Floundering (4)
Time slipped by quickly, riding the autumn wind.
About half a month had passed since the final battle at Longville, and while the west wind slowly dried the grass to straw, quite a lot had happened.
First, Count Tristan's army had withdrawn to Multingham. With the better part of his forces dead or wounded, it was only natural — but there was an official reason as well.
Some ten people were gathered in the lord's manor hall.
"They say Count Tristan has been poisoned."
"...Poisoned?"
The old knight Sir Ariad handed me a letter as he continued. "They've confirmed that Prince Doil stands behind the assassin. The evidence is apparently irrefutable, so if things move quickly, his head will come off before the month is out."
"What utter nonsense."
I skimmed the letter roughly and let out a hollow laugh. "Doil has no reason to kill Count Tristan. Murdering the one father who's been backing him while he tries to secure his position? Absurd."
"His sister stole the succession from him. He may well have nursed a grudge."
When I shot him a look that said are you being serious right now?, Sir Ariad gave a wry smile. "In any case, the Baroness sailed in the same boat as Lady Clarisa — or rather, Countess Clarisa now. She's lost all interest in a man who was once her enemy."
...Well, fair enough. The succession of House Mullin and its political maneuvers were hardly my concern.
Sir Rangvolt, a bandage wrapped around his shoulder, stroked the tip of his mustache and put on a careful expression. "What troubles me is how ferocious the battle was."
"What do you mean by that, sir?"
"Over six hundred dead, no? If the Baroness and Countess Clarisa join hands, there will be those beneath them who harbor resentment over it."
"...We fought because of Doil, that bastard. Isn't he the cause of all this?"
"Of course. But would beheading one Doil truly settle every grudge?"
"Hmm."
Dionea, who had been listening quietly from her seat in the high-backed chair, finally spoke. "Once the repairs to the gate and palisade are finished, we must begin rebuilding the army."
Perhaps because of the terrible war she'd endured? She looked more haggard than before.
Though truth be told, this was her doing better. Until a week ago, she had all but refused food, shut up in her bedchamber.
If I hadn't been dutifully stopping by to comfort her, she'd probably still be playing the recluse even now.
"We need to at least double our forces. No — quadruple them."
At Dionea's declaration, the steward Edita looked troubled. "But my lady, as I mentioned before, the fief's coffers are already empty."
"Then we reopen the gold mine."
"My lady."
The middle-aged woman who managed Longville's property and lands deliberately put on a stern face. "Since your husband's disappearance, Longville has suffered Anupad's attack and fought an entire war. And right now everyone is busy bringing in what little harvest remains. What this fief needs at the moment is not mining development, but peace and stability."
"No. There will be no stability."
Dionea lowered her head with resolve. "We must prepare for war."
"My lady, what on earth—"
Edita faltered for a moment at the unexpected answer, then raised her voice. "Those are words that would make the Lord of Light weep! You wish for war instead of peace?"
"I wish for peace. Very, very desperately. Which is why I will prepare for war."
"My lady..."
Dionea turned to Sir Rangvolt. "I believe the resentment seething in Multingham will fade with time and dissolve in conversation. But should that faith ever be betrayed, and blades cross once more, I will then request Prince Ulkar's mediation."
With her downcast eyes and the small teardrop mole, she cut a rather pitiable figure — and yet Dionea made her voice with no small measure of dignity.
Sir Rangvolt met Sir Ariad's eyes for a moment, then chuckled and bowed his head. "I will gladly carry the regent's words to His Highness. He will be pleased, I'm sure."
Then, suddenly, our eyes met — Dionea's and mine.
When I winked slyly at her, she gave the faintest of smiles.
Beyond that, there were a few more interesting happenings.
It was about three days after the battle ended, I think? When suddenly, freckled Mira came looking for me.
I was in the middle of breakfast when she came dashing over, drool still at the corner of her mouth. And then—
"Phoenix, sir, I just can't stand it anymore!"
—she said that, fixing me with an intense stare.
"...What, all of a sudden?"
"Every time I close my eyes to sleep, it shows up in my dreams! I can't take it!"
Beside me, Ellen began shooting icy blue fire from her eyes.
"What is she talking about?"
"...Beats me." Before the girl's misunderstanding could deepen, I quickly turned the question back to Mira. "What nonsense are you spouting first thing in the morning? What shows up in your dreams?"
"The equipment! The magic tools!"
Mira's brown eyes were glistening with greed as she said it. "You remember the Anupad bastards, one in ten of them was carrying a magic tool, right?"
"One in ten? It wasn't anywhere near that many."
"So where do you think all those magic tools are right now?"
Apparently my words weren't getting through at all.
I swallowed a mouthful of beer and shrugged. "They burned, presumably. Utekwai threw such a tantrum back then that everything got torched."
"The corpses burned, sure. But if you sift through the remains carefully, there's bound to be usable equipment left over."
"...Hmm. So? What's your point?"
"The trading caravans are starting up again soon! And when they do, every two-bit merchant rolling through here will scoop up all that gear for themselves!"
"So it pains you to watch, and you'll go gather it up yourself?"
"Not me — us!"
"Us?"
"Yes, us!"
I leaned back against my chair and shook my head. "I'm not going."
"Huh? Why not?"
"Can't be bothered."
"...What? It's a mountain trail right outside the gate! You could think of it as just going for a stroll!"
I flopped back in my chair like a boneless rag and waved her off. "A stroll my ass. You're talking about scavenging a pile of burnt corpses, not picking flowers. When exactly am I supposed to turn over that whole mountain of ash? Too much work."
"It's not about the work right now — there are magic tools just sitting there!"
"How great could a few magic tools possibly be? Besides, it's been a while since I got to laze around like this. Don't get in my way — you lot go and be back by supper."
"...Going with just us might be a bit dangerous."
"Oh, really? Weren't you calling it a stroll a second ago?"
Mira wore a wounded look for all of a heartbeat before turning to Utekwai.
The brute, gnawing on a roasted pheasant with bandages wrapped all over his upper body, made a puzzled face. "What you looking at?"
"...What about you, Hatanka? Don't magic tools tempt you at all?"
Utekwai wiped the glistening grease from his mouth and took a swig of beer. "Khh. Body heal, then fix Lufte kapuQ."
"Sorry — fix the what now?"
Ellen, spooning porridge made with chickpeas, cheese, and egg, answered for him. "He means his ceremonial hat. The feathered cap Utekwai always wears."
"Oh. He's getting that repaired?"
"Right. It bent. Must mend with care."
The 'Ceremonial Cap of Licuwa' that Utekwai had inherited from the previous Hatanka granted bonuses to all kinds of resistances and even raised Health by 2 points.
Thanks to that, it was treated as essential early-game gear for any Berserker build, no matter what you were running. There were so few alternatives that plenty of players kept it equipped all the way to level 40...
Oh, hold on.
Alternatives... there are alternatives, aren't there?
What came to mind was the Crown of Iron — an item dropped at low probability by 'Anupad Queen Ramashda,' the boss of Chapter 3.
In the game, its drop rate was abysmal, but in reality, the thing sitting on a queen's head wasn't about to vanish into thin air. Which meant it had to be discarded somewhere out there...
After a moment's thought, I fished a generous fistful of silver coins out of my pouch and poured them out in a clatter in front of Mira, who was wearing a thoroughly bewildered expression.
"Huh? Phoenix, sir?"
"I have other business, so use this to hire mercenaries and laborers and run the search."
"Phoenix, sir..."
Watching Mira's face turn moved, I let out a small smirk. "In exchange, bring me every magic tool you find."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"What, don't want to?"
"No, it's, um, it's just..."
"It's just, what?"
"Well, technically speaking, it's you who'd have the rightful claim of ownership, sir. But when you put it so bluntly, it feels a bit..."
She was still hemming and hawing when I raised my hand as if to scoop the silver pile right back, and Mira promptly pulled a wounded face and nodded.
Before gathering people, Mira first wore Utekwai down with relentless persuasion.
Armed with the hint I'd given her, she coaxed him with the promise that there'd be something useful for repairing his ceremonial cap.
Utekwai eventually agreed to the plan, and once word spread that the Red Bear would be joining, people flocked to the cause in no time — mostly farmers whose crops had been ruined by the recent chaos, and travelers whose journeys had been waylaid.
And so the search began, and within just three days, Mira struck it rich. She found seven magic tools.
The first was a rare-grade piece of equipment: the Crown of Iron.
Crown was a generous word for it — it was more like a plain headband — but its fixed bonuses granted resistance to extra-dimensional mana and immunity to lesser curses.
As planned, I gave it to Utekwai. His mana was low, so his magic-related resistances were rather lacking.
He was so pleased with it that he ripped the feather ornament off his ceremonial cap and fastened it to the Crown of Iron.
...That's not exactly item synthesis, and I'm not sure you're allowed to do that. I'll have to keep an eye on it.
The second was the Crystal Orb of House Rao.
Yes, the very orb Siren had given me — the one Ellen had been putting to fairly good use.
She'd lost it during the battle with the mages of La Palais palace, and apparently the search party had managed to dig it up. It was cracked here and there, but supposedly not beyond use.
Well, naturally, I returned it to Ellen.
Next came the Composite Bow of Seeds.
It belonged to 'Half-Blood Zuama,' a named Anupad, though I couldn't quite recall its options.
I knew its appearance, its name, that it was rare-grade — but the actual effects escaped me. Bows were never really my area of interest anyway.
Besides, with its string burnt away and the limbs damaged, whether it could ever perform at full power was questionable.
For now I left it with the fief's bowyer, planning to give it to Cole once it was repaired — he was still recovering at the church.
The fourth was the Beheading Falchion of Slaughter.
It looked like an ordinary falchion, but it was so monstrously heavy that an ordinary person would struggle to swing it one-handed.
It seemed plenty serviceable, but it was neither rare nor anything above magic grade, so it wasn't exactly worth bragging about. I gave it to Steedman, who could at least manage it two-handed.
The fifth was the Burning Axe-Halberd.
A weapon wielded by the named foe 'Red Pshaka,' it lived up to its name by kicking up flames with every swing.
If one-armed Buney and the gentle Jenesser were still in fighting shape, I'd have given it to one of them...
But Buney, having lost his arm, had taken a post as my bailiff at Lavaltun, my manor, and Jenesser had decided to set aside mercenary work until the wound in her lung healed.
With no owner to claim it, I decided to hold onto the axe-halberd for the time being.
Lastly, the sixth and seventh — I honestly had no idea what those were.
A longsword and a ring, respectively. Neither seemed particularly remarkable. If this were still the game, I'd have chalked them up as vendor trash, nothing more.
If I took those too, Mira looked liable to burst into tears, so I just let her keep them. I felt a little guilty about it, truth be told, so I pressed a fistful of gold coins into her hand as thanks for her trouble.
In any case, the search that had begun as Mira's proposal wrapped up a resounding success.
And word of it spread, until it became a fad for idle farmers to comb the mountains and forests nearby.
Apparently, scavenging usable ironware or clothing from mercenary or monster corpses and selling it off made for decent pocket money. Well, the monsters in the area had been thinned out to nothing, so it couldn't have been all that dangerous.
The only hazard I could think of, really, were the Blood Knights who had followed Heila...
And yet, strangely, though more than half a month had passed since Heila was taken prisoner, not a single Blood Knight had shown so much as the tip of a nose.
When I asked Heila why, I got an answer that was quite the headache.
"Because I have not called them."
"...What?"
"Because I have not called them."
Heila sat there with an expressionless face, an iron shackle on one arm and a chained weight bound to her ankle.
She was confined to a small cell in the lord's manor, but between her clean attire, her noble bearing, and her composed air, she hardly looked like a prisoner at all.
Watching her repeat the same words like a broken record, I frowned slightly. "So you're telling me they're holed up somewhere right now, waiting for your call?"
"Holed up?"
"Hiding. Are they hiding?"
Heila gave a small nod. "Yes."
"...Unbelievable." I rubbed at my brow and pressed the question again. "So let me get this straight — your charge has gone completely silent, and you're just sitting quietly in hiding?"
"I ordered them not to move until I command it."
"And if you die while they're waiting?"
"They will return to Aillant and report to Kysis."
"The way things are going, I doubt they'd even notice whether you're alive or dead."
"There is a way to know. The moment my heart stops, Eoardan will sense it."
Eoardan was a middle-aged Blood Knight of House Valuin — Heila's uncle. He was a grand-uncle to Phoinix as well, and among the direct line, one of the royal bloodline's blood kin closest in generation to the Twin Kings' line.
"...Then if you leave Longville as you are, what would Eoardan do?"
"He would wait another half month, then set out to find me."
"Half a month... and if he doesn't find you?"
"He will return to Aillant and report to Kysis."
"..."
When I fell silent, Heila simply sat where she was and gazed out the window.
Bandages were wrapped around both her wrists and her right ankle. Because I had crushed them so mercilessly, her recovery was coming slowly.
Truthfully, these were injuries that could easily have left permanent damage, so the fact that her bones were knitting at all without proper treatment was remarkable in itself.
I tapped the table in silence for a while before speaking.