Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey Volume 13 E-Book

Yoshinobu Akita

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 186

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey Volume 13

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Color Illustrations

Prologue

Chapter I: Dawn of the Sword

Chapter II: Goddess of the Sword

Chapter III: Meeting of the Sword

Chapter IV: Legend of the Sword

Chapter V: Bonds of the Sword

Chapter VI: Guidance of the Sword

Epilogue

Afterword

About J-Novel Club

Copyright

Landmarks

Color Illustrations

Table of Contents

Prologue

She could clearly remember the words that her father had muttered when they’d left their hometown. Maybe that was just a ridiculous delusion—she knew she was just a child at the time, and there was no way she could remember such a thing.

But she was certain she knew. He had gazed back at their beautiful hometown with a strange expression caught somewhere between anger and sadness, shedding tears. His voice had been muffled, so quiet it seemed it might disappear with the wind. The surface of the lake had sparkled, smooth ripples moving across it, and the sun was gleaming brilliantly. The moss-covered trunk of a huge tree had sunk to the bottom of the lake, and countless silver fish had been swimming through its twisted roots. That vast body of water deep, deep in the forest had the beauty of a mirror, though it had looked cold as well.

That was a very sacred place, her father had told her years later. Perhaps she should say it had taken several years for him to be able to tell that to his daughter. In the end, she’d never managed to ask him what had caused his anger, or perhaps his sadness. He’d left her with many words unsaid, still hidden within his heart. Maybe he’d meant to tell her eventually. There was no way to know now just how much he’d left unsaid.

Their hometown—she’d never doubted the importance of the place to her father. She imagined he must have dreamed about the scenery there every so often. On the nights when they huddled together under one blanket to share warmth on a street that travelers never passed down, she imagined his recollections were particularly vivid. He would often stare at her, his daughter. It didn’t particularly bother her being watched like that. But she would ask the night sky what she could do to erase the sadness in his eyes.

Her father sighed a lot—even though she warned him over and over not to. He probably sighed knowing he shouldn’t. It was less like breathing and more like letting his vitality escape him, and as he sighed more and more as the long years went by, he eventually wore himself down. It became clear to everyone around him as he became skinnier than other men his age. He was sick.

His condition changed for both the better and for the worse, almost as if to test the reflexes of those treating him. Eventually, after half a year of him weakening and having attacks, he became unable to even wander through his memories. There was nothing she could do—nothing anyone could do, unless they had the ability to manipulate fate. Expensive treatment and life-extending measures ate through their savings in no time at all, and her father’s screams chipped away at her sleeping hours as well. “We’ll have to tie him to his bed if this keeps up.” One of the doctors had told her that while eyeing his broken glasses resentfully. She’d laughed. Tie him down? The eyes he’d stared sadly at her with were clouded and yellow now, wide open and swollen. Tie him down?

Two days after the doctors stopped visiting, her father died. His passing had been peaceful, either due to divine providence, or because he simply didn’t have the vitality left in him to have a violent fit. She didn’t care which one it was. Either way, she was thankful for the end of her father’s suffering. Maybe his sadness never came to an end, but this was a small mercy. If there was any meaning in her prayers, she was thankful for it.

His words on his deathbed had been quiet ones. He’d held his sword close and looked at her with those same sad eyes, the same look he’d had when they had left their hometown. She thought so, at least. She couldn’t help thinking the words he said then were the same as the ones he’d said when they’d left.

Her father, the great swordsman, left these words behind at the end of his life:

“No one is qualified to inherit the way of life of their predecessor... And even if they were, they would have to inherit their sins as well. Those who bear those sins must bear them carefully...and only on their own back.”

Her father’s eyes were no longer seeing anything at this point.

“If you desire to abandon your master and live your own life, that is all you can do.”

Chapter I: Dawn of the Sword

“Mmmh...”

Claiomh stretched, sucking in a breath that filled her lungs with the scent of morning. The fresh scent tickled her nose. She wiped a tear that had squeezed out of the corner of her eye with the back of her hand and leaned on the windowsill. The outdoor scenery she was viewing over her shoulder was completely dyed in the hues of morning. She could see a long line of light-colored roofs stretching into the distance, because the inn they were staying at had been built on a small hill.

She felt something squirming restlessly on top of her head. With a giggle, she picked up the lump of black fur—the creature resembling a black puppy—from her head and hugged him to her chest, looking back outside again.

The morning sun was shining, bathing the town in light. Claiomh felt sleepiness still remaining behind her eyeballs, so she stretched again, holding the puppy, to try to shake it off. The puppy didn’t seem to have noticed that he had been removed from her head, and he was reaching around sleepily with his front paws, eyes still closed. He was probably trying to find her hair. He pawed around for a little while longer and eventually settled on the collar of her pajamas. He leaned against her shoulder, pressing his nose to her, and began snoring once more.

“Morning, huh...”

She muttered something totally obvious.

Her long blonde hair fluttered in the morning wind, under the light of the morning sun. Watching it with half-lidded eyes, she enjoyed sunbathing for a little while. The town was dead quiet, as if some sort of solemn ceremony was about to begin. The streets wouldn’t be bustling with people for some time yet. If there were anyone about, it would probably only be people delivering bread, maybe.

“I just kinda woke up...” Claiomh muttered, taking a long breath. She wasn’t talking to herself. She looked down at the puppy sleeping in her arms. “Even if you wake up early, there’s nothing to do staying in an inn like this... It’s not like I can borrow the kitchen to make breakfast. And Orphen and Majic probably won’t wake up until noon... What should we do, Leki?”

She called out to the puppy-like creature, Leki, but he didn’t answer her, of course. He must have heard her though, because his ears twitched.

“Puppy-like creature” was no exaggeration—Leki really wasn’t a puppy. Though if someone asked her what he was then, Claiomh would have to say that she didn’t actually know. She’d never had to explain this to someone else, of course.

If she were to borrow Orphen’s words—for she remembered these, vaguely, at least—Leki was something called a Deep Dragon. She’d met him a few months earlier, in a forest. Adult Deep Dragons were huge creatures that stood with their heads some three or four meters from the ground, but Leki was still only as big as a puppy.

She didn’t really know why, but he liked her. Well, things like that didn’t really need to have a reason behind them, or so she blithely accepted.

“Now that I think about it...” She gave Leki a pat on the back and looked up. “You’ve come a long way. This is the opposite side of the continent from Totokanta. We’ve just walked all the way to a place that would take a whole week on a steamboat to reach. You can brag to everyone when you get back,” she said, a little exasperated..

Maybe because she’d patted him on the back, Leki had raised his face and was looking up at her blankly. In his vibrant green eyes was a faint glow that resembled the rippling of light off of water’s surface. She was reflected in those eyes...not that she could see that herself.

“You brag to your mom about stuff, right?” Claiomh asked Leki, giggling to herself.

She looked outside again. The light-blue waves of wind were cold to her skin. It was chilly, refreshing weather.

“The weather’s nice.”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The wind was clear enough that she felt like she could see the layers of air up above her.

“Let’s go on a walk,” Claiomh said, and nodded to herself. She pulled back from the window and closed it with one hand. Shutting the curtains, she set Leki down on the bed and clasped her hands, stretching once more.

She took her clothes out of the closet in the room.

This—everything up to this—was just another normal morning, the likes of which she’d experienced countless times before.

◆◇◆◇◆

“...So, we’re still here.”

“Who’re you talking to, Majic?” Orphen asked as the boy mumbled to himself out the window.

Nashwater was a quiet town. The sort of place where the chill in the morning air lasted until noon. It was small-scale as “towns” on the continent went.

Orphen raised his head. The black-haired, black-eyed, perpetually black-clad man sighed a meaningless sigh. He stroked his jaw, then closed his mouth, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what can we do? We don’t know where to go.”

That being said... There’s no reason to stay here forever either.

Nashwater was the closest town to the Kimluck-controlled Gate Lock region. Of course, there was so little exchange between Gate Lock and the rest of the world that most people on the east side of the continent thought of Nashwater as the northernmost town. Having no particular sights to see nor any local specialties to sample, the town’s only lifeline was that it was near a tourism site.

Its population was slightly high for its size at a little over twelve thousand. Resting at the base of a mountain, some sixty percent of the town was on a slope, so it couldn’t be called a very easy place to live. But it was blessed by nature, and since it was close to the industrially poisoned Urbanrama, they tended to be compared to each other.

Majic turned to Orphen and frowned in frustration. The boy was about to turn fifteen, Orphen recalled. He’d always had a very expressive face, so he was easy to read when he was feeling any sort of negative emotion.

“But it’s been two weeks since we came down from the Ledgeborne hot spring town.”

So you’re just bored, Orphen thought to himself with a sigh as his apprentice pursed his lips and complained to him.

Orphen found himself reaching up to his chest. There was a familiar sensation where a metal pendant hung, a crest of a one-legged dragon curled around a sword. The silver crest was a symbol of the highest authority on black sorcery of the continent: the Tower of Fangs. Fiddling with the pendant for a time, he mused in silence.

“But, you know...” There were any number of excuses he could make. “We’re not traveling on a carriage to a destination like we were before... When we don’t even know where we’re going, I’m kind of reluctant to leave.”

“Maybe so, but...”

“We’ve still got some money, so we’re good on lodging fees for a little while still...”

“The money you got from Eris?”

“Yeah. We’ll call it a reward for our work up there, I guess.”

“...Did we actually do something?”

“Well, you didn’t do anything,” Orphen said with narrowed eyes, and reached down under the bed he was sitting on. His bag was right next to his feet. He rummaged around in it and took out a book.

It had been published by the Continental Sorcerers’ Association, and was the most trusted atlas of the continent that people could get their hands on.

He opened the book to a familiar page—the same spot he’d opened the book to several times over the last few days. The page depicted the entire Kiesalhiman continent on a larger scale than it was on any other page.

Staring at the continent as a whole, Orphen groaned to himself. When Majic peered down at the nearby book, he glanced up at him and said, “So this is where we are right now...Nashwater.”

“The closest city’s Urbanrama.”

“Yep. It’s probably closer than Kimluck.” He pointed at the autonomous city of Urbanrama on the east coast and continued. “Urbanrama’s an independent city—not that that’s really all that rare anymore. In fact, Totokanta’s probably got it beat when it comes to independence from the central government. And Tefurem’s probably first on the list. Still, Urbanrama was the first independent city. Urbanrama’s said to control most of Nashwater’s capital. Supposedly Nashwater only exists because the royal capital didn’t want to pass the continental railway through Urbanrama, so they decided to extend it this way instead.”

“Huh...”

“And Ledgeborne, which used to be only a Celestial ruin, was probably made into a tourist spot as part of the same plan. Well, ultimately, plans for the railroad ended up changing a lot, and they’re still experimenting with it around the capital.”

“I’ve never seen it before. It’s like, a big metal road that a huge steam engine travels down, right?” Majic asked.

Orphen looked up at the boy and pretended not to notice the glimmer of anticipation dancing in his eyes. “Yeah, in theory it’s something like that. I’ve never seen it either, though.”

He returned his gaze to the map. There was a faint line trailing from Urbanrama to the royal capital of Mebrenst, and next to it was a notice printed in red: “Planned Transcontinental Railway—Incomplete.”

“I heard it’s faster and cheaper to travel by sea, so the project’s basically stalled right now. Though there’s a very limited number of people who use sections of it. There’s got to be quite a bit of technological innovation—more safety, more mobility, more speed?—before the plans can be revived to what they were originally.”

“Oh... So we won’t be able to take it,” Majic lamented.

Orphen shrugged as his pupil furrowed his cute little brows. “Well, most intercity exchanges are done by sea anyway. That’s probably enough trivia for now...” he went on. “In short, Nashwater is like Urbanrama’s kid. And Ledgeborne’s the grandkid, I guess. So, if we’re going in order, it makes sense to head for Urbanrama next, but...”

“Is there some reason why we can’t?”

He asks so nonchalantly... Orphen’s lips twitched in a wry smile that didn’t quite make it all the way out on his face. Maybe from the outside, it would look like he’d just smiled.

“Well, going in order’s fine, but if you keep extending the line, it goes all the way to the capital, right?”

“And you don’t want to go to the capital?” Majic hadn’t expected that. He was looking at Orphen with his eyes wide in surprise.

Orphen looked back at him and told him glumly, “Can’t really say I have good memories of the place, no...”

Orphen lifted the map up and took a look at the large fan-shaped capital of Mebrenst before closing the book. He left it at the head of the bed and folded his arms behind his neck.

Looking up at the grayish ceiling in the inn, he continued. “Part of me wants to just take a ship from Urbanrama back to the western side of the continent.”

“You want to go back?” Majic asked, even more surprised. “Go back...where? Totokanta?”

“Well, if you took a ship from Urbanrama, the first stop would be Tefurem.” Orphen waved his hand to cut the conversation short. He didn’t want to say any more before he could get his thoughts in order. “Anyway, if you’ve lost your destination, the best thing to do’s go back to your starting point.”

“Wouldn’t Totokanta be our starting point?”

“...Not for me.”

Majic didn’t seem to agree with him. He looked around as if trying to find the words to say and, whether or not he was satisfied with what he found, the boy seemed to recall, “Claiomh’s looking forward to visiting the capital, you know.”

“Well, she can go by ship after we get back to Totokanta. It’s real easy.”

“No, I mean... Well, I don’t know what I want to say exactly, but I think she wants to go there next.” The blond boy spread his arms.

Orphen gave him a look, and his eyes started darting about as if trying to find more words to convince him.

He shrugged his shoulders and added, “I want to go there too...”

Now it was Orphen’s turn to find the right words. There were all sorts of ways to fill the space. Move your gaze about. Clear your throat. Change the subject. Sigh.

But Orphen just shut his mouth instead.

Outside his window, the sky still shone with the light of morning.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Hmm. So, is this what you’re trying to say? If you fold that newspaper a hundred times, the world will be destroyed? Okay, I get it. I’ll call the nurse, so would you back up two steps?”

“No, Doctor Fury! It’s true! As a mathematician, I can tell you this: it might not be the only way to destroy the world, but it is certainly one of them!”

“I told you I get it.”

“I don’t believe you do get how frightening this information is! What I require is a prescription so that I may forget this forbidden knowledge I have learned.”

“We already fired Brutus, didn’t we? The man’s only flaw was that he hit his patients too much, but we really need him for things like this...”

“...”

Eventually, Claiomh got bored of standing on her tiptoes and watching the little “actors” move busily to the left and right during the puppet show. She tossed the last of her sherbet in her mouth.

The Doctor Fury puppet show out on the street reached its climax, and the children gathered nearby watched with bated breath.

Claiomh crumpled up the paper bag that her sherbet had come in and glanced around. The vast sky above her caught her eye before the townscape of Nashwater. The cold wind blowing from the blue sky that extended out to the nearby mountains seemed to lighten the world around her.

Something black suddenly entered her field of view. Leki was looking down at her from atop her head. However, he was too close, so all he looked like was a lump of black at the edge of her view.

“Well, what should we do? Wanna head back?” she asked him.

The Deep Dragon made no reply, but Claiomh nodded to herself regardless.

“Yeah, Orphen and Majic might be up by now.”

Tossing the crumpled up paper bag into a nearby trash can, Claiomh left, giving the puppet show one last glance. There was only one person manipulating the dolls in the small box-shaped stage, yet by some trick or another, a third doll had appeared and leaped on the mathematician, holding him down.

“Aaah! Please listen to me, doctor! I must seal away the terrifying knowledge I have—”

Claiomh walked down the street, the shrill cries of the puppeteer echoing behind her.

It was still too early to call it “before noon,” but the sun had risen fairly high in the sky. Claiomh estimated that she’d spent some three hours or so wandering here and there. That was probably right, including the time she’d spent in a little café she’d found, where she’d had some hot milk.

“I’m not very tired. I wonder if it’s because I took a break,” she said to herself, picking Leki up off of her head and holding him to her chest instead. She looked down at him as he looked up at her, his nose twitching. “You do start to get bored of taking walks if you go on them every day, huh?” she complained. “I wonder how long Orphen plans on staying here.”

This town had a lot of hills, but if you chose your paths carefully, you could spend most of the time walking downhill—though in theory you should have to climb the same amount you descend and descend the same amount you climb. Claiomh was already familiar enough with this town to grasp that much of its geography.

She’d put away the jeans she was used to wearing and was walking down a street with big flower beds in a new skirt, which didn’t feel too bad. Time seemed to move slower in this town, and no one hurried anywhere. Claiomh didn’t feel any particular need to go against the slow speed of the town, so she walked with a deliberate leisure to her step.

Though she’d always been a bit of a slow walker... Claiomh took a quiet breath as she reflected on the past. There had been a time when merely climbing stairs had been a challenge for her.

Wonder how Ende’s doing... She felt a prick in her chest as she remembered a wet nurse who had been particularly kind to her. She was all excited the last time I saw her because her granddaughter had been born, wasn’t she? She said they were going to name her after me.

Just then—

“Waaaaah!”

Claiomh jolted to a stop when she heard the scream. It was an agonized shout that was horribly out of place in this town full of flowers.

At the same time, there were a few dull impacts, and some aggressive shouts.

“Raaah!”

“Stand up, you bastard!”

Claiomh glanced around, blinking. She groaned, her fond recollections abruptly interrupted. “What’s going on...? A fight?”

There weren’t that many people on the street, but it wasn’t completely deserted. Yet the other people on the street merely gave each other dark looks and sped up, quickly walking past her. She heard one middle-aged man muttering to himself as he passed by her.

“Not them again...”

What’s going on?