Chapter 126
There are things in this world whose concentration doubles when they stray onto a side path.
Things like playing games during exam week, or looking through an album tucked away in a corner while sorting moving boxes.
The concentration-enhancing effect of such things is truly remarkable; before they know it, people forget what they originally intended to do and become utterly absorbed in some new activity.
Grace's current state was much the same.
Until moments ago, her mind had been filled with worries about her circumstances and future, but now not even a trace of those trivial thoughts remained.
The mysterious oak barrel that rolled around on its own and even used a single staff like a leg to leap here and there possessed that much impact.
‘That thing earlier was an arm and a staff, right? Is there a person inside? Why? How?’
Grace had always been curious by nature, and whenever something caught her interest, she could not rest until she had charged straight at it.
She had tried to grab the oak barrel and at least speak to it, but once she actually began chasing it, she discovered that this was no easy task.
“But why is that thing so fast!?”
Rooooooll!
The speed of the oak barrel rolling along the ground was no ordinary matter.
Even Grace, who was quite confident in her ability to run, was giving chase at full speed, yet she could barely manage not to lose sight of it.
But Grace did not give up.
‘There are lots of obstacles on this route. I just need to catch up when it stops briefly, like earlier!’
Just as she predicted, it was not long before a fairly large step appeared in the oak barrel's path.
And it was quite a tall one, reaching about the height of an adult man's knee.
Grace was certain that even the oak barrel would have no choice but to stop at that moment.
Fwap!
A staff thrust out from the rolling oak barrel seemed to strike the ground, and then, retaining all its rolling momentum, the barrel shot into the air and landed atop the step.
Not horizontally, but vertically.
As Grace stared blankly at the oak barrel standing lengthwise like a person who had landed on both feet after a high jump, the arm protruding from it waved the staff from side to side.
For some reason, even though it had not said a word, Grace immediately understood what it meant.
-Hmph.
“…Ha!”
A smile appeared at the corner of Grace's mouth.
Back when she had no connection whatsoever to that troublesome and impossibly burdensome position called ‘priestess.’
It was that very same smiling face that had made the people around her click their tongues and say, ‘That girl is about to go berserk again.’
“All right, let's see who wins.”
Crick, crick, crack, stretch. Grace loosened up her body.
If there had been an objective and clear-headed third party observing the situation, they might have pointed out, ‘That oak barrel seems to have recognized Grace too, so why not just speak to it as things are?’ Unfortunately, there was no such person.
In fact, even if there had been, it might have made no difference.
This was already a contest.
Thump!
Without waiting to see who would move first, Grace kicked off the ground as the oak barrel resumed rolling.
The difference from the chase until then was that Grace was no longer following behind the oak barrel.
Instead of running along the same path as the barrel, she sprinted toward the alley beside it.
At first glance, it looked as though she had given up on the contest, but the true meaning of her actions became clear soon enough.
To the front right of the oak barrel rolling across the ground with impressive momentum—
Like a beast targeting its prey's flank, Grace's body pounced on the oak barrel.
An alley is not a straightforward, linear racecourse.
It is a complicated maze that twists, turns, splits, and reconnects in all directions, which meant that one could predict an opponent's route and take a shortcut.
‘This time, I'll catch it!’
Even as she launched a perfect ambush by making use of the advantage possessed by a local who knew the surrounding geography well, Grace never let down her guard.
Considering the mobility the oak barrel had demonstrated earlier, it was not yet time to relax.
Sure enough, just as the staff struck the ground, the oak barrel leaped into the air.
Yet no matter how incredible the evasion, it was useless once Grace had anticipated it.
Rather than throwing herself forward with all her strength, Grace had conserved some of her momentum, allowing her to immediately adjust her course, and the oak barrel fell in front of her according to the law of gravity.
No, it should have fallen.
CRACK!
At the sound coming from above her head, Grace momentarily doubted her ears.
Then she raised her head and doubted her eyes as well.
Above the alley.
The oak barrel had stopped high in the air.
Like a nail driven into place, the slender staff had pierced the wall and was supporting the entire oak barrel. After a moment, it used the staff as a pivot and leaped into the air once more.
Faced with an unimaginable double jump, Grace's plan to capture it became useless, and the oak barrel landed deftly atop the high wall before giving its staff another smug little wag.
Seeing that arrogant gesture, as though it were saying, ‘No matter how wildly you run around, you're still in the palm of my hand,’ Grace charged at it again. The oak barrel disappeared beyond the wall and fled once more.
It took quite a long time for the Carnelian servants who had come looking for the priestess, who still had not returned as her day off drew to a close, to discover Grace vaulting over walls with a skill that put monkeys to shame.
***
“Priestess. This is extremely troublesome. The head of the family must have granted you a complete and unrestricted day off because he trusted you that much, but if you casually smash that trust to pieces like this─”
Grace let the butler's lengthy scolding go in one ear and out the other.
There was nothing particularly important in it to begin with.
If the people of this estate had spoken that way because they genuinely cared about and worried for Grace as an individual, she would have felt a lingering sense of guilt as well. But her relationship with them was not like that.
Suppose there were a cow scheduled to be slaughtered exclusively for a special guest. Should the cow be grateful simply because the ranch worker treated it with affection until slaughter day? Should it thank them for letting it run through a wide field instead of a narrow pen?
The answer was ‘No.’
Whatever they called it—a reward or something else—the essence of it was livestock management.
The cow had to be let out appropriately and given exercise so that it would be less likely to waste away from stress or succumb to madness and injure itself.
That was why they had merely released the livestock into the field, and even if the cow failed to return to its pen on time, it was the ranch worker, not the ranch owner, who would be troubled.
The ranch owner would only find themselves in trouble and become angry if the cow, frightened of slaughter day, tried to escape the farm altogether.
And Grace had no intention of avoiding slaughter day, nor did she intend to run away from this place altogether.
So she could let the butler's stern words, spoken out of fear that something might go wrong, wash over her without taking them to heart.
After all, regardless of what the butler felt, unless the ranch owner—in other words, the head of the family—personally withdrew the arrangement, her day off once a week would remain guaranteed.
“…Please be more careful in the future.”
Perhaps the butler had just recognized that fact anew as well, because the slight emotion in his voice quickly faded.
Just like the demeanor he had shown when he came to greet her that morning.
Polite, elegant, and utterly devoid of humanity.
Freed from the scolding and back in her room, Grace lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
The estate was quiet, and the area around her room was especially so.
And silence was excellent bait for summoning utterly pointless thoughts.
Thoughts of the future, the complicated and subtle gazes people directed at her, the fact that she could not even go comfortably to the orphanage she truly considered home—problems that grew more depressing the longer she thought about them, yet offered no particular answer no matter how much she worried.
In that sense, wondering ‘How on earth can I catch that detestable oak barrel?’ was an excellent thought.
It was worth worrying over, and thinking about it for a long time did not make her heart ache.
***
“First, gathering information is important.”
And so, when her day off came around again—
Using the formally polite manner of speaking that had returned as a result of the ‘education’ she had received for six straight days, Grace muttered this to herself.
Her pronunciation was far too loud and clear to be called soliloquy, so several passersby glanced her way, but they soon checked her clothes and hurriedly looked away.
Grace did not care.
When a larger and more important problem is right in front of you, minor worries can be pushed aside.
She had properly delivered the ‘gifts’ to the orphanage and finished her farewell in a relatively lighthearted manner, without making too much of it.
If she kept showing them such a bright smile, again and again, the burden left on those behind would be reduced, if only a little, should something happen.
At least it would be far better than some ‘girl trapped in the estate and resentful of the family who sold her,’ a figure that might otherwise grow fat on ominous rumors in their imaginations.
She had done what she could, and there was still time left, so she would now use it entirely for herself.
The residents who had initially made their discomfort plain whenever the ‘Priestess’ spoke to them soon began answering her earnestly, whether they had been swayed by Grace's enthusiasm or had decided that leaving her alone would only make her more troublesome.
“A rolling oak barrel? I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard the rumors. Apparently, it sometimes performs tricks in a plaza or some other place where people gather, then receives food or money?”
“An arm holding a staff suddenly sticks out of the barrel and moves around, but strangely, it seems no one has ever seen what is inside.”
“That oak barrel is a strange thing when you think about it. It is true that oak wine barrels are quite sturdy, but even so, nothing that bounced around here and there like that should still be in one piece.”
Her inquiries revealed that there was no one among the citizens who knew the identity of the oak barrel.
Where it had appeared, why someone was inside an oak barrel, what the occupant looked like, or what their voice sounded like—there was not a single piece of proper information going around.
Yet the more that was the case, the more brightly Grace's eyes shone, and the hotter the fire burned in her chest.
The more she learned, the stranger and more fascinating the oak barrel became.
She wanted to catch it. She wanted to meet its occupant face-to-face. She wanted to see what they looked like and hear how they spoke. She wanted to have a conversation with them.
Where else could there be such a wonderful distraction?
After thinking for a moment, Grace decided to use a sure method proven since ancient times.
“Everyone, if you see a rolling oak barrel, please let me know. I will pay a generous reward to anyone who takes me to a place where I can see the barrel. Naturally, the more collaborators there are, the easier the tracking and search will be, right?”
Not long afterward, people searching for the rolling oak barrel began roaming all over the city.
There was truly nothing like strength in numbers.
The strategy of overwhelming the problem with sheer numbers was truly excellent.