“I need to go there.”
“It’s sealed with tremendous magic. It’ll be hard to get in.”
“Will you help me?”
“Why would I?”
“Since you’re the sort who, if asked a question, will unhesitatingly spill any secret, you can grant me at least this much of a favor, can’t you?”
The mage interpreted Xion’s words as, “Since you went around blabbing my secret, the least you can do is this.”
Not being a mage, Xion would go his whole life without knowing how much power it had taken to pierce layer upon layer of powerful magic and discern what was inside.
But as it happened, the mage had nothing else to do, and he found the matter quite interesting, so he readily agreed to Xion’s proposal.
“Fine. I can’t pass up a good chance to get inside the ducal castle.”
Xion visited the ducal castle while the duke was away.
If he had never returned home once after becoming the hero and leaving, the atmosphere might have been painfully awkward but because he had come by whenever he prepared food for Reinhild, no one in the castle found Xion’s visit suspicious.
“You can only enter the basement through the duke’s bedchamber.”
“Sure enough, with the entrance there, just anyone won’t be able to wander in.”
Since it was a place no one but the duke and the heir would have cause to enter, anyone would assume they’d installed the entrance down to the basement in the duke’s bedchamber so only the duke’s direct line could access it.
But the truth was a little different.
The reason the hidden space was in the bedchamber was not to keep others from seeing someone go in there, nor to prevent people ignorant of the basement’s existence from stumbling upon it by chance.
It was to keep the heir, the only one besides the duke who knew of that place, from going down without permission.
Xion did not bother to explain this.
“If the duke isn’t in the room, the door is designed not to open. You can break it, can’t you?”
“Of course.”
The mage dispelled the magic on the bedchamber door with ease, as if it were nothing.
“I understood this was fairly strong magic, yet you undo it so lightly.”
“Naturally.”
“If the duke saw you do that, he’d keel over, for not stationing knights at the chamber door on the strength of this spell alone.”
“That’s the duke’s mistake. He could have protected the chamber with both magic and guards. Why didn’t he? Saving money?”
“The duke is a man who cannot bring himself to trust even the knights who protect him.”
Xion spoke flatly and entered the room. It had been a while since he’d come here.
It was also the first time he’d visited when the duke wasn’t present.
Xion placed his hand over the magic circle inscribed above the door leading down. A faint light spilled out and the circle activated.
More than the way a stairway down appeared in what had been an empty floor, the mage was interested in the magic circle itself.
“This is unusual. A spell that only activates for members of House West. Among those, it seems only someone who has infused the circle with at least a set amount of their mana, so that the circle recognizes their mana, can open it. Oh, and even that recognition can only be performed under the supervision of someone already registered in the circle? A very complex and fascinating array.”
Xion found the mage, who had accurately grasped the array just from watching it work, more interesting than the circle itself.
“If I tweak this a bit, I could make it even more entertaining.”
“How so?”
“If the duke tries to go in here… boom. I can make it explode.”
“…I’m going down.”
Ignoring the mage’s words, Xion descended to the basement.
The basement was packed with all manner of parchments under preservation magic.
“All this fuss just to store paper?”
“This isn’t just paper.”
Xion pulled out a bundle of parchment bound like a book and handed it to the mage.
“Everything in here is true history itself.”
“Impressive. What’s more impressive is that, while siphoning off this much information, no one thought to try stopping House West.”
After leafing through a few volumes, the mage soon lost interest and drifted about.
Most people would be more intrigued by “truth” than by modifying an array to blow someone up.
The mage’s attitude was that it didn’t matter how history had been distorted.
Of course, whatever the mage thought, Xion likewise couldn’t care less.
“How do we get farther down?”
“I’m looking. It’s a subtler array than the one upstairs. This might take a while to find.”
With a far more serious expression, the mage carefully examined the surroundings.
“Found it.”
After pacing the space for over an hour, the mage set his hand to a small opening behind a bookcase crammed with books.
Nothing happened.
“Beyond this, there’s a way down.”
“If we break the wall, can we get in?”
“Only the wall will break.”
“How do we activate the array?”
“Bring the duke here and it’ll be easy.”
“…”
“Don’t look at me like that. This isn’t an array you can smash with brute force.”
“What about ripping out the whole wall?”
“If you mishandle it, everything beneath here will vanish wholesale.”
“So there’s no way in?”
“There are two.”
“What are they?”
“First: bring the duke, torture him, and make him spill how to enter.”
“…”
“If you don’t like torture, there’s brainwashing. Mind magic is finicky, but not impossible.”
“…The second.”
“Second: I can modify the array and grant you entry authorization.”
In that case, why not do that from the start?
Xion shot him a look of distrust, and the mage added:
“But it’ll take a week.”
“A week will do?”
“Maybe ten days. Could be a bit longer.”
That wasn’t a long time.
To be honest, it was a very short time.
Even an archmage can’t analyze and break through someone else’s array this quickly.
If this was, as the mage said, an extremely delicate and meticulous array, ordinarily you wouldn’t be able to parse it even if you spent your whole life on it.
‘What is he, really?’
If the day came when he had to point his sword at this man, it would be a major nuisance.
He could only hope such a day would never come.
“A week. I can wait that long. In that case, let’s leave before the duke returns.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pardon?”
“Analyzing and dismantling the array will take one week. I need to be here during that time.”
“…”
Come to think of it, that was obvious.
But… at least a week, at most ten days. Could he keep the duke from coming down here during that time?
“That’s why brainwashing the duke is faster. Or should I just blow him up?”
“The duke… I’ll handle him. As long as meals are taken care of, will that suffice?”
“If the duke won’t be a problem, I can handle my own food.”
“Surely you’re not thinking of eating the paper…”
“I’m not a goat.”
After that, the mage stopped responding to Xion’s remarks.
The mage began studying the array with great relish.
Xion realized that the mage’s reason for offering help was nothing other than to examine the hidden array in the ducal castle.
That was better than having some other scheme.
After watching his back for a moment, Xion left the hidden room.
For the next week, he had to keep the duke from noticing someone was beneath his bedchamber.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Why isn’t Xion coming?”
Reinhild felt a pang of regret.
No… he did not! Not at all. There was absolutely no regret. This wasn’t regret.
It was simply that changing the bandages himself was a hassle. Without Xion, he had to sneak and change them out of the butler’s sight.
Reinhild sighed and changed the bandage. The wound had almost healed; now there wasn’t even a scar left.
Even so, Reinhild wrapped his belly in bandages as if making up an excuse for why Xion needed to come visit.
‘Still, I can finally breathe again.’
Once the traces of holy power that had seeped into his body faded to a degree, his body began to recover.
Regaining his health left him with more to think about.
‘Why do I trust Xion this much?’
Reinhild even forgot to insist that he trusted not Xion, but his own judgment.
That was how unsettled he was.
In a situation where anyone would suspect the hero, why hadn’t he resented Xion?
“Well, it’s already past.”
After pondering a moment, Reinhild decided to treat it lightly and move on. More vexing was that he had allowed his belly to be pierced by some worthless human.
No matter how off-guard he’d been, he was the Demon King. Such excuses were unacceptable.
‘I opened the door because I thought it was Xion.’
Reinhild had thought that human would be Xion. No, he had been certain.
‘Was I mistaken because I believed Xion was the only one who could enter here?’
Long ago he had adjusted the castle’s protective magic so that no human other than Xion could enter the secret passage.
Without the hero, one could not even step into the forest surrounding the Demon King’s castle.
So it wasn’t strange that he’d assumed the human who came up through the secret passage was Xion.
But that was too simple an excuse.
Reinhild could distinguish Xion’s mana from that of other humans. The aura, the presence—nothing about the other had been like Xion.
And yet he had mistaken someone else for Xion. It made no sense.
“…I felt the hero’s aura.”
Reinhild’s eyes flew open as he sprang to his feet.
“That human had the exact same aura as Xion.”
T/N: The whole exchanged with the unnamed mage had me cackling. He needs a name. He’s too funny.
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