“Cough, cough.”

Water gushed from my mouth, and I finally managed to open my eyes. In front of me was the female mercenary known as the Firebird Hunter.

‘I’m not dead?’

Barely conscious, I looked around. In one corner stood a middle-aged knight scratching his head. Apparently, the last thing I’d seen before passing out hadn’t been a hallucination.

“What happened?”

She looked apologetic at my question, and the knight came over to me.

“I’m sorry. You were holding a sword with a firebird emblem, so I got the wrong idea. I thought you’d stolen the Lady’s... Ah, no, the young lady’s belongings and were chasing her...”

His voice was deep and pleasant. But she covered her face at his words, while I shook my head inwardly. Didn’t he realize changing what he called her wouldn’t help? No mercenary would be addressed that way by a knight. She must be a lady from some prominent family, just as he’d nearly said.

Wait. He’d thought that even after seeing me?

“What? You thought a little kid like me could do that?”

I pointed at myself, dumbfounded. She stared at me in disbelief, but the knight apologized again with a contrite look.

“Well, I’ve had an assassin who looked like a child come at me before... In any case, I’m sorry. Allow me to apologize formally, as a knight.”

“As a knight?”

The Firebird Hunter must have told him about me while I was unconscious. It seemed she’d also mentioned that, whatever else I was, I was a noble. Otherwise, a knight would never have apologized. But a formal apology as a knight? What an unexpected stroke of luck.

A knight’s formal apology was a custom of chivalry that had almost disappeared. I didn’t know how accomplished a knight he was, but he was every bit as rigid about such things as she was. I looked between the two of them, equally stiff-necked, and got to my feet.

I was a little dizzy, but one circulation of mana cleared it right up. Hooray for mana.

“By the way, do you know each oth— No, this isn’t the time.”

I’d been lying in the ruined tomb chamber. Water was spilling out of the hole that had opened in its center. How much more could possibly come up?

“Let’s get out of here first.”

Perhaps they’d stayed because of me, because they moved as soon as I spoke.

As she left the shattered chamber, she glanced back several times with a regretful look. In the end, though, she stroked the shield and started back the way we’d come. The knight ran remarkably well for someone wearing a full suit of heavy armor. My brief spell of unconsciousness had left me with plenty of mana, too, and we raced through the underground caves.

Running alongside the fleeing underground animals, we reached the bottom of the abandoned well we’d first descended. Its dry floor was beginning to grow wet. We scrambled up the well wall and emerged aboveground. Thankfully, the rising water stopped after filling the well halfway.

Once outside, I looked for Juan. Thankfully, he was safe. He had an enormous bruise around one eye, a cloth stuffed in his mouth, and rope wound tightly around him, but the rest of him was unharmed. He lay sprawled beside the well.

He thrashed when he saw the knight emerge, then his eyes widened when I came out after him. The knight went to Juan first and untied him. Juan pulled the cloth from his mouth and immediately asked after me.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”

I nodded to show him I was fine.

“There was a misunderstanding,” I said. “It turns out those two are on the same side.”

At that, the knight looked at me and praised Juan instead of apologizing to him.

“You have a good soldier.”

It wasn’t a proper apology, but it was his way of showing goodwill as a knight.

He’d apologized to me because I was a noble, after all. A knight would never apologize to a commoner. Juan seemed satisfied with that much, but I wasn’t. I’d lived a previous life in a world that was equal on the surface, and it bothered me that Juan hadn’t received an apology, even if that way of thinking didn’t fit this world.

That didn’t mean I had the slightest intention of making a fuss about abolishing this world’s class system. It had gotten me killed plenty of times and caused me plenty of harm, but I’d benefited from it quite a bit, too. Rather than change the system, I wanted to make sure that I and the people around me benefited from it instead of suffering because of it.

Hmm. I felt as though that wasn’t quite what I’d originally had in mind...

While I was thinking that, she spoke.

“I’m sorry, but something’s come up. I think I have to go back right away.”

I’d expected as much. The knight hadn’t come all this way for nothing. He was a messenger sent to bring her back. It was surprising he’d found us here, but if she’d left a note at her lodgings, it wasn’t impossible. More importantly, whatever had happened must be urgent, just as she’d said. Urgent enough to send a knight who looked like a senior member of any respectable knightly order as a messenger.

They must have discussed it while I was unconscious, and naturally, neither seemed inclined to tell me about it. Instead, she raised another problem.

“But I can’t simply leave things like this...”

If we’d found treasure and divided it according to our agreement, there would have been no problem. Things had turned out nothing like the agreement contemplated, though.

As she pondered, she no longer looked like a mercenary at all. She hadn’t been much like one before, but now she unmistakably had the air of a high-ranking noble. Yet she was still herself, just as she’d always been.

She clapped her hands, apparently having thought of a solution, and asked me, “At your age, you’ll have to go to a proper school in a few years, won’t you?”

A school? Did she mean a monastery, or something like the royal academy in the capital? People were starting to say it was nearly time for my second brother to go study in the capital, so proper nobles did seem to leave home or enter an academy in their early to mid-teens. My sister had gone to a monastery when she was very young, too.

But I didn’t think that would happen to me. I’d gained an inherited ability, but I was still only half a noble. I doubted they’d send me away, and with the Duchess alive and well, I’d probably remain in the mansion. I shook my head to convey as much, but she didn’t seem concerned.

“It’ll take time, but if I send an invitation in my family’s name, even the Duke won’t be able to refuse it outright. Besides, he wouldn’t simply let a genius like you go to waste.”

The middle-aged knight spoke with concern. “But given the current situation, perhaps you should think carefully before sending a formal invitation...”

She shook her head. “There’s no other choice. He’s no longer an outsider. And there’s a great deal we need to check. No one will object.”

The knight tilted his head at that. Apparently, she hadn’t told him what had happened while I was unconscious. Was it a secret?

Surely this invitation wasn’t to come to some laboratory for experiments on living subjects? The thought of being a lab guinea pig sent a momentary chill down my spine. I shook my head to clear away the pointless thought.

More to the point, what kind of invitation would make even the Duke think twice? Just what sort of noble was she?

“Um, I don’t think it’ll be that easy. More importantly, you’re not going to send the invitation as the ‘Firebird Hunter,’ are you?”

She nodded. “I’d intended to part ways with you as nothing more than a mercenary called the Firebird Hunter. But after all this, I should tell you my real name.”

At last, I was going to hear it.

At a glance from the knight, Juan moved well out of earshot. Then she spoke.

“My name is Katrine de Rattenhammar. I’m the second daughter of the Count of Rattenhammar.”

She added that I could call her Katrin. A count’s family. She was high nobility, just as I’d thought.

Still, something puzzled me. The second daughter? As a woman and the second child, she was unlikely to be the heir. From everything she’d said and done, I’d assumed she held an important position in the family... Apparently not.

And there was something else. His Grace the Duke, swayed by an invitation from a count’s family? Unless there were political considerations, that seemed unlikely. I tilted my head, unable to make her claims fit together.

But then the family name kept turning over in my mind. Wait. The Count of Rattenhammar? I’d definitely heard that name somewhere. A particular person came to mind.

N-no way.

I asked hurriedly, “Wait. I’m fairly sure the third queen’s family name is Rattenhammar.”

She answered with a proud look. “That’s right. She’s my older sister.”

My jaw dropped. The third queen of our kingdom, the mother of its only princess, was her older sister. That meant the invitation to the ducal family would come from the queen’s family. Of course the Duke would have trouble refusing it. Now I understood.

No, no, this was no time to let my guard down. The third queen’s family? You’ve got to be kidding me. They weren’t merely some influential noble house. Why did she have to belong to the royal family by marriage? One wrong move and I could get dragged into the kingdom’s politics! And how was I supposed to explain any of this to the Duke?

She went on to caution me. “I’d like you to keep what happened down there secret from everyone else. It was part of our agreement, and it matters to my family.”

That was perfectly understandable, but it would make things even harder to explain! She continued regardless of what I thought. After we talked a little more, she and the knight left the ruined village ahead of us.

Once they were gone, Juan, who’d been on edge the whole time, let out a sigh. “What on earth happened down there? First a knight barges in, and then all three of you come out soaking wet.”

Juan normally didn’t ask questions like that, but this time he seemed unable to contain his curiosity. If he’d known who she really was, he might not have dared ask at all. I couldn’t tell him that, though. Still, he’d stood in the knight’s way for my sake. I ought to tell him what had happened on the way back, leaving out a few secrets.

Before we left, I looked back at the village swallowed by the forest. The people had abandoned it after the well ran dry, leaving it in ruins.

“Now that the dry well has filled with water, do you think this village could come back to life?”

Juan shook his head. “I doubt it. The forest hadn’t reached this far when people lived here. Now that the village is buried in it, they’re unlikely to come back. If anything, with water flowing underground, the forest might grow even larger.”

Juan’s words made sense, and I found myself nodding. Even if you undid something that had gone wrong, everything that had happened since wouldn’t necessarily return to the way it was. That was only possible if you truly went back to the past and made the right choice then.

The right choice...

A lot had happened, and a lot had happened more than once. Much remained from it all, and there would surely be much more to come. As we left the forest and headed back to the city, I kept wondering whether I was making the right choices now.

Even so, the dagger at my waist and the pouch full of gold coins were a great comfort.