"You—you… D-don't screw with me, okay!"
This time, all I could do was bow my head and apologize profusely.
Inside the moving carriage, Krius sat trembling, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes, as I lowered my head to him.
"Sorry, sorry… I got caught off guard when someone called out to me from outside… I was going to take you out right away, but…"
"Wh-who the hell forgets like that! Give me a break! And seriously—was there even any point putting me in there in the first place, huh!? What was the plan—go on, explain it!"
"Well, I finally got my hands on it, so I thought I'd show off my Treasure Weapons a little…"
"Mastaa…"
Tino, who had once experienced being swallowed herself, muttered in a hollow voice.
No, really—I was going to take you out right away… The problem was that my chat with Lapis and the others dragged on way too long.
…I'm glad I realized it now.
"I really thought I'd be stuck in there forever. Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to be suddenly dumped into total darkness—"
"…Wait, did you actually cry?"
"O-of course I didn't cry! There was food and everything in there…"
So there was food, at least. But Krius was clearly in low spirits. Hardly surprising after two days of being locked up.
Mimikun had a fluffy bed inside and probably all sorts of other things if you poked around, but the mental toll of not knowing whether you could actually get out must have been enormous.
His clothes were a little disheveled, and dark circles hung under his eyes. I had to salute the priests who'd spent decades inside Mimikun.
"Brother, come on—give him a proper apology!"
"There, there, you have yourself to blame for letting your guard down too, right? Here, have some sake—"
Riez patted Krius on the shoulder and pressed a sake bottle into his hands. The fact that Riez—who usually backed me up on everything—had switched to comforting Krius instead showed just how badly I'd messed up.
Lapis and the others, following in a separate carriage, were casting glares cold enough to freeze. If we hadn't been on our way to Yggdra right now, they might have quit the Clan on the spot.
"This is grounds for dismissal as Clan Master, you know."
"…Don't start, okay!"
"…I haven't even said anything yet."
"You make that much of a scene every single time the Clan Master vote comes around—it's obvious what you're thinking!"
The Clan Master of the Beginning Footprint wasn't a permanent position—it was decided by periodic vote. That was a system unique to this Clan, established when it was first founded.
So far, the Clan Master had never actually been replaced—but I digress.
I fished a bag of nuts out of Mimikun, stowed in the back of the carriage, and handed it to Krius.
"I'm really sorry. Here, have some nuts as an apology…"
"…What kind of nuts are those?"
"Huh? They're the Amuse Nuts I gave you before, back when I was guarding His Majesty the Emperor."
"…Weakling, do you just carry those around with you everywhere?"
This, too, was thanks to Mimikun's power.
I'd stuffed this time's Mimikun with every item I could think of. Beyond what Citry had requested, I'd packed everything from Treasure Weapons to clothing to snacks. This trip would surely prove just how useful Mimikun could be.
Come to think of it, this was the first time I'd ever carried this many Treasure Weapons. Some of them possessed abilities that couldn't be replicated, so maybe this time I could actually be useful. Collecting Treasure Weapons was fun, but there was nothing quite like the joy of using one in practice.
I let out a sigh heavy with emotion.
"Finally… the day has come for my collection to actually serve a purpose…"
"Brother, your collection is basically all junk! You're always buying up the weirdest Treasure Weapons…"
I wished he'd stop being so blunt. Sure, they'd rarely been useful, but the ones I'd given to Citry and Riez were part of my collection too…
"There, there, don't blame the tools."
"…Isn't that just saying the Weakling is the one to blame?"
It seemed we had a difference of opinion. The problem wasn't me—it was the trouble that kept gravitating toward me. Honestly, everyone around me was always getting into bizarre incidents, and being dragged into every single one was exhausting.
I flashed a hard-boiled grin to deflect Krius's glare, when Citry—who'd been serving as our driver—called out.
"Kurai, it looks like there are bandits! What should we do?"
"Bandits!? Out here near a populated area? That's impossible! Give me a break!"
Krius was making a perfectly reasonable point, but Lucia and Riez looked unfazed. Bandits and Monsters were basically a standard part of traveling. They'd shown up plenty of times even when I was guarding His Majesty the Emperor.
Riez yawned and asked Citry.
"New faces?"
"Seems like it. At least, none of them should be from the groups that operate around here—"
Honestly, bad people were everywhere…
Krius looked at me with a grim expression. I gave a weary shrug, sighed, and said: "Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like a situation that calls for me. Lucia, Riez, Elisa, Krius—take care of it."
Unfortunately, my collection didn't contain a single Treasure Weapon capable of defeating bandits or Monsters.
This was precisely why bodyguards were indispensable.
"Roger! Let's go, Tee!"
"Geez! We just left the Imperial Capital!"
"Why do you get to act all high and mighty, Weakling!?"
Krius screamed as he leapt from the carriage, following after Riez and Lucia.
The Star's Holy Thunder was tagging along behind us this time, so it'd be easy pickings. Bring it on—spears, guns, whatever.
§ § § Deep in the forest. It was a mysterious space where leaves drifted down from above in a gentle, scattered dance.
The thickly growing trees caught the sunlight and glittered brilliantly. Clear, unpolluted water bubbled up from the ground to form a small spring, then flowed slowly across the forest floor.
In this space—like a scene from a famous painting—stood two figures.
Slender and tall, clad in loose robes of young-leaf green. Their features were impeccably refined, with a jawline that traced a beautiful, sweeping curve. Their translucent eyes held a delicate beauty that seemed otherworldly, and strangely, their silhouettes harmonized perfectly with the scenery around them.
Even someone with little knowledge would recognize at a glance from that beauty alone that these two were Spiritfolk.
Spiritfolk—intermediate beings closer to spirits than humans, yet slightly nearer to spirits than purely biological humans.
Among the Spiritfolk, those especially revered were the Spirit Princesses, beings known for their beauty and power. Even now, in an age when civilization had flooded the world with artificial light and the Spiritfolk had almost entirely withdrawn from public view, they remained figures of mystique. One of them—a Spirit Princess, in fact the most renowned queen of the Spiritfolk—heard the news brought from outside and spoke in a voice like a whisper.
"Shero has been found…?"
"One of the Wandering Folk secured and performed rites of repose with human assistance. The letter bears Shero's cursed energy—there's no mistaking it."
The male Spiritfolk who delivered the report spoke with a grave expression to the Spirit Princess, whose face wore a look of weary resignation.
This was the most famous queen among the Spiritfolk in the entire world. When humans had tried to subjugate the Spiritfolk through the advance of civilization, it was she who had cursed and repelled them, demonstrating her power for all to see. Feared among humans, she was simultaneously a hero—and a taboo—among her own people.
The cursed artifact imbued with that long-lost power had to be recovered now that the Spiritfolk had secured a certain standing among humans.
Shero—once a high-ranking Spiritfolk—had unleashed a curse born of rage after the forest under their dominion was destroyed. That curse was far beyond what human hands could handle.
The Wandering Folk—called "Desert Spiritfolk" by humans—were Spiritfolk who had once lived in Shero's forest and undergone a transformation. Spiritfolk who normally absorbed the magical power of forests to grow had, over many generations of traveling across different lands, changed in nature. The fact that word had come from the Wandering Folk meant they had fulfilled their duty.
"They wish to come here directly to return it. Yggdra was the one who gave them their mission—they have justice on their side."
Silence fell over the murmuring stream.
Eventually, the Spirit Princess furrowed her brow.
"That is… a problem. Yggdra currently has no capacity to receive outsiders."
"Indeed it is. Who would have thought Shero would be found at this particular timing… No—perhaps it's better to say this timing is fortunate. Any later, and we wouldn't have had the capacity to accept them at all."
"You're right… We cannot refuse. Shero is one of our own kin."
The Spirit Princess sighed, then raised her gaze toward the sky.
There—towering above—stood a colossal tree that pierced the heavens.
Its trunk was immense, its branches and leaves touched the clouds, and its full extent was impossible to fathom.
One of the systems that drew Mana Material from the Ley Lines and regulated the flow of power among the stars—the World Tree.
But the World Tree long maintained by Yggdra, homeland of the Spiritfolk, was now slipping beyond control.
The area around the World Tree's base had already been transformed into a demonic realm by the accumulated Mana Material, inaccessible even to Yggdra's own people. The folk of Yggdra were trying to calm it, but so far no effective measures had been found.
"By rights, we should welcome them and offer our gratitude—but we'll simply have to send them away after some minimal courtesy. If it were only fellow Spiritfolk involved, that would be one thing, but we cannot afford to draw humans into this."
"Understood. Still, the forest itself is being affected by the World Tree. Whether they can even make it this far is uncertain… Truly, what unlucky humans."
If only they had come a little sooner, the forest wouldn't have been this dangerous. If only they had come a little later, they would have sensed the danger before attempting the journey.
The worst possible timing. And yet, they couldn't refuse the visit entirely. The World Tree's anomaly must not become known to the outside world.