Rumors of the City-State (4)
"L-Lord God! Please, return at once... hurry!"
Once Sorap had subdued the Dark Holy Association's thugs, the family heads rushed to contain the situation. They'd guessed that letting things go any further would only backfire.
The Snake God's face twisted as it began its sluggish retreat. The very men who had summoned it — the heads of the Bion and Griant families — slipped away with sweat beading on their brows.
"Fools..."
Sorap muttered as he sheathed his dagger.
Parading around with a god at their backs was already pathetic enough. Failing to even control the thing? That was something else entirely. If there was ever a time for the phrase it just keeps getting worse, this was it.
"Captain."
The assassin unit's agents arrived a beat later. Unlike Sorap, who had happened to be nearby and moved to suppress the situation at once, they would have been at headquarters. That they arrived so quickly was worthy of the Crase family's title as the Hidden Blade.
"Arrest them. Anyone I designate goes to the interrogation chamber."
Anyone who followed the Disaster earned the epithet of "continental enemy" — there was no escaping it. The Dark Holy Association was a blight that had to be torn out by the roots. From what Sorap had seen of the fight, they were clearly small fry with nothing useful to offer. Still, the process had to be observed.
The assassin unit departed on his orders, and Sorap surveyed the crowd. Citizens who had just secured their own safety were already offering prayers of thanks. Among them, there was no sign of the woman with blue-white hair.
"So she could use magic."
He'd offered her advice, thinking she was a clueless outsider. Maybe he'd just been sticking his nose where it didn't belong. In a world where mana users were rare to begin with, anyone who'd mastered magic was a valuable asset. She could have sat in a comfortable position and been treated accordingly. She might well have thought his concern was unwelcome.
Thinking back on it, she'd been a strange woman. Sorap was not, by nature, the kind of man who helped complete strangers — not even for something as trivial as giving directions. The reason he'd helped Quillere was simply that it had felt like something he ought to do. Not that he even knew her name.
"Hmph..."
He reached back and touched his lower back. No wound. Even without her, it would have been nothing more than a shallow cut. Still, courtesy demanded he acknowledge the debt. But the person he needed to thank was already gone. And so he set off toward Morris's shop.
He was the type who settled his debts — both favors and grudges — without fail. If he couldn't do it directly, then doing it indirectly would have to suffice.
Quillere had been looking for a map, and Sorap had pointed her toward Morris's shop. He hadn't put much thought into the recommendation. It had simply been the closest place.
Morris, however, was a shrewd man. He wasn't stupid enough to get caught running an obvious scam like those two-bit swindlers, but he knew how to quietly pad his profits. Customers who visited his shop tended to walk away a little poorer than they realized, even when they thought they'd bargained well. Unwary outsiders made especially tempting targets.
She might have been taken for a ride as well. If so, he couldn't return the money she'd lost — but punishing the man who'd cheated her would be a form of repayment in its own right. Even if she never found out.
"I've already got Morris's past mistakes on record. If I use those..."
He could at least slap him with a modest fine.
It was the kind of thought that would have made anyone who overheard it recoil — and that was when a peculiar melody reached his ears. A tune that called to mind the opera troupe that had visited the city long ago. No — sweeter than that.
Sorap stopped dead and looked around, searching for the source. He quickly realized the sound was coming from inside the shop.
What in the world is Morris up to?
Had he hired an entire orchestra to play inside his store? It wasn't Sorap's place to meddle in another man's business, but he couldn't make sense of it.
He opened the door and stepped inside. Morris was right in front of him, gloves on, diligently polishing some kind of metal box. He was whistling, a foolishly happy grin plastered across his face.
"Well now, if it isn't Sir Sorap. It's been a while since you've graced my shop."
Sensing the presence, Morris launched into his usual oily chatter and jerked his chin in greeting. Sorap said nothing. He simply walked a slow circuit of the shop. There was no trace of another person anywhere.
His gaze drifted through the empty air before locking onto the silver metal box. As if drawn by it, he approached and spoke.
"This music... it's coming from this?"
The disbelief in his voice was unlike him. Morris's lips curled as if he'd been waiting for exactly that question, and he launched into his tale.
"Ahem! Indeed it is. Can you tell? This elegant melody! This unparalleled refinement! And the source of it all is this one-of-a-kind treasure... the blessing of the music box."
"...Music box?"
Sorap's eyelid twitched at a word he'd never heard in his life. Morris, oblivious to the reaction, plunged deeper into his own world and didn't stop talking.
"Hmm... well, I suppose you wouldn't know what this is. Listen carefully. A music box is, simply put... an automatic music player!"
"Automatic..."
"That's right, automatic! Automatic! Do you grasp the magnificence of it? No instruments needed. No musicians needed. An entire orchestra, obsolete! Just one! This single music box can replace every last one of them!"
Sorap's mouth fell slightly open — a man who almost never showed a reaction. Satisfied with that response, Morris rattled on, but Sorap couldn't pull himself out of the swamp of his own thoughts. That was how absurd the music box was.
This was an era where everything ran by hand. The implications of "automatic" in this world were staggering enough — but even setting that aside, the music box was bizarre simply by existing.
Sorap had a gift for the sword and was a master of stealth and assassination, but he was no stranger to magic either. And by that knowledge, the music box's operating principle made no sense. He couldn't sense any mana. Which meant it wasn't a magical tool.
Even if it did contain mana, how could it store a melody this vast — and play it back? Even if some supernatural technique had overcome that hurdle, the next question was mana capacity. How much mana would it take to sustain such a technique? By any ordinary measure, you'd need to be at least an archmage to pull it off — and even then, you'd need frequent mana replenishment.
And yet, look at this music box. It was spinning, producing a beautiful melody, with not a trace of mana to be felt. At that point, "beautiful" was no longer the right word. "Uncanny" was.
"It's a masterpiece that has it all — elegance, convenience, and rarity! Once word of this thing gets out, who would bother hiring an orchestra? Everyone will swarm it like bees after honey! And the nobility will be no exception! From the Empire's aristocrats to the Holy Kingdom's bishops, from merchant princes to local power brokers — they'll all be falling over themselves to get their hands on one!"
Morris was practically ranting, his eyes bloodshot.
"And I got it for a mere nine maps...! At last, my devotion has been rewarded..."
Unlike Sorap, who was trembling with awe, Morris was blinded by greed and calculation. He'd recognized the music box's value, certainly. But he'd judged it purely through a merchant's eyes, and so he'd failed to grasp its true worth.
Sorap, on the other hand, understood. This was something truly extraordinary. If one so desired, it could turn high society on its head. As a research specimen, its value was immense. If the technology inside the music box could be replicated, it would spark a dazzling leap forward in magical engineering. This wasn't just a treasure that would move the powerful — it was something that could move entire nations.
"...Nine maps? Morris. Explain where and how you acquired this."
His expression had gone rigid. He needed to know the treasure's origin. Who made it, how it was made, how many existed — as much information as possible.
"A most generous customer came by. She was wearing a peculiar white outfit, and she pulled out the music box and proposed a trade. At first I thought she was just some woman who didn't know how the world worked... but carrying something like this around, she must be a daughter of a distinguished house. Perhaps I should have been a bit more generous..."
As Morris talked, Sorap pictured a woman. A woman in exotic clothing the likes of which he'd never seen. Quite possibly the last visitor to Morris's shop before himself...
"...Did you hear her name?"
"Her name? No. Come to think of it, I don't even know that."
He'd felt something odd about her from the first moment they met. But aside from that striking appearance and her icy demeanor, he'd thought there was nothing particularly unusual about her. A mage — and the owner of something like this... Sorap was seized by a powerful conviction that he had to see her again.
But he'd already missed his chance. There was no way to pinpoint her location now. Finding her would mean searching the entire area, and that would require mobilizing the assassin unit. The authority to issue that order belonged to the family head — a young lord who was only just shouldering the weight of the Crase name. This was a matter more than worth reporting.
Of course, before that.
"You said you traded it for nine maps."
"Hmm? That's right. A shining moment of the customer's generosity and my own business acumen. Today will go down as the greatest day in the history of my—"
"That falls squarely under Article 1, Clause 4 of the Uristia Commercial Code, as established by the Crase ancestors: the act of deceiving a foreigner to obtain financial gain. You knew the item's true value and still cheated her out of it at a pittance, all to pocket dozens of times the profit. Deplorable."
Sorap's chilling gaze locked onto Morris. The merchant, who had been cheerfully spinning his tale like a war story, blinked and waved his hands.
"W-what, what are you talking about?! Me, deceiving a customer?! This was a perfectly sound, completely transparent transaction concluded by mutual agreement—"
"If the gap in information is that wide, you can hardly call it fair. You should have given that woman a proper explanation first. Therefore."
It was sophistry. Sorap knew that perfectly well. But he was a man sworn to his family, and he would not hesitate to do anything that might strengthen his young lord. This music box would be an enormous asset. He could not allow it to remain in the hands of a mere merchant, only to slip away.
In a grave voice, he declared:
The waystation was in an uproar.
"The Snake God showed up again... At this rate..."
"Did you hear Ron and Berun went missing recently? It has to be the Snake God. They were eaten, just like last time!"
"What the hell are the families even doing? At this rate we're all as good as dead!"
I stopped in a shadowed blind spot and quietly took in the situation. It was a bit awkward, honestly. I'd come here hoping to find a carriage, since walking all the way to the Empire seemed like a tall order. This was clearly not the atmosphere for that.
"The family heads managed to send it away today... but next time might be different."
All sorts of people had gathered in the middle of the waystation. A mix of professions and origins, from the look of it. Every last one of them wore a dark expression as they talked in grim tones.
"If we want to live, we have to leave the city...! Everyone knows it by now, right? There's no way to stop that thing. If there were, the families would have done something already."
I pricked up my ears and listened for a moment, and the gist became clear enough. Escape the city. Given that an unstoppable disaster was the cause, "emigration" was probably the more accurate word.
There were some native Uristians among the people gathered at the waystation, but most seemed to be travelers or recent settlers. The natives who'd lived in the city their whole lives had too many ties binding them here to leave so easily. The exodus that had already been underway seemed to have intensified with today's reappearance of the Snake God.
At the center of the crowd stood a platinum-blonde woman.
"Everyone! I trust you're all aware of the situation. Anyone who wishes to head for the Empire with me, please join us."
The woman with a wand at her hip carried herself with a dignity the others lacked. She didn't seem like a simple commoner. Even in the citizens' eyes as they looked at her, I could see admiration and envy.
So she was the leader of this procession. I turned to the purple-haired woman standing nearby.
"Know who she is?"
"...Huh? Me?"
A woman who'd been standing in the shadows just like me, arms crossed, watching the crowd. She glanced sideways at my voice, her shoulders giving a slight twitch, then answered the question.
"...Anasha Sheril. She's from the Empire, and apparently a fairly skilled mage. Used to be in service to House Grifeon, though I've no idea how she ended up all the way out here."
The purple-haired woman's voice was even and calm, without any rise or fall. She didn't ramble. She just gave me the essentials.
Anasha Sheril had settled in the city a few years ago, and it seemed the Snake God's appearance had finally pushed her past her limit. Before she was a mage, she was an experienced traveler, and she supposedly knew the geography all the way to the Empire like the back of her hand. She'd seen frightened citizens try to flee the city on their own, only to get attacked by mutated monsters and worse, and she'd decided to help. She'd stepped forward to gather as many would-be emigrants as possible for the journey to the Empire.
Anasha's startling declaration sent a ripple through the crowd.
The subjugation of the Snake God. It was, without a doubt, the dearest wish of every citizen. Of course, if those words had come from the families — who'd already lost all credibility — no one would have given them a second thought. But if the Empire moved, that was a different story. A vast and powerful nation ruled by an emperor, on a scale that Uristia couldn't even begin to compare with. Naturally, it had no shortage of formidable individuals.
The thought flickered through the citizens' minds — if a good number of those people were mobilized, maybe, just maybe...
I had to swallow a bitter smile. That's going to be hard.
Even if it was a lesser god that didn't even qualify as a demigod, it was still a being that possessed divine power. I didn't know how many Hero-class fighters existed in this era, but ordinary people wouldn't stand a chance. Regular knights who weren't Heroes? Don't even mention them. Well, if they just threw bodies at the problem, they might scrape by somehow. But the Arundel Empire had no obligation to do that for Uristia — a city-state that wasn't even an ally.
"What's your name?"
I asked the person who'd satisfied my curiosity. She answered without hesitation.
"Sigilla. You?"
"Quillere."
That much I could share. Leaving Sigilla to mull over my name, I walked toward the waystation. I was going to ask to join them.
It felt like it kind of defeated the purpose of going through all that trouble to get a map. But after combing through it earlier, some of the memories buried inside me had started to surface. One of the branching routes leading to the Empire had come back to me.
It wasn't a path ordinary people could use, but for me, it was the optimal route — a straight shot that would get me to Arundel faster than anyone. I just needed to travel with them as far as the vicinity of the Liv Sea. It would be more convenient that way. Safer, too.
Things like the hellhound I'd run into before had been a type advantage, but I couldn't count on always having that edge. Without an elemental advantage, a Snow Woman's specs were nothing special. And on top of that, the monsters had been acting strangely lately. If I ran into the wrong one, I might not even get a chance to fight back. So just in case... it was an ugly way to put it, but I needed something like a meat shield, didn't I? My life came first, after all.
I walked past the still-murmuring crowd and made my intentions known to Anasha.
A lovely, delicate voice. Beautiful, but cold — and unfortunately, it belonged to me.
For a moment, silence fell.