Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 236
Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 236
The Great Barrier.
A colossal seal meant to keep the Demon Realm completely separate from this world.
Petrick stood at the highest point of the tower, where the Great Barrier was visible, his gaze fixed on the vast encircling curtain with quiet eyes.
The Great Barrier showed no abnormalities.
In truth, that was only to be expected.
Whenever he had a spare moment, Petrick, the Archmage, came here to inspect this barrier exhaustively and repair it.
At most, a few very weak lesser demons slipped through on occasion.
And in most cases, even those perished, unable to survive this world’s environment.
‘There is no problem. I am certain of it.’
Petrick’s eyes remained locked on the barrier, which was woven from divine power and meticulous magic.
Even as he verified it with his own eyes, he could find nothing wrong with the Great Barrier.
The barrier stood firm.
“How strange.”
According to Marquis Bydantis, demon numbers had been increasing lately.
Though they were nothing more than insignificant rabble on the level of common monsters, this was an unmistakable red flag.
Were demons not unable to multiply easily outside the Demon Realm?
If they were increasing despite that, a fissure must certainly exist somewhere in the Great Barrier.
Yet it was not so.
No matter how minutely he examined it, the Great Barrier was intact.
And an Archmage had verified it with his own eyes—
Slowly.
Petrick turned his gaze to the Archbishop, who stood beside him wearing a genial expression.
“What do you make of it?”
“It is true that the late Former Archbishop’s divine power has become somewhat disrupted, but it is not to the extent that it fails to sustain the barrier.”
“You are certain?”
“I can attest to it as Archbishop. If you remain uneasy, I shall return soon and consecrate it again.”
The Former Archbishop. The present Archbishop’s divine power fell short of that of her old comrade who had been called the Saintess, yet he was a wielder of considerable divine power in his own right.
So his words would certainly not be empty talk.
“Are you worried?”
“About what.”
“Haha…”
The Archbishop smiled benevolently and looked out at the Great Barrier.
Within that gaze lay a faint touch of longing, and an emotion beyond words.
“I worry from time to time, you see. If this beautiful barrier that the Former Archbishop made were to vanish, I fear that people might forget her.”
For a man of the cloth, it was a remarkably selfish statement.
If the Great Barrier were to disappear, what followed would be catastrophes on the scale of those that unfolded fifty years ago.
Innocent people would die, fall sick, be beguiled, and lose countless things precious to them.
And yet the Archbishop’s first worry, by his own admission, was the fear that the Saintess might be forgotten.
Once, Petrick would have sharply rebuked such a sentiment, but he could not bring himself to do so now.
“Marquis, you too are worried that your grandchildren may come to harm, are you not?”
“…”
Petrick affirmed it with his silence and gently closed his eyes.
It was true.
A perilous sentiment for a person shouldering great responsibility to harbor.
“It is only a natural worry, is it not? I, too, feel my heart deeply pained when I imagine harm befalling my children.”
Even to the point of resenting the gods, the Archbishop had confided.
He said that it was simply because he was selfish, treating it as a jest, and he offered a light prayer.
“That said, if you do nothing but worry, you may find yourself unable to properly savor the joyful moments you have with your grandchildren.”
“You are rather heavy on the nattering today.”
“Haha… It was only because you’ve seemed so very busy of late.”
From time to time, you must have moments for respite, too, must you not?
With that, the Archbishop turned to take his leave.
“In any case, as far as I can discern, there is nothing wrong with the Great Barrier. The cause must lie elsewhere. I shall investigate, so it would be best for you to return soon.”
That way, I will be able to score a few points as well.
After the Archbishop departed—
“…Hm.”
Petrick lightly stroked his chin with one hand and muttered to himself.
“Time together, he says.”
For once, the Archbishop had spoken sense.
How could Petrick not wish to spend time with his grandchildren, who were so precious to him that it would pain him to put them in his eye?
But the work piled up like a mountain, and, anxious for his grandchildren’s futures, he had been dashing about on his own two feet like this.
Especially since that child, Lion, had so many matters that entangled him.
What was more, even now—
“He must have gone there.”
Lion’s presence, which ought to have been within the Imperial Palace, had relocated to somewhere far distant.
He must have been chosen by “that painting” in the Imperial Treasure Vault.
Petrick had realized all of this midway through his recent conversation with the Archbishop, yet he had maintained his composure.
It was different from the Labyrinth.
For Petrick, too, had once entered “that painting.”
Early on, during the time he was with the Hero.
Petrick briefly revisited that memory.
‘It was certainly because among the imperial treasures there was a clue related to the Demon Realm.’
Well, what could one do? Infiltrate it. That was all.
In truth, it was no difficult matter for Petrick.
Petrick, too, had prior experience entering the Imperial Treasure Vault.
House Asteri had been rock-solid then as well, and the previous Emperor had been quite fond of Petrick.
Fonder, even, than the current Emperor had been.
The point, in any case, was that not a single incident had occurred during any of Petrick’s entries.
And it would have been the same for the others.
But what could one expect?
The very moment the Hero had set foot in the treasure vault, precisely such a situation had come to pass.
If there was something that had struck him as slightly curious, it was that the Hero had taken it utterly in stride, almost as if he had known something like this would happen.
‘At the time, I thought it truly absurd…’
Looking back on it now, he felt it was a genuine stroke of fortune that they had been sucked in ahead of time.
Petrick and the Hero’s party had already dealt with anything that might have posed a threat.
And while it did not sit well with him—
‘The Second Prince fellow’s skill seems at least passable.’
Any mishap that arose should be well within that whelp’s capacity to handle. Petrick shut his eyes gently and nodded.
In any case, his first grandchild was a moth drawn to flame.
He had a gift for finding his way into the most dangerous places.
The moment he had received an invitation to the Imperial Palace,
Petrick had foreseen that the boy would surely set foot in there as well.
Would he listen if he were told in advance not to go?
Knowing his personality, if told not to, he would simply do it in secret; he could never hold himself back.
Better, then, to send along a single bodyguard.
Of course, what fresh accidents the boy would cause in there and emerge with, he could not say—but he was not as worried as he had been during the Labyrinth.
“…Now that I think of it.”
It would take some time to get out of the painting.
He ought to tell his youngest grandson in advance.
Petrick raised the hand that had been stroking his chin and began to trace letters in the empty air.
Following his flowing hand movements, mana sketched itself like ink and was soon inscribed, becoming a letter.
The message was not a long one.
It conveyed that Lion would be safe, and that he asked Rickshel to handle things until he returned.
Having thus written a brief letter, Petrick lightly snapped his fingers, and the mana-ink adhered cleanly onto a sheet of paper that appeared from somewhere.
The paper folded itself into the shape of a bird in midair, and in moments it became a simple familiar, which took wing with vigor and shot off somewhere, vanishing in an instant.
Petrick, who had been watching the direction in which the paper bird had flown, turned his body.
If he wrapped things up at a steady pace and returned, he would be able to arrive at the Imperial Palace by the time Lion emerged.
“Hm-hm. Even so, I really must bring him here at least once.”
He needed to calm down a grandchild who was like a runaway Warp Gate.
A so-called dopamine detox.
Regrettably, in the not-so-distant future, Lion, who came near the Great Barrier… did nothing of the sort, but that is another story.
* * *
“I am sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
From the moment they arrived, Lion had been listening to the Second Prince’s apologies for a full hour.
After that insistent eye contact from the dragon, the place they had landed was a dragon’s lair.
To be precise, a masterless dragon’s lair.
In this world, dragons were legendary creatures that had gone extinct long ago.
And yet the reason Lion was still receiving apologies was none other than this.
Warp sickness. That was the cause.
Yes. He had blacked out.
The one consolation was that perhaps whoever had developed this transportation device really had been a dragon; Lion recovered more quickly than he did after using a Warp Gate.
‘Anyway, with warp sickness involved, this place isn’t something like the Labyrinth.’
It was clear that they’d been transported to a genuine dragon’s lair, left remaining somewhere in this world.
Now that he had regained enough strength to slowly examine the interior, Lion—with a groan—heaved his heavy body upright.
“Let’s have a look around first, shall we?”
“That would be best.”
The Second Prince nodded solemnly and drew a weapon from his bosom—
‘He was carrying it after all.’
Within the Imperial Palace, carrying weapons is fundamentally forbidden.
That held true even for an imperial prince.
That, indeed, was the very reason they had toured the more secure spots in the palace.
If not for this situation, the Second Prince would have kept his weapon hidden away, too.
The circumstances were different from the time at Hotel Easter.
‘Haaah, but still…’
Lion slowly surveyed their surroundings, then tilted his head slightly to the side.
He had glimpsed it even while suffering from motion sickness, but for some reason, it was a remarkably familiar place.
To be precise, he had the feeling he had seen a map like this in <In the World>.
“Hmmmm…”
After studying the lair and its treasure hoard with keen interest, Lion at last smacked his fist into his palm before the dragon’s fossilized remains!
‘Ah, this is that place!’
It was the battle map that appeared during the mandatory main story!
In truth, the mid-story had been so uninteresting that he had skipped it, which meant he did not know why one suddenly ended up here.
But what could you expect?
The mandatory combat had been arranged with clever mechanics that were quite enjoyable, so he at least remembered this one map.
Of course, the dragon’s lair was a little different from the memory he had of <In the World>.
Signs that a battle had passed through here finally caught his eye, here and there.
He could see stones, presumably a golem, that had been shattered to splinters by powerful magic, and his eye was caught by things like the wing of a gargoyle that had been petrified into something like plaster by holy power.
Fortunately, perhaps because at least fifty years had passed since the incidents that took place, there seemed to be nothing dangerous remaining.
“I don’t see anything dangerous.”
Lion calmed the Second Prince, who still had not let his guard down, and stood before the dragon fossil once more.
‘The problem, if any, is…’
Back then, after thoroughly smashing every guardian that protected this lair, they had returned immediately to their original location.
But now, no guardians remained.
In other words, the method of returning no longer applied.
‘Well, if it comes to it, we could always just use a Warp Scroll or something, but…’
The fact that Lion had been sucked into a place the Hero—his main character—had once visited meant there had to be some reason for it, so those were to be used only as the very last resort.
Besides, since he did not know if he could ever return, he had to properly strip the place bare while he was here.
And for that…
‘I have to strengthen the Expert’s Eye.’
With strengthened eyes, the probability of discovering a clue would rise.
And he probably would… uncover something.
Moreover, to prepare for contingencies, he would need the Second Prince’s assistance.
No—the Second Prince had already resolved himself, so, to be precise, what was needed was for Lion to be fully prepared to be found out, out in the open.
“Your Highness.”
Lion called to the Second Prince in a low voice, and immediately asked:
“You did say you would help without asking anything, did you not?”
“…It seems you have figured something out.”
The Second Prince answered Lion’s grave question with unyielding resolve.
“Whatever I see in this place, I will see to it that I forget it.”
At those words, Lion gave a soft laugh and slowly closed his eyes.
Then, as he always did, he suffused his eyes with mana and, gradually, opened the eyes he had shut.
The moment he did—
As though resonating with Lion’s bright violet irises, every mana stone piled within the lair began to hum.