"Oh… that will work out somehow."
"Right? I knew it!"
The ghost Citry said this with a beaming smile. I latched onto those words with everything I had.
I walked through the streets of the capital alongside the ghost Citry.
The capital had taken on an increasingly grand air. The summit was approaching.
Knights and mages who had clearly come from other nations had grown more numerous throughout the city, and amid the bustle there was a taut undercurrent of tension.
Toizant was a vast country in terms of territory, but it was far from prosperous.
I didn't know the detailed history, but this land had apparently once been a place of endless conflict.
Most of the territory was desert, and rain hardly ever fell. Scarcity of food bred constant fighting over what little there was, and powerful monsters native to the desert ran rampant—it was said to have looked like a living hell.
What turned things around was the very era of the Treasure Hunter golden age.
Toizant was an inhospitable place to live, yet it simultaneously boasted a great many Treasure Halls unique to the desert landscape. And those Treasure Halls, composed of nearly infinite energy from Mana Material flowing through the Ley Lines, were tantamount to inexhaustible resources—as long as someone was willing to dig them out.
And so, Treasure Hunters seeking untapped Treasure Halls flooded into a land of poverty. Towns sprang up to welcome the Hunters who returned with riches, and the desert peoples, who had been fighting one another, were united into a single nation. That, supposedly, was how this country was born.
We had never visited Toizant's Treasure Halls. It was too hot. And separately from that, as someone who had once been stranded in another desert, I didn't exactly have fond impressions of a country of sand.
But walking around like this, it was eye-opening just how impoverished my image of it had been.
"It seems like development is concentrated in certain cities… Food really does seem to be the bottleneck. Treasure Halls almost never produce food, and importing it is difficult because of the monsters," I said.
It was a far nicer place than I had imagined. When I told her this, Citry explained with a smile (Citry was pretty much always smiling when she was with me).
"That must be tough."
"I hear they've been doing afforestation nearby, though—"
The ghost Citry chatted away to me, the complete outsider, with a pleasant little lecture.
Citry was wearing her usual green robe, and despite that being far from comfortable in this heat, she apparently didn't feel hot—unlike me.
Our destination was outside the city—the crashed airship.
Zebuldia's state-of-the-art airship, the *Black Star*, still sat abandoned at its crash site.
It couldn't be transported, and it couldn't be repaired. They had removed the bare minimum of cargo, and the hull would be dealt with later once they dispatched engineers. Franz's pained expression when he mentioned what a huge job it would be made my heart ache, but I couldn't exactly ask Lucia to haul it all the way back to the empire.
Seeing the airship again for the first time in a while, the balloon on top had shriveled somewhat, and it bore almost no resemblance to the imposing vessel I had first laid eyes on. The hull, which had been stuck into the ground at an angle, had been straightened, but repairs looked like they would take some time.
The airship, half-buried in sand, was being watched by Zebuldia's people, but we already had permission, so we entered through the broken windows.
The air conditioning had apparently been destroyed too—the air inside the airship shimmered with heat.
We had come back aboard to search for any trace of Term and the others. Well, we had already done a thorough sweep before leaving, but my eyes were practically blind to details, so there was a chance Citry might spot something I missed.
"Thank you so much! Food and potions are chronically short in this country…"
"Well, it was mostly stuff you loaded up for us to begin with."
As it happened, we also had the secondary objective of retrieving the supplies we had stowed. Left like this, they would be ruined by the heat, and since we wouldn't be using this airship for the return trip, there was no reason to keep them. Permission to remove the cargo had already been granted.
There was no sign of anyone inside the airship. I went through the interior with the ghost Citry.
"Come to think of it, you guys really did manage to avoid getting dragged into the Treasure Halls, huh."
"That's the thing… we tried to get pulled in, but our flying speed wasn't fast enough, apparently."
"…?"
"So there was nothing we could do. Luke tried to punch a hole open from the outside, but no matter what he did, he couldn't even scratch it… We couldn't regroup."
"…Right, right. I see."
For some reason, Citry sounded rather apologetic as she explained.
"The boundary of 'The Lost Inn' didn't seem to be physical… It seems that against spatial distortion, even Luke's sword was no use. He said he was going to train."
"…Yeah, yeah, those things happen."
So that was why Luke and the others never showed up. Whether training could actually fix the problem was anyone's guess, but heading straight into training right after the crash—that dedication of theirs was truly admirable.
I was secretly relieved to the bottom of my soul that Luke and the others hadn't been there, and I nodded along.
If Luke and the others had been at that scene, what I would have been fighting to protect wouldn't have been the carpet—it would have been them. And then I wouldn't have been able to offer them up as a sacrifice, which would have meant we had to fight the fox head-on. Our odds of winning wouldn't have been great.
"Well, I guess it just means we were a little too early for 'The Lost Inn,' that's all."
Speaking in full comfort-mode and saying whatever came to mind, I was met by Citry, who grabbed at me with a trembling voice.
"But, Krai, please don't misunderstand! My preparation was perfect! I had even considered the possibility of encountering 'The Lost Inn'—at least a little!"
"…Citry, you're amazing."
If you had considered it, you could have said so… Me, I was the one dragging Term and the others into things and making a mess of everything.
I patted the ghost Citry on the back, even though she was wearing an expression like she was the one who had made the mistake. If this was Citry's mistake, then what on earth did that make mine?
Citry's expression softened just a fraction. She looked up at me and asked cautiously.
"Oh, by the way… Krai, was the fried tofu I prepared useful?"
…Huh? Fried tofu…?
Wait—fried tofu? When had that been? All Citry had prepared were preserved rations and potions.
But Citry didn't look like she was joking. She was practically fidgeting, staring at me like she was waiting to be praised.
I hadn't noticed at all. Probably because I had only skimmed the packing list. But normally, you wouldn't think to find fried tofu mixed in with preserved food.
I smiled and ruffled Citry's head, smoothly dodging the topic.
Her soft hair slipped between my fingers, and Citry's slightly droopy eyes softened a little more.
"Mm-hm, thanks to Citry I made it through. No, seriously—it was a huge help. Without that… well, things could have gotten pretty ugly."
"Last time, I used it to escape from a tight spot during 'The Lost Inn'… so I was certain it would be necessary… I went to a lot of trouble to gather it. Fried tofu isn't a staple in Zebuldia, you know. I'm glad…"
She wasn't lying. It hadn't ended up being useful, but if I had known it was there, it would have been—so there was absolutely no shortcoming on Citry's part.
All the blame was mine. Yes, all of it was mine.
I absolutely must not let her find out that I hadn't even known it existed. I must not let Citry's smile be clouded.
My most precious thing is you, Citry.
Maybe she was happy that she had actually been of use to me, because Citry was in remarkably high spirits as she said: "For reference… was five boxes enough?"
"Five boxes!? Hmm, hrm… hard to say?"
Citry, wasn't that a bit excessive? Five boxes… I didn't think even that fox-masked Phantom had demanded quite that much.
I deflected the cheerful Citry's words with vague noises while scanning the interior of the ship. Sure enough, there was no sign of Term or Kechachachka, nor any trace of them.
Were they still inside the Treasure Hall, or had they been cast out? If they had been cast out into midair, that would be a serious problem.
A mage of Term's caliber couldn't possibly be unable to use flight magic. He was certainly alive. I just wanted to confirm at least that much. If Term, whom I had inadvertently drawn in and then let escape, succeeded in assassinating the Emperor, it could end up being my fault.
And then, at that moment, my dull little ears caught a faint sound. Citry's eyes went wide as she looked at me.
The sound had come from right in front of us—one of our destinations, the cargo hold. We had of course already checked it during the search for Term before the crash.
The cargo hold was genuinely an empty space. It was meant to hold freight, but this time the preserved rations I had brought aboard had been so volumous that they had practically taken over the entire room. We had distributed some to each cabin and it was still packed. There was virtually nowhere to hide.
Damn it—I should have brought Lucia or Anthem along. Citry wasn't weak, but she was a back-row fighter. Going up against someone like Term would be rough.
I had been fully convinced there was no possibility Term and the others were hiding aboard the ship.
Citry quietly drew her Treasure Weapon water pistol from her hip. Holding my Barrier Ring, I moved ahead of Citry, opened the door, and peered inside.
The cargo hold was virtually unchanged from the last time I had seen it. Unlike the cargo placed in other rooms, the freight here had been secured in case of emergency. The towering stacks of wooden crates were all still intact, not toppled or anything.
I entered cautiously. I swept my gaze around the room, but there was nothing suspicious. Maybe it had just been a noise from outside.
"All clear—false alarm, I thi—"
At the very moment I relayed this to Citry, the lid of a large wooden crate stacked right in front of me opened without a sound.
The first thing I saw was a white pointed hood.
Pushing the lid open from the inside and rising to its feet, the figure that emerged was a child in a white shrine maiden's outfit wearing a fox mask. In its hand was a large piece of fried tofu.
Its face turned toward me. All I could do was blink.
"…?"
…Use chopsticks. Use chopsticks. Eating with your hands is terribly poor manners.
The fox mask stared at me while leisurely munching on fried tofu. Still smiling, I walked up to the crate, gently pushed its head back down, and softly closed the lid.
I took a deep breath, then lifted the entire crate in one go. It was a wooden crate, so it had some heft of its own, but it was as light as if it were completely empty.
No—this crate literally was empty. It was a crate with nothing inside. I turned back to Citry and gave her a smile.
"…No… nothing to report. Let's move the cargo out. …Maybe five boxes really wasn't quite enough after all."
Perhaps the heat had made me hallucinate. Let's just get the cargo loaded up and head back to the city.
Maybe I was under too much stress. I needed to have a cold, sweet drink and play with the carpet…
"A-a live capture…? Krai, as expected of you… I could never do something like that…"
I had been trying to pretend nothing had happened, but Citry said this with a strained expression. What do I do…