Chapter 152
When they left Southdoll, Cyril, Claudia, Ture, and Pike had all been in the carriage, making it lively. But on the way back, it was just Isaac and Monica, so the carriage was quiet.
Monica gave her apprentice, sitting across from her, a piercing stare.
Noticing her gaze, Isaac looked up and smiled pleasantly.
"Why are you staring at me so intently? Is there something on my face?"
"...It's not nice to be mean to Lord Cyril."
"…………"
He didn't reply; the only change was that Isaac's smile grew even more dazzling.
Isaac had been like this ever since he'd pinched Cyril's cheeks at the theater.
Whenever Monica spoke to him, he generally answered as usual. But whenever Cyril addressed him as "Your High... Excellency? Duke Eirin?" Isaac would fall silent. And when Monica admonished him for it, he would go silent again.
Then, without saying a word, all that dazzling sparkle in his smile would intensify. Monica could almost imagine it taking physical form and pricking Cyril all over.
Raul had called it "wordless sparkling magic," but Monica had absolutely no recollection of teaching her apprentice any such magic.
When they parted, Cyril had been so flustered that it was almost painful to watch. Even the weasels, poking their heads out of his bag, had chorused, "That's bullying! Bullying is bad!"
As his master, Monica wanted to give her apprentice a proper scolding, but she'd been quietly shaken by Isaac's actual age herself, so she couldn't bring herself to be too harsh.
Isaac didn't seem to care much, but a one-year age gap and a three-year age gap were quite different.
When she'd murmured, "He's the same age as Dee-senpai..." Isaac had gone completely serious, so Monica decided never to say that again.
Before long, the carriage arrived in front of Monica's house.
It was early afternoon, and she was starting to feel a little hungry.
After unpacking, she wanted to have lunch, but maybe they should eat out today... As Monica pondered this, her eyes widened at the black shape curled up in front of the entrance.
"...Oh, Nero."
At Monica's call, Nero slowly lifted his head from where he was curled up in front of the entrance and glared resentfully at her and Isaac.
"You left me behind and went off to have fun."
"Um..."
"You brought me a souvenir, right?"
That was quite a thing to say, considering he'd been the one to run away from home.
As Monica stumbled over her words, Isaac crouched in front of Nero, grabbed his front paws, and lifted him into a paws-up pose.
The cat's body stretched out like a rubber band, to a surprising degree.
"Unfortunately, all this house has right now is carrots. Help us use them up."
"Meat! Meat! Meat!"
"By the way, Nero."
Isaac leaned in to peer at Nero's face and narrowed his eyes.
"So, was the sea off Southdoll pleasant?"
At those words, Nero's golden eyes widened.
"...How do you know I got chased by a stray dog and fell into the sea? Wait, were you watching me?"
Just then, like a puzzle piece snapping into place, an idea occurred to Monica.
The Water Dragon incident had coincided with the time Nero ran away from home.
That Water Dragon had changed its shape by forming schools of smaller species, so the eyewitness accounts hadn't matched.
...But that still didn't explain why a Water Dragon, which normally stayed away from ports, had been spotted near one.
The sighting near Southdoll's Second Port had been reported as "a large Water Dragon with huge fins appeared out of nowhere."
If a black cat chased by stray dogs had fallen into the sea and reverted to its original form so it could swim more easily, then it would indeed have seemed to appear out of nowhere. And its spread wings would have looked like fins underwater.
"Aike, c-could it be...?"
"Good thing we didn't accidentally slay it."
Isaac nodded at Monica, who had gone deathly pale and frozen in place.
Only Nero, who had no idea what was going on, continued to complain in his stretched-out, paws-up pose.
"Slay what? What are you talking about? Hey!"
"The phantom dragon of Pistraune."
＊ ＊ ＊
Back in the form of a young human man for the first time in a while, Nero slouched against the back of a chair and listened to Monica and the others as he gnawed on a carrot cake Isaac had made himself.
They told him about slaying the Water Dragon, Claudia and Cyril's visit, and the trial set by the ancient magical artifact, the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉.
"So, basically, the Water Dragons showing up in a swarm and my magnificent swim in the sea just happened to coincide, huh?"
"That is more or less correct, if you set aside the fact that you've rewritten the story of being chased by a stray dog and nearly drowning as a magnificent swim in the sea."
At Isaac's words, Nero wrinkled his nose. It was an expression he sometimes made even as a cat.
"What was I supposed to do? It's hard to swim as a cat or a human. I've never turned into a fish. I even took a detour and traveled to an uninhabited stretch of land under cover of night, so humans wouldn't spot me."
After that, Nero had apparently reached land quite a distance from Southdoll and walked back, switching between human and cat forms whenever he felt like it.
He might have gotten back faster by flying in his original form, but Nero was enormous, so there was a good chance someone would have seen him.
"Then, um... was the phantom dragon of Pistraune Nero, too?"
Eight years ago, a large Water Dragon had suddenly appeared right beneath the luxury liner Evangeline in the waters off Pistraune.
Nervously, Monica asked whether that, too, had been Nero's doing. He shook his head.
"I don't go out to sea much, and before I met you, Monica, I was up in the mountains in the Empire. Maybe it was a different dragon?"
Thank goodness, Monica thought, quietly letting out a sigh of relief.
The phantom dragon of Pistraune had sunk the Evangeline and killed several hundred people. Now that she knew Nero had nothing to do with it, Monica couldn't help feeling relieved.
The phantom dragon of Pistraune must have been the swarm of smaller Water Dragons Monica had slain this time.
"Um, and then... about the White Dragon Lord Cyril made a contract with..."
As she explained the incident with the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉, Monica had briefly told Nero how Cyril came to make a contract with the White Dragon. But when he heard the name, Nero didn't react much at all.
"Nero, are White Dragons... your, um, natural enemy?"
What if Nero learned where the White Dragon was, flew into a rage, and said he was going to eat it alive right now?
With that fear in her heart, Monica asked hesitantly. Nero casually shook his head.
"Dunno. I've never even seen a White Dragon."
"...Really?"
"They live in cold places, right? I hate the cold, so I'm not about to go out of my way to visit."
Now that he mentioned it, that was certainly true.
"Then, um, is it true that a White Dragon's blizzard can nullify Black Flame?"
"Ah... I heard that somewhere. Where was it...? Hmm, it was a long time ago. I don't remember anymore."
Nero groaned as he thought, taking a big bite of carrot cake. It seemed he really couldn't remember.
How many decades ago did Nero mean when he said it was a long time ago?
That was intriguing in its own right, but Monica had something more important to confirm first.
"...If you run into a White Dragon, you won't chase it around, will you?"
Nero grinned, showing his sharp canine teeth.
"Would you like me to?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
"Yeah, yeah. If that's what you want, Master, I won't pick on the weak."
Nero leaned back even more imperiously than his master and gulped down his hot tea.
As Isaac poured more tea into the empty cup, he asked,
"Nero, if a White Dragon turned into another creature—say, a small animal or a human—would you be able to sense it?"
"Probably not. If it was in dragon form, sure, I'd sense it right away. But it's hard to sense them when they turn into little animals."
"...Are the Black Dragon's and White Dragon's senses equally sharp?"
"Mine are definitely sharper. After all, I'm the strongest!"
Monica heard Isaac murmur, "Hmm," under his breath.
Monica understood the intention behind Isaac's question.
In other words, when Cyril brought Ture along, would the cat and the weasel recognize each other's true identities?
If they couldn't tell while disguised as small animals, then they could avoid trouble as long as Nero kept pretending to be a cat from now on.
"Nero, if Lord Cyril brings Ture—the white weasel—don't bully him, okay?"
"I said I won't."
"And, Aike... when you see Lord Cyril next time, um... please make up with him, okay? No fighting. That's bad."
When Monica said this with the stern expression of a fearsome master, Isaac's eyes widened as if she'd said something unexpected.
"A fight... Yes, I suppose it is a fight."
He murmured it as though turning the word over in his mind, then chuckled under his breath.
It was the slightly mean laugh of a young man—something the usually gentle 〈Prince〉 would never do.
"I like it. I've never fought with him before... Yeah, this makes us seem a lot more like friends."
(That sounds like something Lord Raul would say...)
Thinking that to herself, Monica put on her master's face and pressed him: "Please make up with him, okay?"
＊ ＊ ＊
When the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 next awoke, it was at the Marquis Hione estate, sitting on the Marquis's finger.
As Marquis Hione spread a brand-new board game across the table, he spoke to the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉.
"Good morning, Sophocles. Did you enjoy your first outing in a while?"
'You planned this, Viscent. You slyly made me babysit a young upstart.'
Ancient magical artifacts were one of a kind. The custom was not to take them out lightly. But this man, Viscent Ashley, was always finding one excuse or another to let the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 see the outside world.
Considering how he'd arranged for it to meet Cyril while the Ascald Library was being renovated, he must have been certain of how things would turn out.
"There are some things you can only learn by going outside, aren't there?"
'Hmm... The current 〈Thorn Witch〉 was quite the monster, indeed. And the 〈Silent Witch〉's wordless magic is another utterly incomprehensible thing. Summoning a Spirit King without incantations... Are those people really human?'
Marquis Hione listened and nodded along as he set out two sets of game pieces on the board.
Then he rolled the dice and moved his piece.
"Your turn."
'Honestly, you might be the only contractor who's ever won me over with a board game, Viscent. ...Roll the dice. Hmm, a four. Then I'll move to the red space.'
"Apparently, up to four people can play this game at once. Let's invite Cyril next time."
'Speaking of which, what is that young fellow up to?'
When it grumbled, 'What, no greeting for me? Not even a hello?!' the Marquis answered with a perfectly serious expression.
"He seems to be writing a letter. He looked awfully serious, so it might be a love letter."
'Ha! No way. That stubborn young blockhead is at least ten years away from romance!'
＊ ＊ ＊
In his room, Cyril Ashley sat at his desk, silently writing on the backs of discarded sheets of paper.
He was drafting apologies to send to various people.
One addressed to Monica Everett, one to Raul Roseburg, and then...
"He probably doesn't want his identity revealed in private. If so, Your Highness and Your Excellency are both unsuitable... He didn't care for 'Mysterious Person'... Perhaps 'Noble Person'? Should I add an adjective?"
Muttering to himself, Cyril filled the backs of the sheets with possible ways to address a certain 'Noble Person.' He'd written so many that even beneath the nails of his right hand, the ink had stained his skin black.
On the desk, two weasels were playing by rolling a glass bead they'd found in a corner.
When it looked as if the bead might roll off the desk, Cyril stopped it with a finger and put it back where it had been.
"Pike, Ture, what would you do if you dropped it and it broke?"
"I'll stick it back together with ice."
"Sorry. Would it be bad if it broke?"
Cyril gave Pike, who showed no remorse, and Ture, who apologized earnestly, a troubled look.
"...Since we don't know whose it is, we shouldn't treat it carelessly."
The tiny glass bead, about the size of a piece of hard candy, had somehow ended up in Cyril's coat pocket.
It was white with a pale blue pattern like a snowflake. It had a hole for a cord, so it was probably an accessory or part of a garment's decoration.
He simply thought it was pretty, so he'd placed a small folded piece of cloth in the corner of his desk and set the bead on it. Of course, if its owner came forward, he intended to return it.
With no ball to play with, the weasels seemed to have gotten bored. They started climbing all over Cyril's shoulders and back instead.
"Hey! Don't climb all over me while I'm trying to write!"
"That's three times."
"Ugh."
Recently, Pike had started counting every time Cyril yelled.
For now, Cyril's immediate goal was to keep it to five times a day.
Cyril cleared his throat awkwardly, and Ture, perched on his shoulder, lost his balance and nearly fell.
As Ture grabbed onto Cyril's hair to keep from falling, Cyril let out a yelp. "Eep!"
"Sorry, Cyril. Did that hurt?"
"...Next time, don't use someone's hair as a lifeline."
When Cyril calmly admonished Ture without shouting, Pike tugged at the hair beside his face and said,
"You should just cut it."
"…………"
With his clean left hand, Cyril pinched a lock of hair beside his face and gazed down at it absently.
The words of a certain girl one morning suddenly crossed his mind.
—It sparkles. It's pretty.
Cyril wasn't comfortable with people commenting on his appearance.
Whether they praised or criticized him, he would think of his father, whose appearance was so like his own. His thoughts would become a tangled mess, and he couldn't come up with a proper response.
But that morning, strangely, his father hadn't come to mind at all.
The girl's simple words had left Cyril's mind completely blank, and he remembered his heart beating as if it were leaping in his chest.
At that moment, he'd simply felt happy.
"...Now I have a reason not to cut it."
He murmured this, gripped his quill again, and began writing a lengthy apology letter that opened with "To the Esteemed Noble Person,".