Ragnis Lien da Levien
Ragnis Lien da Levien
It was my first brain freeze since that time Asilie had cussed me out and made the back of my head throb.
So Ragnis, who I'd figured for just some backwater border noble, was actually a ridiculously high-ranking aristocrat?
"I thought you were a country noble."
"...I assumed you knew."
Ragnis said that, looking more than a little flustered by my answer. Judging by her reaction, the family and the incident must have been so famous that not knowing was the strange part.
"I'm so shocked my heart's pounding out of my chest."
"Pfft. What's that about?"
"This isn't a laughing matter, you know? Want to feel?"
"Th-that's not the kind of thing you say!"
Why was she the one suddenly getting serious when I was the one whose delicate heart was pounding like crazy? Anyway, it felt like the difficulty had just shot through the roof. I reconsidered, one by one, all the factors I'd thought I didn't need to worry about, then carefully voiced the most serious problem.
"Would the noble faction have wyvern knights?"
"...Hmm."
Ragnis, having instantly understood what I was worried about, stiffened her face and began to mull it over.
Wyverns can carry two people, tops. Setting everything else aside, there's just no room for more than that. So wouldn't they inevitably have to employ someone capable of combat while also being able to pilot a wyvern in case of emergency?
The world calls such people wyvern knights. Naturally, they are knights who ride wyverns instead of horses, and rather than lances, they specialize in magic and aura to exploit aerial advantages—a profession essentially no different from a living war machine. As Asilie had told me in the past, perfectly mastering both is nearly impossible, so their individual skill can't be called truly exceptional, but that's strictly a matter of knight-to-knight comparison.
If I fight those bastards right now, I'll lose. No question.
"...No. I don't think so. Father once told me that most wyvern knights answer directly to the royal family. Because of their symbolic importance, the Noble Faction might scrape together one or two for public-facing duties, but almost all the rest should belong to the Royal Faction. They wouldn't have anyone expendable enough to use on something like this."
"Couldn't they be secretly training them internally?"
"Without the king's permission, anyone who learns wyvern piloting is forbidden from learning any martial art. Violating it means three generations executed for treason."
"Huh? For real?"
"Yeah. For real."
It was a brutally savage law, but Ragnis's certainty let me exhale a huge sigh of relief. No matter what, it was a tremendously helpful law for us right now.
"If wyvern knights were involved, I genuinely wouldn't know what the hell to do. At least we caught one break."
"...There's no answer besides running away, right?"
"Unless they're stronger than Demon King's Army commanders, that's not an option."
Running away alone would be a violation of my convictions in the first place, and if we ran together, we'd get caught anyway. I patted Ragnis on the shoulder and spoke.
"They've dragged in wyverns already—if we run, is there any ending other than getting caught? Better to hope they let their guard down and stab them while they're careless. Anyway, we avoided the worst-case scenario, so that's what matters."
"...Hehe."
"What are you giggling about? We only avoided the worst. Don't get careless."
Even if they really had brought wyverns, the danger dropped significantly just from the fact that piloting a wyvern—unless it was a large one—could only be done by non-combat personnel. We decided to take comfort in that fact for the moment and kept walking.
◈
We ran into the next batch of reinforced test dummies exactly two days later.
"Hey, we heard our friends were in your debt, so to speak."
The bastards, every last one of them tough-looking, appeared near the adventurer's guild district. It was an area not far from where I'd beaten up those two last time.
At first that surprised me, but after thinking about it, the setup made sense: it looked like they wanted us to believe these guys had been waiting with murder in their eyes for a chance at revenge. Eight of them, apparently adventurers. More than I'd expected, and they felt different from the first two.
Still, I didn't sense they were strong. If they were taking on this kind of job, they wouldn't have proper skills to begin with. Their hiring criteria had probably amounted to just 'stronger than the neighborhood thugs.'
"Oh, right. Keep your friends on a tighter leash from now on. Well, see ya!"
"Wha?!"
I scooped Ragnis up in my arms and bolted straight into the side alley.
"Th-that! That fucker! Get that little shit!"
Like hell they could catch me. I had years of experience shuttling back and forth between home and Ogwen. Even just following routes I could instantly picture in my head, halfway through I wouldn't even need to carry Ragnis anymore. As I was running, Ragnis, who only had to be held, belatedly got her wits about her.
"Y-you startled me!"
"You're surprised by just this, Lady Margrave? I need to carry you for a bit, so hold on tight. I'll explain later."
Compared to the shock I'd had, this didn't even qualify as being startled. Well, it was my own fault for jumping to conclusions without asking in detail, so I couldn't really say anything to Ragnis.
The pursuit was more persistent than I'd expected, but after weaving through a maze of alleys and cutting across a few rooftops, they finally seemed to give up. Once we had room to breathe, Ragnis caught her breath and asked,
"Those guys, were they strong?"
"Not really."
"Then why did you run away?"
"Curious how many times I'd have to repeat this before they came knocking at the inn directly."
She clearly didn't understand, so I sat down for a moment to explain. It was getting dark; if we killed some time, they'd settle on their next move and do something else.
I just prayed it wouldn't be the disappointing result of them posting up in front of the inn tonight.
"I can say this confidently because they're still moving within the range I expected, but I think those guys were basically test dummies sent to find out what kind of man I am and how strong I am. If I lured them into an alley and fought, sure, I could put them all down... but then whoever's behind them would get a lot more cautious."
"So that's why you didn't use aura?"
"Uh. Right... Wait. How do you know about that?"
"You used it back when you killed the chief."
The chief, huh. I understood she meant the bastard I'd kicked to death three years ago when he showed his filthy ambition to mess with Asilie...
But how had this kid figured out it was aura, when to Asilie it didn't feel like aura but more like a buff? As I stood there dumbly, unable to even manage my expression, she opened her mouth with a look of bemusement instead.
"I know because I've seen the domain knights spar with aura. I've seen plenty of movements you can't imitate without aura. That speed back then wasn't possible without aura."
She tilted her head as if to ask, 'Wasn't it?' Apparently she hadn't sensed anything at all; she'd simply compared what she remembered seeing and guessed which movements were possible without aura. I'd given myself away for no reason, but after reacting like that I couldn't exactly deny it, so I gave a vague nod.
"Uh. Right. I thought you had sensed the aura."
"That's... not something just anyone can awaken. You wouldn't understand."
Truth was, I hadn't awakened it either, but I just pretended to be a genius, like 'Oh, I see.' Anyway, we needed to get back to the main point.
"Time's on our side anyway. Two days have already passed and they still sent guys like that, which tells me the other side is being incredibly cautious. Unless those guys were the last result of exhausting all that caution, they'll be desperate for more information. It's been six days now, so nine left? Even if I keep running instead of openly fighting them, they'll be getting pretty desperate. Ideally, I'd like to keep this up for another three days, but who knows how it'll go."
Best case was ending it without a fight. Because the moment we fought, unpredictable variables would pop up. Of course, given the nature of this incident, that was probably impossible, but hoping was free, right?
"...I thought you were just acting on impulse, but you think and move an awful lot, don't you?"
Her gaze, filled with genuine sincerity, was so unbearably infuriating that I promptly gave her a knuckle to the head.
As evening fell and I returned to the inn through the darkened streets, a deeply disappointing result was waiting for me.
"Try running away again now, won't you?"
It seemed those bastards were indeed the result of burning through all the tracker's caution and patience.
No wonder I felt they gave up a bit fast—they were all present and accounted for, in front of Alisha's inn. And not just there, but blatantly blocking the entrance.
"I like the clear feeling that you're pressed for time, but... you didn't happen to mess with our Madam Alisha or the other kids inside, did you?"
"Heh. If you two run away again, we might have to."
"Eldmia!! Get these fucking assholes away from my shop!!"
Had she locked the door? From the looks of it, there didn't seem to be any problems, which put my mind at ease. At that shout, the bastard leaning against the door tried to intimidate her by pounding on the wall, but Madam Alisha merely answered with the same unwavering stream of profanity.
"Can you really handle this? The guards will be here in a flash once it gets noisy?"
Even as I said it, I was catching on. Sure enough, the bastards answered my question with jeering laughs.
There was no way they'd happened to be waiting here at exactly the moment we returned. The moment they lost us, they must have gone back to their employer, explained what happened, and then come here to wait. I knew the night patrol started making rounds after 6, yet there wasn't even a sign of anyone else nearby.
It was almost deflating to realize they'd simply bought off the city patrol without a second thought. Then again, that was exactly the kind of solution rich bastards could afford.
"A worm like you's got no business knowing. Truth is, we've got business with your girlfriend here."
"I know, dipshit."
"So... what?"
"I said I know. It's so fucking obvious, how could I not?"
It wasn't all bad.
That told me quite a lot: they were short on time, flush with money, had connections inside the city authorities, and were complacent enough to believe they could either beat me or make me run and then take Ragnis. Were they watching from somewhere nearby? Inside a building? If our wyvern-escape theory was right, they might already have left the city and be waiting outside after simply issuing their orders.
That was a problem I could figure out from here on out, so I decided not to pay it much mind.
"My name is Eldmia Ega."
I drew my sword and gave the greeting for instilling some convictions. Whether they had anticipated I would draw my sword or not, their jeering didn't change. The bastards confidently began drawing their own weapons one by one.
Very desirable.
"First, since you've pissed Alisha off, let's start your lesson with a stab in the thigh for every one of you."
The serious conviction-instilling would come after that.