Chapter 112. You Will Have to Draw Your Sword
Beep! Beep!
Breakfast No.1, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, had gotten noticeably plumper.
“I heard it from the third. So, you dealt with Destrou, didn’t you?”
Senior Principal looked quite haggard.
I glanced back and forth between Breakfast No.1, whose throat I was gripping, and Senior Principal, when suddenly a thought crossed my mind.
Could it be, that familiars live by sucking the life force of their master? If not, how else could Breakfast No.1 have gotten this fat?
Like a chicken fattened at home, I let go of Breakfast No.1 and sat down on the sofa.
Squawk! Squawk!
Breakfast No.1 glared with hawk eyes and pecked at me, but it was laughable.
Peck all you want, you won’t pierce my barrier. Of course, it wasn’t like I wasn’t annoyed, so I flicked my finger hard against its forehead.
Squawk!
Leaving the toppled Breakfast No.1 behind, I turned to Senior.
“Yes, what was that?”
“……”
Senior’s eyes were hazy.
Breakfast No.1’s eyes were hazy too.
In the middle of it all, the only one clear was me, so in a way, I was the strongest in this room.
Anyhow.
“…I heard it from the third. That you dealt with Destrou.”
“Ah, yes.”
The third must mean the Archduke’s daughter.
“I see.”
“Yes.”
“……”
“……”
An awkward silence hung between us.
What’s with this guy? He sent Breakfast No.1 to summon me, and now he’s sitting there like a sack of rice.
“Ahem. Hmm. But, it looked like you had companions?”
“You heard that from the Archduke’s daughter too?”
“No, I saw it.”
Senior Principal side-glanced at Breakfast No.1. That was when I recalled Breakfast No.1 was his familiar.
“Were they the ones you met in the Great Forest?”
“Yes, I picked them up.”
“…Picked up?”
“One I picked up, one I fished up.”
The one I picked up was Shine. The one I fished up was Rayleigh.
But since Senior didn’t know the details, he blinked in confusion. For reference, I’d dropped the two off at a nearby inn before meeting Senior. Smuggling two people over the walls would’ve been too much.
And yet, why was it so?
Another awkward silence. This time, I spoke first.
“Don’t you have something to say?”
“Hm?”
“Stop circling around and just say it straight. I can see your mind’s elsewhere.”
“Urgh… does it show that much?”
It showed a lot.
The Senior I knew was crazy, yes, but not without conscience.
Look at him when we left for the Great Forest of Hamern. Those mad eyes, full of worry… even a spoonful of guilt mixed in, complete chaos. And now, after I came back alive, he couldn’t even say ‘well done’, only dodging around, how could I not notice?
“It’s just that… sigh.”
Senior let out a deep sigh and lit a cigarette.
Crackle!
Sparks, smoke rising. His weary eyes flickered dully, and soon he opened his mouth.
His gaze changed.
How to put it? Almost like our first meeting? You know, that day he suddenly came at me, saying he’d kill me.
Putting on a heavy air, Senior lowered his voice.
“Junior. Let me ask you honestly, just one thing.”
“Only one?”
“…”
I could see it. That flicker of embarrassment in his eyes. The little cracks spreading through the solemn weight pressing down.
But he didn’t back down.
At this point, even I couldn’t treat it lightly.
“It’s not only one, but… there is one thing I need to make clear.”
“Go on.”
“I heard it from the third. That is, what happened when you fought Destrou.”
Again, that serious voice. And looking into his eyes, I realized today’s talk was a continuation of our first meeting.
“She said… you were at a level far beyond her.”
Yes, that was likely true.
I don’t know from which point the Archduke’s daughter had been watching, but that day, I reached transcendence. I touched that realm. And yet, the reason she still wanted me dead… must have been because she knew the state my body was in.
Anyway, I could already predict the question that would follow. The question he’d always dodged around, about who I really was.
‘So… it won’t just pass, after all?’
I had thought vaguely of this moment too.
I hid my identity from Obern, Senior Rheim, and the Archduke’s daughter. But Senior Principal could piece things together from their accounts. In truth, from the very day we left for the Great Forest, I expected this.
“The Trial Chamber… I thought maybe. That you were some great genius, or had your own circumstances. Your hand was cruel, but understandable.”
Yes, that much.
“At our first meeting, your level… Yes, it made sense. The magic you showed the day we left as well, I could accept that too.”
Yes, that much.
The Trial Chamber.
That, perhaps, could be excused. He hadn’t seen it directly, only traces.
The Crimson Ruby I first displayed before him, that too, maybe could be accepted.
But.
“Hoo…”
He exhaled a long cloud of smoke. No, more a sigh than smoke.
“But this time, I cannot just let it go without asking.”
His sunken eyes gleamed sharply.
“Who are you?”
“…”
A faint smile tugged at my lips.
* * *
Schwarz stared fixedly at the boy before him.
“…”
No reply. Only silence. A faint smile at his lips, saying nothing. It was the opposite of their first meeting. No, it wasn’t like any Aster he had ever seen.
That faint, bitter smile.
In the stillness, Aster removed the half-mask from his face and stowed it into subspace.
But when his hand emerged again, he held another mask.
The Token of the Waning Moon.
“…”
Aster presented the Token.
Then his hand dipped again into subspace, and pulled out a Semi-Royal Ticket.
Schwarz said nothing, he only took it all in with his eyes.
His gaze was complicated.
Aster said it felt like their first meeting, but it was different at its core.
Back then, Schwarz truly meant to kill Aster. Not a shred of falsehood. But now?
His cigarette burned down. Like white ash, his eyes dulled.
In his flickering eyes, Aster’s faint smile wavered. Aster saw his own reflection in those eyes, then slowly erased his smile.
Schwarz’s doubts were understandable. Of course he felt troubled. His junior returned from near death, after Schwarz had begged his help, and now here he was, interrogating that very junior’s identity.
But this was Aster’s free will.
Schwarz’s reward? The Library Lafiterre? His desperate heart for his friend?
None of it was what moved Aster. It was the resonance of the Fire Mark. That was what led him to the Great Forest of Hamern.
And as he had thought before, he wasn’t unprepared for this.
What he’d shown until then could still be rationalized within reason. But what he showed in the Great Forest, those feats defied rationalization.
Defeating the Swamp’s Ruler, repelling Destrou. No genius at his age had ever done such things. Well, there had been a few. But those were all under the wing of noble houses, blessed with bloodlines and vast support, the fortunate few.
So Schwarz’s doubts were only natural.
‘Could it be…’
Perhaps he was something raised by some organization? A weapon forged, trained to kill for some secret purpose?
His outward age? In the shadows, countless bizarre magics exist. Changing one’s appearance would be nothing.
But emotions told him otherwise. The way he had thrown himself into death. The Trial Chamber. The shadows that clouded his eyes when recalling it. His fiery energy when he spoke of founding a library.
Still, even if there was a one-in-a-hundred-thousand chance of suspicion?
Then Schwarz could not just let it go.
…And from Aster’s shadow.
Twin red lights glowed, like rubies.
“This foolish old man, has he lost his wits?”
“…!”
From beneath the shadow, Shine suddenly emerged.
Schwarz was shocked. Aster wasn’t. Shine glared at Schwarz with blazing eyes.
“What? Who’s who, you ask? Is that what you say to the benefactor who saved your friend?”
He had tried to endure, but the more he thought about it, the more enraged he grew. This wily old thing, he had trailed along in secret to see what tricks he’d pull, and now he had to listen to this nonsense?
And that expression…
‘Like a headless Dullahan…’
A bitter smile.
“You are…”
Shine, one leg planted boldly on the table, declared:
“You asked about this one? I am Shine von Leman. Last heir of House Leman, Lord of the noble vampire clan. But anyway, that’s not the point.”
From their time together in the Great Forest, Shine roughly knew Aster’s reasons for being there.
“Wasn’t it you who sent him?”
“…”
That speech, with its ‘this guy, that guy’, no need to ask who was who.
But Schwarz was so dumbfounded he couldn’t answer.
Or rather, he didn’t get the chance.
“And now what? Saying who’s who? He fought, burning his life away, and came back, yet you ask who he is?”
Fury boiled over.
“Is that what you say to the benefactor who saved your friend? Hah, like seed, like fruit, teacher and student, all the same breed!”
That arrogant Archduke’s daughter too. Thinking of herself as the only one in the world. Had it been his younger days, Shine would have slit her throat right then, to teach her how wide the world was.
“That Destrou, huh? At his age, I would’ve cut him down in a single stroke, well, maybe not a single stroke, but still! How can you think the world is only what you see?”
It was a magnificent sight.
A two-hundred-year-old lecturing a white-haired elder.
“What you should say to this one is not ‘who are you’. You should be bowing your head in gratitude, saying thank you!”
But instead, who? Whooo?
Clang!
Shine’s sword slid from its sheath, tip aimed at Schwarz.
“For the last time, I give you a chance. Offer this one a sincere apology and thanks. If not…”
Murderous intent shot out sharp. With overwhelming presence, Shine finished:
“…You too will have to draw your sword.”
So grand was her bearing that Aster gazed at her, almost entranced.
His pupils trembled faintly. Emotions stirred. His mouth itched. But with superhuman patience, he swallowed back the words rising to his lips.
‘…Petty bastard.’
To tell a magician to draw his sword.
Truly, it was a magnificent mindset.
