Oooooooooooooooooooo!
The relaxed vibe was disrupted by an alarm.
“Argh, more trouble?” Arisa grumbled.
We burst out of the shop, looking up at the sky.
“Uh-oh.”
A familiar object was flying our way.
The high-speed airship the Echigoya Company had tricked out.
“Master, it is exploding, I report.”
Nana was right—the airship was buffeted by several small explosions and was falling directly toward the Sorceress’s Tower.
Who was on board? I realized there were several blue dots. That color indicated people I knew personally.
I started running before I knew who.
The airship was losing altitude, on the verge of scraping the roofs, but wind spells were just barely preventing that as it crash-landed before the Sorceress’s Tower.
The girl who’d been leaning out the front hatch and casting those wind spells looked up.
The powerful fortress city sun hit her sunlight-colored hair, making it glow.
“……Satou,” she said, surprised to see me. “Satouuuuuuuuuuu!”
She dove out of the hatch and made a beeline for me, flinging her arms around my neck.
“It’s been a while, Zena.”
This was Zena Marientelle, a magic soldier of Seiryuu County.
She was wearing a sort of form-fitting leotard. The liner for the golden armor—I’d provided that to the professors in lieu of an anti-G suit. She had a light cardigan draped over that.
“Satou?”
“““Master!”””
More faces popped out of the hatch. Count Muno’s daughter Karina, followed by Nana’s sisters at speeds that almost knocked Karina overboard. They were all dressed like Zena.
Another hatch opened, and Hikaru poked her head out, waving at me.
I had no clue what brought them all the way to the fortress city from Shiga Kingdom, but I figured I’d let them fill me in once we’d moved somewhere we could relax.
First, though, I’d better deal with the iron wall pair (who were shouting “Guilty!”) and with Zena, who’d just realized what she’d done and had turned beet red.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, the next incident was already underway.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Oh, no! I can’t find Prince Sharorik anywhere!”
In a monastery at the base of the Fujisan Mountains, a nun burst into the abbess’s office.
“He slipped out again? That prince is a handful.”
“Abbess! We must search for him!”
“Don’t worry, in his condition, he can’t go far. No carriages went in or out, so he’s likely lying under a tree by the side of the road.”
The abbess was as unconcerned as the nun was fretting.
“I’ll go right away! If the prince vanishes, the monastery will be held responsible! And if that happens—augh!”
This monastery received a lot of funding for allowing problematic nobility to live here. If anything should happen to one of them, it would impact their trust. That sideline was just barely keeping the monastery in the red, so they had to avoid worst-case scenarios.
The nun in charge of the monastery accounts flew out of the abbess’s office, looking quite beside herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
Unfortunately…
The abbess’s assurance that the third prince would soon be found proved meritless. The full monastery staff and everyone from the nearby village joined the search, but the sun set without locating him.
“Abbess, what do we do?”
“Stay calm. Alert the capital.”
“Very well. I’ll send our fastest runner with a message.”
“Wait.”
The nun had turned to go, but the abbess stopped her.
“Let’s use a pigeon.”
“But…those only go to the temple in Tofumo…”
“I know that. We’ll alert the Tofumo magistrate to the prince’s disappearance and have them send word to that capital. That’s the fastest route.”
Even as she spoke, she was writing on a tiny piece of paper. She handed the note to the restless nun.
“I’ll get the pigeon ready!”
She dashed off, and the abbess put a hand to her cheek.
All alone, she moved to the window.
“Will that do?” she whispered, eyes on the darkened backyard.
There was a metallic click behind her. A velvet purse placed on the desk in the seemingly empty room.
“My, my.”
The purse was overflowing with gold.
“That will get us through the winter. We can keep the children fed.”
She moved the contents to her safe and headed to the chapel to pray.
For the safety of the third prince, Sharorik, wherever he might be.
“John! John Smith! Hurry up and decipher this!”
In the mountains far west of Shiga—nowhere near the Fujisan Mountains—a temperamental man was yelling.
He wore aristocratic clothes, while the subject of his ire was a one-armed black-haired boy hunched over some strange writing carved into the ruins.
“Hold your horses. The writings are crumbling and hard to make out.”
“That’s what I get for hiring peasants!”
“Sokell, try to remain calm,” said an explorer with a face full of stubble.
“I am calm! His Highness charged us with the search for the Holy Husk Mobile Armor! Do you even know how vital that is to the future of the Shiga Kingdom?!”
“The armor, right. From the legends of ancestral king? Does it even exist?”
“Of course it does! His Highness found secret writing in the language of the heroes hidden within the royal home!”
The explorer’s suspicions infuriated Sokell all the further.
“All right, all right, but that’s all the more reason to be careful.”
“Exactlyyy. Like Yasaku saaays. If you rush him and he gets it wrong, that’d be baaad.”
A priestess backed the explorer—Yasaku—up, drawling her words.
“Yasaku.”
“What’s up, Tan? Gah!”
A magic fencer called his name, and Yasaku turned around, looked—and gaped.
“Is that a wyvern?” a beautiful mage asked.
“Nope, it’s a dragon,” the magic fencer said.
“A d-dragon? D-do something! That’s why I hired you!” the nobleman shrieked.
“Easy to say. This is a dragon, man,” Yasaku said, not the least bit stressed.
“Are you not mithril explorers? Demonstrate the might you acquired under Ringrande, the Witch of Heavenly Destruction!”
“Might? I’m a scout. Tan, you got options?”
“I ain’t gonna win. But I wouldn’t mind trying.”
The magic fencer flexed his fingers round the hilt of his blade.
“Ewww…battle junkiiiies…you’re so craaaazy.”
“Well, I’m gonna hit it with my best shot and leave the rest to you!”
The priestess cast some buffs, and the mage used a “Boost” skill and some items.
They stood no chance against this foe, yet none of them looked the least bit scared.
This was a dragon. Even if it was a lesser one, that was still a foe so powerful, it had treated three active members of the Shiga Eight—Ryuona, the Grass Cutter, Jelil, the Scarlet Nobleman, and Bauen, the Windblade—like children at the Vistall Duchy.
The dragon wheeled around, and the mage’s chant neared its completion.
Tensions mounted. The powder keg about to go off.
“Wait!”
The boy deciphering the ruins leaped out in front of them.
“Out of the way, peasant!”
“I said, wait! It’s written here—don’t attack the dragon! Drop your weapons and ask permission to proceed!”
“Seriously?” Yasaku asked.
The boy nodded.
“Yasaku?” the mage said, holding the spell.
“Argh, cancel it. Drop the spell, Sheriauna.”
“Have you gone mad?” the nobleman screeched.
But the mage just said, “Very well” and abandoned the spell in progress. The magic fencer sheathed his weapon, too.
Sensing the magic ebbing, the dragon flew back toward the ridge from which it had come.
“Nice one, John! You nailed it!”
“Ow! Ow, you’re all muscle!”
Yasaku had grabbed him into a bear hug and was slapping his back as John squirmed away.
“Sokell, the entrance is in the shadow of the ridge where the dragon went.”
“Oh. Then let’s make haste.”
Without a single word of thanks, the nobleman waved them onward.
“Don’t let it get to you. Nobility are all like that.”
“I know. Long as I get paid,” the boy said.
“What reward were you promised?”
“Nothing major. Money and a letter of introduction.”
“To who?”
“Without a letter from a noble, they won’t make a fake arm.”
“Oh, I get you. You seemed like the type to steer well clear up the upper crust, so I was wondering why you’d taken his offer.”
“Met him by chance. He’d dropped a piece of paper—and it so happened I could read what was on it.”
“By that, you mean the hero’s writing? Where’d you learn that complex script? Saga?”
“What are you standing there for? Get a move on! We’re keeping the prince waiting!”
“Whoops, he’s yelling again. Better move before his mood gets worse.”
Urged onward, they reached the crack in the side of the ridge.
They were stepping into ruins untouched by human feet. In search of armor from the Age of the Ancestral King, Yamato, said to be invincible.
But it wasn’t all bad news.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Sara, almost time for the flight.”
At an airport in Shiga’s old capital, a nobleman called to a girl wearing the robes of the Tenion Temple—the priestess, Sara.
“Coming, Uncle Tolma.” She turned to the seal children eating at the table. “Let’s get going.”
“Priestess, coming.”
“Priestess, wait!”
Bobbing their heads as they walked, they lined up with Sara.
Holding hands, they went up the ramp to the airship where Tolma waited.
“This way, Sara. You can watch the launch happen.”
Tolma led them to the observation platform.
Several Northerners—where discrimination against beastfolk ran rampant—frowned at the sealfolk, but most people on the deck were paying more attention to Sara—the daughter of Duke Ougoch.
“Almost time.”
“Yes, Uncle Tolma.”
“Excited to see Satou?”
“Yes—no! I’m going to the capital because I received an oracle from Tenion! Not to see Satou at all. I’m not hoping I might happen to bump into him while I’m there.”
“Right, but the goddess is bound to bring you to the one you love.”
Sara was being all too obvious, and Tolma stifled a smile, teasing her.
“Uncle Tolma!”
“Sorry, sorry. What manner of oracle was this?”
“It was very unclear, but Tenion said Satou would need my help.”
She hadn’t actually said the name, merely “your soulmate,” but Sara figured those were equivalent terms and used his name for clarity.
“Well, if you slay a demon lord, I supposed the goddesses would notice,” Tolma said, nodding.
“Priestess, liftoff!”
“Priestess, floating!”
The seal children pulled her to the windows, and the conversation ended.
“Where does this go?”
“Priestess, tell us!”
“This airship is going to the capital.”
“Is Nana there?”
“Is Nana’s master there?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it.” Sara nodded.
Her eyes peering across the Fujisan Mountains, in the direction of the capital.
“……Not long now, Satou,” she whispered, with longing in her voice.
✦ ✦ ✦
The story was shifting back to the Shiga Kingdom.