Edmund Martell left with a smile. The negotiation had apparently gone to his satisfaction, though the prince declined Wayne's invitation to stay for dinner, he said he needed to return to the Silver Keep promptly, as the old king was waiting for his good news.
After Edmund left, Rebecca offered her assessment. "He seems like a really nice person. I was expecting the crown prince to be super difficult to deal with, all court etiquette and formality..."
"That's because he was sitting across from an elder from seven hundred years ago, not a destitute frontier viscountess," Wayne glanced at Rebecca. "You think what he showed us here is how he normally acts? Quite the opposite. The fact that his behavior aligned almost perfectly with my conversational style is precisely how I know he did his homework before coming."
Rebecca: "Huh?"
Wayne thought for a moment and explained. "The art of negotiation, no matter how much you boil it down, comes to this. say the right things to the right people. He started out visiting as a prince calling on a 'family patriarch' of extremely high seniority, perfectly polite, mature, composed. Then, the moment he noticed my speech patterns and attitude, he immediately shifted to become relaxed and humorous, which made me more willing to keep talking. That's an enormous skill."
Rebecca scratched her hair: "...Eh?"
Wayne sighed.
"Nevermind... Just go back to studying the four different ways to shape a Fireball."
Even someone as single-minded as Rebecca could feel the depth of Wayne's exasperation. She grew nervous. "Great Ancestor, am I... really that hopeless at this kind of thing?"
"Everyone has their strengths. Yours just aren't here, don't force it," Wayne patted Rebecca on the head (the perks of being tall). "And honestly, I'm not that fond of all this scheming and maneuvering myself. I much prefer the old days, when everyone threw caution to the wind and just bulldozed a path through the wilderness..."
Rebecca nodded with partial understanding, then asked curiously. "Oh, Great Ancestor, was everything you said in there true?"
"Which part?"
Rebecca asked with great seriousness. "Did you really give one type of red wine over thirty different names, each with its own fourteen-line poem?"
Wayne sighed.
"Of course it's true."
"That sounds amazing!"
"But the actual reason was poverty. Back then, the pioneering party hadn't even reached the Holy Spirit Plains yet. Before we found arable land, just filling our stomachs was a struggle. We gave one wine thirty-odd names because it was the only wine we had, and the last barrel, at that. We wrote poems for it because there was literally no other entertainment. So understand this. all that elaborate noble etiquette and protocol was either invented when people had too much to eat, or dreamed up when they were too hungry. At its core, it's all mind-numbingly boring."
Rebecca's eyes sparkled. She felt like she'd gained tremendously important knowledge, the kind Aunt Hestia would never teach her!
Just then, the room's window was suddenly pushed open and Amber leapt in from outside. She threw herself into a chair, swinging her legs, and teased Wayne.
"You're pretty entertaining for an old geezer! After that speech just now, you've officially surpassed every noble in my estimation!"
"Stop calling me old geezer, I'm only thirty-five!" Wayne glared at Amber. "And weren't you supposed to be patrolling outside? Sneaking in to slack off?"
Amber rocked in her chair, seemingly incapable of sitting still. "I did patrol! Didn't find anything, so I came in for a drink of water. You can't deny me a break, right? And anyway, what makes you so sure someone's going to come sneaking around? The prince used the front door like a normal person..."
"If the prince were climbing walls, Charles would probably pop out of his coffin too," Wayne's mouth twitched. "But not everyone who wants to learn something from me will come through the front door. I'm staying here tonight specifically to wait for those people."
"Fine, fine, you're the boss," Amber waved her hand, poured herself a cup of tea, gulped it down, and headed for the window. But before jumping out, she doubled back and swiped two scones from Wayne's tea tray. "It's cold out there. Need something to keep my energy up."
The Pioneer's Sword wasn't within arm's reach. Wayne deeply regretted this.
Then he turned to his N-plus-one-times-great-granddaughter. "Go to your room and rest. You need to be in peak condition for tomorrow's meeting with the High King."
Rebecca nodded, then asked. "What about you, Great Ancestor?"
"I'm a night owl. And I'm planning to visit the study," Wayne said. "Call it revisiting old haunts, I want to see how much has changed."
Rebecca obediently wished Wayne goodnight and left. Wayne stood in place for a moment, then headed for the study on the second floor.
Gwayne Seawright had made his name through martial prowess, but he wasn't just a man who knew nothing but swinging swords. He was also something of a half-scholar and herbalist, and quite enjoyed reading in his spare time. So in addition to a room for storing weapons, armor, and battle trophies, Number Four, Crown Street also boasted a sizable study.
Sitting at the reproduction desk, Wayne tapped the surface lightly with his fingers while deep in thought. His gaze moved between the antique bookshelves and the paintings on the wall before settling back on the desk.
Those memories that weren't his own surged up again, lending an uncanny familiarity to everything around him. He marveled at the dedication of later generations, they hadn't just restored the furniture, but had even placed the enchanted quill pen and paper in the exact positions Gwayne Seawright had kept them in life. This near-obsessive level of restoration even gave him a faint chill.
As if someone had known all along that he would return, and had prepared this place specifically.
But though the memories were vivid, they weren't truly his own, and they couldn't generate real emotional resonance. Wayne quickly withdrew his gaze, left the chair, and got down on the floor, feeling around the floorboards beneath the desk.
A hidden compartment opened. His fingers touched cold metal. Finding a pull-ring on its surface, he lifted the object out.
It was an elegant small box, radiating a cool silver glow, still pristine after seven hundred years.
At the sight of it, Wayne exhaled with relief.
Still here.
Perhaps half the objects in this residence were no longer originals, but some things could endure well over seven hundred years, like a strongbox forged from mithril.
Complex magical patterns were inscribed on its surface, but beyond those patterns, a sword-and-shield crest had been cast in orichalcum and stellar iron. Beside the crest were delicate characters, along with the joint seal of Charles Martell and Gwayne Seawright.
These markings and text, combined with secret directives passed down through generations within House Martell (the Andraste royal house), ensured that even if someone rebuilt the house and found this box, they would seal it back in its original location.
But this was also because Wayne's "resurrection" hadn't come too late. Ancient directives and a founding king's authority both lost their power over time. Especially now, in the Second Dynasty, with the First Dynasty's influence at its lowest ebb. Had he arrived any later, had this residence undergone another complete renovation, no one could have guaranteed the box would still be here.
Wayne placed the mithril strongbox on the desk with great solemnity.
If the most important objective of this trip to the capital was the Right of Eternal Conquest, then this mithril strongbox was the second most important.
He hadn't brought Rebecca along to find it, not because he distrusted his theoretical descendant, but because he hadn't been sure the box was still there. If he'd lured the girl here with an expression that said "let Grandpa show you something special," then gotten on the floor and found nothing, the embarrassment would have been unbearable.
Following the method in his memories, Wayne channeled magic into the patterns on the box's surface, then smeared a drop of his blood onto the crest at the center of the lid. The compact magical device emitted a crisp sound of internal mechanisms turning, and the lid popped slightly open.
Inside were only a few items. Apart from several crystals that had lost their magic and could serve only as decorations, there was a palm-sized platinum disc. Wayne set the crystals aside and examined the disc.
Its surface was likewise inscribed with complex magical patterns, but beyond those were characters that seemed to float above the disc's face, trembling faintly. They were sigils used to communicate with the elementals.
"Good. The key is in hand..."
Wayne muttered under his breath and tucked both the crystals and the disc inside his shirt. But just as he stood up, a sudden breeze brushed past his ear.
He immediately snatched up a short sword he'd left by the desk and tensed every muscle, ready for combat.
"That keen awareness and those reflexes, it does seem to be you after all," a young woman's voice came from outside the window. Only then did Wayne notice that the study window had been opened at some point, and a woman wearing a veil and a purple gown was materializing out of thin air, walking through the empty space toward the window. "Please relax. If people like us were to clash, I'm afraid half the city would be star..."
Before the woman could finish, a swift dark shadow shot down from the rooftop, accompanied by Amber's hollering. "Thief! I've finally caught you, ahhh!"
Amber, shadow affinity at master level, stealth and Shadow Walk maxed out, a freakishly talented operative, but with a direct combat rating of only 1.5 geese, she was casually swatted away by the mysterious woman.
The mysterious woman, however, seemed to have gotten a fright herself. After knocking Amber away, she still hadn't fully processed what had happened. "What... was that just now?"
Wayne gripped his short sword, still not relaxing. "If I'm not mistaken, that was my bodyguard."
"Oh, I'm sorry," the mysterious woman apologized hastily, an unexpectedly courteous response. She glanced in the direction Amber had fallen, then turned back to explain. "She came out of nowhere. I reacted on instinct. But don't worry, she'll be fine, at most she'll be a bit dizzy for a moment."
Wayne relaxed slightly, but his guard didn't drop one bit. "Who exactly are you?"
"My apologies, it seems my entrance lacked some consideration," the mysterious woman said, standing on the windowsill and offering a very polite bow. "The Mithril Treasury sends its regards. Allow me to introduce myself. I am your dedicated VIP specialist, Mailita Pernie. All of your deposits at the Mithril Treasury are under my care."
Wayne frowned.
"...My Little Pony?"