Golden Branch Castle
The city was vast.
It had been a long time since I'd truly felt the weight of those words.
A colossal circular city twelve kilometers across. In modern terms, its footprint was a little smaller than Seoul's three Gangnam districts. Set against the pre-modern world, it dwarfed even Chang'an at the height of its glory as the largest city on earth.
If you wanted a circular-city comparison, Baghdad came to mind — though to match Res Limen you'd have to measure against the entire Baghdad metropolitan area. The Round City at Baghdad's heart was only two kilometers in diameter; the greater urban sprawl was two enormous semicircles spanning nineteen kilometers across.
Anyway. Simply put, Res Limen was disgustingly huge.
Naturally, the places I'd actually set foot in amounted to a vanishingly small fraction of it. Which meant that stepping into Golden Branch Castle for the first time was no ordinary occasion.
"You get it?"
"Hmm… so basically, Roman was too much of a scrub to even set foot in Golden Branch Castle."
"…Let me explain it again. The city is big. Golden Branch Castle is on the opposite side from where I lived, so it's far. I never had a reason to go, so this is my first time. Is that so hard to understand?"
"Funny, though — anyone with half-decent skills has been to Golden Branch Castle at least once, right?"
The reason Ray was strutting around being this insufferable was simple enough. I hadn't been. She had.
"Hey, hey, Roman. Did you know? Golden Branch Castle only lets blondes in. Intelligence lives in the head, right? So blonde hair is like golden intellect leaking out through your scalp."
"Bullshit."
As if she hadn't only gone once herself, tagging along with Viola during training. What did that make Viola, then, with her blue-violet hair — proof of a dead intellect?
"Oh! Correct!"
Correct, my ass. I was going to report every last syllable of this to Viola later, without leaving out a single word.
"Ahaha… w-well, it is true that Golden Branch Castle has a preference for blondes."
"Huh? For real?"
I'd heard of discrimination by race, but discrimination by whether or not you were a golden-haired pretty boy was a first.
"The founder of Golden Branch Castle, Cordelia Wollstonecraft, was blonde. So people seem to feel a kind of… legitimacy in blonde hair."
"That actually makes sense. Ray, this is how you explain things, got it?"
Trading banter that wasn't quite banter, we arrived at Golden Branch Castle.
Golden Branch Castle was, quite literally, a castle unto itself. A separate fortress nested inside the great city of Res Limen. Massive towers jutted out at jagged angles like the limbs of some enormous tree, and the first thought that hit me was how a design like that even managed to stay upright.
The golden pinnacle of intellect. The golden bough. Looking at it, you understood at a glance why both names had stuck.
"It's huge."
Until now, the single largest building I'd ever seen had been the headquarters of the Explorers' League. That record had just been broken.
"Kinda intimidating."
If it had just been a monumental structure radiating dignity, that would have been one thing. But Golden Branch Castle seemed determined to flaunt its absurd wealth as well, slathering its exterior in magical alloys and gold. The design looked like the product of reckless, balance-be-damned expansions stacked one on top of another — and the only reason the whole thing still stood solid was probably because those outer materials were impossibly tough.
Big. Gaudy. It reminded me, somehow, of the first time I'd gone to a department store with my mother as a kid. I'd felt the same crushing pressure then, clinging to her hand the whole way.
"Want me to hold your hand?"
Ray grinned and stuck out her palm.
Don't you dare contaminate my childhood memories, you little brat.
"I'm fine."
Still, swatting her hand away outright felt wrong. She was trying to be considerate, in her own way. I gently pushed her hand aside and turned to Leaf.
"So where do we go from here?"
"You'll see once we're inside."
Leaf trotted ahead as if Golden Branch Castle were familiar ground, her steps a little lighter than usual — almost buoyant.
They must be pretty close.
Well, of course. That was why she'd arranged the training placement here in the first place.
Ray and I followed Leaf through the entrance of Golden Branch Castle.
The interior was another world entirely.
High above, the vaulted ceiling glittered with jewels of every color I couldn't name, arranged into a vast celestial chart. Crystal chandeliers blazed beneath it, and magic circles of every description sprawled across the floor. None of it was mere decoration.
The muggy air from outside vanished. Cool, clean air swept over my skin like a rinse. Temperature control. Light regulation. Air purification. Sound diffusion. And layered over all of that, magical systems so intricate I couldn't begin to parse them — all of it woven into the fabric of the space itself.
Booths lined the carefully planned walkways on either side, where people who looked like alchemists were doing business with customers. Selling their own creations, by the look of it.
"This is where the apprentices sell their work. The further inside you go, the higher the grade."
"For the record, I made it to the third floor."
Ray shrugged with a look that practically begged for praise. Pure. Endearingly pure.
"Third floor means custom orders."
"So if the first floor is Normal, the second is Rare, and the third is Unique — that kind of vibe?"
"…? I'm not totally sure, but that sounds about right!"
Leaf went with the agreeable answer first and asked questions later.
"So where are we headed?"
"Ah — we're going to the seventh floor."
"Sev… seventh floor?"
Ray stammered, her face blank with shock. She'd only managed the third floor, and now someone had casually named a floor twice as high — she looked completely overwhelmed.
"Are you an idiot? This is a mixed-use tower. If the third floor is custom orders, then the sales floors basically stop at three. Everything above that is labs and living quarters for Golden Branch Castle people. Getting to the third floor means you went all the way."
"R-right? Yeah, yeah. Viola's kind of a piece of work, but she is a Pioneer."
It occurred to me belatedly that Ray might be feeling a little psychologically crushed by the Golden Branch Castle atmosphere. Ordinarily, even when she acted dumb, there was a sharp core of judgment that flashed through now and then. Right now that judgment seemed almost completely paralyzed.
When you think about it, Ray's from the sticks too.
Beastman homelands tended to sit a fair distance from civilization, after all.
In any case, Ray and I stuck close behind Leaf like ducklings trailing their mother, glancing around at everything as we went.
"Hey, Roman. Doesn't that one look pretty decent?"
"That?"
Ray was pointing at a gauntlet. This was an alchemists' building. Why were they selling weapons?
"Alchemy covers metallurgy too, right?"
"…Okay, that tracks."
Ray had always fought bare-handed. I'd assumed it was just what she preferred — but watching her take an interest now, it struck me that maybe she simply hadn't had the money.
I should've bought her one.
I had plenty of cash. But Ray wouldn't have wanted that. She'd known I was loaded since we left the training camp, and she could have gotten support from the Frontier Guild during her apprenticeship too. She'd probably refused the debt on principle, planning to save up and buy something herself.
Feeling a flicker of pride in her for that, I gave her head a pat.
"We'll take a look on the way out."
"…Fine. But get your hand off my head."
The gruff way she said it sparked pure mischief in me. I ruffled her hair into a complete disaster. Ray squawked from behind, then had to choke her voice down to a kettle-whistle hiss as stares started gathering. She still managed to land a punch, though.
"…My back hurts."
"Hmph."
"Ahaha, both of you, calm down — we're here."
"Oh!"
At Leaf's announcement, Ray bolted forward, planted her feet, and set both hands on her hips.
"Hey, Roman! Bet you've never seen one of these. This is called a—"
"An elevator."
"Yeah! An eleva— wait, you know what it is?"
Ray asked in a somewhat deflated tone. Ah, so she'd been gearing up for the whole this is called an 'elevator'… it carries people up and down routine. Unfortunately for her, she'd picked the wrong audience. I wasn't some isekai nomadic elf who'd never even heard the word "delicious."
"Ray, not that one — this way!"
She'd even picked the wrong elevator. The one Ray had stopped at was the guest car, which only ran to the third floor. Leaf was standing by the visitor elevator, which went all the way to the tenth.
"Ahem. Ahem."
Ray shuffled over, trying to bury her embarrassment, and the three of us stepped into the elevator Leaf had called.
How long had it been since I'd ridden one of these? I was feeling nostalgic today.
But this was something my memories didn't have.
Waiting inside the elevator was a neatly uniformed woman. No — a female-form golem. The elevator girl had been replaced by an elevator golem.
"Please present your visitor's pass."
"Ah, here."
At the golem's flat voice, Leaf thrust out her staff. That was the visitor's pass…? The elevator golem, for its part, seemed to agree — it output a confirmation tone.
Clunk— whrrrr—
"Ohh."
Apparently the pass even specified the floor. The elevator started moving without anyone pressing a button.
That peculiar floating sensation of rising. The familiar vibration of an elevator after so long set something stirring in my chest.
"Pfft. First time, huh, Roman?"
To Ray, I must have looked like a complete elevator novice. I was just about to fire something back when the golem announced our arrival.
"Here we are."
And standing in front of the doors was a woman in glasses.
Not so strange in itself. The golem might have signaled ahead that visitors with a pass were on their way. What was startling was something else.
"Welcome."
The things attached to her head and back. Horns and wings.
The familiar shapes brought Seir and Leraje to mind — and in that same instant, the two great demons whispered.
"Contractor. She is not a demon. Look more carefully."
At Seir's words I looked again. From this woman I felt none of that tar-thick, clinging mana I'd sensed from the two great demons.
Leraje, sharing my senses, confirmed that I'd registered the difference — and gave me the answer.
"She's a dragonkin."