Chapter 64

Accepting the stonemasons' guild's commission and collecting their money from the merchants' association had made Ricard's presence known throughout Ehrenberg. It had also served as publicity for the Beringen Guild branch. People naturally came to see the branch as a place that got commissions done, allowing it to establish a firm footing in the city at a stroke.

Though unintentional, they had also mediated between the city's two great powers, the stonemasons' guild and the merchants' association. The guild branch had done an admirable job of balancing the two.

Moreover, Volka and his friends' efforts had quickly won them the friendship of the local merchants. They could now obtain steady supplies of food, travel necessities, and combat equipment, while the merchants gained a reliable customer. It was good for everyone.

Now only one thing remained before they could truly settle here: time. As they watched children grow, lovers marry, families raise children, and people grow old, the Viola clan would naturally become part of this place.

If Volka and Delphi married and had a baby, that child might grow up hearing a story like this: Long ago, there were five terrible villains here, and my friend defeated them.

A paved road ran straight uphill through the center of Ehrenberg, with side streets branching off to either side at intervals. The low Mount Ehren had been carved into artificial terraces, with buildings erected on each level. The entire mountain was like one great complex.

At the summit stood a tiny castle built long ago. It hardly deserved the name, but several buildings clustered around it. From the mountaintop, the whole area along the Main lay in clear view. The stonemasons and their families had returned to their livelihoods, and the merchants' association's ships were finally sailing the river.

The merchant ships set out under oars, then raised their sails when the wind was right and vanished into the distance in no time. From a corner of Mount Ehren's summit, Ricard watched the ships move slowly, then swiftly, wearing no cloak and carrying only a dagger. Sunlight shattered into tiny glints along a stretch of the river, and the cool breeze blowing off the water ruffled his hair.

"Huh? Riki, you're slacking off!"

As Ricard admired the peaceful river scenery, a young voice came from behind him. He turned to see Bennybenny, the grocer Benny's daughter. Repeated names usually meant that a child had inherited a parent's name unchanged. Once the parent died, the child dropped one repetition.

The girl was only six or seven. She often loitered around the adventurers' building and pestered everyone under the pretext of helping with their work, but they all found her adorable. Still, it was obvious to anyone that she came to see Ice.

"I'm not slacking off. I'm taking a little break."

"My mom says the hours when the sun is up are golden hours. So if you slack off, you're throwing gold away."

"I told you, I'm not slacking off."

"But everyone else is working! Mr. Volka was looking for you, too."

"Oh, for crying out loud."

Escaping Bennybenny's usual pestering, Ricard headed down the back of the mountain. It was called a back path, but originally there had been no path at all. People had simply worn one into the ground by passing that way. It was steep and somewhat dangerous, but certainly faster on the way down.

"Don't follow me. You'll get hurt."

"Riki's running away! Mariiiiie!"

Bennybenny shouted from above. Ignoring her, Ricard quickly ducked into the trees, then walked along the riverbank.

He heard the creaking of the waterwheel beside the smithy as it worked the bellows, along with the sound of hammering iron. Beyond it, around the foot of the mountain, he came to the stonemasons' workshop. It was only half indoors, one might say: a roof standing by itself, without any walls.

There was mostly stone there, with sculptures of various sizes scattered about. Most looked either unfinished or abandoned partway through. Mason stood on a platform, carving a piece of marble as tall as a person. He set his chisel against it and tapped with his hammer, carefully cutting away the stone. There was still a long way to go, but Ricard watched quietly as a shape emerged, as life was breathed into a stone that had meant nothing.

It was a good while before Mason noticed him. Wiping his forehead despite hardly having broken a sweat, he said, "What's this? You should have said you were here."

"I was just watching. What are you making?"

Mason merely chuckled at Ricard's question. "Who knows?"

Not wanting to disturb his work, Ricard moved on. The workshop was quite large, so he wandered slowly around, examining the unfinished pieces as though they were on display. Then a shabby book in a corner caught his eye. He glanced at it idly, wondering whether it contained plans, only to find, to his surprise, that its title was written in ancient script.

<The Threshold of a Sword Master>

Calling it a book was something of a stretch. It was actually one very long piece of parchment folded into evenly sized sections, stacked, and tied with string. To read it, one untied the string and unfolded the sections one by one. Ricard untied it without much hesitation.

<The mana of mages and warriors shares a common source. Yet, just as a child becomes male or female within its mother's womb, mana takes on entirely different properties depending on the approach through which one first senses it. This cannot be changed.

Thus, only those who walk the warrior's path can become Sword Masters, and a Sword Master's blade of light differs from a mage's enchantment in quality and in its very nature.

A Sword Master is, broadly speaking, one who infuses a weapon with mana to draw out its inherent properties to their utmost limits. The weapon's cutting power and strength increase dramatically, allowing it to slice through even the hardest armor in a single stroke. Those who attain this state therefore find few worthy opponents.

Yet while the definition of a Sword Master is clear, the path to becoming one is obscure, complex, and unpredictable, making it difficult to define. Many illustrious swordsmanship families guard their secret arts closely, hindering the gathering of information. Furthermore, Sword Masters sometimes emerge from outside such circles, making it difficult to formulate a unified theory.

Many warriors falter at the threshold of becoming a Sword Master. Some therefore say that the aptitude to become one is determined at birth, while others claim it happens when talent and effort reach their utmost limits and blossom. Neither claim, however, is certain.

Here I would offer a suggestion. Since discussing what we do not know is meaningless, let us begin by clarifying what is certain.

First, there is undoubtedly a threshold one must cross to become a Sword Master. We do not know whether crossing it requires inborn aptitude, talent, or effort. But what if we focused solely on crossing that threshold?

Starting from this idea, I was able to find a clue: the training methods practiced by the Church of the Void.

...

Therefore, to cross the threshold, one must pay a price. One must make a sacrifice. That price, that sacrifice, is a part of one's humanity.

Much research remains to be done, but I am certain.

...>

From the middle onward, Ricard skimmed through the book. Something about it was unsettling, even chilling. He could sense madness and obsession in it. Yet it never explained precisely how to cross that threshold and become a Sword Master. What the author was certain of was that something within a person had to be cut away through a kind of religious ritual.

Was becoming a Sword Master worth going that far? He couldn't understand it. Still, he had learned one thing from the book. There was an upright path to becoming a Sword Master, and then there was the author's path: never mind the proper way, so long as one became a Sword Master in the end.

"Riki, can you read that?" Mason asked as he passed behind him.

"Yes. I studied ancient script."

"Really? Then you can have it."

"What? Are you sure?"

"Truth is, people have stiffed us plenty of times. More than I can count. This time was a problem because the sum was so large. That book came from a baron's estate where we built a chapel a while back. They were a little short on payment, so I just took it. But I can't sell the thing. Who'd buy a book they can't even read?"

Ricard gazed down at the book he had folded back up. Its title, <The Threshold of a Sword Master>, looked different to him now. In fact, this too was a codex, in a sense. All books written in ancient times were called codices. What he had just read contained no great wisdom, but it certainly conveyed knowledge that was as dangerous as it was intriguing. It probably wouldn't be of much use, but since Mason was giving it away, Ricard took it.

"Thank you."

He left the workshop and made a circuit of Ehrenberg's outskirts. Only in the late afternoon did he climb the central uphill road.

When he reached the branch building, a fair number of adventurers were coming and going. Merchants were delivering food and other necessities. Some people had come to place commissions, while locals had settled outside just to chat. As Ricard approached, greetings came from all sides.

"Hey there."

"Riki, Volka was looking for you."

Outside of combat, he was easygoing and unreserved, so everyone treated him comfortably. Ricard entered the building with only waves and nods in greeting. Inside, adventurers were resting at tables and in front of the fireplace.

"Riki." Someone called him the moment he stepped inside. It was Delphi, carrying food.

"I keep telling you to hire some help."

"Hey, paying people is the biggest expense there is."

"Can't you just hire Bennybenny?"

"She's too young. Severed heads come in here sometimes. Wounded people, too."

"Anything I can help with?"

"You're getting good at making empty offers, aren't you?"

Delphi smiled as she turned straight back to her work. To be honest, Ricard did slack off often. He had rarely paid attention in class at the academy, either. He simply smiled back and headed for Volka's room, which doubled as his office. After all, Volka had been looking for him.

"Volka, you wanted me?"

Volka was seated at his desk, going through documents and working on the accounts. Silver and copper coins lay in piles, with a few gold coins among them. Boribori and Marie were beside him, helping sort papers and handle other tasks.

"Damn it, I told you to help. At this rate, I'll spend my whole life doing this until I drop dead."

Counting money wasn't difficult in itself. But making sure every payment was paid and received correctly, and balancing the accounts, required constant checking.

"You get better at accounts the more you do them. You're just slow with numbers."

Ricard's ability with figures and his eye for detail were almost inhumanly good, so whenever he helped, it honestly made an enormous difference. But he seldom did. This sort of thing was a nuisance.

"Never mind that. We've heard from Dunkel. Apparently they're starting negotiations."

"What negotiations?"

"To end the war."

Having been told this was the front line, Ricard had expected frequent fighting. That hadn't happened. Perhaps the enemy feared him too much to come in the first place, or perhaps they simply lacked the resources. It wasn't easy for a single adventurers' guild to deploy people throughout all of Siegfringer, either.

Negotiation wasn't a bad alternative to both sides throwing away money and lives. But negotiations were not something settled in a day or two. They were another form of war—just one in which Ricard had nothing to do. It felt a little anticlimactic, but it was a relief all the same. The greatest reward one could offer exhausted soldiers was an end to the war.

"Which brings me to this. Shouldn't you, Bori, and Marie head back to the academy?"

"Do we really need to?"

"You have to graduate. That's how you officially become adventurers. Call it the bare minimum of formalities, however haphazardly the place is run."

"Really?"

"Yes. I might come get you as early as the beginning of autumn. Head back before it gets too late. You've worked hard. Thank you."

Ricard answered his thanks with a smile. Sitting on the bed, he asked the busy Boribori and Marie, "What about you two?"

"Us? What about us? We've already packed," Marie said.

Perhaps she was too busy working to have time to feel sad about leaving, even though they had only just begun settling in and getting things running. Still, graduation wasn't far off, and they would soon be back here, so it was all right. Perhaps he alone was getting needlessly sentimental.

"What's that, anyway?" Boribori asked, looking at the codex in Ricard's hand.

"Oh, this? Mason gave it to me. Told me to take it."

"Really? Can I have a look?"

"... No reason you can't, but it's an unsettling book."

"What's it about?"

"It spouts some nonsense about having to give up your humanity to become a Sword Master."

"Then I'll pass."

Boribori said it without a second thought. None of them except Ice had set their sights on becoming a Sword Master, so he seemed to have no regrets.

Ricard went to his room to pack. As he was putting the codex in his bag, he paused to gaze at the old, faded book. He remembered his goal upon entering the academy: to discover whether the war a century ago had been worth fighting, whether things called codices had truly been its cause, and, if so, what codices actually were. That was why he had learned ancient script. He hadn't read every codex, of course, but if this was the sort of thing they contained, it was rather disappointing.

Yet it was difficult to say whether that war long ago had been worth fighting. Without the war, without the codices, the adventurer academy would never have been founded. He pitied the children who had suffered for so many years in that chicken coop. But seen another way, without that chicken coop, he would never have met his friends. And so the question of whether the war had been worth fighting was not one he could answer lightly.

In any case, Ricard packed his things. He stayed at the branch for a few more days, helping Volka with his work and giving him some breathing room. Once Volka could finally get his head above the mountain of work, Ricard set off east with Boribori and Marie, back to the academy. Their steps on the journey back were light, as though a cool river breeze were filling their sails.