The Scent of Evening Primrose (1)
The guest room occupied the very top floor of the Fatal Outpost. Aside from Walter, the palace mage who had been carried off to the infirmary, the remaining three were to spend the night here under the Fatal lord's personal guidance. The room was spacious and steeped in old-money elegance, but the atmosphere inside was heavy enough to press on the skin.
Princess Elenoa, with her black hair neatly arranged, broke the silence first, placing a polite hand over her chest.
"It is an honor to meet you, holy crusader of mighty Motala. I am Elenoa von Therion, sole daughter of the Therion royal house."
Her voice was soft, and her manner had all the smooth polish expected of royalty, yet a thin sheen of cold sweat had broken out across the princess's face.
The reason was obvious. Celia, the white-haired woman seated opposite Elenoa, was openly narrowing her brows with undisguised discomfort.
"Raul isn't yours. He's mine."
"...Excuse me?"
"What?"
Both Raul and the princess reacted at once, their expressions changing in a snap. What on earth was she even talking about? Raul, at a loss, spoke before Elenoa could.
"What are you babbling about all of a sudden?"
Celia pointed out something Raul had never even considered.
"That rosary around your neck. It's this princess's property, isn't it?"
"...And?"
"You don't know?"
"I mean, know what?"
"Among the four kingdoms of Exeria, receiving a brooch or a necklace directly from royalty means one thing, no matter how you dress it up: an engagement."
"An engagement?"
"Right. That princess marked you as hers, Raul."
As she said it, Celia shot Elenoa a sidelong glance. Anyone could see the feeling in her eyes. It was jealousy, with not even a shred of room for misunderstanding.
Once Elenoa understood the situation, she nearly panicked, raising both hands and waving them frantically.
"That rosary was simply a token of payment for hiring the adventurer Silver Bullet, Raul, whom I happened to meet on the road. I swear I never entertained any improper feelings toward him, nor did I harbor any opportunistic schemes."
...Was there really any need to look that horrified? And yet the effect of that oath was remarkable. The sharpness in Celia's eyes vanished at once.
Still, she pressed again.
"On your royal honor?"
"Yes. I swear it upon Lady Mimir, the Mother of Abundance. And I swear it upon every last shred of honor I have left to my name."
Like someone standing trial in court, Princess Elenoa lifted both hands high and declared her oath. Only then did the pout still lingering on the crusader's face finally melt away.
Raul tapped his own forehead and added dryly, "Celia. From the beginning, I've only known the princess for five days."
She's a bit of an airhead, so better make things clear up front.
At any rate, after the trivial misunderstanding was cleared up, the princess began speaking at length about the current state of the Therion royal house.
At first Celia listened with a blank expression, only half paying attention, but when the topic turned to a shadow wearing a human skin, her eyes suddenly sharpened.
She looked at Raul for a moment. "Acid Race. That's my guess."
Raul gave a brief nod, and Celia's expression went grave.
"If it's an Acid Race, then you mean a formless spirit-type demon?"
"Yeah. It's wearing the skin of Therion's chancellor and the commander of the knights, and it's tearing the kingdom apart from the inside. And the beginning of it..."
"So they used that demon egg you mentioned, then."
As expected, Celia was quick on the uptake; she even stole the words right out of Raul's mouth as she nodded along. Her face hardened little by little with rising anger.
Then Princess Elenoa moved.
"Holy crusader, great hammer of Motala, light of retribution that judges all falsehoods... please. Please, bring golden judgment down upon the vile rot that has fallen over Therion."
The princess bent nearly double in a ninety-degree bow, casting aside any pride she had left as royalty to beg for help. She had seen what Celia was capable of; that, more than anything, must have made her desperation unbearable.
At that, Celia reached out and helped the princess straighten, her white hair fluttering as she said, "You don't need to worry too much, Your Highness."
"You mean..."
"They may be a bunch of rather foolish brothers, but they won't let this go unanswered."
At those words, a faint mist of tears gathered in the princess's brown eyes.
With a gentler expression than before, Celia smoothed the princess's back and said in a low voice, "I will speak to the Inquisitor properly."
Leaving the two women behind as their quiet voices continued to detail the incident, Raul slipped out of the guest room without a sound.
By then, beyond the long rows of glass windows stretched across the outpost, a crimson dawn was beginning to push back the dusky navy of night.
Would morning finally come for Princess Elenoa, who had spent the long night without a single moment of sleep?
If so, then it seemed all the more likely that a wanderer's meddling ended here.
Raul quickened his pace for the sake of what he had to do.
Morning at the Fatal Outpost came early. It was called an outpost, yes, but the foundation beneath it was a military organization made up of the private soldiers of the knightly house of Fatal. From the moment the first light of dawn lifted its head, they were already on their feet and gathering in the training yard.
The sound that woke their morning was the elegant tolling of a great bell tower.
On the rooftop of the outpost, Raul sat calmly and found himself remembering, without meaning to, the blaring wake-up bugle from his previous world.
Ugh.
For some reason, it left a bad taste in his mouth.
That was when he heard the heavy clang of an iron door closing, followed by the sound of someone climbing up to the rooftop.
"Who are you?"
The old man with faded yellow hair, deep green eyes, and long ears peered at Raul through a worn monocle, fidgeting with it as he stared.
"I figured you'd still like high places, old man Dirk."
"You know me? Hm. I've never seen your face before."
"Here."
Raul, as if he'd been waiting for the question, produced an envelope from his inner pocket. It had a rather gorgeous pattern printed across it, but that wasn't the important part. What mattered was the seal stamped into the wax.
Gale's letter?
"The contents are probably a letter of introduction. I traded for it on the way here."
"Well now. Age doesn't seem to have done a damn thing to cure you of that low-born habit of selling out your friends."
Dirk the Locksmith took the letter Raul offered, then, without even opening it, set it alight with a simple spell. He pulled a pipe from his waist, clamped it between his teeth, and used the burning letter as kindling.
He drew in a deep breath, then let out a thick plume of smoke.
"Don't you even need to read it?"
"Please. It's probably just a string of plausible excuses and polite nonsense about how well I'm doing. Enough of that—tell me yourself. If you came all the way to this outpost looking for me, then this must be worth the trip."
Raul smiled faintly at Dirk's seasoned gaze and took the crystal-shaped cipher document from his coat.
"What's that?"
Only then did interest flicker in the old man's perpetually relaxed eyes.
"You already have something similar to this, don't you?"
At Raul's deadpan look, Dirk gave the same kind of crooked smile Raul had just shown him.
The moment he finished his cigarette, Dirk invited Raul into his workshop.
"Sit down wherever there's a free spot."
The workshop wasn't all that different from the guest room Celia and Elenoa had used. The only real difference was that this broad space was crammed full of reagents in all colors and a ridiculous number of beakers.
Every surface that could hold something—a dining table, a worktable, anything at all—was lined with rows of glass vessels filled to the brim with chemicals.
"Where exactly am I supposed to sit?"
"Anywhere. If you don't feel like sitting, standing is fine too."
"It's not that I don't want to sit, it's just..."
There wasn't anywhere to sit.
Raul was about to complain further, then gave up. The Locksmith's attention had already moved elsewhere.
He had already dropped the crystal Raul gave him into some bizarre liquid.
And then something strange happened.
On the surface of the crystal, which had plunged into the red reagent, a set of strange words began to shimmer and etch themselves in scarlet light—as if they were being revealed rather than carved.
[PALACE]
[PRINCESS]
"Palace... Does that mean something's happening in the Therion royal palace?" Raul asked with studied calm, leaving out the details of the quest itself. Dirk shook his head.
"No idea."
"You don't know?"
"Not yet. This crystal reacts differently depending on the alchemical reagent you use. But there are certain words and images that show up repeatedly. Connect enough of them, and eventually you get a complete picture, or a sentence."
Without even looking back at Raul, Dirk answered and pointed a finger to the right.
"That's what we've figured out so far."
Raul turned his head and saw several sheets of paper pinned to the wall with nails.
Two drawings. One line of text.
And the instant he saw them, Raul's breathing stopped.
For a moment, his whole body stood frozen as if time itself had stopped, and then his eyes slowly widened, sharp and clear.
"That..."
He forgot even to breathe as the word slipped out in a whisper, but whether he understood Raul's reaction or not, Dirk chuckled roughly and said, "Heh. No clue, huh? At first glance it looks like some kind of magic circle, but when I called in the mages from the tower, all they did was insist it wasn't one. And what about those wormy scribbles packed all over it?"
"..."
"It has a sort of linguistic pattern to it, but even in the histories of our Exeria, I've never once come across a language like that in my five hundred years of life."
Devil contractors really do think with their asses, don't they? Dirk clicked his tongue and went back to deciphering the crystal.
Raul, however, was different.
The instant he saw the two drawings, he understood exactly what they were.
"A summoning circle...?"
"What? Summoning?"
Ignoring Dirk's question, Raul slowly approached the papers.
He thought it was only natural that Dirk wouldn't recognize the language.
Because this is...demon-world script.
A language unique to demons, one that could not be understood or deciphered by anyone who had never set foot in the Demon Realm itself.
And the purpose of this summoning circle, packed so densely with that script, was painfully clear.
Demon summoning.
Not just any demon, either, but a high-ranking one that made something like a Desecration Bug—that worm crawling around on the dirt roads of the Demon Realm—look like a joke.
A demon summoning circle was the magic used to call a monster like that into Exeria.
Ha. Shit.
Raul didn't like filthy language, but this time he couldn't help it.
What kind of broken balance is this supposed to be?
The reason was the sheer absurdity of what the demon script said when he rested a finger against it and read on in silence.
A summoning circle for the Flame Devil Armor.
Flame Devil Armor was a high demon whose cruelty and viciousness had been shown in full even in the World Tree's future sight, Bad Ending No. 144.
Without realizing it, Raul swept his bangs back as his heartbeat sped up.
Then the saint's instinct, the first truth Raul had learned in this world—composure—came to his rescue.
Hm?
On the edge of a field of vision narrowed by sheer shock, something suddenly caught his eye.
It was a single line of decoded text pinned beside the two demon summoning-circle drawings.
For safe summoning, the heart, armor, and spirit body must be summoned from separate places.
"From... separate places?"
Only then did a strange suspicion brush through Raul's mind.
Come to think of it, there are two summoning circles?
If they had prepared a grand summoning circle capable of manifesting a high demon all at once, there would be no reason to have more than one.
So they're not using a grand summoning circle. They're planning to summon a high demon through multiple summoning circles?
Whether such a thing was actually possible was beside the point. The heart, armor, and spirit body described in the decoded line were unmistakably the three components of the demon Flame Devil Armor.
In other words, they intended to summon each part separately, then combine the high demon's flesh and body here in the heart of Fatal.
It's an extremely violent idea, but...
Come to think of it, demons were born with the attribute of immortality; maybe it wasn't impossible after all.
"Hey. Are you all right? You've been looking blue, then pale, then blue again ever since a while ago."
At some point, Dirk the Locksmith had come up behind him and laid a hand on Raul's shoulder.
"Old man..."
Raul almost told him about the demon summoning circle, then stopped himself.
These people had devised a scheme meticulous enough to split the summoning circle into three. Who was to say they hadn't planted eyes and ears inside this outpost as well?
The man in front of him, who was decrypting the code, might be safe enough. But Raul couldn't say the same for anyone even loosely connected to him.
This was Exeria. A world where you couldn't trust anyone with one hundred percent certainty.
"It's nothing."
In the end, Raul shut off the rapid whir of his thoughts and shook his head.
He told Dirk he'd simply been awake for fifty hours straight and had gone a little dazed, then slipped out of the workshop.
Walking down the corridor where sunlight cast spiderweb patterns through the bars, Raul paused and stared toward the north side of the pale Fatal outpost.
Beyond the endless, hateful blizzard, a massive fog of snow was swelling and churning, puffing itself larger and larger.
Raul knew exactly what it was.
The cloud of snow that forms when a huge army crosses the snow-covered Great Plain of Radhill.
Along with the demon summoning circle, there was now the appearance of the Frost Steel Orc horde.