Chapter 269 : Chapter 269
Chapter 269: Countryman (1)
Grand Heir Elaine is a woman.
A new lie and concept devised to keep the person called Ellen alive. The female cousin Elaine sometimes even stole Ellen's clothes.
Never tell anyone, Ellen had added.
She would keep it secret from Elaine too, she said.
Because if she didn't, a new lie would have to be invented.
Lies grew the more they were told.
They had already grown much, and Ellen wished them to stop swelling. A lie grown too large would burst someday.
'Elaine.'
She knew it was Ellen.
But Harad could not settle his thoughts.
Because of Ellen.
Ellen in this world; Elaine of the other world. Ellen had drawn that division.
So when "Elaine" was mentioned, it was the Grand Duke of the past life who came to mind first.
The Elaine he had just met.
"The 1st Knights captured a mage alive. Tower of Storms, they say."
Elaine spoke.
A manner of speech at once familiar and growing gradually foreign.
"Normally they'd have killed him on the spot, but they took him alive. Thought an interrogation might be worthwhile. A change brought about by you, no doubt."
The Stone of Regression forced dreams.
Its target was Ellen.
Yet this time it had forced a dream upon Harad.
'Was it even a dream in the first place?'
Was it truly caused by the Stone of Regression?
"The 1st Knights have requested that you be called. Since the opponent is a mage, naturally you should handle it, they say."
The dream had been plainly anomalous.
In Ellen's terms, his consciousness in this world had crossed to the other.
'Elaine crossed over and took Ellen's body. I didn't. Because there's no body for me over there?'
It differed from an ordinary dream.
A different phenomenon from Elaine's Manifestations too.
'Could it just be a rubbish dream?'
The possibility that he'd dreamt of Grand Duke Elaine out of longing.
Obviously not.
Mages could not dream.
"If you're all right with it, I plan to bring that Eiga Akker fellow along. Being Otherworld-born, he'd know the Otherworld better than you. Is that fine?"
If Harad had dreamt, it was by magic.
"Hey."
There was no Manoa in Serzila, so the culprit was the Stone of Regression.
'But Ellen didn't dream.'
Meaning it was a clear anomaly.
What had changed?
"You."
A new stimulus?
'Shura, Laash, Volcano, Harein, the Moon...... no. Most of those are my stimuli. Ellen was in Akuldag.'
Nothing especially stimulating for Ellen.
"Harad."
If something had changed, it was on Harad's side.
Or on the Elaine of the other world's.
"Hey."
"......"
"Fuck."
Harad's head snapped up.
A palm was flying toward his face.
He reflexively dodged, but the palm swung no further.
Unlike the Elaine of the other world, Ellen did not actually strike. She cursed less too.
"I'm fine."
"From what."
"Actually, I'm not fine. Just woke up."
"......"
Elaine's eyes had narrowed.
"Ellen told me. That you have another woman. You were thinking about her just now."
Hence the cursing and the feinted slap, in the manner of the Elaine from the other world.
"Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened."
"Nothing happened and you collapsed in the middle of the street."
"Yes."
"......"
A mouth opened, then closed with a sigh.
A face that had much to say.
"It's about the dream, isn't it. You can tell me. Your relationship with Ellen, and what Ellen knows, I know that much."
Elaine had added to the setup.
To relieve the immediate frustration. That was the kind of woman Ellen was.
"I dreamt."
"We didn't dream, though?"
Elaine and Ellen both dreamt.
Elaine had started, and then Ellen, through associating with Harad, began dreaming too.
A flimsy setup, but plausible because it was magic. One could just insist it was that sort of vagueness.
Of course Harad knew it made no sense, but he was in no position to say so.
If he did, never mind Grand Duke Aratus's interference, the Stone of Regression would burst his heart first.
"That's why this is happening."
"What sort of dream?"
"I saw the other world."
Whether that was genuine.
He could not say for certain.
It might be the past life that remained after Harad's regression, or it might be a virtual space fabricated by the Stone of Regression.
But the Elaine he had met there was real.
Of that, Harad was certain. The idea that he could not tell Elaine apart was absurd.
"I saw the other world."
Grand Heir Elaine murmured.
Harad nodded. She'd be curious about the other world. Ellen was a woman overflowing with curiosity.
"And."
"Yes?"
"How far did you get with that woman?"
"......"
She was vigorously curious indeed.
"Nothing happened."
"Bullshit."
"Pardon?"
"Bullshit, I said."
Elaine scoffed.
She was certain it couldn't be nothing.
The glare drifted into the air.
She seemed to distrust the Elaine of the other world more than Harad.
"Why would the Grand Heir be angry."
"Shouldn't I be? I'm on Ellen's side."
"Ah."
There was a point to that.
***
Was it all right to bring Eiga, an Otherworld native, to the Wall?
A foolish question.
Eiga lived in the Inner Fortress, the heart of Serzila. Hesitating to show him the Wall at this point was laughable.
"Whoa! So this is the Wall. The wall our -- ah, the Otherworld couldn't breach!"
A man who had lived in the Otherworld, yet Eiga was a mage.
Heat poured from his body. The North's cold didn't touch him. Perhaps the same would hold at the Boundary.
"What a sight!"
Eiga said this looking not at the Wall but at the sky.
The wind was sharp, the snow near-constant blizzard. But in the middle of that sky hung the Sun.
To Eiga's eyes, that vista was magnificent.
Because the Otherworld had no Sun.
"May I climb the Wall?"
Eiga seemed to want to be closer to the Sun in the sky.
"Go ahead."
"The Grand Heir speaks just like Lord Harad!"
Eiga bounded up the Wall in high spirits.
No knight stopped him. Because it was Elaine who had given permission.
From the start, news that Harad had brought along a Volcano-mage had spread to the knights too.
The 1st Knights had captured a Tower of Storms mage during a patrol.
Not by encountering him on a patrol route, but by detecting him hidden in the sky.
'And it was Gullen, at that.'
That the capturing knight was Gullen pleased him further.
That future Great Warrior, who had started growing his hair strangely, needed to dig into magic.
The closer he did, the sooner the day he'd touch his true nature.
"I caught him, Harad. Threw this at him."
Gullen, who had seized his axe faster than in the past life and begun studying magic, was growing strong at speed.
To Harad, that speed felt vague.
"Gullen was always a genius."
"He was, back then. The genius has returned."
The 1st Knights found nothing strange about that steep growth.
Thus mages and knights were beings who could not deeply understand each other.
"Well done."
"That's it?"
Gullen, who had been excitedly swinging his axe, knit his brow.
"I find it encouraging."
A mage who would never have been caught in the past life.
Because they never thought to check the sky during a patrol. A fruit of the magic examination and a reward of the regression.
But the reward was short-lived.
The Boundary lay before him. In the sky, behind the blizzard, a single thread of smoke hid.
'The Watchtower's smoke.'
In the dream, Harad had reached its end.
He hadn't seen what was there. It had been invisible.
'What exists yet does not.'
Something of that nature, for Harad, lay at the smoke's end.
It would be a Magical Item the King had left behind, or something related to it. He could roughly guess. His curiosity was immense. But like the reward from the 1st Knights, it was soon buried.
Because of the Elaine of the other world.
She had personally guided him.
'If I go. Can I cross to the other side again?'
Would the anomaly recur?
Harad could not know. But that possibility alone was worth the attempt, many times over. Not knowing was not negation.
'I'd have had to follow the Watchtower's smoke eventually.'
No reason not to retrieve the Magical Item the Sun had left behind.
Leave it, and it was treasure going to waste; let it fall into the Otherworld's hands, and the loss doubled.
He had been putting it off because it was dangerous.
The Watchtower's smoke pointed to the second wall. The yolk of the Boundary, the most perilous zone.
'Is it feasible?'
5th Rank. A sound Manifestation. A full Moon's Orb.
Enough to attempt it once. At least by Harad's reckoning.
But Harad knew better than anyone that personal feeling had crept into that judgment.
'Dying a dog's death is absolutely out.'
I don't want to die.
That was what Elaine had said.
Even that Elaine feared death.
Because she wanted to see Harad. That was the reason.
Having heard such a reason, this side could not gamble with his life. That would be a betrayal of the Elaine who had yielded the regression and remained behind alone.
He had to survive, stubbornly, by any means.
For the reverted Harad, one more duty called survival had been added.
"Settled down now?"
Just then.
Grand Heir Elaine asked. Harad nodded.
"I'm all right now. How did you know?"
No sparks had flown on the way here.
Harad had been hiding it rather well. Because Ellen disliked the Elaine of the other world.
"Ellen said: when you make that face, you're angry."
Harad ran a hand over his face.
Was it showing? Without a mirror, there was no way to check.
"Were you angry? You didn't look it at all."
Gullen chimed in from beside them.
Harad laughed in spite of himself.
He needed to get his head on straight.
Two people could read him from his face alone.
"Save the talk about that woman for later. For Ellen."
Elaine added ominously.
***
The reason Ellen had come as Elaine, not Ellen, was simple.
Capturing and interrogating a mage fell under the Wall's purview.
Unlike Elaine, Ellen could cross the Boundary freely, but could not intervene in the Wall's affairs. Because Ellen was a collateral.
'Elaine can't go to the Boundary freely, but can intervene in Wall affairs.'
In a sense, she could do whatever she pleased.
Since the two were one person.
Only, the mode of expression differed depending on who she was playing.
"Hurry it up."
Elaine spoke listlessly.
Playing Grand Heir seemed no fun at the moment. If she could, she clearly wanted to switch back to Ellen.
Whether mage or knight, the more capable the prisoner, the harder live capture was.
Means to suppress magical power or Aura were rare.
"There you are."
How had they captured a mage alive, he'd wondered.
Harad let out a dry laugh at the sight of the 1st Knights Commander Toremot extending a hand.
Sword Master.
The 1st Knights had stuck that precious asset in the same room as the mage.
"Happy to help. Nothing else to do anyway."
Toremot seemed purely glad.
Serzila's Sword Masters could not enter the Boundary. This mage's capture was practically a gift for Toremot.
"Lips are quite sealed."
"With you, Sir, a touch should make him sing."
Harad said, eyeing Toremot's muscles.
"Haven't touched him. Afraid he'd die."
To the 1st Knights Commander, most mages' lives were less than an insect's.
"Been a great help. The magic examination, especially the Tower of Storms material given to me and Gullen alone. Did you foresee this?"
Toremot asked, sniffing.
"Secret."
"Foresaw it, then."
The nose seemed to have smelled the truth.
Toremot's sense of smell was indeed beyond beast.
"Better study more. Haven't memorized it all yet."
Toremot instinctively grasped what lay ahead. With that, he stepped outside. He would drag Gullen along to study the Tower of Storms material.
The further they went, the further they moved from the past life.
This Gullen had taken up his axe remarkably early. Before long, he'd have no cause for regret either.
The moment Toremot left the room.
The Tower of Storms mage opened his mouth.
"I-I'll answer anything."
The man had been locked in a small underground room with Toremot, chained to a steel chair as one.
"You said his lips were quite sealed?"
The mage's face was swollen all over.
Dried blood clung here and there across his body. Marks of the 1st Knights' treatment, surely.
"The knights didn't seem like the talking type."
"We are, though."
Indeed.
Harad and Elaine were plainly a different breed from the 1st Knights.
"Good eye. We dislike rough things. Hurting or killing, same. Answer only what's asked, and I'll let you live."
"Accepted."
"Tower of Storms, I hear. You were flying."
The mage nodded eagerly.
Ready to spill anything.
"Introduce yourself."
The mage froze.
Briefly. He soon spoke.
"Tower of Storms, 3rd Rank, Barious of the Gentle Breeze."
The mage, Barious, introduced himself smoothly.
"Gentle Breeze. Can you explore the second wall with that Origin?"
"P-pardon?"
"You can't, then. Never mind."
Harad shelved his faint hope.
Chasing the Watchtower's smoke now was premature. He needed to probe a bit more before crossing.
"Why did you come to the first-stage, the Serzila-side Boundary?"
"I was exploring the Boundary. Exploring means......"
"No need to start from scratch. I know the Otherworld's habits."
The scabbed brow twitched.
The remark about knowing the Otherworld seemed to grate.
'Because this is Serzila.'
Devious Otherworld, brutish Serzila.
Harad and Elaine of the past life used to say that. And say it was the reason the long balance had held.
"The target wasn't the Boundary but the Wall, wasn't it? The wind was blowing toward the Wall. Your body too."
Barious had been moving toward the Wall.
Gullen had said so. That there had been two winds.
"A misunderstanding. There's a ceasefire, isn't there. I'd have no reason to approach the Wall."
Barious defended himself.
"A ceasefire."
Who decided that.
The word grated, but it was fair. No reason to skulk toward the Wall alone.
'Unless he held Serzila in utter contempt...... possible? I'd have done the same.'
Harad stroked his chin.
The door burst open then.
"Apologies! I'm late!"
Eiga.
He strode in, then tilted his head.
"Huh?"
"......!"
Simultaneously, Barious's eyes bulged.
"Know each other?"
Harad asked lightly.
Eiga grinned.
"Yes! Tower of Storms, 4th Rank, Peneon of the Northeaster. Long time no see!"
The entire self-introduction had been wrong.
"Eiga Akker!"
Barious, no, mage Peneon shouted.
"Why are you with the insects......!"
"Not insects. Bugs is what he meant."
So that was it.