Chapter 68 : Rescue - 3
Chapter 68: Rescue - 3
The carriage’s horses collapsed onto the ground the moment we entered the capital.
The coachman scratched his head and said,
“Guests. It seems we’ve reached our limit.”
“This is far enough. This is the agreed payment.”
“Eh? This is far too much.”
“I put in double what I first mentioned. You worked hard.”
“Truly, thank you! Farewell.”
No — I was the one who should have been thanking him.
He had already had a letter read into his face ninety-two times.
And I had him read the same letter ninety-two times.
‘Of course the coachman wouldn’t remember.’
Magireta had erased the coachman’s memory every time.
In any case, if it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t have bought any time.
And it was still too early to say our goodbyes.
“Leave the carriage here and come with us for a while.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll pay you twice what I just gave you every hour.”
“Gah! I — I don’t mind … but … all right.”
We had to keep the coachman with us.
We had to make him read the letter periodically.
Until we found Cecil.
Then Armelia asked,
“What do we do now? The capital is far too large for us to search.”
“Finding her won’t take long.”
“Hmm?”
“Edgar would have been wearing shoes, so he must be dead. Our teleportation bead should already be active. If you say ‘I want to go to where Cecil is,’ we can find her immediately.”
Armelia’s face brightened.
But when she heard my next words she dropped into a sullen face almost at once.
“However, moving through the bead right away is a little dangerous. Edgar might be busy dying now, but they might have set some trap in advance.”
“I see. So searching on foot is safer.”
“Don’t worry. We have time. I will keep showing the coachman the letter.”
“…….”
“Of course, I won’t be the one showing it. It’ll just be God’s grace.”
“Saying that now won’t change anything……”
No. It was formal, yes, but it was an extremely important distinction.
Whether I showed the letter myself or it was shown through some unknowable means determined the safety of my head.
I spoke to the Diary Book.
‘Please see this through to the end. Don’t forget—make sure the coachman reads the letter every so often.’
[Yes.]
‘Sorry. Does it hurt a lot?’
[It’s fine. To be honest, I had become detached from it.]
We set off with the coachman.
I don’t know how much time passed.
“Your Highness!”
Someone was running from far off.
Armelia’s eyes widened.
She threw dignity to the wind and ran toward them.
Soon the two met halfway and clung to each other.
“Boohoo. Your Highness.”
“Cecil, Cecil!”
“I … huff. I told you not to come find me!”
“To say that at a time like this. You really never change.”
Armelia cried her heart out but beamed at the same time.
I approached them both and said,
“Hello. Cecil… ma’am? Is that an acceptable form of address?”
“Y — you! The one who was with the Princess then.”
“Yes. You must have a lot to say, but first I’ll ask this. You must have been imprisoned somewhere. How did you get out?”
Before answering, Cecil looked at Armelia.
She smiled gently and nodded.
“You can tell Mason anything. It was all thanks to him in the first place that you are still alive.”
“……All right. If Her Highness says so.”
Cecil told us everything she knew.
Even so, it wasn’t a great deal of information.
She had been unconscious until just before escaping her confinement, and at the last moment she had been helped out by someone.
‘Someone. Someone, huh.’
Aina asked in an anxious voice.
“What did that person look like?”
“Hmm?”
“Age. Voice. Height!”
Cecil, pushed by Aina’s urgency, recited the identifying details she knew.
Aina trembled all over.
Sienne spoke cautiously.
“So it is as we suspected?”
“Yeah. From what she said the facial features were different … but that would be like Granddad’s mask. My brother would also be on the run.”
“Why are you so sure it’s your brother?”
“Because the name was Vayne.”
“But your brother is Benjamin.”
She wiped her tear-streaked face and said,
“That name, Vayne — I made it up playing house with my brother when we were little.”
“Did you really play games like that? I can’t even imagine it.”
“Hey, old man. Why can’t I imagine it?”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t — I said I can’t imagine it.”
“That’s worse.”
Still, thanks to Berseum, Aina’s tears stopped.
Berseum smiled warmly and said to me,
“The hostage was rescued safely, and the teleportation bead’s function is back.”
“That’s right.”
“Then perhaps we should run away now … I’d like to say that, but.”
He glanced at Aina.
“Since we can use the bead anytime, how about searching for one more person?”
Hmm. Benjamin, then.
Aina looked at me with a face full of desperate clinging.
I took out the bead and said,
“First, let’s move Cecil to a safe place and then talk.”
“All right. Cecil, what place do you think is the safest?”
“Need I say? My home. My husband is there, and guards are posted.”
“Then I’ll send you there.”
“What? Send me…?”
“We’ll discuss things at leisure later. You did well.”
“Th — Thank you, Your Highness.”
Armelia nodded at me.
I opened my mouth slowly.
“I want to send Cecil to her own home.”
As soon as I finished speaking, Cecil’s figure disappeared.
Armelia breathed a huge sigh of relief and said,
“Now that I’ve taken care of my precious person, next is Aina’s turn.”
“……Thank you.”
“There is, however, a difference from Cecil.”
“I know. Your brother would be on Edgar’s side, right?”
She nodded heavily and continued.
“I’ll do something to snap him out of it. If I have to, I’ll slap some sense into him.”
“All right.”
“Will you help me until then?”
“No.”
Aina’s eyes widened at my cold reply.
I snorted and smiled.
“Because I said until then — and that’s why no.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll only help if you say no matter how long it takes. Because we’re comrades.”
Aina, momentarily dazed, soon broke into a shy grin.
She nudged my side lightly and said,
“No backing out later, okay?”
“Huh? What’s this about now?”
The coachman once again tore off the letter from Edgar that had stuck to his face.
At this point, the group was barely holding back their laughter.
He probably wouldn’t remember it himself, but he had repeated that line — “Huh? What’s this about now?” — over a hundred and fifty times.
Which meant Edgar had also died over a hundred and fifty times.
“Magireta’s quest? A hidden rule?”
“……”
“Hehehe. The people of the capital sure have strange games.”
Crumple.
The coachman crumpled the letter and tossed it away.
It vanished the moment it hit the ground.
The Diary Book had retrieved it as always.
I muttered quietly,
“So this is the one hundred and fifty-first time, huh.”
We still hadn’t found Benjamin by the time he read his one hundred and fifty-first letter.
Maybe this method wouldn’t work much longer.
“I think it’s time we seriously consider it — directly teleporting to Benjamin.”
At Armelia’s words, we stopped walking.
Sienne let out a sigh and said,
“I agree. It might be risky, but if we precisely determine the location we’re teleporting to, it should be a bit safer.”
“Indeed. That might be wiser than just wandering around aimlessly like this.”
“I’m fine with it too. If needed, I can teleport first and check the situation.”
At that, they all turned to look at me.
They were leaving the final decision to me.
I looked over at the coachman, still reading the same letter over and over again.
I didn’t know how many deaths Edgar had accumulated by now, or how many resurrections were queued.
I had made the coachman read at the shortest possible intervals, so it should be fine… but I couldn’t be completely sure how long his resurrection interval was.
Still.
‘I can’t bring this man along.’
I had to stop dragging ordinary people into this.
I was about to say goodbye to the coachman.
Then it happened.
“Huh?”
The first to notice was Sienne.
Her expression stiffened instantly as she drew her sword.
“What is it?”
“Footsteps.”
“There are countless footsteps here — this is the capital.”
“I’ll clarify. Clanking footsteps.”
Armor?
“And there are quite a few. Around fifty… no, fifty-five.”
A group walking around the capital in armor could only mean one thing — knights.
Each of us drew our weapons and took our stances.
A moment later, I too could hear the clanging of armor.
And then — a sweet scent drifted in the air.
A scent?
“Everyone, hold your breath!”
Aina shouted urgently and rummaged through her things.
She pulled out a small potion bottle and waved it toward us.
The sweet smell that had filled the air moments ago was neutralized and disappeared.
At the same time, the citizens walking around the street began collapsing one after another.
“Huh?”
“Yaaawn… I’m suddenly so sleepy…”
“Ugh…”
“Mmm… zzz…”
Unbelievably, in broad daylight, people lay down right where they stood and fell fast asleep.
Aina spoke in a tense voice.
“It’s my brother.”
“Benjamin Noel?”
“No doubt. He must’ve put everyone to sleep in advance so civilians wouldn’t get caught up. A drug that can knock out this many people at once — even the family’s secret techniques didn’t have anything like that.”
“Did he make it himself?”
“Most likely. He really is impossible.”
At that moment, a group of figures in gleaming armor appeared before and behind us.
Armelia muttered under her breath, sweat beading on her forehead.
“The Silver Knights.”
It was the same order of knights Aina had once mentioned — the ones who had annihilated the Noel Family.
To Armelia, they were the protectors of the Imperial Family.
To Aina, they were her family’s mortal enemies.
Step. Step.
They halted about thirty paces away from us.
Their disciplined movements clearly marked them as elite.
“……?”
No — I had to take that back.
Their movements might have been disciplined, but the drool trickling down their chins and their bloodshot eyes were far from normal.
Sightless, Sienne asked,
“Are they truly knights? Their breathing is completely erratic.”
“It’s the needles. My brother used them to turn the knights into weapons.”
“No — they move with too much precision to just be mindless weapons.”
“That’s because…”
“That’s because I’m controlling them.”
That final voice didn’t belong to anyone in our group.
We quickly turned our eyes toward it.
On the rooftop of a two-story private house stood a figure we had never seen before.
He wore an odd-looking glove.
Countless thin threads extended from it — so fine they could barely be seen unless one focused — and those threads connected to the Silver Knights.
“Brother…”
“Aina. It’s been a while.”
“Why are you wearing that ugly skin on your face? You’re much better-looking than that.”
“As the eldest son of the Noel Family, branded as traitors to the Empire, how could I walk around bare-faced? I’m more surprised you can wander around with your real face showing.”
“I’m fine. I can always run away, no matter when I get caught.”
“Yes. Even Father said your physical abilities surpassed his.”
He smiled softly.
Aina, on the other hand, looked sorrowful.
But she spoke in a firm voice.
“What is this? The needles I know can’t control people like that.”
“You only know a fragment of the secret art. The secret needles and the glove I’m wearing were originally a single set. It’s called Beramut.”
“……”
“The Emperor wanted to turn soldiers into weapons — but no matter how strong they became, uncontrollable forces are useless in war.”
His tone grew slightly melancholic.
“What the Emperor demanded was to make soldiers into playable pieces, not to have them kill each other.”
“I see. I guess I still fall short compared to you, brother.”
“In the family’s secret arts, perhaps. But you have many talents I don’t.”
“Then tell me what they are. Come down here and show me.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
I tensed at those words and spoke.
“Why not? Did Edgar find something to use against you?”