Chapter 41
1.
Deep into the night.
- Clip-clop-clop!
A commotion broke out beyond the door of Doloris's study.
“Sseunni!”
Ruby came running in, panting heavily, her face frantic.
The child, who almost never ran,
was as white as a sheet as she clung to the doorknob and struggled to catch her breath.
“Ruby? What is it?”
“Over there, in the garden…!”
Ruby pointed out the window with a trembling hand.
“The bell Lionel made is ringing all by itself, and there’s a spirit… No, no.”
“……”
“Some strange energy keeps gathering around the bell….”
Doloris narrowed her eyes.
She had known Lionel was making something for Her Highness the Imperial Princess, but.
“Ruby, stay in your room.”
If it was something a child could not handle, she had to stop it.
- Swish.
Doloris fastened the garment she had thrown on and rose from her seat at once.
Then she headed toward the garden at a brisk pace.
By the time Doloris reached the garden,
Lionel had accepted Gaia, Mother Earth's, commission and was about to begin work, but.
“……Huh?”
- Flop.
He simply collapsed onto the grass.
‘…My legs are giving out.’
He had been stepping on that creaking treadle all day, so perhaps it was only natural.
His mind and will… perhaps because of the exhilaration, or the adrenaline, did not seem ready to shut down.
His head was still spinning at full speed. But his body had declared a strike.
“Damn it.”
Lionel sprawled flat on the field, intending to recover at least a little.
- Whoosh….
The night air cooled his overheated body.
Lying there, he stared blankly up at the full moon.
That was around the time Doloris reached his side.
Beside him lay the remains of something broken. The child was staring blankly up at the full moon beside them.
Whatever had happened, fortunately… Lionel did not seem to be hurt.
- Boop.
“Huh.”
Doloris’s face suddenly swept into Lionel’s field of vision.
“Ruby was terribly frightened and insisted that I hurry over to see you, you know?”
“Ruby does have a sense of loyalty, at least.”
She had put on all those airs, then gotten scared and run to call Mama.
“Phew….”
Doloris slowly exhaled.
“You were lying down comfortably, Lionel?”
Her hair fell softly, and he could feel her warm breath right before his face.
Yet instead of being startled, Lionel somehow felt at ease in an instant.
It felt as though his mind and body, worked to the limit all day, relaxed the moment he saw Doloris.
‘Here we go again.’
Lionel thought this was a learned response—more precisely, learned helplessness.
Back when he had been making Frostless Spring,
while he was exhausted from working through the night, Doloris would approach at just the right time and take him into her arms.
Then the day’s work was over, and he would be carried back to the mansion with his face buried in her embrace—her naturally cool bed.
After that had continued for quite some time, his body now reacted first.
No matter how clear-headed he was, whenever he saw Doloris’s face in a difficult situation,
‘I must be going to sleep.’
His body simply felt it, like a conditioned reflex.
Just when that seemed a little dangerous,
“Are you sleepy, Lionel?”
Doloris smiled faintly to herself.
Strangely enough, this child’s tension always melted away and he fell asleep whenever he saw her face.
Though perhaps… she was the one who had made it that way.
“I think I might be….”
“Then let’s go to bed.”
Doloris hugged Lionel tightly, then carefully set the remains of the shattered bell down on the ground.
“I’ll tell the servants to move it to the workshop.”
“Yes….”
In the end, he was carried back to the mansion just like that.
‘I usually fall asleep right away, but I can hold out a little today….’
While Lionel was being carried along quietly, buried in the cool mattress,
how long had they walked?
The mansion came into view.
“…You worked very hard today, too.”
Doloris murmured something and offered him her usual greeting for the day.
The daily greeting she gave to a sleeping Lionel.
- Swish….
Something moist settled on Lionel’s forehead.
Doloris gently pressed her lips to his forehead.
- Kiss.
But Lionel’s eyes were still half open.
“Hmm? Lionel, you weren’t asleep yet?”
“No….”
Doloris’s eyes widened when their gazes met, but.
She simply smiled as though it did not matter and opened the mansion door.
“You’re always asleep, so I could never ask. What did you make today?”
The child in her arms answered in a drowsy voice.
“I was trying to make a divine artifact….”
“A divine artifact….”
“Yes….”
She soon shook her head and let out a laugh.
“It’s so incredible I’m speechless….”
The value of divine artifacts within the Tower surpassed imagination.
There were only a few races capable of making divine artifacts at all.
At the present time, it was even uncertain whether there was anyone who could create something called a ‘divine artifact.’
And he had said he would make one.
Doloris slowly climbed the stairs with the child in her arms.
If so, then the fragments from earlier.
‘It must have been something like a carrier pigeon for communicating with a god.’
Though she did not know the details,
she understood that something was needed as a medium for communicating with a god, whether inside or outside the Tower.
Yet a question suddenly surged within her.
“What kind of person is that god?”
The child in her arms gently grasped her forearm with a sleepy hand.
Then came the answer, in a voice already sinking into sleep.
“…Gaia….”
- Flinch.
Doloris’s steps stopped in an instant.
That name.
She had never imagined it would come from the child’s lips.
- Snore….
The child in her arms had already fallen asleep.
He never even noticed the change in Doloris.
Doloris gazed down at sleeping Lionel’s face for a long while.
“…Mother?”
Then she murmured quietly.
2.
After gently laying Lionel down on the bed,
Doloris covered Ruby with a blanket as well. Ruby had come to call her, then fallen asleep.
- Kiss, kiss.
Only after taking turns kissing both children on the forehead
did she rise from her seat.
She headed to her study, sat down, and quietly opened something she did not usually enjoy.
It was truly, truly not a place she liked. She had never been inclined to use it.
The Inner Tower Community.
Yet when she urgently needed information, it was also a channel she had no choice but to open from time to time.
This place was not merely somewhere people chatted and exchanged stories.
On one side was an auction house where all kinds of equipment were traded.
And on another, the so-called ‘companies’ active within the Tower hung out their signs.
The most useful of them all was
- Tap.
the Information Guild.
Trying to find something out by going around in person was impossible without an extraordinary amount of effort.
But if she commissioned the guild… all she had to do was pay the price and wait.
And as for Doloris….
she was a regular who visited this place fairly often.
- Bzzzz….
The moment she pressed the button,
one of the employees standing by immediately responded.
─────────────────
[Information Guild Team Leader] : Ranker, what information do you require?
─────────────────
Doloris had a great many things she wanted to ask.
Saying they were as numerous as a mountain would not be enough.
But first, she calmed herself and began to speak in an even tone.
“Have there been any rumors lately concerning a divine artifact being made by the Heir of Fire?”
The answer did not take long.
[Information Guild Team Leader]: ……As it happens, we have just received a report.
Doloris narrowed her eyes.
[Information Guild Team Leader]: They say the Heir of Fire chose Gaia rather than the God of Fire.
[Information Guild Team Leader]: It is an unprecedented event in Sun Dwarf history, so the whole Tower is in an uproar.
“……”
Doloris did not read any further.
She simply paid the fee and closed the window.
‘So it was true….’
Lionel had not misspoken while delirious with sleep.
“So it really is… that child….”
The face of Lionel, who had just fallen asleep, rose in her mind.
Doloris quietly placed a hand on her forehead.
She was not someone who believed in fate.
Because fate had never once… ever been on Doloris’s side.
To her, fate was nothing more than the curse hanging over a family destined to die out within a few years.
That was all.
However.
Not long ago—very recently—she had begun taking an interest in fate.
She had begun to place her heart in it.
There was no need to ask why.
“Lionel….”
- Rustle….
When Doloris placed her hand on her forehead,
an intangible tail slowly rose behind her.
A scorpion’s tail.
Doloris gazed at the tail for a long while.
Where did scorpions live?
Barren earth… hot soil and sand.
‘…The earth.’
Even if it was barren, this was unquestionably earth.
The Goddess of Earth….
was someone who never looked down on even such desolate land.
Doloris.
The ruler of the Tower’s fifth floor, and
an apostle of Gaia, the Goddess of Earth.
Gaia’s daughter.
The god she had served for so long was none other than Gaia.
This was the ducal house—the territory outside the Tower, but
her true territory lay within the Tower.
That was the fifth floor.
The fifth floor was abundant thanks to the earth watching over the rule of its apostle, Doloris.
And the same was true at this very moment.
To that mother of hers.
‘You went to her, Lionel….’
Doloris’s eyes trembled faintly.
‘…How?’
There was no way he could have known.
Even if there were people who had pieced together an apostle’s identity, apostles did not reveal such things to the world.
Much less could that young child… have any way of realizing that she was Gaia’s apostle.
For that to be possible, he would have to be a climber at the very least.
And yet the child had chosen his mother of all the countless gods.
Doloris was speechless for a moment.
Then a thought she had folded away and abandoned long ago rose in her mind.
When a god acquired a divine artifact, their divinity rose.
And that increased divinity naturally flowed to their apostle.
“Me, too….”
Gaia—the Mother she served—had remained at a place where her rank could no longer rise for a very long time.
Thus, Doloris had given up long ago as well.
But if the apostle’s rank rose.
If that thing she had never even dared hope for truly rose.
“Perhaps….”
It might have even the slightest effect on the curse.
Because it was the power of a god.
Would that be all?
Following the rise of the god and her apostle, the land of the fifth floor would become even more fertile than it was now.
Doloris slowly closed her eyes.
All her life, the two words ‘fate’ had been synonymous with a curse to her.
But now.
That hateful, wretched fate had approached her from another direction.
“Lionel….”
Once again.
You came to me like fate.
Something hot slowly flowed down beneath her closed eyelids.
- Trickle.
She could not even bring herself to wipe it away.
How could this be happening?
Doloris was someone who had given up on everything.
‘After I die.’
She had believed the abundance of the fifth floor would slowly lose its luster.
She had believed the ducal house would die out, and that she would never, ever again be able to hold that Three-Lion Emblem from the Emperor.
- Trickle….
She had believed she would never laugh again.
She could not sleep peacefully for even a single day, haunted by the thought of Ruby being left alone.
- Stream.
She had thought she would never be able to dream of tomorrow again.
But once the tears began, they refused to stop.
The child’s face kept flickering before her eyes.
“How can you be so….”
- Stream….
“Why do you only ever give me hope…?”
The duke’s cheeks, which were always cold and chilled.
Tonight, at least.
They grew hot and soaked through for a long, long time.