Chapter 186 - Dwarf Liberation Front Nidavellir (2)

The western city, Trinova.

There was an estate situated in the heart of the city, sheltered from the desolate sands that roamed the wasteland.

It was a mansion so large and spacious that it could be clearly recognized even from afar, but the dark air that seemed to hang over it was probably not just an illusion.

"This is why I hate coming to the West. There's nothing decent to eat, and nothing much to drink either."

"..."

"It's no fun, this place."

The Golden Duke Barbosa was grumbling as he pulled off his boots and shook the sand out of them.

It did not suit the luxuriously decorated room, nor was it courteous to the person seated right before him, but he truly seemed to act at ease as if nothing were wrong.

"By the way, you look far worse than when I saw you before. Count Gaidar."

"... Of course I do."

After placing his boots back down on the gritty sand, Barbosa looked at Count Gaidar with a deep smile.

Yet unlike his brightly smiling face, his head was tilted at a strangely crooked angle, giving anyone who saw him an uncanny sense of pressure.

"Well, you did throw away five thousand soldiers, so I imagine your insides must be in a state."

"..."

"And you lost Godin too. That fellow was a real waste."

"Enough."

A solid build and fierce eyebrows.

Though he had shriveled somewhat from his shocking defeat, there was still an unbroken force in the man who continued to dream of making a comeback.

"It was a bitter defeat, but I, Sigmund, am not someone who collapses from a single loss!"

"I can hear you even if you speak quietly, you know."

But even in the face of Count Gaidar's rough force, Barbosa merely picked at his ear with a finger as if the man were noisy.

"What is the purpose of someone who should be busy with affairs in the South coming all the way here?"

"There's something I need to take."

"What?"

At Count Gaidar's question, Barbosa's face, which had been smiling until now, began to twist strangely.

"What, you ask? When you see me, there ought to be something you remember."

"... That is..."

"You borrowed money. Money. The shiny stuff. Gold coins."

In that instant, Barbosa's head leaned forward and suddenly thrust itself right beneath the count's chin.

He looked like a snake brimming with venom.

"Feeding five thousand soldiers, clothing them, putting weapons in their hands. I'm saying that was all borrowed money, wasn't it? Where would a shitty place like this have gotten money like that?"

"That money was borrowed from the Dragonblood Duke...!"

"To be precise, it was money the Dragonblood Duke borrowed from me."

Barbosa, cutting off the count's words with a savage smile, took a document from inside his clothes and tossed it to Count Gaidar.

A sheet of paper so red it was chilling.

It was what was called an ultimatum, the paper said to be most feared by those who had borrowed money from the Golden Duke.

"And after passing through the middleman, the debtor is you."

From Ravnoma to Bayezid.

For an impoverished count's house to rise all the way to conqueror of the West, that much support was necessary.

But Dragulia's support, which Gaidar had swallowed down as much as he could because he had been starving, had in the end caught him by the ankle.

"So let us end it at about this much."

With a practiced gesture, Barbosa lifted the scarlet document and held it before Count Gaidar's eyes.

"You only need to give me one city. The numbers roughly balance out. Then."

It was an absurd, unreasonable demand, but it was also true that he had borrowed.

Count Gaidar, who had dimly guessed that this future might come, could only let his lips tremble and did not dare speak.

Because the report he had received before Barbosa entered had said that ships that had come in a black mass were occupying his city of Torchea.

"What are neighbors for? If you just sign here, I will drive off those northern bastards for you."

Was this what they called a razor-edged smile?

At the corner of Barbosa's smiling mouth, grotesque golden teeth were gleaming.

* * *

CREEEAK!

An unpleasant sound came from the old door, as though its owner had not cared for it.

But what grated on Vlad's nerves even more than that sound were the fierce gazes of the sailors seated in the tavern.

It seemed rejection of something foreign was the same everywhere.

"Here. A glass of brandy."

"I think you've come to the wrong place. There's nothing here to sell to a kid."

"Shaken, not stirred. I'll pay with this."

Vlad took a coin from inside his clothes and deliberately set it down in front of the owner with an audible clink.

The coin was so shabby and rusted that no one would want it even if it were given for free, but the owner's eyes changed when he saw it.

"... Where have you come from?"

"The North."

"The North? Where in the North?"

At the owner's shallow attempt to sound him out, Vlad answered with a sneer.

"I have nothing to tell some Nassau bumpkin."

"... I will tell them a guest has arrived."

Like recognized like.

Though Vlad looked young, he also looked as if he had been knocked around plenty somewhere, and the tavern owner picked up the coin from the table.

"It may take some time."

"You'd better hurry."

Watching the owner take off the apron he was wearing and head outside, Vlad pointed behind him with his thumb and spoke.

"I hate people glaring at my back most of all."

"I'll tell them to be careful."

Taking the glass the owner had set out, Vlad glanced back.

Men with their hands tucked into their bulging coats.

They were grim men who looked as if they might pull knives from inside their coats at any moment, but Vlad smiled and tilted his glass toward them.

"It feels strangely like home."

What he had ordered was brandy, but what came out was an unknown liquid mixed with cheap rum.

Yet even that liquor's harshness was familiar to Vlad, and he tossed it back in one gulp as if nothing were wrong, then grimaced.

"This time, it's the sea."

With no owner present and the customers silent, Vlad, who had been given a moment entirely to himself inside the tavern, took a sheet of paper from inside his clothes and looked at it.

On the shoddily drawn picture, as if a child had drawn it, there was a single golden light that drew the eye.

* * *

"What is this?"

"A revelation."

One night after leaving Sturma.

Varadis approached through the campfire they had lit to make camp.

"The Divine Maiden sent it. In fact, you could say I came all this way to deliver this."

Varadis, who had come out into the world to find traces of Mother World Tree, had decided to join the party that was said to be heading to the dwarves' island.

That was because the West, where the party was headed, was the very place where Mother World Tree had once stood, and Joseph, who was leaving in search of an opportunity, had no reason to refuse the elves either.

"I see. Thank you."

Though Vlad said he was grateful, there was an indescribable hesitation in the hand he stretched toward the picture.

"... It seems her drawing skills still haven't improved." "Her consistency is that child's charm."

A revelation the Divine Maiden of the World Tree was giving to the knight who had saved the World Tree.

But unlike the grand cause with which it had been handed over, the picture in his hand was merely crooked and uneven, as if a child had drawn it.

"What is this? Why is everything around it so black?"

"The sea."

"Then what is this floating here? A log?"

"A ship."

"..."

It was so terrible that he was now embarrassed to keep asking, and yet there was still one light he thought he could recognize.

A single point shining atop the brown lump that the Divine Maiden of the World Tree insisted was a ship.

Though there was no human shape at all, Vlad narrowed his eyes at that color that was far too familiar.

"Could this be me?"

"As expected, you recognized it at a glance."

Varadis, a little excited that someone had recognized the picture his younger sister had drawn, smiled and nodded.

"A knight lighting a fire atop a ship drifting over the sea..."

Nibelun, who had somehow pressed close beside him, was looking at the picture as he spoke in a low voice.

Judging by his sparkling eyes, the revelation said to have been sent by the Divine Maiden seemed to have greatly piqued his interest.

"This is the first time I have seen a revelation this clear. I do not know who they are, but the prophet's level is truly noble."

"Clear? This is?"

Though he had not been given permission, Nibelun had somehow already taken a magnifying glass from his backpack and was examining every corner of the picture, exclaiming in admiration again and again.

At the sight of him handling it so carefully, as if it were a masterpiece, Vlad could not help clicking his tongue.

"... To pinpoint a gap in time this clearly. I would very much like to visit the forest of the elves one day."

"If you are with Sir Vlad."

"I truly want to go at least once. Let us go together. Please."

At Varadis's words that he had to be with Vlad, Nibelun clasped both hands together as though begging.

The beastman's distinctive pupils grew wider and rounder, but Vlad was not looking at Nibelun.

"This time, I'm glad."

"About what?"

A light swaying precariously atop the pitch-black sea.

Looking at the color that was clearly meant to depict him, Vlad poked at the crackling campfire.

"Because the person the revelation is pointing to is me."

There had been a canary in the city of Moshiam who had fallen in my place for my sake.

She had been a bird that lit a light through the black night, trying to guide me onto the right path.

Having buried Justia's death deep within his heart, Vlad instead felt relieved that this ominousness was directed entirely at him.

* * *

"Here is the map."

"..."

"And this as well."

The port of Nassau at sunset.

The western sea, now much warmer than when they had left Sturma a month ago, was just beginning to stretch itself awake.

"What is this?"

The secret contact the tavern owner had connected him to was a harbor laborer one might find anywhere.

Burdened with as much baggage as the long years visible on his face, he stood before Vlad while patting his now-bent back.

"It is a conch shell. Rather large, isn't it?"

"What's a conch?"

"... Right, you said you came from the North."

It was an object whose tip curled upward in a strange way.

Looking at the conch shell, which was hard to believe had once been a living creature, Vlad's expression crumpled oddly.

"At any rate, you use that like a horn. You know what a horn is, don't you?"

"Then they'll come?"

At Vlad's question, the nameless old man of the harbor merely shrugged.

"How would I know that?"

"..."

"What I can tell you for certain is that the place marked on the map is thick with fog, and even experienced captains are reluctant to go there. So I can't take responsibility for a ship."

What he held was one unfriendly map and the corpse of something that had once been a conch.

But since these were the only clues that could lead them to the dwarves' island, Vlad had no choice but to nod.

"The ship is fine. We've already found one."

"Then that is fortunate."

Realizing that the meeting was over, the old man laboriously lifted the net bag he had brought and bowed his head.

Until just a moment ago, he had been a contact, but now he looked exactly like a harbor laborer.

Nassau was Bayezid's land, but western customs still remained there.

Helping dwarves there was probably an act that had to be kept hidden.

"Then let us never meet again."

"Here."

Vlad flicked a gold coin to the old man for his trouble, but he shook his head and quietly returned it.

"I have already received my payment from the dwarves."

"..."

Watching the old man shoulder the net bag with difficulty and leave the harbor, Vlad scratched his cheek.

Even if he looked like an insignificant old man, it seemed he had something that could not be replaced with gold.

"The other ships don't want to go..."

After the old man left, Vlad, left alone in the harbor, walked toward the dock.

The western sea now carried even the scent of spring.

In the deepening red sunset, Vlad spotted a familiar silhouette at just the right moment and took out the picture the Divine Maiden had given him.

"Looking at it like this, it does seem a little similar."

At a casual glance, it had only been a brown lump, but seeing them side by side, it did seem to resemble it somewhat.

A mast that rose high compared to its small hull.

And even the white triangular sail fluttering at the very top.

A small ship entering the port of Nassau on the sunset.

Seeing the familiar ship that had departed from Soara, Vlad waved his hand high.

"Over here, Haven!"

Dwarf Liberation Front Nidavellir.

The ship that would carry the party there was the Red-Haired Zemina, steered by Captain Haven.