Chapter 260 : Chapter 260
Chapter 260: Oddball (3)
Crash!
The kneeling Eiga Akker drove his head into the floor.
"My apologies, Your Majesty!"
The blood that ran down his forehead and fell to the floor flared like fire and evaporated.
It seemed to signify a desperate apology.
"That I dared not to recognize...... what impiety! Please pass judgment!"
Harad had been the deceiver, yet Eiga Akker took on the blame.
A retainer's way.
"Judgment?"
"Yes! Postponement or execution!"
"And execution means?"
"I die."
Eiga Akker acted as though the very question were strange.
Chilling, if one called it chilling.
Truly, if Harad said execution, it seemed Eiga Akker would die with a smile.
"Will dying do?"
Eiga Akker asked.
"I didn't say execution."
"You want to kill me, don't you."
Harad was caught dead on.
Otherworld. A Dreamer like Aten. To say he had no wish to kill him would be a lie. The thought had been there from the start. Curiosity alone had held him back.
He'd thought he'd hidden it well, but Eiga Akker had seen it. Clever, and quick on the uptake.
"Still deliberating."
"When your deliberation is over, please tell me!"
Eiga Akker seemed ready to die at any moment.
"No regrets?"
"I have them. But what can I do—if Your Majesty says die, I must die."
Harad turned his head reflexively.
Ellen decides. Even Kubel and Shura, here now, had joined as members that way.
"Do as you wish."
She had changed quite a bit in the interval.
Ellen wanted Harad to do as he pleased too.
"I was curious about your view."
"I don't think there's a need to kill him right now."
He'd obligingly die if she wished anyway.
"Then I will."
Harad nodded.
That was when Eiga's brow twitched.
"What is that woman, to sway Your Majesty's will?"
"What?"
"Daring, not knowing her place......"
Sweat suddenly flowed from the bastard's body.
Not sweat—lava. A dangerous bastard. Harad sensed at once.
"Stop."
"Yes!"
At Harad's word, the lava was absorbed back into his skin at once.
The Church came to mind.
If they said Laan's will was execution, countless priests would take their own lives.
"That is not a woman. She is Ellen Serzila. A collateral of Serzila."
"Of the Wall?"
Serzila was the Otherworld's enemy.
Eiga's eyes narrowed. Only for a moment. Eiga promptly smiled. Because Harad had been the one to introduce Serzila.
"So that's why you were in Serzila! What is your relationship with Serzila?"
"As one body. From now and forever on."
Ellen's face flushed.
Cassion nodded as a matter of course, while Kubel and Shura wore pleased faces.
"Troubling. We hate Serzila."
"Not my problem."
"Well, of course. What matters is Your Majesty. But what does 'one body' mean?"
Eiga glanced aside at Ellen as he asked.
"I mean Serzila and I are for each other."
"I see. Then I shall endeavor hereafter!"
Endeavor how.
Harad cocked his head.
"Were you not saying I too should work for Serzila?"
It meant betraying the Otherworld.
In a single instant, at that.
"I haven't decided that yet."
"Ah, right. Still in postponement."
Told to die, he'd die; spared, he'd betray the Otherworld.
Harad unknowingly let out a dry laugh.
Because beside him, Shura spoke.
"He shook his head."
Serzila's enemy.
To that question, Eiga had first nodded.
But now in Shura's eyes, the bastard was shaking his head.
Because he'd learned Harad and Serzila were one body.
To Eiga, Serzila was no longer an enemy.
With a single word from Harad.
"Properly mad."
"Eh, at the Tower of the Sun, this is standard."
Truly mad men do not know they are mad.
"This joyous news to the Tower of the Sun...... I won't be sending!"
Eiga, who had been speaking like a clown, read Harad's look and revised his line.
From Harad's expression alone he'd realized he must not.
"May I tell the continent?"
"Dreamers? Are there any who know?"
"All of them. Ah, we don't know the locations! Everyone's too willful."
"You knew about Aten."
"That bastard is an exception. Peculiarly cock-like, so everyone keeps an eye on him."
Aten, the Extinguished Torch, seemed to be a peculiar breed even among peculiar breeds.
"That he died by Your Majesty's hand will please the other fires too."
"He was much hated."
"Plenty of secrets and plenty of troubles. When word spread that he'd wiped out some noble house a few years ago, everyone was aghast......"
"That house was mine."
"I am nothing like that cock of a bastard!"
Eiga sprang up, shouting.
"Other Dreamers are more like me than like Aten. There aren't many of us. Fire is rare."
Fires that emerge on the continent are rarer still.
Being few in number from the start is why they were called peculiar breed.
"Fires that can't master their temper all die."
"......"
Seemed the Red Tower was an exception.
Weak peculiars died, strong peculiars survived.
That was what Dreamers were.
"If I say execution, do they all die?"
"Probably?"
Eiga said.
Harad did not believe him. The bastard spoke like that because he took it as the natural course.
"Execution, hm."
"Ah! Has your deliberation concluded?"
"Not yet."
A madman.
But the noun "madman" was directed at Harad. Whatever Harad said, the bastard would somehow carry it out.
'Value aplenty.'
The enormous Origin of Volcano. 5th Rank. Quickness to understand without being told. Harad especially liked the last.
'But Otherworld.'
That rankled.
Eiga Akker was Otherworld-born. He carried the surname Akker, too. A mark of precious Otherworld blood.
Such a one, in Serzila.
"To my eye they're all the same."
Ellen opened her mouth then.
"Kubel, Jis, Anton...... all the same. Including him."
All mages.
Only their origins differed; as people, they were the same.
"But he's Otherworld."
"Manoa was Otherworld."
"...... Put that way, I have nothing to say."
Harad smiled wryly.
Youth truly has its uses. Unlike the reverted Harad, Ellen had a flexible mind.
No—Ellen had become flexible thanks to Harad.
'No time to be picky.'
The Otherworld had to be brought down.
If it helped, there was no reason not to make use of Otherworld mages too.
"Then postponement it is."
"You will not regret it!"
Eiga rubbed his hands like a swindler.
"There is something to bear in mind."
"Command me! I shall bear it in mind."
"Place Serzila equal to me—no, above me."
"Ah. That is not possible."
Eiga went stern-faced.
"To us, Your Majesty is the highest."
"And the one telling you is me."
"Still, it isn't possible. What isn't, isn't."
Eiga offered a troubled smile.
It really didn't seem to be possible.
Harad wanted to pry open Eiga's head.
How could a bastard who'd met the Sun for the first time today hold an ideology like that?
"Above isn't possible, but alongside is."
"Alongside?"
"Yes! From here on I shall serve her as Queen!"
Eiga bowed deeply toward Ellen.
Harad was at a loss for words.
"Good. I'll look forward to it."
Ellen seemed pleased.
***
"So the Star that appeared at the Boundary was Your Majesty!"
The North was a place where one couldn't help but grow talkative.
Because speaking briefly left others not understanding.
"So that's why you disguised yourself as the King of Prophecy. The Tower of Earthquakes would have no pretext to stop you! As expected of Your Majesty."
Quick to grasp things.
Without her having to say it, he scratched the itch.
That was the kind of mage Eiga Akker was.
Harad found it unfamiliar.
There was no such model of talent in Serzila.
"Only water?"
"Iron too. Those bastards have been acting above their station lately."
There was much Eiga Akker disliked.
Not only the Tower of the Deep Sea, but also the Tower of Meteoric Iron.
Harad recalled the Tower Master of Meteoric Iron Kandenkel drinking fire.
It seemed that fire had been liquor forcibly wrung from Eiga's kind.
"The Tower of Earthquakes?"
"No particular feeling. They're quite the docile sort."
"Oh dear. I killed Galuer Berrick."
"Well done! If Your Majesty wanted him dead, he had to die!"
The King of that docile Tower had died as well.
Harad did not bother saying so. Neither the Moon's caprice nor the Tower Master of Meteoric Iron's death. What the Otherworld did not know, he would not leak. Jis, of course, was also a secret.
Harad was not fool enough to bestow trust straight off merely because the man obeyed well.
Postponement—which could turn to execution at any time. So for now he would simply mine information.
"Am I Your Majesty's fourth mage?"
Kubel, Shura, Cassion.
Eiga glanced at each in turn and asked. Harad nodded.
"Correct. Of those, that one is the strongest."
Cassion twitched, then stilled.
He may look the way he does, but a mage was a mage. He'd caught on that Harad wasn't trusting Eiga.
"An assassin-like mage! I'm sure you'll find me more to your taste."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a Volcano!"
Eiga laughed innocently.
But he surely already knew. A quick-witted bastard.
"I shall work hard! Until Your Majesty trusts me!"
As expected.
"Drop 'Your Majesty.'"
"Pardon? Apologies. That won't do."
"If not, execution."
"Yes! I'll die!"
Eiga aimed his dagger at his own throat.
No—it already touched. Blood beaded on the throat.
"If you stop calling me 'Your Majesty,' I think I could trust you a little more."
"Yes, Lord Harad!"
"......"
Harad clicked his tongue.
'I am the standard, then.'
The Sun, more precisely.
All of Eiga's standards were calibrated to the Sun.
That was why the unease lingered still.
What Eiga followed was, in the end, the Sun. Not Harad.
Even so, there was room to observe.
Setting Harad's thoughts aside, Ellen had judged so.
The judgment of none other than Ellen.
The present Ellen and the Ellen at first meeting were different. Through repeated dreams and Grand Duke Elaine's Manifestation, her Innate Strength was awakening.
That Ellen said they should keep watch on Eiga.
Meaning no immediate danger.
"You're returning to Serzila, yes? I'll guide you!"
Business in Akuldag was done.
The quick-witted Eiga got up and threw open his body.
He had a Key.
Used in Laash, the Key opened the most recently used passage—the branch. Meaning they no longer had to cross the continent.
"Here."
Before leaving the inn, Ellen held out an empty hand. The necklace must be there.
"I'll just pull a hood tight over my head. Just for a moment."
Harad yanked the robe Kubel had brought down over himself.
He no longer wanted to be Harein.
He hadn't realized back then, but back to himself, the self-loathing was beyond what he'd imagined.
That necklace was a dangerous Magical Item.
"You said you Manifested."
On the way, Ellen whispered.
"I'm fine. Refilled the Moon's Orb too."
The aftereffects were shallow.
Only a bit of blood lost. Grudging as it was to admit, it was the work of Aten, the Extinguished Torch.
'Or the work isn't yet complete.'
Harad remembered the emptiness when he'd Manifested.
Something was missing in the Sun. Or in his Manifestation.
Eiga, leading Harad's party, opened the door and went through.
A different door from the Laash exit Jis had found.
Laash, overturned and swallowed by lava and cooled, was closer in shape to a small canyon than a street. The ground near the Manifested Sun had vanished, and around it the lava had raged before hardening.
Parus's voice was no longer audible.
"Over there!"
Instead, an unfamiliar voice rang out.
A single voice, but quite a crowd—well over twenty.
"Who is the Sun."
The woman who had just shouted asked.
Harein was. And she was not here.
Not a question a Laash survivor would throw.
"Tower of Earthquakes!"
Eiga shouted.
"Do you know them?"
"Yes! The Akuldag side."
Mages who had been in Akuldag, not Laash, when the Sun Manifested.
Hence the question "Who is the Sun."
They had only just come into Laash after belatedly sensing the anomaly. They had heard of the Sun from survivors, but had not heard of Harein.
"That woman's my friend who gave me the Key."
Eiga waved to the woman at the front.
"Eiga Akker?"
Truly seemed an acquaintance.
Having recognized Eiga, the woman knit her brow.
"Crazy bastard, Paradise's Taboo again......!"
Killing mages of other Towers is a taboo.
Paradise's Taboo referred to that.
Eiga appeared to have a record.
A record to Harad's liking.
"That woman too calls you a madman."
"Don't trouble yourself with it! Lord Harad need only deliver judgment."
"Over what?"
"The Otherworld is Serzila's enemy, is it not!"
"......"
"Did she not dare ask who the Sun is?"
This side was earnest.
"Not 'My Lord Sun,' nor 'Who might you be.' Heavens! How most irreverent!"
Ostentation and excess.
Eiga Akker had looked like a mage far from either.
A mistake.
Eiga Akker made ostentation of the Sun.
"Lord Harad! Judgment!"
He treated Harad as Laan.
"Like the Church."
"Eh, different from the Church. You are real."
Eiga lifted Harad up with both hands and laughed.
A fair point.
Eiga's fanaticism was better than the Church's.
Unlike Laan and Luan, who had never conveyed their will.
"Judgment!"
If Harad said stop, Eiga would stop.
Meaning: controllable.
"Kill them."
But now was not the time to control.
The North did not turn away a fight brought to it.
"Execution!"
The Volcano Manifested.