The time to leave had come, but it seemed winter was still reluctant to withdraw.

It certainly looked that way from how it clung to the window.

Joseph found himself thinking that as he watched the winter wind rattling the window.

"Yes. Joseph of Bayezid. You have come to find me from quite a long way off."

Roused from his thoughts by the voice, Joseph looked at the man facing him.

An elderly man was smiling with a crackling fireplace at his back.

His rather splendidly grown mustache left a strong impression, and he was Baron Moldavir, the lord of this city, Kishinyor.

"Thank you for arranging this chance to meet you in person, Baron."

"This year's winter was long, and visitors have been few in equal measure. I was just feeling rather lonely because so few people had come calling."

From his words alone, it was certainly a warm answer.

But Joseph, who had been carefully watching the baron's eyes, could tell that he was not particularly pleased to see him.

"However, even if you are a guest who has come after such a long while, I do not think I can help you this time."

Sure enough, just as Joseph had thought, Baron Moldavir set down his teacup, shrugged, and continued his refusal.

"It is terribly awkward to interfere in another family's affairs without any cause. Besides, you have already been eliminated from the competition for Family Head."

The baron did not speak with any particular malice, and that made his words all the sharper.

For he was now saying in a roundabout way that Joseph's proposal, made without any proper standing, was no different from an empty cry.

Understanding the baron's words, Joseph merely lowered his head in silence.

"Though I cannot lend you any great strength, I hope you will at least rest comfortably while you are here."

Joseph was uncomfortable to face, and there was not much to gain from meeting him, but even so, Baron Moldavir did not coldly drive him away.

Because he did not want to make an enemy of Bayezid, which was currently flaunting its power in one form or another.

"By the way, this tea you served is quite good."

"... I am glad it suits your taste."

"Well. The tea leaves looked black as pitch, which was rather unappealing, but still."

Perhaps because of the refusal just now, the air in the room seemed to have grown a little colder.

Yet even in that atmosphere, Joseph did not show any particular sign of disappointment.

He looked far too natural for it to seem as though he was deliberately hiding his disappointment.

"Still, the tea things you brought, and the tea you served as well. For someone so young, your tastes are quite refined."

"These are teacups my mother gave me. She always wished I would drink warm tea instead of the alcohol that was ruining my body."

As Joseph arranged the tea things he had laid out with a natural motion, he merely looked with indifferent eyes at the baron, who was drinking as if nothing were wrong.

Joseph's tea, tinged with an ominous black color somehow unlike ordinary green tea.

Watching the baron's Adam's apple bob as he slowly swallowed the tea, Joseph's gaze began to sink deeper and deeper.

* * *

While Joseph was meeting Baron Moldavir, Vlad and Nibelun were searching all over Kishinyor.

To be precise, they were searching for rumors left behind by the vanished Frausen and the black woman.

"Haa... Do we have to go back to the North again?"

But despite how hard they had run around, they seemed to have gained practically nothing.

When the splendidly dressed knight mussed up the back of his hair as if irritated, the nearby customers began to slowly rise from their seats while watching his mood.

"The people here don't know anything useful."

The tavern owner looked ready to cry as he watched the customers slowly slip away, but Vlad merely sank into his own worries.

"Why not try going to the church? They seem like they would know the news well."

"... The church here belongs to the Vatican."

Vlad tapped his left breastplate as if telling him to look here.

There, where his finger struck, the words personally engraved by the pope of the Northern Orthodox Church were plainly visible.

"The people there probably hate me even more than you, a beastman."

"Oh. That would not do."

It may have been an honorable inscription in the North, but here in the central region, where the Vatican's influence was strong, it was nothing but proof of heresy.

With nowhere proper to ask for help, Vlad had gone running around himself, but the results he had gained were pitifully meager.

"... But you look awfully natural eating that?"

Vlad's expression began to turn fierce as he watched Nibelun casually bite into the skewer in front of him.

It was an expression harsh enough to make even the shop owner flinch, but Nibelun himself merely pushed another skewer to Vlad's lips as if nothing were wrong.

"In any case, we need to find them quickly. Dragons continuing to die in the West is certainly an ominous sign."

"Right."

Listening to Nibelun, Vlad recalled Frausen, who had shown a strange obsession with dragons.

And along with him, the black woman who had spread wicked fog through the city of Moshiam.

"I'd like to stop them before they do something else."

Cutting down wicked beings was also an obvious duty that knights ought to have, but for Vlad, there was a slightly more special motive.

Frausen, who was connected to Quijano.

And even the black woman, with whom he had already been tangled in ill fate since the fog-filled village.

Because as he continued to cross paths with them, he felt a sense of duty that he could hardly shake off.

"It has been a while, Vlad."

"...!"

Was it because he had been lost in thought?

Vlad was startled by the sudden voice.

He had certainly sensed no presence at all until just now, yet before he knew it, a man was sitting in the seat beside him.

"Lord Marcus?"

"I wonder what you were thinking so hard about."

A man with scars all over his face.

Marcus, who had given a new name each time they met, picked up one of the skewers in front of him and looked at Vlad.

"... How are you here?"

"I had some business."

He was certainly an acquaintance, and someone he was glad to see, but Vlad's face as he faced him was filled with wariness.

Because there was no way Marcus, Bayezid's hidden blade, would have come all the way here without any intention.

"What business?"

"As I told you before, I cannot tell you about my mission."

"Did you come because of Lord Joseph?"

"..."

Marcus, answering neither yes nor no, merely looked down at the skewer Vlad was blankly holding.

"Is the young master in good health?"

"I imagine you know more about Lord Joseph than I do."

Joseph had the right of succession, but had been eliminated from the competition for Family Head.

The fact that he was wandering around the central region as he pleased and meeting other lords would hardly be something Bayezid would welcome.

Vlad had been wary of Marcus, wondering if that might be the reason, but the answer he heard was only vague.

"I do not know. Not from the outside alone."

"...?"

"By the way, there is something I want to ask."

Vlad wanted to ask what that meant at Marcus's somewhat difficult-to-understand answer, but the initiative in the conversation still belonged to the scarred man.

"You once traveled east alone, did you not? When you met the elves."

"... Why bring that up all of a sudden?"

"Did anything untoward happen then?"

It seemed the reason Marcus had appeared this time was apparently not Joseph, but himself.

Looking at Marcus, who had suddenly asked about the past, Vlad could not help but make a puzzled face.

"Untoward, such as?"

"For example, taking someone's belongings by force."

Marcus slowly began to look at Vlad.

The presence he gave off around them was faint, but to the person facing him, it left a powerful impression, and Vlad grew tense despite himself.

"Or killing them outright."

"..."

At Marcus's difficult-to-understand question, Vlad missed the moment to answer.

But Marcus, who had been carefully examining Vlad's expression, soon nodded quietly as if he understood.

"So it was not you after all. I hope you can clear up the misunderstanding."

"What?"

CLINK.

Despite Vlad's question, Marcus said nothing, set down some coins, and quietly left the shop.

However, the coins he had left were more than enough to pay not only for what he had eaten, but also for Vlad and Nibelun's food.

"The central region is not a good area for you to operate in. Personally, I would advise you to leave for another region quickly."

"..."

"See you next time."

Vlad stared blankly at Marcus's back as he left with that advice.

He had merely seemed to blend into the crowd, yet before Vlad knew it, he had vanished, and Vlad could not wipe the complicated expression from his face.

* * *

The sun had set, and now it was time to close the city gates.

WHINNY!

At an hour when even peddlers no longer came, there was a group approaching the city with loud hoofbeats.

Seeing them arrive with sturdy-looking horses and gleaming armor, the gatekeepers of Kishinyor began to grow tense.

"Halt! Identify yourselves!"

The guard captain stopped the men according to his assigned duty, but when he recognized the flag hanging behind the horse, his face went pale.

A pattern of white lightning striking down across a flag with a black field.

At that simple yet powerful emblem, not only the guard captain but even the surrounding guards hurriedly raised their hands in salute.

"Welcome to our city!"

"... We received intelligence that Vlad Aureo, a knight of the North, is in this city. Is that true?"

However, the men receiving the courteous salute merely asked a cold question, as if they felt nothing.

But the guard captain, realizing that anger difficult to hide lay within that coldness, quickly began searching his mind for the name Vlad.

"Vlad... If you mean Sir Vlad Aureo, he certainly visited our city yesterday!"

He did not know why they were looking for him, but Vlad's splendid blond hair still remained in the guard captain's memory.

The knight who had arrived with a nobleman with dark shadows beneath his eyes was a man who had carried so many emblems that they were almost impossible to count.

"Is that so?"

A knight of the North who had come bearing a flag filled with honor.

Yet at that answer, the men's expressions merely hardened stiffly.

"In the name of Lord Armand, the Court Duke who protects the imperial household, I command you. From this moment, seal every city gate in Kishinyor."

"... B-But."

"Do not question it. Do it."

At the fiercely flashing eyes of the knights, the guard captain lowered his head.

The name of Court Duke Armand was one thing, but he was even more afraid of that chilling gaze, as if the man were facing a mortal enemy.

"... We finally found him."

Though they did not have the lord's permission, knights bearing an unfamiliar flag were entering through Kishinyor's city gates.

All of them riding their horses possessed such flawless bearing that none could be taken lightly.

"At last, we can avenge Lord Auguste."

The pure-white lightning emblazoned over a flag with a black field.

The only ones permitted to carry that glorious flag, said to contain reverence for the Swordmaster, were the Imperial Enforcers, who were responsible for security in the capital, Brigantes.