Arc 24: Teibeon (2)

Before leaving for Teibeon, I made one final check in the training room.

Perhaps because I had successfully completed my finals, repeatedly practicing simultaneous creations in the training room had finally raised Weaving’s level.

[The Unique skill ‘Weaving’ has leveled up.]

[Weaving’s range of applicable targets has expanded.]

[Current applicable targets for Weaving: ‘Objects’ ? ‘Skills’]

Weaving now worked on skills as well as objects. In other words, I could now watch other people’s skills and ‘imitate’ them.

However, since Weaving originally created copies as ‘illusions,’ I wouldn’t enjoy the effects of the actual skills. It might be possible to some extent within Menosorpo, but even that would be limited.

I would need to run a few tests to work out the details, but that wasn’t what mattered right now.

My Weaving currently had an option attached to it called ‘Descent of Thanatos.’

- The trigger activates the first time Weaving affects reality.

- The trigger activates if Weaving injures a ‘monster from the Outside.’

- The trigger activates if Weaving injures a god.

Thanatos had attached that option without my permission to keep Weaving in check. I still didn’t know when or how he had done it.

As long as this shitty thing was attached, I wouldn’t be able to do anything in Teibeon.

Weaving was my main weapon, but if I touched a monster from the Outside with it, Thanatos would show up again.

But now that Weaving’s applicable targets included ‘skills,’ I could modify Weaving itself.

Using Weaving, I applied the Modification option ‘Degradation’ to Weaving itself.

[The option ‘Descent of Thanatos’ has been removed.]

"... Good."

I couldn’t say for certain that this completely eliminated divine interference, but at least Weaving wouldn’t get in my way.

At last, all my preparations were complete.

* * *

I packed what I needed at the estate and finally stepped out through the front entrance to leave for Teibeon.

But the car waiting in front was one I had never seen before. The driver was a stranger too.

When I gave Malia a puzzled look, she smiled awkwardly.

"Oh, your father brought in someone else so you wouldn’t be able to lose your nerve and come back."

"..."

It seemed a little harsh, but it was good that Ampere had changed his mind.

If he couldn’t stop me from going to Teibeon anyway, he probably wanted to fuel my resolve instead.

Only Malia and the servants were there to see me off. Atzier and Ampere were nowhere to be seen.

"I’m rooting for you, Frondier. Have a safe trip."

"I will."

"Don’t die."

"I won’t."

She spoke as though she were joking, but her expression was anything but, so I answered seriously too.

As soon as I got into the car, the driver set off. He seemed to know our destination already.

Although Teibeon and Yeranhes were both in the north, they lay at opposite ends, east and west.

It would be a long journey. Maybe I should get some sleep...

* * *

"We’ve arrived."

I opened my eyes at the driver’s voice.

The moment I stepped out of the car, he sped back the way we had come without so much as a goodbye. Probably Ampere’s orders.

"... It’s cold."

Yeranhes wasn’t exactly warm either, but here it felt as though the air itself were swirling around as grains of ice.

As far as I knew, the actual temperature shouldn’t have been all that different. Perhaps it felt this way because there was no one around.

There was nothing here but a single road, surrounded by freezing wasteland. Ahead of me, an enormous outer wall filled my view.

Teibeon’s abnormal circumstances had led the region to develop in a distinctive way. An exceptionally sturdy outer wall encircled it, with homes, shops, and other places of everyday life inside. This was to keep the residents separate from monsters from the Outside and the prisoners under Teibeon’s supervision.

Even from here, I could see a massive circular building that looked sturdy at a glance. That was Teibeon’s prison. Since prisoners made up most of the manpower defending the wall, a strong prison was a given.

The barracks stood nearby, and walls separated them, the prison, and the civilian district from one another. From above, it would look like a huge circle divided into three sections.

Of course, I would soon get a taste of a life not so different from those soldiers’. Being from the Roah family would probably earn me somewhat different treatment, though.

"All right. Let’s go."

Steeling myself, I started forward, only to stop after a few steps.

An unfamiliar woman stood before me. Her appearance was so uncanny that I couldn’t tell when she had arrived—or whether she had been there all along.

The blonde woman lightly held the sides of her skirt and bowed her head elegantly.

Both the design of her uniform and the way she greeted me brought a single word to mind.

"I greet the heir of House Roah."

A maid.

The maid was greeting me in a thoroughly maidlike manner, with a thoroughly maidlike expression.

"... Who might you be?"

For the moment, I addressed her politely.

I had asked, but I could guess who she was. Or rather, I knew where she had come from.

"I will be attending to you from now on, young master."

"The Ten Thousand Capes?"

"That is correct."

The maid admitted it readily. Well, there was no one here to overhear us, so perhaps that was only natural.

She wore a gentle smile, and her expression and gestures were remarkably alluring. Her looks were objectively outstanding too, but her expression and the look in her eyes drew my attention first.

Either she was naturally seductive, or she had been trained to appear that way.

"Where’s Hagley?"

I asked about the man who had introduced himself in the infirmary.

"He is my superior."

So he’d dumped the work on her.

Since his plan to use me to eliminate Elodie hadn’t worked, he seemed to have come up with another approach.

"..."

I examined the maid’s outfit. It was really only a token imitation of a maid uniform, with far too much skin on display. Her exceptional figure made it seem even more revealing. It came within a hair’s breadth of looking vulgar, only just managing not to cross that line.

... Their intentions couldn’t have been more obvious.

"Your name?"

"In the Ten Thousand Capes, I was called ‘Jay.’ You may give me another name if you wish, young master."

Was called.

In other words, she had no proper name.

I looked at Jay using my ‘Analysis’ skill.

[Jay]

- An assassin of the ‘Ten Thousand Capes.’

- The name Jay derives from the alphabet. Assassins were trained and named in alphabetical order. She is therefore the Ten Thousand Capes’ tenth assassin.

- Her parents named her ‘Selena,’ but she does not remember it.

- During their lives, her parents—

Analysis stopped there.

My intuition told me that going any further would require an enormous amount of mana.

"You said I could give you another name, right?"

"... Y-yes, of course. If you wish."

Jay answered a little late, as though she hadn’t expected me to actually rename her.

I spoke.

"Selena. From today onward, you’re Selena."

I didn’t know who her parents were, but they had taken the trouble to give her that name.

It would be a shame to let it simply be forgotten.

"..."

Jay—now Selena—blinked at my declaration.

Her small mouth fell open blankly, and her eyes wavered.

"What’s wrong?"

"... N-nothing. Selena. From today onward, that is the name I will live by."

Selena smiled again.

Analysis had said she’d forgotten, but perhaps the memory remained somewhere in her mind.

"I’m heading into Teibeon now. Is that all right?"

"Please do not worry. I will protect you, Lord Frondier."

With that, Selena bowed again.

Her outfit was so revealing that even her fairly shallow bow exposed her pale skin and breasts. No, that was probably the whole point.

I had a feeling life in Teibeon was going to be more exhausting than I’d expected.

* * *

"Kid. Pack your bags and go home. Right now."

Lidwe said that the moment he saw me.

Since I had submitted my trip to Teibeon as my vacation plan at Constel, it was only natural that I formally greet Lidwe, the head of the family.

But he was thoroughly uncooperative from the moment he laid eyes on me.

"Don’t you get it? Your father sent you here to die."

Lidwe looked deeply displeased. It seemed to be because of Ampere rather than me. His eyes plainly said, No matter how worthless his son is, how could he send his own child to Teibeon?

"Looks to me like you only knew Teibeon from rumors and books and stumbled into coming here. Go back right now and cling to your father’s legs. Beg hard enough, and even that man won’t turn you away. You’re still his own—"

"I came of my own accord."

"What was that?"

Lidwe’s eyebrows rose to different heights. Their odd slant was rather funny.

"Then I have even more reason not to allow it."

"Why?"

"Because I don’t deal with lunatics."

Then Lidwe glanced beside me.

"And a man who brings a woman to the battlefield is worse than a lunatic. He’s a dumbass. Know the difference?"

"What is it?"

"A lunatic endangers his allies as well as his enemies. A duumbass ruins the operation too."

That sounded reasonable.

It hit home all the more because I hadn’t even wanted Selena here.

"But I came here with my family’s permission. Even you can’t simply throw me out, Lord Urpa."

"... Tch. Get out of here. Corner room on the left, second floor. It’s yours."

Just as I’d thought. For all his talk, he had made preparations.

I bowed to Lidwe and headed upstairs, with Selena following me.

I heard Lidwe’s voice mingle with a sigh. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.

"... Duuumbass."

Somehow, it kept getting longer.

* * *

Those who defended Teibeon against monster incursions fell into two broad groups.

Prisoners, and those who weren’t prisoners.

Naturally, prisoners were expended in the greatest numbers, but they alone could not hold back the monsters from the Outside.

They were nothing more than meat shields to halt the indiscriminate advance. Of course, most prisoners conscripted to Teibeon were dangerous individuals who had committed horrific crimes, so they had a corresponding level of skill in combat. As meat shields went, they were fairly high-quality ones.

Then there were the mercenaries. They gathered here, lured by the staggering sums Lidwe offered. Of course, House Urpa didn’t pay for all of it; the money came from the Empire. Repelling incursions from the Outside was the Empire’s most important task.

That left the knights and mages. Their motives varied widely. Some knights served Lidwe directly with tremendous loyalty. Some were deranged researchers willing to sacrifice themselves to uncover the true nature of the monsters from the Outside. Others had been promised positions as Imperial Palace mages and had come as part of their duties.

Not one of them, however, had come for ‘training.’

And if a snot-nosed brat who wasn’t even an adult yet came during his ‘vacation,’ he certainly deserved to be called a lunatic.

"Heard a lunatic’s turned up."

"Yeah, I heard."

In the barracks near the Urpa estate, the knights traded remarks about the rumor that had reached them from the mansion.

"Apparently he even brought a woman with him."

"Yeah. That ass is wasted on a lunatic."

"You mean those tits."

Laughter every bit as crude as the conversation briefly filled the air.

"Hey, Robert. They say he’s from Constel. You know him? You were in the central region yourself until a few days ago."

One of the knights addressed a man sitting quietly apart from the group.

It was Robert, one of Philly’s personal knights.

For some reason, the man who had questioned Frondier at the hospital while pretending to be a detective—though he had been found out almost immediately—was now in Teibeon.

Robert let out a long sigh.

"How many people do you think live in the central region?"

"Fair enough. No reason you’d know a lunatic like that."

The knights snickered again.

"So, what’s your bet?"

"One week. Ten thousand quir."

"Five days. Fifteen thousand."

The knights amused themselves for a little while, betting on how many days it would take for the lunatic to die.