“Master, what are you going to do now?”
“Good question. I do need to resolve it somehow.”
I answered while chewing on a piece of bread that had only recently been baked.
Somehow, eight days had already passed since we began staying in this village. If I counted from the day that swordsman had been brutally beaten and returned, it had been five.
During those five days, I had to face the ghost swordsman in question three more times.
Just in case, I had left Cassian and Iliana in the village and gone alone, so it hadn’t been especially dangerous.
The first time, I went to check whether he had really restored his body in such a short span of time, and a fight broke out.
The second time, I went to see whether he had truly revived again after all that, and a fight broke out.
By that point, I decided that simply scattering his mana would never be enough to extinguish him, so the third time, I’d meant to hear his story.
After all, no matter what kind of ghost it was, once it resolved all the lingering attachments it held in the present world, it would invariably attain peace.
Though the fact that there was now a case of a ghost still moving around even after only its soul was left made things a little ambiguous.
In any case, it would be better than leaving him as he was and potentially letting some unsuspecting victim come to harm.
There was also the reason that, if such a powerful ghost were to go berserk in some way, who on earth would be able to stop it?
But one problem had arisen.
―――[……Strong one. This, however, is no concern of yours. Leave.]
No matter how much I beat him, no matter how thoroughly I overwhelmed him, even when I bound him with magic and interrogated him, he absolutely refused to open his mouth.
I asked because I at least wanted to know his reason for attacking people, but the only things that came out of him were……
―――[I cannot allow anyone beyond this point.]
―――[No one may enter this place.]
That was all he would say, making the situation frustrating beyond belief.
If he had at least had a living body, I could have driven mana into his brain and read his memories, but a body made of mana merely imitated an outward form, so I couldn’t even do that.
It wasn’t as though there was absolutely no method, but even so, if I entered the deepest layers of his soul and rummaged through his memories, I was afraid of the side effects I might have to deal with, so I gave up.
In the end, that day ended the same way, with me blowing the ghost swordsman away with a storm of mana.
For that reason, I was currently having a hard time figuring out how to resolve this.
If I were traveling alone right now, I wouldn’t have minded spending not just eight days, but eight years on it. But at the moment, I couldn’t do that.
After all, if eight years passed, Cassian and Iliana would practically be adults, and I couldn’t very well leave them rotting in a place like this all that time.
And while it was something that could be resolved slowly, I also had to smash the heads of the black mages who were probably still plotting something down in the southern part of the continent.
“We’ll try for about a month, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll leave.”
“Will that be all right?”
“It won’t feel entirely satisfying, but still, it’s not exactly a road many people use.”
If several people had been dying there every day, I would have tried to see it through no matter what, but it wasn’t that urgent a matter.
“And it won’t be too late even after I let you two become independent. I can come back and look into it then.”
I didn’t know how many years later that would be. But at least to me, it could be called a short amount of time.
“……Inde… pendent? Teacher, you’re leaving……?”
Iliana, beside me, clutched my hand tightly and looked up at me. Come to think of it, had I never told Iliana?
Whenever I decided the time had come, I would let my disciples leave my side.
It wasn’t as though I could stay attached to them forever, and if I remained by their side the whole time, they wouldn’t be able to grow on their own.
And if I had to be precise, there had been more cases where they fell in love with someone and got married than cases where I acknowledged them and sent them off myself……
I gently stroked Iliana’s hair and said,
“Well, that’s still more than ten years away. Let’s think about it when the time comes.”
“Yes……”
“Right. In any case, starting tomorrow, let’s investigate while asking the people in the village.”
◇
Day 10.
I went to see the ghost swordsman, who had revived yet again, and tried to draw out some information from him somehow, but failed spectacularly.
The investigation in the village produced almost no results.
If possible, I wanted to ask someone like the village chief, but I heard that everyone had left due to negotiations with a neighboring city and would not be returning for some time.
All I heard from the villagers was that there was an incredibly strong and terrifying ghost, so we should avoid using that road if at all possible.
●
Day 16.
I fought the ghost swordsman for the seventh time.
This time, he launched a preemptive attack before I could even ask anything.
It seemed to be his way of expressing that, no matter what I did, he had not a single proper word to say in response to my questions.
Naturally, I dealt with the remaining ghost swordsman cleanly and reduced him back to only a soul.
There was still no progress in the village.
If anything, rumors began to spread that we were annoying brats who kept prying into things, though no one knew what we were so curious about.
It would have been wonderful if there had been something like a library where books recording the village’s history were gathered, but there was no way a village like this would have such a thing.
Just in case, I also visited the church several times, but the only books they had were a few copies of scripture.
●
Day 23.
Only two days remained until the time limit of one month.
And as it happened, the village chief and the delegation who had left for the neighboring city to the south had returned yesterday, so I decided to go see them.
If this also turned out to be a wasted trip, then I would have no choice but to come back later and try to resolve it then.
◇
Though called the village chief, she wasn’t so much the leader of the village as someone with the title of its representative.
In terms of status, she wasn’t a noble, but simply the same as any ordinary neighbor. She merely had a stronger voice within the village.
Perhaps it could be called a primitive form of democracy.
The village chief’s house we visited made that abundantly clear.
It was not extravagantly decorated, nor was it markedly larger than the other houses. It was simply an ordinary home.
The villagers passing by looked at us with gazes that said, “It’s those kids again,” but I paid them no mind and knocked on the door.
―――Knock, knock.
“Come in.”
The voice that answered sounded like that of a rather elderly grandmother.
When I slowly opened the door and entered, a neatly arranged interior revealed itself.
Inside the house, there was only one elderly woman resting in a wooden chair. If there was anything unusual, it was that a bookshelf stood against one wall of the house.
And it was filled with books in fairly good condition.
“So it’s you, is it? The children who’ve been stirring up the village lately.”
She smiled quietly and rose from her seat. Then she took three cups from the cupboard, filled them with water, and offered them to us.
“There’s nothing else, and water is all I can serve, but if you don’t mind, drink this at least.”
When I tried it, it really was plain water with absolutely nothing else in it.
Each of us sat in a chair and sipped the water in our cups.
Cassian and Iliana seemed to be leaving it to me to speak, and the village chief waited with a faint smile, as if telling me to go ahead.
I silently drank my water, then when the silence began to grow awkward, I opened my mouth and asked,
“Do you know how long that ghost on the hill over there has been there?”
“Yes, just as I heard. They said you’ve been going around asking when the ghost first appeared and whether anyone knows anything about it. What are you planning to do with that knowledge?”
“We might be able to resolve it. Help him attain peace, for instance.”
At my answer, the village chief’s eyes widened. Then she lowered her head slightly and covered her mouth with her hand, letting out a small laugh.
“Yes, I suppose that could happen. It has been a long time since I heard something so amusing.”
Even without asking in detail, she seemed to think I was simply making the sort of boast children often made.
“But I do not know the details either. It is only that when I was young, my grandmother told me she had heard, ‘That is where the grave of our ancestor lies.’”
She slowly got up and walked over to the bookshelf. Then she gently swept her hand across the books.
“These books at the very top were left behind by that ancestor. Isn’t it strange that they remain this clean despite being so old?”
Then she took one of them out, opened it to a random page somewhere in the middle, and showed it to us.
“But look. Unfortunately, we cannot read them. I know the ghost is connected to our ancestor, but beyond that, I know nothing.”
I approached the village chief and scanned the page she had opened over her shoulder.
It seemed to be written in the language of the Delberg Kingdom, which had held considerable power around this region some five hundred years ago.
There were a few unfamiliar expressions, but I had no trouble reading it.
“Excuse me. May I read those books for a bit?”
The village chief slowly looked down at me, then spoke with the benevolent smile of a grandmother indulging a child’s game.
“I suppose it can’t be helped. Read as much as you like. But you mustn’t tear them.”
“Thank you.”
Now that I had permission, I reached for the book at the very top, farthest to the left, which looked like the first volume…… and failed.
I stood on tiptoe and stretched my arm as far as I could, but my fingers only barely brushed the book.
Just as I was about to take it down with magic, Cassian smiled unpleasantly behind me, raised his hand, and took the book down in my place.
“How’s that?”
“……Well done.”
Feeling a strange sense of defeat, I lightly brushed the dust from the cover.
《On the Lost Kingdom - Eibel Ehil Clanter》
It was an extremely novel-like title.
And Clanter was an extremely familiar surname.
I definitely remembered one of my disciples, long ago, falling in love with someone who had that surname and running away with them.
Thinking that, I turned the cover of the book and began reading.