Verbs were generally conjugated depending on subject and tense, but I’d never known a verb to change depending on whether the object was an old man or woman.
Such a language would need an absurdly high number of verb inflections—it should’ve been too ridiculous to exist. But, believe it or not, this was just such a language. Oh, and verbs didn’t just change depending on the subject and object—they changed with the level of politeness too, which created yet another complication.
Maybe a strange world where verbs had the power to drive everyone crazy actually made for a peaceful civilization—a place where everyone stuck to adjectives for expressing their day-to-day thoughts. But as far as I was concerned, this was a world of psychological horror, unbound by the rules of rationality.
There was no way my brain, limited by my puny common sense, could have conceived of such a language.
Needless to say, there’d never been a time or place where people had actually spoken this language. Even in the empire’s heyday, it was only ever used in writing. No doubt the intelligentsia of the time had had way too much time on their hands and used it to twist the language into the ridiculous mess that it was.
“Um, why am I learning this?” I wondered, repeating the same question I’d asked countless times already.
“You’ll need to know it so you can read old texts.” Satsuki gave the same reply as always.
“Um... Will that help me to use magic or something?”
“What? Where did you get that nonsense from?”
“Just thought I’d ask...”
I sighed to myself. I’d be willing to put some real effort into this if it let me use magic.
“I don’t understand why you hate classic texts so much, Yuri. It’s just rote memorization, no different from history...” Satsuki said with a frown.
It’s nothing like history.
I couldn’t see any reason to learn it at all. If Rook had been an archeologist who’d hoped for me to follow in his footsteps, then I’d understand the need to read Ancient Shanish. An archeologist would obviously need to read ancient texts. But I had no such interest in old texts, and therefore no need. There wasn’t a single person still living who used this bizarre language in speech or writing.
“Look, you’ll never be able to call yourself cultured until you learn how to read Ancient Shanish. Now why not write this down and memorize it?”
For the first time in a long while, I remembered exactly how it felt to be a little kid who would rather do anything besides study.
✧✧✧
The trials of the body and the mind were over, and I was heading to Sham’s room with lifeless, glazed eyes. My lessons weren’t exactly torture, but they left me mentally exhausted and unsteady on my feet. I needed to see Sham to soothe my soul.
No one responded when I knocked, so I unlatched the door and opened it.
“Hey.”
Sham was motionless at her desk and holding a pen.
“Sham?”
“Oh! Yuri?”
The second time I called her, she noticed me and jumped in shock. She must have been concentrating so hard that she hadn’t heard me open the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“I can come back later if you’re busy.”
I didn’t want anything in particular, so I wasn’t about to get in the way of her studies just to make myself feel better.
“Kepler’s laws really are amazing.”
“Oh, you’re thinking about complicated stuff again.”
“This heliocentric model explains everything. It predicts Mercury’s position perfectly, and it even clears up all the mysteries behind Mars’s movements. I’m still struggling to believe it, though.”
She still doesn’t fully accept it? I’ve never seriously studied astronomy myself, so I don’t know what kind of movements she’s talking about, but it sounds like she’s just solved a big problem. That’s good.
“Well, I’m glad.”
“The existing model says that Mars and the other planets orbit around the Sun,” Sham added.
Huh? What?
“Isn’t that heliocentrism already?” I asked.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and the other planets orbited the Sun. I already knew that—that wasn’t mysterious at all.
“No, because the model places Earth at the center with the Sun in orbit around it. To put it another way, the Sun is like a second moon that’s further from Earth than the actual Moon. The other planets orbit the Sun like they’re its moons. That’s how the model arranges things.”
What? This world is weird. Since I knew how massive the sun was, it was hard to even imagine.
“With enough coefficients, the old model predicts the motions of the heavens rather well,” she continued.
That can’t be right.
“It does?”
I took a seat; it felt like her explanation could go on for a long time.
“Well, if you watch Mars’s movement throughout the year, this is the pattern it follows, doesn’t it?”
Sham sketched something on a piece of wood before showing it to me. She’d drawn a backwards letter Z and a shape resembling a ribbon with a loop in it. Mars moved in the strangest way.
I’ll just pretend I already knew that.
“Of course,” I replied.
“If Mars had a circular orbit about the Earth, you wouldn’t see a pattern like this.”
I could understand that much, at least. Leaving aside how small Mars appeared in the sky, it would move straight across the night sky just like the Moon if it orbited around the Earth. That was common sense.
“But you can explain everything when you think about how Mars would orbit the Sun,” she continued.
“Ah, I see.”
Kind of like the teacups at a fairground. Someone sitting at the center of a merry-go-round would never see the people that were riding on the horses move against the direction of rotation. But if the riders were in spinning teacups, an observer might see them move in the opposite direction for just a moment. Their geocentrism is surprisingly well thought out.
“I suppose it’s like they say: if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” I said.
“What do you mean? Is that a proverb or something?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve never heard it before. But yes, you’re right—faulty reasoning can just be covered up with more reasoning, and then you can force your model to work on anything by inserting more coefficients.”
The model must’ve needed lots of different numerical constants that contradicted each other if it worked well enough for Sham to accept it. And obviously the model only worked on paper because it ignored the magnitude of the sun’s gravity. I’d be surprised if the contradictions weren’t apparent at a glance. It must’ve been a really complicated calculation.
“This new model explains everything neatly with no need for contrived reasoning. It’s wonderful, if I do say so myself—beautiful, in fact. Everything is in harmony.”
“That’s great.”
Well, at least she’s happy. I wonder if I used to make that same face back when I worked in the lab... No, of course I didn’t. I never had her passion. My research topics weren’t chosen based on my own personal interests—they had to take the world’s needs into consideration.
“Oh. I’m not sure what I meant by ‘if I do say so myself.’ It was you who thought of it, Yuri.” Sham sounded apologetic.
“No, it doesn’t matter who thought of it...”
I just happened to know it. I didn’t think of it myself, so I don’t care who takes credit. I might think differently if I could make money from it, but I don’t want fame and respect earned from a theory that Kepler came up with long ago in another world. I’d feel guilty for stealing someone else’s work if I took the credit.
“I think it does matter, but anyway... I’ve gone over it quite thoroughly now.”
Thoroughly?
“No one’s forcing you, you know,” I added.
You’re free to do other things. Like...playing house. I know I can’t tell her to go watch PreCure, but her generation has to have something to do for fun.
“I can’t help it. I enjoy it too much.”
It didn’t sound like she was forcing herself.
That’s impressive. She’s got some serious brains.
When I was her age—back when there were still only 151 Pokémon—I’d lost my mind when a friend had given me a Mew that someone created with a duplication glitch. Meanwhile, my cousin here understood the binomial theorem and trigonometric functions. Plus, she’d even verified a model of the solar system based on Kepler’s laws. That’s what gave her joy.
“Why don’t we go outside? We might find something fun,” I suggested.
It’s good to step outdoors once in a while.
“Um...” She was obviously opposed to that idea.
“Why not? It’ll clear your head.”
“My head’s quite clear already. You’re awfully unsophisticated at times, Yuri...”
Unsophisticated? I guess Sham is sick of people telling her what I just did. Maybe there’s nothing relaxing about going outside when you’re a shut-in at heart.
“But if you think it’s a good idea, Yuri...”
It was already dusk when we left the manor.
Ginkgo trees were planted in the manor’s garden and the leaves had already begun to discolor and fall due to the season. There was a faint smell of ginkgo nuts, but not enough to be unpleasant. The trees didn’t line the paths, which meant that no one stepped on the nuts, and the servants would collect them before they could begin to rot. I’d seen them do it.
There were few evergreens in this area, so the greenery would disappear in winter. It was a little sad to see.
At this time of year, we could feel the cold in our bones. We wore fur jackets, but that didn’t keep our extremities warm.
“Winter’s just around the corner,” I said softly.
“Your dad says things like that.”
Ugh... That feels like a roundabout way of telling me that I sound like an old man.
“Do you know why this region’s so cold?” I asked.
I’ll try talking about a subject she enjoys. Lucky for me, I’ve got no shortage of scientific topics to talk about.
“Hm...? Isn’t that just because we’re in the north?”
“But how far we are north or south shouldn’t have any effect on how many hours of sunlight we receive per year, should it?”
Any place that experienced a midnight sun would also have polar nights to balance it out. The average length of a day throughout the year at the equator and at the poles wasn’t significantly different. Plus, just because the sun never set during a polar summer didn’t mean that it became scorching hot like it did by the equator.
“Now that you mention it... I don’t know...”
Sham began to think. It was one of the things I liked about this smart girl—she resisted simply seeking the answer from someone else. It felt good to teach her because she’d always try to find the solution herself.
“Is it related to atmospheric and ocean currents?” she asked.
Well, that is one factor.
“It’s the angle of the sun.”
“Angle...? It’s related to angle?”
“An easy way to think about it is to imagine a hearth.”
I put my hands out in front of me.
“If you hold your palms facing the fire like this, it feels hot. But if you tilt them like this, you don’t get much heat. It reduces the quantity of heat being supplied across the entire surface area. In this region, the sun’s rays always hit us at an angle, don’t they?”
“Aaaah... I see...” Sham’s mouth hung wide open in amazement.
“And that’s what makes this region cold.”
“I want to know more.”
“Bearing that in mind, take a look at this.”
Getting into the flow, I picked up a fallen ginkgo leaf.
“At what?” she asked.
It seemed Sham had cheered up and was now enjoying herself.
“This leaf.”
“Hm?”
“It fell from the tree, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Why did it fall? Or more to the point, why did the tree give up its leaves?”
“Hmm,” she mused. “I don’t know. I just know that’s how those trees are.”
“You’re right that this type of tree sheds its leaves, but that’s obvious.”
“Okay...”
“Everything freezes here during the winter. It’s a survival strategy to protect against that problem,” I explained.
“Ah, it loses its leaves because they would all freeze. I see.”
She catches on quickly.
“But growing this many leaves and then re-growing them each year places a heavy burden on the plant. In human terms, it would be like cutting off your arms and re-growing them each year.”
“But there’s no other way, is there? They’d freeze otherwise. If it kept the leaves, they’d just freeze to death and drop off anyway, wouldn’t they?”
That’s true.
“There are lots of countermeasures plants can use against freezing. For example, if the leaf is thick enough, sap will continue to flow through an inner core that doesn’t freeze. Or the surface might be protected by a material that doesn’t freeze easily. Then it wouldn’t have to lose its leaves when the temperature drops a little.”
“Now that I think about it, yes. But the trees don’t do that.”
“In a region as cold as this, it doesn’t work. That’s why there are no plants like that. From the plant’s point of view, growing new leaves each year is easier than maintaining leaves that are thick enough to withstand the cold here.”
“But that wouldn’t be the case if it was a little warmer?”
“Right. Even in this kingdom, there are plants that stay green year-round that way. They grow in the southernmost regions. It’s like there are boundary points—if you go even further south, you’ll find lots of plants with thin leaves that can survive all year. The other plants disappear because there’s no need for any protection against the cold.”
“Wow... I get it.”
“Though other life-forms find it easy to live in that environment too, so instead they have to fight off insects that eat their leaves... That’s interesting too, right?”
“Yes!” Sham exclaimed with a bashful smile.
“We should start heading back,” I said.
“You’re right. It’s getting cold.”
Dinner should be done pretty soon.
In the distance, I saw the guards at the gate being replaced by those working the night shift.

Conqueror 1.4

It was easy to imagine how stars in space would get a little boring without a big observatory telescope. Once in a while a supernova would cause new stars to appear and disappear, but otherwise they’d endlessly spin around and around at a constant speed, with a pole star always at the center. There couldn’t be a more boring topic of research.
Inferior and superior planets, on the other hand, moved in much more interesting ways than the stars.
“You won’t teach me?”
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to. Now, listen carefully...”
My humble approach made Sham feel proud of herself.
She’s easy to please. And that prideful expression of hers is kinda cute.
“First, the constellations can be divided into summer and winter constellations. What we see now are winter constellations.”
We’re starting with the basics? She’s like an elementary school teacher.
“And well, um, that’s the Bull.”
“I see...”
Unsurprisingly, I had no idea which one she meant. Simply pointing up at the sky with a finger was no way to indicate a specific constellation.
“That’s the Lyre, and that’s the Cat.”
“Wow...”
I wasn’t learning anything, but Sham was surprisingly cute, so I was okay with it.
I feel like I’ve turned into her dad. The thought made me smile. I’d always wanted a daughter like her. Save for one bad experience with a woman, there hadn’t been any others in my previous life, and that unpleasant experience had left me with something close to gynophobia.
“And that’s the Ladle.”
Okay...
I didn’t know what the Bull, Cat, or Lyre constellations were supposed to look like, but I could recognize a ladle shape. There were seven stars forming the ladle’s shape, and the outline stood out clearly because they shone brighter than the others around them.
It looks just like the Big Dipper. Uh...
I blinked several times, doubting my own eyes, and took another look at the Ladle constellation.
Huh?!
It looked exactly like the Big Dipper. No, it was the Big Dipper. For a moment, my mind went blank.
I shifted my gaze in search of other familiar constellations. I didn’t know them well at all—I couldn’t tell you what Cygnus looked like—but I recalled a few famous ones made of bright stars.
I soon found another. I could see so many other stars that it was difficult to make out, but I was certain that I’d found Orion.
Huh... But that shouldn’t exist. Can the stars look the same from another planet? I knew the answer without having to think. Of course not. It’s impossible.
Constellations were made up of the light of stars and galaxies in space, or the residual light of a supernova as it reached the Earth’s surface. When viewed from another position or distance, the stars that made up the constellations wouldn’t remain clustered together in the same way. The three-dimensional nature of space meant that they’d become scattered further apart as you moved closer.
Calling it a space fingerprint or planetary DNA would be an odd analogy, but from other planets, the constellations could never look the same as they did on Earth. And if this was an entirely new universe, then absolutely everything should’ve been different.
There had to be some kind of explanation. I came up with several theories and tried to make them work. Once I’d eliminated the absurd, though, I was left with just one logical explanation: I was in roughly the same location as the Earth and in the same galaxy.
✧✧✧
“...and that’s the Monkey, and that’s the Chair.”
I came to my senses and realized that Sham was still talking.
“And...that’s all of them. Have you memorized them?” Sham asked.
You expect me to remember all that? Anyhow, I’ve got bigger things on my mind.
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“Huh? Don’t tell me you fell asleep?” She looked a little shocked.
Now I feel bad.
“No, it’s just that now’s not the time...”
“It isn’t? But you’re the one who asked to hear about them in the first place...”
She’s got me there. She looks so disappointed.
“I’m really sorry, but can we end our stargazing for today?”
“Astronomy must be boring. It’s a shame because it’s interesting to me...” she said, growing unhappier by the second.
Ah, jeez. What do I say to her now?
“No, I like it too—it’s just that I think I’m about to make a big discovery.”
“I understand. You can explain your great discovery to me later.”
I’ll have to make this up to Sham at some point...
I dashed down the ladder and searched for a maid so that I could ask for directions to Satsuki’s room. Then I knocked on the door.
“Come in,” came the reply.
“Pardon me,” I said while entering.
“Oh, it’s you, Yuri. What’s wrong?”
“I was wondering if I could take a look at a map. Do we have one?”
“A map...?” Satsuki looked unsure for a moment. “Oh, I suppose you might never have seen one before.”
It wasn’t that I’d never seen a map, it was just that the ones back home were all rough sketches that a child could have drawn, and none of them showed anything beyond our kingdom. Those were no help.
“I’d like to see the biggest one you have.”
“The biggest... I believe it’s in the vault.”
“When I say the biggest, I don’t mean how big the parchment is—I mean the one that shows the widest area. I want to see the shape of the continent.”
“Don’t worry. It’s a map from the late days of the empire showing all of its territories.”
A map of the old Shantila Empire was impressive. It must have been a treasure.
She must have noticed my surprised expression because she explained further. “But of course, it’s not the original. It’s only a copy.”
A copy? That’s still good for my purposes.
The Shantila Empire had once controlled a vast territory that included what was now the Shiyalta Kingdom, and I’d heard that their civil engineering surpassed that of the Shiyalta Kingdom of the present. Some of the empire’s construction techniques were still in widespread use after nine hundred years.
Kalakumo, the city I was currently in, had been constructed after the fall of the empire, so it wasn’t a remnant of those times. The shoreline defenses and foundations of the castle on Royal Castle Island were said to have been built in the days of the empire, though. I had high expectations for a map made by the same people.
“Could you please show it to me?”
I let Satsuki guide me to a set of imposing doors reinforced with iron plates. This was the vault.
Satsuki set down the large key to the vault and headed deeper inside, lantern in hand.
A faint light revealed the many valuable items packed into the small space. They weren’t the gold and silver treasures of a pirate’s hoard. Most of it was weapons—swords and spears—as well as armor mounted on the walls. Their historical significance must’ve given them value.
But on closer inspection, I did see some gold bars too. They rested on top of a sturdy-looking shelf where they’d gathered a lot of dust. Nearby was a bright red object that looked like a piece of precious coral.
“Oh my, it’s dusty in here,” Satsuki noted as she held her handkerchief to her mouth.
“It really is.”
The valuables gathered here were bound to stoke greed and other impure thoughts, so the manor’s maids weren’t sent in to clean the room each day.
“I seem to remember it being in here,” Satsuki continued.
She opened a bureau made of a pale wood that might’ve been paulownia. Inside, there was a map made from a large piece of parchment that had been folded in two.
Parchment was made using animal hide, so there was a limit on the maximum size of one piece. This map was actually two large sheets that had been sewn together with fine thread. Once it was opened up and spread out, it was about the size of an open newspaper.
Although the outline of the landmass was terribly distorted, its shape was immediately familiar to me—it was the western region of the Eurasian continent. It must’ve been drawn largely based on third-party reports. This rendering of Eurasia was quite crude compared to the accurate maps I’d known in Japan, but it was still easily recognizable as the same landmass.
“Our kingdom is located in this region here.”
Satsuki pointed at a spot that corresponded to the Scandinavian Peninsula.
Much like Russia, the Shantila Empire had once been a vast expanse of territory, although much of it was the barely habitable regions in the far north. Judging by the borders drawn on the map, it had stretched from the Ural Mountains all the way to the Scandinavian Peninsula, and it’d gone down past Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula to the south—almost as far as the city of Baku.
The imperial capital of Shantinion appeared to be on the Crimean Peninsula. Unlike the Scandinavian Peninsula, which looked like a rough sketch, the map was incredibly well-drawn around the shores of the Black Sea. It matched my memories of world maps almost exactly. I could even see the Sea of Marmara connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The map extended from that region to around the Italian Peninsula.
Great Britain, on the other hand, was drawn like a peanut, and Ireland wasn’t even pictured. Either it didn’t exist, or the mapmaker used information so vague that they hadn’t known to include it. I had no way of knowing which.
“Our kingdom isn’t depicted particularly well on this map. I believe the heart of the empire was in the far east in those days.”
“I see...”
So I was right about the peninsula being drawn inaccurately. This whole region must’ve been far too remote to garner much attention back in the empire’s heyday. Anyway, it all adds up. I really am on Earth after all. How’d it take me a whole seven years to realize it?
“Was this what you were hoping to see?”
“Yes, it’s exactly what I wanted. I don’t suppose you could show me an accurate map of the peninsula too?”
“There’s a map of the kingdom in my husband’s room.”
“Would it be possible for me to view it now?”
“Yes, I’ll lead you there.”
Satsuki and I left the vault. On the way out, she closed and locked the door.
“This way.”
After we’d walked along the corridor for a while, Satsuki brought me to a room that was lined with tightly packed bookshelves on either side. It was hard to believe that this private room had once belonged to a warrior; it looked more like a study than someone’s personal quarters.
“This is a lot of books,” I said.
“Once you live with us, you can read them all you like.”
“I look forward to it.”
I was no bookworm, but didn’t mind sitting down with a book once in a while.
“Oh, it’s right here on the desk...” Satsuki said.
The map had already been laid out. Since the maids were unlikely to touch things in this room, only Gok or Satsuki could put the map away. That meant Gok must’ve been looking at it before he left, and it’d remained on the desk since the expedition had set out.
A shadow came over Satsuki’s previously happy face.
“Would I be allowed to take a look at it?” I asked.
“Yes... Please go ahead.”
Satsuki put her hands under my armpits and lifted me up.
“Um...”
“You’ll be able to see it better if you sit on a chair.”
She scooped me up and put me on what had once been Gok’s chair. Her strength surprised me. Once she’d placed me down, Satsuki moved away and watched over me.
Uh... It helps, I guess.
I inspected the map and found that it showed two neighboring nations—the Shiyalta Kingdom and the Kilhina Kingdom. Both were on the Scandinavian Peninsula. The Kilhina Kingdom was at its base, roughly where Finland would’ve been.
Further to the east were the Dafide Kingdom and the Timna Kingdom, but each was partly cut off. The two countries had already ceased to exist.
The biggest difference between the Scandinavian Peninsula and what I remembered was that the end appeared to be missing a chunk around the Denmark region. The island that would’ve contained Copenhagen was completely gone. I couldn’t imagine the mapmakers forgetting to include that region completely, so it was possible that it didn’t exist at all.
Ho Province was now the tip of the peninsula and covered its southernmost parts.
“My husband was fighting here,” Satsuki explained as she pointed at the map.
That’s near Saint Petersburg.
Saint Petersburg was a city on the shore of the Baltic Sea, and it occupied part of the peninsula’s root. But Satsuki had pointed to a spot a little further inland. Basically, the fighting was happening in the eastern part of the Kilhina Kingdom where the peninsula connected to the mainland.
“There’s a fortress here. It’s the one Rakunu fled from.”
Geographically speaking, it was a good place for trade, but since relations between the Shanti and Kulati people were completely nonexistent, it probably wasn’t possible to establish a trading city on the border.
“Did the fighting start at the fortress?”
“Soon after the battles began, they suffered a defeat that forced them to defend themselves from within the fortress.”
I didn’t know what sort of fortress Satsuki was talking about, but for some reason the soldiers there had needed to mount a suicide attack. If there had been any hope of reinforcements arriving and breaking the siege, such drastic measures wouldn’t have been necessary—their chances of success would be low, after all, so it was only chosen as a last resort.
I noticed that the fortress was positioned much further north than our current location. Perhaps they’d hoped that winter itself would join the battle. In a contest of endurance, would our side have run out of food before the enemy? It was impossible to answer based on guesswork. Without asking someone who’d actually been there, I wouldn’t know the specifics.
“Thank you. I understand now,” I said.
“Oh? What is it you understand?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to learn some geography.”
I’m not lying.
“Oh, really? Well I’m glad I helped.” She seemed willing to let me off without further questions.
“Well, it’s been a tiring day. I’d like to rest. Sorry for keeping you up so late,” I said.
“Not at all. Let me see you back to your room.”
“That’s all right. I’ll be fine by myself.”
I doubt I’ll need a guide to find my room from here.
“It’s easy to get lost at night. You can’t see anything outside, so even adults get lost sometimes. I hope you’ll be all right.”
Ugh... I thought I would be until she said that.
“In that case, is it too late to accept your offer?”
“Of course not. Let me take you there.”
In the end, I had Satsuki take me back to my room.
The corridors were dark and deathly silent. Even the richest households couldn’t illuminate their corridors evenly at night. Considering the risk of a fire, increasing the number of torches might have even been foolish. The stairs were an exception, however—there was a torch placed wherever the stairway turned a corner because of the high tripping risk. Their thick wicks absorbed oil from canisters to create some fairly large flames. Once one’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, it was easy to see where the stairs began and ended.
After navigating the stairs, we entered a corridor that seemed familiar. If I remembered correctly, heading straight would lead us to the room where Rook was sleeping.
But we got no further before hearing a strange voice—the sound of a girl crying.
The voice felt supernatural, and I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. It stood to reason that a manor like this would be home to a ghost or two. Not to mention that two people had died earlier today.
“U-Um...” As I turned to Satsuki, the sobbing stopped.
“Shush,” Satsuki whispered and gestured at me to be silent.
Maybe it’s best to just keep quiet?
We walked a little further and then came to the owner of the voice.
“Sham, did you get lost again?” Satsuki asked.
Sham was sitting in the corridor with her knees to her chest. She’d been crying.
“Yes...” she replied with a sniffle. She looked relieved when she recognized Satsuki’s face.
That’s cute.
“Looks like we caught you at an embarrassing moment,” Satsuki said.
Sham then noticed me hidden in the darkness.
“Huh? Yuri?! It’s not—”
“Sham, don’t shout,” Satsuki chided before putting a finger to Sham’s mouth to close it.
I realized that the only other sounds around us were the distant snores of old men. We couldn’t hear any forest creatures here, which made it quieter than my usual home. The shrill voice of a little girl could really carry through these corridors.
“I’m s-sorry...”
Sham was surprisingly obedient when faced with her mother.
“I’ll head back to my room...” I said.
“No, wait. It only happened today... I don’t normally get lost, honestly...” Sham muttered.
“I know, I know. You couldn’t help it because it’s so dark.”
Between the pitch-black corridors and the rows of identical doors, it was hard for anyone to find their way. Still, it was odd to see Sham lost on the first floor when her room was somewhere on the second floor. Maybe she’d taken a wrong turn while worrying about ghosts—this manor was enough to give anyone a fear of them.
“I’m serious... Please believe me...” she whimpered.
I couldn’t quite tell in the darkness, but I sensed her tearing up again.
“Don’t worry. If anything, having a flaw or two just makes you cuter.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m stupid...”
Apparently, that was Sham’s biggest concern. It hadn’t even crossed my mind, though.
“I don’t think that.”
This has nothing to do with how smart you are...
Satsuki took Sham by the hand and began walking.
“Let’s head back to our rooms. Yuri, your room is just up ahead.”

Conqueror 1.3

When I saw his face, it brought back so many old memories that I knew I had to be dreaming. He was a boy my age—my age back in Japan, at least—named Yahata. I hadn’t seen him since we’d graduated high school. Even in the dream, I thought it was impressive that I remembered him so well.
It felt like I was watching a boring movie as the dream replayed memories of the distant past.
Yahata was in my year group through elementary, middle, and high school, which made him something of a childhood friend. He lived near my family’s home, and his dad worked for a company managed by my old man.
The run-down workshop next to our house was still in operation when I was a child so, although I didn’t know his dad well, he was a familiar face because he worked next door. Yahata had about the same intelligence as me, and public schools dominated in the area where we lived, so we both entered the same public high school—one with the best test scores in the region, but without any national renown.
Although our homes were close, we weren’t good enough friends to travel to school together. Still, we got along well enough to talk when we saw each other. By the time we were in the last year of high school, he was studying hard in hope of getting into medical school.
One lunch break, Yahata came to me with a pale face. “I think my dad’s gonna be fired...” he said.
The news was a bolt out of the blue.
I’d never been involved in the management of my family’s business during high school, and ever since the run-down workshop had been demolished and the head office relocated to a business district, the whole thing felt like it had nothing to do with me.
I knew Yahata had multiple siblings because I’d visited his home a few times in the past. If he wanted to go to medical school, the fees were going to be high.
“I don’t know the details, but I can ask my dad about it,” I offered, then called my dad right there.
I would’ve preferred to discuss it with him face-to-face, but I didn’t see him often back then. I didn’t really see either of them, actually—my mom had left after their divorce, which left me virtually living alone. Dad would stay with one girlfriend after another and rarely ever came back home. He must have had trust issues, though, because he kept the company seal and all rights-related paperwork at home—never at his lovers’ places. He would show up the next time he needed something from the safe, but I had no idea when that would be.
“Yahata? How’d you know what happened to him?” Dad must have expected me to ask for more money to pay the bills or something, because he sounded surprised when I brought up a completely different subject.
“His oldest son’s in my year. Has been since grade school.”
“Ah, he went crying to his son, did he?” I could sense that my dad was sneering on the other end of the phone.
“No one’s crying. But what happened?”
“He stole from the company, and the police got involved. That’s an open-and-shut punitive dismissal.”
“He stole something?” That was completely unexpected. Larceny and corporate embezzlement were words that came to my mind. “What’d he steal?”
“Nails and fittings,” dad replied, sounding like he was boasting of his wise approach to management.
“Nails and fittings? How many did he steal?”
At this point, dad’s company had grown large enough that cheap things like nails and fittings were plausibly handled in huge quantities. A veteran employee with a thorough knowledge of the company’s operations could have made a fortune just siphoning off those small items.
“Considering he used them to make a doghouse...I’d say ten thousand yen’s worth.”
I later realized that the amount he’d told me was probably an exaggeration—no one needed ten thousand yen’s worth of nails and fittings to make a doghouse. Five hundred yen might’ve been more realistic. At most, it probably would’ve cost two thousand yen.
“He used a few nails and fittings on a personal project, and you accused him of theft? Everyone does things like that.”
It was the equivalent of someone taking a pen from the office. Maybe someone with impeccable morals wouldn’t have done it, but this was no evil deed. A warning should’ve sufficed.
“Theft is theft. The police agreed.”
“You could’ve just cut his pay over a little thing like that. Why fire him?”
“Don’t tell me how to run my company. I’m done paying through the nose for cocky employees who’re stuck in the past.”
With that, he abruptly hung up.
I felt responsible, so I looked into what had happened. Later on, I would learn that my dad had looked for any excuse to rid himself of his long-serving employees. As the company grew, there was no shortage of graduates applying, and dad had come to see the hires he’d made back when he’d run a small downtown workshop as deadweight. It also must’ve coincided with the company’s operations becoming increasingly automated.
Yahata’s dad was one of those who’d been cut loose. After he casually confessed to my dad about the fittings he’d used at home, a recording of the confession was passed on to the police. They, in turn, had made a point of taking him away in front of the other employees. This elaborate approach resulted in a punitive dismissal rather than a voluntary resignation, which made him ineligible for retirement benefits under employment law.
Even in retrospect, I couldn’t see any justice in my dad’s approach to management.
In the end, there was nothing I was able to do to make things right. I heard that Yahata had worked hard to get into medical school on a scholarship, but—since his family was in the process of being torn apart—he’d failed his entrance exam. I don’t know whether he tried again or found a job, but I doubted he ever became a doctor.
✧✧✧
“...”
I woke up drenched in sweat, as if I’d had a nightmare. My throat was awfully dry from the effects of dehydration, and my head hurt like I had a hangover.
The dwindling firewood glowed red in the small hearth of my bedroom.
The room was warm, but I wanted the sensation of cold air to wake me up. A bitter wind blew into the room when I opened the window, and it felt as though my skin tightened in response. It was pitch black outside. After I’d stared out the window for a while, my sweat-drenched nightclothes turned ice cold, so I shut the window again.
I warmed myself a little in front of the hearth before going over to my desk. After my nightmare about things long past, I could clearly recall knowledge from over seven years ago. With the aid of an oil lamp, I carefully wrote down all the scholarly knowledge I could remember. The chill receded as I wrote. After I’d finished, I decided to go back to bed.
That was when I heard a knock at the front door.
Who would visit at this hour?
I left my room and went downstairs. As I approached the door, I heard the unmistakable sound of knocking once more.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
“Shun, a servant of the Ho family,” the person on the other side responded, their voice faint and trembling.
Now I see.
“You must want my father.” If he had business here, it could only be with Rook.
“That’s correct.”
“I’m not allowed to open the front door. I’ll wake him right away.”
“Thank you kindly.”
I entered my parents’ bedroom where Rook and Suzuya lay side by side, sleeping close to one another. I placed a hand on Rook and shook him without hesitating.
“Dad, please wake up.”
“Muh...”
No amount of jostling would wake him.
“Please wake up,” I cried while shaking him more forcefully, but to no avail.
Maybe I’ll have better luck hitting him.
“Mh... Yuri? What’s wrong?”
Suzuya had woken up instead. Thanks to the faint light from the room’s hearth, I could see she was sitting up in bed beside him.
“There’s someone at the door. He says he’s a Ho family servant.”
That made Suzuya bolt up immediately.
“Darling, please wake up.” She didn’t say it loudly—in fact, it was definitely quieter than the voice I’d used.
And yet, Rook opened his eyes and mumbled, “Ngh... Morning already?”
What a pair they are.
“Dad, there’s a servant named Shun from the head household at the door. I couldn’t let him into the house myself, so I had to leave him outside. Please go get him quick.”
The look on Rook’s face changed, and he leaped out of bed.
✧✧✧
When Rook opened the door, there was a small, pale-faced man standing outside.
“What brings you here at this hour?” Rook asked.
“I must immediately inform you of—”
“Get inside.”
There was a fine coating of snow on the ground. Although the region was cold, the snow didn’t pile up as much as you’d expect. However, the dry, freezing air made our winters harsh, and winter had begun.
“Pardon me for intruding...” Shun said.
The living room hearth had gone out. Rook picked up the oil lamp that was illuminating the room and poured its oil onto the smoldering embers. He then used the lamp’s flaming wick to ignite the hearth. The flames grew quickly, and with the addition of a little more firewood, it became a real fire.
Suzuya dug out some embers from the ashes in the kitchen kiln and got another fire started in order to prepare some hot water.
“First, show me your hands and feet,” Rook demanded.
“I’m quite all right.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. You wouldn’t feel the damage.”
“Very well,” Shun conceded. He took off his gloves and then his socks, revealing deathly white fingers and toes.
Rook gripped Shun’s hands and gently massaged them. Then, though they must have smelled somewhat, he held Shun’s feet without a hint of reluctance and massaged his toes too.
“Your toes...should be fine,” Rook said. “I’m worried about your hands, but if you hold a hot cup, it should put them right.”
“I appreciate such kindness.”
When someone traveled by plainrunner, their legs would be half buried in the feathers, keeping them surprisingly warm. Their hands, however, would be chilled as they gripped the reins. In any case, Shun didn’t appear to have reached the point of frostbite. That was cause for relief.
“Now you can tell me what happened,” Rook said while wiping Shun’s hands clean.
“The expedition force has returned.” Shun delivered the news with a somber face, causing Rook’s own expression to stiffen.
“And is my brother well?” Rook’s tone had changed completely, and now sounded like he was interrogating the messenger.
Shun shook his head. “Lord Gok was killed in battle.”
My mind went blank for a moment.
“No...” Rook murmured. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I’m completely serious. His body hasn’t been recovered, so we only have reports to go by, but there’s no doubt that Lord Gok has passed away.”
No body?
“What...? What do you mean the body wasn’t recovered?” Rook was clearly thinking the same thing as me.
Gok was the commanding officer. Regardless of whether he’d been killed suddenly by a stray arrow on the battlefield, or gradually succumbed to a wound that never fully healed, they would have had his body. If, however, their highest-ranking officer had been captured by the enemy, it suggested a crushing defeat.
“Lord Gok led a kingeagle strike mounted upon the eagle you gave him, and—through his valiant efforts—secured our victory.”
Rook held his breath in stunned silence for a moment. “I see... He was successful?”
“Yes.” Shun looked close to tears.
What’s a kingeagle strike? I could tell from Rook’s reaction that it was an unusual circumstance, but I didn’t know what they were talking about.
“Was the situation really that hopeless?” Rook asked.
“Yes,” Shun answered. “The expedition force lost half of its members in battle and found themselves besieged in the fortress. It was then that Lord Gok and the other sky knights of his expedition force resorted to a kingeagle strike. That drove the enemy away...”
“O-Oh... I see.” The pain Rook felt upon learning of his brother’s death was visible on his face even as he tried to hold it back.
“Lord Rook, I was dispatched here to ask that you attend a family council tomorrow.”
“All right. I’ll be there.”
It was then that Suzuya entered with a basin of hot water. “I’ve heated some water for you,” she said while placing it at Shun’s feet.
“Go on. Bathe your feet,” Rook urged.
“I’m most grateful for— Ugh!” Shun sounded like he was in pain as he plunged his frozen feet in the water.
“This is for you too, if you’d like it.” Suzuya presented him with a large cup filled with tea, along with a plate of hard bread, jam, and butter. She must have toasted the bread over the same flames that heated the water.
“Thank you so much. I haven’t eaten at all today.” His hunger was obvious from the way he dug into the bread immediately.
“The whole day?” Rook asked.
“Yes. Today has been busy.”
Dawn was close to breaking, which would have made it unclear what he meant if not for the fact that mechanical clocks were so rare in this country that few people worried about what time it was once the sun went down. By the same token, when he said that the family council would happen tomorrow, he meant today after sunrise.
“That was reckless,” Rook scolded him. “It’s a miracle you got here alive.”
He was right. Riding a horse or plainrunner all night was nothing like driving a car along a highway in the dark. Obviously, the animals lacked the powerful headlights of cars, which meant that you had to ride across unpaved dirt roads by the faint light of a burning torch.
Shun’s thoughts must have been befuddled by the harsh cold of the winter night. If he’d fallen from his plainrunner, he’d likely have frozen to death where he’d landed. It was a dangerous journey at the best of times, but to attempt it while starving was madness.
“Indeed, you are correct. I had planned to eat before setting out from the manor, but...it slipped my mind.”
“You can use the guest room. Once you’ve eaten, drink some liquor and go to sleep.”
“But I couldn’t—”
“If you won’t sleep, you’ll have to stay here tomorrow. I won’t let you die by falling off a bird.”
“Very well. I’ll accept your kind offer and get some rest.”
Rook brought out one of his favorite pieces of glassware and filled it with alcohol. Once it had been filled to the brim, he presented it to Shun.
“Make sure you drink it all. You won’t sleep while your body’s still chilled to the bone.”
“You’ve shown me such kindness.”
Even if Shun hadn’t been cold, it was hard to sleep under such circumstances. The drink would help him forget.
✧✧✧
When morning came, Rook, Shun, and I set out for the head household together.
Suzuya didn’t need to come because it wasn’t a funeral. As for why I needed to go along, I supposed that as the heir to a branch family, I was there as Rook’s attendant.
We set out in the morning and entered the main household’s estate before noon. In a complete change from the day of the expedition ceremony, the manor was as somber as a wake. Like everyone else, I’d come dressed all in black despite the fact that it wasn’t a funeral. As long as there was still a chance of his remains being recovered, it would be left for another day.
After we arrived, we were led to a grand parlor where we were given a little food.
Shun came to Rook and me while we hungrily ate. “Lord Rook, this is a list of those attending the council.”
“Thanks.” Rook cast his eye over the list of names on the parchment he was given. Something made him frown, and he rechecked the list several times. “I don’t see Sir Rakunu’s name. Why not?”
“Her Ladyship has forbidden Sir Rakunu from attending due to his refusal to assist in the kingeagle strike.”
“What?” Rook furrowed his brow even harder. “He can’t have been stripped of his knighthood for refusing to join a kingeagle strike. If he’s still alive, then...”
“In Her Ladyship’s opinion, a coward who abandons his lord is no knight.”
This ladyship person was probably Gok’s wife—Sham’s mother. She must have had some sort of authority here.
“But if not Sir Rakunu, then who...?”
It sounded like Rook had been expecting this Rakunu person to be the next head of the family. At the very least, he must’ve thought he was a strong contender.
Even I’d heard of a relative named Rakunu. He was the head of a powerful branch family by the name of Ek. If this were Edo-period Japan, the Ek family would’ve been equivalent to a line of chief retainers who served successive daimyo over multiple generations. In other words, Ek was a powerful name listed among the Ho family’s most senior vassals. I’d been taught that they’d adopted a bride from the Ho family during my grandfather’s generation, making them our distant relatives. Even I understood how odd it was for the head of such an important household to be excluded from our family council.
“The situation is what it is. Her Ladyship has said that if there is no one better suited than Sir Rakunu, then she will resort to adopting an heir.”
“She’d do that?” Rook sounded a little shocked. The idea of someone being adopted into the family mustn’t have occurred to him until now.
The suggestion worried me personally because Gok had already asked me to become their adopted son by marrying Sham. But a successor needed to be chosen immediately, and it seemed unlikely that a seven-year-old—one who wasn’t even Gok’s trueborn son, no less—would be abruptly adopted into the household and appointed head of family. The idea was absurd.
But it stood to reason that the household’s little girl might be forced to marry a young man—or perhaps even an old man—who was many times her age. I didn’t like the idea one bit.
“I see how it is,” Rook said. “Thank you.”
“Indeed. Now you must excuse me,” Shun replied before leaving the room.
With Shun gone, Rook remained slumped in his chair.
“Well, I don’t have any say in the matter. I’m just here to listen.” He sounded apprehensive, and it was unclear whether he was talking to me, or to himself.
“Are you sure about that? As Lord Gok’s brother, aren’t you a prime candidate?” I asked.
“No. Every head of the Ho family must hold a knighthood. That’s the rule.”
Oh... That makes a lot of sense.
Rook counted as one of the Ho family’s vassals, but he didn’t have a knighthood.
Knighthood was roughly equivalent to a qualification earned when graduating from a military academy—anyone who hadn’t done so would never be considered fit to command an army. It was possible to earn the qualification by graduating from the Knight Academy in the royal capital, but Rook hadn’t done so because he’d come to hate the idea and dropped out. This meant that Rook wasn’t eligible to be head of family.
But there was something else I was more eager to learn about—something that I hadn’t found a chance to ask until now. “What’s a kingeagle strike?”
“Oh... I didn’t explain it to you, did I?”
“No. Please tell me.”
“Well...I suppose it’s time you knew.”
He’s talking like it’s a heavy topic. What is it?
“A kingeagle strike is an attack made while riding a kingeagle.”
Like a dogfight?
“Do you mean when someone fights an enemy’s kingeagle in midair?”
“No.”
Okay, so not that. I suppose it’s hard to imagine them fighting without guns.
There were some scenes of aerial combat in stories, but anyone trying it in real life would soon learn that it wasn’t so easy to wield a spear effectively on the back of an eagle. If a rider charged someone with a spear, they’d end up slamming into the opponent with the whole eagle.
“Obviously, it’s enemies on the ground that they attack.”
“Enemies on the ground?”
Sky knights weren’t cavalry. Fighting while on the back of an eagle was impossible. Likewise, an eagle couldn’t just lift a person up, like a fish caught from a river, and then drop them from a height. Not that they couldn’t be trained to do it—the problem was that the troops on the ground could easily defend themselves by thrusting upward with a sword or spear, resulting in major injuries to the eagle, or even a crash landing. Such an approach would be far from cost effective.
“Do you mean they throw spears at the ground from above?” I asked.
“No. They charge into the center of the enemy camp and kill their general.”
I was speechless.
They do what? That’s a suicide attack.
“I’ve never mentioned it until now because I hate kingeagle strikes.”
“Does a plan like that ever work?”
No sooner than I’d asked, I remembered that Gok had succeeded. There was no way to know whether Gok had actually killed their general, but Shun had said that the enemy forces had retreated. They wouldn’t just pull back for no reason. Whatever had happened, it had been a success. Unfortunately, he’d died in the process. Now I understood why there was no body.
“It doesn’t have a high rate of success. Most attempts fail.”
“I thought so.”
“They fly out in large numbers at dawn and mount a surprise attack on the leader’s tent. Of course, there’s always a chance the general isn’t there; it’s also not unusual for there to be a body double dressed like a general. That makes things even harder. And then when the eagle aims for the tent, an ordinary landing isn’t possible—it has to crash down with enough force to crush the enemies on the ground. Ideally, it’ll crush the enemy general right there and then, but the sky knights will usually have to dismount and fight their way to him.”
I see. We’re talking about crash-landing into the middle of a camp filled with enemy soldiers in an attempt to wipe out their commanding officers. Pure madness.
“It sounds easy enough, but it’s rare that anyone pulls it off,” Rook continued.
“I can imagine.”
Of course it’s difficult. And it’s a waste of life, at that.
Kingeagles couldn’t be factory farmed like broilers. A long period of careful rearing and training was essential for each and every kingeagle. The same was true of the rider. And it wasn’t like they just needed to ride the birds either—they also needed to fight, which meant that every rider needed both flight training and combat training up to the level of a first-class knight. Throwing kingeagles at the enemy en masse like leftover vegetables could easily result in them all dying before any harm came to the enemy general. In fact, they could even be attacking the wrong place, which would be a pointless waste of human and eagle lives. All in all, it was a nasty business.
On the other hand, it couldn’t be denied that it created a chance to turn the tide of battle. Even if the odds were one in a hundred, it could be worth attempting when the only alternative was being caught between a rock and a hard place that would eventually result in everyone’s death.
“But my brother did it. That’s how incredible he was,” Rook spoke, sadness in his eyes.
“You’re right.”
The achievement made Gok a first-rate warrior.
“Do all sky knights have to join in kingeagle strikes?” I asked.
Sky knights were the knights who rode on kingeagles. Needless to say, merely riding on a kingeagle didn’t make someone like Rook a sky knight.
“No, but...the ones who carry out kingeagle strikes are held in the highest regard.”
“What does that mean for someone like Rakunu?”
“Sky knights attempt kingeagle strikes of their own free will; no leader can force them into it, no matter how high-ranking. So when they attack as a group, it’s up to individuals to decide whether they want to join or not.”
“I see...”
It didn’t sound like a standard military operation. If they had no right to refuse, they’d be forced to go along with whatever orders a stupid commander might give, no matter how ridiculous the timing. If they were going to give up their lives, then it was human nature to demand that their sacrifice be meaningful and carried out under the orders of a competent and respected leader.
But this country was run by an aristocracy, and that wasn’t a good system for ensuring that capable commanders rose to the top. The right to refuse had most likely become ingrained in our culture out of necessity. In Gok’s case, the situation must have been dire enough to call for such drastic measures. When Rakunu had refused, it might have been acceptable in theory, but it wouldn’t be ignored in practice.
Before long we heard a knock at the door, and a female attendant entered. “The council attendees are gathering now. If you’ll allow me, I’ll guide you there.”
“Good luck.” I waved off Rook with a smile... Or at least, I tried to.
“What are you saying? Get up.”
“Huh? I need to attend?”
That can’t be right. What’s the point in a little kid like me attending the council?
“Of course you do. Why do you think I brought you?”
“Um... Because it would look bad if you had no one attending to you?”
“No—because they summoned both of us. Your name’s written right here.”
Rook lifted up the list of names that he’d been given a moment ago and waved it in front of me.
✧✧✧
“I don’t understand why I’m going.”
It was odd. I was just a boy.
“Because Sham was his only direct descendant,” Rook said. “It’s just how it is.”
“Will they call for Sham too?”
“She hasn’t been called for yet, but she will be if she’s needed. In your case... Well, it would be rude if you were summoned here and left outside, wouldn’t it?”
“Okay...”
I wouldn’t think it was rude at all. They should forget about me.
“This is the room. The council will take place here,” the female attendant announced as she opened a pair of double doors made from two huge wooden slabs.
The interior was as elegant and spacious as the doors had suggested. A large table—created by combining three smaller rectangular tables and decorated with an elaborately embroidered cloth—lay in the dead center of the room, but there was still plenty of empty space around it. It was a fine room for holding a council.
Chairs were arranged around the table. Most of them were already occupied by attendees, both young and old. Though when I looked around, I noted that old men made up the majority. Given the longevity of the Shanti, some of them could have been over a hundred years old.
Ho family customs dictated that the head of the family couldn’t retain their role into advanced old age—they would generally relinquish their position to the younger generation as soon as they began to weaken. As the leader of the Ho family, they needed to be ready for war whenever it might occur. And since they needed to maintain command of the family’s forces, train soldiers, and lead them into battle, no one wanted a situation where an elderly figure had to hand over command to their son in the event of war. It was therefore desirable for the head to step down as soon as their age might have made it difficult to head out into battle.
That all seemed reasonable, but it was odd just how many old men were here attending the council. I guessed that some of these elders had previously stepped down from their positions to allow an heir to take their place, but they’d returned to service after the head of the family had died in battle. The fact that so many of them had been made to gather here suggested that the Ho family was short of hands now that the family’s forces had suffered such heavy losses.
We’re in real bad shape.
The attendant showed us into the room and led us toward our seats, taking us deeper and deeper into the room. We were taken to the top of the table beside a sullen, ill-looking woman. On the wall behind her was a great tapestry with the Ho family crest sewn onto it. The attendant gave us a brief bow and then left us there, as if to say this was where we should sit.
Hang on. Isn’t this the head of the table?
There was no mistaking it—this was indeed the top of the table, where the most important figures sat. I’d been expecting us to sit at the very bottom. The whole thing gave me a bad feeling.
Rook took a step forward and greeted the woman in an unusual way. “My apologies for not writing more often, Lady Satsuki. It is a great honor to—”
“Enough of that,” she dismissed Rook with an awkward smile. Her tone was devoid of energy. “You needn’t call me lady.”
I guessed that this was Gok’s wife, Satsuki Ho. It was hard to compare her to others, given that the stress she currently faced had left her face so withered and pale, but she looked close to Suzuya’s age. Actually, I’d say she had to be at least ten years older than Suzuya. The effects of aging set in slowly for the Shanti, making it difficult to discern a difference of ten years sometimes.
Satsuki had the air of a refined lady from a noble family. My mom was a lively and animated person in my mind because I often saw her busy with housework, but my aunt here appeared much more subdued.
“Please don’t make me blush. Call me Satsuki as you did in the past,” she continued.
“Very well, Satsuki.”
“This must be your son.” Satsuki looked at me with kindness in her eyes.
“That’s right. Go on and introduce yourself,” Rook told me.
“Nice to meet you, Aunt Satsuki. I’m Yuri.” I bowed my head to her.
I hope “Aunt Satsuki” is polite enough.
“Hello,” she replied. “My, how you’ve grown. Last time I saw you, you were just a baby.”
Apparently, this wasn’t our first meeting, but we hadn’t seen each other at all since I was a baby. I hadn’t had a chance to meet her during the recent expedition ceremony.
“He’s my amazing son,” Rook added.
Now you’re embarrassing me.
“Isn’t he?” Satsuki replied. “Even Sham is in love with him.”
Her words left Rook looking stunned. He’d probably never spoken to Sham, although I couldn’t imagine what the two of them would even talk about.
“I heard that you and her had a lot in common,” Satsuki continued.
“Yes...but she’s a lot smarter than me,” I replied.
“Oh, you don’t mean that.”
I honestly do.
When I was Sham’s age, my only concern was finding a way to get hold of new batteries for my Game Boy—they’d always run out so fast. And that was despite getting an education at a good elementary school. Meanwhile, Sham had educated herself to the point where she was thinking about prime numbers. The gap between us was immeasurable. It made me want to support her efforts to educate herself.
“You can’t just stand there the whole time. Why not sit? Rook, your place is there,” Satsuki instructed, pointing to a chair near to her.
That must mean I’ll be sandwiched between Satsuki and Rook. Why can’t I just be left alone?
“I was feeling blue. Having a youngster beside me is cheering me up. Thank you for that,” she said.
“We’re honored to be of service,” Rook told her.
Don’t I get a say? I complained internally as I looked at my seat. But what’s with this? Seriously, what’s the deal here?
“What’s wrong, Yuri? Sit down.” Rook had already taken his seat, and he encouraged me to do the same when he saw me simply standing there.
If I could sit on this thing, I would.
“I could attempt to jump up onto it, but I’m worried that might make it topple over and cause a scene.”
An extra thick cushion had been placed on the chair to turn it into a makeshift high chair just for me, but that only made it harder to climb up. If the chair had legs that were joined together by some horizontal support beams, they would’ve made a good ladder, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
“Well if you can’t get up, why didn’t you say so?” Rook grabbed me with both hands, lifted me up, and sat me down like a doll.
It was really embarrassing to be treated like that in front of a bunch of strangers.

Conqueror 1.2

I
I felt that I was in a dream, floating through a placid, lukewarm sea. It was an abnormally long dream, but I never grew tired of it. It was as if I lacked the ability to feel tired of anything, and my mind remained dull and blurry. In this world, my body and the environment were at comfortable temperatures, and I felt only bliss. There I remained in what felt like an endless slumber.
The tranquility persisted for about a week, or perhaps even a year, when I suddenly felt an intense pressure—like a pro-wrestler had put me in a headlock. My peace was brought to an abrupt end by a crushing sensation that gripped my head and squeezed my brain itself.
My first thought was that someone was trying to crack my skull and kill me, and I was filled with a sense of mortal peril. The panic soon gave way to a feeling of liberation, however, as though I’d woken from a nightmare. I was released from the unexplained compression and found myself in an open space. The sensation of floating disappeared, and then I was immersed in more warm fluid while arms and fingers cradled me. Once the clear water had cleansed my body, I was wrapped in a soft blanket and held by an unknown person.
I saw the world around me as no more than an indistinct blur, regardless of whether things were close by or some distance away. It was as if I’d been stricken with a serious case of both near and farsightedness. Something was wrong with my brain, similar to times when I’d gotten very drunk on good wine. Trying to satisfy my needs for food and sleep while trying to avoid sources of pain were as much as my feeble mind could handle.
I would instinctively suckle at the breast of some stranger as my vision filled with light and then faded to the dark of night repeatedly. After I’d been through that cycle ten or so times, my thoughts finally began to grow clear.
Am I still dreaming? This was the question I kept turning over in my hazy mind.
I’d felt like I was in a dream the entire time, but several days had gone by since the mysterious head pain. It didn’t make sense for me to have such long-term memories within a dream.
“Mm aah ii a deem?” I tried to put the thought into words, but my throat wouldn’t work well enough for me to speak.
Why did it all feel so real? Was I in heaven or hell? Or was this some sort of afterlife?
The last thing I remembered clearly was how I’d struggled in the cold water before drowning. My body had been chilled to its core, and I’d soon lost the ability to move. With that, I’d swallowed water and sunk into the river. In other words, I should have been dead. Yet I wasn’t in any pain, and I wasn’t cold.
But it was possible that I really had died. There was the possibility that past-life memories were something everyone had at first, something erased and forgotten the moment they started a new life, similar to the way that even remarkable dreams somehow faded from memory upon waking. The experiences that made me into the person I was would soon fade away in that case, but I wouldn’t have minded—it didn’t feel like much of a loss.
At any rate, these strangers would place me in a soft bed where my sole task seemed to be sleeping each day away. It was as though I’d been reduced to an infantile state, unable to tell whether I was awake or dreaming.
The person who presented their breasts to me appeared to be my mother. She stayed by my side each day, attending to my various needs. Having someone change my diaper made me feel like I’d turned into an infirm old man.
Her breasts were small, but my mother was very beautiful. Still, she looked unlike any person I’d ever known. She had none of the sharp features that would have suggested European descent, but she didn’t look Asian either. She had a calm and gentle face that I always wanted to look at. She was perfectly human for the most part, but her ears were clearly the wrong shape. They were somewhat pointed, and the tips were covered with the same hair that was on her head. Though her ears were pink around the earlobe, the hair covered the edges and tips. They certainly looked warm, but also unnatural.
The words she spoke were completely alien—I couldn’t understand a word of it. I guess it should have gone without saying that someone who looked like her wouldn’t speak Japanese. Whenever night fell, she’d swaddle me and wrap me up in her arms. She would hold me tightly and speak in a soft, yet clear voice. I suspected she told me fairy tales, but the words were as meaningless to me in that state as everything else she said.
Now and then, my father would take turns caring for me. If we were in a Japanese town, there was no doubt he would’ve caused the women to turn their heads as he walked down the road. When he held me in his arms, I felt hard muscle that suggested the slim body beneath his clothes was surprisingly well built. His lean figure could have easily belonged to a boxer or rhythmic gymnast.
What sort of job would make a man turn out like that? It was a total mystery.
Based on their living standards, I didn’t think we were in modern times. Their clothes were all made of natural fibers, the uneven threads of the fabric suggesting they were all handmade. Once, my mother had taken me into the kitchen, and I’d noticed that they were still using a kiln. We had to be out in the sticks. The only noises at night were the calls of forest animals, and the house rarely had visitors.
The place felt too well built to be some rural shack, and there was often meat on the dinner table. That made me think they were well-off. As far as I could tell, my mother was a full-time housewife, and there were no signs of them struggling to get by. But the lack of any visitors meant they probably weren’t merchants, so I could only assume they were wealthy farmers.
It remained a mystery, and I wouldn’t be able to ask until I’d learned to speak. All I could do was snooze the days away in my crib while guessing at the meanings of the words they spoke.
A year flew by as I lounged in that absentminded state.
✧✧✧
A year had passed without my consciousness fading like a forgotten dream. It seemed that I was going to continue living as a little boy.
Being forced to start a new life on “New Game Plus” despite already being bored of my old one sounded like it should’ve been like a huge hassle, but it turned out it wasn’t so bad. It was nothing like the life I’d grown tired of because everything here was so novel—the environment, the people, and the many discoveries that lay in wait.
My Japanese parents weren’t crooks or anything, but I definitely wouldn’t have called them good people either. In this world, however, my mother and father loved and doted on me. The confusion I’d felt toward everyone else’s completely different outlook on life was now replaced with a feeling of comprehension—I realized that those people had been raised by loving families.
It was around then that I began to practice walking on two legs. I had expected it to be easy, but my weak little knees would easily buckle, and so much of my weight was in my head that I couldn’t keep my balance even when I did manage to stand up. I found it easier to get around by crawling.
I learned that my family had a custom of celebrating birthdays. I hadn’t kept track of the seemingly countless days that passed, but a full cycle of the seasons had passed when they threw something like a birthday party. The three of us celebrated with a fairly extravagant meal. That said, I was given the same old gruel, complete with small chunks of meat, that always served as my baby food. Nevertheless, I was definitely the cause of festivity, which meant it had to be my birthday.
As time went on, my mother continued to stay at home with me, talking in a language I couldn’t understand. This allowed me to gradually learn the words she spoke. I quickly figured out which words meant “mommy” and “daddy” because she said those to me constantly. I started using new words as soon as I’d figured them out, without much worry for how it shocked them. They probably thought I was weird, but all I cared about was getting out of diapers as soon as possible.
This cozy, ordinary life went on for three years.
✧✧✧
Time went by, and I reached the age of three.
Based on the information I’d gathered during my three years of life, my dad’s name was Rook, and my mom’s was Suzuya. Our surname, i.e. our family name, was simply Ho.
The name newly given to me was Yuri. Yuri Ho. It was simple and easy to remember.
The day after my third birthday, my dad—Rook—took me to his workplace in the forest. We traveled beyond the tall hills that lay behind our home on a plainrunner.
“Plainrunner” was the name given to a large type of flightless bird that looked like an ostrich in a winter coat. Their bodies were completely covered in fur—except for the legs—and they could, surprisingly, be ridden like horses.
I was absolutely certain that these birds didn’t exist on Earth. If they did, there was no way I wouldn’t have known about them—they’d have been the main draw in every zoo. I already thought it odd that there were people with hair-covered ears, but these strange birds only served as concrete confirmation that I was no longer on Earth.
Our plainrunner made a fine steed, and I found it even more comfortable than riding a horse. As I sat between Rook’s legs, I didn’t feel like I was being rattled around. The bird ran on two legs with joints that looked like backward knees, and the legs absorbed shocks like a car’s suspension.
Rook’s workplace turned out to be something like a ranch. He’d told me so already, but this was definite proof that Rook was more like a ranch owner than a farmer. The sprawling site included barns, fences that outlined what looked like horse-riding courses, and an open area that appeared to be a pasture. Overall, it didn’t look much like a place where you’d keep livestock like cows or pigs—it seemed much more suited to raising racehorses.
“This is my ranch,” Rook announced before hopping off the plainrunner. Then, he lifted me down from the position that had been between his legs.
I didn’t try to hide how impressed I was. “It’s incredible.”
It was a peaceful place, situated within a picturesque clearing in a coniferous forest. The wooden barns were a little worn, but well cared for—there wasn’t a single hole or rotten plank in sight. In fact, none of the buildings showed any signs of decay despite their age. It was a fine ranch even by the standards I’d known in Japan.
“Do you know why I built my ranch out here?” Rook asked with a tinge of pride in his voice.
I already knew from our day-to-day conversations that my dad considered it important to let children think for themselves.
“Did you build everything from scratch, dad?”
I’d been convinced that successive generations of the Ho family must have managed our ranch, but the way he’d worded the question made it sound like Rook had started it himself. And this was no small ranch—it was spread across several hectares.
“That’s right. I made it.”
“Amazing.”
That really is amazing, I thought. Someone his age made all this from nothing? That’s no small feat.“But enough about that. You didn’t answer my question.”
Oh, right.
Although he’d just chided me, it was clear from the look on Rook’s face that he appreciated the compliment from his son.
It’s seriously impressive. I can’t believe it grew this big in just one generation.
I’d reached his age once myself, but I hadn’t had a wife or any real estate besides the tiny place I’d inherited from my grandfather. Rook, on the other hand, had a wife, a child, a home, and an entire ranch that he’d built from scratch. That was amazing.
“Hmm. Is it so that the animals can be noisy without bothering anyone who lives nearby?” I asked.
“That’s...an interesting idea. I suppose all the noise would annoy anyone living too close.”
If I read between the lines, I understood that wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. Still, he was looking at me with admiration.
Seemed like a sensible answer to me. Maybe I’m still stuck in the city-slicker mindset?
“The thing is, most people living around here keep livestock in their own homes. They wouldn’t care about ours,” Rook continued.
Oh? That’s news to me.
The idea of someone keeping livestock in their own home was...hard to imagine. I knew that my grandfather had once had a stable at home when he was young, but no one who’d lived near me back in Japan had owned a ranch, so I’d never heard of anyone keeping cows or horses at home. I’d seen nothing like it.
“What was the right answer?” I asked. “I can’t figure it out.”
“Look. This area’s between mountains, isn’t it?”
In the distance were things that looked more like large hills than mountains, but he was right that there was nothing but hillside surrounding us in every direction. Visibility here was terrible.
Oh, he’s right. We’re in a small basin.
“The wind passes over the top of the mountains, so the air down here is still,” he explained. “You can’t raise birds properly on windy land.”
Okay, now I get it. It’s hard to argue with that.
Rook still looked young, but he had to have been even younger back when he founded the ranch. He must have searched for a suitable patch of land, and when he’d found the right place, he’d kicked off his business right here—building upon ground that had once been nothing but forest. It sounded simple when I summed it up like that, but there was really nothing simple about it. My dad was quite possibly one of a kind. I wouldn’t normally call someone who’d achieved all of that a farmer—I’d call him a young entrepreneur.
“Is running this ranch your job, dad?” I asked.
“More or less,” Rook replied.
As I’d guessed from conversations back at home, he was managing the ranch himself.
“Do you handle everything by yourself?”
“No, I employ people. They should be here already.”
That figures.
Rook led the plainrunner by its reins to a spot where he could tether it. Next, he took my hand and brought me over to a barn.
The barn’s interior was laid out like stables, but it held plainrunners instead of horses. Even though the birds were in separate rooms with dividing walls, they weren’t crammed in; each one had ample space. Smaller enclosures would have made it possible to keep more birds without the need to expand, so Rook may have been pampering them and prioritizing their well-being over profit.
There were also two people inside the barn wearing work clothes. They were standing in the central walkway on either side of something resembling a trailer. They were giving large amounts of feed to the plainrunners by transferring it from the fully loaded cart into feeding troughs.
“Oh, they eat hay?” I asked. I didn’t know the first thing about plainrunner behavior.
“They’d be scrawny birds if they ate nothing but hay. There’s grains, berries, and beans mixed in with it.”
“Wow.”
So they’re herbivores, I thought. They eat pretty much the same stuff as horses.
“Wild plainrunners eat grass and forage for fallen berries, but they’ll hunt small animals when there’s no other food in the winter. Even here, they’ll sometimes catch a rabbit while out grazing.”
It turned out that they weren’t herbivores. No one had ever heard of a horse eating a rabbit. Judging from their speed and tough beaks, plainrunners were probably adapted to hunt for mice and rabbits as they ran through forests and across grassland.
“Don’t you ever feed them meat?”
“No. Meat makes them strong, but they’ll turn violent once they get a taste for it.”
“I see.”
They develop a thirst for blood?
I gathered that it wasn’t an essential part of their diet. On the other hand, the understanding here wasn’t backed by solid science. If Japanese livestock researchers were to run their own analysis, they’d possibly find the feed sorely lacking in calcium and sodium. They might even make easy improvements by mixing meat and bone meal into the feed, or by putting chunks of rock salt in the barn. As Rook’s oldest son, I was probably in line to inherit it someday. Investigating that sort of problem was potentially the key to a happy future.
“That said, some people like an aggressive bird. When we get a special order, we let them hunt inside a special enclosure that keeps the mice trapped inside. Those ones are a handful to train.”
Similar to how some people like unruly horses.
“Why would anyone want a violent plainrunner?”
“Some soldiers prefer that sort of bird, despite the fact most of them can’t even ride it once they’ve bought it. But with proper handling, those birds can rampage across a battlefield like no other. They can kill several people with their kicks alone.”
They rage like bloodthirsty beasts? I could guess from what Rook just said that plainrunners could be used as a sort of weapon. Maybe I’ll be able to ride them in the future, but I’m steering clear of the violent ones. I can easily imagine climbing onto the saddle only for it to throw me off and instantly stomp on my head.
“But I mostly leave the plainrunners to others,” Rook went on. “I get involved in the final stages of training, but not much else. My main focus is caring for the kingeagles.”
“King...eagle?” The name had come up a few times in books that were read to me, but I’d never understood what the creature was.
“It’s a type of bird that can fly.”
I guess he’s breeding birds for falconry too?
“Follow me,” Rook said.
I followed as he led me to another barn some distance away. Unlike the barn that housed the plainrunners, this building looked about three stories high. It had many windows, all of which were open, but there was a sort of iron lattice that ran across each window frame’s interior. From a distance, I’d thought it was a building where the workers lived, but apparently there were more birds in there.
When it came to bird-raising facilities, the only birds I’d seen besides chickens were all in cages and mesh fences, so I didn’t know what to expect. I could imagine that removing all the walls and ceilings from a three-story building would create a spacious enclosure, making the interior a sort of aviary for something large.
Once we’d reached the building, Rook removed a hefty bar that kept a large pair of doors closed. With that, he opened the double doors.
“Go on in.”
I stepped inside as Rook gently pushed me forward.
What I saw surprised me so much that my knees almost gave way. Beyond the doors was a massive open space. As I’d suspected, the three-story building had no walls or floors.
There were several birds living inside, but these were no run-of-the-mill birds—they were extraordinarily big. I estimated that they were about three or four meters long from head to tail. Their striped brown wings were tucked up flat against their bodies, their talons were sharp, and their beaks were large. Their eyes looked as keen as any bird of prey. They were basically eagles...really massive ones.
Rook saw my jaw drop. “Surprised?” he asked with a grin.
“This is... Yeah.”
“I thought you would be.”
“Yes, they’re...”
The birds known as kingeagles were both large and striking. They weren’t fat, doughy things; their silhouettes were sleek and slender.
The building housed five kingeagles. It felt odd that such a large structure held just five birds, but it was probably appropriate given their size.
Though I’d initially thought it was just a set of outer walls and a ceiling, there was also a large tree that had simply been stripped of its branches before being positioned here as a broad pillar. It supported the whole structure without creating a hindrance that would stop the birds from flying around. Thick beams extended from it and connected to the walls, creating perches that the kingeagles appeared fond of.
While I watched, a kingeagle would occasionally fly from one perch to another. It would leap into the air, then—with two or three great wingbeats—gain considerable speed before coming to a sudden stop by gripping a beam. If the beams had been much narrower, the impact might have broken them.
The kingeagle’s wings were covered in striped brown feathers. The region spanning across the chest and stomach varied from the rest because it was white with flecks of gray. Equally beautiful were their bright yellow beaks, which stood out against those muted colors.
“I can’t believe these things exist...”
It was like a glimpse into the marvels of nature, or as though I was witnessing a mythical giant bird—like the Middle Eastern roc or huri kamuy of Ainu origins—brought to life.
“Right?” Rook replied. “They’re my favorite birds. They’re really smart, and friendly too—once you’ve tamed them.”
“You can tame these things?”
“Well, yeah. Otherwise they’d be too dangerous to ride, wouldn’t they?”
Ride?
“You can ride them?” I asked.
“You’ve heard about sky knights in stories, haven’t you?” Rook sounded surprised. “What did you think they were?”
There were indeed such tales, but I’d always thought they were just high-ranking knights; I’d never understood what they did.
“You’ll have to learn to ride them too,” Rook said.
I was struggling to keep up with everything he was telling me.
“Is it possible to fly on one of these while riding it?”
“If you’re not too scared, yes, you can ride one with me. Riding a kingeagle at the age of three is a bit of a Ho family tradition. I had to do it back when I was your age.”
That’s not what I meant...
The way he said it made it sound as though he was planning to fly a kingeagle with me today. I got the sense that he was trying to coax me into it, thinking a little boy like me would be too scared.
“These creatures can fly with a person riding on them?”
“Of course. That’s the whole reason I rear them.” Rook sounded completely serious. My dad then offered his unique brand of reassurance: “Don’t worry. Your dad’s the world’s greatest kingeagle rider.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Whatever part of my brain controlled common sense sounded alarm bells at the very idea of flying on one of these birds. But Rook made it sound like our family had a proud history of doing just that. Besides, I believed him when he said they were tame, and I didn’t sense danger. In fact, I didn’t get the slightest sense that Rook was encouraging me to do something dangerous.
“All right. I think I’m ready.”
“Good. That’s my boy.”
Rook took the wooden whistle hanging from his neck and put it to his mouth. The sound caused one of the great birds to come down to us. It was hard to imagine that he could pick out a kingeagle just by using the sound of the whistle, but only one of them had reacted, so he must have beckoned that one specifically.
While I stood there astounded, Rook picked up a saddle—different from the one on the plainrunner—that hung on the wall. First, he put a leather ring that connected to the reins over the bird’s beak, then he fitted the saddle to its back and tightened a leather strap around its abdomen. Rather than being flat against the bird, the saddle was a little raised up, more like one made for a camel than a horse. It was designed to be straddled just the same, but the area where the rider sat was somewhat elevated like a seat.
Rook took the reins that now extended from either side of the kingeagle and pulled on them to lead the bird away. The kingeagle obediently followed without any resistance. With the reins in hand, Rook led the bird outside through the double doors we’d used to enter.
After replacing the bar that held the doors closed, Rook led the trotting kingeagle over to some grass a short distance from the building. Then he gave the eagle two taps on the head. That made the bird fold up its legs and drop into a crouching position. It complied as easily as an obedient dog being told to sit. He must have trained it well.
“Lift up your arms a moment,” Rook said to me.
I put both arms up in the air. He fastened a belt attached to several metal rings around my waist and tightened it so much that it hurt. Then, he grabbed my waist to lift me up.
“Here you go.” Rook placed me on the saddle like he was putting something on a shelf.
“Whoa.”
Once Rook had put on a similar belt, he climbed onto the saddle too. It was easy for someone of my height to sit on the saddle with my legs at either side, but Rook had to sit with his legs bent. It looked a little cramped.
Unlike horses, this creature had wings that the rider couldn’t obstruct with their legs. One solution would be for them to sit with their ankles raised up alongside their hips, but that’d be bad for their pelvis. It explained why the saddle was a little elevated—to improve the rider’s sitting posture.
Rook connected the belt around his waist to the saddle using leather straps, anchoring his body in place. I gathered that the waist belt worked as a safety harness. With that done, he turned to where I was sitting between his legs. My body was held securely against the saddle once he’d finished using straps to secure my belt in the same way. Now, whatever orientation the kingeagle might take during flight, there was no chance of me falling off.
Rook took up the reins.
✧✧✧
As the eagle was beating its wings and preparing to take flight, Rook gave me some advice that he must have forgotten to mention until now: “Whatever you do, never open your mouth while flying.”
The g-force hit me like nothing I’d ever felt before as the eagle left the ground behind. It wasn’t the constant acceleration of an aircraft, it was more like waves of acceleration that came on with each beat of its wings. After gaining some height, the kingeagle increased its speed with several powerful wingbeats, and then it was flying for real.
The view below changed at a dizzying pace. In no time at all, we crossed the hills and a small river. We charged through a dense pocket of air while almost grazing the tops of the conifers below. Then the angle of the bird’s wings suddenly changed, sending us soaring directly upward, higher into the air.
We rushed up to the altitude of a high-rise building. Unobstructed by tall trees or the planet’s curvature, the view opened up and the world was spread out before us. It was as though the clouds had absorbed all of the moisture from the sky. The air was clear as far as the eye could see, and even the distant scenery looked sharp. It was beautiful.
It wasn’t like seeing the world from a tiny aircraft window, or from the lookout point of a mountain top. This was an ever-changing panorama, unobstructed in all directions. Everywhere I looked, my view was clear, and the world was breathtaking.
After we’d flown in circles for a short while, Rook manipulated the reins again, and the eagle began performing aerial maneuvers with graceful movements. It rolled over in midair, flipping the world upside down. With my body weight no longer holding me against the saddle, I felt myself instead supported by the safety harness around my waist.
A moment later, my weight was no longer supported by the harness as we transitioned into a free fall. I lost sight of the sky and horizon. Soon, the ground filled my view. We were falling, and soon we’d crash into the ground. A primal fear filled my mind, sending me into a panic.
But the free fall lasted only a few seconds. The eagle’s wings changed angle to once again catch the wind, gently shifting the bird into a horizontal path of flight. We were still a good height above the ground by the time we’d fully leveled off.
We must have been flying for around twenty minutes when familiar-looking buildings came into view below us—it was the ranch we’d set out from. I’d completely lost track of where we were, but Rook must have known precisely.
The eagle descended so quickly that I thought we might crash. Just before landing, it beat its wings several times to apply the emergency brake, and then it finally touched down gently upon the ground.
“Phew,” Rook sighed from his position above my head. He began removing his safety harness.
There was the sound of fittings clattering. Rook had himself free in under a minute, and then he immediately started removing my harness too.
Rook got off the kingeagle first and said, “Your dad’s here to catch you, so just jump down.”
I hesitated for a moment, but then I leaped down from the saddle. True to his word, Rook caught me and put me on the ground.
“How was that?” Rook asked, his eyes filled with anticipation.
“Awesome,” I replied, telling him my honest feelings. “It was an incredible experience. I really mean it.”
“Glad to hear it,” Rook said, sounding relieved. “Looks like you’ll be all right.”
“What do you mean?”
“With eagles. Some people just can’t get used to riding a kingeagle no matter what they do. They need both feet firmly on the ground.”
Ah. When children turn three... That’s when they’re tested to see how they’ll handle it. Someone with a fear of heights would have no chance.
“I think I can handle flying. I don’t know whether I’ll be a skilled rider though.”
“Don’t worry, I can see you’ve got potential,” Rook reassured me. “And if I say so, you know it’s true.”
“Really?”
When a family member said something like that, I was filled with a sense of happiness and embarrassment that felt wrong for someone my age. During my life in Japan, my parents hadn’t been the sort of people who’d given their son that type of praise. I hadn’t even known the whereabouts of one of my parents. As for the other, we’d eventually broken contact and never spoke again. Now it felt like my mental age had been dragged down to match my body. Rook’s praise moved me, and I had to react quickly to hold back the rising tears.
“Does everyone start training at this young age?”
“You didn’t like it?”
“That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just hard to imagine everyone doing this.”
“Well, the three-years-old thing is just our family tradition, but everyone has to start when they’re small. You’ll never be a sky knight unless you learn to ride solo before you’re fully grown.”
Is he saying that you can’t ride a kingeagle unless you train as a child? That’s a sad thought. These kingeagles must be valuable creatures. They eat meat, so they must cost even more than horses. If you have to start training as a child, only people from the wealthiest families will ever get a chance to ride one.
“Why’s that? Why can’t someone decide to learn after growing up?” I asked.
Kind of like how you can fly light aircraft as a hobby.
“Because a kingeagle can’t fly with two adults on its back. It’s too much weight.”
Seriously? That sounds like a harsh weight restriction.
“Then what about fat people?”
“Ha ha,” Rook laughed. “There are no fat sky knights.”
You can’t ride them if you get fat? Then I’m guessing Rook’s slim, muscular build is ideal.
“There are those who grow up and then want to ride a kingeagle, just like you say—merchants, for example, who get rich through some lucky business deal. And, um...let’s just say it doesn’t go so well.”
He must be choosing his words carefully so he doesn’t scare me. I bet they crash and die.
“You mustn’t ever ride one alone until you’ve got permission,” Rook warned. His expression had gone from the face of someone talking about their favorite topic to the face of an adult worried for their child.
“I understand. I won’t forget it.”
We were finished for the day, so we rode back home on a plainrunner. I spent the whole journey with thoughts of only one thing: kingeagles.

Conqueror 1.1

Prologue
When I woke up in my bed that morning, I was still feeling kinda sleepy.
I had nothing in particular to do that day—no games that I wanted to play, no books I wanted to read badly enough to make me shake off my weariness and win against the urge to sleep. I had no reason to get up, and there was nothing I could do about that. Once I’d decided to give in, all I had to do was let my weary brain have its way, and I soon drifted off again.
By the next time I woke up, there couldn’t have been more than a few minutes left until the afternoon. My tiredness was gone, and now I was thirsty. I sat up in bed. After looking at the clock, I reckoned that I’d slept a whole nine hours. Looks like it’s yet another day of me being a good for nothing, I told myself.
The thought made me feel uncomfortable, so I headed to the washbasin to wash my face.
The air was bitingly cold as I stepped out of the heated room. I was a bachelor living alone in a wooden, single-story house that must have been built around 1960. My grandfather, a college professor, had originally chosen it as a place to enjoy his retirement, so it had been renovated when he’d left his job. The place had previously been occupied by a quiet old couple. On the surface, the house still looked to be in fairly good shape, but unsurprisingly, it had begun to creak rather loudly as of late. Though that wasn’t an immediate concern, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live here my whole life.
I wasn’t feeling hungry, but I had to do something with the leftover rice I’d cooked yesterday. I took what was left in my rice cooker and made it into chazuke—rice tea soup.
While my food digested, I turned my attention to an online game I’d been playing recently and caught up with the community. I was beginning to get bored of the game, but it would be good enough for killing time for a while yet. Ever since I’d quit my job to become a no-lifer, I’d found myself with far too much time on my hands. A way to fill the endless days was just what I needed.
When I logged on to the game, I found it empty—it was the middle of the day, after all. So, I went back to another game I’d bought a month earlier. Since I’d already cleared it, all that remained were some required tasks for one hundred percent completion, but it had been an enjoyable game and those tasks were fun in their own way.
Back when I had a job, the time between game release cycles felt too short compared to the little leisure time I had, and the list of games I’d wanted to play would continuously grow. Once I’d quit my job and turned my life into nothing but free time, however, I’d rapidly cleared that backlog. Now, the long wait for release cycles was agonizing.
Once the sun was setting, I logged on to the online game again. After taking a break to eat dinner and take a bath, I played until around 3 a.m. By that point, I was tired, so I went to bed.
My bank balance barely declined because I lived such a simple life. It meant that I felt no sense of urgency, and each lazy day that passed was no improvement over the one before.
As fun as it was, I felt as though some part of my mind was blurry, and as though my life carried the sweet yet putrid odor of rotting fruit. It was a vaguely unpleasant feeling, but I was reluctant to break free from this dormant state and once again give everything my all. I simply trusted myself to the abundance of time, and I soon fell asleep.
✧✧✧
When I woke up the next morning, my mind felt unusually sharp and alert, as though I couldn’t have possibly slept a single minute longer. I checked the clock on the wall and found that it wasn’t particularly late. I had to conclude that my physical fatigue had lined up nicely with my body clock to allow me some good quality sleep.
After washing my face, I decided against sitting in front of my computer desk like always—it seemed a waste to stick to my sluggish habits on a day when I had such a spring in my step. I figured I’d head out somewhere to make the most of this day of strange energy.
There were a few consumables that I needed to top up. I could have just ordered everything online, but I didn’t mind going out for a walk. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do anyway.
I slipped on a jacket over my sweater, slid open my front door, and stepped outside.
The sky looked too clear to be considered winter, and the air was warm too. After a slight pause, I went back inside and took off the sweater that I’d been wearing under my jacket before going back out again.
Deserted shopping centers certainly held a lot of charm, but they had an atmosphere that somehow pushed people away. Maybe crowded, thriving stores looked more welcoming than empty ones. As a socially awkward guy with no real desire to get to know the staff, I felt a little uncomfortable in mom-and-pop stores. You know, the ones where the customer service was dependent on the owner’s good nature.
The problem with people was that whenever they met someone new, they seemed to want to classify them somehow. They’d generally ask what you did for a living, and as someone unemployed, that might have been what put me off.
All of this meant that rather than supporting the local business, I was heading for a small shopping center that was within walking distance.
As I moved away from my residential area, which was near a mountain, I approached the more densely populated urban area.
The people here were productive individuals who worked honest jobs every weekday. I used to be just like them, so the idea of living a respectable life wasn’t alien to me—I simply had no desire to go back.
That said, seeing all these working people in their suits made me feel out of place, like I was the only one not pulling my weight. Now that I was here, I couldn’t wait to be home. Perhaps the whole reason people pursued careers was to avoid this sort of feeling. Or perhaps not.
Once I’d finished shopping at the grocery and general stores, I decided to head straight home.
The shopping mall also leased out space to a few other small stores, such as a clothing store and a furniture store that sold stylish desks and chairs. None of them caught my interest. I had more than enough clothes and furniture, and I had no real desire to upgrade to anything better. I passed them by and left the shopping mall, by which point I was unusually exhausted. It was probably the result of seeing so many people hard at work.
There was a time when I’d worked at least five days a week, sometimes staying overnight at the college for several days when I’d risked falling behind. There was no sickness preventing me from working. If I hated feeling like I was letting myself decay, I could just get a job somewhere, or maybe even start a business based on my own ideas. I had the free cash. It was something I thought about occasionally, but it never led to any action.
I knew why: it was because I had no motivation. I felt no urge to be useful to strangers, nor did I want to use my earnings on material possessions like fancy cars. I’d also stopped caring about appealing to the opposite sex. Having savings meant that there was also no incentive to earn money to pay for food—in other words, I didn’t need to work to stay alive. Perhaps I’d grow tired of feeling this way someday, and that would create enough of a push to spur me into action.
Alternatively, there was the possibility that I would put an end to it all once I figured out an easy way to do it. But it felt like a waste to die while I still had my savings, and the idea of dying after my money had been used up was a horrible thought. Choosing death while carefree enough to make that choice was one thing, but I suspected it was something else entirely to die while feeling I’d been backed into a corner.
With these negative thoughts running through my mind, I was about to cross a bridge spanning a river near my home when I saw something happening that I couldn’t make sense of.
There was a girl—a child of early elementary school age with a mysterious sort of air about her. What baffled me was where she was walking. She wasn’t on the sidewalk or the road—she was walking on the bridge’s guardrail.
It was highly unlikely that she was deep enough in debt that she might be killed over it, so I couldn’t understand why she was reenacting the steel beam crossing from a certain gambling manga. There were no sadistic millionaires around to enjoy the spectacle of some poor soul desperately trying to get rich. The girl couldn’t have given up on life, so I was at a loss to explain why she was doing such a thing.
It was then, with perfect timing, that the rail she was standing on shook.
Maybe an overloaded truck had just passed by. Whatever the cause, I couldn’t look around to investigate. My eyes were fixed on the girl as she lost her balance and looked as though she would plummet into the river.
The bridge shook vertically, her body seemed to float, and then she took three small steps along the railing in an apparent panic. By that point, her body was tilted toward the river while her feet were still planted in place. It was clear to anyone watching that there was no recovering from that pose. She raised up her other leg in the direction of the bridge in an attempt to shift her center of mass toward the other side of the railing as much as she could. It looked like a desperate bid to beg the laws of physics to show mercy on her. Then, after striking a pose with her limbs outstretched and body tilted, the girl disappeared from my view.
I ran to the railing and looked down into the river, which had swelled due to the time of year. There, I saw the girl being swept downstream, and it looked as though she couldn’t swim.
I could save her, but I might die. I hesitated for a moment, but then quickly made my decision. Well, that wouldn’t be such a great loss. It’s not like I’ve got anything in particular I want to do before I die, and no one would miss me anyway. What would it matter?
I took off my jacket to strip down to my shirt, then jumped over the railing. After a three-meter or so drop, I plunged into the river. When my body hit the water’s surface, I was struck with an incredible coldness, as though my blood vessels were all constricting at once. The shock made me feel like my whole body was a rag being wrung dry, but I endured it and started swimming.
It had been about four years since I’d last gone swimming, since neither the beach nor the swimming pool were part of my daily life. I swam and swam, the flow still carrying me, until I finally reached her.
Once I’d caught up to the exhausted girl, I grabbed onto her clothes and headed for the shore while I struggled to keep my head above water. I could feel my body’s warmth rapidly draining away, and my strength was fading. It was then that I realized I hadn’t eaten that day because I’d planned to grab a bite while I was out.
After just barely reaching the river’s edge alive and somehow getting the girl ashore, I didn’t have enough strength left to drag myself out of the water. The river swallowed me up and carried me away.