Night in the Imperial Capital - 2
The ornate carriage rattled onward toward the Imperial Capital.
Ordinarily, carriage ambushes were such a cliché in web novels and games that I'd boarded with my heart thoroughly steeled for the worst.
And yet the ride proved so thoroughly safe that all that preparation felt almost embarrassing.
From time to time, crows circled the carriage.
Ordinary crows would have meant nothing — but this was a fantasy game world.
Remembering the Emperor's magic, my mood soured slightly.
Being spied on by that old skeleton geezer? Ugh. Physiologically impossible to handle.
Rationally speaking, I knew that even in the chaos of wartime, no one in their right mind would attack a carriage bearing the crest of a high noble or the imperial family.
But still — clichés usually happen, don't they?
No matter how irrational the situation.
Honestly, I might have been hoping for an ambush just a little.
A heart-pounding adventure! There was romance in that.
What makes a person's heart race is a threat felt directly in the body.
We would arrive at the Imperial Capital as dusk fell, so until then I accepted the food the Hero had stuffed into his subspace pouch, shifting my stiff body this way and that inside the cramped carriage.
The Hero had driven the Holy Sword into the carriage floor with one hand and was casually handing over food with the other — a performance closer to a circus act than anything else.
He passed me bread, skewers, and the like, and when I took them not with my hands but with my mouth, I saw his expression waver ever so slightly.
Yes — that confirmed it. He was a man after all.
Of course he would be. If a woman accepted food that way, blushing would be the normal reaction, wouldn't it?
Watching that steel-hard blank face crack with the faintest fissure, I felt a quiet satisfaction and gave him a shallow smile.
I hoped that someday I would see his face dyed red with embarrassment.
My stomach was full. Now it was truly time to think.
Not about the silly pranks from earlier.
Real plans for the future.
Honestly, I still had no certainty that I would survive.
It was, fundamentally, a problem of the lifespan this body possessed.
Considering that every Saintess had died young, the chance that I might escape that fate was probably a vain dream.
But humans are creatures who, from somewhere deep in their hearts, carry a faint thread of hope and press forward — and so I would move ahead, hoping my journey would not end.
That was my wish.
Telling the stars of such a wish would never get me heard, of course.
The stars had never intervened in the world beyond a certain threshold.
And was "stars" even the right plural to begin with?
Aside from the two stars whose existence had actually been proven — the two gods worshipped in the Holy Kingdom — the rest were nothing more than pretty trash glittering in the sky.
The more I followed that train of thought, the further it drifted into irrelevance, so I hastily steered the topic back to the main point.
First, let's organize what I need to do, step by step.
One: visit the black market at night.
Two: purchase items to manage the Erosion Rate.
Three: buy a notebook.
Four: don't get caught by the Hero.
Good. The plan is nearly perfect.
The Hero is human too, so when he sleeps, I'll sneak outside!
Though… will he sleep?
Honestly, looking at how exhausted he seemed, I thought he'd drop off any second.
But according to the game's descriptions, from the moment the Hero took up the Holy Sword he was no different from a Superhuman — he could go days without sleep, and there were even quests that could only be completed at night because of that.
In the end, all I could do was pray.
That the Hero would sleep soundly.
As always. Yes. Just like that.
The carriage rattled on and at last reached the Imperial Capital, called the heart of the Empire.
For some reason, this luxurious carriage skipped the inspection that every person without exception had to undergo just before entering the capital, and raced through the Imperial Capital at top speed.
Beyond the massive gates, the imperial palace — with its rather modest-looking small palace and several tall towers that seemed almost too humble for a nation called the widest in the world — felt beautiful precisely because of that.
In wartime, an ostentatious palace would only poison the people's hearts, so one could call it wise.
I remembered the game graphics as distinctly lavish, but the night palace and the night capital before my eyes looked rather gloomy.
As if a ghost might leap out at any moment.
Well, even if not a ghost, there was one old skeleton around.
An apt description, I'd say.
Ahaha.
Anyway, after meeting the Emperor, we would almost certainly be assigned a room.
Jerome might well end up staying in the same one.
Here, "room" meant something no different from a house.
Because the term covered a whole space with a living room, bathroom, and multiple chambers.
Why the interior of this austere-looking palace took such an unusual form was something only the Emperor — a mage powerful enough to interfere with space itself — would know.
He was one of the recruitable NPCs with the epithet Supporting Star, the Bone Star, so his combat power was understandable.
Most companions with epithets were Tier 1, after all.
Especially if they were Stars.
But recruiting the Emperor as a companion for the front lines required an extremely complicated process, and the dukes would have to fill the empty throne.
In a situation where power naturally fractured and the nation grew unstable, what would the Hero have to do?
Run around on foot, of course. What else could you do?
That was why I preferred recruiting companions who could handle the aftermath over pure strength, so recruiting the Emperor was not a priority.
The three of us walking through the dim palace after stepping down from the carriage looked a little eerie.
Watching the Hero's back, I quickened my steps to stick close.
My legs creaked, but this much was bearable.
I moved my feet and turned my mind at the same time.
You could say I was rolling both my head and my feet.
Jokes like that kept bubbling up unbidden.
Just what kind of person had the Saintess been?
In the game she had clearly been portrayed as a precarious flower on a cliff's edge — yet ever since the Erosion Rate rose, I kept craving sweets, and controlling these trivial jokes and thoughts that burst out like symptoms of mental illness had become terribly difficult.
Or was it not the Saintess who had changed, but me?
…Maybe so.
Anyway! Time to think about what matters.
I absolutely had to get to the black market and obtain items to lower the Erosion Rate.
Otherwise I really felt like I might die.
Surviving in this body was like walking a blade's edge — if I kept wandering around with my sanity this loose, I would surely die.
First, meet the Emperor, then wait for the Hero to fall asleep.
And just then, a massive door stood before our eyes.
Ordinarily, the only place one could meet the Emperor at night was his private office — but since he was receiving both the Hero and the Saintess at once, it seemed the meeting would take place in an official setting.
Somehow, I'd seen those crows…
Bad luck.
Had the crows and the Hero been communicating?
As if an appointment had already been made, only silence came from within.
The Hero approached the great door and knocked.
Creeeak—
The door, linked by invisible threads, slowly opened, and inside, countless nobles and the Emperor seated upon the throne came into view.
And the moment we appeared, a murmur of noise began—
"Tsk. Quiet."
The Emperor spoke softly, as if irritated.
But the result of that quiet word was enormous — a single utterance that created perfect silence demonstrated his power.
In truth, it wasn't quiet.
The way a fleshless skeleton produced sound was through magic and sleight of hand — in other words, a trick.
But revealing a magician's trick would be a grave discourtesy.
I am a person who observes etiquette properly.
The nobles cast glances at us mixed with all sorts of things.
Hmm — suspicion, jealousy, anger?
Anger? What was that about?
Admiration, pity, reverence, faith.
…Faith?
The swirl of so many emotions in their gazes was thoroughly dizzying.
Using holy magic here would clearly be rude.
I decided to endure it for now.
Strangely, as the Erosion Rate rose and I grew more like her, my abilities seemed to grow stronger.
My eyes seemed to catch more than other people's did.
And with those thoughts, I waited for the Emperor's words.
"You must be tired. Go and rest."
…What?