Chapter 83: The Thirteenth Seat of the Rounds
A gaze watched from behind a tree as Ekaterina trudged away from the Adventurers' Guild.
"Hey. Get out here."
And who was hiding there? The Sub-Rounds on relay duty—the very one who had spent the entire day transmitting every moment of Lupin and Ekaterina's fight. The girl startled, scrambled out in a fluster, and bowed her head low.
Ekaterina was in a state of extreme agitation. She had meant to have a far more physical conversation with Lupin, take what she needed, and see herself out. Then this Sub-Rounds had to go and act the fool, and Kain had come crashing in out of nowhere. She had not received a single thing she wanted. What she had been handed instead was some mission involving thirty thousand treasure chests—and not even to receive them. Merely to find them.
What else was she supposed to do? Her fury had climbed all the way to the crown of her head. Of course she could not endure it.
"Have you lost your—"
But a pigeon had settled on the shoulder of the Ekaterina about to let her vicious streak loose. Its stare was heavy and unblinking, as if warning her what she thought she was doing. As if to say that Lady Lupin would be watching her every gesture, every step.
The right hand that had flashed upward hung in empty air and lost any place to go. She met the pigeon's eyes in a blank stare, and a chill ran the length of her spine.
I'm not a child. What, you're going to start grading my conduct? Did I even do anything that wrong? What's the problem here? A Sub-Rounds exists to assist her superior. That's obvious, isn't it? My own Sub-Rounds made a mess of this, so of course I ought to punish her and crack down hard enough that it never happens again...!
"...!"
That cold voice was something only Ekaterina could hear. More precisely, it was closer to an auditory hallucination, born of the desperate wish of a woman who had been yearning to be dominated. That the owner of the voice happened to be Lupin was only because, until moments ago, Ekaterina had been colliding with her at full strength.
Don't tell me... she's watching everything through the pigeon's eyes...?
But to a willful girl who had never truly been given an order, and never truly been watched, that single sentence was fatal.
What is domination?
When some particular force suppresses a person's thoughts and controls their actions, that state is called being dominated. Ekaterina was in that state now. Slavery and domination cannot be pulled apart; take hold of one and the other comes with it. The sexual service she had longed for was still a distant, distant story—but in this moment, she was unmistakably under dominion.
It was the instant in which Ekaterina, Twelfth Seat of the Rounds, first understood what domination meant.
"...... I-I should start with aura training, I suppose."
Only then could she loose her clones and set them to finding treasure chests, or whatever the things were. It was absolutely not that she wanted to be conscripted into labor this harsh. Not in the slightest...!
Appearance mattered a great deal when it came to getting close to people. It was not only Lupin. Most human beings were the same. An impression that looked easy and unthreatening at a glance loosened a person's tension and made them simpler to approach. The bearded man left standing alone after Ekaterina had been sent off—Kain, First Seat of the Rounds—was a fine example.
"A pleasure, Lupin. I shall introduce myself first. First Seat of the Rounds. I am Kain."
The First Seat? What was a personage that lofty doing gracing this place with a visit? In the hierarchy as Lupin understood it, the First Seat of the Rounds stood higher than the Emperor. She was a feral little beast, after all, and she bowed to no one unless the logic of power was absolute.
And yet, for the First Seat—the strongest of the Rounds—he was far too young. Mid-twenties, if she stretched it. A parachute dropped in from above? Or had he genuinely been so overwhelming at a young age that he had stormed straight up to First Seat? Maybe the Rounds had suffered an upheaval just short of a dynastic overthrow, all so this man could take the chair.
Lupin ran through every possibility, and not one of them was right. Fair enough. She had forgotten, with uncanny thoroughness, about body reconstitution—one of the hallmarks of a Grand Master. But then, when a person is handed a hundred treasure chests free of charge every week, the head is bound to empty out.
Whether Ekaterina's pace of work would please her was still an open question. If the woman simply would not listen, Lupin could always end things cleanly. And if she kept clinging even after the break was already clean, then Lupin would toss her into Ginnungagap personally and be done with it.
...Of course, Lupin had no actual wish to face that situation. She had chests to crack open, and instead she would have to find out where Ginnungagap even was, go there, hand Ekaterina over. The mere thought left the nape of her neck sore and throbbing for no reason she could name. Could she not get someone else to handle this?
But while she was lost in this and that, she realized Kain had been standing there the whole time with his hand extended, waiting for a handshake.
"...Ah. Look at me. I'm sorry. I had a lot on my mind."
Lupin caught his hand in a hurry. Three years of corporate life. Three years of hell. Instinct dropped her posture and brought her free hand up beneath the elbow of the arm she had offered—the old, careful deference of an employee before someone far above her station.
Kain saw it, and spoke.
"There is no need to stand on ceremony."
He was testing her. For the record, when the same courtesy had been offered to Ekaterina, she had seized it with both hands and fired casual speech at him on the spot. Lupin, however, knew a test when she saw one. The higher the seat, the more they liked to pretend they were loosening the reins, all the while quietly taking the measure of your character.
The way she had learned that was ridiculous in itself. She had only behaved as she always did, and a company president had declared that she had passed his private test and opened a deal with her. ...What had the test even been?
The reason she remembered any of it was simple. Those few days of paid leave had been a brief paradise of treasure chests. Three days off, after being ground down by work every single day. It had tasted sweet. Truly. She had hunted the remaining chests to extinction and been left sucking her fingers until the next game came out, but even so.
Lupin shook those happy(?) old memories out of her head and spoke.
"Even so. I can hardly start rattling off casual speech in front of someone I've only just met. Does it bother you? Would you rather I spoke casually?"
Even a man like Kain, who reigned over countless others, was bound to have his standards sink after a decade or so of suffering Ekaterina. So was it any wonder that the mere sight of a young person treating the one before her with respect warmed him, and set him at ease?
Human preconceptions are a frightening thing. In that instant, two possibilities vanished clean from Kain's mind.
Lupin, an Apostle of the Calamity Star? Nonsense. Those beings did not listen to human speech in the first place. They thought only of what pleased them, and if the world failed to arrange itself to their liking, they reached for force first and looked afterward. Heartless thugs. Nothing more.
Was she warped, then, the way an ordinary deviant Aura User was warped? No. Not that either. To call her the insolent sort who, the moment an elder so much as opened their mouth, thought of nothing but talking back—why do I have to?—
"Hello? Kain... Sir Kain? Lord First Seat? What am I supposed to call you."
Lupin was far too pure and clear a person—such was the thought of most people fooled by her first impression.
"Address me as you please. You may call me Kain by name, if you wish."
"Huh? Seriously? Your Grace the Grand Duke, or something along those lines. You don't have a title of your own? You're a Rounds, of all things."
"...Then call me the Flawless Sword."
"Flawless Sword. Flawless Sword. That's a difficult one. I'll call you Kain."
At those words, the corner of Kain's mouth stirred. A purely pleasant feeling had moved the face of an old man who, under almost any circumstance, kept his expression blank.
"If you mean to call me Kain, then speak freely as well."
"Mm. You do look younger than I am. I'm a little slow to warm up to people, though.... This way is more comfortable."
"Slow to warm up. Good. Yes—do as you find comfortable."
Lupin smiled sheepishly and scratched her cheek.
A man of Kain's years, once Lupin's outrageously lush figure had registered, did not spare it much further interest. Exceptional specimens of humanity existed, of course. Even so, what met his eyes now was, in practice, nothing but her face.
She smiles so prettily.
Could a person truly be this artless? He had heard she was the Sword Emperor's head disciple before he ever heard word of the deviant aura. Like master, like disciple, perhaps. Kain knew well the character of the man called the Sword Emperor. To learn that she was a student that man had taught was enough; she had done nothing in particular, and still his fondness surged. And now that he had spoken with her in person and found her pure and honest, what reason was there to test her any further?
And yet.
He was the First Seat of the Rounds. A costly piece had been moved upon the board. The test would have to be finished, and finished properly.
Kain gathered his focus and laid his gaze upon the very center of Lupin's neck.
Flawless Sword—a swordsman who wielded a blade without flaw. The title had clung to him because the moment he willed a strike, that strike could not miss. His aura answered thought and will alike, parting space as it advanced. No intent to attack rode within it. And yet few were those who understood that the instant such aura touched skin, their life could be gone.
"...Oh?"
Lupin, who always put evasion first, reacted in earnest and drew her sword. Nor was it a simple draw. Her left hand lifted the scabbard to the height of her neck, and her right pulled the blade free by only a fraction. In that split second she had judged that, to draw at maximum speed, the scabbard itself had to move.
Even Lupin found it strange. She trusted her evasion; evasion was what her body did first, by habit, every time. Kain had not drawn. He had shown no direct killing intent. And still her instinct had told her this was a moment in which she might die.
A thrust. There isn't one? She had been certain something was about to come flying at her.
Kain watched her tilt her head against that unpleasant, unresolved feeling, and spoke.
"To have sensed that... you are a truly gifted child."
"Did you do something?"
"I put forth the will to attack. Had you not blocked that will, your life would have lain in my hand."
Lupin did not properly understand what he meant. Small wonder. She had never met a sword that crossed space. Kain laughed, low and rough. She had blocked it without knowing anything at all? Then she was all the more extraordinary.
"It means you blocked it admirably."
Whatever the case, Kain had administered his test, and Lupin had passed that brief examination splendidly.
"Ekaterina will lose her seat at the Golden Council two days hence. The lowest seat of the Rounds will then stand empty. I am of a mind to pass that seat to you. Well? Does it interest you?"
The Rounds were the dream of the Empire's martial artists, and their ideal. Ekaterina had worn some of the shine off in recent years, but martial artists still went faint at the mere name of the Rounds. The privileges were vast, and so the responsibility was meant to weigh as heavily—yet the power, the wealth, and the honor that attended a seat among the Rounds were enough to make a person forget the exhaustion of the exacting duties that came with it.
But there was one person here. A person who cared nothing for any of that, and was mad for one thing only: opening chests.
"No!"
To Lupin, the Rounds could not measure up to a treasure chest.