“Is it just the two of us? What about the others…?”
After their brief scuffle, Claire came to her senses and looked around anxiously.
A room black from floor to ceiling. And yet, strangely bright. Within it, there were only Hio and Claire.
“We’ve waited this long and no one’s shown up, so I guess it really is just us two. Why? Are you scared?”
“S-scared? As if! I’m a Royal Knight. The youngest Royal Knight, at that!”
Claire thrust out her chest as if she wasn’t scared in the slightest.
The golden lion emblem engraved on the left side seemed to shine especially brightly.
“But how did you really get into the Royal Knights?”
It was something he’d wanted to ask from the start.
The Royal Knights, said to be an order made up only of the strongest in the Empire.
Of course, rumors were always a little exaggerated. In truth, rather than gathering the absolute strongest, Vitalianus had personally selected and founded the order with people who possessed abundant experience and immense potential.
The problem was that even that was more than enough for them to be called the greatest military force on the continent.
In any case, at Hio’s question, Claire could only shrink in on herself once again.
“Th-that’s…”
How had she gotten in?
She didn’t really know herself.
She had simply stood before Vitalianus, whom she’d met by sheer luck, and confidently said she wanted to join the Royal Knights—only to somehow become one on the spot.
Over the past few months, she had been painfully reminded of just how lacking her experience and skill were.
All the countless expectations and praise she’d built up at the academy had long since crumbled away.
But that didn’t mean she could tell Hio all of that as it was.
That it had all been pure luck. That when others had clawed their way up from the very bottom, she had risen high by luck alone—how could she possibly say that?
And so she hesitated, stammering.
“Well, Vitalianus does have a good eye for talent.”
Hio nodded as if he understood on his own.
“Your talent was praised to the skies not only by me, but by Silbert too.”
Perhaps it was because it had been so long since she’d received praise offered so naturally, with a gentle smile.
Perhaps it was because she heard those words while she had been thinking she had only gotten lucky.
Or perhaps it was simply because Hio was the one who said them.
“It couldn’t have been easy, though. You must have worked hard. That’s amazing.”
Why was her face turning so red over words that really weren’t anything special? Why was her heart pounding so obliviously in her chest?
It was familiar praise, the sort she had heard several times a day back at the academy.
Even when people had showered her with elaborate compliments filled with every flowery phrase imaginable, even when they had confessed their love shyly or boldly, she had never thought much of it.
So what on earth was this feeling, as if a single plain compliment from Hio might send her flying?
“Well, I mean… Something like this is… only natural. Since you sent me to the academy and all, Hio.”
For no reason, she toyed with her hair, then tapped the ground with the tips of her toes, and when she glanced at Hio, he was still looking at her with a smile.
“S-so! I’m not scared!”
For some reason, it was difficult to meet his eyes, so she raised her voice for no reason and walked past Hio toward the gate.
Had he noticed her flushed face?
Was her heartbeat so loud that he could hear it?
“L-let’s hurry inside!”
She quickened her steps toward the black gate.
“You shouldn’t rush like that.”
Hio caught Claire’s hand as she passed by and stopped her in her tracks.
“I’ll go first, so follow me in slowly. Don’t let your guard down.”
As she was gently guided back a step by that hand, what filled Claire’s vision was Hio’s back.
Had Hio always been this tall?
Had the space behind his back always felt this warm and dependable?
Why had she never known before?
And so Claire slowly followed behind Hio as he went ahead.
“We’re going in. You can follow me, right?”
At the gently asked question, she answered with a quiet nod.
“Yeah…”
Behind that answer was no longer the tomboy Claire of Delphir Village, but a girl who had grown quite mature.
* * *
「Entry of Pioneer—‘Hio Pavlenko’ confirmed.」
「Dungeon forming.」
A Breakthrough Floor dungeon would, on average, have about twenty stages.
The moment Hio entered the first of them and felt unfamiliar air brush against his skin, he activated his skill.
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor (雷帝)’ has been activated.」
In most cases, combat began the instant one entered a dungeon on the Breakthrough Floor.
It could be called a dungeon faithful to the concept of “breakthrough.”
That was why he had activated Thunder Emperor, a skill well suited to immediate response in any situation.
「This is a space where skills cannot be activated.」
「You are in a state where skills cannot be activated.」
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor (雷帝)’ has been canceled.」
But confusion came over him at messages he had never seen in his life.
A space and state where skills couldn’t be activated?
Such a place existed?
Even in the Abyss, where he had been dragged so suddenly, he had been able to activate skills.
But for skills to be unusable inside an instance dungeon meant…
‘…For now.’
Now was not the time to think about that. It was time to prepare the next measure.
Even without skills, Hio had magic.
So he swiftly drew up his mana and applied power to his Circles.
Since it had said this was a space where skills could not be activated, summoning the Grim Reapers would be impossible as well.
In that case, he had to use magic carefully too.
After all, Fifth Circle magic consumed a considerable amount of mana.
As he rotated his Circles, focused his mind, and braced himself, his vision gradually began to clear.
And the instant he opened his eyes wide against the sudden flood of bright light—
“This is…”
He immediately understood why he was in a state where skills could not be used.
Why this was a space where skills could not be used.
—Aaaaaaah!
—Get in! Get inside!
Everything packed tightly around him was people.
An endless procession of humans, stretching so far he could not tell where it ended.
All of them were heading toward one place.
If there was anything strange, it was that every single one of them was surging forward while ignoring Hio.
As if they did not perceive his existence at all.
And the people rushing in like that passed straight through Hio.
Beyond simply not perceiving him, they passed through his body as though Hio had truly become a ghost.
The sensation of not being affected by physical force was rather familiar.
“Spirit Form?”
The Spirit Body, one of Hio’s traits.
It felt similar to when he used that.
And yet it was clearly different.
Turning into a ghostly body did not mean he became completely invisible to people.
Even when he activated Spirit Body and rode the Phantom Steed, people could still clearly see Hio.
He had merely borrowed a ghost’s body for a while; he had not become a true ghost.
But the people filling the surroundings now did not perceive Hio at all.
It truly felt as though he had become a ghost.
“Eek! Y-you scared me…”
Claire, who entered a step later, also recoiled in horror at the people running through her body and examined herself.
“What is this…”
Even Hio, who already possessed the Spirit Body trait, found this sensation unfamiliar. How much more so must it be for Claire?
She looked this way and that at her ghostlike body, touched a passing person, stared in wonder as her hand slipped right through, then suddenly came to her senses and looked around.
—Get in! Push your way in!
—We have to get inside!
People were packed tightly in every direction.
All of them were blindly pushing toward one place.
—Waaaah!
—Aaaagh!
—D-don’t push! It’s blocked!
The crying of children.
The screams of those who had fallen. Desperate shouts. All of it mingled together, making the scene resemble a battlefield.
“What… is going on?”
Before entering the Demon Realm, she had heard a thorough explanation.
Hadn’t they said that once they entered the dungeon, monsters would charge at them in droves?
But this phenomenon was something Claire could not even begin to guess at.
“Hio?”
Thinking Hio might know something, she turned to ask him, but Hio’s gaze was fixed on one place, unmoving.
Naturally, Claire’s gaze followed his.
And what she saw was an enormous tower unlike anything she had ever seen in her life.
A single tower, visible clearly despite being so far away in the distance, because of just how enormous it was.
People swarming like a horde of ants.
A strange, translucent barrier blocking them.
And beyond it, a city.
At the center of that city, a tower rising so high it pierced even the clouds.
“What is that…”
As she stared blankly at its majestic form, Hio’s low voice reached her ears.
“…Tetradia.”
This was the ancient city of magic.
They were standing before Tetradia.
* * *
“Let’s go in for now.”
“Okay.”
They moved toward Tetradia, where the towering barrier stood.
Whether they were ghostly bodies or something else, they could walk freely through the air, so they were heading toward Tetradia over the heads of the people.
—Open the gate! Open this thing!
—Please… please open it!
The translucent barrier thoroughly blocked the invasion of the gathered people, while the mages standing beyond it could not meet their eyes, staring up at the sky or down at the ground instead.
“Those people… their clothes are similar to yours, Hio.”
“They’re mages.”
“Huh? Mages?”
“Yes. The ancient mages, who have now vanished.”
“Then… does that mean we’ve come to the past?”
At Claire’s question, Hio shook his head.
“Probably not. What we’re seeing is likely only a memory.”
Perhaps it was connected to the Space of Hardship from before.
Abelard Pavlenko, who had watched the destruction of a wretched king and his kingdom instead of helping Basterion’s migration.
What happened after that.
The only difference from that time was that now, they had to watch as complete bystanders, unable to move directly or change anything.
If anything, that was better.
It meant they could focus solely on the truth from a thousand years ago without having to worry about anything else.
“So watch carefully, Claire.”
A secret history from a thousand years ago, remembered by no one and left behind in no record.
“What we are fighting, and what happened in a past so erased that not even records of it remain.”
The two of them passed over the heads of the clamoring people, passed through the translucent barrier and the mages lined up before it, and entered Tetradia.
The streets of Tetradia felt both familiar and unfamiliar.
Hio had always looked down on the streets from around the hundredth floor of the Mage Tower, but he had never walked through them himself.
This was not the Tetradia of the present, crawling with Abyssal energy and monsters from the middle and later sections, but the city of Tetradia from the past—clean, and bustling with people.
“So… you’re saying the reason magic disappeared wasn’t decline, but loss?”
“And this is the ancient city of magic from a thousand years ago?”
“Wow… this city is incredible.”
As they walked those streets, Hio told Claire various things.
There wasn’t enough time to tell her everything, so he kept it as brief as possible.
He gave her only the key points.
The magical city of Tetradia spread out before their eyes.
Glowing portals appeared here and there, and at regular intervals stood streetlights and mana conduits connected like electrical wires.
Several airships floated slowly in the sky, and above all of it, the Tower of Mages was so magnificent that it was beyond words.
They were seeing such a city with their own eyes.
Seeing that magical spectacle with her eyes while hearing stories of an unbelievable past with her ears, Claire naturally felt as if she had stepped into a mystery.
“Was the Tower of Mages always that big?”
“Then does that mean you’re the last mage, Hio?”
“Why was magic lost?”
“Are those things called the Abyss really that strong? Strong enough to give even you trouble?”
As the story continued, questions difficult to answer poured out.
Tetradia was a city about which even Hio still did not know much.
Perhaps, through this opportunity, he might be able to glimpse some of the secrets of the past.
Thinking so, they arrived at the entrance of the Tower of Mages.
The first floor, which the Mage Tower of the current era had never once permitted Hio to enter. The Lobby of Beginnings.
Would they be able to enter that place?
“Let’s go in.”
“…Okay.”
With the expectation that they might learn Tetradia’s secret, they stepped inside the Mage Tower.
At that moment, their vision went dark.
It felt as though not only their sight but all their senses had been cut off.
It was the same feeling as when the scene changed in the Space of Hardship. As that sensation slowly faded and all their senses, including their vision, returned—
—Listen.
Before Hio and Claire’s eyes, an elderly mage and a middle-aged mage sat facing each other.
Hio did not know who the old mage with a head full of white hair was, but he recognized the identity of the middle-aged mage sitting across from him at once.
Because the green necklace hanging around his neck was terribly familiar.
—Tower Master…!
He was Abelard Pavlenko.
The greatest mage of his time, the head of the great House Pavlenko, and at the same time—
—Are you truly saying that is the best we can do?!
A man who had abandoned a wretched king and his people to death.