Warm Southern Territory - 1
Even gathering over a hundred carriages all at once at the same resort was impressive enough, but the fact that a single resort could swallow every last one of them and still have room to spare was even more so. They had really gone all out building this place. It suddenly made perfect sense why they had pulverized the Kraken habitat the instant they discovered it.
School trips are definitely going to be Boyar from now on.
Margeta had said Boyar would probably keep hosting them, but at this scale it was no longer a “probably.” It was a lock. Putting up something this extravagant and then treating it as a one-off was impossible even for someone who could print money.
Anyway, it was definitely glamorous. Whether I would actually get to stay here for any real length of time was another matter entirely.
Is shipboard life going to be all right?
I had a mission: to return a baby Kraken that could not survive alone in this harsh world to its parents’ side. That mission made a game of maritime hide-and-seek inevitable. Until I caught the thing I might not set foot on land again, let alone enjoy the resort.
Still, if a Kraken started loitering in the waters near the resort, it had to be dealt with. Leave it alone and it would one day pop up on the beach where the students were playing; that would be a full-blown disaster.
“Brother! Come on in!”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
Luise, walking in with the rest of the carriage group, turned and waved me forward from where I had lagged behind. I had a room assigned to me, so I would just drop my bags and head straight for the casino.
Arriving at a vacation spot and immediately making for the casino. Without any context, that looked like the behavior of a thoroughly ruined human being. Conveniently, it was about time to feed a little money into the imperial ATM, so a few hands of cards would be necessary.
Yeah, I’m completely ruined.
The first thing I did upon reaching a resort was gamble. My chest tightened with involuntary shame.
Unlike the students, I had been given a single room. Whether I would ever get to use it was anyone’s guess. Single or not, it was spacious and lavish. Of course, whether I would ever get to use it was still anyone’s guess.
“My room isn’t far. Remember that, Young Master Karl.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
While she was showing me to my room, Margeta also made a point of telling me where hers was. What exactly she expected me to do with that information was a little frightening to imagine, but I said I understood. Since I had already promised to drop by when I had time, she probably wouldn’t come looking for me first.
I unpacked just enough and headed for the casino. The guards were waiting as if they had been counting the seconds. If I had been any later they looked ready to kidnap me.
“Welcome. His Grace has been expecting you.”
“Already? I’m late, then.”
“He had business at the casino today and has been here since morning. Please do not trouble yourself over it.”
I wondered what business a duke could possibly have in a casino, then decided I did not care. He had probably cut a deal with the Emperor—host some civil-engineering projects in exchange for a few ATM deposits. To deposit the full amount he would have had to sit there from morning, sure enough.
Under the guards’ escort I cut through the casino floor, a swirling mix of mania, cheers, and screams, and made for the VIP room. No matter how many times I came, I never quite got used to the atmosphere here.
“His Grace is inside. Enjoy your time.”
“Right. Good work.”
The way they left without so much as a glance back the moment we arrived spoke of thorough training. Then again, these were the guards of a place where hundreds of gold coins casually changed hands in short order; slipshod training would have been the stranger thing.
*Knock knock.*
“Your Grace, the Audit Department Chief is here.”
“You’re here? Come in.”
With the Golden Duke’s permission I opened the door and found three men seated at the table plus one dealer. The Golden Duke himself, half-white hair and a cigar clenched in his teeth; the commander of the Boyar duchy’s mage corps, his staff set aside while he toyed with his cards.
Who’s the last one?
I had never seen the third man before. Judging by the atmosphere, he was connected to the Kraken subjugation.
“Come, sit.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The moment I took my seat the dealer slid cards in front of me. I checked them. If there was such a thing as a dogshit hand, this was it.
“How much is the bet?”
“One large silver.”
“Understood.”
I had planned to deposit money today anyway, but the Golden Duke’s sheer malice in fleecing me in units of large silver coins—each worth a hundred ordinary silvers—still made my teeth grind. Could we not at least start with regular silver?
With a desolate heart I set fifty large silvers on the table and immediately pushed one forward as the ante. Fifty large silvers… five gold coins. Today’s bleeding was going to be a little severe.
“Ah, come to think of it, you two haven’t met.”
Confirming the large silvers serving as chips, the Golden Duke spoke lightly.
“This is the Second Fleet Commander. Lately the busiest man alive.”
So that was who he was—the fellow who had been hauling the mage corps all over the sea hunting for the Kraken. In that case his presence here made sense. I gave a light nod of greeting; the Second Fleet Commander returned it with a smile.
“We’ll be spending some time together for a while, so it wouldn’t hurt to get acquainted, would it? Cards have a way of making people familiar.”
“I see. Thank you for the consideration, Your Grace.”
Normally the longer the cards went around the more vicious the relationships became, but the people at this table had not gathered to win money. They had simply been summoned for a pre-operation discussion and were killing time while they were at it.
“Its range of activity has been expanding lately.”
While chips flew through the air and the game progressed at a brisk pace, the Golden Duke opened the real conversation. An expanding range of activity—that was bad news. I already could not guarantee when I would catch the thing.
“On top of that, the time it spends above the surface is getting shorter and shorter. It seems to have learned how to endure underwater.”
“Remarkable. Krakens are usually so desperate to leap out the moment they see a human that they can barely help themselves.”
“The shock must have been that great. The problem was that we failed to wipe it out in one go and let it escape.”
For a sea creature to use the “you come to me” strategy underwater was only natural, yet Krakens—massive as they were—almost instinctively surged to the surface, attacked ships and people, then vanished at their leisure. For one of them to grit its teeth, camp stubbornly on the seabed, and expand its range at the same time?
Smart little bastard.
It seemed to possess at least as much intelligence as that bear I had seen in the dungeon. Wait—was it a bear or a stump? Something with an “ung” sound in it, anyway.
“Landing an effective blow on a Kraken was already difficult. Now it has become even harder.”
I nodded quietly at that. The duchy’s mage corps did not lack the firepower to take down a single Kraken. The problem was that you had to see it before you could hit it, and as the Golden Duke kept emphasizing, it simply would not come out of the water. Even when they finally forced it to the surface it submerged again almost immediately, leaving almost no time to pour on the damage.
That was why the Golden Duke had commissioned me for the Kraken hunt. The only person who could deliver the finishing blow—the one that would send the Kraken back to its parents—in the barest fraction of a second was me. There were others who could manage it if one looked hard enough, but since I was conveniently coming to Boyar for the school trip, he had decided the timing was perfect.
“I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I heard you were coming. It is a blessing that the people of the territory have not yet suffered any harm.”
He laughed heartily as he said it, the very picture of a benevolent lord—except for the ruthless hand that kept raising without a shred of mercy. Now that he had said everything he needed to say, he was telling me to spit out the money and get lost. The bastard.
“With Your Grace’s heart so full of concern for your people, I can well imagine how happy the folk of Boyar must be.”
I pushed every remaining large silver into the pot and smiled lightly. The Golden Duke did care about his people, after all.
The minor catch was that his kindness did not spring from valuing each individual life so much as from the financial losses that came with dead subjects—the compensation he would have to pay the families if someone died during corvée or military service.
Even so, a lord who regarded paying compensation to bereaved families as a matter of course still ranked in the top one percent of lords.
I was cleaned out of all fifty large silvers in the blink of an eye and left the VIP room. The dealer had dealt me nothing but garbage hands right to the end. Damn it—just once, let me win a single hand.
Tomorrow at noon.
The Kraken hunt would begin tomorrow, so I was told to rest well today and report to the harbor at noon. Well, at least I would get to sleep in the resort for one night.
Carrying that strange feeling of fortune within misfortune, I was just about to leave the casino when a familiar back caught my eye.
What.
My head insisted it was exactly the person I knew, yet my heart refused to accept it. Wait—was he even allowed to be here?
I carefully made my way toward the white-haired man who stood out among the crowd gathered around the roulette table. The closer I got, the more certain I became that it was him.
“Tanian.”
“Ah, Brother?”
What are you doing here?
“This is unexpected. I never thought I would meet you in a place like this, Brother.”
“That…”
Why are you saying the exact words I wanted to say?
If he had been an ordinary priest I might have teased him about a clergyman sitting at a gambling table, but he was not just any priest—he was the next Saint. One wrong word and I could end up blacklisted by the Holy Kingdom and excommunicated.
But seriously, why was he here?
“Aha. You’re more curious about me than I am about you, I see.”
Having read the question written all over my face, Tanian answered with a small smile. Could he please stop calling me “Brother” for just this moment? Hearing it in a casino was giving me a mild case of cognitive dissonance.
“Our Lord taught us never to turn our faces from any dark place. As a servant who follows His will, I cannot simply choose the comfortable and the pleasant.”
He clasped his hands piously as he spoke, looking every bit the saint—except for the roulette wheel spinning behind him.
“Even a place where every kind of desire gathers is fully worthy of the Lord’s teaching and the Lord’s mercy. There is no place in this world that is unworthy.”
“I see.”
In short: a casino was a place where people gathered, people were worthy of following Enen’s will, and therefore there was nothing wrong with him being here.
…Well, if he said so, then so be it. The more I listened, the more it almost sounded reasonable. Getting worked up over it would only tire me out.
Then a sudden roar of cheers and shouts erupted from the roulette table. Tanian’s eyes and mine turned toward it at the same time.
“Oh dear. It seems this one isn’t coming through.”
“…….”
At the sight of Tanian murmuring with genuine regret, I quietly closed my eyes.
This bastard wasn’t just watching—he had money on the table too.