#223
Kalkos Tribal Alliance (1)
“Hmm, the prognosis is very good. Your body is quite well trained, so I expected as much to some extent, but your recovery speed is beyond what I imagined. Are you experiencing any other discomfort?”
“Mm... No. Everywhere else is fine. If anything, I feel stronger than before. Hahaha!”
The imperial hospital, located on the outskirts of the imperial palace of the Azerion Empire.
An elderly gentleman in a white gown—the director of the imperial hospital—nodded as he looked over a tablet-shaped magic tool where all sorts of figures floated in a dizzying array.
“It is likely not just your imagination. We used all manner of rare ingredients, including a manticore’s detoxification gland and infisilene flowers, so it is only natural.”
“Oh, I see. I’m grateful for that! Then when can I be discharged?”
“Hmm— For now, I think it would be best to keep observing the condition of your eye and arm for a few more days. They appear stable at the moment, but problems may arise later.”
After answering his question calmly, the hospital director asked a few more things, then put away the magic tool he had been operating, gave him a slight bow, and withdrew.
“That should be enough for today. A nurse is waiting outside the door, so if you need anything, please call at any time. Then, I will take my leave.”
After the hospital director departed with that farewell, Hesperon, left alone, swept his eyes over the luxurious hospital room and then glanced down at his right arm.
“The treatment is a little burdensome... Well, I suppose it’s understandable.”
Bandages engraved with all sorts of runic characters wrapped around him from his fingertips to the middle of his upper arm.
This was the price he had paid for excessively abusing Hans’s special black magic tool.
The curse that had spread through his body had somehow been removed, but his right arm alone had mutated under a vicious curse down to each and every cell, and he had been diagnosed as having no option other than amputation for the time being.
Along with the opinion that, if things went wrong, the curse might flow backward and resume its erosion.
‘There’s no need to go that far.’
Just two days ago, when he had regained consciousness about three days after the attack on the imperial princess, a system message had appeared before him.
《The individual has gained enlightenment through repeated training. Skill “Curse Resistance” acquired.》
By facing a curse beyond his limits and overcoming it, he had acquired a related skill.
Of course, if he got careless relying on a single resistance skill, he could be in for a painful lesson, but with the sealing effect of these bandages added on top, there should be no cause for concern.
‘It’s a little frustrating not being able to see out of one eye. They said an ordinary transplant wouldn’t even come close, right? I wondered if Hans might have some way...’
He stroked the black eye patch embroidered with gold thread that covered his right eye and let out a sigh.
‘...What kind of mess is this?’
Even when he had first woken up and grasped the situation, he had been so dumbfounded that he had been at a loss for words, and now that he had checked again, he was just as flustered.
‘Leaving aside the fact that Harris and Harley have lost it, Hans is the biggest problem. No, I can roughly understand what he’s aiming for...’
If he could steal the board that the bastards from the Heaven-Defying Oath had laid out, good. Even if he could not, he could interfere with them while sucking up as much karma as possible, and in the process, it would also provide a pretext for Harley and the rest of the Hero’s party to intervene in the south.
It was an exceedingly rational and clear move.
The only problem was that the process felt extremely unpleasant.
“Ah! I don’t know! It’ll work out somehow.”
In the end, Hesperon gave up thinking deeply and buried himself in the soft bed.
After all, even if he agonized over it here, it was not as though he could have much influence on the avatars far away.
‘They all have such strong personalities, after all. What I can do right now is...’
His gaze, as he lay on the bed, turned toward the old-fashioned books placed on the table beside him.
Gifts prepared for him to ease his boring hospital stay.
Every single one was a magic book owned by the imperial palace’s Magic Tower, books that only affiliated mages could read and that, under normal circumstances, could not even be taken outside.
Naturally, they were not things that should be in a place like this, but the person who had brought them to him was...
Knock, knock—
“Excuse me, Lord Hesperon. Her Imperial Highness Princess Riley Carte Azerion has come to visit.”
It was Princess Riley, who made sure to visit him once a day despite being in the midst of an extremely busy period.
Immediately after the nurse outside the door knocked, she stepped carefully into the hospital room and smiled brightly at Hesperon.
In her arms, she was holding a new stack of books.
“Heron, how are you feeling today? I heard your recovery is going smoothly.”
Having left her attendants waiting outside, she came in alone, closed the door, placed the magic books on the table, and asked after him.
“There’s nothing more to recover from! I feel like I could be discharged right away, but they’re keeping me here out of excessive caution.”
“Still, do as the hospital director says. In this field, he is the best on the continent.”
“Well, it’s not like I can’t wait a few more days, so it’s fine.”
He shrugged lightly and began sorting out the books he had already read, then, struck by a sudden thought, picked up one volume, waved it, and asked her in return.
“But Riley. Is it really all right for you to bring me these magic books like this? I’m grateful, of course, but I feel like the mages wouldn’t like it. Won’t it become a problem?”
Mages—especially imperial mages—were hardly the sort of people one could treat lightly.
At a time when she was just solidifying her position as successor, making enemies of them would not be particularly helpful to her either.
“Ah, that’s all right. Especially at a time like this. Of course, the tower master has already given permission as well.”
She spoke with a gentle smile, but her words contained a frightening meaning.
Among the rebels who had targeted Riley were mages affiliated with the imperial palace’s Magic Tower.
Naturally, it was obvious that a considerable number of those who had sympathized with them still remained within the Magic Tower.
While her furious purge was already sending bloody winds through the place, the imperial princess herself was saying she wished to borrow a few books for the benefactor who had saved her life—who would be bold enough to object to that?
Unless they were truly forbidden books that just anyone could not see, they were merely ordinary books that anyone affiliated with the Magic Tower could read.
‘Mm... Well, she’s smart, so I’m sure she’ll handle it well.’
At that, Hesperon simply nodded in acceptance.
If she herself said it was fine, then it should be fine.
“Ah, right! Since Heron woke up, Sister Sea asked me to pass along her regards. She said she wanted to come in person this time, since she couldn’t come when the incident happened, but she’s sorry because circumstances absolutely won’t allow it right now.”
Even as she relayed the message, Riley pouted her lips with a regretful expression, as if grumbling.
Outside this hospital room, she was the iron-blooded imperial princess who brought the bitter north wind and snow with her wherever she went, but right now she only looked like a cute girl her age.
‘...Mm, I think I know what’s keeping her busy.’
But he could not bring himself to meet her eyes and had no choice but to quietly turn his gaze away.
After all, he was part of the same group as the people who were playing a major role... no, taking up the majority of the reasons behind Isea’s busy schedule.
Hans, Heinrich, and Harley.
She was merely one of the victims caught up in their wild, chaotic, utterly insane party.
Together with the other members of the Hero’s party, who had just crossed the desert and arrived at the southern Tribal Alliance.
***
“Haa, how did I end up all the way here again?”
Isea let out a sigh as she looked over the vast expanse of wasteland.
Since something major had recently happened in the empire, she had planned to make time, even if only briefly, to stop by the imperial palace, but because of the matter that had suddenly erupted this time, that plan had gone up in smoke.
When Harley had first acted on impulse, she had thought it would end as a simple happening, but then Heinrich’s “prophecy” followed, and it had become such a serious matter that she could not possibly excuse herself.
‘The great chieftain of the Tribal Alliance has become a puppet of the Undying King and is brainwashing the other chieftains to prepare for war against the continent...?’
It was true that the sudden declaration of severing diplomatic relations had been suspicious.
At the summit, the southern representative had shown no sign of anything like that, and the discussions exchanged between them had concluded quite reasonably.
To think that such a reason had been hidden behind it...
‘The fact that things have progressed this far means the situation is more dangerous than I expected.’
She had found the south’s movements unsettling, but in an alliance system where the agreement of each chieftain was necessary, she had let her guard down, thinking they would not start an irrational war at a time like this.
No suspicious noise had been detected during the course of discussions either.
‘But if the Undying King is involved, it makes sense. To think he was preparing for a war starting from the south behind the scenes, while distracting the continent’s attention with undead and giants.’
Certainly, with this method, he had not broken his wager with the saint either.
Whatever trickery he had done behind the scenes, in the end, the ones who would be starting the war were the humans of the Kalkos Tribal Alliance.
‘Wait, I heard the situation in the republic has been unstable lately too. Surely the Undying King hasn’t had a hand there as well?’
Now that things had turned out this way, everything seemed suspicious.
To the point that even the recent assassination attempt on Princess Riley seemed as though it might have been part of his schemes.
‘...It isn’t really, is it?’
In any case, that was why the Hero’s party, having conveyed this “prophecy” to the Great Temple and urged preparations for war, had hurried to the south.
They would leave preparations for what came after to others and focus solely on the task that only they could accomplish.
It was the grave mission of eliminating the mastermind behind the incident in advance, so that the war would never occur in the first place.
‘With only the six of us, no less.’
She glanced aside and looked back at the rest of the party.
“The Continental Alliance will begin preparations for now, but if things really break out, it will be disastrous. Before that happens, somehow...”
“Do not worry. The Lord God will illuminate the path ahead of us. So first...”
Saintess Liesta and Saint Heinrich, conversing with serious expressions.
“The Undying King is here...”
The spear knight Geos, glaring beyond the wasteland with blazing eyes.
“This is my first time seeing such barren land. How fascinating. Personally, I do not particularly like this environment, but since the power of the fire spirit, my main force, is strengthened here, it should not be bad for fighting.”
The high elf Lydia, looking around with curiosity and taking deep breaths.
“Hooh—? So this is the south.”
And even the barbarian warrior Harley, whose eyes gleamed as he looked at the desert spread out beyond, as if he found everything so fascinating.
‘At least every one of them is worth more than a hundred soldiers... but the opponent is the Undying King and a ruler backed by a nation.’
A sigh escaped her without her realizing it, but thinking about it carefully, the Hero’s party’s traditional main duty had never been to take the vanguard on the battlefield. It had always been this.
They had simply forgotten their original role while running around frantically in response to the invasion of the Undying Army.
Infiltration behind enemy lines, assassination of key figures, sabotage of strategic material production facilities and important strongholds...
Even the death squad that had been the predecessor of their “Special Mobile Strike Force Against the Undying King” had acted in the same way, so there was no point complaining about it now.
“Wahahaha! I was thinking I might have to cross the desert by running, but we got here more comfortably than I expected! Magic really is amazing! Mm-hmm!”
While she was groaning inwardly, trying to come up with countermeasures for what lay ahead.
Unlike her, who was sunk in worry, the barbarian warrior of the party burst into a hearty laugh with an attitude that showed not even the tiniest speck of concern.
“Haa, Mr. Harley. This isn’t the time to laugh so carefree. We did make it to the south, but the real work starts now.”
They had crossed the desert and arrived here based on the southern coordinates they already knew, but Kalkos was so closed-off, and tribal movements were so frequent, that even pinpointing the exact location of their target would not be easy.
While they wasted time like that, information about them would naturally reach the great chieftain’s ears, and then their plan to eliminate him as quickly as possible would fall apart.
‘In the worst case, we might end up fighting the entire Tribal Alliance without even catching a glimpse of the great chieftain.’
If he only ran away while feeding his subordinate tribes into the grinder, they might end up exhausted after repeating meaningless battles.
“Huh? What’s the problem? It’s simple, isn’t it?”
Of course, it was impossible to imagine that man, who was like an iron tower, collapsing from exhaustion.
Isea looked at Harley, wondering if there was some unexpected brilliant plan behind his unconcerned attitude, but...
“We charge into their stronghold! Fight the bastards who block our path! Smash everything that gets in our way! And beat the great chieftain to death! What problem could be easier than that? Wahaha!”
“Ah... Yes... I suppose that’s true...”
She had wondered, but as expected, it was exactly what she thought.
In truth, she had not expected much, so her disappointment was not great either.
“Do not worry. We already know where we must go.”
At that moment, the party’s leader, the Hero, approached her and spoke in his usual reliable manner.
Then he looked toward a certain direction in the desert and, with an oddly sunken air, continued as if chewing out the words.
“The desert city in that direction, Beorsen—. That is our objective.”
“...Is the great chieftain there?”
“Yes. Along with...”
Heinrich’s face had hardened stiffly.
His words, briefly cut off, continued slowly before too long.
“The Undying King Han...nibal Strauss as well.”
***
Beorsen, the base city of Great Chieftain Balteon.
[...So they come in the end. Yes, that is not bad either. Khehehe—.]
Inside the largest building at its center, a being shrouded in endless darkness looked in one direction and let out a low laugh.
Anticipating the reunion that would take place after so long.