In the end, they didn’t get going on the same day as Yua had hoped. There were still preparations to make. But the next morning, a hastily assembled “Holy Maiden’s Procession” gathered in front of the palace gates.
There were two carriages and five knights to protect them. Four knights were from the Second Royal Order, who specialized in protecting the kingdom’s key figures.
The other person was…
“I knew this would happen. I knew it. But how the hell is this going to work?!”
…Orjef, Vice Commander of the Third Royal Order, bemoaning the circumstances.
Although this meant that both the commander and vice commander would be absent, this apparently wasn’t a problem, given that the Third Royal Order took frequent expeditions away from the capital. Admittedly, the severe lack of prep time did cause its own issues, though they were not insurmountable.
“They’ve got a lot of magic stones over there. They might even have some texts I’ve never seen before!”
Next to Orjef was Ist, assistant director of the Sorcery Department, as jubilant as a child on an excursion. He must have heard about the trip from somewhere because he strode right up to Seiichirou and demanded to come along.
“But why me…?” A pale-faced Sigma clutched his bag, trembling. He’d been there when Ist had made his demand, and here he was again today, getting dragged into the fray.
“It’s a good opportunity to broaden your horizons, don’t you think?” Seiichirou said nonchalantly. Inwardly, he was grateful to Sigma for being Ist’s guardian. Although there was something silly about a thirty-year-old needing a twelve-year-old’s guidance, this was Ist they were talking about.
“Nah, I’m the one who should be wondering what I’m doing here…”
Norbert, who had been glued to Seiichirou’s side the whole time, had joined the group under Yurius’s orders. The fact that he was technically royalty probably had something to do with it. This didn’t have much to do with Seiichirou, so he just shrugged and let it happen.
“Aren’t you a bit too callous with me, Sei?” Norbert whined.
“It’s my way of showing affection.”
“Uh…well, in that case…” Seiichirou’s frivolous young subordinate blushed.
Today, his hair was done up properly. The Accounting Department would be going without two of its members, but this was fine since Seiichirou had written down instructions for their colleagues.
“Anyway, Sei, what’s that?” Norbert pointed at Seiichirou’s face, which was covered below his eyes.
Indeed, Seiichirou was wearing a thin, dark cloth as a mask.
“I’m told this cloth is made from a plant called rafket. It’s not one hundred percent effective, but it can stop magicules from getting into my lungs.”
The plant was apparently cultivated in Plasas, a kingdom to the south where magicules were sparse. It could be used to purify magicules to some small degree.
“Cool,” said Norbert. “But wait, that reminds me…are you gonna be okay?! I heard magicules are way denser in Egorova compared to Romany!”
“I’ve accounted for that.”
Namely, the purifying mask…plus the medicine for diluting magic and reducing the symptoms of magic poisoning. He got it from the Medical Bureau director Ciro, who made it on Aresh’s request. Ciro had been reluctant to hand it over, saying that it was still in the trial phase and didn’t have a strong impact, but Seiichirou convinced him that it was better than nothing. Ciro also gave him the mask as another means of protecting himself.
“Most of Egorova’s magicule-dense areas are in the mines, so I doubt I’ll keel over straight away in the capital,” Seiichirou said.
“Well, sure, but don’t push yourself, okay? Tell me as soon as you feel unwell.”
Norbert kept bugging him about this, so Seiichirou told him, “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”
As all of this was going on, the star of the show arrived with a knight and lady-in-waiting in tow. It was Yua—clad in a refined, light blue one-piece dress—and one other person: a beautiful lady oozing with elegance in her purple dress and her tied-up black-blue hair.
The sharp-eyed lady—Erene—must have heard about this trip on the grapevine, because on the night Yua made her proposal, she came to Aresh’s mansion and said, “You ought to bring a noble along with you.”
And thus she pushed her way—er, cordially invited herself—into the group.
“So you’re Aresh’s older sister!” said Yua. “I can see the resemblance. You’re gorgeous!”
“Why, thank you, Your Holiness.”
“Oh, you can just call me Yua, not Your Holiness.”
“Well, then, Lady Yua, let’s pray for our safe travels.”
The refined ladies in the group hit it off marvelously. Without further ado, Yua, Erene, Orjef, and the lady-in-waiting went into one carriage while Seiichirou, Norbert, Ist, and Sigma took the other.
It took six days to reach Egorova’s capital by carriage. This only applied, however, to carriages outfitted with special magic tools for royalty. With all of Romany’s wisdom and know-how, the journey would still take ten days. To make matters worse, Egorova’s mountainous landscape meant that any carriage unfit for steep climbs would have to take detours.
Having come from a world of cars, bullet trains, and airplanes, Seiichirou was still not terribly used to carriages. He hadn’t traveled any long distance since the Demon Forest. Even if horses were faster than humans, the weight of luggage and the frequent rest stops slowed progress considerably. They had changed horses at towns along the way to the Demon Forest, but they lacked the preparations to pull that off this time.
Seiichirou had expected that the trip would take over ten days—once upon a time.
“Let’s take the shortest route! We can make it in three days!” declared Romany’s Holy Maiden.
Everyone else gaped at her as if she was off her rocker, save for one person with sparkling eyes. Needless to say, it was Ist.
“I’d love to get there quick, too. How do you plan on doing it? What’s the method?”
“I’ll cast healing magic on the horses! Then they can keep going without breaks!”
What is she, a drill sergeant? Seiichirou winced at Yua’s suggestion, but the others looked surprisingly receptive. Apparently, since healers were a precious resource, nobody had thought to use them for these purposes.
“Oh, I can use healing magic, too,” Ist enthused.
It bore mentioning that their group included the Holy Maiden and the kingdom’s foremost sorcerer.
“Help out, too, Orjef. You can use a bit of magic,” Erene demanded huffily. This reminded Seiichirou that if Orjef was Aresh’s cousin, then he was Erene’s cousin as well.
“Don’t ask for the impossible!” Orjef retorted. “I’m no healing magic expert!”
“Useless. What are you even doing here?”
“You know I’m a guard, right?!”
As he watched the bickering cousins and the buoyant Yua and Ist, Seiichirou decided to revise his opinion. He wanted to reach their destination as fast as possible, too.
“If there are multiple types of magic you can use, are you able to cast something that slows fatigue instead of just healing?” Seiichirou asked.
“What do you mean, ‘slows fatigue’?” Yua asked curiously.
“Ohhh, what’s this?!” said Ist. “Are you up to something, Kondo?! Let me in on it!”
“Calm down, Ist. We haven’t even left yet, and you’re too worked up.” The twelve-year-old restrained the thirty-year-old baby.
Feeling grateful for Sigma’s service, Seiichirou pulled a large scroll out of his luggage.
“This piqued my interest when I was researching Egorova. The shortest route is between these mountains.”
Seeing where Seiichirou was pointing, Orjef’s eyes boggled. His regular monster-slaying excursions and trips to remote areas and frontier lands gave him a robust grasp of geography.
“Hey! How do you know about that?! It’s not common knowledge in the kingdom!”
“Huh? What is it?” Yua cocked her head.
“There is a tunnel here connecting Romany and Egorova,” Seiichirou explained flatly.
“Whoa! That’s convenient! Why aren’t we using it already?”
“Because it caved in over a hundred years ago, making it impossible to get through.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” said Norbert. “I heard about that. It was built a long time ago as a trade route between Egorova and Romany for importing food and whatnot, but when Egorova decided it could make do on its own with its magic tools, the tunnel was left in disrepair and now it’s unusable.”
Leave it to a member of the royal family to know history. Orjef, who had actually seen the tunnel for himself, nodded along to Norbert’s explanation.
“But that doesn’t mean there’s no way through at all, does it?” Seiichirou said.
After all, they had the kingdom’s best and brightest with them.
Seeing the smile on Seiichirou’s lips, the entire group realized that he was completely and utterly serious. They were stunned into silence.
And so, through the combined efforts of Yua’s healing and purification magic, Ist’s weight-lightening and strengthening magic, and Orjef’s earth magic, they were able to keep the horses strong and healthy while clearing the path ahead of them. Orjef and Ist also teamed up on gravity spells to clear enough space for the carriages to get through. With that, they actually did manage to reach Egorova in three days.