21. Salt Is God and Invincible
21. Salt Is God and Invincible
What happened to me can be summed up in three lines.
1. I died in Rus's place.
2. Then I came back to life(?).
3. The moment I opened my eyes, the Chairwoman and Rus nearly got me killed all over again.
I mean, I wake up and the two of them are radiating sword aura and rigid energy right there. Do you people ever think about the 1st Rank guy caught in the middle? Damn high-Rank bastards.
Fortunately, both of their expressions shifted the second I tried to speak, and they helped me up to the surface above the mine.
"Finance Director, please hold his arm a little more gently. Can't you see he's suffering under your grip strength?"
"Student Rus, are you sure it isn't you who can't control your strength after reaching 7th Rank? The Finance Director looks like he's in pain."
You both hurt like hell, so let go. I can walk by myself.
But with Rus supporting my left arm and the Chairwoman my right as we climbed up—well.
The realization that even the slightest squeeze from either of them could turn me into A-dumb kept my mouth firmly shut. I simply endured, feeling every ounce of both high-rankers' grip strength.
Reaching the surface again, the sunlight was genuinely moving. There was no one near the collapsed mine entrance, probably for safety reasons.
Our first priority was getting back to the count's castle.
But there was something I had to confirm before that.
"Student Rus, do you know exactly what happened to me?"
"............."
"Right now it's just the three of us here. Only the three who share the academy's secrets. This needs to be discussed now."
I was covered in blood but otherwise perfectly fine, and with Rus and the Chairwoman present, safety had long since been secured.
Better to learn the full details of what happened before we returned to the castle.
While Rus fell silent at my words, the Chairwoman swept her glare across our surroundings.
"That irritating bastard is gone."
"Pardon?"
"The Surveyor. There's a man who grates on me every time I see him. He didn't mean harm, but carrying that kind of power... tch. Looks like that finance officer has cleared out too."
The Surveyor? You mean that 8th Rank Imperial Surveyor I know about?
What's he doing in territory like this? We're in the Kingdom, after all.
Never mind, I can ask about that later. Right now, Rus's explanation comes first.
I definitely remember my heart being pierced.
Try as I might to forget that accursed pain, I can't. I felt it unmistakably in that moment: I'm going to die here.
So why am I completely unharmed?
"...Someone advised me once that I'd find a better moment to reveal everything. That now was not the time."
"Pardon?"
"Back then I couldn't answer. Now, this is what I'd say in reply: go fuck yourself."
Rus's eyes smoldered quietly. Her gaze, which had always been half-dead, carried a faint spark of life for the very first time.
And that gaze was fixed squarely on my chest—on the spot where not just my clothes but my heart itself had been punched through.
"What dragged us into the mine and attacked using salt was a fragment of the Holy Relic."
"A Holy Relic? You mean the one from the Holy Kingdom?"
"I don't know why, but the relic wasn't whole. A fragment—about one-third of it—targeted me and the Finance Director. And the reason is."
She hesitated.
Only for the briefest moment.
"Because I hold the Dark Sword. And the Finance Director holds the Dark Sword's scabbard."
"......Pardon?"
Wait, that—
Say that again?
I already know about the scabbard. I don't understand how it happened either, but the Chairwoman and I confirmed it.
But the Dark Sword?
Rus's confession even shook the Chairwoman. She stepped quietly in front of me, positioning herself to shield me if anything went wrong.
"Isn't the Dark Sword the holy relic of the Wish Order?"
"It is. But right now, it's in my hands."
Woom.
What Rus revealed was the worn old sword she always carried. She nicked the tip of her finger and let her blood touch the blade, and the sword's appearance slowly reversed itself.
From a battered, notched blade—every part of it, grip, crossguard, and edge—transformed into something utterly black and alien.
This is the Dark Sword?
"Well, hmm. It certainly looks the part..."
"If that were really the Dark Sword, the aura of menace should be far thicker than what I sensed from the Wish Order's Holy Knight Commander."
"The Chairwoman is right. The Dark Sword normally radiates a far more intense presence. It did, until recently."
"Recently?"
"...Until the Holy Relic fragment was destroyed, and its light was absorbed into the Finance Director's scabbard."
Huh?
I feel like I just heard way too much information at once.
"You destroyed... the Holy Relic? Isn't that a conceptual-dimension artifact?"
"The Dark Sword is the same. The relic used salt to try to take our lives. I had no choice."
"No, I'm not blaming you. I feel nothing but gratitude toward Student Rus."
But if that's true, then what the Holy Kingdom still has is likewise just a fragment of the Holy Relic—and they'd be secretly searching for the rest.
This must never reach the Holy Kingdom's ears. The Mountain King may have shrunk their power absurdly, but the Holy Kingdom is still a sovereign nation.
More importantly.
"You're saying the light inside the Holy Relic was absorbed into the scabbard—into my heart?"
"Yes. I saw it with my own two eyes, clearly."
"...I don't exactly feel any different."
"The scabbard's restoration power was barely keeping the Finance Director alive, and then the Holy Relic's power was added on top of it. That's how... your impaled heart was regenerated."
Put like that, it sounds incredible. So you're telling me that inside my body, I now have the Dark Sword's scabbard plus—admittedly only a fragment—the power of a Holy Relic?
Is it okay to get my hopes up?
Honestly, this is the kind of fate-defining encounter you'd give a novel protagonist. I couldn't use the scabbard before because I'm 1st Rank and have no mana, but with the Holy Relic's light, surely something can happen now?
With the hope that I might finally escape this miserable 1st Rank existence, I looked back and forth between Rus and the Chairwoman. The certainty in their eyes matched.
"For now, I sense no ki inside the Finance Director's body. Perhaps your talent has bloomed on the magic side instead."
"Finance Director, is your heart all right?"
"No problems whatsoever."
"Then try to move your power slowly, as if focusing strength through your heart. The scabbard now has the Holy Relic's power added to it—something should respond."
My heart was pounding. Not figuratively. Literally.
I'd never really been aware of my own heartbeat normally, but when I closed my eyes and focused my consciousness on my heart, I could hear its rhythm, slow and steady.
And something inside it, too.
That's it!
But sensing something and actually drawing it out of my heart were two entirely different struggles. I don't know if Rus and the Chairwoman always do it this way, or if this was just my first time because I'm 1st Rank, but during that short period of concentration my body was drenched in sweat.
Wincing, clenching my teeth, I kept my awareness fixed on my heart and slowly, painstakingly drew the something inside it outward.
"That's it! Finance Director—I always believed you were a genius!"
"Finance Director, now guide it toward your palm. Slowly, slowly."
"...Hold on."
"This is just basic assistance with guiding power. The Chairwoman's rigid energy would be far too strong, but with a mere 7th Rank like myself, it's controllable."
"................"
Quiet, both of you. I'm about to manifest a supernatural ability for the first time in five years since I transmigrated into this game world!
This is genuinely moving. The years of being dismissed as 1st Rank, of suffering behind young schoolgirls' backs—they're over now.
From this moment on, I am reborn as a genius mage wielding two artifacts! Or a genius swordsman or martial artist—I'm not picky!
Using the ki Rus guided into me as a signpost, I finally pushed the power all the way through.
And from my fingertips.
Ssssh.
"S... salt?"
"Salt?"
"......It's salt."
A tiny amount of salt spilled out.
...That's it? No magic? No transcendent power? Nothing?
"With the Dark Sword's scabbard and a Holy Relic added on top, this result..."
"Th-the Finance Director's talent must be so im-immeasurably vast that even those two together can't awaken it! It's absolutely not because he's thoroughly, utterly talentless in every way! Definitely not! Anyway!"
"...Wait a moment."
"Huh?"
"What?"
I was disappointed at first, but thinking it over again—this is salt.
Salt. Something I can produce with my own power, created from nothing.
......Wait.
*
We're fucked. No matter how he thought about it, that was the conclusion.
Anton Beryl closed his eyes, having reached that judgment after careful deliberation.
Lying on the bed in his count's castle, he was officially listed as unconscious. Thanks to that, Finance Officer Marcus Lutel had assumed command under Kingdom law and was shouldering a share of the responsibility.
But that didn't mean Anton's own responsibility had vanished.
Why did a tremor have to happen right then...!!
He'd already known about the earthquake that collapsed the rock salt mine. That was precisely why, when he'd purchased the mine from Viscount Dabis, he'd devoted such thorough attention to that issue.
He'd hired mages of 5th Rank and above to construct defensive arrays capable of withstanding earthquakes. He'd outfitted the mine with the sturdiest construction equipment available and checked the ground stability over and over.
And in fact, not a single tremor—let alone an earthquake—had occurred.
So why, of all times, did it have to happen the very moment Finance Director Adam Caines visited the site?
Even an incident like this would normally be manageable. If safety concerns were the issue, they could simply renegotiate the terms.
But the Finance Director and the youngest-ever 6th Rank student falling into the mine together—that was something Anton had never anticipated.
After the Surveyor, the Chairwoman herself... came.
The Surveyor's arrival, having ostensibly been visiting the royal capital, was already astonishing. But far worse was that the Chairwoman had come all the way to Count Beryl's territory in person.
What kind of liege travels such a distance herself because a single subordinate is in danger? Only two possibilities existed.
Either that subordinate was indispensable to the liege.
Or he was someone the liege loved beyond all measure.
And no matter how Anton looked at it, the Finance Director satisfied both conditions.
It's quiet for now, but...
What if something had happened to the Finance Director? What if the Chairwoman's fury erupted as a result?
Right now, with the Delphia Kingdom on the brink of civil war and the royal family poised to use the Chairwoman's existence as backing to deploy their forces—if the enraged Chairwoman razed Count Beryl's domain to ash and killed Count Anton, would the royal family object to such a "trivial" matter? Unlikely, given that he was the head of a house King Aken Delminos had already abandoned.
How had things come to this?
Was my greed too excessive?
Honestly, whether a hundred years of tribute or thirty, either was excessive given the profits the rock salt mine would generate. But Anton had believed it was necessary.
This was the final chance to revive his declining territory. Was it a sin to hope for greater profit, a greater outcome?
A bitter laugh escaped Anton at the thought that this choice might cost him his house and his very life.
Right then, the bedchamber door opened.
"Count Anton. I'm relieved to see you're safe."
"......!! Finance Director!! Do you have any idea how worried I've been!? Your body—are you unharmed?"
"You ought to remain lying down, in your condition. As you can see, I'm perfectly fine. Thanks to the Chairwoman's help, I was rescued without a scratch. Student Rus as well."
"Truly... truly fortunate."
Anton swept a hand over his chest, having plunged from hell to heaven and back in an instant. A genuine relief: the Finance Director and the youngest 6th Rank were safe, and judging by his tone, the Finance Director seemed to bear no particular grudge.
Feeling gratitude toward the gods for the first time, Anton urgently pressed Adam Caines.
"And the—the Chairwoman? Was she greatly angered...?"
"Frankly, yes. But this incident was a natural disaster beyond Count Beryl's control, was it not? I'm unharmed, and I managed to persuade the Chairwoman."
"Ohh! Thank you, truly thank you!"
Gone was the man who had haggled with the Finance Director. Tears welling in his eyes, Anton bowed his head over and over in thanks. How could he not, having narrowly escaped the annihilation of his entire house?
But unlike Anton, the Finance Director let out a small sigh.
"However... it seems the investment must be treated as though it never happened. The Chairwoman has ordered me to wash my hands of it immediately."
"Regrettable, but what can be done? Think nothing of it."
The Grandis Academy and Chairwoman's investment, secured after a week-long game of brinksmanship, had fallen through. A disappointment, but there were other investors, weren't there?
In any case, with the situation resolved, the royal family's investment in the rock salt mine was all but certain—funding would not be an issue.
This was a mine with an overwhelming extraction volume, as if something deep below could generate salt without limit. Losing one major investor wouldn't cause any real disruption.
Even so, sending the Finance Director away empty-handed would be a problem in itself.
"Moreover, even without the investment, I will transfer a modest stake of the rock salt mine's salt to you."
"Pardon? But that's—"
"Consider it a token of my apology. Compensation for damages. It won't be a large amount, but sufficient for the academy's internal use. I'll supply it annually."
There was a saying: turn crisis into opportunity. If he offered salt—not a severe loss—free of charge in the wake of this incident, the Chairwoman's and Finance Director's view of Count Beryl's house would surely shift.
Most importantly, if it could soothe the mood of the Mad Dragon, the Human Butcher, even slightly, Anton was prepared to give far more.
But to his astonishment, the Finance Director shook his head.
"Hasn't the tremor significantly delayed your reconstruction efforts? I'll accept your goodwill in spirit, Count—please use the resources for your territory's recovery."
"Finance Director...?"
"I won't accept a refusal. My apologies, but I'll take my leave now."
With those words, the Finance Director rose from his seat at once.
Anton, who had been scheming to extract a nearly fraudulent profit from such an upright and principled man, bowed his head in shame. And because of that, he did not see it.
The corners of Finance Director Adam Caines's lips as he declined Anton's compensation were brimming with the most wicked, complacent smile imaginable.