Water Magician

Vol 3. Chapter 701: Bonus Part: Ryo and Abel’s Journey Home (29)

0701 In the Frontier III

Clean stables, fresh straw bedding.

Seeing Andalusia delighted, Ryo nodded several times.

In that satisfied state, the lodging procedures were completed, and the two entered their room.

Unfortunately, there was no open-air bath attached to the guest room, but...

“There was a large public bath! The water was wonderful.”

“It’s strange, being able to take a bath in the middle of a wasteland.”

This was the conversation the two had after getting out of the bath.

The towns they had stayed in since leaving the Eastern Countries had, unsurprisingly, not had baths.

That said, Ryo was a water-attribute magician.

And a former Japanese man.

Naturally, he had filled an ice bathtub with hot water every night and taken a bath... and Abel had shared in that benefit too.

“Well, as for baths themselves, your water-attribute magic handles that just fine, Ryo.”

“Yes, yes. Every night, I’ve shown you the splendor of water-attribute magic. But a large public bath at an inn is different in its own way.”

“That’s true. Just having a spacious bath changes the feeling in all sorts of ways.”

As they said that, the two entered the dining establishment next to the Sand Sleep Inn.

The Sand Sleep Inn did not have anything like a dining hall, and guests were meant to eat at the neighboring dining establishment, the Sand Meal Pavilion.

“Judging by the name, it’s in the same group as the inn, isn’t it?”

“Probably. Still, Sand Sleep is one thing, but Sand Meal is...”

“Let’s pray they don’t serve sand cuisine.”

The two men’s fears did not come true.

The meal was wonderful.

As expected of the place the head of exchange at the merchants’ guild had recommended as “the best inn.”

Naturally, it was a good inn with the meals included.

“Guests can eat as much as they want of whatever they like? That’s too amazing.”

“The seasoning on this meat is spicy in a way that becomes addictive.”

Both Ryo and Abel were thoroughly enjoying the very delicious food.

The Sand Meal Pavilion felt like a somewhat high-class restaurant, and many of its customers were refined people, but it did not seem likely to suffer from the common problem of such establishments: not enough food.

Yes.

Provided one could keep eating to the end...

The two had started on the main meat dish... or more precisely, on seconds of the meat dish, when the outside door opened and six men entered the restaurant.

Of course, customers had been coming and going until then as well, so the two continued eating without paying any particular attention.

“There they are. Those two.”

They heard that voice from the men.

The six men walked quickly to the two men’s table and surrounded it.

Abel looked at them with suspicion.

Incidentally, Ryo either completely ignored them or did not even spare them a glance.

“You’re C-rank adventurer Ryo and his porter, yes? You’re coming with us.”

“I refuse.”

The brown-haired man who seemed to be the leader of the six spoke as if it were only natural, and Ryo rejected him without the slightest pause.

After saying only that, Ryo continued eating the meat dish in front of him.

Seeing that, Abel gave a small sigh, then began eating his meat dish as well.

The six men were left behind.

For a moment, their surprise at the two men’s attitude outpaced their anger... but as time passed, it seemed their anger properly rose.

“Don’t screw with us!”

The brown-haired man shouted.

Every customer in the restaurant began glancing at the six men.

“This is a place to eat food. I think people who cannot be quiet should leave.”

Ryo’s calm voice was spun out.

Even after hearing it, the six men apparently had no intention of backing down.

On the other hand, one person trembled just slightly at the sound of Ryo’s uncharacteristic voice.

It was Abel.

Ryo is angry...

He understood how Ryo felt.

They had been enjoying a meal, and anyone would be angry if that was disturbed.

Naturally.

“Hey!”

Thud.

The hand of the brown-haired man who had finally reached toward Ryo struck something invisible.

“What?”

“?”

Repelled by something invisible, the six men recognized it as a physical barrier.

At some point, it seemed Ryo had surrounded the two of them with to protect them.

Seeing that, however, Abel thought:

The staff are going to bring dessert afterward, so what is he going to do?

Whether that thought was appropriate to the situation was extremely questionable.

Rather, it was a very Ryo-like thought.

After their long relationship, Abel’s thinking might have been eroded by Ryo-like thought patterns too.

Until the two finished their main meat dishes, the six men literally could not lay a hand on them.

Apparently concluding that they were being protected by a , they merely glared silently at the two.

As expected, even they would not swing swords around inside the restaurant and try to destroy a .

After Ryo and Abel finished the meat dishes, they raised their hands toward the female server watching anxiously from the corner of the restaurant.

Seeing that, the woman approached timidly.

“Excuse me, dessert, please. I’ll have the Mont Blanc cake.”

“I’ll have the mille-feuille.”

“Certainly.”

Ryo and Abel placed their orders, and the woman only glanced at the six men before leaving toward the kitchen.

She had been nervous when she approached, but the two had ordered normally, and the six men neither said nor did anything in response. By the time she returned to the kitchen, she looked slightly calmer.

Then they saw the female server carrying the two cakes and coffees toward them.

The next instant—

“H-huh?”

“What...”

“My body is moving on its own...”

“I can’t brace myself.”

Several of the six men surrounding Ryo and Abel “moved,” leaving no one between the woman and the two men’s table.

It has to be a combination of and .

Abel thought as he watched Ryo, who said nothing and wore a composed expression.

He had frozen the floor with so they could not brace themselves, then moved them by shifting the ...

Precisely because Abel had known him so long, he could accurately read the method.

Naturally, the men who had been forcibly moved tried to move in order to obstruct the female server’s path, but there was an invisible wall, and they could not move.

“Mont Blanc cake and mille-feuille.”

The woman reached the two men’s table without issue and delivered the two cakes and coffees.

The two men ate their cakes deliciously and drank their coffee deliciously.

But finally, the brown-haired man snapped.

“Hey!”

“Quietly, please.”

Ryo said it without the slightest pause.

In contrast to the brown-haired man, his voice was quiet and composed.

But the words seemed to possess physical pressure, silencing the men and bearing down on them with a sense of oppression.

So this is Ryo’s pressure. I’ve seen it through Soul Echo before, but... it really is something.

Abel thought while eating cake with an innocent face.

When Abel had seen it, the pressure had been slammed straight into its targets from the front.

If he remembered correctly, that had been against inquisitors who had barged into an inn.

If you had something like this slammed into you head-on, of course you’d get scared.

Even now, when Ryo did not seem to be putting all that much strength into it, the six men surrounding the two of them were flinching.

It was so obvious that even Abel could tell they were flinching.

After that, the six flinching men said nothing and watched the two men eat their cake and drink their coffee.

After slowly draining their coffees, Ryo and Abel left the Sand Meal Pavilion.

The Sand Sleep Inn where the two were staying was right next door.

The six men had followed them out of the Sand Meal Pavilion.

“We are staying next door at the Sand Sleep Inn. If you have something to discuss, your person in charge should come in person tomorrow. If so, we will hear what you have to say.”

“What!”

The six men bristled at Ryo’s words.

“I did not say we would refuse to meet. Or, if we quarrel here and now and make relations worse, causing us to leave the fortress, can you take responsibility for that?”

“Ghh...”

“If you understand, please leave.”

Ryo gave them no opening whatsoever.

The memory of having been pressed down by his “pressure” had been carved into the six men.

There was no way such men could oppose Ryo.

Ryo and Abel entered the Sand Sleep Inn.

“You’re frightening when you get angry, Ryo.”

Abel said it with a laugh.

“They were wrong to come during an enjoyable meal. It was boorish. Causing a commotion after coming in during a meal is a standard trope, but...”

“Ah, one of the tropes you love so much, Ryo. Then why were you angry?”

Abel tilted his head.

Abel knew that Ryo dearly loved “standard tropes.”

“Tropes are important, but I don’t need ones that make me unpleasant.”

“O-oh...”

“If they had waited until we finished eating before speaking to us, or if they had spoken to us after we left the dining establishment, I might have gone with them tonight.”

“Well, timing is important in everything.”

If the situation was urgent, then one could not afford to worry about such things.

But that was the other party’s circumstance.

If that was truly the case, then they should not have spoken so high-handedly from the beginning.

Timing was important.

So was the way one spoke.

“If it’s important, they’ll come again tomorrow.”

Abel shrugged as well.

A national crisis, an organizational crisis... That did not mean one could ignore the other party’s circumstances.

Even Abel, who was a king, did not think that.

If it truly was important, one must not use someone who would anger the other party as one’s messenger.

It was that simple.

The next morning.

After enjoying a wonderful sleep, the two men entered the Sand Meal Pavilion with smiles on their faces in order to eat breakfast.

Then, after breakfast, they returned to the Sand Sleep Inn, where four men were waiting for them.

They had actually seen two of those men before.

“Lord Ryo, and Sir Porter, I apologize for the rudeness of our people yesterday.”

The first person they recognized immediately bowed his head.

Seeing that, the other three hurriedly bowed their heads as well.

Among them was the other person they recognized... the brown-haired man who had come the day before.

He looked extremely awkward.

Apparently, he had been scolded quite harshly.

After only glancing once at the brown-haired man, Abel spoke to the person who had bowed first.

“You were one of the guards at the gate yesterday.”

“You’re the person in charge?”

Ryo asked with a surprised expression.

Yes. The person who had bowed first was the man who had led the guards checking identification at the gate into the fortress, and the one who had spoken with the two of them.

“My name is Morgar. I am the commander-in-chief of the guards and the military officer responsible for the fortress.”

He was in his late thirties, with black eyes, dark brown hair, brown skin, and he was perhaps around 175 centimeters tall, the same as Ryo.

He had a well-toned body.

“Is it some tradition of this fortress for the person in charge to stand at the gate himself?”

“No, we’re simply short on people.”

Commander-in-Chief Morgar answered Abel’s question with a laugh.

“To be precise, I should say we have people, but many of them are in training. If someone stands guard, they can’t train with the sword during that time, can they? Right now, everyone we have is someone we want to train and strengthen even a little. We don’t have the luxury of letting them rest by standing guard.”

“Guard duty is rest, then...”

Abel shrugged at Morgar’s words.

But he understood that what Morgar was saying was reasonable.

To put it another way, this fortress was in a situation where they had to immerse inexperienced people in training.

“I understand that you’re busy, but you should choose your messengers more carefully.”

“Yes... you’re right. I have no excuse.”

At Abel’s words, Morgar gave a wry smile and looked at the brown-haired man.

Apparently, he completely understood what Abel was talking about.

The brown-haired man also bowed his head deeply once more.

He understood that his own behavior had complicated the situation.

“To offer an excuse, I was also going around checking other inns at that time.”

“Looking for us?”

“Yes. I told them that if they found you, they were to ask politely... I’m sorry we made you uncomfortable.”

Morgar bowed his head again, and the other three bowed their heads once more too.

When they went this far in humbling themselves, even Ryo and Abel began to feel that perhaps it was fine.

Perhaps sensing that the two men’s bad feelings had softened considerably, Morgar looked once at Ryo and once at Abel, then asked:

“I have one question.”

“Yes?”

“Hm?”

Ryo and Abel reacted.

“I would like to hear Sir Porter’s name.”

“Ah...”

Abel glanced at Ryo.

Receiving Abel’s gaze, Ryo shrugged. It was a sign that he would leave it to him.

“My name is Abel.”

“Hmm. Sir Abel, then. No matter how I look at you, you do not seem like an ordinary porter. In fact, since earlier, you have been the one answering for Lord Ryo, who is a C-rank adventurer.”

“I’m often entrusted with negotiations too. Don’t worry about it.”

“I-is that so? I’m certain you must be a swordsman of some renown.”

Morgar said that with a brief glance at Abel’s sword, but he did not pursue the matter any further.

“The reason I came this time is to make a request of Lord Ryo, as an adventurer.”

“If it’s a request for an adventurer, I would think you should go through the adventurers’ guild.”

“Yes. Normally, that would be the case, but this fortress has no adventurers’ guild.”

“I thought not.”

Abel nodded at Morgar’s words, as if it was just as he had expected.

“Yesterday, while we were walking along the streets looking for the merchants’ guild, I didn’t see any adventurers’ guild sign.”

“I heard the two of you spoke with Head of Exchange Maifa of the merchants’ guild.”

“Maifa asked whether we wanted to take on work training people.”

“Yes. And you told him that you were leaving the fortress immediately, so it was impossible.”

“That’s right.”

Abel answered.

Ryo nodded silently as well.

When Abel was speaking, including during negotiations, Ryo was often silent.

Narrowing the point of contact to one person was a rule of negotiation.

This time, the point of contact was Abel.

“I heard Marquis Nyusha overthrew the former royal family, and the fortress is resisting him.”

“That is correct.”

“Is it about to become a war with this Marquis Nyusha? Is that why you’re training?”

“I won’t say the possibility is zero, but we want to avoid war above all.”

“Is that your own thinking, Morgar?”

“No. Not only mine... The merchants who manage this fortress’s self-government think the same.”

“Oh?”

Abel looked slightly surprised.

“I did think things seemed rather suspicious... I thought you would not shrink from war.”

“It seems the marquis’s side wishes to avoid war as well.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. Since the days of the Go royal family, Zarash Fortress has prided itself on being impregnable. It once repelled an attack by two thousand regular troops with two hundred soldiers.”

“That is impressive.”

Abel was impressed.

Whether fortress or fortified city, in general terms, the upper limit one could defend against was said to be five times the number of defenders.

Repelling an enemy ten times their number could be considered proof of Zarash Fortress’s excellence.

“That said, at present, there are very few veteran soldiers left among those defending the fortress.”

“Why? If I remember correctly, the civil war itself has been going on for nearly five years, hasn’t it? If they kept fighting, I would think they’d gain experience.”

“Yes. In fact, that was true until two months ago... There is a town called Bond a little distance from here. Along with Zarash Fortress, it could be called one of the centers of the anti-Nyusha faction. An epidemic broke out in Bond... and unfortunately, at the time, the priest was away from the town, so many people died.”

“I see. The veteran soldiers of this fortress were sent to fill that hole.”

“Yes. Bond is not as solidly fortified as this fortress. If they were attacked, they would be forced into a difficult situation, so there was no choice.”

Morgar answered with a grimace.

“In fact, the first meeting between both factions will be held the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh...”

“I will attend as the military officer responsible, but... the marquis’s faction has also informally approached us, saying they wish to avoid armed conflict. If a large-scale armed conflict breaks out, it may invite intervention from surrounding countries. That is something everyone wants to avoid. Us and the marquis’s faction alike.”

“That sounds like a levelheaded judgment.”

Abel nodded.

Yes. The troublesome thing about civil wars was intervention from surrounding countries.

That did not change in any era or any country.

Ending a civil war without armed clashes, or at least avoiding large-scale ones, should have been good for everyone...

“Will there be a mediator, or someone standing between the sides at that meeting?”

“Yes. The Handaru Federation will serve as mediator.”

“I see.”

If a meeting was to be held between factions that had been opposed for a long time, an organization to mediate was absolutely necessary.

In many cases, that would be a powerful country.

Because it would be troublesome if one side carried out an ambush or assassination at the meeting.

If a powerful country had stepped in as mediator and felt its dignity had been trampled, it would become an enemy... and to avoid that, neither side would attempt such an attack.

That was why who mediated was important.

The Federation could be said to have sufficient power.

“But I hear the marquis’s faction is not satisfied with that part.”

“Is that so?”

“They say the Federation ultimately intends to absorb all of us, so it is not neutral.”

“Ah...”

At Morgar’s explanation, Abel nodded slightly.

“You wanted us... no, Ryo, to help with training, correct?”

“I would like Lord Ryo to help, but Sir Abel as well.”

“The request fee will double.”

“Ugh... I’ll somehow persuade the merchants on that point...”

Morgar grimaced.

“Well, that aside. What level are they, and how many are we training?”

“Thirty children who had never even held a sword until a month ago, and twenty who have learned the basics but are still too dangerous to send onto a battlefield.”

“Hmm.”

“This fortress does have a sword instructor.”

“Oh?”

“He is already past sixty, but stronger than any of the guards. We call him Old Masda. He has been in this fortress since the days of the Go royal family, and in fact, he trained me in the past as well.”

Morgar gave a wry smile.

“But as expected, when fifty young ones were suddenly added... no, from the beginning, nearly twenty people were already receiving training. Old Masda has his hands full with training them alone, and he was complaining that another fifty would be impossible. Then a C-rank adventurer arrived, you see? Well, Lord Ryo is wearing a robe and looks like a magician... but even so, I thought he might be good to have help with training.”

“Yes, I am a magician.”

Here, at last, Ryo opened his mouth.

Ryo took pride in being a water-attribute magician.

But Abel glanced sideways at him.

He said nothing aloud, but his gaze was speaking.

You were a swordsmanship instructor for the Rune Knights, weren’t you?

Ryo noticed Abel’s gaze too, but ignored it with a composed expression.

That was that, and this was this.

“May we have a little time to think about it?”

“Of course.”

At Abel’s words, Morgar’s eyes widened, and he nodded.

He had likely thought it would be impossible before coming here.

And even while speaking with them, he probably had not expected to receive any favorable answer.

“There is a training ground for the Fortress Training Association, so please come there. It is right near the west gate. For the exact location, the front desk at the Sand Sleep Inn or anyone in town will know it.”

After saying that, Morgar left.

“Abel, let’s cooperate.”

Unlike the previous night, Ryo was unusually active in his agreement.

“That’s rare.”

Abel was surprised by it.

“I felt that Mr. Morgar’s desire to avoid war is genuine. So I want ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) to cooperate with that. I will graciously forget last night’s boorish outrage.”

“Outrage...”

Abel shook his head slightly.

“I’d like to avoid war.”

“Yes. If one side were belligerent, that would be one thing, but if both sides want to avoid it, then cooperating with that is the human thing to do.”

“You’re a battle maniac, Ryo, yet you hate war?”

“How rude! Personal combat and war, where the lives and deaths of many people are at stake, are completely different things.”

Ryo stated it clearly.

Of course, as someone who liked history, Ryo knew that human history could not be separated from war.

But even so, he did not believe that war was something absolutely necessary for people.

When it came to countries, they were too large, and unavoidable collisions sometimes occurred... It would be difficult for individual effort to prevent those collisions from happening.

As a result, no one became happy.

That was what war was.

Though he had forgotten to deny the point that he personally was a battle maniac...

“The contradiction of providing training in order to prevent war...”

“Yes. In the end, mutual destruction becomes a deterrent... Even if it isn’t almighty, it contains a certain amount of truth. It is difficult to start a war with an opponent you know will strike back powerfully and without hesitation. It’s the same as a bully not targeting someone quick to fight, strong, and frightening.”

“I don’t really understand, but... if the issue can be resolved by means other than war, then nothing could be better.”

At Abel’s words, Ryo nodded silently.