Back to the City
This matter had slipped beyond our hands.
It was no longer something we could settle among ourselves.
That was Luke's verdict as he pressed for a return to the city.
He had offered the same advice once before and been refused, but this time the team's reaction was altogether different.
"Do we really have to go back up…?"
Ray muttered it in a sulky voice thick with reluctance, every word dripping with leftover attachment. Coming from someone who usually dealt only in absolute yeses and nos, that kind of hedging already meant she had half accepted the idea in some corner of her mind.
Leaf went a step further. She cast her vote for going up without hesitation.
"I think returning is the right call."
"Mm…"
"And once we're up there… there's something I need to talk about."
When she put it like that, there was no real room left to stop her.
The atmosphere did shift a little after she spoke with Elowen alone.
Leaf had probably decided she couldn't keep it buried any longer. As for the catalyst, there was no need to guess — it had to be Elowen. Maybe there was something only elves shared among themselves.
Ray started to object that Leaf could just say it here and now, then took one look at Luke and Elowen standing firm on either side of us and let it drop. The three of us were hopeless at barrier arts; even stepping a short distance away for a private talk would have felt awkward. This was a world with long-range eavesdropping magic, the kind that worked like far-sight. Luke and Elowen didn't seem the type, but you never knew how the world would turn.
"Fine. Let's head back."
Our original reason for descending to the second layer had only been a simple survey anyway. We hadn't come down with some grand ambition of hunting ruins. Taking down a Sentinel alone was more than enough to say we had set foot on the second layer. And even if we refused, Luke looked ready to go up no matter what. If that was the case, better to climb with him while he was still willing to guide us.
"Elowen…"
She slid straight in behind Leaf's back. Leaf startled and bolted over to me; Elowen's sharp eyes drooped like a discarded puppy's.
"Guess there's nothing to ask."
Three of us had come down. Five of us were going back up.
At least it'll be easier.
The night-watch shifts would get shorter, if nothing else.
On the road back to the city.
The day Luke drew meal duty, Leaf finally found herself face-to-face with it.
"…We still have supplies left, don't we?"
"Supplies are to be conserved as much as possible. The second layer is the kind of place where any situation might strand you. Supplies are a lifeline. Remember that."
Luke launched into what sounded like the first of a hundred proper mindsets every explorer ought to hold. In the pot before him, a stew was bubbling away with a surprisingly appetizing smell. To Leaf, that rolling boil must have sounded like the toll of judgment. What was cooking inside was none other than labyrinth-rat meat, caught fresh on-site that very day.
"Uh… I'll pass on breakfast today. My stomach's a little off…"
"You still have to eat. Explorers may have higher limits than most, but replenishing energy is essential among essentials. Or is it something else? Nausea, diarrhea, perhaps…"
"Aaaah—!"
Poor thing. Luke's hardline explorer fundamentalism had been far too much for Leaf's delicate sensibilities.
"Leaf, you—no. Leaf. I'll share some of my rations. I've got a fair bit of dried fruit, though…"
"That won't do. Didn't you pack any meat?"
"…I was going to forage locally…"
"Hah. Elves do tend that way, but it's a shame. If you're a peer of theirs, you must have come through the training camp. Far too careless. Proper supply management is, first and foremost…"
Ray and I left Luke's sermon behind us, quietly taking up the ladle he had abandoned.
"Let's eat first, just us."
"Yeah."
Ray and I played imperial tasters and each took a sip of the stew.
"It's good?"
Ray would call anything edible fine, so her review didn't carry much weight — but it really was pretty decent.
"Yeah. The meat flavor's pretty strong, though. Might be rough on the elves."
Not every elf was a vegan, but the way Elowen had packed nothing but dried fruit as rations said enough: they leaned more toward plants than meat.
"If there's any left, we'll just eat more."
Ray said it with a shrug.
There was nothing left in the pot.
Who said elves were vegetarians?
They demolished that meat.
Coming up into the first layer, the contrast hit hard.
The thinner density of mana, the clean clear air, the warm light pouring down — all of it. So this was how bright the world could be. After so long in the dark, stepping out onto the first layer left my eyes stinging.
Did Philon and Nathaniel just slap healing magic on their eyes because they're holy casters?
Getting from the first layer back to the city was simpler than the climb from the second to the first. Five people already meant fewer people picking fights. Luke alone, with a look that screamed he was no ordinary customer, was enough to make anyone think twice about starting something. And the way he navigated was on another level entirely.
Footwork — or movement arts, I supposed you called it here. He put on a full demonstration of what a seasoned explorer looked like, and we rode that straight into a smooth return to the city. Mea had always given the impression of knowing the way and simply not bothering; Luke felt more like he was declaring he was getting out of here at top speed by the shortest route possible.
"We really got out fast."
Ray murmured it as she took in the cityscape she hadn't seen in a while.
"We did… It feels like it ended in a rush."
Leaf agreed — and right on the heels of her words came Luke's, still carrying that sense of hurry.
"Forgive me, but I'll be going on ahead. I have a duty to report this as quickly as possible."
"Ah — yes. Thank you for everything."
"And you as well. I look forward to the day we meet again in the Abyss."
With that brief farewell, Luke vanished at speed. Reporting to the League about the side path that had opened in the Sentinel's territory really was a matter of urgency.
"You're not going?"
Ray's question, half a dismissal already, was aimed at Elowen. Elowen ignored it as if she hadn't heard. Ray's brow furrowed on cue.
"Hey. Answer."
"…I'll be in touch again later."
"I'll be waiting."
Only after Leaf stepped in did Elowen withdraw without a fight.
"Whoa~ She's completely turned into your subordinate. What are you, Leaf, some kind of princess?"
"…I'll tell you later."
"…Uh. Yeah, okay."
Ray wilted on the spot under Leaf's cool reply. I cleared my throat to break the mood and spoke up.
"Let's get back for now. I'm heading to the Thelema School. You two go on ahead to the inn. I'll stop by tomorrow."
"Sure."
"Understood."
I walked them as far as the inn, then turned alone toward the Thelema School. Their lodging was on the way anyway, so it didn't cost me much time.
And the Thelema School I arrived at was…
"What is this?"
Different.
"Over here! Waiting number fifteen!"
"Why haven't I been assigned yet?"
"Can't you hurry this up somehow?"
The school's first floor was packed wall to wall, noisy as a marketplace — as if the place had turned into a pub overnight. Hekate was handling the crowd with a look so dizzy it almost seemed her eyes were spinning in circles.
"Ah, Roman. You're back?"
Mea's calm voice finally convinced me I was standing in the real Thelema School. Then I looked at her, and reality went sideways all over again.
"Uh… Mea? But that outfit…"
"This?"
Mea pinched the hem of her skirt, gave a little twirl right where she stood. The skirt flared out in a circle; the apron over it swayed with the motion.
There it was. Mea was wearing a maid uniform.
"Well? Does it suit me?"
"Uh? It does, but…"
What on earth was going on here? Had they changed business models?
Skyler Martin braced every muscle in his body, steeling himself for whatever reaction the woman before him might show. Without that, he was certain he would start shaking on the spot.
After the training-camp raid, Skyler had stepped down from the director's post and taken the responsibility with him. His new workplace was the Explorer League. He had transferred in with a decent career behind him, but half of it had been a parachute drop — and so he had been unable to dodge this particular assignment.
Namely: delivering the Grand Duke's and the League's orders to a Pioneer.
While Skyler silently cursed the people who had dumped the job on him, the woman's lips finally moved.
"So. You want me to go down."
"…There's no one else."
No other Pioneer still left in the city. The rest of what Skyler wanted to add didn't need saying out loud.
Pioneer. A rank founded in honor of the First Expedition — the highest honor the city could bestow on those who stood at the front line of the unknown. And also…
A shackle, more like.
Res Limen's political structure was complicated. The Grand Duke looked like he wielded absolute power; he did not. This was a city where one-man armies — monsters capable of facing entire forces alone — had grown fat on the Abyss's mana. So the city had dispersed its power structure, ensuring that even the strong who could shred the law at will would still respect it.
The city's laws were overseen by a Grand Ducal Council of fifty. The Grand Duke, with twelve aides, handled only administration. Law enforcement fell under that administration as well, which meant both executive and judicial authority sat in the Grand Duke's hands.
Even that was incomplete. There were people who could put the brakes on the Grand Duke's administrative and judicial decisions.
The Council of Ten.
The heads of the great organizations that ruled the city, and walking disasters who carried absolute force in a single body. People who held no public office, yet could sway the entire city through influence and raw power alone. Gathered into the Council of Ten, they served as the Grand Duke's advisors and overseers, with the authority to involve themselves in the exercise of that power.
But power always came with responsibility. In exchange for sharing power with them, the Grand Duke had secured a limited right to issue them commands.
"This is exactly why I said I didn't want it."
"You're free to step down from the Pioneer post, of course."
"Ha! Not a chance. The taxes alone would kill me."
Tax exemption. The signature privilege granted to anyone who entered the Council of Ten as a Pioneer.
"No helping it, then."
She clicked her tongue openly and leaned back into the sofa, arms flung wide across the backrest, and tipped her head up. The ceiling's plain grid pattern stared down at her. Lately her life had looked a lot like that. Maybe she had stayed away from the Abyss too long, all for the sake of raising one late-acquired disciple.
In that case, perhaps it was time she went down again.
"I get to pick my own people, right?"
When her head came forward again and her face returned to view, Skyler met her changed eyes and froze solid. It wasn't hostility. It was simply the helplessness a weakling felt standing before absolute strength. Skyler himself had made a name as an Expert explorer, and still he felt endlessly small in front of her. That was what a Pioneer was. Even after years away from the front line, the essence did not change.
"…Of course."
At his strained answer, she smiled. The fierce edge in that smile almost seemed to look forward to the chaos to come.
Challengers. Pioneers who never stopped pushing the horizon of what could be known. One of the giants who held a seat among them rose after a long time at rest.
"Then let's move."
Guild Master of Frontier, and the city's sole Pioneer.
Viola Pelletier.
It was her declaration of return.