What a Pity, Truly.
One day later.
Arendt was able to confirm that his prediction had not missed the mark.
"Ordinary bandits... that's what they said. The men themselves."
"I see."
Laios nodded simply.
"No particular objective, they claim — they say they merely formed a band of robbers out of greed for the vault's treasures."
"And you found that credible?"
"I judged it not credible at all."
To Arendt's question, Laios answered without a trace of hesitation.
"They babbled incoherently and their condition was far from sound. None of them suffered serious injuries during the arrest, and we even wrested away the poison each of them held between his teeth for suicide. We kept them under watch the entire night without ever leaving their side."
Having said that much, Laios let out a short sigh.
"...And in the span of mere hours, every single intruder's condition changed like that. Which means, in the end, there is nothing we can extract from them."
"Well, figures."
Arendt gave a perfunctory nod.
At that, a subtle shift crossed Laios's eyes.
"You know something?"
"Roughly. I expected it would turn out this way, too. I didn't have any certainty, so I didn't get around to mentioning it."
He didn't bother to deny it.
Laios gave a short command.
"Tell me."
"Honestly, there wasn't anything you could have done anyway. It's not a problem that can be blocked."
Arendt shrugged out of habit.
"By any chance, Commander — are you familiar with memory manipulation magic?"
"That is..."
Frowning at the question that had leapt out of nowhere, Laios paused briefly before speaking again.
"You mean the ancient magic? My understanding is that it was banned long ago and has vanished entirely."
"You know artifacts, right? Relics passed down hand to hand from antiquity — things like that."
Arendt rolled his eyes for a moment, as if choosing his words.
Then he lifted his head again and looked at Laios.
"Unfortunately, a few of them happen to be in their hands."
Yes — like those gloves he'd just carelessly stuffed into his pocket.
Laios's brow furrowed a shade deeper as he drew a single conclusion from what Arendt had told him.
"You're saying one of those artifacts you mentioned has memory manipulation magic inscribed in it?"
"Yes, and an extraordinarily powerful spell at that. The archmages of today probably couldn't imitate it if they tried."
Arendt waved a hand dismissively.
It was a kind of natural disaster.
There might conceivably have been some way to stop it, but at the very least, not right now.
"Even with advance warning, it would have been useless. It was designed to trigger within half a day of capture in the first place."
"..."
Laios's face hardened.
Arendt regarded him with a perfectly blank expression.
"What? Don't believe it because it came out of a traitor's mouth? Well, then, can't be helped."
Truthfully, it wouldn't have been strange for Laios to react exactly that way.
The men had simply fallen into delirium from the shock of arrest; the rebel elements Arendt had spoken of had never existed in the first place; Arendt, who had only gotten tangled up with some thieves by sheer accident, was spinning lies to save his own neck...
A stretch, perhaps, but if he dug his heels in and insisted, it was entirely plausible.
Yet the fact that the man himself brought it up unprompted was another matter entirely.
'Is he testing me, or is he just naturally mean?'
Honestly, it felt like the latter.
Laios, who had been studying Arendt with complicated eyes, at length released a slow sigh.
"No, I believe you. I've seen it with my own eyes. An organization capable of deploying invisibility scrolls to a force that size is obviously no ordinary outfit. And this isn't my judgment alone — Sir Kendrick and Sir Diana have both concurred."
"That's how it should be. Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through?"
"...Do you have a conscience?"
"Fully intact, sir."
At Arendt's shameless reply, Laios momentarily lost his words, his mouth opening and shutting a few times.
Arendt met his commander's gaze with an expression warmly conveying, well, what do you want me to do about it.
Arguing further would only drain Laios's strength.
So Laios simply changed the subject.
"...In any case, the defense of the East Vault owes a great deal to you. So you won't be going back to a cell."
"And this damned thing stays mine for the foreseeable future, right?"
Arendt tilted his head and raised an arm.
A silver bracelet glinted at his wrist. Laios affirmed with silence.
Arendt pulled his sleeve back down and responded as if it were nothing.
"Eh, doesn't matter. Better to have it, really. Seems there's quite a few people itching to leap at my throat personally, but since you hold the authority for summary execution, Commander, everyone's keeping their hands to themselves."
Ironically, this monstrosity served simultaneously as an execution instrument and as a kind of shield.
And Laios knew that fact very well.
Turning his eyes from the bracelet, Laios began.
"It should be safe to say that the value of your life has now been proven. So from this point on, as a knight of the Callion Empire, as a sword of His Majesty the Emperor — show at least a minimal measure of fidelity."
"I don't really know from fidelity. But this one life of mine is precious, so I'll do my best for now, I suppose."
At Arendt's crooked answer, Laios heaved what had to be some uncountable number of sighs.
Then, drawing the sword at his hip, he flicked it toward Arendt.
Reflexively, Arendt snatched it from the air.
To the question in his eyes — what's this? — Laios gave a simple answer.
"It's yours. Take it."
"Sorry?"
At those words, Arendt looked anew at the sword resting in his hand.
Come to think of it, it was a different item from the sword Laios had carried around like his own limb for the past several days.
It was Arendt's sword — the one confiscated when he'd been arrested.
Arendt blinked a few times, then looked once at Laios, and once at the sword.
Then, before long, he gave a small snort of laughter and smoothly sheathed it at his hip.
"Much obliged."
"Go on out, now. Most of the restrictions placed on you have been lifted. However, leaving the Imperial Palace alone remains forbidden."
"Wasn't expecting that anyway. Then I'll be off."
Arendt offered a cursory bow by way of farewell, spun on his heel, and strode out of the office.
Thud.
At the sound of the door shutting coldly, Laios lowered his head.
"Nothing about him changes."
The subtle hostility threaded between his words, and that pride that soared without knowing the sky's limit.
For all he had been through, it seemed Arendt von Eckhart, as a person, would never change at all.
'Even if he doesn't change...'
It would be nice if he would at least stop keeping people at arm's length.
With complicated eyes, Laios stared at the door through which Arendt had gone.
His prediction had proven correct — but that didn't make it particularly pleasant.
Sitting up on the bed, Arendt quietly surveyed the items laid out before him.
A sword, and a pair of leather gloves.
It would be fair to call them the entirety of what the apprentice knight known as Arendt currently possessed.
Crossing his arms with a click, he sank into thought.
"...So the rest of them nearly all ended up in their hands after all."
The memory-destroying artifact, the Breath of Mnemosyne.
One thing was certain: that one was in their possession.
Which meant it seemed right to assume the other artifacts were all on their side as well.
'And yet I'd thought at least one or two would be gathered in the same place...'
Among Baron Porta's effects, he had seen nothing on the same tier as the Frost-Tinged Touch.
The other items had mostly been artifacts too, but even so, they couldn't hold a candle to these murderous things.
"Ugh. Should I count myself lucky I salvaged at least this much?"
Letting out a groan, Arendt picked up the gloves.
From the moment his skin touched them, a chill like gripping ice began to seep slowly inward.
'I have no idea if this is a wise thing to do.'
But he had to survive, first and foremost.
What he'd said to Laios earlier hadn't been a joke.
The things threatening this life of his, after all, weren't limited to enemies.
Taking a slow, deep breath, he slid the gloves onto his hands.
The instant he did, a shuddering cold coursed down his spine.
Letting out an involuntary groan, Arendt shuddered from head to toe — and then opened his eyes again.
"Huh?"
His eyes widened, and without thinking, he spread his fingers wide.
To the naked eye they had looked a bit large, but at some point the gloves had reshaped themselves as though tailored for him from the very start, fitting snug and perfect.
The cracked, worn leather had likewise turned smooth and new, gleaming to the point of shine.
And the terrifyingly raw surge of mana that had poured off them was no longer perceptible at all.
Apparently, upon donning them, it had been absorbed straight into his body.
"Wow... incredible. Who says this isn't a fantasy world, huh?"
Muttering dazedly, Arendt clenched and unclenched his fists over and over.
The repellent chill he'd felt at first had vanished without a trace.
Holding his hand out in front of him, Arendt closed his eyes again and concentrated.
Mana.
First, he needed to internalize that abstract concept.
In this world, mana sensitivity decided a great many things.
It was the difference that could raise even a commoner in station, so long as one could wield it.
As a knight of the imperial house, Arendt, too, possessed that talent.
He had identified the artifacts in the vault at a glance, after all — the ability was meant to be fused seamlessly into his very being.
'To perform the role of Arendt von Eckhart flawlessly.'
And to keep this body alive in this absolute mess, he had to make it entirely his own.
The strange sensation he'd felt from the artifacts.
Something similar surely existed within his own flesh as well.
Arendt slowly honed his senses.
Once his consciousness took on a clear, deliberate will, his body naturally responded in kind, and his senses began to open, little by little.
Then something else mingled in the air around him registered against his sharpened nerves.
Eyes still closed, Arendt strained to translate that feeling into something visual.
Behind his closed lids, an unknown light flickered.
There it is.
Arendt focused his mind further in that direction.
Mana revealed its presence in faint, shimmering glimpses.
He shifted his awareness down into his body, guiding the mana inward with each breath.
Moments later — instead of escaping with the carbon dioxide — the mana drawn in from outside merged with the mana already residing within Arendt.
His eyes snapped open.
Once brought to consciousness, the mana flowed at his will like water.
Immediately after, pure white frost crystallized across the black gloves.
He raised that hand and seized the porcelain cup set at the head of the bed.
"...!"
The porcelain surface froze over bone-white in the blink of an eye.
Unable to withstand the sudden cold, the ceramic trembled faintly.
And then, a moment later.
Crash!
The frozen cup shattered outright, becoming a scatter of ice shards.
Dazed, Arendt stared at the fragments spilling from his grip.
"Whoa..."
The white-frozen pieces rolled across the floor in a sorry, broken mess.
After glancing back and forth between that trace of destruction and his own hand several times over, Arendt simply slid backward and flopped face-first onto the bed.
"HAAAAGH!"
A huge breath burst from his mouth toward the ceiling.
His golden eyes were shaking wildly.
What? It can freeze an entire village in one go? Freeze people to death?
"...I'd die before I even got to the fight."
He'd used it for only a brief moment, yet sweat was pouring off him.
His breath had climbed all the way to his throat, as though he'd sprinted laps around a training ground at full speed.
To be fair, the destructive power was tremendous.
If a mere touch could shatter a porcelain cup, then a human body — softer than ceramic and rich with moisture — could be destroyed just as easily.
But the problem was stamina and mana.
In that brief instant, something like half the mana in his body seemed to have been drained dry.
It was a long while before he could finally catch his breath.
Of course, he hadn't expected overwhelming results from the start.
The rebel who had originally wielded the Frost-Tinged Touch had been a far stronger individual than Arendt.
Which meant, in the end, the outcome varied according to the capability of the wielder.
The quantity of mana, especially.
"Haaaah..."
Steadying his breath with a long, deep sigh, Arendt lay sprawled and shot a sidelong glance at the sword he'd tossed carelessly beside himself.
"So it comes down to this, huh."
What he needed to do to put it to proper use was perfectly clear.
Mana cultivation and physical conditioning.
And throwing himself into the sword happened to be an exceptionally well-suited — and fast — way to achieve both.
The very first stage was sensing mana and accumulating it.
Choosing the path suited to one's aptitude — magic or sword — and devoting oneself to training came after that.
Through that process of training, mana steadily piled up within the body.
As a knight, Arendt's physical condition as a swordsman was already fully established.
So if he wanted to increase his mana, honing the sword as he'd always done was the obvious course.
Granted, he didn't actually know anything about swordsmanship. But since he could move mana without much difficulty, drawing out swordplay his body already knew might well be possible.
"Cling to the sword to cultivate your mana..." — put that way, it sounded utterly ridiculous.
Even so, to perform the role of a knight perfectly, he had no choice but to learn the sword.
In circumstances this treacherous, one more means of protecting his own skin was always welcome.
"Right, well... I suppose you won't know until you try."
His deliberation didn't take long.
Gathering up the sword, Arendt sprang to his feet.
Then, sword in one hand and coat in the other, he stepped out of his room.
Thud.
The door closed, and a perfect stillness filled the empty room behind him.