“Kousaka, may I have a minute?”
I was at the spring washing dishes when a window popped up, accompanied by Karumi’s voice.
“Yes, of course.”
Actually, two windows popped up. One displayed “Connecting: Sound Only,” while the other one showed Karumi sitting at the office table, upon which was set a steaming water heater and an extra large cup of noodles proudly proclaiming Tom Ramen.
...She didn’t want me to see this.
I set the clean dishes atop a nearby rock and took a seat. The bottom of the ravine was covered in luminescent moss, which provided a bit of light, but not much in comparison to the fluorescent lights of the office on the other side of the window. I could see the train station through the window in the office. They had a lot of lights on there as well.
“I wanted to ask you about Mary, actually.”
Karumi pressed the button on the water heater, dispensing it into the cup of noodles. Three minutes until dinner time.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Knights are a bit different there than they are here, and they really come in two classes. First, those who pilot the Extended Knight Armor, the mechanical devices which you dealt with in Milt. Those are fairly common in scuffles between humans and Daemons.”
Right, Mary had said the same thing: people who could pilot the armor were called knights.
“The other group is less familiar to me. It’s possible Mary herself isn’t terribly familiar with them. They’re a clan of powerful members of the human colony, tasked with protecting their race. It’s rare for one of them to be born with less than exceptional strength.”
“Hmm, so that’s the other kind of knight, huh?”
Maybe that was why I’d seen two different skill sets when I had used <Appraisal> on Mary?
“Yes. It seems Mary has had training as both kinds of knight. The second variety may have faded into obscurity after the Extended Knight Armor grew in popularity, but Daemons are still wary of them. As a member of that clan, someone born into the guardianship of the human race, she has outstanding physical prowess.”
So she’d be like, a champion NPC or something if this was a game. No surprises there. Her stats were too high to be a simple soldier, however well trained. The others who had been with her during the raid had been normal.
“So you see, as a sworn protector of humanity, she would find it difficult to betray her people. If she tried, her knightly instincts would make her feel revulsion at her actions, leading her to avoid it by any means possible.”
At least it didn’t sound like any kind of terribly painful experience, or like a physically binding restriction, but she did have some kinda fuzzy shackles. That whole thing about being the chosen guardians of her people was pretty amazing. Karumi seemed to be implying there were a bunch of other people like her. If they were all that amazing, they’d probably go down as a family of heroes on Earth, or maybe like a line of top military commanders or something? I wondered exactly how one became a knight here. It sounded like you had to be born into the clan, but Mary had said something about her initiation being difficult, so I wasn’t so sure. Anyway, that question could wait. I had something more important to ask first.
“Can she still be a labyrinth guardian?”
I didn’t think Karumi would’ve let her sign a contract if she couldn’t actually do the job, but I still wanted to make sure.
“Things should be fine as long as she’s working towards returning to her kind. Even if she is temporarily allied with the Daemons, it will all be to benefit the humans in the end.”
“I see. As long as this isn’t going to restrict her too much, we’ll be okay.”
So Karumi had called to warn me, although there was nothing to worry about immediately. The sight of Karumi lovingly tilting her cup of noodles to drain the water from them cut the tension of the moment magnificently.
“Can I ask you one more question? What would happen to a knight who betrayed her people?”
Karumi had said that a knight would find it difficult, not that she would find it impossible. A subtle but important distinction.
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t answer that question. There are restrictions on what I’m allowed to tell labyrinth managers, and frankly, everything I’ve told you so far is already forbidden.”
So Karumi wasn’t allowed to tell me much. Though they must’ve been pretty lenient about it, if she could just call me up and tell me about it quietly. Sounded more like an “only on a need-to-know basis” kind of thing, rather than a “strictly confidential” thing. At any rate, I was just relieved that Mary would get to stay on as our labyrinth guardian.
“Thank you for contacting me. Enjoy your dinner.”
“Oh, thank y— Wait, Kousaka, how do you know that I’m about to have dinner?”
Karumi looked sorrowfully at the little timer on the table, which probably indicated that her noodles had been ready for a long time now, so I cut off the call. I sure hoped her noodles hadn’t gotten too soggy.