"Master, may I ask you something?"
They had passed the halfway mark on the road to the Royal Capital.
So far, everything had gone smoothly. Leila's proposed strategy — deliberately pitting the nobles against each other and having them each take separate routes to the Royal Capital — had succeeded beyond expectations.
Leila's deft information manipulation, Sara's reputation and personality, and the swift information relay carried out by Albert, who excelled in mobility. By leveraging all of these, they had managed to deploy their forces efficiently without the nobles noticing a thing. The organized armies they'd encountered along the way had been defeated without too much trouble, and they had been able to traverse the distance while preserving their strength.
...However, there were several things on Ermes's mind, including matters related to that.
To clear up those doubts, Ermes turned to Rose during their rest break — she had entered a rest period as well.
"Hmm~? What is it, my beloved apprentice, asking so formally? If it's something I can answer, don't hold back — ask me anything!"
Rose was relaxed, in her usual easygoing mood. Taking advantage of those words, Ermes spent a moment deliberating what to ask first before opening with this:
"Have you ever heard the word 'shrine maiden'?"
"...Tell me more about that."
...It seemed he'd hit the mark from the very first question.
Rose's expression immediately turned serious. Ermes explained: what had happened in the hidden chapel, the document he'd found in the archive that bore a deeply significant passage, how its contents flatly contradicted what passed for common knowledge in the current kingdom. And among it all, one sentence had especially caught his eye...
"'Should one emerge who, despite being of the royal bloodline, possesses not a single drop of Bloodline Magic, that person is a true child of god, a shrine maiden, and shall be treated with greater care than the King himself.' ...I see. Doesn't exactly smell sweet, does it?"
"Right. So I figured the word 'shrine maiden' — the one thing I'd never heard before — might be the key. From the context, it seems to refer to some kind of position or title, doesn't it?"
Rose nodded at Ermes's question.
"Yeah, I don't know the details myself, but it's apparently a title from another country. Seems to be a type of priest, more or less — their main role is to serve as a bridge between gods and people. As for what they can actually do..."
From there, she described several of the roles a "shrine maiden" was expected to fulfill.
According to what she'd heard, Rose had frequently encountered the word "shrine maiden" during her time in the Royal Family. After leaving the royal household, however, she hadn't heard it at all. In other words...
"It's probably something closely tied to the Royal Family. Beyond that, even I don't know."
"...Even you, Master?"
"Yeah. I was royalty, but I never actually became the King. So there are two possibilities: either it's a legend with no real substance passed down only within the Royal Family, or..."
She paused.
"...It's the kind of thing only the person who becomes King is allowed to know."
"Something like that actually exists?"
"That one's eyebrow-raising too, I'll admit. But in short, as for what it specifically means..."
"We'd have to actually go to the Royal Capital and ask the King himself to find out."
According to Rose's reasoning, the current King — given his position — likely hadn't been killed yet.
If that was the case, then they had even more reason to head to the Royal Capital. Ermes was reaching that conclusion when—
"......Come to think of it, there was something that's been bothering me about the current King, too."
Rose continued, broaching the new topic.
"Something bothering you?"
"Well, the current king — that's Freed's older brother, right? He's a rigid guy with a weak constitution mentally, but his abilities were more than adequate, and above all, he's an absurdly serious person.
...So it feels wrong that he'd just let the interior of the country go to hell like this."
"!"
"If he were actually doing his job as king, then at the very least... what was it, Aster? Even if he'd been keeping close watch on that guy, there's no way he'd have allowed a mere prince to run rampant like that. And he should have had a tighter grip on the reins of the nobles as well."
"...So you're saying there was some reason he couldn't do that?"
"Exactly. Maybe he was paralyzed by political constraints, or perhaps..."
In response to Ermes's question, Rose pondered for a moment before speaking.
"He was so consumed by some emergency that he couldn't afford to deal with any of it."
"Ah—"
Hearing that, Ermes remembered.
That was right — there was something else he had been about to ask Rose about here.
Recently... no, perhaps ever since being driven out of the kingdom by the
regime usurpation,
he had remembered it: that vague, indescribable sense of wrongness that pervaded the entire country.
"Master."
Just as he was about to voice the thing he had only recently managed to put into words, turning to Rose—
The outside of the carriage suddenly erupted into commotion.
Before long, the carriage door flew open, and bursting inside in a panic was... a silver-haired girl with her sword drawn.
"Sorry to interrupt your break, Ern, Lady Rose. Emergency."
Nina said, looking — for her — remarkably flustered.
She reported exactly what Ermes had been about to voice as a premonition.
"...Monsters.
An enormous horde of them — abnormally huge — is rampaging up ahead, and... the road to the Royal Capital is completely blocked in every direction."
That was right.
When they'd fled the Royal Capital, when they'd headed toward the northern rebellion, when they'd moved toward the church headquarters—
They had traveled considerable distances each time, and yet the obstacles they'd encountered had always been human armies or mages.
In other words, from the moment they'd left the Royal Capital until this very instant—
—the monster interference had been
abnormally
scarce.
The reason. The cause. He had been about to ask Rose about it just now, but the source of that wrongness had materialized before his eyes before he could.
He had no idea why this was happening. He had a few theories, but in the current situation, they were all nothing more than speculation.
What he did know was this:
To reach the Royal Capital, they now had to overcome one trial here.
The worst kind — an ordeal of the highest magnitude.