The Bird's Trap (3)
I followed Kanisia into the Blood Axe King's palace.
"Whoa..."
Hwaryongwang, the former ruler of Indigo, had kept a fine palace of his own — but it was nothing next to this. The difference was city versus countryside. In scale, in acreage, in the sheer number of servants, everything here was overwhelming.
Trade really does pay. The more traffic you get, the more you rake in.
Chinnimoni was drowning in specialty goods. The clown masks you could pull from the Clowns' Dungeon — a place I had farmed half to death — were just one of them. Those masks were popular with anyone who dealt in curses or hexwork, which meant they moved fast and sold high. Beyond the masks, there was the shell of a monster that looked like an armadillo, the 3-star Volberg, and the weapons and talismans you could loot off a 3-star Orc Warrior.
When a city had items you could only get there, people came. A lot of people.
When I take a city of my own, this is how I'll run it.
Not that I planned to run it myself. I'd put a fairy on it, or hire people. A former office drone managing a city? As if that would be as easy as it sounded. Which meant my job was simple: put the right talent in the right seat, then sit back and stamp whatever papers landed on my desk — fat salary, performance bonuses, and a year-end envelope thick enough to choke on.
Heh. Can't come soon enough.
Once I was operating at that level, the three thousand gems I owed Uroboros would stop being a problem.
"What's got you so happy?"
"Hm? What?"
"I said, what's got you grinning like an idiot."
"Oh. Was I smiling?"
"Yeah. Full-on ear-to-ear."
"I was not."
"You are right now."
Damn. Just imagining it had been enough to put a look on my face. I wiped the expression clean at Kanisia's remark.
"Come this way. I'll give you the tour."
"Oh! A tour. I'm in."
"Master. I shall take my post at the gatehouse."
"Sure. See you later, Abraham."
"Yes, Master."
Abraham turned and left, the square shield on his back nearly as large as he was.
Chinnimoni had two walls. The outer wall encircled the city; the inner wall wrapped the palace. Abraham was headed for the gatehouse of the inner wall.
You know what to do?
Yes, Master.
While Kanisia and Abraham traded that brief exchange, Aquaril and I locked eyes. Memorize the layout. That was the order. Aquaril was smarter than I was — and when it came to geography, she had no equal. She had walked Indigo's sewers once and committed every turn to memory.
I left the palace map to her and rubbed my hands together.
So. How do I find the vault?
Friendly as Kanisia and I had become, she was not about to hand me the location of the treasury. Ask outright and she would look at me sideways — or worse, start suspecting me. I needed to pry the information loose without giving her a reason to doubt.
"Let's go."
"Yeah."
I followed Kanisia into the palace.
"We have arrived, Master."
"Good. I'll be out shortly."
Outside the carriage, the fairy Erita announced that they had reached the dungeon. The Blood Axe King, who had ridden the whole way in comfort, answered her — and then, contrary to his own words, made no move to step down.
"Haaah... Master...!"
"I'm going to come. Take all of it."
"Yesss...! Nnhhh—!"
He was still buried in a sticky, fever-hot stretch of time with Solis, the beauty with the striking green hair. His stamina stat sat at a full sixty-five points. A mere hour of sex was never going to wear him out.
"Fix your clothes and come out."
"Yes... Master..."
The Blood Axe King finished inside her, straightened his clothes, and stepped down from the carriage. Everyone knew he was a lecher, but he was still a king. Appearing rumpled in front of his men would cost him dignity.
The air inside the carriage had been thick and sweltering. The cool wind that met him outside drew a smile to his mouth.
"Hit it harder! How many times have I told you — tap it like that and the whole thing comes down!"
"Food stores over here!"
Soldiers were throwing up a camp in front of the dungeon.
The Blood Axe King was the strongest man in Chinnimoni, but even he had never taken on a C-rank dungeon before. The place had only just been discovered, and hard information was scarce. No one could say with any certainty when the raid would finish, which meant a proper camp was mandatory if more than a hundred people were going to live out here.
"Where is Prince Kevin?"
"Ah... Blood Axe King."
"Hm?"
The first person the Blood Axe King asked for after leaving the carriage was Prince Kevin. Kevin had been the first to confirm the rumored dungeon and the first to attempt a raid; the king wanted whatever extra intelligence the prince had gathered.
The one who came running at the summons, however, was not Prince Kevin. It was Halla, his fairy.
A king calls, and you send a fairy in your place? That was an insult. The Blood Axe King would have been within his rights to take her head on the spot.
"What happened to you?"
"That is..."
He didn't. Kevin's fairy was torn up from head to toe.
Halla explained why her master had not come.
"After the first raid failed, my Master entered a second time with only himself and his fairies."
On the first attempt he had done what he always did — brought soldiers and porters along. The party had exceeded the recommended size, and the dungeon had scaled up accordingly. Prince Kevin, still sitting at three stars, had failed, of course. The soldiers and porters who went in with him never made it out. Every one of them died where they stood.
After that, Kevin decided that sitting still would only erode his standing. He took his fairies and nothing else and went back in. Stay under the recommended headcount and the difficulty does not climb. Even if they could not clear the place, he figured they could at least push through the first stretch or two.
The difficulty did not climb. The monsters that spawn in a C-rank dungeon were still brutal. Kevin had to run again. They had not entered the boss room, so retreat was still possible — but in the scramble to get out, one of his fairies died, and Kevin himself took a dullahan's thrown blade through the back.
"...And so my Master has fallen into a coma."
"....."
"Kevin got hit that hard? This dungeon is a lot more dangerous than we thought."
"No kidding. We need to prepare properly."
The Masters who had come with the Blood Axe King scowled at Halla's report. Prince Kevin and the fairies he kept were not inferior to any of them. If anything, he had been skilled enough to volunteer as the first scout. That same man had been crushed. The others could not help but tense.
"Halla, was it?"
"Yes, Blood Axe King."
"Go back to Kevin and devote yourself to his treatment. I brought physicians and medical supplies among the stores. Use all of them if you have to. Keep him alive."
"Thank you, Blood Axe King!"
Tears welled in Halla's eyes at the order to save her master by any means. She bowed to him again and again.
"Blood Axe King. One of my fairies is a healer. I will send her to Prince Kevin."
Prince Aeson stepped forward. The physicians the Blood Axe King had brought were ordinary people. A healer who could close wounds with mana and skill would give Kevin a far better chance. Aeson and Kevin were close — close enough to swap fairies for a night. They were swapping partners. Aeson was prepared to lend his healer to keep the man alive.
"Denied."
"...What?"
The Blood Axe King would not allow it.
"Your healer comes into the dungeon with us. Kevin is no ordinary man. A physician will be enough to bring him around."
"...Yes. Understood."
Aeson bit his lip and stepped back under the king's cold command.
"Halla."
"...Yes, Blood Axe King."
"Tell me everything you know about this dungeon."
The gratitude that had put tears in her eyes drained away the moment he refused the healer. Her face fell. But no one refused the ruler of Chinnimoni. Halla reported what they had learned.
"The dungeon is C-rank, and its name is..."
"This is the mess hall. Servants and soldiers eat here. Go further in and you'll find the dining room for Masters and fairies."
"So, enlisted cafeteria and officers' mess?"
"Hm? What?"
"Ah. Nothing."
The moment Kanisia explained it, my last life in the Korean army came flooding back. The mess halls there had been split the same way — enlisted and officers. Smaller units ate together; the big ones kept the kitchens separate. Not that any of that mattered here. Moving on.
Shit. How do I steer her toward the warehouse or the vault?
Mention either one and Kanisia would smell it instantly. I could not just ask to go that way. Palos's Bird could make their move at any moment, and the waiting was starting to eat at me.
Master.
Aquaril called to me under her breath. She had something to say; I could see it in her eyes.
"Kanisia, I'm going to hit the bathroom real quick."
"Sure. Go ahead. You know where it is, right?"
"Yeah."
"Princess Lora. I shall accompany him."
"You too? And I told you to stop calling me that. It makes my skin crawl..."
"Then I shall be on my way, Prin. Cess. Lo. Ra."
"Ugh..."
Aquaril hit every syllable like a hammer. She still had not forgiven Kanisia for slipping her that sleeping draught. A fairy who held a grudge. Adorable, honestly.
We slipped out from under Kanisia's eye and into the men's washroom together. I checked that it was empty, then looked at her.
"What is it?"
"I cannot be certain yet... but something is wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"Some of the servants are behaving strangely."
"The servants?"
"Yes. I looked into the kitchen a moment ago. One of them dripped an unknown liquid into the soup."
"....."
Kanisia had been giving me the tour, and I had been busy trying to figure out how to aim her at a warehouse or a vault. Aquaril, meanwhile, had been scanning the rooms and committing the layout to memory. She had the bandwidth to actually watch the people around us.
Don't tell me.
The second the words left her mouth, Palos's Bird came to mind. I had already assumed they would not stop at luring the Blood Axe King into a dungeon — that they would have something else in place. And if the servants Aquaril had flagged were plants...
Whatever went into that food is poison. Or a sedative.
The Blood Axe King and most of his Masters and fairies were gone, but Kanisia and Abraham were still here. Either one of them ranked among the strongest in the city after the king himself. Even Palos's Bird would have a hard time putting those two down quietly.
Their goal was to stay hidden and grow strong enough to stand against the Empire. They would not want a spectacle. If word got out that the Blood Axe King was dead, their existence would surface whether they liked it or not. And for quiet work, nothing beat poison and sleeping draughts.