The king remained motionless, eyes closed. In his place, one of the guards beside him spoke.
“Order! I will now give the verdict! Kaijin, the mastermind behind this crime, is sentenced to twenty years of labor in the mines. His accomplices are sentenced to ten years of labor in the mines. With that, this court is hereby—”
“Wait,” a deep, quiet voice interrupted.
The king opened his eyes and looked at Kaijin.
“It has been a while, Kaijin. Do you remain in good health?”
“…Yes, my liege!” came the instant reply. Presumably he had the right to speak now. “It gladdens me that you remain so as well!”
“Yes. Now, do you and your friends”—looking at us—“have any desire to return to us?”
The audience in the royal court murmured among themselves. It must have been an unusual development. Vester immediately blanched. Our traitorous representative, meanwhile, had developed a deathly pallor.
“I beg your forgiveness, my liege, but I have already found a master to serve! I have made my vow, and it has become my treasure. A treasure so fine that, indeed, not even the direct order of my liege could make me part with it!”
This clearly angered the audience. I could see the guards staring daggers into Kaijin’s forehead. But he stood strong—chest puffed out, the picture of dignity.
The king, seeing this, closed his eyes again. “I…see.”
Silence ruled for another moment.
“I have made my decision. Listen well to my sentence! Kaijin and his friends are hereby exiled from the kingdom. After midnight tonight, when the new day comes, they are officially no longer welcome in my lands. That is all. Begone at once!” Opening his eyes, the king made his proclamation in a loud voice.
Ah, the dignity of a born leader! His overwhelming presence sent shivers through my body. Although, being king around here seemed like a terribly lonely job to have.
✦ ✦ ✦
So there we were, after the trial, back at Kaijin’s shop. That little celebratory drink we wanted to get sure broke bad, didn’t it? Now we had to pack up and leave for good.
Oh, wait, is Gobta all right? We’re still only at day three with him, right? I was a tad nervous about that as I opened the door to his punishment room.
“Ooh! Welcome back, sir! Did you have fun? Gee, sure hope you take me with you next time!”
There he was, leaping up off the sofa to greet me! How did that happen…? He couldn’t have gotten out of my spider silk that easy!
Taking another look, I realized that the cushion Gobta had been using on the sofa was actually a tempest wolf. Wait, seriously? He actually summoned the guy?
“Uh, Gobta, how’d you get that wolf in here?”
“Oh! Right! That! I just thought to myself, ‘Hey, can you come on over, please?’ And he did, sir!”
He made it sound so easy, the bastard. None of the other hobgoblins had managed the feat from such a long range before. Maybe his brain cells were all devoted to his natural talents instead of, you know, actual intelligence. It seemed crazy to me. I concluded that it must’ve been a coincidence.
I then realized that the sight of the tempest wolf had frozen the dwarves in their tracks. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “We need to start packing, don’t we?”
“W-wait a second!” the panicked Kaijin replied. “What on earth is a black direwolf doing in here?!”
“Yeah! You need to run! That’s a B-ranked monster!”
And now they were panicking.
They looked so ridiculous, I was actually amused.
“Oh, he’s fine! Really! No problem! He’s like a big dog, really! We keep him indoors and everything!”
My attempts at calming everyone’s nerves met stony silence.
Black direwolves, by the way, were a somewhat advanced version of regular direwolves. If they evolved in a more magic-oriented fashion, their fur would turn black. The coats of the tempest direwolves were black as well but with a uniquely colored sheen.
Direwolves weren’t really supposed to evolve toward the “storm” element in the first place—that was just a side effect of the name I gave out.
In volcanic regions, direwolves would evolve with a fire element and become red direwolves. Near bodies of water, you would find blue direwolves. In the forests would be green direwolves. In other words, adopting elements was a fairly common evolutionary pattern for these guys. The magic-infused black ones, meanwhile, were apparently a notorious threat to any nearby humans and humanoids. The tempest element gave our wolf pack an ever-so-slight purplish shine to their black color, something you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t paying attention.
Sorry I spooked the dwarves, I guess. We didn’t have the time for me to explain the whole story. I’ll just call him Gobta’s pet for now and move on.
After hurriedly pressing the dwarves to put on their best traveler’s outfits, I pushed them out of the shop, went back in by myself, and proceeded to swallow up the entire contents of the building. Capacity-wise, I was still A-okay, but swallowing the building whole would probably have drawn a little too much attention, so I kept it at that.
Once our preparations for the journey were complete, we made our way to where Rigur and the other goblins were waiting.
✦ ✦ ✦
The space was silent, a far cry from the loud arguing of a moment ago.
After the five accused had all but fled from the court, nobody in attendance dared move an inch. Vester nervously swallowed. The persistent silence of the king put both him and everyone else on edge.
Then Gazel shattered the stillness.
“Now, Vester. Do you have anything you wish to say?”
“A—a thousand pardons, my liege, but this is all a misunderstanding! It simply must be a mistake!”
Vester’s voice was a nervous warble as he pleaded his case. The king regarded him coldly, betraying none of his emotions.
“A misunderstanding? If it is, then it has cost me one of my most faithful servants.”
“How can you say such a thing, my liege?! You call what he offered to you ‘faithfulness’? Why, he is simply a man off the street—”
“Vester. I see you are mistaken. Kaijin left my corps on his own volition. When I speak of a faithful servant I have lost…I refer to you.”
The minister’s heart raced. I need to find an excuse… But his mind was blank. The words refused to come to his lips. His thoughts were slow to form. What did he just say? He referred to me? Then…
“Let me ask you once again, Vester. Do you have anything you wish to say?”
Fear, pure fear, dominated Vester’s head. The king had asked him a question. He needed to reply. But all his speech had abandoned him.
“I… My liege, I am afraid…I…”
“I had great expectations for you, Vester. I have been waiting for so long. Even during the magic-armor affair, I waited for you to finally speak the truth. And now I find that, yet again…”
The expression Gazel showed Vester could almost be described as one of kindness. The king’s words pierced through the minister like the sharpest of swords.
“Look at these.”
The king pointed out two items one of his attendants had produced. Vester, eyes hollow, looked at them. One was a sphere filled with a liquid that he had never seen before; the other was a single longsword.
“Do you know what these are?”
The liquid remained a mystery to Vester, but the longsword he remembered. Kaijin had brought it in.
“You may explain to him,” the king ordered his attendant. The following speech took a fairly long time for Vester to fully understand.
✦ ✦ ✦
The liquid was a life-regenerating elixir, a near-perfect extract of the juices of the hipokute herbs. A so-called “full” potion, named for its miraculous recovery properties.
Even with the best technology the dwarves had at their fingertips, the purest extract they could produce topped off at 98 percent. That made it only as potent as a “high” potion. This liquid, meanwhile, was at 99 percent!
Vester’s face twisted in shock. He had to know! What did they do to produce such a level of—? But before he could ask, the attendant had even more shocking news for him. The longsword had a core of magisteel that was already working its way through the rest of the blade.
Impossible. That process began only after a ten-year adaptation procedure! The shock set Vester’s mind reeling. If this was true…!
“Both of these wonders were brought about by that slime,” the king said. “And thanks to your behavior, we have lost our connection to such a creature. Do you have anything you wish to say?”
Now Vester realized the full extent of his king’s rage. There was truly nothing he could say.
“I… I do not, my liege.”
Tears began welling in his eyes. He knew it all too well now—his lord had abandoned him. All he wanted was to serve his king. To win his approval. That was it. When did I go wrong? When I grew jealous of Kaijin, or before…? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he had betrayed the king’s trust.
“I…see. In that case… Vester! I hereby forbid you from entering the palace. Do not let me see you before me again. I shall leave you with this: I have tired of you!”
Hearing his words, Vester stood up and bowed deeply to his lord. Then he left, setting off to pay his penance for his foolishness.