NBFTR 13

Chapter 13

 Anyway, It’s the Royal Palace

There was such an overwhelming sense of helplessness that she could believe she had died and come back to life.

When the situation just before her death came to mind, Airy suddenly thought:

This is definitely a regression scenario.

There was no way I could have survived that.

When I open my eyes, will I be in a world without monsters?

Or will I get to live once again as the only eleven-year-old daughter of a viscount family?

If this was a regression within a book she had possessed, she had read countless novels like that.

At this point, what the original novel was no longer mattered.

There was no greater stroke of luck than this.

Only now was Airy beginning to understand how she might live as a mage despite having such a pathetic mana circle.

But wait. How am I supposed to get those expensive mana stones? I need them if I’m going to function as a mage…

As Airy mentally ran through one calculation after another, her ears caught a sound.

Rustle.

Airy lifted her eyelids, which felt as though they had been sealed shut with wax, forcing them open with relief at the sign of another person.

“……”

Who…

“Miss Airy Aster?”

“…?”

No voice came out.

Startled, Airy raised a hand to touch her throat, only to find her wrist unbelievably heavy.

When she looked down, her wrist was thin as a skewer.

Good grief. Even when I did an all-sandwich diet, I never got this skinny.

The middle-aged man slowly dropped the medical instruments he had been holding.

His reaction was so theatrical that Airy almost laughed despite having absolutely no reason to.

He grabbed his thinning hair and rushed outside.

“Miss Aster has come back to life!!!”

“What? Miss Aster?”

“That corpse?”

“How?”

“They say the woman brought here by the young master of Salisbury has come back to life!!”

Airy was already tired.

Two healing mages and one doctor attended to her.

The mages’ strange mana searched through every corner of Airy’s body four times.

The doctor bent and twisted her arms and legs at various angles.

Then they spoke to a man standing behind them with his arms folded.

“She is completely healed. A case like this is impossible.”

“I will not hold you responsible for your mistake.”

“Begging your pardon, but this young ma… miss… truly did not have a body capable of surviving.”

“Speak properly, Lord Kotusia. She was as good as dead. It was a miracle that she managed to remain breathing for four days.”

“That is what I mean, Lord Rotusia. Your Majesty, it truly is a miracle.”

“A miracle, you say. Is there any possibility that this young wo… woman possesses some ability to resurrect herself, or that she performed some sort of magical miracle?”

“None.”

The two talkative men answered in unison.

Airy could no longer pretend not to notice the identity of the man standing behind them, so she tried to sit up.

The young king casually waved his hand and frowned as though he found it bothersome.

“Enough. What can a patient do? Concentrate on recovering. I have many things I want to ask.”

Airy had many things she wanted to ask as well.

But because she could not possibly question the king due to the difference in status, Airy spoke to the man standing beside her, whether his name was Kotusia or Rotusia.

“Excuse me…”

“Yes?”

Her voice was barely audible.

Airy clutched her throat and wheezed out her question with difficulty.

“Where is our young master?”

“Ah, do you mean the young master of Salisbury? He is currently meeting Count Eulos Salisbury.”

“Eulos…”

Who was Eulos again?

As Airy searched through her memories, her mouth opened in realization.

If it’s Eulos Salisbury, isn’t he Laertes’s younger uncle?

It seemed this was the royal palace.

And if the social hierarchy was still functioning perfectly in this royal palace, then how had Laertes’s uncle remained here, within walking distance of the nephew who had been surviving alone?

And he had never even come to check on him?

No. How could something this infuriating happen?

Just as the furious Airy was about to slam her fist into the bed and break her own wrist, the king spoke.

“The count died seven years ago while protecting my father, His Majesty the previous king. Since he had always been terribly worried about his young nephew, I sent Laertes Salisbury there as soon as he arrived.”

Airy reflexively moved her lips and muttered something halfway between an expression of gratitude and an expression of overwhelming thanks.

The king apparently had never learned etiquette either.

People said ignorance was courage, but Airy, who possessed only a half-baked knowledge of etiquette, felt as though the head that had barely been reattached to her body might fall off again just from looking at the king.

The king snorted.

“The only thing I can do is take the nephew who appeared seven years after his death, practically a half-corpse, and bring him before his grave. Being a king is truly useless, isn’t it?”

Everyone surrounding the bed lowered their heads and cried out in unison.

“Not at all, Your Majesty!”

Airy narrowed her eyes suspiciously as she watched.

Did that king say something like that just because he wanted to hear them say that?

The king did not soften his visibly exhausted expression in the slightest.

He merely waved his hand dismissively as though he were sick to death of being bothered, then walked outside.

Just before the door closed, Airy thought she heard him say,

“Rest.”

Unable to ignore the king’s words, Airy bowed her head toward the closed door in what she hoped looked like a respectful gesture.

The doctor beside her dragged out a chair and plopped down.

“Hey, Rotusia. Sit down. You’re going to collapse.”

“Good grief. I’m drained of mana.”

“Miss. We used up every bit of mana and every trick we had, despite all of us being old, to bring you back to life. Understand?”

Didn’t they say I survived by a miracle?

Airy blinked innocently.

Whether he understood her answer or not, Kotusia vigorously rubbed his thinning hair.

“It’s astonishing enough that you regained consciousness, but to be perfectly fine as well… How is this possible? Your limbs had all been severed, your ribs and spine crushed, and your internal organs had burst.”

Ugh.

Airy shuddered.

Across from her, Rotusia rubbed his flushed face.

“You didn’t even have a handful of mana left. But now you’re completely full, aren’t you?”

At Rotusia’s prompting, Airy checked her mana circle and nodded in agreement.

“You were so completely depleted that there wasn’t even a single drop left. I’ve seen plenty of corpses like that, you know? Usually, before dying, people try to do something—anything—and squeeze out every last bit of mana without even thinking about the fact that their mana circle could break. You know what happens when you squeeze it that hard? The circle gets twisted.”

“…Yes.”

“Now that you’ve come back to life, remember this too. Looking at you, it seems you’re not someone destined to die easily, but even when you think you’re about to die, always save at least one drop of mana. Your circle is so small that controlling it must be difficult, right? Can’t be helped. You have to practice.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Your voice is getting better now. Our hearing isn’t very good either. We’ve heard too many bombardments.”

Airy was about to hear the whole story.

Before listening to him, however, she looked toward the doctor’s assistant and a maid who were standing stiffly nearby as though they were being punished.

Compared to Kotusia, Rotusia seemed to have at least a little awareness of the situation.

Noticing the meaning behind Airy’s gaze, he sent the two outside the room.

“We’ll do some work here before we leave, so go outside for now.”

“Yes, understood.”

“Work, my foot. We’re just slacking off.”

“Hey, Coco. Would we survive if we didn’t get a chance like this? We were old enough to retire back in the day. My father, you see, submitted his resignation the moment he turned exactly fifty.”

“I’ve been hearing that story since last year.”

“Of course you have. Around this time last year, I was fifty-one.”

I’m tired.

Airy struggled to keep her drooping eyes open.

The last piece of information she managed to catch before completely falling asleep was that the place where Laertes had gone to pay his very belated respects was a shrine five kilometers north of the royal palace.

Our young master won’t die, right? I wonder if Pepper is being taken care of.

Since Airy’s circumstances were so miserable, she decided to extinguish the little lamp of thought for now and drifted into sleep.

There were no windows, so there was no way to tell what time it was.

It was not unusual for a maid’s room or a patient’s room to have no windows, but Airy already knew that this place was underground.

It was thanks to the magic circle that she and Laertes had activated.

There was a gigantic hollow beneath the royal palace.

The rumbling sounds had been the sound of digging a new tunnel during the lull immediately before the attack, and the reason the monsters had caused such a commotion was that they had been clearing out the surrounding monsters in preparation for the new tunnel.

As soon as the three of them learned this, they agreed that they had to somehow make their way to the royal palace at that exact time.

They planned to join up with the royal palace and assess the situation.

The safety of her mother, who should be somewhere in the south, was also a constant worry in the back of Airy’s mind, while for Laertes, it was the fate of his family.

Things had certainly turned out this way, but at least they had arrived safely at the royal palace.

Thinking about it indifferently, Airy carefully slipped her feet into her slippers.

It feels so good to have new clothes and shoes.

“Kuiiik!”

For a moment, Airy thought she had heard an auditory hallucination.

She stopped halfway through getting out of bed and looked toward the doorway.

“Kuiik! Kuiik!”

She heard something coming toward her, squealing nonstop and scampering along with rapid little footsteps.

Airy was already smiling.

Soon, a glowing pig appeared, passing effortlessly through the door.

“Kuiiik.”

Pepper stood motionless in the doorway as though he could not believe what he was seeing.

When Airy smiled brightly, he backed away as though he found it even more unbelievable.

“Pepper, come here. I’m alive.”

“Kiiik! Kuiik! Kiiiiik!!”

Pepper came rushing at her as though flying, tears like little drops of chicken broth streaming down his eyes, and crashed into her.

Airy wrapped her arms around the soft, warm body of the pig and rubbed her face against him.

She thought she finally understood why Laertes had spent the entire day hugging and rubbing Pepper when he first discovered him.

There was a sense of security that came from having a familiar pig around.

Understanding him in a new way, Airy happily kneaded Pepper’s soft belly and plump rear to her heart’s content.

Before long, another presence appeared outside the door.

He stood there for quite some time, hesitating.

Then he carefully knocked.

Airy answered before the small knock had even finished, and the door opened.

A man with deeply sunken eyes looked at Airy with gloomy eyes.

It was just like the day they had reunited beneath the stairs.

He had looked this depressed then, too.

Airy suddenly realized that during the time he had spent with her, she had erased that expression from his face quite a lot.

“Young master, cold air is coming in. Please come inside now.”

“…Are you really all right?”

“They say it was a miracle. I’m completely fine.”

She raised both hands, clenched and unclenched her fists, then lifted each foot in turn.

One-two!

She twisted her upper body, and finally even raised both arms above her head in a triumphant stretch.

Laertes crossed the distance in two steps and pulled her entire body into his arms.

Airy stood there with her arms still extended, rolling her eyes.

…Well, I’d be happy even if a pig I thought was dead came back alive… If it were a person, I’d be even happier…

That said, he seemed to be holding her a little too tightly and for a little too long.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to push him away.

Airy awkwardly lowered both arms and let out a cramped breath.

Laertes’s body, completely wrapped around hers, was pounding with heat.

It was an unmistakably vivid sign of overwhelming relief.