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— “Hey! Were they there?”
“No, not at all! I don’t see them over there.”
“They’re not over here either! There’s no sign of them!”
The imperial court had suddenly become noisy, with guards rushing here and there.
“…Yes! What’s going on?
“Hee!”
Under these circumstances, Emperor Sieg, who was surrounded by a large number of guards in his office, shouted at the middle-aged man who had come to report the circumstances.
“What was the person in charge of the imprisonment centre doing, wasn’t he supposed to be patrolling his room at least a few times a day? Why couldn’t he have prevented the escape before it happened!”
“Well… Your Majesty, it seems that all the guards were stunned by someone from the outside. The cages in the imprisonment chambers were also pried open by force.”
“Outside, eh? Who were they, assassins from the kingdom?”
“N-no, Your Majesty, it was probably someone from inside the Empire…”
“… insiders? Spies?”
“No, I don’t think it’s a spy.”
“What are you saying, you’ve been so brusque since a while ago. If you have something to say, why don’t you say it clearly!”
“Hee!”
The emperor’s yell makes the secretary man’s shoulders jump up again. With a large drop of cold sweat on his broad forehead, he opens his mouth gingerly.
“That’s the thing, please don’t get angry and listen to me…”
“Just tell me quickly!”
“In short, it seems that this is the work of one of the Seven Warriors that Your Majesties summoned before…”
“…what?”
The air freezes with a snap. The guards behind Emperor Sieg shrugged their heads as if to say ‘Oh dear’ or ‘Not again’, and then they suddenly put their swords in Sieg’s hands. Immediately afterwards.
“Why are the seven warriors who have nothing to do with me releasing my foolish sister Gumai──[Danza]?”
With the loudest yell of the day, Sieg swung his sword at the secretary.
“Ahh?”
The secretary spurted fresh blood from his shoulder.
“Ah… I told you not to be angry…”
With that, he trailed off.
“Huh, huh… hmm…”
Sieg said, trying to catch his breath.
“Hey, go and get someone to replace the secretary. And Agranis, too.”
“You wanted to see me, Your Majesty?”
“… you’re here.”
Agranis was somehow waiting in the corner of Sieg’s office. She looked up and said.
“Leave it to me to arrange for a secretary.”
Agranis snapped her fingers, and a flimsy, human-shaped paper doll slid out of her pocket and out of the office.
“And there’s one more thing to report from my side.”
“What? I don’t want any more bad news, do you?”
“Rest assured, Your Majesty.”
Agranis smiled, the edges of her mouth twisting into a smile.
“I think we’re about to find a shortcut to the [Holy Sword]. I have found a promising collaborator among the Seven Warriors.”
“…Huh?”
The Emperor raises one eyebrow quizzically.
“What do you mean? I thought we were still supposed to keep them in the dark about the [Holy Sword].”
“Yes, Your Majesty. They asked me about it, from the other side.”
“?” What?
“I will tell you where the sword you seek is, how to get to it, everything.”
“You sound like an unworldly god.”
“Or perhaps I am.”
“What?”
Agranis responds with an enigmatic smile. Emperor Sieg decided to let it slide, assuming it was a joke of sorts.
“A shortcut, you say. How much can you shorten it?”
“About ten days, is what I heard.”
“Ten days? That’s a bluff!”
“I had my doubts too, and I’ve been accompanying him for a while now, but I can assure you… he was telling the truth.”
Sieg gulped and said, “No, no, it can’t be. How is that possible?” He puts his hand to his chin and thinks deeply.
“…Agranis. What was our assumption? How long did it take to obtain the Holy Sword?”
“We assumed about seven months, implementing the power of the Seven Warriors and fighting against the kingdom… about seven months.”
“Right? And you think it will be done in ten days? You’re going to send in the entire Imperial Guard?”
“No, he said, ‘I only need myself and a staff warrior’.”
“Just the two, you say…? What about [the gatekeeper of the Hell Valley]? What about the fight against the [Water Demon of the Sleeping Forest]? According to the soldiers who risked their lives to bring back the results of the ‘appraisal’, there are monsters of over 60 levels waiting for us, you know?”
“They said that we should ‘dodge’ them…”
“Dodge…?”
“Your Majesty, you should see this.”
Agranis opened the door to the office, and three guards brought in a large sealed wooden box. They then placed it in front of the emperor’s eyes.
“‘Unlock’.”
Agranis chanted a single word. The lid of the crate was opened with a clattering sound. Inside was a large, black scale.
“Your Majesty, these are the scales of the [black dragon].”
“Wha…? That’s ridiculous, this can’t be true…?”
“Your Majesty, I went there together to obtain this.”
Sieg gulps heavily and gasps, “Nonsense…”
“What did you do with Cerberus the Watchtower?”
“We lost. He was right, there was a way. A path in the wall that I could pass through without having to fight Cerberus.”
“A path in the wall, huh…?”
“He said it was, ‘There’s one here too, a coordinate bug. He said, ‘I can go through the wall.'”
“Coordinates, bug…? Wall-slipping…?”
“I have no idea what that means, not at all… But if we move as he says, we can probably get the [key item] we need to get the Holy Sword just by his actions.”
Sieg held his brows as if troubled.
“It’s too, too much, too unexpected…? Too far-fetched.”
“But as you can see, it’s true, and it will shorten our plans considerably.”
“Mm…”
Sieg nodded, looking down at the dragon scales in front of him.
“Agranis, you’re not in a hurry, are you?”
He turns a suspicious glance towards Agranis.
“I know what you want. I also know why you serve the Empire. But any plan that involves uncertainty risks both you and me going down together. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
Respectfully, Agranis bows her head.
“All of this will only happen after we fulfil Your Majesty’s wish, the unification of the continent. And for that, we need to reduce the losses in the war against the Kingdom as much as possible – a seven-month war is too long, as Your Majesty said in the planning stages.”
“Yes, that’s true, but…”
“As long as we can obtain the Holy Sword, the damage will be minimal. We would be able to invade the kingdom immediately and then quickly prepare for the rest of the world. As Your Majesty likes to say, ‘its speed is as swift as the wind’ and ‘its invasion is as fierce as fire’.”
“…Hmm, come to think of it, I’ve heard those words from you.”
“Hmph, I also only borrowed the words that [Master] said a hundred years ago.”
Sieg looks back at Agranis, as if deciding.
“Alright. Let’s let these seven warriors talk.”
He replied with pride, “I’m not going to give up the initiative. I’m going to use them.
“And what are the names of these seven warriors?”
“‘Mamoru Hayashida’, Your Majesty.”
“…Hm? I don’t think there was ever a warrior with that name…”
“Apparently, he used a false name from the beginning. I asked him about the reason for that, but he brushed it off.”
“…I’ll have to confirm the truth of that in due course. But for the time being, good. So, what kind of warrior is this ‘Mamoru Hayashida’?”
“Yes, he is…”
Knock! Knock!
At that moment, a knocking was heard on the door of the office.
“Come in.”
Sieg said, and the door was opened fearfully. Then, the face of a middle-aged man peeked in timidly from between them.
“Excuse me, Your Majesty. I’ve been summoned here by Master Agranis’ paper doll…”
It was the emperor’s stock secretary.
“You are the next secretary to me?”
“Ehh! Y-yes…”
He screamed when he saw his predecessor bleeding and dying near the entrance to the room.
“Ah, that’s it. That’s unnecessary rubbish now. Your first job is to clean it up.”
“Ha, ha, yes!”
“Rejoice, you are my 30th secretary. It’s a good end. At best, you’ll do your best to live a long life.”
The secretary shrieked at Emperor Sieg’s cruel smile.