by Hiro Ainana
These funds would come from the profits from selling the treasure we’d recovered from the pirates.
The bounties from the pirates went into my Savings folder for my companions.
Once the paperwork was taken care of, I stood up to stretch when Lulu entered with a timid knock.
“Master, you have a visitor.”
A middle-aged man practically shoved past Lulu to enter my room.
“Is it true that His Royal Highness Sabaan is here?!”
This man seemed to be an Ishrallie ambassador.
“Yes, if you mean Sir Sabaish, he is currently resting on that sofa.”
Obvious though it was, I was technically transporting the king of Ishrallie’s messenger Sabaish, so I made a point of using the official story.
However, the ambassador didn’t seem to be paying that any mind.
“Your Highness!”
“Indeed. I do appreciate your coming to greet me.”
Sabaan responded with an equal lack of subtlety.
After speaking with the ambassador about something for a moment, the prince turned toward me.
“Let us go, then, Satou.”
“Where to, exactly?”
I thought I just had to deliver the prince to his keeper here. Was there some other procedure involved?
“I heard from my father. You wish to speak with the king of Lalagi about the ancient Lalakie dynasty, correct? You may bring the knowledgeable girl Father spoke so highly of, as well.”
I see. So this is a surprise reward?
Grateful to Prince Sabaan and the king of Ishrallie, I decided to take them up on the offer.
“It is good to see you after so long, Prince Sabaan.”
“I am glad to see you doing well, Your Highness.”
Rei had been in a trance state for the entire visit, so I covered her mouth as I listened to the king of Lalagi speak with Prince Sabaan.
The grim-faced king looked more like a pirate in the prime of his life.
Unlike the Eastern Roman style of Ishrallie, the popular style in the sweltering Kingdom of Sorcery was largely tropical. Men and women alike had a lot of exposed skin and usually wore layers of thin, semitransparent fabric.
The abundance of crimson clothing was probably due to the widespread use of Lalagi’s native red silk.
“Now then, Prince Sabaan. Will you be introducing the two people behind you?”
“These two are nobles from the Shiga Kingdom who are researching the ancient Lalakie dynasty.”
The king’s frown deepened at the prince’s explanation.
“
“
I didn’t want to argue with the king, so instead I politely introduced myself, matching his use of Hallowed Language.
“
The king’s expression cleared into an amused grin.
Oh, right, I should give him those gifts while I have the chance.
I had heard that the king here gave people titles like Liquor Knight and Liquor Baron for bringing him rare alcohol, so rather than giving him a drinking set or anything, I decided to go directly with some high-grade sake.
Personally, I was more interested in putting him in a good mood so he would tell me about Lalakie than any of those liquor-related titles.
I gave a signal, and the castle servants brought in a wagon with baskets of gifts to present to the king.
“Allow me to thank you for granting me an audience by offering you these.”
“Hmph! No doubt it’s the same old Shigan sake, or Kingsblossom, or White Mountain.”
The king opened the baskets with a rudely dismissive air but then raised his eyebrows.
“Wine, sake with some kind of floating red particles, and…is this amber liquid by chance distilled barley liquor?”
“These are drinks made by the fairy races: fairy wine, Leprechaun Claret, and Spriggan Treasure.”
“Wh-what’s that?! This is the legendary fairy wine, you say?! And these others, too, are so famous that I have only ever heard whispers of their names!”
That went over well.
“Th-then could this little bottle be Treant Drops?!”
“No, that bottle is something else.”
The king’s excitement was tempered ever so slightly by my response.
“O-of course. I suppose it is not even known for sure whether Treant Drops truly exist. What could it be, then? Surely it is no ordinary liquor?”
“Yes, it’s a bottle of something called ‘dragonspring liquor—’”
“Dragonspring liquor?!”
The king interrupted me with a shout.
He looked so wild that I took a step back without thinking.
“Y-you say this is the sake said only to be made by fully grown dragons?! But that is the stuff of legends!”
Ooh, we’ve hit legendary-tier now.
“W-wait just a moment. This is no fraud, is it? Send for my Analyzer! Right away!”
The king of Lalagi had scarcely finished shouting when an elderly man practically tumbled in from the hallway.
One of his vassals must have already called for him.
“Analyze this bottle at once!”
“A-as you wish, Your Highness.”
Trembling a little before the king’s half-mad shouting, the man confirmed that the contents of the bottle were indeed black dragon’s dragonspring liquor.
“How in the world did you acquire such a thing?”
“While I was on a mission to deal with a black dragon along with the Hero of the Saga Empire, we discovered a spring of dragonspring liquor. The spring dried up before long, but Sir Hero kindly shared some of the vials they had drawn from it first.”
I’d actually given the dragonspring liquor from that time to Ga Hou and the other orcs who lived under the old capital, but this was still dragonspring liquor made by the same black dragon, Hei Long, so that seemed like a minor detail.
“I thought surely this must be presented to the King of Lalagi, famed for his love of drink, and so I brought it here as soon as I could, Your Highness.”
Oops. My “Fabrication” skill went a little too wild, carrying me into suck-up territory.
Just to be safe, I showed the king my Ougoch Duchy Dragon Conquering Medal, which seemed to convince him.
“I never imagined I would meet a real dragon conqueror.”
The king of Lalagi looked at me with the eyes of a young boy gazing at a superhero.
I told him that Hayato the Hero was the one who’d defeated the dragon, but the king was too excited about the dragonspring liquor to listen to the details.
“You deserve a higher honor than the title of Liquor Baron. I shall make you a liquor marquis! If you find any more rare liquor such as this, be sure to bring it to me!”
At that, the king’s vassals around us all exclaimed in surprise.
“A liquor marquis? Hasn’t it been more than three hundred years since anyone held that title?”
“But he presented His Highness with three fairy liquors and even the legendary dragonspring liquor. I can understand why the king would say a liquor barony would be insufficient.”
“Indeed! A fitting title!”
“Ah, I wish I could try even a single drop of that dragonspring liquor.”
Even the vassals in this kingdom seemed to be alcoholics.
I had never heard of a liquor marquis, but apparently it was a higher rank than a liquor baron.
Unlike normal nobility, these special titles came with no further duties than to present the king with liquor; in exchange, they did not qualify the holder to participate in the kingdom’s politics and essentially granted little more than the right to enter and leave the royal castle as one pleased, as well as special tax exemptions for trading.
“In fact, even a title alone is an
inadequate reward for such choice liquor. Have you any desires? If you wish to marry a princess, I can offer you one with little inheritance, such as the twenty-sixth princess.”
Um, I’m all set, thanks.
Still, there were at least twenty-six princesses? That was pretty amazing. I had to wonder how many wives he had.
“Then could I perhaps request any information you might have about the ancient Lalakie dynasty?”
Sidestepping the marriage offer, I tried to steer the conversation back toward my main goal.
Prince Sabaan, who was standing beside me looking a bit put out, breathed a sigh of relief.
“Very well, Sir Pendragon. If you wish to hear about Lalakie, I shall be glad to tell you. After all, the kings of Lalagi have handed down the history of Lalakie for generations.”
The cheerful king readily agreed to my request, and we were guided into a separate room, where he told me all about Lalakie.
The only people in the room were the king and me, Rei, a few guards and musicians, and the crown prince of the Kingdom of Sorcery Lalagi.
His role completed, Prince Sabaan excused himself under the pretext that he was tired from his long journey. According to my map information, he was meeting with one of the daughters of the king of Lalagi. Coincidentally enough, it was the twenty-sixth princess who’d just been mentioned earlier.
While I was distracted with such thoughts, the king finished his preparations and began to speak in a solemn tone.
For this, he was using Hallowed Language.
“
Oh, this was farther in the past than I’d expected.
“
This was pretty elitist right from the start, but it only got worse from there.
“
Uh, you’re saying that like it’s this grand thing, but doesn’t that actually mean they destroyed a country that opposed them and colonized their land?
If it weren’t a king telling me this story, I’d have a hard time not butting in.
The king of Lalagi spoke in a grave, clear voice, accompanied by the stately music the musicians provided, but it sounded to me like Lalakie was a pretty crazy nation with the support of the gods.
Besides…
If I remembered right, the Divine Wrath Cannon was the powerful weapon that had easily sliced through the adamantite alloy of the first sunken ship we’d found in the Seadragon Islands.
I doubted even cities and castles protected by a City Core would be safe from that.
“<…but like the ripest of fruit, the golden era would soon fall.>”
Oops. Are we starting a new chapter?
“
The Dogheaded Demon Lord, huh? Now that was a name I’d heard a few times before.
According to a conversation back in Baron Muno’s castle, it was a demon lord so powerful it was also known as an evil god.
The Golden Boar Lord had mentioned the same name when I fought him beneath the Ougoch Duchy, too, and the Skeleton King had shouted something along those lines.
If I kept hearing about this guy, I had a bad feeling that I was going to wind up having to fight the Dogheaded Demon Lord eventually.
“
I guess they didn’t call him a demon lord for nothing. He wasn’t exactly an ally of justice out to save the people from tyranny.
After that little segment, the king described some violent atrocities, but it was so graphic that I tuned the whole thing out. Tales of old should be a little more PG than this, if you ask me.
“
So the creature I beat on the volcanic island was related to the Dogheaded Demon Lord?
Then were the other three types lurking in the Kraken’s Domain where Lalakie sank, by any chance?
This better not be some gamelike mechanic where defeating all four summoned Doghead himself.
The king of Lalagi continued his story for some time, so I’ll summarize: Doghead was defeated by one of the gods, the Flame Lord and Ground Lord were sealed away by the god’s followers, the Sky Lord was chased to the far reaches of the sky by the sky dragons, and…
“
Phew. If that was how it ended, maybe Doghead wouldn’t show up after all.
Still, if Lalakie had to sink in order to seal away the Sea Lord despite having the Divine Wrath Cannon, that meant that even a weapon that could slice through adamantite like butter wasn’t strong enough to defeat the Sea Lord completely…
If I ever ran into this Sea Lord, I would have to hit it with all my attacks at max power, even if it ended up being overkill.
Incidentally, the royal family and other citizens of the Kingdom of Sorcery Lalagi were descendants of the people who had escaped from Lalakie.
“That was wonderfully told, Father.”
“And quite tiring in the telling. Bring me the Water of Life!”
Waving off his son’s high praise, the king had a lady-in-waiting bring something to drink.
Water of Life turned out to be a brand of rum.
Before long, the slightly sweet, alcoholic scent of rum filled the room.
Evidently, the king liked to drink his rum hot.
“How is it, Sir Pendr—?”
The king stopped mid-sentence and sent a lady-in-waiting to fetch some cloth.
Following his gaze, I saw that Rei was sitting next to me in a trance state, tears flooding down her cheeks.
The lady-in-waiting handed me the cloth, so I wiped her tears.
“Satou… I feel…really…sad.”
Her memories didn’t seem to have returned, but the king of Lalagi’s story had stirred something that moved her deeply.
Given Rei’s distressed state, we decided to wrap up for the day, so Rei and I left the king’s room.
On our way out, however, the king had an invitation for me.
“
“
I was so surprised that I responded a little less formally than I should have, but the king didn’t seem to mind.
The Box was probably the Lalakie Box that Baron Jeetbert had mentioned after we rescued him in the Seadragon Islands.
Though I was excited to participate in this secret ceremony, I also had a premonition that something strange might happen there.
Rei had fallen asleep, so I carried her on my back as we walked the halls of the royal castle, sorting through the information I’d gathered so far as I did.
I had learned a lot from the king’s tale, but the most important new information was that the Lalakie of old had been a pretty intense place with the power of the gods backing it and that the “last queen” had helped seal the Sea Lord at the bottom of the ocean.
We already knew that the Skeleton King’s goal was to return Lalakie to the skies and that the three items he needed to
do that were a box, a key, and a Firelight Pearl.
The key was likely Rei’s hair ornament, which left the Coffin and the pearl.
The “box” probably referred to the Lalakie Box here in Lalagi.
It could also be the Coffin that Captain Ghost mentioned, but if I started including clues I didn’t have any further leads on, it would only make it harder to reach a conclusion, so I decided to forget about that for now.
Next, I thought back on the volcanic island where I’d acquired fragments of a Firelight Pearl.
“Come to think of it, if Doghead is an enemy of the Skeleton King, why would he unleash the Flame Lord when it’s related to Doghead?”
The Ishrallie soldiers seemed to think he’d freed the Flame Lord to try to steal Ishrallie’s Dragon Cannons, so maybe the cannons contained Firelight Pearls.
I’d been checking the map periodically, but there was no sign that the Skeleton King was attacking Ishrallie.
Which would mean that as of now, the Skeleton King hasn’t gotten his hands on a single one of the three key items.
If those unmanned ships were indeed the work of the Skeleton King, he would probably attack either Ishrallie or Lalagi.
Between the two, Lalagi was probably more likely, since the Skydea Festival was about to occur there.
So the Skeleton King would most likely go after the Lalakie Box first.
Still, I should probably tell Arisa and the others that Rei’s key was being targeted and that the one she normally wore was actually a fake.
I wouldn’t want any of them to get hurt trying to stop the fake from being stolen, after all.
Next, I took my theorizing a step further.
“If the Skeleton King did steal all three items, what would happen?”
I muttered to myself as I thought.
If the Skeleton King did manage to get Lalakie to fly again, the sealed Sea Lord would be freed, and the Skeleton King would gain control of the floating island Lalakie and its Divine Wrath Cannon, which could cut through even adamantite alloy with ease.
That sounded like a potentially world-ending threat, but neither of them was anything I couldn’t handle.
Having reached this conclusion, I let out a little sigh of relief.
“If it’s in the middle of the ocean, there won’t be any risk of collateral damage, so I should be able to go all out.”