3
“Whoa! Scaaary! It’s so high! Not having a railing is freaky!”
“Wah, stop it, Subaru! It’s dangerous to go near the edge!”
Beatrice frantically pulled Subaru back as he peeked over the side of the spiral staircase.
Joseph and the carriage waiting on the bottom floor looked like specks. The stairs wound clockwise along the inside of the tower, and while they had only made it about halfway up, it was already quite chilly at this height.
“It’s a few dozen yards from the bottom to the next floor, but because of the spiral stairs, the walk is a couple miles…talk about inconvenient. What was the guy who made this place thinking?”
“Based on recent conversation, wouldn’t that be Flugel? It did happen four hundred years ago. Maybe they thought differently back then?”
“There are limits to what can be explained by a generation gap. Also…”
While Subaru and Beatrice held hands and walked together, Emilia trailed behind them. Subaru glanced past her, toward the tail end of the procession—
“Don’t shake so much.”
“Huh? You’re hitching a ride on my back, kiddo, so be grateful.”
“It’s way too much work climbing these hundreds of stairs up and down.”
“Well, it’s ticklish with you kicking around on my back like tha—Hey! Don’t pull my hair!”
Shaula scowled at Meili, who was riding on her back. But there was no rancor in their back-and-forth. Mysteriously, the two of them seemed to be getting along.
At the moment, Subaru and party were climbing the spiral stairs, going from the lowest floor to the next floor.
Julius and Anastasia were at the head of the procession, followed by Ram, Subaru, Beatrice, and Emilia, with the Meili-Shaula pair bringing up the rear.
The reason that pairing had happened was because Meili had complained about being tired and not wanting to climb the stairs, so Shaula had volunteered to carry her.
“She doesn’t seem like the sort to be universally loved by kids, but…”
“If you get tired, too, Subaru, just say so. If it comes to it, I can at least give you a piggyback ride.”
“It won’t ever come to that because I’m a dude.”
He was grateful for the thought, but as a young man with his pride, he had to politely decline. Even the thought of it was too much. He’d rather ask Julius for a favor than resort to that.
Anyway…
“Huh? What’s up, Master? Looking at me with such intense eyes… Have you finally realized my charms after four hundred years?!”
“You’re crazy patient! And sorry to bother you while Meili is playing with your ponytail…”
“Scorpiontail, not ponytail.”
“Huh?”
“Scorpiontail.”
“Ah, right, sure, whatever. Anyway…”
“Scorpiontail…”
“Fine, I get it! What a weird thing to get hung up on! Scorpiontail then, scorpiontail! Scorpi… Scorptail… Wow, that’s awkward to try to shorten!” She was being weirdly insistent about it, so Subaru acknowledged the point before quickly moving along. The intended topic was, of course, the name Emilia had just mentioned. “So this might be going over ground we already covered, but you’re sure that your master is Flugel?”
“Yep, yep. That’s your name, Master, so maybe stop being so weird about it? Oh! Or are you coming on to me by making me say it over and over?” Her eyes twinkled as she peered up at Subaru bashfully. “You don’t have to do that. My heart has always belonged to you, Master. I love youuu!”
“Nooo, thank you.”
“You threw it away?!”
Without missing a beat, Subaru took the feelings Shaula had just poured out and made a show of unceremoniously dumping them over the side of the stairs before clearing his throat. If he let Shaula dictate the pace of the conversation, it would never end.
“So this Flugel is the same guy behind the Great Flugel Tree, right?”
“What’s that? Some big tree somewhere?”
While Shaula was feeling depressed at having her feelings cast aside so easily, Meili cocked her head and asked an innocent question.
Subaru nodded. “Yeah, in the Liphas plains. There was a tree that reached all the way to the clouds, and it was called the Great Flugel Tree. Seeing it set my boyish heart aflutter.”
“Hehhh? Really, now. If it’s that amazing, I might want to see it one day, too.”
“Sorry, I cut it down.”
“That’s terrible!”
Subaru could only muster an awkward smile when he instantly crushed Meili’s fleeting dream.
—The Great Flugel Tree.
A little over a year ago, that towering tree became Subaru’s trump card during the battle with the White Whale. After pinning the great demon beast of mist beneath the fallen trunk, the Sword Devil cornered the beast he had spent fourteen long years searching for and dealt the final blow with his blade.
“It’s hard to believe I’d run into the Flugel who planted that tree in a place like this… Though now that you mention it, I did hear someone call him a sage before.”
“But he was a sage whose accomplishments are largely unknown… The fact that he’s considered a sage despite that is rather odd, I suppose,” Beatrice mused.
“Just going by his few supposed achievements, it is certainly true that they don’t seem to justify the lofty title of Sage. Perhaps he was simply quite skilled at trumpeting his achievements…like Barusu.”
“When have I ever exaggerated the stuff I did?!”
That rude assessment touched a nerve for Subaru, but Ram looked unperturbed by his reaction.
While that was going on, Anastasia was nodding to herself up at the front of their party. With Julius leading her by the hand, she turned her head back toward them to chime in.
“From the sound of it, Shaula and Flugel had their achievements mixed up by later generations… Or more likely, they were all pinned on her, right?”
“You mean Flugel made it seem like Shaula had done the things he did?”
Emilia’s eyes widened in shock at the mind-blowing hypothesis. Anastasia nodded and looked back at Shaula again.
“Or at least that’s what I was thinking. But do you think your master is the sort of person who would do that?”
“Mmm, to be honest, I didn’t really get what Master was thinking a lot of the time. But he didn’t really like standing out too much. So him pinning any annoying rumors on me to avoid dealing with them definitely sounds like something he would do.”
It wasn’t exactly the most confidence-inspiring response, but by and large, Shaula seemed to be supporting Anastasia’s theory. At the same time, something was bothering Subaru.
“If he was that determined to hide, then how did his name get passed down through the ages as some great sage?”
“Um, according to a book I read…the reason Flugel’s name became known is because the words ‘Flugel was here’ were found carved into the top of the Great Flugel Tree.”
“He what?! Was he some kid on a field trip?!” Subaru couldn’t believe his ears. How could that be considered staying on the down-low? “To be totally fair, I considered doing the same thing, but Rem stopped me… For Flugel to actually do it, he must’ve been one hell of an idiot.”
“His name took on a life of its own, and because of it, Sage Flugel became known through the ages as a great but mysterious figure. And now, after all these years, to hear from the mouth of a different Sage that the man lived up to the legends… It truly makes you think. How thrilling it is to be in the position to fill a gap in history.”
“Don’t go turning into a history nerd, man…”
Julius seemed excited to be learning a bit of hidden history from four hundred years ago.
He has strong opinions about magic, too, or at least a tendency to get into long, rambling explanations. Maybe he just has a hidden nerdy side?
“They do say that philosophers have many loves, so maybe this nerdy dude is the same…”
“Sorry to interrupt your thoughts, but watch your feet. We’re nearing the top.”
“Oh?”
Looking up, Subaru saw the end of the spiral staircase just in front of him.
Julius and Anastasia had reached the landing a few steps ahead, soon followed by Ram and the rest of the party. They were greeted by an open space that was noticeably different from the bottom floor.
And the first thing that caught Subaru’s eye was—
“Whoa, that’s a crazy huge door…”
The door was well over ten yards tall and ten yards wide. It was made of a strange material that appeared to be stone. Is it the same material as the wall?
“This is the official entrance to the tower. It’s pointlessly large, but it actually opened and closed when we entered.”
“I see. So you’ve already gone in then? …Wait, what?”
Hearing that they had used the entrance to the tower already, Subaru swung his head around. In the crazy big space around them, there was nothing other than the spiral stairs they had climbed connecting them to the floor they had come from.
“Then how did Joseph and the carriage get all the way down there? There’s no way the carriage could take stairs that narrow…”
“Ah, Shaula carried the carriage and the land dragon. She just lifted them over her head.”
“…Pardon?”
Thinking he had misheard something, Subaru looked at Emilia, who was adorably miming what she was describing without batting an eye. And no one was correcting her.
Seeing Subaru’s reaction, Shaula puffed her chest out, her nostrils flaring slightly.
“Like she said, I carried them. No sweat.”
“The shock is winning out over the gratitude. That sounds like something even Reinhard couldn’t do.”
In Subaru’s head, Reinhard was indisputably the person most likely to do something absurd or crazy, but even he wouldn’t lift a whole carriage over his head. He could split the world in half with the force of his sword, or walk on water, or even come back to life once, but that sort of brute strength was—
“Actually, could he? I’m not so sure anymore. Is he human?”
His cluttered thoughts about his friend aside, Subaru had finally figured out how the carriage had gotten down to the bottom. In which case, were the giant doors in front of him also operated manually using Shaula’s insane strength?
“All I can say is they didn’t move at all when I pushed on them. That’s why we couldn’t do much to look for Lady Anastasia or the rest of you once we found ourselves in here after we got separated.”
“Gotcha. So they are as heavy as they look. I gotta admit, the ancient-ruins feeling of it all does get me going, but…”
Subaru didn’t hate these sorts of buildings that felt like something straight out of a fantasy novel. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really in a situation where he could afford to stop and take his sweet time admiring every little thing.
Looking at the doors, he thought he could feel a faint sandy texture on his tongue. Probably because this floor connected to the outside. Upon closer examination, he could see yellow sand scattered all around the floor.
Anastasia said, “The sandstorm is strong, but be careful about the sand that filters inside. Breathe in too much without realizing it and your body probably won’t be very happy.”
“The dunes here are filled with miasma. It would be unwise to underestimate it simply because the concentration is low,” Julius also cautioned.
“Yeah. Agreed. But…”
Subaru nodded at their warnings as he peered up at the ceiling.
They had reached this floor after a very long climb up the spiral stairs, but the Pleiades Watchtower’s high, high walls still continued upward. At the very least, the next floor was also connected by a spiral staircase.
“Seeing stairs again is seriously demoralizing… But it also finally feels real.”
“Feels real?” Emilia asked, standing beside him.
“Yeah, this is definitely the Pleiades Watchtower that we were searching for.”
The rest of his comrades all nodded at his quiet statement.
It wasn’t as if they had achieved their goals yet. They still had not found a way to save all the people waiting for them to return. But all the same, they had cleared the first hurdle.
They had reached the Pleiades Watchtower at the edge of the Auguria Dunes, an impenetrable land.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, I have to correct you there, Master.”
While Subaru was busy basking in the moment, Shaula wagged her finger in disagreement. Looking back at her, she had a wicked, smug smile on her face.
“That level of understanding only gets you ninety-nine points.”
“Isn’t that basically perfect?!”
“The core concept is lacking, though! And the score only goes that high after factoring in a whole lot of bonus points for how much I love, love, looove you!”
Putting a hand to her forehead, Shaula seemed to be reflecting on how lenient her grading apparently was. Then, still carrying Meili on her back, she ran out in front of the party and spun around with flair, spreading her arms with the giant door at her back.
“The Pleiades Watchtower is just a temporary name for a temporary role. With Master back now, it can fulfill its original purpose.”
“Original…?”
“Thaaat’s right. This is a great library where anything you might want to know and anything you might want to discover can be found.”
Subaru’s face shuddered when he heard that.
Because that was exactly what they—what Subaru—wanted so badly. A method of omniscience to grant salvation to the ignorant; that was what they had come in search of.
And the name of that deliverance he sought was—
“—The Great Pleiades Library very, very, very happily welcomes your return, Master!”
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