Volume 2, Episode 8
Seherbian, a little flustered, lifted the newsletter and looked over at Cassio.
“I only just saw this. I’m sorry.”
“Th-that—”
“It’s all right!”
Before Cassio could even react, Jin, who had gone deathly pale, refused the apology as if she were about to spring into the air.
Ignoring Cassio, whose eyes had gone round as a puffer fish’s, she bowed her head in return and apologized instead.
“We should have explained the existence and use of the mailbox to you. I apologize for not thinking of it sooner. Here are your appointment letter and the new newsletter.”
With that, Jin carefully drew out the new newsletter she had been holding to her chest and offered it to him.
The privilege of having the deputy commander deliver it personally rather than a messenger pigeon made Cassio’s eyes widen all over again.
“Whew, the deputy commander’s never been this kind to a newcomer befo—”
“Keep your mouth shut, Lord Drake.”
“Yessir.”
At the firm order, Cassio shrank down and fell silent.
“Has the morning assembly already ended?”
“It has, though if nothing is amiss, the commander asked that you join afternoon training.”
Though the atmosphere was relaxed, the Varzian Knights were still an armed organization that drew swords, and that meant their training hours were fixed every day. Seherbian glanced toward the brilliantly shining sun outside the window, then dipped his head lightly in thanks.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“……Ah! N-not at all.”
Jin, tense to the point of stammering, waved her hands quickly in denial.
Only Cassio, who was fastening a leash onto the wildly excited Dogret a step behind them, kept looking back and forth between the two of them with a suspicious expression.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Afternoon training took place in a broad, open yard.
The Varzian Knights had no dedicated training grounds of their own; instead, the entire camp served as a vast practice field.
“Priest Seherbi!”
Airen, seeing him again after only a day, waved with cheerful enthusiasm the moment he spotted him.
With Seherbian’s appearance, curious gazes began to gather from every direction. Aside from the matter of his enlistment, the fact remained that Seherbian was Winter Bell’s dragon priest, and that alone made him impossible to ignore.
He had changed out of the flowing priest’s robes he’d worn on departure and into a practical knight’s uniform, but the white tassel staff in his hand and the holy pendant hanging around his neck stood out all the more starkly among the knights in training.
“I heard the newsletter didn’t get delivered properly. Sorry, sorry. I’ll make sure to pay more attention from now on.”
Airen apologized first, clearly trying to spare Seherbian any embarrassment over missing the morning assembly.
“Did you recover from the travel well?”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
Seherbian replied as if it were nothing, and Airen nodded before turning to Jin, who had come with him.
“Jin, the appointment letter?”
“It was delivered properly.”
The order had been a little muddled, but before coming out to the training ground, Seherbian had signed the membership documents issued along with the appointment letter in front of Deputy Commander Jin Veronica herself.
And so the dragon priest “Seherbi” had officially become a member of the winter knight order, the Varzian Knights.
“Thank you for deciding to join us, Priest. New comrades are always a great joy.”
Airen gave him a thumbs-up, plainly welcoming him.
Seherbian stared at that innocent, transparently readable expression, and at that moment the white tassel staff at his side gave a small ring.
External presence detected. No hostile intent.
Almost at the same time, Airen turned toward the sound and spoke brightly.
“Lord Pinuoa, Lord Wiz! What are you two doing here already? Not enough training for you? Want me to increase it?”
“Hrk. What’re ya saying? If you increase it any more, we won’t get any sleep and we’ll be runnin’ all day.”
“That’s right, Commander. We came to greet the new brother who joined us!”
A burly, scruffy-haired man with a massive greatsword slung over his shoulder and a sturdy woman with her hair cut short enough to leave the nape of her neck bare walked over together, smiling companionably.
The man was of common birth, and his rough way of speaking reflected it; there was no surname after the name Pinuoa. The woman, meanwhile, was called Wiz Dick.
Both had spent so long in the Varzian Knights that they were seasoned old hands.
“Right, then. Introduce yourselves. This is Priest Seherbi, who joined today.”
“Woooah! This is the famous one…!”
The moment she heard the word priest, Wiz couldn’t hide her excitement and clenched one of her huge fists, already wearing training knuckles, hard in the air.
“Winter Bell’s dragon priest?”
“Pardon?”
“My God!”
When Seherbian answered, Wiz slapped her thigh over and over and muttered things like “for real” and “holy crap” in a daze.
“Hey, Lord Wiz? Calm down a little.”
“Goodness, Commander! In my whole life, this is only the second time I’ve ever seen a priest since my coming-of-age ceremony, and this one serves Winter Bell of all dragons!”
Airen tried to soothe her, but Wiz had already gone wild like a bull that had spotted red cloth, and his effort was wasted.
Instead, Pinuoa, standing beside her, placed a hand on Wiz’s shoulder and patted her down until she settled.
“Leave her be. She’s probably shocked that priests are supposed to be such a rare sight among noble houses. If you leave her alone, she’ll come to her senses soon enough.”
Seherbian nodded as he watched the hulking Pinuoa deftly turn the eager Wiz away whenever she tried to rush toward the dragon priest.
“Anyway, welcome, Winter Dragon Priest.”
When their eyes met, Pinuoa’s rough face creased into a grin.
A common-born man with relatively little education but a calm head, and Wiz Dick, who possessed the specialized knowledge peculiar to nobles yet was emotionally expressive.
Watching them, they made a rather well-balanced pair.
Wiz only began to calm down once a ring of people had formed around them.
With two veterans from within the order stepping forward first, the other members, who had merely been watching from the sidelines, took that as their cue and gradually gathered around now that training had been interrupted anyway.
“They say he really is a priest.”
“The dragon priest of Winter Bell, they say?”
“That pendant around his neck is supposedly a holy artifact given directly by Winter Bell.”
Since the Varzian Knights were, after all, the winter knight order, Winter Bell’s influence was immense whether one liked it or not.
Knowing that well, Airen deliberately did not stop the knights from approaching, and with the commander’s tacit approval, a natural break time formed around them.
Countless gazes, mixed with goodwill and curiosity, followed Seherbian.
Particularly keen attention was trained on the pendant proving his identity as a dragon priest and on Mimir.
“So priests carry staffs instead of swords. That’s fascinating…”
“The staff’s made of wood, though. Wouldn’t it break if you fought with it?”
“Idiot. There’s no way a kind priest would swing a staff around to kill people!”
“W-well, I suppose not.”
The knights stood at a slight distance from Seherbian and exchanged impressions among themselves.
The atmosphere was almost mercenary in its freedom.
Because of that, the murmuring was fairly loud, and even without Mimir relaying every word, he could hear them perfectly well.
If they tried to smash Mimir, the sword would be the one that couldn’t take it.
He had never actually tested the theory, but Seherbian was certain there was no weapon in the world that could break his white tassel staff.
Even if they were both wood, where the wood came from mattered!
What kind of staff was Mimir, after all?
It had been created directly by a god, carved from a branch of the World Tree for the world’s guardian dragons, the Bells, and thus had become a special guardian with a self despite being little more than a branch.
So unlike what the knights were imagining, ordinary metal would not leave so much as a scratch on Mimir.
Maybe it could even block a dragon breath.
Now that he thought about it, he was a little curious just how far Mimir’s limits extended.
Sensing Seherbian’s thoughts, Mimir answered the question mechanically.
“One hundred percent defense is impossible.”
So some level of defense is possible, then.
“If the master’s breath were to hit directly, the body would sustain about thirty percent loss per defense.”
Ah. So it would eventually break if the damage piled up?
“Correct.”
What happens if it breaks? Even for you, would that mean death?
“Restoration is possible down to ten percent of core energy, but depending on the extent of the damage, the loading period may become lengthy.”
Seherbian continued his telepathic conversation with Mimir while keeping a polite, showpiece smile on his face for the knights around him.
What if it falls below ten percent?
“…….”
Mimir, who normally answered his master’s questions without the slightest delay, went quiet for a moment.
When Seherbian, sensing the silence, glanced down at the tassel staff, the bell on it gave a faint ring.
“Statistically, that is an unlikely event, Master.”
So what happens?
Seeing that his master had no intention of being diverted, Mimir fell silent again. But since he could not disobey an order, he could not stall forever and reluctantly resumed his explanation.
“If energy drops below ten percent, the regeneration failure rate rises sharply and loading may cease.”
Regeneration failure?
Seherbian was a little startled this time too, hearing that Mimir, who prided himself on being a perfect program as the god’s messenger, could fail as well.
“At five percent, it enters a coma state. Naturally, there is insufficient energy available for regeneration, so all functions cease.”
Mimir continued his mechanical reply as usual.
“This is probably the state closest to what the master perceives as ‘death.’”
At those words, the sunset-colored eyes of Seherbian lowered a shade.
But the knights around him, completely oblivious to the change in his mood, still carried on as if this were a welcome party.
“But if you’re Winter Bell’s priest, then surely you’ve actually met the dragon, right?”
“……I’m a dragon priest, so of course I have. You can’t become one without meeting a dragon.”
Unlike ordinary priests, who trained their divine power through prayer in the temple, a dragon priest had to be chosen by a dragon.
Kisha Hartney, who still remained at the dragon temple, was likewise a special case, having been appointed as an apprentice dragon priest without the Vatican’s approval.
Ah. Thinking about it, I’ll have to take her to the Vatican at some point.
Separate from Winter Bell’s personal choice, if he wanted to become an officially recognized priest in the world’s eyes, there was still the matter of receiving Vatican authorization and having his name entered into the records.
Seherbian tucked the thought of taking Kisha to the capital soon into a corner of his mind.
Meanwhile, Airen, after calming the restless knights, turned back to him with an awkward laugh.
“Well, there you have it. These guys really like people, so they don’t calm down easily.”
“It’s fine. It feels fresh compared to the temple.”
He only meant it as reassurance, but the one line only stirred the knights’ curiosity again.
“Then is the temple always quiet?”
“Of course it is, don’tcha know? In a temple, you have to, um, be solemn!”
Between Wiz and Pinuoa, who were questioning and answering each other in all seriousness, Seherbian calmly waved a hand.
“There’s no particular need to be solemn. The guardians are lively too.”
“Huh? Guardians? You mean dragon guardians? You’ve met them too?”
“……They’re just a bunch of very chatty crows.”
Seherbian answered with what was almost a sigh. That was one of the reasons he had deliberately not brought any guardians with him when he left Blanconia.
The knights, unaware of that fact, let out admiring sounds of “ohhh.”