Volcano and Knight
Getting to the inn, with its roaring fireplace, and setting down my bags took no time at all.
After washing myself with magic in my room, I went downstairs and ordered a meal.
"Excuse me—one lunch set, please."
"Coming right up!"
The waitress answered with bright energy and dashed off toward the kitchen. Watching her go, I took a sip of the complimentary water and tuned my ears to the conversations around me.
Mercenaries and merchants sat with grim faces, and the talk was, of course, about the Volcanium Ore theft that had just gone down.
"Looks like those criminals who've been keeping their heads down finally lost it."
"Tell me about it. Stealing a trade caravan's wagon? Those gutless rats actually pulled that off?"
"Someone put them up to it—has to be. No way those lunatics do something like this on their own!"
It took about ten minutes for the food to arrive. In that time I listened, and nearly every conversation circled the same conclusion: the criminals had been put up to stealing the Volcanium Ore by someone else. And it was a theory most people here seemed ready to swear by.
A few thugs acting alone was one thing. But criminals who never gathered more than five at a stretch banding together to snatch Volcanium Ore? Someone had to have been pulling the strings.
So who was the puppet master? That was where the mercenaries and merchants turned next.
"Around Himrave… Shade Fang, right? Those bastards pretty much own this area."
"Come on. Quiet little smugglers don't just start thrashing around like this out of nowhere."
"Hmm… the Void Cult, then? They've been stirring up trouble for months already."
Unlike the shared certainty that the criminals had been hired, opinions on the sponsor splintered all over the place. Names of every criminal outfit under the sun spilled from the tables around me, and even by the time I finished the lunch set that had arrived with a glass of fruit juice, no single candidate had risen above the rest.
Nothing more worth hearing here.
With the surrounding chatter yielding nothing further, I grabbed the staff I'd leaned against the table and stood. A soft clink of coins settled beside the empty plate; the waitress was there in a flash, sweeping up the dishes and the payment. Leaving her behind, I stepped out of the inn and set my feet toward Himrave's walls.
"It's not something that involves me right this second, so I'll handle my own business first."
I had a bad feeling this affair might snag me eventually, but knowing that changed nothing I could do about it now. Maybe it was pure paranoia. The ones dealing with this were Himrave's militia and the mercenary companies. I wasn't kind enough to roll up my sleeves for a mess that still had nothing to do with me, so when I reached the gate I showed a militiaman my citizen's papers and walked out of the city.
"Time to head for Bramante Volcano."
What I needed first was to find the Fire Elemental Stone waiting in a cave somewhere on Bramante Volcano. There was no friendly game system pointing the way, so from here on I had to search myself. Before I set off, I pulled the pipe from the belt at my waist and set it between my teeth.
Mana Herbs—just smoking them nudged up your mana pool and elemental understanding by a little. Lately I'd been lighting one whenever I had a spare moment.
"This time… earth, maybe."
I'd been favoring water and wind, so I dug an earth-element Mana Herb from the pouch on my belt, rolled it carefully, and packed it into the pipe. Coating the herb with mana shifted to the earth element, I settled myself onto my staff.
"Sss… haah…"
I drew once on the pipe, then worked wind magic and lifted into the sky. Eyes from every direction snapped toward me as I rose.
…That's a little embarrassing.
Mages who could fly freely were rare enough that drawing stares from people coming and going through the city was only natural. I did my best to hide the heat creeping into my face, pipe in one hand and staff in the other, and flew for Bramante Volcano.
Winter wind slapped past my whole body, but the artifact Camilla had given me kept my temperature steady. I didn't feel the cold at all.
"Oh—it's even closer than it looked."
In less than ten-odd minutes I was there. The volcano had been plain to see from the city, so I'd expected it to be near, but I arrived faster than I'd thought. Humming under my breath, I began a slow descent toward Bramante Volcano.
My boots hit the ground.
"So this is what a volcano smells like…"
The sulfur reek of volcanic ground and the burnt stench of ash hit my nose the moment I landed. I wrinkled my face and looked around at the mountain of pure black rock.
"It's huge."
Everywhere I turned there was only black stone and ash-gray soil, with the occasional half-burned, skeletal tree clinging to it. That landscape stretched from the ground under my feet all the way up. And this whole vista was just one of the rock mountains that made up Bramante Volcano.
Bramante wasn't a single lonely peak—it was a cluster of overlapping rock mountains. Dozens of them ringed the central crater. The place I was looking for was a cave mouth on one of those mountains. More precisely, a small cave entrance just wide enough for a single person.
"This is going to take a while."
In the game, a system had pointed the way. In this world, I would have to comb every one of these rock mountains by hand. The thought alone dragged a sigh out of me.
"There is another way, if I don't want that…"
If I hated the idea, I did have one other option: fly straight to the crater, punch through the lava, and drop vertically into the caves beneath. Of course, shoving aside that immense mass of molten rock alone and boring down through who-knew-how-much ground was impossible. True Name Release might make it doable—but if I didn't reach the cave within thirty seconds and get back out before the Rapid Analgesia spell's ten minutes ran out, the lava pouring into the tunnels would bury me alive.
"…Yeah. Just finding the cave entrance is faster."
I wasn't being chased by anyone, and I wasn't some dopamine junkie who liked gambling with her life. So the method left to me was simple, if slow: search every rock mountain.
"At least being a volcano means no underbrush. Small mercies."
Unlike ordinary mountains, there were no dense trees or thickets, so moving around should be easy enough. Of course, I wouldn't know a cave mouth if I didn't get close, so flying was out—I'd have to look carefully on foot.
I swallowed another sigh, dragged my motivation back into place, and started climbing with a determined step. Applying a little wind magic, I walked almost as if I were flying, and even the uphill stretches didn't cost me much strength.
One full circuit of a rock mountain later, the result was a complete blank.
"Not this one, then."
The mountain I'd landed on first had no cave entrance. Roughly an hour to search the whole thing, and still no real disappointment. I hadn't expected to strike gold on the first try.
"Next mountain."
I'd checked beforehand: forty-five rock mountains ringed Bramante Volcano. If I searched five a day, including this one, I'd find the entrance within nine days at worst.
"Or sooner, if I'm lucky."
A little greedy, maybe, but I hoped I'd find it today or tomorrow as I lifted off toward the foot of the next mountain.
Wind rushed past me.
"Hm?"
Pipe still between my teeth, lighting a fresh Mana Herb as I flew, something caught my eye. Against a world of nothing but black and gray, a jarring streak of white stood out.
"Is that… armor?"
I narrowed my eyes. The white resolved into armor—more precisely, a person collapsed in armor. The moment I realized it, I snuffed out the Mana Herb and dropped hard toward them. On the ground, details I couldn't see from the air came into focus.
"…A woman? Knight aspirant?"
The figure in armor was a woman. Black hair pulled into a ponytail, a cold, striking face. The sword at her hip suggested a swordsman or someone aiming to become a knight. And the second I looked at her, I knew exactly why she was face-down on volcanic rock.
"Wearing full plate out here…? Is she insane?"
I had an artifact that automatically regulated my body temperature. The ambient heat here had to be at least forty-five degrees Celsius. And she was tromping around volcanic terrain in full-body armor with not a single temperature-control artifact in sight? She looked every bit the madwoman. The cracked lips and empty waterskin only confirmed she hadn't brought nearly enough water either.
I dragged a hand down my face, half in disbelief—but I couldn't just leave her.
"Honestly, what kind of person… Fire, withdraw."
I didn't even need the staff. A single spoken phrase, mana moving with it, and the searing air around us vanished in a blink. I could barely feel the difference myself, but for her it would have been like switching on an air conditioner in the middle of a desert.
"Nngh…"
Sure enough, the moment the temperature dropped, her eyelids fluttered faintly and a spark of life returned. That such a cool, intelligent-looking face could have done something this stupid was hard to believe, but I shook my head and set a hand on her armor.
"Better get this off her."
I couldn't hold the cooler air forever. To keep her alive, the armor had to come off first. I knelt and put my hands to the plates—
Her hand shot up and locked around my arm.
"A-a knight does not remove her armor, even in death… If you mean to strip my armor… kill me f-first…"
"Is that right? I was going to take the armor off and give you water, but if that's how it is, I'll just leave."
"…Huh?"
I straightened as if to stand, and she grabbed my arm again in a panic. Both hands this time, almost pleading.
"I-I'm sorry. I thought I was going to die, so I just wanted to say one cool line I'd always wanted to try. Please—just save me."
"…Haah. Then just lie still."
I resisted the urge to smack the nonsense out of her and went back to working the armor free, barely swallowing the mutter that I'd gone and rescued a genuine pain in the neck.