Chapter 23: We Were Never a Contradiction
Rian never got the chance to use the 「Blade of Zelda」.
After learning how to bring forth Holy Mana, he’d wanted to swing it right that instant, right there in the middle of Pandora’s Rainforest.
But he didn’t have the time.
The military was most likely already heading this way, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if Rian ran into one of them out here.
He hovered his left hand over the hilt of the purple blade, itching to draw it right that very second.
’Nope.’
Then he pulled his hand back, forcing the child inside him to wait until they’d reached somewhere far more secluded.
As they neared the teleportation gate, Thalia raised her hand and asked in her usual polite manner.
"My apologies, Great Master, but might I ask one question?"
"Hm? Go on."
He glanced back slightly, and noticed the face she was making.
’...What’s with that expression?’
She looked as if someone had stolen her favorite thing and ran off with it.
Thalia pointed behind her.
"What is that thing following us?"
She was referring to Sister, who had been trailing along behind them this whole time.
And hearing it, the very person she was pointing at answered, bowing her body in a respectful gesture.
"Hello, Miss Thalia. I am a Sister."
Thalia tilted her head. "Whose?"
"My name is Sister."
"Then say it like that."
Thalia turned to face her fully and inspected her from her bare foot, to all the way up to the halo floating above her forehead.
From the outside she might have looked like a child, but this small girl was a great deal stronger than Luthan, the Cardinal Thalia had just finished dealing with.
And that was without mentioning the immense Holy Mana that halo was giving off.
It might have gone unnoticed by others, but as an undead, Thalia could feel it plainly.
She was far, far more powerful than a Cardinal of the Holy Empire.
Right now, what Thalia really wanted to know was how her Great Master had gotten his hands on her.
"...She doesn’t appear to be human." Thalia muttered as she inspected her, her red eye shimmering in the process. "You have no digestive system at all. Great Master, what exactly is she?"
Unable to make sense of it, she finally turned and asked him.
Rian was amused to see the glint in Thalia’s eye as well. Right now, she wore the exact same curious look as him, the gaze of a mad scientist.
"I don’t know either, but... we’ll figure it out soon enough."
A chill ran down Sister’s metallic body.
The way these two were looking at her, their eyes practically taking her apart piece by piece, unsettled even her, the masterpiece Zelda herself had designed.
She was starting to regret tagging along.
"I can hardly wait, Great Master." Thalia’s crimson eye gleamed with something sinister. "Yes, tonight, we’ll get to see what’s inside her."
After an hour, Rian took the same teleportation gate back to Garissa.
The cold breeze hit his nostrils. "...what time is it again?"
Rian pulled out his pocket watch, and the moment he read it, his expression flattened.
’...Four in the afternoon.’
That’s basically ten hours he was away from them.
He’d told them he was going to the library.
"...Haaah."
Rian shut the watch with a click.
Knowing Lilly, she’d have questions of what he could be doing for 10 whole hours in a library, knowing his mother, she’d have more questions.
And his father...
’...He probably won’t even ask.’
But right now, the more important thing weighing on Rian’s mind was how he was going to sneak Sister into the family estate.
That halo of hers would be the biggest obstacle. Without it, he could have smuggled her in the same way he did Thalia.
Rubbing his chin, he asked her.
"You don’t happen to have a way to hide that halo of yours, do you?"
Rian wasn’t expecting a yes. He couldn’t see why Zelda would have bothered adding a feature like that.
That halo was the only thing keeping Sister running on Holy Mana. If she took the thing off, she’d shut herself down.
’...Hmm. Now that I think about it, shutting her off might actually be better. I could just dismantle her here, stuff the parts into a bag and—’
"Yes, I can."
Sister nodded, answering before Rian could finish that horrendous thought of his.
She pointed upward, toward the halo floating above her blonde hair.
"I am able to store Holy Mana inside it as well. It will keep me operable for a week, so long as I limit myself to basic tasks."
And as she said it, the halo above her head began to spin, faster than before.
It seemed to draw in the mana from the atmosphere around her, and then it began to shrink, smaller and smaller, until it had formed into a tiny golden ring, luminous and shaped like a little donut, which attached itself neatly to her left earlobe.
"...."
That was genuinely impressive.
The Holy Mana had vanished along with it, faded down to something completely unnoticeable.
Rian didn’t know how, or why, it worked. But now, even he couldn’t tell she was capable of using Holy Magic at all.
This was technology even Rian was seeing for the very first time.
And the more he looked at it, the more excited he got.
. . .
"Do you even see what time it is?!"
Lilly stood in the middle of the living hall, both fists planted on her hips, glaring up at Rian the second he stepped through the door.
"The whole capital is still in an uproar after last night! Father hasn’t even come home yet after he was called again by the Empress, the guards have tripled around the estate, Mother’s been pacing since noon, and you decided today was a good day to disappear for ten hours?!"
"...I lost track of time."
"You told us you were in a library?!"
"They had a lot of books."
Lilly stared at him with the expression of someone deciding whether it was worth the effort to keep arguing.
Apparently, it wasn’t.
"...Whatever." She turned on her heel, then stopped and pointed a finger back at him. "Be ready tomorrow. Mara and I are going shopping for Caelistra, and you’re coming with us, understood?"
"Yeah, yeah."
He agreed easily enough.
He hadn’t gotten the chance to buy anything for himself today either.
Satisfied, Lilly finally left him alone.
Once he reached his room, Rian pulled off his coat and let himself fall back onto the bed.
"...today was hell."
He closed both his eyes for a moment, then rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.
He stretched out his left hand above him, the one wearing the black glove that covered his Holy Mark so well.
"...A True Goal, huh."
Till this point, he had two ways of triggering his Holy Mark.
The one was his Necromancy Art cast with his left hand, and the other was to have a true goal.
It is still weird how Holy Mana operates differently compared to Dark Magic.
It was a whole new world even though Rian was able to channel holy power into his body because right now he had no idea of how to make use of the Holy Mana.
’Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have to rely on Necromancy anymore.’
Still, Rian wondered about his True Goal which he thought of that time when Luthan was teaching him.
"....it’s surprising."
He took off his gloves and stared at his Holy Mark.
It didn’t radiate any glow at this moment.
Calming his mind, he tried once again with the same True Goal he used before.
Shaaa—!
And just like before, the Holy Mark glowed with a golden shimmer, faintly tracing over his arm.
A soft smile appeared on his face.
The energy it radiated was identical to hers.
Rian had a feeling that his and Jeanne’s True goal could be the same.
And it made sense...
Because both of them share the same True Goal.