Chapter 85 — The Road to the West (2)
Chapter 85 — The Road to the West (2)
Snow rarely fell in arid Basel during winter. That didn't make winter travel easy.
That was why Evirgio used demon beasts instead of horses. No matter how much sturdier they were than ordinary horses, an Evirgio winter was harsh enough to bring them down. Demon beasts, on the other hand, could move unhindered through the biting winds of Deep Winter.
Among them, four especially powerful demon beasts were pulling a carriage, steam rising from their entire bodies.
What the knights were escorting was Emperor Roan.
Those accompanying him were Grünent, Helen, and Rauka.
'Good thing I didn't insist on riding a demon beast.'
He had yet to travel a long distance riding a demon beast. He'd secretly been looking forward to riding one whenever he left Basel to search for waypoints, but then Grünent had expressed her wish to accompany him.
— We don't know when Your Majesty might collapse.
He wasn't some frail invalid. Even though he was now diligently attending to his nightly duties, Grünent still seemed uneasy.
The sight of him collapsing in front of her—the one everyone believed to be stronger than anyone—must have been quite a shock.
— Please use the carriage so we can use it in an emergency, Your Majesty.
Grünent, who never usually insisted or clung to things, had pleaded with tears in her eyes. She'd begged him to take her along. The carriage could be used for sex, just in case.
A carriage dedicated to sex.
He'd planned to simply ride a demon beast and make a quick trip with the knights, but things had snowballed.
In the end, however, accepting Grünent's suggestion seemed to have been wise.
Looking out the window, he saw knight order members sitting atop demon beasts, frozen tears clinging to their faces.
The knights escorting the carriage from four directions wore winter hats and all manner of cold-weather gear, but nothing stopped the biting wind.
Roan recalled the people he'd seen suffering while riding motorcycles in midwinter and shivered for no reason.
"It's cold, Your Majesty."
Grünent quietly urged Roan, who'd been looking out the window, to come back inside.
As Roan pulled away from the window, Grünent personally closed the storm shutters and offered him warm tea.
"You must have gotten cold, Your Majesty."
She was human; what was she worrying about him for?
But Grünent's expression was far too sincere to dismiss lightly. Roan accepted the cup without a word.
"Lady Grünent, you worry far too much."
Even Helen saw it as overprotectiveness.
"I can restore Master anytime. Do you not trust me?"
...Things wouldn't even get to the point of needing restoration!
The two of them were the same.
"Both of you are the same."
Startled, he turned to Rauka; her chiding had sounded like she'd read his mind.
Meeting his eyes, Rauka's own widened briefly before she turned her head away. Was it his imagination, or was a faint blush coloring her cheeks?
Her Affection was +15.
During the New Year Festival Banquet, while drinking and then fleeing in the garden, the value had risen by an additional 5 points.
Anyway, Grünent had been in overprotectiveness mode for months.
She couldn't know his body's exact condition, and having seen what she'd seen, he could understand her shock... but still.
He wished she'd stop treating herself like a spare battery.
With her Affection reaching the mid-80s, hints of obsession were starting to peek through. According to the Legend of the Holy Hero developer's affection guide, full-blown obsession and addiction began around +90 Affection.
Should he avoid raising her Affection further...?
Or should he actively lower it...?
When Roan appeared lost in thought, Grünent and Helen waited silently.
Just then, someone knocked on the carriage from outside.
The carriage soon halted, and a booming voice followed.
"We have arrived! Your Majesty."
"...Already?"
Grünent's eyes widened.
Not even ten minutes had passed since they'd left the city gates surrounding Basel.
"Mhm. It's close. Did I not tell you that you needn't worry?"
"But Your Majesty, the reason I was shocked before was not that you were somewhere far away. Please try to understand my heart."
Roan gave a bittersweet smile and stepped out of the carriage.
Right. Even then, I was only three minutes from the castle.
The moment he stepped outside, the air he inhaled felt as if it would freeze his lungs solid.
"Stay here."
He left the door open, keeping the worried women inside the carriage. The carriage was enchanted for heating. They'd be fine as long as they didn't step out.
Roan surveyed the sparse forest around him.
His first visual glimpse of the world outside Basel.
"...There's nothing."
Ten minutes from the castle by carriage.
Roughly a thirty- to forty-minute walk on foot, the winter forest beyond the walls held nothing but bare, bony branches.
The whole place was desolate and silent.
"It is Deep Winter, so there are barely any travelers coming or going, Your Majesty."
A knight spoke in explanation, almost as if making an excuse.
Roan nodded understandingly.
It wasn't just people; it was a forest of dead, withered trees where he could barely feel any trace of life force.
Unlike Basel on the opposite side of the river and its surrounding areas, there truly was nothing here. Normally, near a castle, you'd expect a village, a farm, a market—anything—but there was nothing, almost absurdly so.
In the game, he'd liked this place for its desolate quiet. But knowing people couldn't harvest any crops here saddened him.
'So please, let it be here.'
Roan raised his Will as if in prayer and moved his feet.
This place was familiar to Roan.
In the center of the dead forest, upon a flat stretch of land, a lone ancient tree stood, half-rotted and dying. Beneath it rested a stele, one meter tall.
「The Basel River is the source of life. A force that nurtures fresh life, so the soil may embrace it and let it grow.
Countless beings will consume life here and raise their next generations.
Where traces of generous life remain, the Goddess left her footprints.」
Thanks to his study of the ancient language with Helen, he could now read the stele's inscription, though haltingly.
Roan furrowed his brow.
The phrase 'fresh life' didn't suit this area at all. The Basel River, supposedly the source of life, didn't even flow this far.
Had the past been different?
More importantly, he couldn't see the waypoint.
Roan's face darkened.
'It's supposed to be right here.'
Had it truly only been a game element?
Just how much of the game did this world contain, then?
Surely the crystal mine hadn't vanished too.
Roan gritted his teeth.
This moment felt more emotionally devastating than any before. But his constantly active Will was barely managing to support him.
The shock was that profound.
As the emperor stood frozen, wordlessly surveying the stele, the faces of the knights and women watching him darkened as well.
First, he replayed what Rauka had said.
— Only after shining the lantern will future generations find the Goddess's benevolence.
Hadn't it been said that the Goddess's lantern was woven from starlight and moonlight?
He'd searched the library materials afterwards but hadn't found any magic related to moonlight.
For lighting a flame, there was no need to bother with ambiguous moonlight. Light magic existed.
Alternatively, within divine magic, there was also 'Sunlight'—a spell used to purify evil things like ghosts or dark magic, though from the perspective of the humans who'd been heroes at the time, the evil side was his.
His initial bafflement at Starlight fell along the same lines. When walking a night road, who lights a cigarette lighter when they have a phone flashlight? Moonlight? It was a spell that, rationally, had no reason to exist.
But Starlight does exist. A magic thought to no longer remain in this world:
'Starlight'. For some mysterious reason,'
that 'Starlight' had manifested within him. Grasping at straws, Roan gathered his holy power.
Lately, through training alongside Helen, his holy power had been slowly increasing.
So the light growing at the emperor's fingertips had graduated from a tiny bulb to the size of an incandescent lamp.
And then—
"...Your Majesty, what did you just do?"
A sharp voice sounded from inside the carriage.
Immediately, Rauka burst out.
She might have balked at the cold wind, but Rauka strode straight to Roan as if it were nothing. The knights began watching her with furrowed brows.
"Did you sense something?"
"...It seems Your Majesty didn't do it himself."
Narrowing her eyes, Rauka glanced at Roan once, then started glaring at the ground.
"What you just did. Once more."
Roan cast 'Starlight'.
Then he focused his senses, trying to understand what Rauka was talking about.
The moment 'Starlight' brightened, Rauka picked up a fallen branch from the ground and began drawing lines in the dirt.
'A drawing...?'
While 'Starlight' shone, Rauka moved feverishly, sketching shapes. Roan was astonished when he saw the form Rauka was creating.
Within a circle large enough for two carriages, complex letters and patterns overlapped—a form extremely familiar to Roan.
"Rauka, how did you...?"
"...Is this the ruin Your Majesty spoke of?"
"...It is."
Rauka, having traced the shape of the waypoint with a branch, crouched down and began brushing and digging at the earth.
"There's nothing. Rauka. The knight order and Surveillance Unit have already finished their investigation."
"Then what is this."
"...."
Roan's face brightened considerably.
'It was here. It definitely was.'
Traces of a waypoint that reacted to 'Starlight'.
The positions and shapes of the patterns Rauka had drawn were a perfect match for the waypoint design he'd seen in the game.
'But it wasn't revealing itself.'
What did it mean to bind starlight and moonlight together?
Maybe he had to use 'Starlight' at night when moonlight was visible...?
Roan recalled the scene where the Hero discovered the waypoint.
Just before dawn, right before the sun rose. The rescue party that had freed Grünent and Rauka succeeded in escaping the castle but hadn't even cleared Basel before the pursuit team began chasing them.
Perhaps the Hero had heroic qualities even before being marked as one. The Hero, who'd still been a mercenary and wouldn't have been bound by loyalty, focused the pursuers' attention on himself to let Helen, Grünent, and Rauka escape, fleeing Basel.
Maybe he'd done it to protect Helen, whom he'd slept with before meeting Grünent.
For whatever reason, while the rescue party escaped along the river, the Hero fled in the opposite direction with soldiers on his tail. He'd run in that direction for a long time. The place he'd finally reached was—
'This very forest.'
The deep hour before dawn.
The day of Grünent's rescue operation was the Harvest Festival, a day that threw all of Basel into a frenzy.
In this world's seasonal calendar—where a full moon rises on the fifteenth and a new moon marks the start of the month—the moon around the Harvest Festival on the ninth day of the ninth month was a half-moon. A waxing half-moon.
"When does the waxing half-moon set?"
The knights furrowed their brows at the emperor's seemingly random question. But it was Rauka, a forest fairy, who answered immediately, without any need for calculation.
"Midnight."
She only gave her answer; Rauka didn't demand an explanation, choosing instead to wait.
Everyone present could see he was deep in thought.
'That meant there was no moonlight at that time either.'
Because it was a moonless night, the Hero couldn't see ahead of himself. After repeatedly hiding and running, just when he thought he'd shaken off the pursuers, he'd tripped spectacularly over this very stele.
Tumbling gracelessly to the ground, the Hero finally realized he could no longer see the pursuers' torches and admitted moving further without light was too difficult.
Hoping for the best, the Hero activated 'Shield'—his romance reward from Helen's route—and carefully lit his Light magic.
'I couldn't use 'Star Cloud Shield' and 'Starlight' together.'
Roan, who had been silent, finally spoke.
"Whatever you may see."
He focused his holy power.
"Remain silent."
And then, divine magic unfolded.
Rauka and the knights gasped and stared wide-eyed in shock; Helen wore a radiant smile.
'Star Cloud Shield'.
An ancient, mystical miracle that transferred the beauty of a nebula directly into a shield was recreated.
Seeing the cloud-like, sparkling shield, Rauka unknowingly let out a sigh of admiration.
"This is... such beautiful magic..."
Then Roan summoned another spell into his opposite hand. One of the few spells the (former) Demon King had learned before acquiring divine magic.
'Light.'
In an instant, following the pattern Rauka had drawn, an immense surge of mana suddenly erupted upward.
Rauka, who had been standing outside the pattern and examining it for fear of distorting the figures drawn in the dirt, was so startled by the force that she fell backward without realizing it.
"Your Majesty!!!"
A scream rang out.