3
With lunch on the ninety-fifth floor concluded, Ronie returned to her private room on the twenty-second floor. As her best friend tried to slip through the shared space into her own room, she called out to her.
“Oh, Tiese, I was going to ask you how you made that sheaf of papers you carry around with—”
“Notebook.”
“What?”
“I’m going to call it a notebook in the sacred tongue. It’s shorter that way. And I think it suits it better,” Tiese proclaimed, pulling out her notebook to show it off. Ronie gave her a searching look.
“…What, Ronie? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, no reason. It’s fine…It’s just that if you keep using every new sacred word you’ve just learned, Sir Deusolbert is eventually going to grumble about you and say something like ‘Young people these days…’”
“Well, then I can teach him what they mean.”
“That’s not my point…Anyway! Can you show me how you made it?” Ronie insisted. She didn’t want her friend to pull too far ahead of her and leave her behind.
Tiese smirked and clutched her booklet to her chest. “Of course I can, but I’ll warn you, it was pretty difficult to bind such thick hemp paper together like this…”
“…Fine. I’ll give you one raspberry tart from Honis’s Bakery.”
“Deal,” Tiese said solemnly, pulling out a sheet of folded paper from her other pocket. Based on the flimsiness and color, this was normal paper, not white hemp, but nevertheless, it was crammed with tiny writing.
“There. Kind, considerate Tiese has already written down the instructions to create a notebook for poor, helpless Ronie. The most important part is using thread that is fine but tough.”
“…Th-thanks…”
Ronie took the paper, surprised. Tiese must have created this little sheet—called a memo in the sacred tongue, if she recalled correctly—for her sake a while ago.
“Thank you, Tiese,” she repeated, firmly this time, taking her friend’s hand in both of hers. Now it was Tiese’s turn to blink a few times in surprise. She laughed awkwardly.
Now that Ronie knew how it was made, she wanted to rush right down to the paper-processing room on the twelfth floor to get a scrap of the new stock, but sadly, that would have to wait. She changed into her knight’s uniform to go out, put her gray cloak around her shoulders, and joined her friend in heading downstairs.
They left the main doors on the ground level, the gentle afternoon sun warming their skin. The February breeze was cold, but you could sense that it was getting balmier with each successive day.
After crossing the neatly laid white tiles of the entry plaza, they walked over the grassy lawn in a southwest direction. Normally, they’d go to their juvenile dragons, Tsukigake and Shimosaki, at the stables and spend time with them until the evening, but that would have to wait today. They had a very important duty to perform first.
The girls rushed on until the spacious lawn turned into a fruit garden lined with trees. Of course, nearly all the trees were bare in this season, but there was such a variety here that even winter fruit like black apples and ice figs were available. A sweet scent wafted through the area.
Despite just having eaten a very filling lunch, they had to resist the urge to pluck just one of the rare figs, light blue and translucent, on their way through the trees, until at last a huge wall came into view before them. It was the marble wall that separated the Central Cathedral grounds from the rest of the world.
Near the corner where the south wall and western wall met, Kirito and Asuna were already waiting for them. They wore plain brown cloaks and waved their hands when they saw the girls approaching. Ronie and Tiese rushed the last few dozen mels and came to a screeching halt with their heads bowed.
“We’re sorry we kept you waiting.”
“It’s fine; we just got here ourselves,” Asuna reassured.
Kirito smirked and added, “We jumped down out of the cathedral and saw you below us.”
Apparently, while they’d been running, Kirito used his ability to fly with Incarnation to zip past them through the air. If I can’t do it with Incarnation, I want to at least learn how to fly with wind elements, Ronie swore to herself.
“So, um…why did you choose this as our meeting place?” she asked, looking around.
Their destination was in the middle of South Centoria, which would require them to pass through the gate that was in the middle of the cathedral’s southern wall. But this was the corner where the two marble walls met, with no form of passage anywhere to be seen.
Maybe we’re going to use some hidden doorway I wasn’t aware of? she wondered.
But Kirito just shrugged. “Opening and closing the main gate causes a scene…There will be a bunch of visitors in the square just beyond the gate at this hour, so there’s no way to get past without drawing attention to ourselves.”
“Then why don’t we fly like the other time?” asked Tiese hopefully. Four days ago, when word of the murder in South Centoria had first arrived, Kirito had picked up Ronie under his arm and flown through the air from the terrace at the top of the cathedral, using wind elements to reach their destination. The trip took less than a minute, and flying unsupported through the open air was a thrilling experience. You couldn’t blame Tiese for being excited.
But Kirito just grimaced and shook his head. “Actually, that draws plenty of attention, too,” he said, then quickly added, “but I was thinking we might test out a secret shortcut today.”
“S-secret shortcut?” Tiese repeated, too surprised to feel disappointed by his answer. The swordsman delegate gave her an impish smile and provided no explanation.
Instead, he raised his arms and said, “Okay, let’s all hold hands in a circle.”
“…?”
Bemused, Ronie extended her left hand to hold Kirito’s and her right hand toward Tiese. Opposite her, Asuna did the same, looking a bit resigned. The four of them were now forming a circle.
Then a series of green lights blinked in succession in the center of the circle, and a strong gust of wind flattened the grass at their feet. Ronie squeezed with both of her hands instinctively as the wind pressure pushed her into the air from below.
“Whoa! Whoaaaaaaa!” Tiese shouted, kicking her feet. But she did not return to the ground; they continued to rise at a speed of about one mel per second.
Even Ronie, who was a bit more familiar with Kirito’s nature than her friend, held her breath at this unfamiliar experience, but she had enough presence of mind to watch what was happening. The wind elements burst beneath them again and again, creating powerful gusts of wind, yet the branches of the trees around them merely swayed as if in a gentle breeze. Further examination told her there was a very faint rainbow sheen surrounding their circle. That was the light of Incarnation—most likely, Kirito was using his knight’s skill of Incarnate Arms to form a cylindrical, transparent wall around them that blocked the wind, forcing the unleashed wind elements into a strong upward current that was lifting them vertically. It operated on the same principles as the elevating disc inside the cathedral.
Despite her initial panic, in less than ten seconds, Tiese had regained her poise, and she swung her head around to look at the sights. “Ha-ha! This is amazing, Ronie! We’re flying!” she marveled.
“Be careful, Tiese; don’t let go of our hands!” Ronie scolded, strengthening her grip. The four of them were picking up speed now. The ground was far below, but the white wall that blocked their side view showed no signs of ending. She looked up with trepidation and saw that the crisp line that marked the boundary between wall and pale winter sky was still far away.
What if Kirito’s concentration lapses, or the spatial sacred power dries up? she wondered, then forced those thoughts out of her mind and focused on the space above them. Their ascent continued for twenty more seconds, tilting a bit diagonally at the end, until they were on top of the wall at last.
Suddenly, the wind pressure vanished, and they promptly dropped about two mels to land. That wasn’t a very tall height when Ronie and Tiese did their pillar-balancing training, but their legs weren’t ready for the sudden ground, and they nearly fell onto their bottoms.
With Kirito’s support, Ronie managed to straighten and see what lay just ahead of them.
She couldn’t help but gasp “Ohhh…”
In terms of height, they had only ascended about ten floors of the cathedral—maybe fifty mels at most. But from the cathedral itself, the city was hazy and distant, and now it was all laid out before her, close enough to touch. And not just that—they were standing at the intersection point of the southern and western walls, and at that same height, the wall continued into infinity in the southwest direction.
“…We’re atop the Everlasting Walls…,” Tiese murmured with wonder. Kirito nodded.
The Everlasting Walls: the white-marble wonders that split Centoria into cardinal quadrants—and all of the territory that extended beyond the city as well. The walls were not built by stonemasons stacking blocks but through the divine work of Administrator, supposedly in a single night.
From the external corners of Central Cathedral, the walls continued all the way to the distant End Mountains, which surrounded the lands of humankind, a distance of 750 kilors. Like their name suggested, they were essentially indestructible and impervious to everything. The Taboo Index forbade climbing them or harming them, so no one would have attempted to cause damage, but Ronie was certainly violating the other taboo.
While she might have been freed from the Taboo Index when she became an apprentice Integrity Knight, that didn’t erase the years of fear and reverence for those rules. Ronie found herself standing on her tiptoes to lessen the trespass she was committing. She looked down at her feet.
The marble was stacked and arranged without so much as a milice of space between any block, and despite hundreds of years of exposure to wind and rain, it shone as smooth as if it had just been polished. The nearby corner of the wall was as sharp as a blade’s edge, defying any who would be rebellious enough to attempt to scale it.
Just then, she heard the light fluttering of wings. Overhead, two pale-blue birds descended upon the top of the wall. They hopped back and forth atop the marble, staring at Ronie with beady black eyes.
“…Hee-hee. I guess the Taboo Index doesn’t have any effect on birds,” Asuna remarked. The tension went out of Ronie’s neck and shoulders; she looked at her best friend, and the two of them laughed.
She looked at the city below again and said, “Oh, I see…You want to move atop the wall until we reach the inn in the fourth district of South Centoria, right?”
Kirito turned to her and grinned. “Correct. They can’t see us walking up here from below, so once we find a good place to jump down, it’ll be surprisingly easy to avoid notice from the citizens, you’ll find.”
“From the way you say that, I take it you’ve done it before?” Asuna noted promptly, causing Kirito’s eyes to bulge briefly. He cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Er, w-well, you know, confirming your escape route is the bedrock of strategy, so…Anyway, let’s hurry,” he said, rushing away. Asuna shook her head in exasperation, but she and the girls followed nonetheless.
The Everlasting Walls, which split the human realm into four pieces, each had their own unofficial names.
The northeast Spring Wall separated Norlangarth and Eastavarieth. The southeast Summer Wall separated Eastavarieth and Sothercrois. The southwest Autumn Wall separated Sothercrois and Wesdarath. And the northwest Winter Wall separated Wesdarath and Norlangarth.
Not even Fanatio and Deusolbert, the oldest of the Integrity Knights, knew how the four walls wound up with this unified naming scheme. Until the Human Unification Council started up, the Everlasting Walls were absolutely inviolable national boundaries, and the citizens of the four regions of Centoria were basically prevented from mingling. The only ones who could traverse the single gate in each wall were traders or wealthy tourists who had passes that authorized such travel.
The regulations about using the gates had been greatly relaxed, but it still wasn’t completely free. That was because the aftershocks of the Rebellion of the Four Empires had not entirely settled yet. Somewhere in the realm, the remainders of the Imperial Knights who fought back against the Axiom Church still lurked, possibly following orders from the emperors. Yazen’s murder and Leazetta’s kidnapping might have even been their work.
Ronie considered these things as she walked atop the Autumn Wall. The wall was four mels wide, so as long as she didn’t get too close to the edge, there was no worry about slipping, and no one could see them from the ground. Soon the cold winds blew her concerns away, leaving her mind empty of all thoughts except taking in the sight of the city around her.
On the left side of the wall was South Centoria, with its buildings made of reddish sandstone, and on the right was West Centoria, where the homes were constructed of blackish slate. Separated by a single wall, the cities were wildly different not just in color but in decoration and design. In South Centoria, the red rock was cut in clean squares that stacked up with plenty of space, creating an air of openness, while in West Centoria, the delicate sheets of slate were reinforced and rearranged, with precisely fitted roofs covered in tiles like dragon scales, with all the care and complexity of fine art.
According to Kirito, the four Centorias didn’t just look different, their food was completely distinct from one another as well. Ronie and Tiese could go anywhere throughout the four quadrants if they wanted, but they felt a bit self-conscious about doing so, and when they went into the city, it was always to their home of North Centoria.
Perhaps it wasn’t right for the Integrity Knights sworn to protect the entire four empires to show such favoritism, Ronie was going to tell Tiese, when Kirito stopped them short.
“The fourth district is right around here…I wonder where that inn is…,” he muttered, looking over South Centoria. Ronie turned to her left to examine the reddish-brown town beneath her.
Inn, inn, inn, she thought, gazing at the city, until she realized she hadn’t actually visited the inn where the crime occurred. By the time the report had reached the cathedral four days ago, Oroi the mountain goblin was already held at the city guard’s office on suspicion of the murder, so Kirito had gone straight there.
“Um…Kirito, did you bring us here without actually knowing where the inn is?” Ronie asked quietly. He looked away and kind of sort of nodded.
“Erm, w-well, I suppose so. But you know, there’s going to be a sign that says INN, so I figured we could see it from above…”
“When you have an entire city’s worth of buildings down there, there’s no guarantee we’ll just conveniently spot the one sign we need!” Tiese snapped, quite reasonably. Kirito turned a different direction this time and mumbled that she was right. Asuna shook her head once again, then pulled out a folded piece of hemp paper from her cloak.
This one, of course, wasn’t holding baked goods inside. It unfolded to reveal a map. And this one was much more detailed than the kind sold in the city. It had details not just about each street, but even individual buildings.
“Whoa…where’d you get that?” Kirito wondered.
Asuna turned to him with a smug expression and said, “Soness happened to find a collection of maps while sorting through the library, and she copied it between study sessions. She said that the original map book wasn’t drawn by hand, but the previous scribe had created it through some mystery arts.”
“…Ah…the previous one…,” murmured Kirito, looking momentarily pained, but it passed quickly, and he leaned closer to examine Asuna’s map. “Let’s see. So this is the fourth district…and this is that street. Which would mean the inn is around here…”
He straightened and looked at the eastern side of the wall they stood upon. “Oh, it’s probably on the north end of that intersection there. Thanks, Asuna,” he said, expressing his gratitude with a word in the sacred tongue.
“You’re welcome,” the subdelegate replied in the common language instead. She folded the map and put it back into her cloak.
Now they knew their destination, but that didn’t solve all their problems. They had to descend a fifty-mel wall into the city without attracting the notice of any citizens. And if they used wind elements the way they did to get up in the first place, they would absolutely be spotted.
Ronie looked to Kirito, wondering what his plan was. The swordsman walked to the edge and peered over the side.
“Okay, nobody’s down there. I’ll go first. Once I give the signal, you guys jump down.”
“Jeeee?!” Tiese screeched mysteriously. Kirito just thrust out his fist with a thumbs-up, then leaped over the side of the wall. His brown cloak vanished in moments, leaving the three women with nothing but a dry breeze for company.
After several seconds, they hadn’t heard any huge crashes from below, so Ronie joined Asuna and Tiese at the edge of the wall, and they peered down. There on the street, an entire fifty mels below, stood Kirito, casually waving at them.
“Good grief…,” Asuna muttered. She held out her hands toward Ronie and Tiese.
“I swear I’m going to learn how to fly,” Tiese promised, a mirror of Ronie’s thoughts earlier, taking Asuna’s hand. Ronie gave up and grabbed the other one. It was stunningly fragile, her skin as smooth as the finest silk, and just a little bit warm. Asuna squeezed Ronie’s hand back, and the next second, with just as much boldness as Kirito had shown the first time, Asuna leaped off the marble wall.
The moment of floating weightlessness lasted only an instant, after which the three plummeted like rocks. The wind howled in their ears. Ronie wanted to scream, but she had to grit her teeth to fight the urge, lest someone hear them falling.
Even an apprentice Integrity Knight wasn’t going to survive a fifty-mel fall onto hard stone tiles. I’m trusting you, Kirito! she screamed inwardly.
Just at that moment, right near where they were going to land, Kirito lifted his hands to form a bowl shape. Suddenly, it felt like something invisible was softly enveloping her body. Her falling speed slowed, and the howling of the wind quieted down. Kirito had used Incarnate Arms to grab the three of them.
It was said that even the senior Integrity Knights could do no more than move a single dagger, but he had just slowed down three people in a free fall—a tremendous use of Incarnation that was surprising despite his many prior exhibitions. Kirito spread his hands open when they were just ten cens off the ground, and they plopped downward to the surface. All three of them exhaled deeply, and Ronie quickly turned against her former tutor.
“Um, Kirito, if you could do this all along, what was the point of using the wind elements on the way up…?”
“Well, catching something falling and something flying straight upward are completely different levels of difficulty to imagine. Just on my own, I have to transform my clothes into wings so I can fly with Incarnation…,” he said, shrugging.
“I want to jump down on my own next time!” Tiese cut in. “Please teach me how to use the wind elements like that!”
“Huh?! Th-that’s not as easy as it looks…B-but I guess it’s good to be ambitious. Anyway, let’s hurry and get to that inn,” Kirito said, without actually replying to her request. He started walking north, but Asuna grabbed him by the back of the collar.
“Wrong direction, Kirito.”
They turned left down the darkened alley in the shadow of the Everlasting Wall, and once they were on the wider street, there were suddenly more people around. It was February, so you’d figure that long cloaks wouldn’t be a rare sight outdoors, but the South Centorians were dressed surprisingly light. North Centoria wasn’t even a single kilor away, so the temperature couldn’t change that much, but for some reason, the sunlight shining on the sandstone city seemed warmer than it did at Central Cathedral.
Fortunately, no guards stopped them, so the four were able to cross the fourth district of South Centoria to arrive at the inn in question.
It was a very large three-story building, explaining how they were able to host so many visitors from the Dark Territory with an inexpensive nightly cost, as listed on a sign at the front entrance. Kirito pulled back the hood of his cloak, gave a brief glance to the red sandstone exterior of the inn, then opened the door without a second thought. A high-pitched bell rang.
“Welcome!” cried an energetic voice.
The owner of the voice, a woman who looked only a little older than Ronie, stood behind a long counter on the other side of the entrance lobby. Her reddish hair was tied up with a dark-green scarf, and she wore an apron of the same color.
As Kirito approached the counter, she smiled and asked, “Are you staying? Party of four?”
“Uhhh,” he mumbled at first, then nodded. “Yeah. Four. Just for the one night.”
“That can certainly be arranged. Will you be staying in just one room?”
“Yes, same room. Preferably on the second floor.”
Ronie assumed that he was going to identify himself and demand her assistance in the investigation, so this initial conversation left her surprised. Within moments, he had rented a room, paid six hundred shia for it, and they were led up to the second floor.
They’d been given a corner room on the southeast side of the building, where much of Solus’s light filtered in through large windows. There was a large, round table with a selection of fruit on top, and four beds were lined up in a row along the back wall.
After a detailed explanation of the room’s features, the innkeeper bowed deeply and left. Tiese promptly exclaimed, “I’ve never been in an inn outside of Norlangarth before! The way the room feels and the way the furniture looks are completely different from the north!”
“Tiese, we’re not here to have a good time,” Ronie scolded her friend, then turned to Kirito. “Um…what are you planning to do now? This isn’t the actual room where it happened, is it…?”
“No, I would assume not. But there’s a way for us to figure out which room it was. Let’s take a break for now, though,” Kirito replied, stretching luxuriously.
Asuna took off her cloak and shook out her long hair. “I’ll prepare some tea,” she added, heading for a cupboard in a corner of the room. Ronie trotted after her to help.
Then, out of nowhere, there was a voice, distorted and alien, like it came from underneath the very earth.
“…ou are…eror’s priv…serf Yaz…n’t you…?”
It was a man’s voice—that was all she could tell. Then came another man’s voice, this one hesitant and nervous.
“A-ah…no, I’m…not…holding’s tena…anym…”
“…ce a serf…ways a serf…If you don’t like that, then…,” said the first man’s voice, suddenly growing clearer and crueler, “…die right here and now!”
There was a dull, heavy thud, and the second man screamed.
Then the crystal disc shattered into a million tiny pieces. Asuna started to fall to the floor. As if by teleportation, Kirito was there, his arms extended to grab her before she hit the ground.
The four of them left Room 211, which was lit again, and hurried back to their original room.
Kirito hoisted Asuna up on his shoulder and helped lay her down on one of the beds.
“I-I’m all right,” she said hastily, trying to get up, but he pressed down on her shoulders and turned to look at Ronie.
“Can you get her a cup of water?”
“S-sure, right away,” she said, hurrying to the cupboard to pour some of the cold water in the pitcher into a glass. Kirito took it from her, lifted Asuna up slightly, and brought the cup to her lips.
After three separate careful sips, the subdelegate looked at Ronie, slightly revitalized, and smiled. “Thank you, Ronie.”
“It’s nothing…,” she murmured, looking down. She felt frustrated that this was the most she could do. Her only course of action was to reassure herself that there would be a time where she could be of more help.
Asuna’s fatigue was not something caused by the loss of her life value, so sacred arts could not replenish it. Kirito should have known that, but after he gave Ronie the glass back, he lifted his hand and generated three light elements without a spoken command. He let them float in the air around Asuna; they lit her beautiful face and chestnut-brown hair as her eyes closed.
Once released from Kirito’s control, the light elements expended all their meager light in less than a minute, but the faint warmth seemed to give some life back to Asuna. Her eyes opened just after that.
“Yes…I’m fine.”
“Don’t tell stories. You should be resting,” Kirito admonished.
But she shook her head and sat upright. “No, I have to hurry…”
A tense look crossed his face, and Ronie and Tiese shared a glance.
“…What did you see?” he asked. “Could you find out how the killer evaded the Taboo Index to murder Yazen?”
She blinked, holding her eyes shut for a moment to be sure, then whispered hoarsely, “The first thing I saw in the glass disc…was a man cleaning that room. I think it was Yazen. Then, just in the front of the image, a second man said to Yazen, ‘You are from the emperor’s private holdings, the serf Yazen, aren’t you?’”
“The emperor’s…private holdings,” Kirito repeated in a whisper. She nodded.
“Yes…Yazen started to nod, but then he said, ‘No, I’m not the private holding’s tenant anymore.’ Then the second person was…almost mocking him by saying ‘Once a serf, always a serf. If you don’t like that, then die right here and now,’ and he stabbed Yazen in the chest with a dagger…Yazen fell to the ground, and the man left the room with the dagger. That was as far as I saw…”
She said nothing more, but no one rushed to fill the ensuing silence.
Even the greatest of artificers could not falsify the events of the past, so this made it clear that it was not Oroi who had killed Yazen. That was good to know, but it was undeniable that this also raised more mysteries.
Kirito straightened up from his kneeling position at the side of the bed and looked around the room. “The man who killed Yazen dropped the bloody dagger in the hallway, knocked on a nearby door, and disappeared,” he explained. “Oroi the mountain goblin was sleeping in that room, and he got up and saw the dagger in the hallway and had picked it up to examine it when the Centorian guards spotted him and arrested him. That’s what I think happened after Yazen’s murder.”
That made sense to Ronie, but Tiese had some thoughts on the matter: “But, Kirito, wouldn’t that be too early for any guards to arrive? I would think that from Yazen’s murder to the knock on Oroi’s door to Oroi picking up the dagger, it could only have taken a few minutes at most…”
That was a good point. Kirito frowned and puzzled over it.
“True, true. The guards rushed to the inn after the fourth-district guard station received a civilian report that a demi-human was rampaging with a blade, I believe. But in fact, Oroi had only picked up the knife and wasn’t doing anything with it. Which would mean the report came from the killer or a companion of his…And you couldn’t see the killer at all, Asuna?” he asked.
She shook her head regretfully. “I couldn’t. It was like he was always just behind the view of the glass disc. Or…in fact…” She paused, mouth partly open, as though searching for the right word. Then she sighed. “No…I’m sorry, I can’t really explain it.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Kirito said quickly, approaching her and gently rubbing her back. “You didn’t see the killer, but you did hear his voice, and we learned some other things, too. Such as…the killer didn’t utilize some complex trick to kill Yazen while evading the Taboo Index’s rules. He just stabbed him right in the heart…”
That was true. Asuna braved danger to use the past-scrying art to find out how and why the killer attacked Yazen. The “why” part was still unclear, but the “how” was very simple. No tricks, no cleverness—just a stab from a dagger. Meaning…
“The killer isn’t bound by the Taboo Index,” Ronie murmured.
“That’s what it means,” Kirito agreed, his voice dark and heavy. “Though we don’t know how…”
“About that, actually,” Asuna interrupted. The other three looked toward the bed. The swordswoman subdelegate looked almost entirely recovered now. She stared at them in turn with eyes the color of tea softened by milk. “I think the killer’s words are the reason he killed…he was able to kill Yazen.”
“His words…? ‘Once a serf, always a serf’?”
“Yes…What if the reason the killer was able to ignore the Taboo Index is because Yazen came from the lands privately held by a noble, and he was subject to judicial authority…?”
“…Oh!” Kirito inhaled sharply. He stared at the window, as though he was going to see the culprit standing right there. “Then the culprit can kill not just Yazen, but any of the old former serfs we freed…That’s why you said we ought to hurry.”
“Yes…My first thought was that we ought to strike before another person becomes a victim…but…”
Ronie could tell why Asuna was hesitant to continue speaking. She took a step forward, barely conscious of it, and said, “There are nearly a thousand former serfs in the northern empire alone—and four times that in all of the realm…We can’t provide protection or safety for all of them.”
Tiese came forward next to her and gestured with her hands. “Plus, not all the people who were released from servitude stayed in Centoria. Over half left the capital and chose rural places where they could have their own land, I’ve heard. It would take weeks to track them all down…”
“And it’s not like this place has a unified census registry,” muttered Kirito, although that term was unfamiliar to Ronie. Asuna joined him in thinking hard, her brows knit, but after a while, her face shot upward.
“But…the culprit is attempting to start another war between the human and dark realms, so they wouldn’t just be looking for any old former serf to kill. There’s no point in doing it unless they can pin the act on a visitor from the Dark Territory.”
“Meaning we should be protecting…the dark-worlders…?” Tiese asked.
Kirito nodded firmly. “Yes…I was always planning to come to this inn, either today or tomorrow. I was going to invite Oroi’s companions to the cathedral. It’ll probably help ease Oroi’s homesickness, too…”
“But there are so many more tourists out there,” Ronie added, eliciting a shrug from him.
“That’s true. But fortunately, we have their numbers and inn locations all recorded, so they’ll be much easier to handle than the former serfs. We can’t bring every last one of them to the cathedral, so I think we’ll push the schedule a bit and start sending them home as early as today. If we put together armed caravans to take them to the Eastern Gate, I don’t think the killers will be able to mess with them.”
“Then let’s get a move on,” said Asuna, slipping her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. Kirito quickly moved to give her support, but she seemed to be fine. She still gave him a smile and a quiet word of thanks, however, before composing herself and getting down to business.
“So…do you know the room where the other three mountain goblins are staying?”
“Of course. It’s a four-person room on the first floor, so it’s probably right below us. There should be a guard on duty in front of the door—half to guard them, half to keep an eye on them…”
“That’s unavoidable. It won’t be necessary once they’re safely moved to Central Cathedral. Let’s get going,” Asuna commanded, quickly walking off. The others hurried after her.
But when they descended to the first floor, they found only an empty hallway and a cleaned room. Kirito asked the innkeeper at the counter, and with a surprised expression, she informed them that a carriage had brought an agent of the South Centoria city government to the inn that very morning, and it had taken the three goblins away with it.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login