Silver Bullet (2)
By the time the man opened his eyes, Raul had already set a camping cook set over the fire and was melting the snow around them to secure drinking water.
"Huh?!"
The moment he came to, Walter shot upright.
The movement sent a savage headache and a stab of pain crashing through him at once, but Walter still clutched his head with one hand and looked around in confusion.
"Y-your Highness!"
He called to the woman they had laid down at a distance and hurried toward her.
The man standing beside her only then seemed to notice his surroundings, and his gaze landed on Raul, who was sitting by the fire.
"...You are."
Raul answered by walking over with something in his hand.
"Here. Drink this first."
What Raul held out was a bowl of steaming hot water.
Walter did not take it. Instead, he stood there shaking all over, as if trying to place himself between the princess and Raul.
"State your identity first."
"Have you lost your memory completely? If I meant you harm, do you think I would have gone out of my way to do this?"
"Do this?"
When Walter frowned in confusion, Raul extended a finger.
Walter realized at once that it was pointing toward his side.
Looking down, he saw a bandage soaked through with bright red blood.
Come to think of it, his hand had also been wrapped where that "knight" had run him through.
"Honestly, if you keep moving around like that, you'll tear it open again. Sit down already. I'm changing the bandage."
"W-wait, but--"
"Sit."
"A-alright."
Only then did Raul let out a small sigh as he watched the magician finally obey.
After he wordlessly removed the bandage, applied medicine, and wrapped it up again, Walter at last gave his thanks in earnest.
"T-thank you."
Raul stuffed the spare bandages into his backpack and answered with a faintly awkward tone.
"Don't thank me too much. I'll be charging double for the medicine and bandages anyway."
"E-even so..."
"Enough. Drink this too. It'll get cold."
"Huh? Ah, yes."
Walter accepted the cook-lid Raul handed him with a vacant expression.
This time, though, he drank without hesitation.
He was so thirsty that, despite the steam rising from it, he gulped it down in great swallows.
It was only after he had finished that he seemed to notice something was off.
"The water... It's salty?"
"You and that woman were both badly dehydrated, so I crushed some salt and dried fruit into it."
"D-dehydration? What is that?"
"You don't even know that much?"
Raul paused for a moment at the young man's level of knowledge, which was enough to provoke a cough, and then gave him a brief explanation.
"S-so such an illness exists?"
"It's not exactly an illness, but... Here. Feed this to that woman."
As he said it, Raul held out a thick, dark green liquid that looked like something dredged out of a swamp.
"Feed her... this?"
Walter frowned at the unexpectedly harsh smell and asked, and Raul narrowed his brow right back.
"Are you planning to let her die?"
"D-die... What?! "
"She was hit by an arrow, and that arrow was poisoned, wasn't it?"
"H-how did you know that--!"
"Forget being shocked by useless things. Here. Give it to her slowly, one drop at a time."
Raul thrust the bowl into his hands, and Walter, as expected, tended to the woman with care.
Only after the woman's ragged breathing had calmed somewhat was a proper conversation finally possible.
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"...Are you a wandering healer?"
After quite some time had passed, the man looked at Raul with a composed voice and steady eyes and asked the question.
"Something like that."
"...That's impossible. That day, you clearly used runic magic. I saw you handle a sword as well."
"You don't know what dehydration is, but you recognize runic magic?"
"..."
The magician said nothing, simply studying Raul with an unchanged expression.
It could have been taken as ingratitude, but since Raul now knew the woman lying there was the princess, he decided to be generous and understand this excessive caution.
"This is who I am."
With that, Raul held out, naturally, a silver identity tag.
"S-Silver Bullet?! "
As expected, the man's reaction was not much different from anyone else's.
"How is Silver Bullet here...?"
"Enough. Now it's my turn. You and those assassins were both calling that woman 'Your Highness.' What exactly is going on?"
The man looked away briefly as though weighing his words, then spoke as if he had finally made up his mind.
"My name is Walter. I was once a magician of the Red Tower, but I later became a court mage by order of the Kingdom of Therion."
Raul had suspected as much from the moment he cast fire magic, but he had indeed been from the Red Tower.
"And that lady is Her Highness Eleanor von Therion, the only daughter of His Majesty of Therion."
"...I remember the Therion royal family having quite a few sons."
"That's correct. But... in their endless struggle to inherit the throne of the aged former king, all of the princes died, even the Fourth Prince, who had just turned five this year."
And what was left was this one princess.
It was true enough that stories of royal houses destroying themselves through power struggles were not rare, even in this world.
The problem was...
"Still, all of them dying is a little strange, isn't it?"
At Raul's question, the court mage Walter's eyes went wide.
"Y-yes. As expected of the legendary adventurer Silver..."
"Leave that aside and continue."
"Ah, yes. Cough. The point you raised, Sir Silver Bullet, was the question that troubled all of us in the 'princess faction,' myself included. No matter how many tragedies piled upon tragedies, could it really make sense for all the princes to be assassinated on the same day, at the same hour?"
Walter's pupils turned a burning orange-red as he spoke with rising excitement.
"As we investigated the tragedy from behind, we discovered it. The existence of a monster wearing human skin and impersonating the kingdom's chancellor and the captain of the knights."
"A monster?"
At Raul's question, Walter's hands began to tremble.
"It wasn't human. It peeled off the chancellor's facial skin and wore it again as if it were changing clothes... It was a living black shadow."
"A shadow?"
"Yes. N-no other explanation fits. The body that writhed like mist, the head that breathed and spoke despite having no eyes, nose, or mouth..."
Raul fell silent for a moment, propping his chin on his hand in thought.
Something from the category of vile demons had come to mind after hearing the court mage Walter's account.
A demon without any real flesh or body: an Acid Wraith.
Come to think of it, he had heard something faintly similar during the Exceed "executive meeting" he had eavesdropped on last time.
It's been so long since I had a body that I think I'm going to piss myself here. Is it fine if I just let it out?
It had been a long time since he had had a body?
That smelled fishy.
And hadn't the bastard spent the entire meeting talking about the internal affairs of the Therion royal family?
Putting Walter's story and that fact together made the answer simple.
An Acid Wraith. More specifically, a special specimen had assassinated the chancellor and the captain of the knights of the Kingdom of Therion, stolen their flesh, and was now meddling in the kingdom's internal affairs.
And its next target was the woman lying right in front of him.
Princess Eleanor.
Huh.
On top of that, he had abruptly become entangled with a fairly central figure in the Therion royal family.
Therion.
Up until now, he had merely thought of them as a force that might become an enemy.
But if things went well, maybe he could turn this around.
Cutting off the Abyss Archduke's limbs was just as important as preparing for a head-on war with him.
That said, I can't exactly take the princess around with me while I ignore the main quest...
Raul scrubbed a hand over his face and kept thinking.
Wasn't there some faction out there that was very good at crushing demons, distinguishing creatures that merely mimicked humans, and refusing to be overpowered even by a kingdom's knight order?
And then the answer came to him sooner than expected.
Right. The crusaders existed.
The Eye of Celia and the Hammer of the Crusader Order would be more than a match for most kingdom knight orders.
Besides, Raul had also been thinking of warning them about the purple potion and figuring out how to redirect their attention afterward...
If he handed Princess Eleanor over to them, the Saint Pursuit Squad would stop in their tracks again.
Those people could endure injustice, but they absolutely could not stand vile creatures running wild and stirring up the world at their whim.
At that moment, Walter, who had been standing there with a tightly strained face, spoke with a look like an abandoned puppy.
"I-I know this all sounds impossible to believe. But Sir Silver Bullet, please, believe me. Therion, no. Exeria itself is in danger! Please!"
Walter bowed his head deeply.
Whatever else could be said, there was no mistaking the desperation in the sight of him.
Raul didn't dislike people like the knight of Zern, Lergal, who held fast to their duty like this.
And in any case, Therion's royal problem was one of the tasks that needed solving.
"What I can do for you is get you as far as Fatal. Is that acceptable?"
To keep some distance, Raul gave an answer that was neither a refusal nor a full acceptance.
"T-thank... thank you."
But even that was enough to make the court mage suddenly start shedding tears like beads of chicken droppings.
Through his tearful, broken muttering, it seemed they had already visited four noble houses, only to have all of them refuse to protect the princess.
One of them had even gone so far as to betray her location...
So this was what the life of the kingdom's last surviving bloodline looked like as it continued to crumble.
"If you've got enough energy left to cry, carry some firewood instead."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Raul soothed him with an even snappier tone than usual, then took dried meat out of his backpack.
Whiiiiiiish.
Beyond the cave entrance sealed off by a magic item, the roar of the blizzard still echoed relentlessly.
Thinking of it as an investment in himself either way, Raul filled a wide, rough bowl with water and set it to boil.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
He chopped in dried vegetables and meat.
Then, once he added flour, a steaming soup slowly deepened into something rich and savory.
Raul scooped out a bowl and handed it to Walter.
"One bowl costs one gold coin."
"W-what?! "
"What's so surprising? I'll just count it all as debt for now. When that princess there takes the throne later, you can pay me back then."
Only then did Walter understand that Raul had been joking, and he belatedly managed a thin smile.
"Yes. Of course. I will make sure to tell Her Highness about this kindness properly."
He ate Raul's meat soup while crying.
According to him, it had been nearly half a year since he last ate anything this warm and soft, ever since he started running from assassins from the end of summer.
Honestly. This was enough to make a person's heart soften.
Raul had no choice but to hand over a third bowl of soup.
The princess woke that night, deep into the darkness.
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On the second day, the blizzard still showed no sign of easing.
Raul rose early in the morning and, with Walter and the princess, checked the entrance of the cave they had taken shelter in.
He needed to make sure the building material in this world, something akin to real-world cement, was working properly.
Hisssssssss--
He had wondered where that eerie sound was coming from, and sure enough, one side of the magic item had cracked.
Raul took two more sealed packs of magic-item material from his backpack.
Then he glanced back for a moment at the two people sleeping inside the cave.
"This stuff isn't cheap."
Should he ask for money?
No, that might be a bit much for people who had reportedly survived for half a year on boiled mud and tree bark.
Still, demanding a proper reward for labor was perfectly reasonable common sense in Exeria.
It felt wrong to do anything free of charge.
Then something brushed through Raul's mind: the rosary hanging from the princess's neck.
That thing has a very small amount of divinity in it...
A holy object, if kept on the body for a long time, would slightly increase the wearer's divine power.
By volume, maybe one SP a year, at most three.
If she wore it diligently for about ten years, it might raise her by twenty SP.
Once again, he felt the full weight of the twenty SP reward from this quest.
"Hah."
It really was a lot, now that he thought about it.
Raul considered how he might get it out of the princess.
For a moment, he worked his brain.
Then it happened.
"Hm?"
Raul turned his head at the presence he felt approaching from afar.
A black silhouette came toward him.
Her long black hair hung down over her shoulders, and though her complexion was still pale, there was no mistaking her: it was Princess Eleanor.
"You shouldn't be up yet."
Raul moved to stop her immediately.
But the princess, with a blank face, waved him off.
"No. I know my own body well enough."
She did not, in fact.
Still, it would have been impolite to argue with royalty, so Raul left her be.
Eleanor was staring at the campfire Raul had built in front of the cave.
"Are you hungry?"
For reference, that princess had already woken once the previous night, eaten Raul's soup, and thrown up.
Only after taking more medicine had she finally managed to fall asleep again, and now she had awakened at last.
When Raul asked, the princess shook her head.
"I've heard that if you light a fire inside a cave, you'll be killed by an unseen demon... You're surprisingly fearless."
"This cave has a thin, long passage opening out the other side, so it's fine. I'm also circulating the air with a simple magic tool."
"...If the air circulates, then the demons won't come?"
The princess, with her black hair and eyes that held a faint brown cast, looked at Raul with a puzzled expression.
He nodded.
"Carbon monoxide poisoning... no, that's not it. Fire steals the air people need to breathe."
"...The wisdom of adventurers is sometimes greater than that of the scholars in the palace."
It was really just modern knowledge, but he didn't bother correcting her.
And so the princess took a seat right in front of the campfire.
Raul tried to offer her his robe, but the princess refused firmly.
Even if the entrance was blocked, the outer wall of the cave was still cold.
And considering her condition, the princess should have been in the worst possible shape. Yet she did not let out a single groan.
Stronger-minded than I expected.
Raul acknowledged that the princess Eleanor before him was very different from the usual image of a princess people liked to sell.
"Walter told me. That you promised safe passage to Fatal without demanding anything in return."
"I never said there'd be no cost. I only said I'd collect it when we meet again alive later."
When Raul said that with half his heart in it, Princess Eleanor let out a hollow laugh.
"What a wicked promise. To say we'll meet again alive..."
"You're saying that like someone who's already dead."
At that, the princess looked back for a moment with a subdued expression.
"If not for subjects like Walter, I would have ended my own life long ago."
"..."
"But what am I supposed to do? Because of those who throw away their lives for me again and again, I remain alive because I cannot die."
"Do you want to die, Princess?"
At Raul's question, the princess stared at him for a very long time with muddy, earth-colored eyes.
Those eyes looked almost empty.
At last, she spoke.
"My younger brother died before me. The tea we shared had been poisoned. Yet I lived, and by someone's design I was imprisoned in the highest tower. Someone wanted this worthless shell."
The princess clenched her knee hard with unkempt nails.
Whiiiiiiish.
The bleak wind battered the cave entrance again.
The blizzard showed no sign of stopping.
Outside and inside alike.
"My younger brother, Alperso, had placed a flower crown on me that day. And then, that same day... from that tiny mouth, from that frail body... he vomited up an impossible amount of blood and died. I still cannot forget Alperso's eyes."
It still feels like he's looking at me...
The princess murmured that in a voice so small it nearly disappeared.
Then she lifted her head again and said,
"So yes, I want to live. I want to live long enough to punish the filthy wretches who stole my brother, my bloodline, and my country. Is that enough of an answer?"
"...More than enough."
"Legendary adventurer Silver Bullet. Your promise was indeed wicked, but just as I'd heard, I have confirmed your noble character. And yet, I still dislike favor that is given for nothing."
"Then?"
When Raul met the princess's gaze with an adventurer's eyes, she seemed to like that and smiled.
She was the type to prove things through action rather than words.
Clink.
She undid the button at her collar, removed the rosary from her neck, and held it out to Raul.
"On the day I was born, a priest of Mimir blessed this amulet of health and wisdom. It is also an heirloom of my mother. I will give this to you."
Raul looked over the princess's entire body for a moment.
Come to think of it, she had nothing else that could really be called jewelry.
She had probably sold off everything else to survive that long flight.
But this rosary, this one thing, she had not been able to give up until the very end.
And now she was saying she would give away something she had treasured that much to Raul.
She said,
"Would this be enough to pay for the favor of a legendary adventurer?"
Raul looked at the tiny spark rising in her eyes and nodded.
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