Chapter 81: Royal Notice

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***

Name: Kalender
Age: 17
Occupation: Champion of Reincarnation
Lvl. 15 Human
HP: <ERROR>
MP: 141/141

[Skills]

Available Points: 13

All-Language Fluency (MAX)
Interpersonal Bubble (2/5)

[Companions]

Minimine (Flagged)
Vice-Goddess of Reincarnation
Gratitude: 12

Jyn
Knight of the Champion
Lvl. 13 Human
Devotion: 4,294,967,295
Overprotection: 1
Companion Skills: —

Page Turner
Librarian of Lyrica
Lvl. 8 Human
Companion Skills: —

[Blessings]

[Blessing of Reincarnation: Champion]
…

[Blessing of the ###### God: Like Moths to a Flame]
…

***

What should have been a simple expedition had concluded with the horror and miracle of watching people come back from the dead.

Even Kalender, Jyn, and Page, who had been tired from the fighting, panicked for a good five seconds as they mistakenly thought that the dead recruits had become undead. Such a thing wasn’t unthinkable in the Monster Wall, though the elves would take offense. No way they would use magic in such a cursed way!

Kalender and co. realized it was Minimine’s doing, of course, but they couldn’t just go around telling everyone that that was the case.

The recruits’ valuation of their resurrected comrades upgraded from “undead” to “unalive” once they started speaking, sparking doubts in each of them as to whether this wasn’t actually a miracle. Thus, it ended up that all the resurrected recruits were tied up before being brought back to Harmony.

What met them there was a small procession of Priestesses and Clerics from the Temple of Minimine, and at the head of them was Priestess Tak — having beaten Priestess Cecilia in rock-paper-scissors, earning the right to get out of the temple.

Mostly everyone thought the Priestess and her Clerics were going to slaughter the resurrectees — that’s what the Temple of Minimine was known to do for anything with a faked soul — but the words that came out of Tak’s mischievous lips blew everyone away:

“Minimine did it.”

There were several things that piqued people’s interest there. First, Minimine did it. Second, “Minimine” did it; there was no honorific mention of “Goddess” anywhere, and that was strange.

Had this been a different context, people would’ve nitpicked on the second thing. However, the fact was that the head of a temple had essentially announced the start of a new age, one where the goddesses above and below were finally starting to stir and become interested in the mortal world once again.

Minimine’s followers were known to be fond of their goddess, which helped everyone gloss over the otherwise-rude form of address — especially because now, it was a time of celebration. They cheered, released their comrades from their binds, and cried in each other’s embrace. They were each well and truly alive, and not lost to some dark fate.

This incident, however, couldn’t be ignored, and three weeks of busywork descended upon Harmony’s institutions.

The Company launched further expeditions between then and now, but this time with veterans at the fore. Kalender, Jyn, and Lilia continued to participate in these expeditions, while Page showed up every and now then as part of the Combat Librarianship Study Group, now a formalized program spearheaded by the Research Guild and supported by the Throne itself.

All four continued to show good results.

Jyn and Lilia quickly earned rightful recognition for their combat skills. While Lilia’s growth in her sword skill quickly outpaced Jyn’s, the latter was still the better fighter, overall, demonstrating crazy stunts like bear wrestling a giant mother spider as it attempted to tie up Kalender, or unleashing a crazy magical spell that put so much power into her sword slash that she cut down an entire pack of wolves who’d sneaked up behind Kalender — along with all the trees in the area.

She zeroed out her MP in that moment and cried in Kalender’s arms for quite a while, only becoming embarrassed once she’d recovered enough MP and came to.

... perfectly remembering all the things she’d said in that state.

“You’re all I need!” “There’s no one I trust more than you!” “What do I need to do? What do I need to be for you to take me as your wife!”

That takes us to the present moment.

— In a faraway place.

***

Arpeggio — no, the Princess Knight — was finally back home. She’d come back alone, whereas her mother, Amelia, remained in Harmony to organize the regiments being gathered there.

She walked along a thousand-year-old cobbled road, and looked upon a resplendent palace in the middle of a grassy plain, and whose tallest spires were like needles that stabbed into the sky. The spires surrounded the central structure of the Throne itself: a 300-meter-high castle of alien design, circular from tip ‘til base, supported all-around by giant buttresses that doubled as aqueducts to raise and expel water to and from the Throne’s residents.

At the very top of that superstructure was the chamber room where the King of Lyrica kept the throne warm at all times. Some say the King was a slave to the goddesses, and the top of the Throne was his cell.

She didn’t have particularly hateful memories of her father, and she found it all too easy to forgive him for being pushy about her being a Princess. It was his position as King that made him do that, after all; as a father, he was terribly mediocre, but she didn’t curse that about him, either.

She reached the end of the road, stopping at the foot of a gate taller than most people’s houses. It opened after a short moment, but there was no one to welcome her. The gate was magically keyed to open for the royalty of Lyrica, after all, and the Throne was its own guard, fully capable of defending itself.

She passed the lush gardens where Maids and the occasional Butler carried on with their tasks, then she passed through a second set of gates, just as tall as the last, finally entering the palace itself.

Inside, the ceiling was even higher. Expensive, polished stones were used for the floor, and everything from the walls to the arches in the ceiling, had a story engraved into them. The entire history of Lyrica itself was sculpted into every non-pedestrian surface, and as she walked through the halls, the history ended right before the next door.

Thousands of years wasn’t a very long time.

She had an inkling as to why she was here. Oh, of course, she’d killed a mana dragon and all that, but in a moment of national emergency, was it really okay for the King to call one of the country’s greatest fighting assets away from the triple point called Harmony?

No, of course not, so there could only be one reason why she was called here.

She opened the doors to the throne room, finding her father upon the Seat of the Throne. As expected, his face held conflicting emotions.

“Arpie!” His Majesty said, his face brightening as if to wipe all those emotions away.

“Your Majesty, I’ve returned,” Arpeggio replied. Thorn Selisie frowned at such a cold way of addressing him, but, well, he expected it.

“So you have,” he continued. “I’ve heard about your fight with the mana dragon. Splendid work” —

He stopped upon seeing the face she was making. She’d sighed; it wasn’t audible, but the way she turned her head away ever so slightly and closed her eyes made up for the lack of volume.

The shortness of her patience took him aback. He had gotten used to Arpeggio playing along with the charade until they got to the main point — it had always been the way their dialogue as Princess and King went — but, perhaps, he’d gotten too used to it.

Arpeggio eyed him impatiently. They both knew he was just skirting around the actual topic, but still, her behavior confounded him. He could only think of one reason why she was acting this way, and it was the very same reason for which he’d called her here. Was this the act of a woman in love? Thinking back to Amelia ... it might just be the case. The way his wife had acted against her own father had been much the same.

Better get to the point. “Do you truly love him?” he asked.

It was Arpeggio’s turn to be confounded as she took a step back from the sheer physical recoil of such lies and misinformation. Was the Inquisition feeding him something? Lies and misinformation, for instance.

She couldn’t discount the possibility. Her mother was at the head of it, after all — lies and misinformation, specifically — and she could very well be conspiring to land a blow on Arpeggio.

“Where did you hear that?” she asked.

“What? Were you hoping to hide it? What a terrible job you’re doing, then!”

“I don’t know where you get your information, but there is no such mutual interest between me and that man.”

“You held! His! Hand!” The King banged the arm rest of the throne to the beat. Obviously, casual physical contact for the whole of five seconds was the most damning of evidence!

It was all Arpeggio could do to rub her forehead. She looked up at her father, more than just displeased. “What of it?”

King Thorn froze. “What?” The stern face his daughter was making was the more crushing blow than the implication that she didn’t care about royal custom.

As a father, he didn’t actually mind this development all that much. Instead, he was happy to learn that it was physically possible, after all, for his Arpie to actually take interest in someone — anyone at all!

Unfortunately, as a King, he couldn’t ignore this situation, and it was also why he could only make arguments as a King. “He’s a commoner!”

“Which is precisely why,” Arpeggio answered, her tone of voice dead and flat, “I can be as I am.” She chuckled at the absurdity in the way they, as royals, lived their lives. “Did you know, father? We have everything except the most basic of human connections. Would you take that away from me, and so soon after just finding it?”

The vocabulary she’d just used far outstripped King Thorn’s own, for he had lived a life where his only goal had been survival: against the many nobles who might stab him in the back at any given time, against his scheming relatives who yearned for the right to succession, and — once upon a time — against his own siblings, in their own little war, spilling each others’ blood.

To build a secure place in a nest filled with snakes for his family — his wives, his daughters, his sons — he had had to abide by a cynical doctrine made for royalty, one which he’d also passed down to Arpeggio in the hopes that she, too, would survive this place.

To be reminded — by his own daughter, of all people — that he, too, was missing something, felt like a notch of failure on his crown.

Even so, it didn’t change the fact that news would soon spread about Arpeggio’s relationship with a commoner. No matter what the substance of that relationship actually was, it would be seen as an amusing weakness. Most would ignore the weakness, of course, but it only took one ambitious snake to bite in the most hurtful way to make it all come tumbling down.

Thorn finally said, after a long pause, “How do you plan to defend it, Arpeggio? The problems this will cause cannot be cut with a sword. In the worst case, Amelia will have to kill me.”

Arpeggio couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She shook her head, but she was sure she’d heard the words right. “What do you mean?”

This was a father’s flawed love. “If the worst comes to pass, the nobles will use their boundless knowledge of the Throne’s Laws against us. Depending on the case” — his life was built on survival, and he would rather his children survive than him — “I would even bring an era of terror down on them just to make sure they do not endanger you. Amelia is more strictly bound by the Throne’s Laws than I am, and she will be compelled by the Throne to kill me if I do so.”

The Throne — it was more akin to a living entity than a simple castle. There were things that displeased it, and things that didn’t. A thousand years of Lyrican history was spent discovering what these things were, and they were compiled into the Throne’s Laws.

The Laws never changed, but at the same time, they were complex and comprehensive. One could say that it was effectively a heaven-gifted, living constitution upon which a country could be founded and run; if the monarch ran afoul of the Throne, they would be marked for death; if the monarchy entirely collapsed one day, the Throne may choose a new King on its own.

For such a reason, Lyrica stood nearly unchanging since ancient times.

For such a reason, those who knew the Throne’s Laws were the kingdom’s apex predators, maneuvering in such a way that they could ‘convince’ the Throne to dispose of their political opponents for them, and the most fearsome of them were Lawyers.

Although Arpeggio was powerful, she was still just a mere human granted permission to step foot inside the Throne. If a Lawyer could possibly construe her to be in violation of the Throne’s Laws, the Throne will act, and if it cannot reach her directly, then it will reach her father, instead.

The King of Lyrica was just the Throne’s mouthpiece — and its hostage.

“I’ll... find a way,” Arpeggio said, though her resolve wavered, and she did poorly in hiding it.

“That’s not enough,” Thorn said. His own words stabbed daggers into his own heart, just as much as it did for Arpeggio.

Being a royal, after all, was truly a curse.

— The doors opened.

Arpeggio turned around to see... a lost child? The child was in a brown garb, and they appeared to be in a poor state, comparable to a beggar.

Even Thorn was taken aback. In fact, this act could be construed as an insult to the Throne, and even a child could be put to death for it — but a child shouldn’t have been able to reach this far into the Throne in the first place!

“Thorn Selisie,” the child spoke. It was a girl’s voice, and the lack of titular address should have offended Thorn... but there was some kind of ethereal quality to the child’s voice that made him stop and listen. Her voice had echoed in such a soft way that was almost... divine...

Suffice to say, Arpeggio knew who it was from the moment she spoke.

The door closed behind the child, and she pulled back her hood. Her mint green hair was especially glittery today, as if fairies were dancing around her.

Throne’s Laws or not, King Thorn’s basic instincts as a Lyrican native made him get up, rush down the steps, and get on both his knees with his head bowed down so low, his forehead touched the floor.

He didn’t see her daughter doing the same, however, and that caused alarm bells to ring in his head. “Arpeggio! Down! Down!”’

Arpeggio chuckled. “Father, if it were anyone else, I would, but she is quite kind. That said...” She turned her whole body to face Minimine and showed her a deep bow. “You grace us with your presence. This is quite the sudden visit, however...”

Minimine nodded, speaking to everyone through telepathy: “I’ve been very busy, and this visit to the King is part of it. Though, I’m surprised our visits exactly coincided.”

“I was summoned here by my father.”

“About Kalender?”

“It seems...” Arpeggio put on a troubled face.

“Is there something wrong?”

It was in that moment that Arpeggio felt something truly strange. After all, she was in a situation where she was conversing otherwise normally with a real-life goddess — and one of the most important ones — and that same goddess was showing a scary amount of concern for her, a lowly human.

Wow, was this why Minimine’s followers love her so much? It seemed she shouldn’t underestimate the power of ‘being showed concern from someone you wouldn’t expect it from.’ Truly scary stuff.

That said, should she talk about it? There felt like a 90% chance that something outrageous might happen if she did.

“You can tell me,” Minimine continued.

Arpeggio swallowed her pride. She was, after all, also a Lyrican native, and turning down the kindest goddess’s concern was something she felt, at an almost genetic level, that she absolutely shouldn’t do.

After some hesitation... “W-well, you see, we were discussing how my friendship with Kalender might end up tempting some Lawyers to target the royal family.”

Today — on this date — mere mortals witnessed a goddess’s divine gasp.

Had they incurred her displeasure, somehow? Was someone going to be smote? Was there going to be hell to follow?

On the other hand...to be honest...Minimine was faking the gasp. She had already anticipated this sort of development, and it was exactly why she’d come here in the first place: to sort things out.

Just, really, there was a holy war against the Cult right around the corner; three of the most prominent nations on this side of the world were gearing up for a possible skirmish; and now Kalender was starting to catch the attention of multiple governments. The least she could do was to make sure Lyrica and the Throne wouldn’t become a great annoyance later on.

Minimine walked up the steps to the Seat of the Throne, leaving behind the two shocked royals who just watched as she climbed up the Seat, leaving her two feet dangling a few inches from the floor.

The Seat flashed gold for a brief moment, followed by silence — then a plethora of golden panels flew out of the top rail of the Seat, flying in a circle around Minimine with dizzying speed.

It was only when no new panels were shooting out of the Seat that the flying slowed, then finally, stopped.

One last panel appeared right in front of Minimine’s face, sliding up out of nowhere as if from a slit in mid-air. She looked at it feeling ... daunted. It was just a keypad she was looking at, but she didn’t know that; she didn’t know what modern technology was like, not at all.

She looked at the ink scribbled in her left palm: a special access code provided to her by Civilas just for this occasion.

9-1-1-1-2-3

(On this occasion, please healthily ignore the fact that a goddess thinks that a 6-digit PIN is secure.)

She looked at the numbers on the keypad, then at the numbers on her palm. How troubling. Unlike humans, who had the natural tactile urge to press matching buttons, such a keypad interface simply wasn’t intuitive for someone who’d been used to using magic for doing anything and everything.

Arpeggio watched as Minimine’s expression evolved from troubled to intimidated. “I-is there something wrong?” she asked.

In the first place, the Throne was designed to be operated by humans, so they must know how to do this — was what Minimine thought, and she was absolutely correct. “Please come up here.”

“Huh?” Arpeggio let out a stupid sound. She was being made to get up and stand right next to the Seat. Well, at least she wasn’t being made to sit on it...

Yielding to Minimine’s request, she walked up the steps with some trepidation, stopping right before the circle of panels. Minimine told her it was safe, so she stepped through.

The sensation of stepping through the glowing panels was ... nothing at all. Amazing. It’s like they aren’t even here.

Finally, she found herself standing next to Minimine, and she immediately spotted the issue. Press-able buttons were still a rare technology in Lyrica, but not unheard of, and so Arpeggio easily knew what she was looking at. She brought a finger up towards the panel, but she stopped, looking to Minimine for permission to press the most powerful buttons in the country.

“Go ahead,” Minimine said, moving her hand beside the panel to make sure Arpeggio could see the numbers scribbled onto her palm.

Arpeggio’s finger poked the panel, and...

|===========|
| 9         |
|===========|
| 7 | 8 |(9)|
|-----------|
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
|-----------|
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
|-----------|
|     0     |
|===========|

... the keypad beeped, and both she and Minimine nervously pulled their heads backwards for a second.

“It appeared,” Arpeggio remarked.

“It did,” Minimine added. “Five more.”

|===========|
| 91        |
|===========|
| 7 | 8 | 9 |
|-----------|
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
|-----------|
|(1)| 2 | 3 |
|-----------|
|     0     |
|===========|

It beeped again. This time, both Arpeggio and Minimine were mentally prepared. It seemed that the sound was just some kind of feedback, so Arpeggio continued to enter the rest of the code.

|===========|
| 911123    |
|===========|
| 7 | 8 | 9 |
|-----------|
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
|-----------|
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
|-----------|
|     0     |
|===========|

Arpeggio stared at the panel for a while. She’d entered the code, but nothing was happening. “Now what”—

|===========|
| !GRANTED! |
|===========|
| 7 | 8 | 9 |
|-----------|
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
|-----------|
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
|-----------|
|     0     |
|===========|

The panel beeped loudly and differently, surprising the both of them. It disappeared, however, replaced by an even larger panel — with even more buttons. Thousands of them, in fact... and Arpeggio soon realized why.

“These are traditional Lyrican script,” she muttered. They used a logography, which meant that they had thousands — if not tens of thousands — of glyphs to refer to and memorize, all just to be passably literate.

As a goddess native to this world, Minimine was one of the most literate people in existence. Even so, she only had two hands, and the directives she wanted to enter into the Throne were quite lengthy.

She quickly turned to the second most literate person in the room. “Arpeggio, I request your aid once more.”

“O-of course. What shall it be?”

“I must instruct the Throne with several directives. As you can see, there are thousands of keys, and it is too terrible to search through them all just to enter a single word.”

“Understood. I shall assist. Then, what directives do you want to enter?”

“ ‘The Throne shall recognize Kalender as a special guest. It is not to act against his interests. If any individual acts to construe the Throne’s directives with the intent of harming him, his interests, or his companions, they shall be imprisoned within the Golden Cage for divine judgment. This directive shall override all other directives.’ ”

Arpeggio stood there, stunned at the content, intent, and the wildest dreams she had of the consequences of what Minimine had just said.

As she helped the goddess painstakingly enter those very same words, she wondered about how Kalender would feel about becoming the most untouchable man in Lyrica essentially overnight — standing above even the King.