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“Where is the path up to the next floor, anyway?”
“We don’t have any clues for that yet…”
Emilia cocked her head while Subaru twisted his in the opposite direction.
After being completely and utterly outplayed by a little girl, Subaru was enduring the bitter taste left in his mouth as he and Emilia were forced to consider a change in plans.
The new priority was to best whatever challenge stood in their way and ascend to the second floor of the Pleiades Watchtower rather than attempting to use the countless books of the dead that filled Taygeta.
“It feels like this archive is too much for us to handle right now…”
“Mm-hmm… Even if we manage to find a name we know, the chances they know what we want to learn… It seems really low.”
Emilia’s eyes sagged regretfully, but she was right. Unfortunately, it was hard to claim that the books of the dead were well suited for finding the knowledge they needed. Searching for the memories of a dead person whose name and face they could put together would require an enormous amount of time and the sort of luck needed to win the lottery. They couldn’t afford to count on having either of those. Time went without saying, but counting on luck was basically suicidal as far as Subaru was concerned.
“Most likely, the information we want should be on another floor.”
“But can we even go up? I tried hopping up on one of the shelves, and it was no good.”
“That was bold of you…”
When they decided to look for the stairs to go up, Emilia had immediately jumped on top of a bookshelf to check if there was a hidden staircase somewhere. Unfortunately, she failed to find a hidden passage, so her decisive leap into action had not borne fruit.
Incidentally, when she leaped up onto the shelf, her short skirt’s hem had swayed rather dramatically, causing a brief scene that made Subaru quite flustered.
“Ah, it’s okay. Puck taught me a lot about making sure my skirt didn’t flip up. A ‘graceful comportment befitting a proper girl.’ I’m always careful about that.”
“I’m not sure whether I want to compliment Puck or be mad at him… Either way…”
Setting aside that shocking revelation, Emilia’s failed attempt was enough to say that they couldn’t forcibly break through to the next floor. Because of that, their search for a way to Electra was in dire straits. It was almost like a follow-up question to the previous examination.
Getting too elaborate would make challengers just quit, but Flugel probably had that in mind while setting it up. Talk about unpleasant.
“I’d love to see the look on his parents’ faces when they realize they raised a monster… Though fat chance of that when I haven’t even seen what the man himself looks like.”
“…Subaru, a moment if I might?”
Julius called out to him.
He and Anastasia had challenged the room full of books from a different angle, so Subaru hoped that maybe they had discovered something, but…
“How is it? Find anything?”
“Unfortunately, I cannot claim any results worthy of the name. Despite my best efforts, I could not discern any sort of organization system that governs how the books are arranged. They do not appear to be sorted by name or chronologically.”
“It was already fairly clear they’re not organized by name, but no luck with time, either, huh…?”
Figuring out how the books of the dead were arranged was their one hope for deciphering how to use the Taygeta archive. If there was an easier way to search for specific books, it might have been quite useful.
The topic of how books were added had come up in that conversation with Meili, but if they weren’t arranged in any discernible chronological order, then it wasn’t very relevant.
“All we know so far is that we don’t know anything. We were wonderin’ what you two found.”
“Mmmm, sorry. We didn’t find anything on top of the shelves, either…”
“Ah, so that’s why you climbed up before. I was wonderin’ what that was about…”
Anastasia flashed a slight, wry smile.
“May I?” Julius raised a finger as he looked at Emilia. “I suspect it is the same conclusion you reached, but this Taygeta archive is too much for us. We do not have nearly enough time to study everything in such an enormous archive.”
“Mm-hmm, we were thinking the same thing. That’s why we were looking for the stairs to the next examination.”
“That is a worthwhile search. However, at the same time, I would like to find some sort of way to make use of this.”
“…Did you have something in mind then?”
“Yes, of course. As a proposal, we could raise an army.”
Touching on their extreme lack of people for the task, Julius answered with the straightest of faces.
“An army…?”
Emilia’s eyes widened in open confusion, but Subaru snapped his fingers.
“Ahhh, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s totally an option now that the barrier keeping people from coming to the tower has disappeared. And assuming they can clear the demon beast–infested desert…”
“…Then they can reach the tower. Even so, it is quite the adventure. However, with the option of throwing people at the problem now available, there is more than enough value in reporting what we have discovered to the kingdom.”
“The research value is definitely huge… They might be able to fill in a lot of the moth-eaten gaps in the histories you love so much.”
“That is merely a delightful secondary benefit.”
Julius quickly fired back at Subaru’s joke, but then he shook his head.
“No, I would be lying if I said I did not have some hope of that possibility. Apologies, my suggestion had selfish motives.”
“You don’t need to get bent out of shape over it. There’s nothing wrong about selfish motivations. If that’s how you’re taking this, what about someone who moves one hundred percent on ulterior motives like me? What am I supposed to do?”
By and large, Subaru expected some sort of return on his actions, and he did not expect he could abandon selfish motives and act out of duty alone. Subaru’s guiding philosophy was always to focus on himself.
“It isn’t worth that much effort to avoid. Besides, at least as far as I can remember, Anastasia’s reason for wanting to claim the throne was purely selfish, too. Right?”
“Mm-hmm. You aren’t wrong. It’s to satisfy something I want personally. And as a result, the people around me also benefit. That’s all it is.”
Anastasia smiled, seemingly unbothered by Subaru’s rude—or at least blunt—point. She touched her scarf and kneaded the white fur.
“But Julius being like that and me how I am makes for an interesting pairing. At least that’s what I think, but what do you think?”
“Personally speaking, it’s convenient that our rivals aren’t in perfect alignment, so the longer you guys have ideological differences, the better— Oww! That hurt, Emilia!”
“Don’t say things like that. I don’t know that much about either of you, so I don’t want to step out of line. But in whatever way my opponents might be praiseworthy, I’m going to do my best in my own way, working hard with my knight and everyone else.”
Grabbing Subaru’s sleeve when she said “my knight,” Emilia held her head high. Subaru’s heart warmed as he watched her from the side, and he exhaled slowly through his nose.
“I might be a tenderfoot, but I won’t lose.”
“There’s a word you don’t hear too often anymore.”
“…From time to time, you two seriously scare me. I can’t tell what parts are serious and what parts aren’t.”
“Me aside, Emilia is pretty much always completely serious and earnest. That’s what makes her charming, right?”
Julius grimaced at Subaru’s wink, and with that, their derailed conversation reached its final stop. It was up to Anastasia to clap her hands and get things back on track.
“All right, all right. So then, getting back to the previous topic… Given that we don’t have enough people, we were talking about whether we should bring in help from outside, right?”
“Yes, my Lady, that is correct. At this point, it should be possible to dispatch a dedicated team of investigators to this tower. They might be able to find not only the path to the next floor, but also something helpful in this archive—”
“Mmm, that makes sense. It does, but I’m preeetty scared of it.”
“Scared, my Lady?”
Anastasia slowly shook her head, interrupting Julius’s heated explanation. Seeing her knight furrow his brow, she raised her finger.
“It’s like this. I’d definitely welcome more hands to help here. It’s tough looking around this whole floor. Especially with how short I am and all, just siftin’ through the shelves is a real pain.” Anastasia tapped the back of her neck. “But the cornerstone of trade is putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Well, it’s not limited to trade, more like a rule of thumb that’s useful in all sorts of situations. Anyway, try thinking things through with that in mind.”
“Think about it from the other side’s perspective? But who is the other side?”
“The person who made this tower, set up the examination, and placed Shaula here…that person. Think from his perspective. You can see it once you do, right?”
“What, a horrifically twisted personality?”
“Like we can’t even imagine, probably.”
Anastasia nodded in agreement with Subaru’s answer.
Emilia and Julius had troubled expressions as they heard that answer because they were earnest and good-natured. Subaru and Anastasia were both on the more twisted side of the spectrum, which was why they were naturally in sync on this.
Anastasia’s right. If a twisted jerk wanted to make it even harder to clear the tower, then…
“Shaula! There’s something I want to ask you. Come here a sec.”
“Master? Hold on! I’ll be right there!”
Without anything else to do, Shaula had been playing with Meili near the stairs leading down, but she leaped up when Subaru called her. She literally flew through the air and slid across the floor, landing in a formal sitting position right in front of Subaru.
“What is it? What is it? Is there something you want me to do, Master?”
“I feel guilty when you look at me so excitedly… Anyway, you know where the stairs to the second floor—”
“No clue! I’ve never been higher than the fourth floor before!”
“In four hundred years? That’s reeeally surprising…”
If what Shaula says is to be believed, she has spent four hundred years in the tower. If she really did just stay focused on watching the dunes outside that whole time, her level of devotion is way too admirable. Enough that it would be hard to deal with being treated as a master by her.
“Shaula, mind if I ask something, too?”
Anastasia, who was in the process of laying out her own theory, interjected.
“You’re what? The Great Pleiades Library’s guardian, right?”
“Like I said.”
“I see. In that case, my guess is…four. No, maybe five?”
“Hmm?”
“The secret rules you were told in order to protect this tower. There are five, right?”
“—Ugh?!”
Anastasia wore an elegant, restrained smile when she saw how Shaula was shaken.
The way her wide eyes and shoulders twitched said everything, proving that Anastasia’s suspicion was correct. But Subaru and the rest didn’t understand what Anastasia was driving at.
“Rules? And secret? What are you talking about?”
“Y-you’ve got it wrong, Master! Also, it’s not like I’m hiding things—I just didn’t say anything because you didn’t ask. I want to make sure the record shows that!”
“Just spill it already.”
Shaula frantically tried to cover her ass after her secret was revealed, but Subaru didn’t give her anywhere to run. Realizing that she wouldn’t be able to wiggle her way out of this, Shaula remorsefully touched the fingers of both hands together.
“Hypothetically speaking, if you all tried to secretly leave the tower behind my back, I would have to mercilessly kill all of you.”
“Where’d that come from?!”
“It’s got nothing to do with wanting to do it or not! It’s just a hypothetical! If anything, it’s something that I can’t disobey.”
Subaru’s eyes widened at the sudden declaration of hostility, and Shaula shrank down on herself and shook her head. Sitting on the ground and grabbing her legs, she trapped her voluptuous breasts behind her knees.
“There’s no way I can kill Master. I’m the one who would end up getting killed, and that’s the end for me. It’s a massive pain in the ass…”
“If you don’t want to do it that badly, then just refuse… Don’t tell me it’s because of a contract?”
Subaru was getting a bad feeling as he asked that.
For anyone thinking more seriously about Shaula’s identity, it was a natural thought. A guardian watching the shrine where the Witch was sealed in the Sage’s stead—a being who had filled that role for several hundred years. Both in lifespan and mindset, that wasn’t a human sort of feat.
“Are you a spirit like Beako?”
Beatrice had been bound to the archive of forbidden books by a nonexistent promise for four hundred years.
She might even be exactly the same as Beatrice—
“Of course not. Don’t lump me in with those fluffy lightweights. Absolutely not… Also, why’d everyone’s eyes get a lot scarier all of a sudden?!”
“Because about eighty percent of the people here have a connection with spirits!”
Including the one novice, three of their party were spirit mages. Another was a little girl who was a spirit, and another was a person whose body had been taken over by what was provisionally believed to be a spirit. The only people unrelated to spirits were the Oni girls waiting downstairs and Meili, who was watching in amusement as Shaula wilted under their collective gazes.
“Fine then, what exactly are you? If you aren’t a spirit, you don’t have to be that desperate to keep to your contract.”
“What are you saying, Subaru? Whether or not someone is a spirit or a spirit mage, promises must be kept. That’s super important. Repeat after me.”
“No, I admit I didn’t exactly put that the best way, but it was a figure of speech—”
“Promises are important. Three times.”
“Promises are important. Promises are important. Promises are important.”
Catching a rebuke from Emilia from an unexpected angle, Subaru earned his forgiveness by reciting the line three times.
Setting aside their silly back-and-forth, Subaru struggled to accept Shaula’s stubborn stance. It didn’t make sense that she was holding back purely out of a reverent sense of duty.
“Now look, Emilia is mad at me. This is your fault! Damn it! Now get to talking already!”
“Wow, how didja figure that, Sherlock? But that’s just like you, Master! I’ll talk!”
Still on her knees, Shaula raised her hands as Subaru vented at her.
“Unworthy though I might be, please allow this one to simply and briefly expound upon what she was told. First, any who challenge the Great Pleiades Library may never leave.”
“Well, there’s not much to be done after that.”
“It’s okay! There is a way out! Hooowever, it doesn’t open until people have solved the examinations in their entirety and reached the first floor, Maia. After that, you’re all good.”
Shaula gave a hearty thumbs-up at that.
“Incidentally, if anyone runs afoul of this condition, I’ll transform into a cold-hearted killing machine. My promise with you would be voided. I would kill whoever broke the rule.”
“It takes precedence over your promise to me? I’m hurt.”
“Ohh, hurting Master is a big success. I’ve leveled up to a new stage of evolution! The culmination of four hundred years!”
“I was being sarcastic!”
“Me too!”
After an exchange of sharp jabs, Shaula held up a second finger and wagged it rhythmically.
“Well, I’m bored of this, so I’m just gonna slam ’em out now. One, it’s forbidden to leave before the examinations have been completed. Two, it is forbidden to break the rules of the examinations. Three, it is forbidden to show disrespect to the library. Four, it is forbidden to attempt to destroy the tower itself. Five… Ah. Five… Ahh, there isn’t a five.”
“So there are four rules… But…”
Emilia accepted Shaula’s explanations and turned to Subaru, who was furrowing his brow. He shared her unease and concern.
The rules that Shaula had listed, assuming that it was even possible to make it to the end without breaking them…
“…The one about it being forbidden to break the rules of the examinations bothers me.”
“That would mean there are hidden rules that we do not know about.”
Julius seemed to be of the same opinion as Subaru, who put his hand to his chin in thought.
At the very least, when they were in the white space with the asterism made of monoliths during the Taygeta examination, there hadn’t been any rules announced to them.
At most you could say that touching the wrong monolith was counted as a failure, but…
“…In the trials in the tomb, when you failed, it was impossible to attempt it again until the next day. It sort of resembles the retrying of the examination just now. Maybe…”
Emilia hesitated to continue, so Subaru nodded.
“If you’ve thought of something, just come out and say it. We won’t make fun of you, no matter what.”
“Okay, I understand. You and Anastasia both said it, but the person who made this tower is reeeally mean…right?”
“Your choice of words is adorable, but yes. So?”
“It’s important to consider things from other people’s perspectives. So I tried thinking like someone who is reeeally mean and, based on what Shaula just said, something occurred to me…” As everyone’s eyes focused on her, Emilia licked her lips. Then she put her hands together and pointed her fingers toward the ceiling. “…We don’t know the rules that we have to follow… That’s reeeally not nice, right?”
“…Meaning…”
“That means we have to advance while imagining what the rules might be and being careful not to break them. Like if it was Echidna, what would she do?”
“…So she’s who you think of when you think of a nasty person, too, Emilia? We really are on the same wavelength.”
The supplementary rewording gave it a lot more credibility to Subaru.
The concept of a sadistic personality was foreign to Emilia, but it rang true to Subaru. Setting up rules that could not be broken and then not telling the challenger about them.
“Nasty tastes and a nasty personality… Incidentally, are you the one who judges what breaks the rules?”
“Apparently, I’ll just know if any of those rules I just said are broken. So there is no hiding it. You can’t, and neither can I.”
The last part was softer, but there was an unyielding force behind it.
Not because of how strong Shaula was. If anything, it was the opposite.
—Because there was a greater power that could make someone as strong as Shaula say that.
“…It was already dangerous enough. Just means another layer of danger. No biggie.”
“Occasionally, I’m a little jealous of how easily you can say something like that.” Julius’s expression softened, and he shrugged at Subaru’s murmur. “I suppose it is a mentality that must have been nurtured by always having to face off against opponents of much higher caliber. In which case, that is a gap in experience that will be difficult for me to fill.”
“You should be more scared of what waits below you. You’re going to hit your pinky toe on the corner of a desk before long. See how it feels then.”
“All right already. It’s nice you two can get along with your little squabble, but don’t go forgetting the main topic now.”
Interrupting the two of them, Anastasia put her hand on her hip as she looked down at Shaula.
“Is that really the end? Everything else is okay?”
“I swear it. It’s not a lie this time. Also, as long as you don’t break those rules, I stay in control of my body. Ah, wrong, I mean it’s Master’s.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Rejected! But my heart will always be at your side!”
“I don’t want that, either.”
Shaula expressed her position clearly, though with some pointless extra information, too. There were problematic additions here and there, but at a basic level, it seemed like she would keep the promise she had made Subaru downstairs that she would not cause them any harm.
Of course, that was only true as long as they did not break any of the rules.
“Still, though, not being able to leave until the examinations are done… This is getting more and more like the trials in the tomb.”
“No, in the worst case, if we just beat her when she turns against us, we can leave, right? That’s an improvement.”
“You would never do that, Master! You’re kinder and more openhearted than anyone! Uh-oh, I broke out in hives from telling that lie!”
As Emilia and Subaru sighed, Shaula was suffering some just deserts for her lie.
Still, she probably told the truth, more or less. We’ve gotten enough out of her for now.
“All right, have at her, Meili! Keep a tight grip on her reins for us.”
“Leave it to me… Though isn’t that kind of a strange way to put it?”
Meili, who had been roped into the job of dealing with Shaula by Subaru, puffed her cheeks out in a pout. But she obediently climbed onto Shaula’s back, so it was just for show.
Even so, it was a bit rich coming from Subaru, but…
“You look surprisingly comfortable settled in there. Have you taken that much of a liking to her?”
“It’s sort of like our wavelengths match? It’s kind of relaxing being next to the half naked lady.”
As she said that, Meili put all her body weight against Shaula’s head. It would hurt Subaru’s neck if she did that to him, but for someone who possessed the monstrous strength needed to carry the carriage, it was probably nothing.
And Shaula easily stood up even with Meili on top of her.
“I don’t really mind. I can take care of kiddo number two at least.”
“Number two?”
“This one’s number two, that one’s number one.”
Shaula pointed over to Beatrice to clarify.
Beatrice was wandering around the stacks by herself. She must have been incredibly focused not to have heard or reacted to Shaula’s rude nickname.
“It’s rare for Beako to let something like that slip by her.”
Subaru walked over to her as she looked deep in thought. Standing beside her where she had stopped, he looked at her face.
“Beako, we’re all talking right now, so you come, too.”
“ ”
“Beako? Hey, Beatrice. Snap out of it. I’ll kiss your forehead.”
“…Do what you want…”
“Muah.”
“Ngha?!”
It was annoying him a bit, so he decided to make good on that threat. Partway through, Beatrice snapped out it and leaped backward when she felt his lips pressed against her forehead. And then she rolled. Stood up. And fell over again.
“That’s a little over the top.”
“Wh-wh-wh-what was that all of a sudden?! It was so illogical!”
“There was a logic to it, and I even got your permission. Are you really okay?”
Subaru was a little bit hurt seeing her desperately rubbing her forehead, but he was also worried about her.
Thinking about it, they were in a tower in the middle of a desert with a mysterious past. There was a miasma that he did not really understand filling the air, too, so that might have been the cause.
“If you’re not feeling great, just hold my hand. It’ll help calm you down.”
“That’s impossible given what just happened! Give Betty some time to calm down!”
Beatrice’s face was red as she shouted. It was a shock to have her reject even holding his hand, but at least she was back to normal. It bothered him a bit, but he decided to save it for later.
“Now then, the next problem is…”
“Is whether we have no choice but to search randomly for the stairs to the second floor.”
As Subaru faced the shelves, Julius finished his thought.
His expression was a little bit pained. He had been the one who had thought to report their findings back to the kingdom and gather more people to help tackle the tower, but the rules Shaula mentioned completely closed off that route.
They had to complete the examinations in order to be allowed to leave. Because of that, they had no choice but to work with the people they had there.
“If I said it feels like looking for a single grain of sand in a desert, would that translate for you?”
“It’s an unusually poetic expression for you, but one I can wholeheartedly agree with.”
Subaru and Julius were for once on the same page as they faced the difficult task ahead of them.
For the moment, they settled on looking for the stairs up to the second floor again. But just as Subaru decided to forget about the Taygeta archive…
“Hey, I was just thinking.”
As the two steeled themselves to challenge a new stage, Emilia raised her hand a bit. When they turned around, she cocked her head and put her finger to her lips.
“If someone who wasn’t honest made a tower…”
“Your word choice is adorable again, but please explain.”
Almost like a rerun from last time, but this time, Emilia elaborated.
“The location of the staircase…what if—?”
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