Yona is No Longer a Baby (2)
“Waaah. I’m Baby Yona. Can’t walk on two legs.”
“What on earth are you saying, Yona-yona…? If your body’s fully recovered, get down already….”
“Nooo! Don’t wanna!”
I wrapped one arm tightly around Elly’s neck and flailed the other in protest. Opportunities to legally cling to her body while she wore that skintight full-body suit were rare. I had to milk this for all it was worth…
After spending a moment plastered against her back and marking my territory, Karen—arms laden with the mark of Those Who Swallow the Twilight and various pieces of evidence—spoke in a cautious tone.
“Lord Yona. How do you intend to handle this matter?”
“Handle what, exactly?”
“The aftermath. If you tell me how much to report to the temple and how much to conceal, I will follow your instructions. Otherwise, I will handle it at my own discretion.”
“Ah, that. Well…”
After organizing my thoughts for a moment, I nodded.
“Let’s just keep everything a secret!”
“Pardon?”
“Inquisitor Karen came alone to punish the heretics despite everyone trying to stop her. She believed the only way to save Inquisitor Ian was to kill the one who cast the curse… I mean, the blessing.”
“But since it wasn’t actually a curse, killing the caster wouldn’t solve anything…”
“I know. Just go with the story that she was mentally cornered to that extent!”
“Story…?”
I explained in more detail to the tilting Karen.
“She fought her way back to the center of the first floor alone, only to find traces of a fierce battle and fragments of a monster she’d never seen before.”
As I spoke, I placed one of the thorns I’d cut from the Thorn King into her hand.
“Those Who Swallow the Twilight succeeded in summoning the first-floor guardian that was thought not to exist, using some unknown method. However, exhausted from the ritual, they ended up perishing alongside the guardian!”
“What? But then your achievements would disappear.”
“Doesn’t matter. I came up with this while licking Elly’s nape and thinking how salty it tasted.”
“Y-Yona, you were thinking that?!”
Elly thrashed in shock. I adjusted my center of gravity to match her movements and barely avoided falling before continuing.
“The summoning conditions for the first-floor guardian must never be revealed.”
“Why? I would never presume to understand the Goddess’s will, but if I may be so bold as to guess, the first floor is like a training ground that turns ordinary people into adventurers.”
“It is exactly that.”
“O… Goddess… A-Anyway, if we could regularly defeat the floor guardian, the growth rate of adventurers would increase dramatically. Wouldn’t that align with the Goddess’s intentions?”
“That’s true too. But since you don’t seem to understand yet, let me tell you… What I want to hide isn’t the usefulness of the floor guardian, but its summoning conditions.”
“What kind of conditions could they possibly be?”
Karen blinked. Elly, Rydia, and even Lemon and Apple—who for some reason were giving me sly looks—held their breath and waited for my answer.
After a brief pause, I spoke in a low, heavy voice.
“The corpses of every monster and elf on the first floor. Intense vengeful spirits. And a sincere prayer directed at the World Tree.”
“…Ah.”
Karen’s expression hardened as realization dawned. Right. If it became known that elf corpses were a summoning condition, it would obviously put novice elves in danger…
“I understand. You mean that faith meant for the Goddess could flow to an already dead god.”
“Duh?”
“Yes. Offering faith to a dead god only brings emptiness in return. You don’t want to create more victims like the elves of the past, do you, Yona-janghae?”
“Deh-deh?”
“As an elf, I also agree with Yona-nim’s opinion, sir.”
“It’s not something from our generation, but we’ve only heard stories… They say clinging to prayers that bring no response is like slowly walking toward death, sir.”
“……”
My head throbbed slightly at perspectives completely different from what I’d been thinking.
“No, seriously, none of you thought about innocent victims because elf corpses are the material? Especially Lemon and Apple—you’re both elves.”
“But elf corpses are already circulating on the market, sir. In other words, they’re already being targeted fairly often, sir.”
“Innocent victims appear by the dozens every day at the hands of plunderers, sir. Regardless of race.”
“Oh.”
She was right. Come to think of it, elf corpses were already being traded at high prices. In other words, whether I revealed the summoning conditions or not, elves were already the top priority targets for plunderers. While there were complicated procedures for official buying and selling… not everything in this world went through official channels.
“I see… So Lemon and Apple are always getting captured and put in life-threatening situations not because they like being tied up, but because their ransom is expensive…”
“You were looking at us with those eyes?!”
“Hmm… Not a bad look, sir.”
Lemon recoiled in horror. Apple nodded calmly. Lemon recoiled even further at that. Honestly, watching these two never got boring.
It was a relief we arrived in time to save them. If the timing had been even slightly off… we would’ve had to summon the floor guardian using Lemon and Apple’s corpses.
“Haaah.”
I let out a deep sigh and buried my nose deep in Elly’s hair. Right on cue, the mini sanctuary’s duration ended. My body was already fully recovered, so it shouldn’t have mattered…
“Kuhk!?”
Suddenly, a burning sensation flooded my entire body as intense pain surged through me.
“Yona?!”
Elly, who had been carrying me half-resignedly, whipped her head around in shock. Rydia immediately prepared a potion while Karen readied a healing spell using divine power. Just as Rydia grabbed my chin to pour the potion into my mouth, I squeezed out what little strength I had left and shook my head.
“I-I’m fine…!”
“Don’t be stubborn. We don’t know what kind of aftereffects this might have. At least drink the potion first.”
“N-No. I’m really okay.”
“The thorns had poison. The dagger’s power neutralized most of it, but some might still remain…”
Rydia stroked my back and tried to feed me the potion again. But this wasn’t something a potion could fix. After all—
“An… authority…”
“Huh?”
It felt similar to when I drew an authority through gacha. Something deep inside my body was being rewritten. There was a brief moment of pain, but it wouldn’t last long. There was no process of forcibly imprinting knowledge into my head or optimizing my body like with skills. I just had to endure the moment the authority was engraved into my soul.
Sure enough, just moments ago I’d felt like my insides were flipping over, but now all that remained was a refreshing sensation, as if I’d received a full-body massage. And naturally, the method to use the authority surfaced in my mind.
“Basileus.”
The moment I spoke the authority’s name, the sensation of wood settled on my head. It was merely ash wood woven into a ring with minimal decoration. Calling it a crown felt far too crude. It probably felt similar to removing all the thorns from the Thorn King’s crown. But the power contained within was not to be underestimated.
“Grow.”
At that single word, a blade of grass nearby rapidly grew and bloomed into a flower. It resembled the way the surrounding nature had grown wildly just before the Thorn King appeared. However, I couldn’t help but feel a hollow sensation as the warm energy that had spread through my body was swiftly drained away. It wasn’t from consuming the mana I’d recently managed to increase. It was the pure divine power that had remained in my body after absorbing and refining the distorted blessing that had once infested Ian’s body. That was what fueled the plant’s growth.
I could probably accelerate plant growth without consuming divine power, but rapid growth like this would be difficult. The sight of flowers blooming from a single word left everyone around me stunned.
“Yona? What is this…?”
“The World Tree’s authority. First time seeing it.”
“Regardless, the labyrinth is directly managed by the Goddess. This must also be her will.”
“…It really is the World Tree’s authority, sir.”
“Excluding Lady Eve, don’t we elves still have no remaining authorities?”
It was useful. Even if it was weak right now, if I accumulated more divine power and researched how to utilize it, it would definitely be helpful. But rapid plant growth through consuming divine power was merely a secondary effect. Like most authorities, the usage method became clear the moment it settled within me. I didn’t need to materialize the authority or consume divine power like before. Simply possessing it drastically increased my own growth rate. Just like how it had grown the plant moments ago…
And this growth boost applied to all forms of growth. Not only achievements gained through ordinary training, but even rewards obtained upon surviving the labyrinth were no exception. Other authorities possessed powerful abilities in and of themselves. Just as Sina had used a relatively easy-to-obtain elemental god’s authority to cause small-scale natural disasters. But Basileus was different. It held no particular power on its own. However, if I strove to become stronger, it promised greater rewards than anything else.
“So…”
Basileus was the Greek word for king. It suited a classic “king’s return” type authority perfectly. Gripping Elly’s waist firmly with my thighs, I straightened my back. Then, in a deliberately dignified voice, I spoke.
“Yona is no longer a baby. He is a king.”
“Ah, elves do not serve kings, sir. Elvenforest has been a republic for four hundred years, sir.”
“A king who doesn’t bring in money is unnecessary, sir! Revolution, sir!”
“……”
I was immediately dethroned.
…Come to think of it, being a fallen royal family might have a certain charm to it.