Chapter 17

CHAPTER ONE Cybermagic City—Akihabara Month of the Behemoth, Day 7. “Let us put an end to this—the end…of my journey.” Veltol Velvet Velsvalt was on the verge of death. His enemy, the king of the demons, was many times his size. Veltol was in the enemy fortress, his final destination. The enemy’s attacks were getting stronger with each moment, but none could compete with Veltol’s focus as he kept on dodging. Flames billowed, ice rumbled, and thunder boomed. Veltol’s armor was broken, and his shield was shattered; the only thing that remained was the chain in his hand. The lightest graze would kill him for sure. He was at the end of a long, uninterrupted seventy-four-hour journey. The fatigue would have any regular man incapable of coherent thought at this stage, yet Veltol’s concentration showed no sign of faltering. Perhaps his unwavering spirit was indeed his greatest weapon. Now the long adventure was soon to end. “Time to finish thiiiiiiiiis!” Veltol howled. He activated his ultimate skill, and a dragon made of mana pierced straight through the demon king. The ensuing explosion flooded Veltol’s vision with white. The next thing he knew, he found himself standing atop a cliff with a fortress visible in the distance. That fortress—the scene of his final battle—began to crumble. And so ended the seventy-four-hour long fight. “Grahhhhhh, it’s overrrrrrr! Behold! You all claimed this game would be far too difficult for me, and yet I won! Also, who the hell was saying it would only take ten hours?! Oh wait, that was me!” Veltol put down the controller and leaned back on his throne—his gaming chair. The holodisplay in front of him showed the ending screen of the gothic horror action game Super Fortressvania Gaiden: a vampire-slaying vampire-ninja knight atop his noble white steed, the rescued princess safe in his arms, and text reading THE END. Comments extolling his triumph scrolled by on another display. SO THIS IS THE GUY WHO HACKED AN AD INTO SHINJUKU’S HOLODISPLAYS… DUDE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO STREAM FOR 74 HOURS STRAIGHT WITH JUST HIS FACE, VOICE, AND OVER-THE-TOP REACTIONS I’M DYINGGGGG OVER HERE The comments weren’t as lively as usual. The viewers seemed tired. “Well then, a swift and peaceful death to you fools.” He said his customary farewell and put an end to the festivities. He tapped away at the 3D keyboard connected to his PDA, stopped the streaming app, and shut down the device. The holodisplays showing the comments closed immediately. “Camera off, recording off, stream off, secondary display off—all good!” He pointed at and read out every single step to ensure the stream had successfully ended. The only thing still open was the web browser holodisplay. “Ooooof!” Veltol yawned. He was a good-looking fellow. He had long, raven-colored hair, dark eyes, and a finely defined yet virile face. His artfully handsome body was clothed in an all-black tracksuit and a T-shirt with the words Demon Lord printed on it in Japanese. He didn’t look sloven despite his rough outfit, all thanks to his majestic aura, which leaked from every pore. A sculptor trying to mold the form of the perfect man would likely end up creating his image—that was just how awe-inspiring he was. And for good reason: Veltol was beyond immortal; he had defied death and ruin. This was a man who had lived thousands of years. Since time immemorial, people either feared or worshipped him. They called him the king of the demons—the Demon Lord. Five hundred years earlier, before the fusion of Earth and Alnaeth, he had tried to conquer the latter of the two worlds. He was the enemy to all mortals, having fought against even gods, making him a menace to humanity. He fell at the hands of the Hero Gram only to be revived five centuries later. And yet… “Seventy-four hours is too long for a single stream… The game was so good, I ended up getting far too carried away. My viewers will likely have trouble following the archived footage, so I should think of what to do about that…” Veltol looked at the analytics of the latest stream on his browser, reflecting on what this could mean for his following. The Demon Lord, who had once tried to conquer all Alnaeth, was now making a living as a livestreamer, playing games and broadcasting them through the aether network. One room of his apartment had been dedicated for his streams, flooring changed anew as soon as he moved in. It was furnished with a desk and chair, along with all the devices needed for streaming, and his own streamer merch. This was the current throne chamber of his Demon Castle. Veltol stared at the game’s holodisplay, still open in midair. He had created the avatar of the vampire-ninja knight to closely resemble himself. “An avatar, huh?” he muttered while looking at his character. A person’s physical appearance was extremely malleable in this day and age. Be it an avatar on the aethernet or mechanization of one’s entire body, you could freely change your looks so long as you had the time and money. Appearance, species, and gender no longer factored into someone’s identity either online or in real life. Take, for example, a goblin man who could turn into a beautiful elven boy on the net or maybe even transplant his brain and spinal cord to a borg body to obtain the appearance of a female ogre. There were many financial drawbacks to physical mechanization: the surgery, hospitalization, the mechanical body, post-op rehab, and periodic maintenance and upkeep expenses. Some cities required registering for a full-borg physical examination, plus there was a borg tax. Changing avatars on the net was much easier and cheaper. But so long as you had the money, you could become anyone you wanted. This consequently brought opposing movements to the post-Fantasion world, such as neo-naturism and neo-speciesism. Immortals, meanwhile, depended on the strong connection between body and soul, meaning they could only implant machines in a few parts of their body. It was only natural that Veltol found full-borgs, who replaced most of their bodies with machinery, to be deeply fascinating. “To think the soul doesn’t disappear even after fragmenting the body and replacing most of it with steel… The world still has plenty of surprises left.” Then someone knocked on the door behind him. “Come in.” A beautiful young woman entered with her king’s permission. Her hair was long and silver, her eyes a light crimson, her skin white as snow, and her countenance bewitching yet innocent. She looked around sixteen or seventeen, but she was an immortal just like Veltol—her true age was over a thousand years old. Her name was Machina Soleige. Personally chosen by the Demon Lord to be his aide, she was one of the Six Dark Peers, his most powerful immortals: the Duchess of the Dazzling Blaze. She was wearing a T-shirt printed with an image of a tanuki, a mystical beast that went extinct fifty years earlier. “You must be tired, Lord Veltol.” She politely bowed her head. “Indeed,” her master replied. “I was watching your stream. Super Fortressvania Gaiden is known for being a difficult game, so much so that I had to give up in despair after being unable to clear the first stage… But in the end, it was no foe for your orichalcum will. I’m in awe.” “Heh, no big deal… It was about as difficult as the conquest of Fort San Breda in 711 CE.” “But please, from now on, take a break every twenty-four hours. You mustn’t go at it for so long without rest,” she said with a pout, then continued in a small voice. “…I might collapse from a Lord Veltol deficiency if I have to spend another three days without seeing your face.” Machina, his loyal subject, had to wait for five hundred lonely years for his return. A mere three days of him cooped up in his room should be no longer than the blink of an eye from an immortal’s point of view, but he understood that Machina truly treasured every single moment spent with him. “I have good news. Thanks to this stream, my channel finally reached three million subscribers. The advertising campaign carried out through hacking Shinjuku’s holodisplays must have been highly effective.” “Really? That’s great! Congratulations. I’ll go make some celebratory red rice. Or would you rather go out for sushi?” “No, there’s no need to celebrate. In any case, more fans means more faith, and as a result, I am now able to unleash Vernal’s second form. Come to think of it, it feels a lot like I just leveled up and unlocked an upgrade. These games must really be getting to me.” “Really? That’s great! Congratulations. I’ll go make some celebratory red rice. Or would you rather go out for sushi?” “You really want to eat sushi, don’t you? I don’t mind, but…this second form is rather limited in its use.” “What do you mean?” Veltol frowned and hmmed. “…You see, it is for executing immortals.” “Oh…” Awkward silence. The number of immortals had dropped dramatically in the modern era. In fact, neither Veltol nor Machina knew the whereabouts of any of their fellow immortals. They were an endangered species in every sense of the word, so there was no real opportunity for utilizing the aforementioned Vernal form. “I doubt I will ever use it again…” “Yes…there is rarely a need to cut through the soul itself in this day and age.” “Besides, this form is too similar to Gram’s. It simply doesn’t feel right on me.” Gram was the Hero who defeated the Demon Lord Veltol five hundred years earlier. After the goddess Meldia granted him eternal youth, Gram wandered the globe until meeting Veltol yet again. Due to various circumstances, these former foes had to join forces to solve a certain incident. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking after what happened with Marcus, and…” Just two weeks ago, Veltol learned that Marcus was burning immortals to provide Shinjuku with electricity and mana. Veltol branded his former retainer and the director of IHMI a traitor and defeated him, thus putting an end to the Immortal Furnace. “…I believe it’s time to look for the rest of the Six Dark Peers.” “…” Machina listened in silence. “The Duke of the Bloody Arts betrayed me, and the Duke of the Karmic Sword perished in the Immortal Furnace. That’s two out of the six whom we’ve lost. And the only one I know who’s still safe is you, Machina.” Veltol recalled his two vassals. The latter, Zenol, was a stubborn man, but quite loyal and strong. Marcus turned out to be a traitor, but his talent was unquestionable. “So we only know the whereabouts of the three aforementioned Peers. The other three—Ralsheen, the Blue Storm; Sihlwald, the Black Dragon; May, the Mournful Firmament—remain missing.” “I knew May’s and Ralsheen’s whereabouts back before the Immortal Hunt, but I’ve heard nothing from them recently…” “Machina, Marcus never mentioned anyone besides Zenol, correct?” “Yes. The traitorous fool said he fed Sir Zenol to the Immortal Furnace but made no mention of the other Peers.” “Considering his twisted personality, he would’ve bragged about throwing the rest in as well, if he had done so.” “True… He certainly would’ve told me that, at least eventually, when he’d truly gone off the deep end.” “So we can deduce that Marcus did not kill any others in the Furnace. That is why I want to look for them. Will you help me?” “Of course, my lord. Between the wars and the ever-changing landscape, I was unable to search for them myself, but I feel the same way as you. Please let me help you.” “The fact that you couldn’t look for them proves how arduous the situation must have been. But there is no need to worry now.” Between the two worldwide City Wars and the Immortal Hunt, many immortals met their doom, and the remaining ones scattered. Veltol motioned to the stool in the corner of the room with his chin, and Machina brought it over to him. For some reason, she knelt atop the stool, but Veltol didn’t comment. “We have no choice but to look for the Dark Peers Records.” The Dark Peers Records were six books engraved with the mana of the Six Dark Peers, the Demon Lord Army’s top brass. Marcus had conceived the idea five centuries earlier in case the six of them were to get separated after the Demon Lord Army’s defeat during the Immortal War. He created these magi-gadgets to automatically record all their movements, making it possible to confirm their status and location. However, following the army’s defeat and the Blood Alliance’s rebellion, the Records were lost to the chaos. Machina, naturally, looked for them afterward but was unable to locate them. “The only way to know whether they are still alive is by checking the Dark Peers Records,” Veltol explained. “If we don’t even know their fate and they have ended up like Zenol, we will never be able to find them. Though, of course, we have no idea where the Records might be.” Then someone rang their apartment’s intercom. Machina opened a holodisplay showing a girl’s face: Takahashi’s. “Hey, hey, I’m here! Open up, please!” She was already at their door. The apartment complex’s entrance was locked, but Takahashi was an expert aether hacker—this building’s security was a mere trifle. Machina used the Familia connected to her nape to remotely unlock the front door. A moment later, they heard the door open. “She’s here again today, then?” Veltol said. “She swore she would never visit us here, and yet now she’s coming over five times a week… She also stopped by while you were streaming, by the way.” Veltol and Machina’s apartment had some…issues. The previous owner was murdered in the bedroom, hence why Takahashi refused to visit at first, but just three days after they moved in, she was coming over to hang out. “But you’re nonetheless happy to have her over, aren’t you?” said Veltol. “Well… I won’t deny that…” “Heeeeeey!” A young human—Takahashi—quickly burst into the room. The bubbly Asian girl had black hair with a tuft of her bangs dyed red. That day, however, she wasn’t wearing her usual qipao and dwarven jacket, but her school uniform—specifically, the one worn by students of Shinjuku First Municipal High School, many of whom Veltol saw along Waseda Street. “Takahashi…,” he stammered. “You… That uniform… You’re a high schooler…?” “Oh, I didn’t tell you?” “Did I forget to mention that?” Machina asked as well. “No one told me, no…” Veltol was shocked to his core. Not so much from learning that Takahashi was in high school, but that neither she nor Machina had ever told him. “And you’re taking on such risky hacking jobs? No student should be doing a thing like that…” Not only did she hack the net, but she also put her life in danger by doing risky on-site work. “Aw, c’mon, what’s the big deal with a student taking a few shady gigs here and there?” “Perhaps it’s not my place to say this, but that is a big deal, generally…,” Machina said. “Anywho, whatcha guys talkin’ about?” Machina was sitting properly on the stool now, and Takahashi parked herself on Machina’s lap and leaned against her. “Hey, Takahashi, you’re heavy!” “No, I’m not! I’m as light as a feather!” Machina gave up and held Takahashi in her arms. “So what were you gossiping about?” Takahashi asked. “Lemme in on the secret.” “Nothing that has anything to do with you,” Machina replied. “C’mon! Don’t ice me out!” “Very well,” said Veltol. “We were talking about looking for these ancient magi-gadgets called the Dark Peers Records that will help us locate the remaining Six Dark Peers. The problem is we don’t know where the Records might be.” “Ancient magi-gadgets?! Treasure hunting?! Seriously, you guys gotta let me in on this stuff sooner! I’m an aether hacker, remember? Investigation is my whole thing! Aw yeah, now we’re talking!” “I wasn’t so sure about relying on a mortal for immortal matters…but this certainly wouldn’t be the first time you’ve done that for us.” “Right? Anyway, let’s just gargo it.” Gargo was shorthand for using the Gargoyle search engine to look things up on the net. Takahashi coined the term herself and was trying to get it to catch on with little to no success. “Come on, Takahashi, there’s no way it could be so easy,” said Machina. “We’re not looking for hidden items in a video game, you understand? The aethernet isn’t as omnipotent as you might think. Hee-hee, silly girl.” “Tsk, tsk. Who the hell do you think I am? Of course it’s not gonna come up if you just type in where’s the Dark Peers Records! I know better than that.” “Indeed you do,” Veltol added. “So what we’re looking for won’t come up with the usual methods. What do we do, then?” Takahashi lifted her index finger. “We turn it on its head.” “We what…?” Veltol asked. Takahashi nodded. “We look at it from a different perspective. We don’t search for the thing itself, but rather where it might be. For instance, some person or organization that collects pre-Fantasion artifacts—museums, research labs, that sort of thing. That’s where we look.” Multiple holodisplays popped up around Takahashi, and she mirrored her VRD to them through the aether. Several small windows appeared as she inputted a number of commands using her spherical 3D keyboard and telepathic keyboard. Artificial spirits combed through the data at lightning speed. Veltol watched with deep interest. His supernatural mana reserves couldn’t possibly grant him the processing power that Takahashi so deftly wielded. “Granted, looking for this stuff ourselves would still be too hard, so we’ve gotta provide the artificial spirits with the right parameters. That way, they can penetrate beyond the search engine’s reach and sift through the copious amounts of data on the aethernet for us. Then we find the most likely hits from there. This is what we call artificial spirit mining.” “I’ve been using the aethernet since its early days, and yet I’m nowhere near this adept. I think Takahashi’s talents are its own separate category from the usual magical talents…” Takahashi didn’t react to Machina’s comment. She was so focused on her task, so deep in the net, that no voice could reach her. She was too immersed to even bother wiping the sweat from her brow. “Aha! Found it!” Takahashi rose from within the annals of the aethernet ten minutes later. “That was fast! Perhaps even too fast?!” “I’d expect nothing less,” said Veltol. “I’ll reward you later, Takahashi.” “I don’t have three artificial spirits for nothin’. Futaba’s a real ace at this sort of processing.” The job didn’t look all that special from the outside, and Takahashi laughed it off, but such a feat usually required specialized personnel and facilities. She’d hacked into restricted depths the search engine couldn’t reach, collecting info from all sorts of places. Even with the help of technology and artificial spirits, at its core, this was a type of magic—proof of her talent as an aether hacker, particularly the skills needed for on-the-fly modifications to rewrite technics in real time. “One final touch, aaand…there we go!” Takahashi revealed a map of Shinjuku’s environs on one of her holodisplays. The city itself appeared as a big yellow dot surrounded by other smaller red dots—Shinjuku’s satellite cities. The display zoomed in on one red dot that was slightly northeast before showing a 3D aerial map of the satellite city. It was called: “Akihabara…” Veltol muttered the name. “You’re saying this is where we should look?” he asked Takahashi. “Yep. There’s an underground treasury below Akihabara School of Magic, one of the few and the oldest in the world. Futaba narrowed this place down based on the parameters I used.” “That School of Magic?” Machina asked. “Yeah, in Akihabara.” “Oh-ho. I’ve never heard about this place,” Veltol commented. “Lu Xel, the Akihabara School of Magic, was founded after the end of the Immortal War. It’s an educational institution specializing in sorcery,” Machina explained. “It’s also the oldest remaining school of magic. Legend has it that there exists a hidden treasury underground that hasn’t been opened for almost five hundred years.” “I see. That must be around the time the Records were lost, after my defeat.” Machina fiddled with the 3D map of Akihabara to zoom in on the school building. “But how will we infiltrate the school’s underground? Do we barge straight in and fight our way through?” “Please, we’re not barbarians,” said Takahashi. “Let me handle the security, and we’ll just sneak in—” “What? No, we can’t break the law—” “And is fighting our way through supposed to be legal or something?!” “Calm down, you two,” Veltol interrupted. “No need to take such risks. There is one very simple way to infiltrate a school.” “What could that possibly be?” Machina asked. “Easy. Like hiding a tree in a forest, or a corpse in a catacomb.” To put it bluntly… “What better way to get into a school than to enroll as students?” Machina and Takahashi froze momentarily, mouths agape. “I-indeed… I did not consider that… But that would require certain documentation, and this isn’t the right season for—” “Wow! You sure come up with some wild stuff, Velly! Sounds great—let’s do it! I’ll handle the issues Machina brought up!” Takahashi proudly thumped her chest. “I just gotta get some exchange-program applications from my school, then me and my buddies’ll do a bit of tampering, and boom, we’re golden.” She put it so simply, but the reality was much more complicated. Nonetheless, Veltol trusted her to take care of it. He stroked his chin and pondered for a few seconds. “Strike while the iron is hot; make hay while the sun shines; steal the treasure while the dragon slumbers. There are similar sayings across various lands, even various worlds. Everlasting beings such as immortals may value time differently than mortals do, yet I think those adages still ring true.” “Um, so what do you wanna say, exactly?” The Demon Lord smiled. “Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today.” Veltol got to his feet, then thrust out his hand. “Our course of action is set!” Machina and Takahashi straightened up at his regal decree. “Our destination is Akihabara! Our objective: locate and obtain the Dark Peers Records! I, the Demon Lord Veltol Velvet Velsvalt, proclaim this quest’s commencement henceforth!” he declared bombastically. The view from the bus departing Shinjuku for Akihabara was truly bleak. There wasn’t a single leaf on the ground, just an unnatural mix of ashmoth stone known as reprid, and asphalt. It was a graveyard of decayed buildings and abandoned automobiles, all effects of the catastrophic Fantasion, which merged both worlds roughly eighty years ago. Traffic was light; the only other vehicles that passed through were caravans of trucks that protected passengers and cargo from the bands of raiders inhabiting the wasteland. The bus, of course, had its own escort as well. The bus’s interior wasn’t exactly pleasant, either. The seats were hard, the vehicle swayed a lot, and it was nowhere near insulated enough for the chill outside the cryotolerance zone. At last, a city appeared on the horizon. The Cybermagic City of Akihabara. The city was divided in two by a pedestrian mall extending from north to south; Electric Town was on the east, and Magic Town was on the west. The name of the old city in that location was Lu Xel, just like the school’s. It had a storied past, but during the City Wars, it merged with the old Akihabara, keeping the latter’s name. Then one man finally stepped foot into the city. “Here we are…” They arrived at the western side, Magic Town. It was nothing like the tumultuous Shinjuku—this side of Akihabara still had remnants of an ancient far east Alnaethian cityscape. “Here we are!” The view filled the man’s heart with joy. Tall stone lanterns called starsas glowed with faint bluish-white aether light. White smoke blew from the chimneys. The street was stone-paved. There were faded copper signs, grimoires lining the displays of magic bookshops, and magi-gadget shops with dried mandrakes and chicken legs hanging on the storefront. Brooms, a type of flying vehicle, passed by overhead. Pedestrians wore cloaks of many colors, and far in the distance, there was a giant wall. “Here we are, in Akihabara Magic Town! To think that such vestiges of Alnaeth still remained in this world!” The Demon Lord’s roar echoed throughout the quiet town. Takahashi arrived at the School of Magic’s VDX building and was soon shown to the principal’s office. It took less than a week for her to go through First High’s exchange-program procedures, forge some documents, and get to Akihabara after a bumpy bus ride. It helped that the exchange program was only a month long, but still, everything went extremely quickly thanks to her stellar grades. “Hmmm…,” came a suspicious grumble. There were five people in the principal’s office, three of them wearing the school’s blazer uniform: Takahashi in the middle, Veltol to her right, and Machina to her left. They were facing two women, one seated and one standing. The seated woman had a holopaper spread out across her desk. “Hm-hmmm…,” the woman murmured. Takahashi was sweating bullets mentally, though not because she feared the forged exchange-program documents weren’t up to snuff. In fact, she had no doubts that they were in perfect shape. She’d be more concerned if she left the task up to another hacker, but she oversaw all of it herself. My forgery is foolproof. I copied some spy’s technique and then added my own improvements. Not even the most seasoned aether hacker could easily see through that… Besides, I also had someone with a different type of artificial spirit examine it. Lu Xel had a six-year system, and Takahashi, Veltol, and Machina enrolled as sixth-year students. Takahashi had forged two extra applications using fabricated identities; it might’ve been easy to notice that Shinjuku First High had two extra students as a result, but as Takahashi mentioned, that shouldn’t have been a problem. Transferring to a satellite city—although technically, Akihabara was more of an allied city to the bigger Shinjuku—and for a short-term exchange program at that, involved comparatively lenient scrutiny. So why was Takahashi so nervous? “I see, I see…” My forgery’s perfect. It should be fine…I think… The reason was right in front of her: this woman who was still grumbling to herself. “Veltol Velvet Velsvalt…” The young elf woman read the name on the holopaper out loud. “That is, um…your real name, yes?” She looked from the name to the attached photo and then at the Demon Lord standing brazenly in front of her. Suspicious, right?! And spying is a serious crime, I know that! thought Takahashi. The Demon Lord had enrolled under his real name. The suspicion was reasonable, and there was no guarantee that this wouldn’t blow their cover. Forgery was, naturally, a felony. Most modern cities depended on their corporate enterprises, and industrial espionage was always on everyone’s radar. It wasn’t uncommon to hear that a city’s entire economy collapsed due to such spies. The punishment had become stricter over time, too. Takahashi wouldn’t get away with just a scolding even if all she did was forge some student documents. Worst-case scenario, she might get arrested and tortured. She did her best to act normal as she turned to look at Veltol. He seemed entirely unfazed by the woman’s question and nodded majestically. “Indeed. I am Veltol Velvet Velsvalt. That is my name.” Too unfazed, actually. Common sense did not apply to this man. He would never use a fake name, no matter how necessary it was. He was the one and only Demon Lord Veltol. “Mm-hmmm…” The woman brushed a strand of her black hair from her face as she stared at the holopaper. Takahashi eyed her cautiously; she knew all about her. Tratte Götel… Current head of the prestigious Götel clan, one of Akihabara’s Three Great Houses that dates back to the end of the Immortal War five hundred years ago. She’s also principal of Akihabara School of Magic and the de facto leader of the Magic Town half of the city… It was no use trying to guess an elf’s age by their appearance, but Tratte still looked young, and for good reason—her entire body was mechanized. She was a full-borg. According to Takahashi’s sleuthing, Tratte had been so gravely injured during the City Wars that her brain and part of her spine needed to be unitized, or transferred to a mechanical body. Her body was an older full-borg model, an Atropos. The most common model in the modern era was the Prometheus, which involved replacing the patient’s body with machinery over time, making rejection much less likely. Tratte hardly looked much different from someone with a flesh-and-blood body, however. Were it not for the unit-wiring on her cheeks, it would’ve been impossible to tell she was a full-borg. Her face was well-shaped, and the skincover was top-class. Naked full-borgs—those without skincover—and bucket-helms, which lacked detailed faces, were still the standard, since the price of unitization skyrocketed the more a borg resembled a person. Tratte looked away from the documents. “Very well, then. The documents are legitimate. I accept. Welcome to Akihabara School of Magic.” She didn’t contest them one bit. Seriouslyyy?! Takahashi screamed internally, although she immediately felt relieved. The elven woman standing behind the principal was also a high-grade full-borg. The plain-looking assistant opened her artificial eyes wide as she glanced back and forth between Veltol and the holopaper. Takahashi wondered if she was just as incredulous. “Let me ask one last question.” Tratte stood up with a metallic clang, revealing a sword hanging from her waist with a magnificent scabbard and metallic hilt. “Why this school?” Aaand there it is. Just saying they wanted to study magic at the best institution or whatever probably would’ve worked fine. But right before Takahashi could put that thought into words… “We’re here to inspect the building’s underground treasury,” Veltol answered. D-don’t just say that! Takahashi broke out in a cold sweat. Tratte furrowed her brow. “How do you know about the treasury? Only a select few are aware of it, even in Akihabara.” “Heh… No secret is rival to my keen eye and inquisitive mind. The truth always reveals itself; it cannot resist my charms.” “I see… So you’re telling me it’s no coincidence you found out about it.” “Maybe so… Or maybe not.” “Cyplicusian logic, huh? The truth always wavers when viewed subjectively.” “I don’t have much to say.” “Silence is golden, as the saying goes… It seems you didn’t come here out of mere curiosity.” Man, this really feels like walking a tightrope, thought Takahashi. I dunno how their meaningless blabbering is holding up this conversation, but okay, just don’t fall! “I’m impressed by your enthusiasm,” Tratte said pensively. “I would really like to allow you inside the treasury, but…” “We shouldn’t go in?” “No, you shouldn’t, but more accurately, you quite literally cannot go in. The treasury is sealed shut.” “…A seal, you say?” “That’s right. It was sealed five hundred years ago.” “Interesting… And I gather it is not an easy one to break?” “Correct. To release the seal, the heads of the Three Great Houses—the Götels, the Seburds, and the Reynards—must gather with their regalia, the three magi-gadgets that act as keys.” Tratte tapped her golden sword as she continued, “This is one of them, the Götels’ Blade. The Seburds have the Crown, while the Reynards were entrusted the Orb.” “Hmmm…? So we only need those three keys, correct? Rather straightforward requirements for a five-hundred-year-old seal.” It was the obvious question. Merely collecting these three regalia sounded like an uncomplicated task. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, but yes, the mechanism is quite simple.” “So if I can borrow these regalia from the two remaining houses, will you allow us to—?” “Yes, I will gladly release the seal if you can bring them to me. It is the wish of the Götel family to gather all three regalia, and I also have interest myself in seeing what is inside this treasury. However…there is one big problem.” She put her hand on her cheek, then sighed with melancholy. “And what would that be?” Veltol asked. Tratte smiled uncomfortably. Her ability to make such delicate and natural expressions was proof of how top-class her borg model was. Each and every one of her gestures had this sort of bewitching charm to them. “The Reynards’ Orb is missing.” She sounded truly regretful, so much so that one wouldn’t imagine it was being produced by a speech processor.