Chapter 111 - When the World Tree Blooms (2)

Cloudy eyes that looked as though covered by a stark white fog.

Within them, green pupils that barely maintained their color were carefully looking at Alicia's amber.

"... So you were a precious guest."

A faint smile began to form on the old elf's face as he recognized the scenery contained within the amber.

The Great Elder of the elves.

Old Geronimo, who had survived the era of tribulation long ago, was able to recall a very old memory through the amber Vlad had brought.

"Where did you get this amber?"

"I heard it is a family heirloom of the Heinal Family."

The Great Elder's gaze became pleased as he met the boy's blue eyes.

It was truly a precious human guest he was receiving after a long time.

"Heinal, Heinal, you say..."

The corners of the old tree's eyes, recalling the green of the past, trembled faintly.

With the old man's fading energy, it couldn't have been easy to dig up memories layered over a long period of time.

"The Swordmaster."

However, no matter how deeply buried under the weight of time a memory was, there are unforgettable names.

People whose every step became history.

The current era was built entirely upon their traces.

"... I believe one of the knights who followed behind him had such a surname."

Auguste was standing still behind Vlad, quietly listening.

Remaining that still, holding even his breath.

To a knight who had devoted his entire life to the Empire, hearing about the traces of the Founding King could only be an experience that still made his heart pound.

"I want to know where the maple tree inside here is located, Great Elder."

Old Geronimo opened his closed eyes at the voice coming from in front of him.

A blue light that could be clearly recognized even with his hazy eyes.

The young knight's desperation could be glimpsed starting from the fists he was clenching without realizing it.

"You want to know where the maple tree inside here is located?"

"Yes. That is correct."

His sparkling blue eyes were like starlight.

It felt as though a possibility that had only just taken shape was wriggling within them.

"And how did you know the scenery contained inside here is a maple tree?"

"... Pardon?"

But no matter how much they sparkled, how could he have peeked into a world that shouldn't have been permitted to a human?

At the Great Elder's sudden question, Vlad's breath was instantly caught in his throat.

"..."

There were also excuses he had thought up just in case.

However, in front of the old elf before his eyes, it somehow felt like he shouldn't bring out any lies.

It was a warning stemming purely from instinct, not from experience or knowledge.

"Then again, what would that matter."

The elves looked at Vlad, who kept his mouth shut and couldn't answer, with suspicious eyes.

But the old Great Elder alone merely closed his eyes again with a faint smile, as if it was nothing.

Geronimo was a person who knew well that the reality right in front of him was more important than every single minor flaw.

"... The maple tree engraved inside here was located in the West."

"The West?"

The Elder's answer was finally heard.

In his excitement at that answer, Vlad unconsciously asked back in a suppressed voice.

"Yes. The West. The place where the greenest forest on the continent once stood."

However, listening to Geronimo's words, Vlad ended up feeling that something was strange.

"Is there such a forest in the West?"

The only thing in the West was an endless wasteland.

In the western part of the Empire, full of rough dirt and dry winds, there was no such thing as the green forest the old man spoke of.

"There used to be."

At Vlad's question, a wrinkle was etched across the face of the old tree.

It was a wrinkle that was like a deeply carved wound.

"Our forest that existed a very long time ago."

A scenery he longed for even in his dreams.

But there was a memory of that day that was painful just to recall.

There had been a wheat field full of golden light.

The wheat bowing its heads this way and that to the wind, a massive forest that no one knew where it ended.

The children running and playing along the crimson-dyed dusk.

And there had been a single crimson-dyed maple tree looking down at all these things from atop a low hill.

There used to be such sceneries.

"Before the dragon burned it down, that is."

The most perfect dragon.

The cursed being that burned all these things away with a single breath.

His eyes, now wandering through the burned memories, were shaking dizzyingly.

"Then..."

"How can you find something that no longer exists?"

It felt as though black ash was spilling from the old man's mouth as he spoke of old memories.

"It's been a long time since it was all entirely burned to ashes."

The autumn scenery contained within the yellow amber.

The things engraved in there were now nothing but memories like ashes that had all been completely burned away.

The eyes of the young knight, who had been searching for something that did not exist, rippled endlessly.

* * *

Inside the room provided by the elves.

There, Vlad sat leaning against the window frame, looking outside.

The elves' forest. Aushrina.

It was said that the green light stretching to the eastern end was connected all the way to a blue sea he had never seen before in his life.

"Then I shall go examine the Tuzon leaves."

Auguste, wearing a gray hood over his head, had not forgotten his purpose for coming here.

A thorough investigation into the source of Epsilon.

Only irrefutable, concrete evidence would be able to stop the madness occurring in the Empire.

"Didn't they tell us to stay here?"

"Just tell them I stayed."

Vlad owed his life to Auguste, and in return, he had led him all the way to the elves' forest, a place humans could not easily enter.

Thus, Auguste's current actions were like his inherent right that Vlad dared not restrict.

"The atmosphere outside is also somehow chaotic."

"Do not worry. It's something I did plenty of times back in my prime."

Telling him not to worry since he would quietly go and come back without getting caught, Auguste grabbed onto the window frame instead of the door and looked at Vlad.

"As expected, it seems your master is someone related to the Imperial Household."

"... Is that so."

"From what I've seen, that is the case."

Hearing those words, Vlad let out a deep sigh.

The Imperial Swordsmanship that was said to retain its original form.

And the scenery of Elvenheim, the elves' forest that had burned down a very long time ago.

Now, he was at the point where he wondered who the voice was purely out of curiosity, not just because of their contract.

"The Founding King Frausen voluntarily stepped down from the Emperor's seat and became the lowest one."

The lowest one.

Knights who threw off all the titles they had accumulated thus far to prepare for retirement while finishing up uncompleted tasks simply as a natural person.

That glorious beginning was none other than the king of knights, the Founding King Frausen.

"Befitting the start of a legend, he is someone whose end also remains mysteriously unknown. I thought that perhaps you were someone connected to the unknown final moments of Lord Frausen."

The end of the Founding King Frausen was precisely an honorable retirement.

However, the final moments of the lowest one, Frausen, were only full of rumors, and no one truly knew what happened.

Listening to the words of the elves, wouldn't the young knight currently sitting against the window frame in despair be a trace connected to that glorious end?

"What does that matter? The clues have been cut off here."

"Cut off, you say. From how I see it, this is only the beginning."

Auguste, placing a foot on the window frame Vlad was sitting on, looked down with a smile.

The ground that seemed dizzyingly far away.

The increasingly darkening surroundings obscured Auguste's vision, but he did not hesitate.

Because in order to find the truth, there were times when one had to drive oneself into the darkness.

"What do you mean, it's only the beginning?"

At Vlad's question, Auguste pulled his hood up and stepped up onto the window frame.

"I'm saying that if your master is someone who carried on Lord Frausen's will, you just have to follow his traces."

If you don't know the end, you can just follow it from the beginning.

Vlad's master was strongly connected to the traces of the Swordmaster, so by following the final traces of Frausen, he would eventually be able to uncover his master's identity as well.

"Didn't you say nobody knows what happened to Lord Frausen in the end?"

"Humans don't, yes."

Auguste looked at Vlad with a smile.

Today's fading twilight was settling across his obscured face.

"But the elves might know."

With those final words, Auguste leaped outside along with the fading twilight.

Vlad was startled as he watched him fall down below with his hood fluttering.

"It's not like he's a cat or something."

A nimble movement that he could recognize even more clearly because he was a former pickpocket and thief.

The old knight, who landed on the ground without a single sound, soon walked away with a natural demeanor as if it was nothing and disappeared into the elves' forest.

"... Then I guess I should stay here a bit longer."

Vlad, left alone in the room without Got or Auguste.

In the room that had become silent, Vlad rested his head on his knees and fell into deep thought.

'He definitely said he saw it.'

The voice had clearly stated that he had seen the scenery inside the amber before.

However, his memory was something ambiguous that he couldn't be certain of, so perhaps the voice hadn't seen it in person either, but rather remembered seeing it through the amber just like him.

To begin with, even if he had seen it in person, it was an event from hundreds of years ago, so the timeline wouldn't match up.

"Just what kind of person was he? Seriously."

It would honestly be easier to fulfill the seven-year contract with Joseph.

Because the more he followed the traces of the voice, the more it felt like he was being blocked by a massive fortress wall.

Knock, knock, knock.

"...?"

The sound of knocking on the door reached the ears of Vlad, who had been contemplating for a long while.

"Come i—..."

CREAK—

The door carefully opened before he could even say to come in.

Through the slightly opened crack in the door, bright platinum blonde hair could be seen.

The unidentified girl who had dragged him into the illusion.

"Do you have a moment?"

The girl, who had only poked her head into the room, was smiling as soon as she recognized Vlad.

As if they were acquaintances who had known each other for a long time.

* * *

If possible, he wanted to ignore her.

There was also the warning from the elves not to go outside.

However, there was a strange, inescapable weight in the girl's words that made it hard to refuse.

Much like the gaze the Great Elder of the elves had shown him.

"Where are we going right now... exactly?"

Unlike the beaming girl, Vlad's expression was stiffly frozen.

It couldn't be helped, considering that the two elves currently following behind the girl were looking at Vlad with disapproving expressions.

"Because there's something I want to show you."

"What is it that you want to show me?"

Vlad decided to be as careful as possible with his actions.

He knew she was an extraordinary person from the first time he saw her, but to think she even went around with an escort.

The girl beaming as if she were excited right now was undoubtedly someone in a high position even within the world of the elves.

"That amber."

"Amber?"

"Yeah. That."

The girl pointed her finger at Vlad's sword as she spoke.

"Yeah, that! I really want to show it."

Watching the girl who still didn't properly state the subject, Vlad inwardly let out a small sigh.

"It says it wants to see its mom. That little one has never seen its mom since it was born, you know?"

"Mom?"

Incomprehensible words.

Her words were so disjointed that he wondered if she was somewhat lacking in the head, but there was not a hint of wavering in the girl's eyes.

"... Who is 'that little one'?"

At Vlad's question, the girl silently pointed her finger toward a certain spot.

At the end of the direction she was pointing.

There stood a single massive maple tree with green leaves that had not yet changed color.

"The World Tree?"

Vlad, after checking the spot her finger had pointed to, turned his head and looked at the girl.

"It says it really wants to see its mom just once."

"..."

Although they were words his head couldn't understand, they were words that touched his heart.

Perhaps because of the girl's attitude of speaking as if she were treating a person, the appearance of the World Tree he looked at again seemed somewhat different.

The branches of the green maple tree visible from far away were swaying.

As if beckoning him to hurry over. Just like that.