Point of Contact
Point of Contact
Because I'd hurried quite a bit from dropping off my gear for repairs to arriving at Ragnis's residence, not much time had passed.
There was some time to spare, so I understood why she'd sent a person to fetch me instead of a carriage. But unlike me, who only needed to get stronger, Ragnis had far too much to learn in far too little time. The only help I could offer right now was to get her business with me over quickly enough that I didn't waste any of that time.
Ragnis's residence was originally a villa her family only used when stopping by the capital, so it wasn't very large. Of course, that was all measured by aristocratic sensibilities, but even by my own standards it was remarkably modest for a noble.
My last memory had been of Ragnis living in that villa with a small number of servants you could count on one hand.
"A guest the Margrave has ordered us to escort. Admit no other visitors until you receive separate instructions."
"Understood, Sir Renisa."
But now the place felt completely different. Two guards stood at the gate and another two at the front entrance, barely ten paces apart, and there were even soldiers patrolling outside the brick wall.
Just looking at the troops, it seemed like they were guarding a military command post, and I unconsciously shrank back a bit.
"Has something happened? The atmosphere is quite different from my last memory."
I asked Renisa as we passed guards standing ramrod straight with expressions that were sternness itself, but I didn't get much of an answer.
"There have been several matters that have drawn eyes our way lately. It seems the Margrave wishes to speak of the details in person."
After passing the familiar servants and maids and reaching the office on the second floor, Renisa stopped walking.
"The Margrave instructed me to guide you only this far. Farewell."
Renisa was courteous to a guest, but she'd apparently decided not to take questions while carrying out her orders. Before I could properly respond, she gave a short bow, turned, and headed back alone. She had a stiffer air than any knight I'd met lately, which had made me uncomfortable, so maybe that was for the best.
Thinking that, I knocked on the door and immediately opened it.
"Come—...no, if you were going to do that, why did you even knock?"
"To notify you that a mere door cannot stop Eldmia Ega."
"Seriously... we meet after a long time and you start with nonsense."
Ragnis burst into a hollow laugh over an expression of disbelief, setting aside the work she'd been doing as she rose from her seat.
The understated but unmistakably expensive red dress suited the hair she'd been growing out since coming to the capital as though the two had been designed together. More importantly, though, sitting at a desk and working in something like that looked miserable. Without thinking, I pointed at the corset and gave her some advice.
"Hey. Don't wear corsets. Your ribs will go."
"Wha—what are you saying the moment we meet? For a noble, cultivating beauty is also work."
"You're already too pretty for one corset to make any difference. I'd recommend taking it off."
"...Heh, heheh. So you're saying I'm pretty even without something like this?"
"Yeah."
This wasn't the half-starved Ragnis from the old days anymore. After sustained care, both her health and looks had improved beyond comparison, and she now looked every inch a noble young lady. She'd long since passed the point where you couldn't tell a meaningful difference from adding or removing one corset.
"Heh, heheh. W-well then, I'll just throw them all away later or something."
"Do that. Those things seriously wreck your body. Throw every single one away."
They were items that could cause hernias, internal bleeding, and truly all manner of side effects. No matter that healers existed in this world, I couldn't help but frown thinking of someone close to me walking around wearing something so dangerous.
Still, seeing that she made the sensible decision fitting a smart kid put my mind at ease, so I sat down on the sofa and decided to move to the main topic.
"Anyway, it feels like the first time in ages you've actually had a little free time. What did you call me over for?"
"Because it's been a long time, like you said. Partly to see your face, and partly to talk about the big events that have happened lately."
Ragnis sat on the sofa opposite me, rang the little bell on the table, then stretched and continued.
"My studies have actually been going pretty smoothly, but I've been swamped lately because the Imperial Divine Council has been making a fuss about something."
"That's a name I never expected to come up. Why them?"
The only time I'd ever heard talk of the Imperial Divine Council in my life was back when I'd heard from Asilie that a Hero had been selected long ago. Still, given that they could personally designate a Hero through an oracle, I'd expected them to be large in scale, but now hearing that they had a connection to Ragnis felt strange.
"One of my teacher's disciples was dispatched to the Empire to educate the Hero, and it seems my name came up there."
"What business would your name have there? Did they compare pretty girls or something?"
"Y-yes...! Heh, heheh. Eldmia, your way with words has improved, hasn't it?"
"Don't laugh all sloppy like that. Anyway, why did you come up?"
"They said the Hero's magical talent seems similar to mine."
Huh? I felt like I'd just heard something really irritating cloaked in calm.
I thought it through calmly. If people were discussing a Hero's talent, wouldn't they be far more likely to compare it to some famous genius as praise than to bring up an ordinary person just to say, 'Your talent is pretty average'?
In that case, didn't that mean Ragnis's talent was being called genius-level?
Finding the conclusion I'd reached somehow absurd, I asked Ragnis back, and she folded her arms and puffed out her cheeks as if her pride had been wounded.
"What's with this reaction? I'm the disciple of Radnelbandes Akrisan. True, when I was in Ogwen I couldn't learn proper magic and wasn't of any help, but in the handling of Mana and magical theory alone, even my teacher was impressed, you know?"
"Wait, wasn't that person just a physical mage whose hobby was taking disciples?"
"I don't know what kind of mage that's supposed to be, but my teacher was a person famous enough to be counted on one hand even in the kingdom."
"Well, a battle mage who's that strong would be plausible, I'll grant you, but..."
"There's that, but as you say, my teacher is a battle mage and yet also someone who crossed barriers that even ordinary mages can't easily overcome. He doesn't just take anyone as a disciple—he only accepts someone after seeing them personally and judging they have potential."
Good heavens. It seemed not just Ekaf, but Radnelbandes too had been an immensely great figure. And on top of that, Ragnis possessed talent impressive enough to make that great figure marvel?
"Eldmia, in truly odd areas you seem to have no sense or know nothing at all."
"Any other time I would've ignored you, but... yeah, this time I might actually deserve that."
Was I living with too little interest in the ways of the world? I should periodically buy a newspaper being sold on the roadside or something from now on.
"Putting that aside, the Hero's magic is good enough to be compared to yours. So what happened because of that?"
"Well... while the educators gathered to teach the Hero were talking, the idea of arranging meetings with talented people who could help the Hero came up."
What was this, some matchmaking app? What kind of meetings were they trying to arrange?
"They said the idea was that putting other people around the Hero—people of a similar age and talented enough to provide real competition—would help push the Hero's training forward."
Were they trying to provoke a competitive streak? The idea itself was reasonable, but I didn't think a Hero should need that kind of motivation. Maybe the instructors were thinking too much like ordinary people.
"So all that back-and-forth is why you've been so busy? They're basically telling you to come to the Empire?"
"Exactly. They sent letters acting like it would be strange if I didn't come, with no regard for my circumstances, so my teacher absolutely flipped out. It was a huge uproar."
"I swear, there isn't a normal Imperial in the bunch."
Yeah, I'm sure a girl whose house collapsed and who was working day and night to rebuild it would just love an invitation to come smile at somebody else's training camp. Weren't they taking this way too lightly simply because it wasn't their problem?
Of course, the other party was a Hero, and if you approached it with the mindset that there'd be nothing left if the Demon King's Army swept everything away, it wasn't entirely incomprehensible, but...
"I don't even remember when the Hero was chosen. The rumors started when I was eight or nine, didn't they? Why are they still doing this now?"
That meant six or seven years had already passed. They'd gathered all those famous elite instructors, and only now they were thinking about using same-age rivals as stimulation...? Wait.
"Wait, Ragnis. Is that really about the Hero's education?"
The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. A Hero didn't fight alone. Like a party in a game, the Hero eventually advanced on the Demon King alongside the finest people of the age.
If education had truly been the goal from the beginning, it would've made far more sense to run the whole thing like an academy and train everyone together from the start, rather than wait until now to scrape together prodigies from elsewhere just to stimulate the Hero.
Because a Hero needs comrades.
They were gathering brilliant instructors anyway. If they'd trained a whole group together while scouting for the Hero's future companions, it would have been far more efficient. Even those who weren't ultimately chosen would have gone through the Hero's curriculum and ended up much stronger than they were now, making them easier to deploy in the war.
But the Imperial Divine Council hadn't made that choice.
"Isn't this nothing more than a place to show off the Hero's power?"
Ragnis's eyes widened slightly.