Chapter 48 - The Count's Knights (2)

Out in the castle corridor, Ilea chuckled as she left the office.

"Those knights looked rather flustered."

Yohan nodded.

"Of course. No one's ever treated them like that before."

Just moments ago, Yohan had treated House Staviana's knights as though they did not exist. He had not even glanced at them, showing nothing but blatant disregard.

He had trampled on the highest authority in the kingdom. A mere bastard from a minor house, no less.

The knights could hardly help being taken aback.

Ilea spoke.

"That must have wounded their pride. Won't they come running after us?"

Yohan gave a wry chuckle and looked back.

"You were right."

The two knights burst out of the office. One still had not removed his visor.

"Wait!"

He came stomping down the corridor and stopped before Yohan.

Yohan spoke, his face expressionless.

"I believe I told you I was busy?"

"As I said, Count Staviana sent us."

The eagle insignia gleamed on the knight's chest.

"Then your every action must reflect the Count's wishes."

Yohan met the knight's eyes through the bars of his visor. The moment their gazes crossed, the knight's aggression began to ebb.

"W-well..."

The Great Saint's eyes were stirring strange feelings within the knight.

"Not content with barging into another house's lord's office wearing a sword, you refuse to disarm even while speaking with us. These outrages go well beyond mere discourtesy. Are you saying the Count ordered all of them?"

Pressed in that calm tone, the knight could not utter a word.

Yohan added, his expression grave,

"Unless the Count wishes for war... well, I can find no explanation for your conduct."

However powerful House Staviana might be, House Miyatro was also one of the kingdom's venerable noble houses. They owed each other a minimum of courtesy.

The knight had disregarded that boundary. He had probably acted with the Count's tacit approval.

'Just like in the original novel.'

Throw his authority around to take the measure of an opponent. That was Count Staviana's method.

It seemed childish at first glance, but its effectiveness was hard to deny. In the original novel, Grian had indeed buckled under the Count's pressure and made his younger brother Kril his heir.

Knowing how that had played out, Yohan had no intention of indulging these petty games.

Once he openly expressed his displeasure, the knight stopped taking such a hard line.

Staviana's authority held no sway over Yohan. Of course, the Count had measures for dealing with such people, too.

"Allow me to apologize on Kembel's behalf."

The other knight approached Yohan and bowed his head. He had removed his visor and disarmed.

"And who are you, sir?"

"My name is Maira Beriel. I serve House Staviana."

He was a handsome knight who looked to be in his mid-thirties.

"Yohan Miyatro."

"I've heard much about you, sir. You are every bit as spirited as they say. I hear you recently answered the Church's summons and traveled all the way to the southwestern quarantine zone? You truly are an example to the nobility. To have shown such discourtesy to a man like you... I offer my apologies once again."

The southwestern quarantine zone meant the site of Kaiaze's manifestation. Barely a few days had passed since Yohan left the sealing array, yet word had already reached the Count.

As expected, the Count's eyes and ears spanned the entire kingdom, and they were watching Yohan.

'... I'd better start being careful.'

Unease crept over him. The knight had likely brought up the quarantine zone to put precisely this sort of pressure on him.

Yohan spoke.

"Enough apologies. Just state your business briefly."

"Please spare us a little time. It may be a somewhat lengthy discussion."

"I'm sorry, but I'm busy at the moment."

Yohan had no intention of yielding to their rudeness. They were not invited guests, merely unwelcome visitors who had arrived without so much as a message beforehand.

Their host was perfectly entitled to turn them away if it did not suit him to receive them.

"... Is that so? Then we will wait until your business is finished."

Yohan clicked his tongue and looked at Gaf, who stood waiting with an impassive face, leaning against the office door.

"Gaf, show our guests to the reception room. I'll see them as soon as I'm finished."

Gaf nodded.

"As you command."

Yohan would have liked to throw them out, but he could not bring himself to do it. Even if Staviana crossed the line, Miyatro had to stay within it.

Such was the logic of power. Justification and justice were ultimately nothing but empty trappings.

'And I do need to hear what they want.'

What business had prompted the Count to send not one knight, but two? For now, it was difficult to discern his exact intentions.

Maira spoke.

"Take your time finishing your business. We will be quite content to wait."

"Then I'll see you later."

Yohan set off, heading straight for the underground study.

* * *

Ilea, Yohan, and Raguel faced one another around the round table in the center of the underground study.

Yohan spoke.

"This will be our first time going down together."

"So it will. You must be a little disappointed."

"Why?"

"If it weren't for me, you could have kept them all to yourself. Every treasure and relic lying dormant in the forbidden library."

"No, I intended to share them with you from the start."

As long as Ilea existed, Yohan could never keep the forbidden library to himself.

A witch's obsession with the unknown was like a living creature's instinct for survival. As long as she lived, that drive would never falter.

He had merely hoped to put off sharing the forbidden library with her for as long as possible. That hope had now come to nothing.

Since Ilea had found the forbidden library on her own, he had neither grounds to bar her nor reason to regret it.

"If that's true, I'm touched. You really must want to stay with me until the very end. You did say so before, remember?"

Her eyes curved in a playful smile.

"I did?"

"I'll be hurt if you don't remember. You said it right here, too."

Yohan did remember, but for some reason he did not want to admit it.

"You certainly are useful. I suppose I might have said that."

"Useful? That's cruel. I'm not an object, you know."

The corners of her eyes drooped. She was pretending to be hurt.

Raguel, who had been listening to their conversation, ventured to speak.

"You two have grown much closer. I seem to remember talk of killing each other at first. Haha."

Raguel still remembered the witch and the Demon's first meeting. Threats disguised as persuasion, barbed mockery, smiles concealing their intentions. There had been nothing between them but an uneasy battle of wills.

The tension of that day had all but vanished, leaving scarcely a trace.

Ilea smiled.

"Imagine if things had gone wrong that day. You could search the whole world and find very few subjects as stimulating as Yohan. I can hardly believe I nearly closed off those limitless possibilities with my own hands."

Most of what surrounded Yohan remained shrouded in mystery. As a witch, Ilea could hardly help taking an almost obsessive interest in him.

Yohan gave an incredulous laugh.

"After all that talk about not being an object, you treat me much the same way."

"I can't help it. I'm a witch, after all. Even now, my heart is racing. Today, we might peel back one layer of the veil around you."

They were about to descend into the forbidden library and try approaching the rift above Yohan's head.

What lay within that pitch-black void? Interest flickered in Ilea's eyes.

"The veil..."

Yohan murmured the words. He was just as curious about his own identity. Might touching the rift give him at least one little thread to grasp? He certainly harbored that hope.

As Yohan's mood grew a little subdued, Ilea spoke cautiously.

"... Did I hurt your feelings? There's no need for that. I'm quite fond of you as a person, too."

Yohan frowned slightly.

"Where did that come from?"

"You just seemed a little hurt."

"What on earth gave you that idea?"

He had merely been lost in thought for a moment.

"Well, if you aren't, never mind."

Yohan found it hard to play along with her. The atmosphere grew a little awkward.

Raguel gave an awkward smile.

"A-anyway, you both need to go down to the forbidden library, right?"

Yohan nodded.

"That's right. If you would, Raguel."

As usual, Raguel bit his index finger lightly. Smearing the blood that seeped out onto his palm, he pressed his whole hand firmly against the center of the table.

Biometric authentication. The moment his Miyatro bloodline was verified, the round table blazed with pure-white light.

Yohan and Ilea quickly climbed onto the table. At the same moment, the earth shook.

The table plunged downward, deeper underground.

* * *

An immense hall opened before them. Countless holy relics, arranged in precise rows, poured out holy power without pause.

Had Yohan come in his Demon body, it would have been quite painful, as usual. Now he felt nothing. He was human.

Ilea, on the other hand, looked unwell. Her eyelids trembled, and her lips were turning blue.

She was suffering from the overwhelming holy power. It was an uncharacteristic display of weakness.

"I'll lend you this for now."

Yohan offered her Kazan's corrupted ring.

She weakly extended a finger.

"Put it on for me."

Yohan stared at her in disbelief.

"Do it yourself."

"I don't have the strength."

"Then how did you manage last time—"

Ilea had certainly come down to the forbidden library alone before and brought back the original first chapter of the Book of Doom.

"Hurry. It hurts so much."

Yohan clicked his tongue. After a moment's hesitation, he sighed and slipped the ring onto her index finger.

Only then did color return to Ilea's face. She stroked the ring with a satisfied expression.

"If you're done, hurry up and fetch that item."

To approach the rift, Yohan first had to be able to perceive it. Unfortunately, with his magical capabilities, even perceiving a fragment of a higher dimension was difficult.

They needed a way to break down that barrier, however briefly.

Ilea had found a solution in the forbidden library.

"All right. Wait here a moment."

The item was classified as a treasure rather than a holy relic. Some treasures were extraordinarily dangerous merely by existing, so their handling differed considerably from that of holy relics.

The forbidden library contained separate treasure vaults.

Yohan could not yet enter the higher-level vaults. Some unknown treasure might rob him of his sense of self—or his life.

That did not apply to Ilea. With her current abilities, she could at least enter the vaults of the Fourth Sphere and below. Anything higher would likely be beyond even her.

Fortunately, the item they needed was in the Fifth Sphere vault.

At the far end of the hall, one of the white doors standing in a row opened, then quickly closed.

A short while later, Ilea reappeared with a small, gold-rimmed monocle in her hand.

Even Yohan, who had read the original novel, did not recognize it.

Ilea approached and spoke.

"It's the Telescope of Vain Desire. Apparently, it shows the wearer objects and phenomena they lack the ability to perceive."

"Quite a find."

"I spotted it during my last visit. There really is nothing the forbidden library doesn't have."

"So I just put it on?"

"Wait a moment first. There's something you must hear. When sentient beings encounter phenomena far beyond their own level, they can't maintain their sense of self. In other words, your mind could collapse the moment you perceive the rift through this lens."

It was a rule of this world he knew well.

"I was perfectly fine in the presence of the Apostle Beris and Kaiaze. I doubt simply seeing the rift will cause any trouble."

"I agree. That's why I suggested this approach. But there's one thing you should bear in mind. When you encountered Beris and Kaiaze, you were in a different form from the one you're in now."

He had been in Demon form then.

"My soul is the same."

"True. Normally, the stature of the soul determines a sentient being's worth."

"Then that settles it."

"... Still, we can't be certain. It would be safer to use mind-protection magic as well."

They could not use magic in the forbidden library. Unknown holy relics that reacted to mana and demonic energy might attack them.

Yohan nodded, and the three of them went back up to the underground study.

* * *

As soon as all the preparations were complete, Yohan put on the monocle.

The density of the world he saw changed.