Chapter 32
“The night Kalud Lucilante was believed to have reformed.”
Rex, sitting across from me, tilted the teapot over his empty teacup and said,
“The real Kalud Lucilante—the one called the Lucilante wastrel—is dead.”
“Dead?”
“The cause of death was poisoning. A former lover who held a grudge against him sent an assassin to poison him.”
“Then….”
“That’s right.”
Rex nodded.
“Kate’s revenge can never succeed.”
“….”
“And the current Sir Kalud Lucilante, the magic knight, is a spirit from another world possessing the corpse of the dead wastrel.”
After calmly muttering such absurd nonsense, Rex tilted his teacup.
Gripping the teacup tightly in silence, I forced myself to speak.
“No, that’s impossible.”
It was a lie. I knew better than anyone that Rex wasn’t trying to tease or deceive me.
A spirit from another world that had entered by taking over the body of its dead original owner.
Because I was the perfect example of exactly that.
“A spirit from another world? What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that?”
But I shook my head. I had to deny it. I instinctively felt that way. I forced out a hollow laugh and shook my head again.
“There’s a limit to nonsense. Are you making fun of me?”
“….”
Rex silently shook his head.
“Fine, let’s say that’s what Sir Kalud claims. What about you?”
I continued by asking Rex. I was testing him.
“A spirit from another world. Do you really believe such ridiculous nonsense?”
“There’s no other way to explain it.”
Rex spoke in a low voice.
“He single-handedly reversed the desperate situation on the Western Front. Nearly every battle he commanded ended in victory, and we reclaimed more territory than we had lost along the border. It would have been impossible if he hadn’t known the future in advance.”
A feat possible only because he was an outsider from another world who knew this world’s future.
In fact, Kalud Lucilante’s achievements and tactical ability, as discussed immediately after the war ended, were in no way inferior to those of Sir Ivanov, called the ‘Grand Strategist’ and hero of the Northern Front, or Sir Rozis, who was called the hero of the Eastern Front in the original world where I had never existed.
There was only one reason he was never called a hero.
His past was stained with disgrace, and he had been called the worst wastrel in House Lucilante’s history.
“If he hadn’t noticed the disastrous situation on the Western Front before the central command and mobilized his private forces first, I wouldn’t have survived the ‘Battle of Fifty Hours.’”
The very battle that had made Rex known as the hero of the Western Front and the strongest knight in the world.
My mouth went completely dry. I carefully tilted my teacup and moistened my burning throat without letting my distress show.
“And all of this is something Sir Kalud himself told me.”
“Kehk…!”
I choked. I had been so tense that I hadn’t even realized the tea was going down the wrong pipe.
“Are you all right?”
Rex asked. I nodded with tears in my eyes.
“Y-yeah.”
But unlike my outward composure, my insides were burning up.
Rex must already know everything. No, he must have heard it all. If Kalud really was a possessor like me and knew more about the original story than I did,
there was no way he would have kept silent about the existence of an irregular like me.
“And there’s something else. Sir Kalud said… that he knew the future of this world.”
Having already revealed his secret to Rex, even if only indirectly, there was no way he hadn’t mentioned me as well.
“He did say that he couldn’t know everything, and that he could only see the general flow of events….”
After hesitating for quite some time, Rex finally opened his mouth.
“At least in the future he saw, the Nameless Ronin of the Eastern Front—in other words, you—never existed in the first place.”
As expected.
It was just as I had anticipated. In fact, because the conversation was unfolding exactly as I had imagined, I even felt strangely calm.
As I listened to Rex, I thought it over.
Should I confess first? Perhaps it would be better to reveal the truth before keeping silent until the end.
Yes, I should tell him. Everything, while I have the chance. That I was just like Sir Kalud. That the original owner of this body had died before I met you, and that the person you know as me is simply me. Rex would believe me. He wasn’t incapable of reason….
“Tell me honestly, Haru.”
Rex said it. I spoke to him in a trembling voice.
“The truth is….”
“You’re somehow connected to that person you call your ‘master,’ aren’t you?”
“…Huh?”
I blinked blankly.
The first thing I felt was confusion.
I had gone barking up the wrong tree. Completely missed the point—spectacularly so.
“I heard all sorts of rumors about you from your time on the Eastern Front. Two nameless ronin had joined the Eastern Front as temporary knights, a duo consisting of a giant nearly two meters tall and a woman around 1.5 meters tall.”
“….”
“The latter woman was probably you, Haru. I also learned that she called the giant traveling with her by the nickname ‘Master.’”
Rex said this as he set down his teacup.
Overwhelmed by confusion, I asked quietly,
“…Did you investigate me?”
“I’m sorry for secretly digging into your past.”
Rex bowed his head to me.
“But there’s something we absolutely need to discuss. Your master… the man named Gaul.”
“What?”
Gaul. That was Master’s name.
Master had been extremely reluctant to reveal his name to others. Even when he went to the Western Front, he told everyone to call him Nameless, an alias.
Among the knights who participated in the Western Front, only Sir Rozis and I knew his name.
“How do you know Master’s name?”
“….”
“Answer me, Rex.”
“I saw a record about a magic knight who used the same name, Gaul, in documents containing the kingdom’s highest-level classified secrets.”
Rex didn’t answer my question. I could sense urgency and desperation in him. He rattled off the words as though he were being pursued by something.
My stomach churned.
“It was a record I could access thanks to my status as a hero, and revealing its contents to outsiders is strictly forbidden… but you’re a fellow hero, so it should be all right to tell you.”
“…Stop.”
“For the crime of plotting to overthrow the Magic Kingdom and colluding with subversive forces outside the kingdom, a subjugation mission was issued to Ludwig, the Moonlight Knight, First Seat of the Rounds──the eleven knights who stand beside the king.”
“I said stop.”
But Rex didn’t seem to hear me.
“Answer me. The reason the future Sir Kalud spoke of changed was because of that man, right? He taught you and made you go to the battlefield….”
As I said, the first emotion that came to mind was confusion. Rex’s mistake was so spectacularly far off the mark that it was absurd.
But then there was the reason he had gone so far astray. The ridiculous nonsense he had laid out before me.
Because of those things, the second emotion that arose was anger.
-Bang!!
“…Haru?”
By the time I came to my senses, fragments of the shattered table were embedded in my fist, and blood was dripping down.
When I opened my mouth, a dry, cracked voice came out.
“I don’t care that you investigated me. I have no memory of doing anything so remarkable that it would warrant exposing me, nor have I lived a life I wanted to hide from anyone.”
“….”
“But if you meddle with that man, I won’t stand by, even if it’s you.”
Rex stiffened and asked.
No, he tried to ask.
“But, Haru….”
“This conversation is over.”
I coldly turned my back on him.
I think now that I shouldn’t have done that… but at the time, my blood had rushed completely to my head, making calm thought impossible.
Even though the other person was Rex, I had been driven to such an emotional extreme.
I had ended up pouring out my emotions on someone I’d been meaning to apologize to someday.
=
“…Instructor.”
“….”
“Instructor Haru?”
Kate spoke beside me as I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
“Is something wrong?”
“…Ah, Miss Kate.”
I answered while slumped over, turning my head slightly.
Kate had been sentenced to 120 hours of on-campus community service.
Apparently, according to the terms of her punishment, Kate was allowed to choose where she would be assigned to serve her community-service hours.
I didn’t know whether that degree of freedom was normally permitted, or whether House Lucilante had pulled strings even there….
In any case, Kate had strongly requested to work as an errand runner between the private offices of the Practical Class instructors, including me, so she stayed by my side whenever it wasn’t class time.
“I’ve transcribed the mission list you mentioned.”
“That was fast.”
“It was easy once I circulated mana through my arm as you instructed and flushed the fatigue out.”
Printing technology was not very advanced in this world.
It wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist, but printing just one or two pages took too much effort and expense.
It was optimized for mass-producing hundreds of copies of the same content, so when only one or two copies were needed, it was apparently better to have someone copy them by hand than to use a machine.
Indeed, copying documents was included on the list of Kate’s main duties.
“Thank you.”
I spoke weakly as I accepted the mission list from Kate.
‘As for the matter of Sir Kalud….’
I glanced up at Kate and thought.
Should I tell her? That her revenge was actually a meaningless, futile effort. That the man she truly hated had died long ago.
‘…No.’
But I soon shook my head.
I’m no messenger for House Lucilante. If the circumstances are to be explained, he should do it himself.
Besides, just yesterday, I had explicitly told Rex that I would pretend I hadn’t heard anything he said today.
I couldn’t go blabbing about it for no reason.
‘Ah, I really shouldn’t have done that.’
When I recalled what had happened yesterday, belated regret and self-loathing surged over me again. My shoulders drooped like a wet rag.
“…Haaaaah.”
“A-are you really all right?”
When I let out a sigh deep enough to make the earth cave in, the flustered Kate began to fidget.
“No, no, I’m fine. You did a good job transcribing it, Miss Kate. I’m not upset with you… I’m just dealing with a personal concern.”
“A concern?”
“A personal one.”
I brushed it off awkwardly and carefully read through the mission list.
A personal concern was one thing, and work was another.
What the Practical Class students would undertake as their first field mission, and what experiences they would have, was entirely up to the instructor in charge.
There was a saying that well begun was half done.
How they handled their first mission would have a considerable impact on their subsequent activities as apprentice knights, as well as on the success rate of their future missions.
‘Since it’s their first mission, I need to choose one that makes the most of their aptitudes while minimizing the cost and likelihood of failure….’
As I read through the list, lost in thought, one mission caught my eye.
But what caught my attention wasn’t the title or content of the request. It was the client’s name.
[Client: Kalud Lucilante]
Why was this bastard’s name suddenly showing up?