Chapter 60
The most famous landmark in the Undersea Kingdom? If you asked anyone, the first thing they’d mention would be the Record Library.
Even though not a single person had ever stepped inside it, the mere sight of the Record Library was enough to fill the heart with a sense of mystery.
That aura, which felt fresh no matter how many times one experienced it, was more than enough to make the Record Library the undisputed top attraction of the Undersea Kingdom.
Yet if one excluded that overwhelmingly dominant landmark, the rest of the so-called famous spots were all roughly on the same level—with one glaring exception. There was one place that drew crowds on par with the Record Library itself.
The weapons shop Kraken.
In a single sentence: a store overflowing with weapons imbued with every conceivable magical mystery.
The Kraken was enormous, occupying more than a quarter of an entire district. With so many weapons on display that even a casual browse took at least three hours, it was only natural that the shop enjoyed immense popularity.
On top of that, Kraken didn’t limit itself to bladed weapons like swords and spears. It also sold staffs, wands, daggers, throwing weapons, grimoires, and countless other varieties—making it even more beloved.
Of course, every single item was a magically crafted weapon, so ordinary arms couldn’t even begin to compare. Each piece cost as much as an entire house.
That was why most visitors either compromised within their budget and bought something of slightly lower quality, or simply came to admire them with their eyes.
Because of this, the weapons shop Kraken located in the Undersea Kingdom was nothing short of a paradise—a dreamlike haven—for every swordsman, mage, archer, and combatant in the world.
A paradise so distant that no matter how far one reached, the cold wall of reality called “money” would always block the way.
And that was precisely why Arin was seriously wondering if she had misheard.
If she was in her right mind, she must have heard wrong. There was no other possibility.
But when Professor Aria saw the stunned reactions of Arin and the other children, she declared once more in her usual bold, cheerful tone.
Anything. There wasn’t a single person here who didn’t understand what those words meant. Yet because this was Kraken, their brains simply refused to process it.
Seeing the children still frozen in place, Aria flashed a grin and added one more thing.
At those words, Arin and the other children didn’t even wait to see who would move first. They all dashed into Kraken at once.
They couldn’t afford to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
* * *
Weapons. Weapons. Weapons. Nothing but weapons.
The corridor inside Kraken stretched at least a hundred meters, and its walls were covered floor to ceiling with swords of every shape and design.
Blades that gave off an unmistakably extraordinary aura at first glance hung in dense rows.
Seeing the countless people standing before the wall, admiring the displayed weapons, both Arin and Kana—who had come to the sword section together—let out simultaneous gasps of awe.
Kana, so moved that she had been staring blankly at the weapons, suddenly snapped back to her senses and grabbed Arin’s arm, pulling her along.
Arin nodded vigorously and walked deeper into the corridor with her friend.
Thud— thud—
It really was a popular weapons shop. The luxurious carpet felt wonderful beneath their feet.
The plush carpet gently cradled each step, easing fatigue.
Enjoying the same luxurious sensation she had only ever felt inside the royal palace, Arin was admiring the weapons on the wall when she suddenly stopped in front of one that caught her eye.
“This is……”
A straight, sharply tapered blade. A crimson crossguard. And a golden grip.
No matter how she looked at it, the sword was strikingly similar to the Sunset Sword Carnia currently hanging at her waist.
“I can’t believe a sword like this existed.”
The familiar shape was impossible to ignore. Arin slowly reached out and grasped the weapon. When she lifted it, the sword fit perfectly in her hand.
She had expected it to feel cold since no one had been touching it, but the blade was surprisingly warm.
It felt like holding a small hand warmer.
This sensation was exactly the same as when she had first received Carnia from Aria. Back then, too, the sword had felt as warm as if she were clutching a hand warmer.
Shivering at the eerie similarity, Arin turned to tell Kana—only to freeze when she saw the now-empty spot beside her.
“Ah… she already went off to find a kitchen knife……”
Come to think of it, Kana had mentioned earlier that she would go look somewhere else first.
Unlike Arin, Kana’s weapon of choice was a cooking knife, so it made sense that she wouldn’t be interested in a section full of combat swords.
Well, she probably was interested, but with only one hour to choose, she had no choice but to skip any corridor that didn’t contain what she needed.
Left alone, Arin felt a slight chill of loneliness before turning back to the sword in her hands. She decided to look for its description card.
She wanted to learn a little more about this unfamiliar weapon.
“Let’s see……”
Finding the description was easy. Right beneath the display rack from which she had taken the sword was a sheet of paper that could only be the description card.
As expected of Kraken. They’re surprisingly considerate in these details, Arin thought as she leaned closer and read the name written at the very top.
“Sun Sword Solide.”
Sun Sword. At those words, Arin looked back and forth between her own Carnia and this new blade, and her earlier suspicion grew into firm conviction.
Sunset Sword and Sun Sword. No matter how she looked at them, they could only be sister blades—or at least part of the same series.
Smiling at the confirmation of her guess, Arin turned her gaze to the explanatory text beneath the name.
“Huh?”
She couldn’t help but let out a puzzled sound after reading the lines below.
“What is this……”
It wasn’t that the description was missing or that the card had been torn off. Clear lines of what appeared to be explanatory text stretched down the page.
The reason Arin had voiced her confusion was because the characters were completely unreadable to her.
“I’ve never seen this script before……”
As the daughter of the Phra Kingdom’s Knight Order Commander, Arin had studied diligently and possessed at least basic knowledge of other nations’ and races’ writing systems. Yet the characters on this card were ones she had never encountered.
Still, staring at the card wouldn’t magically make the unknown script readable.
In the end, Arin looked away from the description, stood up, and scratched her cheek. She picked up the scabbard that had been stored beneath the Sun Sword.
“I can’t read it anyway, so there’s nothing I can do… but I should take the sword with me.”
If she left it here, someone else might snatch it away.
She glanced around at the other blades on display, but none of them caught her eye the way the Sun Sword had. With her mind half made up, Arin hugged the weapon to her chest.
“I wonder… maybe the professors would know?”
As she stood up with the Sun Sword in hand, a sudden thought escaped her lips.
Maybe the professors would recognize these unfamiliar characters. The more she considered it, the more likely it seemed. Arin nodded to herself and turned around.
There was still more than forty minutes left. Since she had already chosen her weapon, she decided to head back to the professors waiting at the entrance and ask them about the sword’s evaluation and the unreadable description.
“Alright, let’s go.”
The moment she finished thinking, Arin started moving.
While occasionally stealing glances at the weapons around her, she walked briskly toward the entrance. Just like when she had reached the sword corridor, she arrived at the entrance in less than five minutes.
In the distance, she could faintly see Professor Aria and the other instructors.
Arin quickened her pace, intending to run over to them—but the sight that greeted her made her stop dead in her tracks.
On Kraken’s checkout counter—or more accurately, on the wide counter designated for that purpose—lay a mountain of weapons.
There had to be at least three hundred of them. Arin felt her mind go completely blank.
Who in the world would buy that many weapons at once? Deep down she already knew the answer, but Arin shook her head, desperately trying to deny the truth before her eyes.
“No way… No matter how crazy Professor Aria is, buying this many weapons all at once is……”
At the voice, Arin instinctively covered her face with both hands.
…She really hadn’t wanted to learn just how insane Professor Aria could be in this particular area.