Arc 24: Teibeon (4)

I climbed onto the wall.

The wind was more than chilly; it was bitterly cold, cutting into my skin.

The cold alone made this place miserable enough. Having to hold off monsters on top of that made it a living hell for good reason.

“... Are you going to stay here?”

Selena asked from beside me.

Her maid uniform exposed far more skin than necessary. Naturally, she would be freezing somewhere like this.

“Yes.”

“... Could I, um, go and change my clothes...?”

“Wasn’t your purpose to protect me? We’re outside, on top of a wall where I’m an easy target for a sniper. You intend to leave me somewhere this dangerous?”

“N-no. I’ll remain by your side.”

With that, Selena stood beside me. She was trying to endure it, but I could plainly see that she couldn’t stop shivering.

I clicked my tongue.

“Go change. And from now on, whatever you wear, make it something normal.”

“Th-this outfit is perfectly normal, too. It’s simply not suited to the season—”

“All right, just go.”

Selena hastily nodded and vanished.

I sighed and inspected the wall.

It wasn’t in very good shape. Like a beggar’s clothes, it bore patches everywhere.

Where there were no boulders, they had used stones. Where even those were lacking, wood. In emergencies, they had evidently scraped together scraps of cloth or even rubbish and stuffed them into the gaps.

... Weaving did have a “Restoration” function. It was still locked, but leveling up might unlock it.

Of course, the monsters weren’t going to wait for that. Until then, we would have to fight with this precarious wall in front of us.

“... Normally, it would fall.”

In fact, Teibeon would fail to hold out during Constel’s vacation and be breached.

In an ordinary playthrough, you learned about it from the librarian Einen and the newspapers.

The wall would collapse, Teibeon would be devastated, and the professionals and knights dispatched in haste would barely manage to pull back the front and hold their ground.

Not all of Teibeon would fall, but the loss of territory was predetermined.

Aster, the player character, couldn’t stop this course of events. He was a commoner, and even if he forced his way to Teibeon, he would only be used as a soldier. Even surviving wouldn’t let him make much of a difference.

However...

“...”

I looked beyond the wall. Past the meadows and fields trampled by monsters stood a sacred forest that even the monsters of the Outside couldn’t defile.

Sacred ground, visible from right here. Less than a kilometer away.

... Somewhere in that forest lay King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur.

The reason Excalibur—a weapon in a league of its own even within this game, in both power and stature—was so close was that Teibeon was meant to fall in the first place.

The monsters of the Outside would push back Teibeon’s front line, naturally leaving Excalibur farther away.

Only after greatly improving their character’s abilities and finally managing to push back the monsters of the Outside would players realize, “Excalibur was this close all along!”

Even if you restarted the game after realizing that and brought Aster to Teibeon first, you could only watch it fall before your eyes. Ultimately, there was no explanation except that the game was designed that way.

“Not right now, though.”

I would reach Excalibur before this vacation ended.

If I went now, the only future awaiting me was being slaughtered by monsters.

I heard approaching footsteps. Unhurried, but keeping a precise rhythm. I could guess who it was.

“There you are.”

I turned at the voice, and sure enough, it was Robert.

“Sir Robert.”

“Frondier. What on earth brings you to Teibeon?”

I had heard that question many times already. But it was only natural to wonder, so I smiled.

“It’s just something like vacation homework.”

“Coming to Teibeon for vacation homework? Does Constel want its students dead?”

Constel was taking the blame instead of me.

“What about the other knights?”

“They’re still on standby. Well, they’re all chatting away.”

They were probably still laughing at me.

Then again, if someone else had told me no one would die here in Teibeon, I might have laughed, too.

“You’re very polite, Sir Robert. You’ve spoken respectfully to me ever since we first met.”

“I learned it from my superior. She speaks that way to everyone, so I suppose it rubbed off on me.”

By his superior, did he mean Empress Philly?

... Though Philly’s polite speech wasn’t really a sign of respect.

“Why did you come here, Sir Robert?”

“I’m a knight. I simply follow orders.”

“Even without knowing the reason?”

“The reason naturally becomes clear as I carry them out.”

Truly loyal. Enough that I could fully understand why Philly kept him under her command.

I smiled wryly.

“I wish the other knights were like you.”

“They’re not so different from me. It’s simply that the conditions here are too harsh.”

I half agreed with Robert. As I had said before, in an environment like this, perhaps you were better off going a little mad.

But harsh conditions only brought out a person’s true nature.

Not every knight had Robert’s mindset. When they belonged to an order and acted together, they appeared to, and even came to believe it themselves.

But in a place this extreme, once they stepped out as individuals rather than as members of an order, they were merely human, not knights.

“Let’s go inside now. The wall is too cold when there’s no battle to fight. Besides, we have something scheduled today.”

“Scheduled?”

Come to think of it, Lidwe, who had sent me to the barracks, was nowhere to be seen. I had assumed he had sent me to the waiting room because of the monsters.

If it wasn’t because of monsters, why had he gathered the knights there?

“You didn’t know? Her Highness the imperial princess is coming for an inspection.”

“... The princess?”

Wasn’t there only one imperial princess left now?

The eldest daughter had been stripped of her position, and the second daughter would be busy preparing to inherit the throne.

“... Still, surely she wouldn’t...”

“She?”

“Just talking to myself.”

* * *

Aten arrived in Teibeon at the head of the Imperial Knights.

It seemed an excessive escort for a single person, but in Teibeon, it was only natural.

“Lady Aten, please turn back now. This place is too dangerous. We don’t know when monsters might break through the wall and overrun it.”

The knight beside her spoke gravely.

“If the wall is unstable, and that could allow monsters to invade and cause greater harm, then as a member of the imperial family, I have a duty to inspect it.”

Aten had intended to visit Teibeon someday, even if it wasn’t during this vacation.

Unlike Yeranhes, which Ampere defended, Teibeon was the empire’s most precarious corner, despite both being in the north.

Frondier had provided the impetus, but Aten’s concern for Teibeon’s residents was genuine.

“... Understood. Then let’s get to our lodgings quickly. The horses are tired, too.”

The journey had not been easy.

A car was better for simply traveling, but horses were far preferable if combat was a consideration.

Unlike cars, horses needed food and rest and were sensitive to temperature. In other words, they suffered just as humans did.

They had traveled a great distance from the central region. The horses were exhausted, and so were the knights.

“Let’s do that. It certainly was a difficult march.”

As she spoke, Aten swept her gaze over the company, checking each knight’s face.

“Thank you all for your efforts. Few people would ride all the way here from the central region...?”

Then she stopped.

At the edge of Aten’s vision, a lone horse was clip-clopping along.

At first, she thought one of the knights had broken away. But no. The horse wore no barding, and its rider was dressed in ordinary clothes, without any armor.

“...?”

The horse kept clip-clopping along and passed to Aten’s left. The sight was so peculiar that it captured not only Aten’s attention, but every knight’s as well.

“... Hmm. A traveler, it seems. The rider appears to be asleep.”

“Y-yes, it seems so.”

As the knight had said, the woman on the horse was breathing steadily with her face buried against its neck.

Yet her appearance, her silhouette, seemed familiar—

“... Mmph. Are we here? I’m awake, so we must be here, right?”

The rider drowsily straightened up.

Long pink hair and green eyes. A face whose beauty—and equally alluring charm—couldn’t be hidden by disheveled hair or dust.

“... Saibel?”

Aten spoke the name without thinking.

The pink-haired woman casually turned toward Aten, then her eyes widened.

“Oh my, Aten! Wow, what a surprise! Why are you here? How did you get all the way here? Wow, this is amazing!”

“... I’d like to ask you every single one of those questions.”

Saibel Forte.

The girl beloved by fate had come to Teibeon.

* * *

“Ahaha, that gave me a fright.”

Inside the lodgings, Saibel let out a breath as though releasing her tension.

The moment she had tried to approach Aten without thinking, she had found herself facing the spearpoints thrust forward by the knights.

Aten had stopped them, but it had certainly chased away her drowsiness.

“Right, of course. You’re an imperial princess, Aten. I slipped into my habits from Constel without thinking.”

“I’m sorry. The knights only wanted to protect me.”

“No, it was my fault.”

“... If we meet on an official occasion, please try to, um... It could put you in danger, Saibel.”

“Of course. I’ll observe the proper etiquette.”

Saibel nodded brightly.

The two were in the guest room Aten had rented at the lodgings. Since they couldn’t speak freely with the knights present, they were alone in the room.

“Hmm, I see. An inspection. You really do have a lot of work, Aten.”

“... Why are you here, Saibel?”

Aten had never imagined Saibel would come here. No one at Constel would have.

Surely she hadn’t done something as ridiculous as coming here to “train,” like Frondier...

“Hmm? I came because of Frondier.”

“...!”

Saibel’s matter-of-fact answer startled Aten a little.

Aten had certainly come to Teibeon for an inspection. That was unquestionably her main purpose.

Yet, in that moment, she somehow felt she hadn’t been as honest as Saibel.

“Don’t get the wrong idea, okay? I was just worried, so I came as a friend.”

“... I see. You were just worried, so you came all the way from the central region to Teibeon...”

“I mean, isn’t he ridiculous? Suddenly deciding to go to Teibeon for vacation. How could I hear it through rumors before hearing it from him?”

“... I heard it through rumors, too. I think Elodie was probably the only one who heard it from him first.”

“Yes! Exactly, Elodie! He told her himself, but not me. Well, I suppose the problem was that the rumors spread too fast!”

Saibel nodded emphatically as she spoke. Aten swallowed despite herself.

Somehow, she felt she ought to change the subject.

“Um, how did you get here? It can’t have been an easy journey.”

“Hmm, it just sort of happened? I had help along the way? I guess I was lucky?”

To Aten, that might sound like a vague attempt to dodge the question, but Saibel was answering honestly.

Chance and good fortune generally helped her obtain most of what she wanted.

“I borrowed a horse called a ‘Cassian’ from Constel. It’s incredibly smart. It seems to like me, too, for some reason.”

“... You borrowed a Cassian? Just like that?”

“Huh? They just let me borrow it.”

“...”

That shouldn’t be possible, Aten thought. But this was Saibel.

That alone was enough to make a certain kind of sense to her.