The Vortex (2)
The Paltran Marquisate, which bordered the Beastman Kingdom, was—as was typical for any region touching a national border—a chaotic melting pot of cultures. When the traditions of two neighboring nations blended together, they often gave birth to something uniquely eccentric and exotic.
“Lady Ruina. Look, it’s a rabbit beastman over there.”
I followed the direction Chris was pointing. Sure enough, a human with rabbit ears was wearing thin, revealing clothes and soliciting customers. Beside the rabbit beastman, an ordinary human was doing the exact same thing in similarly skimpy attire. The sight, completely free of prejudice, made me nod in approval.
“This is a good place.”
Suddenly, I grew curious. If a human and a beastman married and had a child, what would the child look like? Would it take after the beastman? Or would it look human? In most cases, even if the child looked exactly like a beastman, people simply labeled them with a casual “Anyway, they’re a half-breed.”
That aside.
“I wonder what circumstances forced those beastmen to come all the way to another country to work like this?”
Whether in Happy Mid-land or Sad Mid-land, brothels were places for people at the very bottom of society. Of course, the customers came from all walks of life, but those who ended up supplying the services usually did so for similar reasons. I knew this well because it had once been one of my possible career paths.
If selling me off to a noble family hadn’t worked out, my parents probably would have looked into a high-class brothel next. Maid who worked day and night for nobles, high-class courtesan, or mage. Out of those three diverging roads, I had become a mage. As expected, I must have been destined to learn magic.
In the modern world, there were many ways to distinguish beastmen, but in this world, it seemed they were simply humans with animal ears and tails attached. Other than that, they weren’t all that different from humans. Though even that thought might be too human-centric. From a beastman’s perspective, humans might simply be creatures who “look exactly like us, except they don’t have ears and tails.”
I scanned the beastmen up and down. Chris spoke up.
“Lady Ruina. Do you have business with the beastmen? Why are you staring like that?”
“I want to touch their ears.”
“That look meant you wanted to touch them? Then what about the times you stared at my chest?”
“That’s because your cooking pouch is so big that no matter where I look, it ends up in my line of sight.”
“Ah, I see.”
After exchanging a few appropriately ridiculous words, we headed to a suitable inn.
[The Place Where the Wind Lingers]
After dropping off our luggage at the inn named The Place Where the Wind Lingers, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity any longer and went to find the owner.
“I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“Did you get the inn’s name from somewhere else?”
“I came up with it myself. Isn’t it creative?”
“It is creative.”
Feeling the profound mystery of the world, I sat down in the inn’s hall. Chris, who sat beside me, spoke up.
“Lady Ruina. I told you this inn isn’t some kind of chain branch, didn’t I?”
“It’s just so hard to believe. Human creativity really is limited, huh.”
After all that pondering, the best they could come up with was The Place Where the Wind Lingers. Well, it did sound somewhat elegant and plausible. I raised my hand.
“Four glasses of honey wine and two meat pies, please!”
After ordering drinks and food for myself, I placed a lantern on the table. With a whoosh, a flame that devoured sound appeared. I put a pipe in my mouth and leaned my head back. It had been a while since I’d rested properly at an inn; it felt like I might actually live a little.
Hiss. The fire caught.
Jerry flicked his finger to extinguish the flame and asked me,
“What do you plan to do now?”
“We’ll have to see how things develop.”
We had finally arrived at our destination, the Paltran Marquisate, but we were still far from finding the Holy Grail. The reason was—
“I can’t believe they discovered Toltpier’s dungeon. It’s hard to accept.”
“He’s a man who vanished without a trace some time ago. If he was hiding in a place like that, it makes sense.”
I snapped out of my thoughts and tilted my head. At the table right next to us, two men were chatting loudly. And they weren’t the only ones mentioning the name Toltpier. Practically everyone in the inn was talking about him in one way or another.
The most famous mage of the current era was, of course, Adelian Croft. She was one of the few 8th-circle archmages whose survival had been recently confirmed, and she was by far the most active. If you changed the question and asked who the most famous mage of the previous era was, the answer was still Adelian Croft. After all, her active period had been exceptionally long.
But if you changed the question again and asked who the most famous mage from three hundred years ago was, the answer changed. That was when the name of the 8th-circle archmage Toltpier Prossen came up.
All 8th-circle mages were, without exception, completely insane. Mages were already mentally unhinged to begin with, but those who reached the pinnacle of 8th-circle? It wouldn’t be strange to think of them as entirely different beings. Even Adelian seemed normal when you talked to her, but her behavior itself was missing quite a few screws, wasn’t it? Pouring every ounce of her energy into disciple training to the point it became inconvenient for daily life was clearly an act bordering on madness.
Toltpier was the same. He was famous as a madman. The most well-known anecdote about Toltpier was, of course, how he wandered the world disguised as a clown. What was interesting was that the fact he lived as a clown had only been revealed by pure coincidence. If a massacre hadn’t broken out that day, and if that massacre hadn’t reached even the lowest dregs of society, it would never have been discovered.
The full story came out, and one noble who realized the clown he had beaten just the day before was actually Toltpier got scared and shut himself in his house. That was the punctuation mark at the end of the Toltpier anecdote. But the important part was this: he hadn’t revealed his identity just because he’d been beaten by a mere noble. In other words, even if he had wandered the world in a form other than a clown, and even if he had suffered all sorts of dirty treatment during that time, people wouldn’t have noticed.
Thanks to that, people at the time had gone around treating every single bottom-dweller with extreme caution for a while. Anyway, if you heard stories like that, you’d probably think the same thing. So I understood that Toltpier was a madman, but what did that have to do with people getting so excited about his dungeon?
The answer was simple. If the famous anecdote related to Toltpier was the clown story, then the famous keyword associated with him was something else entirely.
The Alchemist of the Stars.
Yes. Toltpier was an alchemist who had reached the 8th circle. And now a dungeon belonging to such a person had been discovered. It was only natural that people’s eyes would roll back at the scent of money so thick it could paralyze their noses.
I exhaled smoke toward the ceiling and continued speaking.
“To think the Holy Grail is in Toltpier’s dungeon. What a strange coincidence.”
People didn’t know what was inside Toltpier’s dungeon, but we were different. It was thanks to what Adelian had told us. It seemed there were many other treasures in Toltpier’s dungeon besides the Holy Grail, but our goal was the Grail anyway. Well, to be precise, it was the fake Holy Grail.
It would have been so much better if it had just stayed buried in some remote mountain somewhere. Sigh.
“It looks like the rumor is spreading quickly. Soon, people will probably flock here from all over the empire and even from other countries.”
“To think so many people are coveting my Holy Grail. I’m actually tearing up.”
“Lady Ruina. Why is it your Holy Grail? That’s not right, is it?”
“But what can I do when it feels unfair?”
I tapped out the ashes from my pipe and let out a long sigh. Oh well. I slowly opened my mouth.
“First, shall we investigate the current state of Toltpier’s dungeon?”
“Didn’t Lady Adelian say it was blocked by a barrier?”
“That was a few weeks ago. We need to check what it’s like now.”
“It would be best to split up and gather information.”
Jerry muttered quietly. Indeed, splitting up to collect information would be the fastest way. Good. Now that we’d decided, it was time to start moving.
That was exactly what I was thinking when—
“What the hell did you just say, you bastard!”
At the sudden commotion, I froze. A man and a woman were fighting. To be honest, brawls breaking out in inns were extremely common. I just hadn’t emphasized it, but I had seen it every single time I’d stayed at an inn so far. So this wasn’t particularly unusual, and yet I blinked in surprise.
I recognized the voice.
The woman spoke with a sneer in her voice.
“You’ve got nothing in your pants, acting all tough.”
“Go die!”
The man and woman were fighting. At a glance, the man seemed to have the upper hand, but I knew better. In three seconds, that man’s nose bone was going to get shattered. Before that could happen, I stood up and stepped between them.
“What the—?”
The startled man stopped mid-punch. The woman also paused. I said,
“I don’t like noise.”
“What is this woman saying—?”
The man got irritated at my words, but the woman shifted her gaze to my face, clicked her tongue softly, and then glared down at the man.
“Consider yourself lucky, you.”
“Hey! Where are you going!”
The woman backed off. The man reached out in confusion, then abruptly turned his head toward me.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Hello.”
“You… what the…”
“Have you perhaps developed an illness that prevents you from recognizing people’s faces?”
“……”
The man shut his mouth. He rolled his eyes as if digging through distant memories, then whispered with an expression of disbelief.
“Is that… Ruina?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Ruina? For real?”
“Forgetting your own little sister. That’s not something I’d expect from a blood-related older brother.”
To forget his own younger sister just because they hadn’t seen each other for a little over ten years. I was worried about his memory.
“You should go see a healer. Memory decline already? Who knows what will happen as you get older.”
At those words, the man—Rizel—closed his mouth. Why was he acting like that? I tilted my head in confusion, and Rizel finally spoke in a calm voice.
“…Your face changed so much. How did you recognize me?”
“Ah.”
So that was the issue. Understood.