“Huh? Wait, we’re not going to go right away?”
“We can’t make it there and back on just one gold coin, can we? You guys begged me to let you earn the rest of the money on your own, so I thought you must have had some kind of strategy in mind... But honestly, we really can’t make this work with just five platinum coins.”
“We completely forgot about travel funds... Ugh, you should’ve stayed with us to earn more money instead of camping out in the woods, Chris!”
“Hey, there’s no need to freak out. Raising the funds for the surgery was the hard part, and we’ve already cleared that hurdle. Getting enough to cover our travels won’t take long at all.”
In any case, my plan was for us to spend just a few days earning some money for our trip, and then head out as soon as we had enough.
The reason I’d decided to go with them this time was because I wanted to see if I could get any intel on Claus.
Truthfully, though, I hadn’t really expected to need to go this far to do it. I’d just assumed everyone would have been talking about Claus ever since the blessing ceremony, but apparently, news about the new sword god hadn’t yet reached Realzahd.
So, I felt like it’d be worth visiting the capital just to ask around and see if Claus really had made his way there like I expected.
“Man, this is so exciting! I’m finally gonna be able to walk like a normal person again!” Ralph exclaimed.
“It won’t happen overnight, you know,” I cautioned. “Don’t forget that you’ll probably have to go through some rehabilitation first.”
“I’m not gonna let a little rehab get me down. I’m just looking forward to working together like an actual party.” Ralph smiled brightly as he spoke.
I was looking forward to working together as a party too. Doing everything we could to earn money had been our number one priority up until now, so I’d been spending a long time just hunting stray cowbirds.
I was eager to start fighting some stronger foes and gaining some experience working as a team.
Then, once we’d gotten strong enough, I’d travel the world and forage all kinds of poisonous plants with undiscovered latent properties.
I’d start by checking out all the locations mentioned in Otto’s autobiography, and one day, I even wanted to get my hands on a particular “skill fruit” he’d written about.
It was apparently highly poisonous, so it had become legendary for being—quite literally—a forbidden fruit.
Many who sought power had risked their lives over the years to eat the fruit, and most of them wound up dead.
Thanks to the danger it posed—and its forbidden allure—the fruit now only grew in secret locations. But I was determined to find it one of these days.
“By the way...didn’t you have something you wanted to tell Chris, Ralph? You know...some information you learned?” Hester asked.
“Hmm? You did?” I echoed, turning to Ralph.
I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts about the skill fruit that Hester’s comment took me by surprise.
Ralph didn’t seem to have any idea what she was talking about. He cocked his head in confusion.
What in the world could he have wanted to tell me? I wondered.
“Ooh... Riiight!” Ralph said. “I heard some adventurers at the guild talking about someone who might’ve been your younger brother recently! I meant to tell you, but I was so excited about saving up the money that it completely slipped my mind.”
I was stunned.
“Are you serious?! Come on, you should’ve led with that! Don’t leave me hanging, though. What’d you hear?”
It had been several months since I’d fled my home, and this was the first I’d heard anything about Claus’s whereabouts. No matter how trivial the information might have been, it was of grave importance to me.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up—it wasn’t anything all that useful. I mean, I don’t even know for sure if it really was your brother or not.”
“Enough with the disclaimers. Just hurry up and tell me what you heard.”
“All right, all right. I overheard some adventurers talking by the quest boards, and apparently, a potential hero has just enrolled in the Imperial Academy. I tried to get the guy who was talking about it to tell me more, but that was all the information he had.”
That’s all, huh? Just that a potential hero has enrolled in the Imperial Academy? I thought.
Ralph was right. There wasn’t enough information to determine whether or not the adventurers had been talking about Claus. When I thought about the timing, though, it seemed to me that there was a pretty good chance it had been.
And that was just the information that had reached the neighboring city of Realzahd. I was bound to find more details if I went looking for them in the capital.
“You’re right that we can’t be sure they were talking about Claus, but I think the odds are good. I was already hoping to get some more intel on him when we went to the capital. Will you guys help me?” I asked.
“Come on, do you even have to ask? We’d have to be real jerks to say no.”
“Of course we’ll help you. Let’s split up when we get there and look for information!” Hester added. “If it is really your brother they were talking about, then that makes the conversation we had when we first formed a party feel a whole lot more real.”
“Yeah. I’ve got no doubt he’ll be recruiting the best of the best in the capital to be in his party, so we can’t just content ourselves with hunting bronze-level monsters forever.”
“Ngh... This is kind of freaking me out,” Ralph said. “Like, here’s a question. If your brother is a potential hero, then what’s gonna happen when you kill him?”
“I dunno, actually... But if I had to guess, I’ll probably be labeled a traitor. Worst-case scenario, they might paint me to be even more villainous than a demon king.”
“Oh, god... I wish I hadn’t asked.”
A sword god affinity was only bestowed on someone every few centuries, so I knew that the kingdom would cherish Claus as a precious resource to be nurtured and protected. Killing him would almost certainly be viewed as treason.
Not only was Claus an impossibly strong enemy, but there was absolutely no objective advantage to killing him; if anything, the consequences were bound to be disastrous.
Even so...backing down wasn’t an option.
That day in Patia Forest, I’d made a promise to myself that I would make Claus regret not ending my life that day.
“Well, don’t worry. I have no intention of dragging you two into his death. If Claus has a party by then, I’ll probably just ask you to handle them so they don’t get in my way,” I said.