Chapter 57
The elf woman—in other words, Nesiel—was an excellent cook.
Despite the meal consisting solely of plants, with not a scrap of meat, every dish was full of varied flavors that made people happy.
“Nesiel, this is really delicious. You have to write down the recipes for me later.”
“Heh-heh, I’ve lived for so many years; I ought to be good at at least one thing, shouldn’t I?”
Nesiel smiled as she watched Vieta heap praise on every spoonful.
Ugo, too, said it was a flavor he had never tasted before, yet he kept happily moving his spoon without pause.
After the meal, while Ugo took the medicine prescribed by the priest and napped for a while in a separate guest room, Vieta and Nesiel sat in the reception room enjoying some post-meal refreshments.
“I hope your peaceful everyday life remains undisturbed.”
Over fragrant Trom tea, Nesiel spoke again.
Nesiel seemed to have a sore knee.
Perhaps because of elven pride, Nesiel moved as though nothing were wrong, but Vieta noticed the slight oddness in her movements.
Vieta helped Nesiel cook without saying anything, and Nesiel did not refuse her help.
Rather, throughout the cooking, she told Vieta this and that, as though recounting an old fairy tale.
Starting with the origin of the World Tree and ending with the sad personal story of how she had once had a grandson about Ugo’s age.
“By the way, that’s a fine dagger.”
Nesiel’s gaze was fixed on Vieta’s waist.
“…You have a keen eye.”
When Vieta checked her waist, the hilt was peeking out slightly beside her apron.
Apparently, moving busily around while cooking had loosened her apron a little.
“I may be like this now, but I was once a high elf who survived even that terrible Demon Realm War.”
Nesiel rubbed one of her knees with one hand.
“And it doesn’t mean anything in particular. It merely caught my eye because it looked like a sword I saw long ago.”
“…A sword you saw long ago?”
Vieta once again searched her memories to see whether she had ever met Nesiel before.
But no matter how she thought about it, they had never met before.
“Now that I look at it, the hilt looks exactly alike. Could you show it to me for a moment?”
Vieta tilted her head and handed her dagger over to Nesiel.
Her dagger was something she had received from the goddess Aurea when she first came to this other world; since it had not been made by humans, there was no way another dagger could have exactly the same appearance.
“Yes. It was exactly about this size.”
Nesiel held out her palm to gauge the dagger’s length.
“Going by my memory, even the decoration on the hilt is identical.”
After returning the dagger to Vieta, Nesiel told her about the dagger she had seen long ago.
“Around the time the war with the Demon Realm had just begun, an elf standing guard was poisoned by demonic energy and died. At the time, there was a dagger beside that soldier that I had never seen before. It looked exactly like yours.”
Nesiel’s gaze drifted toward empty space, as if she were searching her memories.
“Several high elves, myself included, tried to study that dagger, but the demonic energy was so strong that we had to begin with purification. After placing it near the roots of the old World Tree and assigning shifts, high elves poured purification magic into it from beside it for more than a hundred days before we could finally examine it.”
Nesiel’s story was entirely new to Vieta.
Neither the goddess nor even Siran had ever told Vieta about the dagger.
“I don’t know what ability your dagger has, but the dagger I saw then possessed a truly unusual ability. It could read its owner’s mind or emotions and change into the form most suited to them.”
“So what happened to that dagger? Is it still being kept at the World Tree?”
Nesiel slowly shook her head.
Then she tightened the shawl draped over her shoulders and continued.
“Unfortunately, it disappeared during the war. And aside from high elves like me, there probably isn’t anyone who knows about that dagger. We didn’t study it for very long, but other than its ability to read its owner’s mind and change shape, we couldn’t find any other unusual traits. So no one paid it any attention.”
A faint fragrance rose from the tea, which had gone cold.
“Even I had completely forgotten about it after that, but seeing this, I feel that your coming to my Guardian Tree may not have been a coincidence.”
Nesiel gave her a kindly smile, but Vieta’s thoughts had grown complicated.
Just who had owned that dagger,
and why had a holy dagger been tainted by demonic energy?
Perhaps someone had been summoned to this other world before her.
Even if that wasn’t the case, it was certain that the goddess was hiding something.
***
“Hang in there just a little longer.”
Fulcare patted Blanc on the shoulder.
Yesterday and today alike.
Blanc seemed to have been continuously absorbing the World Tree’s energy.
On top of that, he had to engage in a war of nerves with the elves, so the fatigue must have been considerable.
After the eventful banquet and a tour of Arba Palace, it had grown pitch-black outside.
Fulcare visited Blanc’s room exactly thirty minutes after parting from him.
He wanted to let Blanc rest comfortably for about an hour, but Iseria was waiting for them in the subspace.
Surprisingly, someone other than Iseria had come to the goddess’s subspace as well.
“I told you to hurry up and tell me!”
A shrill voice brimming with anger—it was Vieta.
And the person Vieta was glaring at was none other than the goddess Aurea.
Fulcare glanced at Iseria to ask what had happened, and Iseria closed her eyes.
She meant that she did not know either.
She rarely inserted herself between the goddess and Vieta, but perhaps she could no longer bear to keep watching, because she called out to Vieta.
“Lady Vieta, His Highness has arrived.”
At Iseria’s voice, Vieta turned her head, and
then let out a strange cry and gripped and tugged at her hair with both hands.
“When did you two get here?”
“…Rather than that, I think it would be best to deal with matters concerning His Highness first.”
At the sigh-laden sound of Iseria’s voice, Vieta blushed and sank down where she stood.
“So, the magic materi—Fulcare. What is it you want to know?”
Leaving Vieta behind as she sat in a chair, sighing heavily,
Iseria approached Fulcare and Blanc.
“Blanc, lie down here.”
When Blanc lay down where Iseria pointed, Fulcare infused his mana into Blanc’s chest.
Soon, a blue-glowing sphere rose from the left side of Blanc’s chest, and magic circles that sprang from it unfolded in orderly fashion through the air.
“That must be the formula they said was cast on Blanc?”
At Vieta’s question, Fulcare nodded.
“Iseria, look over the entire formula first.”
“All of this?”
Rarely, irritation colored Iseria’s voice.
It was absurd to ask her to decipher at once a formula that made her eyes swim just to look at it.
“You don’t need to know exactly what principles they operate on. It’ll be enough if you can roughly determine what these magic circles are meant to do. I simply want to hear someone else’s thoughts rather than judge it alone.”
Fulcare hurriedly added an explanation.
“At first I didn’t realize it, but the more I unravel these formulas, the less it seems their purpose is to suppress this troublesome fellow’s mana flow.”
Iseria sighed, then went over beside Fulcare and began examining the places he indicated.
“If we consider only the basic framework, there are truly all kinds of things here, from sealing magic to purification magic.”
“Right? Then, lastly, take a look at this trace, too.”
Fulcare pointed to a magic circle that stood out for its size among the dozen or so floating in the air.
The one he indicated was the magic circle serving as the basic foundation for the other formulas floating around it; in its center, something black, about the size of a thumbnail, was writhing.
Iseria’s expressionless face became horribly distorted the moment she encountered the black energy.
When Iseria reached toward the mass of black energy, it scattered momentarily, revealing a blue leaf inside.
“…A World Tree leaf.”
As soon as she withdrew her hand, the blue leaf was swallowed by the black energy again.
“Why is elven energy in His Highness?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Fulcare had been puzzled all along.
It had been impossible from the beginning for Blanc, who was born human, to wield a Guardian Tree and sense the World Tree’s energy. Even Vieta, greater than anyone else, had been unable to possess a Guardian Tree.
And the formula Blanc said he had received from the Kingdom of Madak was strange beyond belief as well.
To block the flow of mana, a single formula would have been enough,
yet Blanc’s formula had been layered over and over to an excessive degree.
Not only that, but every time he unraveled one layer of the formula, he sensed a strange energy that seemed twisted somehow.
At first he thought he had sensed it incorrectly, but the moment he heard Elrod’s words today, Fulcare was certain.
That strange energy was elven energy.
And he had just received confirmation of that from Iseria.
“But why….”
Iseria’s eyes wavered.
It had seemed suspicious from the moment the goddess had ordered Blanc to be given a branch of the World Tree, but Iseria had assumed it was simply the goddess’s will, which she did not understand.
“We’ll have to find that out from now on.”
While everyone was sorting out their thoughts,
“Aurea.”
Vieta quietly called out to the goddess who had fled.