Accidents Always Happen When You Least Expect Them (2)
At the same time, in a different part of the cave from where Cain and Lia were.
The handsome blond-haired second prince, who had concealed his and enrolled at the academy, casually sheathed the sword Bern had drawn and flicked a glance to the side.
Beside him was Stella, the first-year runner-up, who had been paired with Bern for this exercise. For some reason, she kept scanning the training grounds with an uneasy expression.
“If your partner’s in the middle of a fight and you keep looking around instead, wouldn’t you get docked for your attitude, Stella?”
“...Mind your own business, will you? I have a reason for doing this.”
“How cold. Telling your comrade, the one you’re supposed to trust with your back, to mind his own business.”
Muttering in a tone uncannily similar to someone from the student council, Bern rolled his wrists as he stretched.
Stella didn’t care for that at all, so she narrowed her eyes and stared at him in silence.
“Besides, Stella, isn’t the weather lovely today? On a day like this, rather than swinging swords in such a dreary fashion, you ought to be out for a stroll with a friend.”
“I’m not interested in that sort of thing, so why don’t you recommend it to your own friend?”
“Ah, I see. Then after this lesson, I’ll have to suggest it to my friend Cain Reinhardt. The weather is cool and pleasant, so I’m sure he’ll gladly agree.”
That obnoxious name that kept slipping out of the well-groomed man’s mouth every five minutes: Cain Reinhardt.
Just thinking about the name she had already heard at least a dozen times today, Stella asked in an irritated voice, “Aren’t you sick of talking about Cain Reinhardt already? You’ve been going on about him nonstop.”
“Sick of it? Hardly. Talking about my dear friend is always new and thrilling.”
“Friend, my ass....”
If it weren’t for this Cain Reinhardt he thought of as a friend, I would be the runner-up and he would be fourth. Did he not know that, or did he know and just keep doing this anyway?
If it was the former, then he was an idiot. If it was the latter, then he was a harmless fool. Either way, he was the sort of person Stella disliked, so she shook her head and didn’t even spare Bern a glance.
“Still, Stella, don’t you think it’s a truly happy thing to have someone you can share friendship with?”
“......”
“To exchange trivial chatter, laugh together at silly jokes, and sometimes even share something delicious to eat! Ah, I’m truly blessed to have such a friend.”
Ah, what an idiot this guy really is....
He kept spouting nonsense no matter how she listened. Was this man actually stupid? In a situation where they were both competitors, what friendship was he even talking about? This wasn’t some little hill behind a village for idiots or a flower town where only fools gathered.
Cain Reinhardt treated the two of them as potential threats and had even officially declared at the freshmen entrance ceremony that he would keep a close eye on every organization other than the student council he belonged to. So why, exactly, did this empty-headed fool keep trying to tangle himself up with Cain Reinhardt?
Ignoring Bern as he kept preaching his utterly ridiculous theory of friendship, Stella walked ahead.
But then, after she had taken only three steps, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind.
Wait. Could I... use Bern?
Couldn’t she use Bern to keep Cain Reinhardt in check?
That is, if she handled this man who kept throwing her weird advances carefully enough, maybe she could get him to dig up Cain Reinhardt’s weaknesses or interfere with his training....
Once her thoughts reached that point, Stella glanced at Bern. This greasy-looking man had been bringing up Cain Reinhardt all this time. He probably knew Cain Reinhardt from before he enrolled at the academy.
Could it be—maybe?
“Hey, your name was Bern, right?”
“More precisely, Bern von Edward, but. Since we’re in the same pair, I’ll grant you the privilege of calling me Bern, Stella.”
......Ugh.
“Yeah, Bern. You said you’re friends with Cain Reinhardt, right?”
“Mm, yes?”
“Then you must know a lot about Cain Reinhardt, don’t you?”
At Stella’s question, Bern froze.
It was because Bern knew absolutely nothing about Cain, he was truly a blank slate. But Bern was simply delighted that Stella had spoken to him first, so in order to keep the conversation going, he nodded.
“Of course. Cain and I are so close there’s nothing we don’t know about each other.”
“......What? Really? You and Cain Reinhardt are that close?”
“Mm-hmm, of course.”
At Bern’s immediate answer, Stella’s mind whirred at top speed.
This man, she had thought he was nothing but a fool, but he might actually be useful in unexpected ways.
Growing eager, Stella grabbed Bern by the sleeve.
“Th-then. Be my friend too, Bern.”
“...Friend? You and I, Stella?”
“Yeah, friends. Talk to me, and um.... talk about dumb stuff too. Anyway, be my friend like that. ...How about it?”
Of course, Stella hadn’t said that because she truly wanted to become Bern’s friend.
She only suggested it because she thought she might be able to use Bern, who claimed to be close with Cain, for her own plan.
But Bern, who had never had proper friends his own age because of his position as the Empire’s second prince, was simply overjoyed that Stella had been the one to suggest friendship first.
“Ah, of course! I’d like that very much. Then, starting today, we’re friends, Stella?”
“Y-yeah. Friends, right....”
Without a trace of hesitation, he agreed and extended his right hand to shake Stella’s.
* * *
“......Hoo.”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and slid my sword back into its scabbard. At the same time, the massive body of the rock golem, easily over five meters tall, began to crumble slowly. Before long, it dissolved into blue-tinged mana and scattered away.
The sensation of cutting it still lingered vividly at my fingertips, so for a second I’d wondered if it might actually have been a real golem. But no, it really had been made with illusion magic.
Letting out a fresh sense of realization, I looked around. The rock golem’s body had been so huge that the aftermath of the fight had punched massive holes all over the cave.
No matter how strong I was, if I’d taken a rock golem’s fist head-on, I doubt I would have been able to stand here in one piece like this. Thinking about that made me seriously question the mental state of the instructors who had brought a monster like this into a cave in the first place.
What if another pair had entered the cave before us and run into that rock golem? Good thing I knew the original story, or things could have gone very wrong.
“Cain, are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Just as I had been muttering to myself inwardly, worried that my voice might leak into one of the monitoring magical devices nearby, Lia came closer and asked me that.
“Yes, I’m fine—ah. Are you hurt, Lia?”
Right, the magical devices. I only remembered that a beat too late and changed my words, which made Lia snort with laughter.
“Yeah, but you can just speak casually. The magical devices built into the walls were all smashed by the rock golem, and the ones floating around just went outside the cave a moment ago.”
“Oh, I see.”
Then that was a relief. I brushed the dirt from Lia’s shoulder and looked toward the cave wall the rock golem had torn open.
From inside the wall that should have been dark, a strip of light was seeping out. The reason was simple: this was the cave’s hidden space, the place Stella and Edwin were supposed to discover.
“Hmm.”
Looking at it this way, the original plot was starting to come back to me.
In the original story, the heroine Stella had probably been abandoned by her own partner, hadn’t she? The reason she was abandoned was because Stella was beautiful and good at studying, and the order had come from the leader of the noble girls who envied her.
Left alone by the machinations of some extra noble girl whose name I didn’t even remember, Stella struggled to earn points and walked into the cave. As she moved forward, defeating monsters along the way, she eventually encountered the rock golem, and just as the terror of death washed over her at a threat far beyond anything she had expected—
[—Stella, duck!]
Edwin, who had been watching her from far away, would make his entrance there and magnificently take the rock golem’s fist head-on. The way the original novel described Edwin’s emotions as he seemed to duel the enormous rock golem in single combat was so vivid that it remained one of the standout scenes I still remembered.
Ah, the mood had been good up to that point. Then somehow some strange woman showed up and got pregnant with Edwin’s child.
My mouth turned bitter at the thought, and as I clicked my tongue, Lia pointed at the torn-open wall and tugged my sleeve.
“Cain, look over there. In that part where the rock golem tore things apart, doesn’t something seem a little strange?”
“Hmm, does it? I’m not sure I see it.”
According to the original plot, this was a place Stella and Edwin were supposed to discover together. So I had intended to pretend I hadn’t seen anything and let it pass, but Lia murmured in a tone of certainty.
“No, it’s strange. I can feel an odd flow of mana coming from inside there.”
“An odd flow of mana. Then it could be a trap?”
“Mm-mm, no. It doesn’t feel suspicious like that. It feels... sacred, somehow?”
The reason she felt that way was probably because beyond there stood the altar where Stella would be tested for her qualifications as a saint.
I knew it because I’d read the original story, but I couldn’t explain it recklessly, and I couldn’t move on my own either. After all, this was a completely different matter from defeating the rock golem and taking first place in the training exercise. Touching the link that would connect Stella and Edwin was not something I could interfere with lightly.
It was true that I didn’t care for the later developments in the original story. But that still didn’t mean I could break the pairing from the very start, did it?
Well, the moment Lia and I took first and second place, the plot had already gone wildly off course. Still, I thought it would be better to leave the main flow alone.
“Cain, let’s go inside once. I’m curious about what’s in there.”
Unaware of my thoughts, Lia kept tugging at my sleeve. Her eyes, blazing with the scholarly fervor unique to mages, were full of curiosity.
“...Yes, understood. Then let’s go together. I’ll lead the way.”
There wasn’t any good reason to stop her, and besides, even if I tried, it probably wouldn’t matter. Lia was the kind of girl who had a quietly stubborn streak and wouldn’t be satisfied until she chased a curiosity all the way to the end.
I stepped one pace ahead of Lia and pushed through the dust into the inner passage.
Hand in hand with me, Lia carefully took in the view ahead as we walked on.
“Wow.... It’s really narrow.”
“We’re almost there.”
After passing through a narrow corridor barely wide enough for two people, the view opened up. The space inside the wall was broad and open on all sides, and some unclear source of light hung from the ceiling. The glow was illuminating not where we stood, but somewhere else.
That is, it was shining only on an altar made of pure white marble.
“Cain, that thing in the center. It looks like an altar, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
An altar so pure and white it seemed to cleanse the mind and body just by looking at it. It matched the original description exactly.
I felt a strange sensation, almost as if my chest were swelling, and walked closer to the altar with Lia.
“This... it looks like there’s something written here. Can you read it, Cain?”
I knelt on one knee beside Lia, who had crouched down adorably.
What she was pointing at was a giant stone stele engraved with strange writing, and I knew what it was. It was probably the warning inscription from the original story.
This stele, inscribed in an ancient script now more than half-erased, had been interpreted by Stella as something like, “This altar can be used only by a single pair of man and woman.”
But according to the information given in the original, its actual meaning was, “Only a pair of man and woman who love no one but each other may proceed beyond this point.”
...A saint was basically no different from a priestess who followed the will of the gods with the most devout heart. I still didn’t understand why the condition for awakening as a saint had to be “love,” though.
Still, something like this was the sort of thing only Stella, with her archaeological hobby, could decipher. If a swordman like me knew how to read it, it would only look strange.
“Let’s see. It does look like it’s written in an old script, but I’m afraid I can’t make it out either.”
So I acted as if I knew nothing, even though I understood everything.
As Lia kept tugging on my sleeve, she took one more step forward.
“Mm.... Really? Then I guess there’s nothing to be done.”
“...Hold on. Where are you going?”
“Where else? Into there, of course.”
“Wouldn’t it be dangerous to go farther in? We don’t know what’s inside.”
“It’ll be fine. It doesn’t look dangerous at all, does it? Nothing will happen. So let’s go, okay?”
The words, “Only a pair of man and woman who love no one but each other may proceed beyond this point,” in other words, meant that a man and woman who had no intention of loving each other couldn’t go on.
So I figured Lia and I wouldn’t be able to pass through here. Even if we tried, it wouldn’t disturb the original flow.
“Yes, well. Let’s go take a look.”
Without thinking much of it, I nodded and took a step forward. And as a result—
—tap.
Far too easily, I passed right by the stele.
“......Huh?”