Chapter 282
Chapter 282: Water and Fire (1)
A bear-like man brushed the ice and sand clinging to his leather armor. Squeak. The sand grains made a strange noise. Magical Beasts.
"The boys are at their limit. I'll go alone."
The man said, having mostly brushed himself off.
His build was certainly impressive, but standing before Terkan, he looked like a bear cub.
"Don't be greedy."
"It's camaraderie."
Both at once.
Harad laughed dryly at the staredown between Terkan and the cub.
'Raole.'
4th Knights Deputy Commander Raole was a greedy man.
And fiercely loyal to his comrades.
The greed here meant fighting.
Raole was pushing for more despite being thoroughly exhausted.
"Solo patrols aren't recommended."
"I'll say it couldn't be helped."
Raole seemed ignorant yet flexible.
Harad thought the man resembled Terkan.
"Say that again."
Terkan pointed at Ellen.
"Wh...... oh, right."
Raole's mouth fell open in stages.
"That was a joke, Lady Ellen."
No knight didn't know Ellen.
She was popular.
"Don't worry. I won't tell."
Ellen smiled as though it were someone else's business.
Perhaps that was one of the secrets to Ellen's popularity.
Ellen rarely invoked the name of Serzila.
Her status existed for precisely that sort of freedom.
"But what brings you here, Lady Ellen?"
The relieved Raole asked.
"Ah!"
Then he spotted Harad beside her and let out a short gasp.
"You followed Mage Harad. I've heard plenty of rumors."
What rumors now.
Harad thought of the 1st Knights. They'd be the culprits.
"Is it the 4th Knights' turn?"
"That's right."
"I'll do my best to learn, though I can't promise results. Good to meet you, Mage Harad."
Raole extended a cub-like hand.
It was smeared with blood and sweat, but Harad clasped it without a care.
SQUEEZE.
The grip tightened hard. It didn't hurt. Raole's eyes went round.
"Quite the grip."
"I'm not Serzila's mage for nothing."
Raole laughed loudly at Harad's words.
His fondness was plain to see.
It hadn't been low to begin with.
Raole had said from the start that he'd do his best to learn magic.
"We're not the brightest bunch."
Raole added.
The exhausted knights behind him nodded.
"That's fine. Everyone said the same, and they caught on well enough."
Because otherwise, they couldn't go on patrols.
Every Wall knight order except the 4th was staking everything on the magic examinations.
"Because of the rewards and punishments, I take it."
"Well, orders are orders."
"I heard from Tursten the rewards are incredible."
"Pallotan, you're banned from patrols now."
"The hell!"
The 4th Knights worried about the new system but took it in stride.
Because Serzila had ordered it.
"But what's this about magic?"
Harad broached the main topic.
The main topic Ellen had been waiting for.
"Magic? About that...... what magic? I didn't say anything."
Raole was about to explain, then played dumb.
"You won't be getting back in either way."
Harad pointed at Terkan.
Terkan nodded. Consecutive patrols weren't possible. It was suicidal.
"Damn it."
"Report, Raole."
"Yes, sir!"
Raole answered Terkan's command with a booming voice, yet plopped right down on the ground. The Wall's distinctive atmosphere. Strict yet free.
"Area twenty-four was damp."
Serzila had seventy patrol routes in the First Stage Boundary.
Raole had come through Patrol Route 24.
"The Snowfall Desert."
"You know it?"
"I memorized them all last time."
"Impressive."
When Harad chimed in, Raole offered brief admiration.
Impressive, but not remarkably so. Seasoned knights had memorized every patrol route too. Proof that they were selectively ignorant.
"Route twenty-four. The Snowfall Desert is a place where snow doesn't accumulate. But snow had piled up. There was even a channel."
"And you think magic is behind it."
"That's my assessment. Am I wrong?"
Raole asked for his opinion.
In Serzila, Harad already held that kind of standing.
"I'd agree. Though it could be a Magical Beast."
In that case, a high-Rank one.
A Magical Beast that had constructed a water-related Origin.
High-Rank Magical Beasts with low intelligence tended to leak magic wherever they went.
"So that's why you insisted on going back in."
Whether mage or high-Rank Magical Beast, it was a rare encounter.
"Tch."
Raole clicked his tongue at the bull's-eye.
As expected, he'd been hoping for a fierce battle.
Nothing to admire. The Wall was composed of such knights.
"We'll check Patrol Route 24."
Harad said, indicating himself and Ellen.
The two could move freely through the Boundary.
Apparently, that was among the rumors too.
"......I'm jealous."
Raole was envious from the bottom of his heart.
***
There were seventy patrol routes, and the Wall knight orders relocated their garrison annually. After living there a few years, most knights experienced the majority of routes.
But the area covered was not so grand.
It wouldn't amount to half of half the First Stage Boundary. That warped land's very space was grotesquely twisted and vast.
Moreover, the Boundary was split in two by the second wall, so the Boundary the knights of this era had experienced was a drop in the ocean.
Excluding Toremot and Terkan, no knight had likely experienced the Boundary more broadly than Harad.
Perhaps Toremot should be excluded too.
Harad and Ellen had ventured beyond the second wall, into the Second Stage Boundary.
The snow melted and vanished before it could even strike his body.
Such was the power of the reward called Harad. With Harad or Fireball present, knights could conduct full-strength patrols.
"This could be an even better reward."
But Harad seemed to have found something better.
"What could?"
"This view."
Harad and Ellen were on the patrol route.
But their eyes were gazing beyond it.
Knights couldn't cross over there.
But Harad was allowed to.
"Wouldn't the knights go mad for this?"
Like Ellen.
"Would Serzila allow it?"
"If it's a small group, probably."
Could he bring knights along.
Harad had once asked Grand Duke Aratus that. When he'd been trying to reach the Village of Embers, that dreamlike place.
'If you truly wish it.'
The Grand Duke had answered so.
Proof that the Grand Duke didn't concern herself with the imperial decree. Harad had his doubts about whether that was wise, but regardless.
If truly needed, the Grand Duke would lend knights.
"With me along as well, the reward is doubled."
To venture beyond the patrol route, Harad had to be there.
The battles beyond the route. The fire that was Harad.
Any knight who accompanied them would receive two rewards at once.
"If the reward is special, the examination should be special too."
This wasn't a reward to give immediately.
The knights hadn't yet fully experienced the reward of Harad and Fireball.
'Rewards should be given step by step.'
Eiga had said so.
That way, the knights would stay obedient.
"Not interested?"
Harad asked, lost in thought.
Because Ellen's expression said she wasn't.
"No. I'm not."
"Why? The imperial decree?"
"No. It's that time like this keeps shrinking."
Snow fluttered through the air.
But it didn't reach Harad's vicinity. And it was warm.
This had originally been a scenery reserved for Ellen alone.
"I like it, but liking turns to bitterness. Watching you earn recognition, watching people gather around you."
Ellen looked caught between joy and sorrow.
That kind of face.
"Are you jealous?"
Right now, it was just the two of them.
No Jis, no Eiga.
Come to think of it, it had been a while.
Originally, it had been just the two of them, and even that hadn't been easy.
"Maybe it feels more like something's being taken from me."
"Jealousy, then."
"Must I spell it out?"
Ellen now took it for granted that there were two of them.
More than that, she liked watching people gather -- liked the reward of Harad's regression -- yet felt the pang of loss.
If this too was a reward of regression, then so be it.
"I'll have to do better, then."
Looking back, rewards overflowed.
Harad shared a smile with Ellen. He hoped it would stay that way.
They didn't encounter any Magical Beasts.
Because Deputy Commander Raole and the knights had only just returned through this route. Every Magical Beast visible from the route lay as a carcass.
The fluttering snow grew steadily thicker.
Each flake had swollen to the size of a big toe, and the volume had multiplied several times over. On the continent rather than the Boundary, this would have been a blizzard for the history books.
The toe-sized snowflakes carried magical power. If they touched skin, they'd cling fast and freeze it solid. That was why Raole's leather armor had been caked with ice.
The life-freezing snow turned to water in Harad's vicinity and fell to the ground. Plop. The sound gradually grew softer. Feet that had trodden on cracked stone now stepped onto sand. The zone had changed.
Snow worse than a historic blizzard above, and a desert that swallowed feet below. This was the zone Raole had described. The sensation was peculiar. Cool above, and below, as hot as Akuldag.
That was how it felt to Harad.
Knights would feel the blizzard above as hellishly cold and the desert below as hellishly hot. Without Aura, one's lower half would cook and one's upper half would freeze to frostbitten death.
That contrast remained wondrous no matter how many times he experienced it.
'Not like the Sanctuary of Fire, though.'
If only the desert existed, it might serve as a kind of preparation, but the pitch-black sky pouring blizzard snow ruined that.
Then again, perhaps that was what maintained the balance.
"It really doesn't accumulate."
Ellen seemed to be seeing this patrol route for the first time.
From the warmth of Harad's side, she took in the peculiar spectacle of a blizzard over a desert.
As Ellen noted, the blizzard vanished without a trace the moment it touched the sand. It couldn't withstand the desert's heat.
Just as the snow became a weapon, the desert was no different. Squeak--! Sand suddenly erupted skyward like an explosion. Magical Beasts hiding in the sand, disguised as grains.
Harad raised a wall of fire and frowned.
"Too few."
Because the number of Magical Beasts was small.
The hearts killed by fire and absorbed weren't that many.
Normally, there should have been as many as grains of sand.
"Maybe because the 4th Knights cleared them out?"
"When knights pass through here, they usually run. The fights aren't fun."
The grain beasts weren't particularly threatening. Just a nuisance.
Knights typically killed the tiny beasts with fists or feet.
Because there was no satisfaction in cutting them.
That was why the grain beast population usually held steady. But the number that had just erupted was lower than that.
"Why fewer."
Harad walked on. Pop, pop--! Grain beasts erupted sporadically. Their intensity was inconsistent.
Harad walked toward the weaker spots. Pop, pop...... the farther he walked, the more the eruptions dwindled to feeble pops. At the end of that trail, snow had accumulated.
'A channel.'
Exactly as Raole had reported.
Snow piled to the height of a shack, and beside it ran a channel. As if originating from the snow and leading somewhere.
'Only the ground here is cold.'
From start to finish, everything was thoroughly unnatural.
"Could it be a Magical Beast?"
Ellen's eyes gleamed.
To her, it seemed like a Magical Beast's trail.
That unnaturally piled snow was where a Magical Beast had been, and the channel was the trace of its movement.
Or perhaps she simply hoped for a Magical Beast.
The Rag Beast might have come to mind.
"Unfortunately, I don't think so."
In Harad's view, she'd guessed wrong.
Not snow piled to the height of a shack, but snow functioning as a shack. And why had the channel-like trench been left? Harad set the snow ablaze for now.
WHOOSH--!
The fire burned strangely.
Only the surface caught fire, while the interior was hollow. When the snow had all melted away, half-eaten food and blankets bearing peculiar patterns were revealed.
"Otherworld, then."
Otherworld forces had crossed into the First Stage Boundary.
And in a group, no less.