Chapter 4: Where is the Restroom?
Adelia had left.
She had said a great many things, but none of it had really stuck with him.
Honestly, putting it plainly, he hadn't understood a single word she'd said.
Kael had only just begun to adjust to life in the Imperial Guard.
For someone like him, talk of the Empire and the Crown Prince was never going to be something he could keep up with.
‘Not that I'm particularly interested.’
He had no desire to get tangled up in the affairs of people in high places.
Guard life had become manageable now that he'd gotten used to it.
‘This isn't bad at all.’
Good was good enough.
Kael made every effort to keep his thoughts on the positive side.
"It'd be a lot nicer without that thing, though."
Kael fixed Balmung with a long, steady glare.
His already rough life had started spiraling out of control because of this thing.
‘……Though it did save my life.’
He didn't fully understand the whole Seven Deadly Sins business, but he did remember nearly being killed by that monster.
One step from crossing the river of death, a strange voice had burrowed into Kael's ear.
‘Didn't think it could actually talk.’
Did being a national treasure really make that much of a difference?
Even thinking back on it now, it had been a truly bizarre experience.
The moment he'd drawn the blade, his body had slipped beyond his control.
As though someone else were pulling the strings, it moved in ways he hadn't intended.
‘How did I even do that?’
He'd trained seriously in martial arts, but he had no way of understanding it himself.
Setting technique aside, it seemed that fighting bare-handed against a cold weapon was still a losing proposition in a real fight.
He'd received some sword training within the Imperial Guard, but even to Kael's untrained eye, it looked thoroughly crude.
That was unavoidable.
Expecting proper swordsmanship from a common guard unit—not a prestigious knightly order or the Imperial Guards—was stranger still.
And if pure practicality was the measure, a spear had its advantages anyway.
"Still, how does someone standing right in front of it not recognize it?"
A guardsman like Kael might reasonably be forgiven for not knowing what Balmung looked like.
But shouldn't someone of the Empire's 5 Swords caliber have known?
In military terms, that was the equivalent of a 4-star general.
He recalled Adelia standing there with a perfectly straight face, declaring that Balmung had to be recovered—while Balmung itself was right in front of her.
Even now, he genuinely didn't know how he was supposed to have reacted to that.
"At least I didn't get caught. That's what matters."
Kael decided to look on the bright side.
He tried to get out of bed, and his entire body screamed in protest.
Clenching his teeth, he forced himself upright.
"Still……Doesn't seem like anything's seriously wrong."
He'd been a professional athlete, after all. He was familiar enough with his own body to know when something was genuinely off.
But right now, it wasn't at that level.
‘It feels more like the morning after a match.’
‘Why I'm in one piece, I have no idea.’
From what he remembered, he'd been completely wrecked by the end—his arm hadn't just been broken, it had been crushed to pieces. Several ribs had gone too.
And yet here he was, with nothing worse than some muscle soreness. His bones and muscles were perfectly intact.
What Kael didn't know was that the reason his body had recovered so completely was because Adelia had used a precious Elixir she'd been carrying on him.
Kael picked up the rough-hewn sword leaning against the wall—Balmung.
"I'm pretty sure it said something……"
The moment Kael's hand closed around the hilt—
[That grip is most unpleasant.]
"……Eek!"
A familiar voice burrowed into his ear. Kael startled violently and dropped the sword to the floor.
[What are you doing? Pick it up immediately.]
……What on earth is this.
A talking sword.
It went beyond unsettling—it made his skin crawl.
He'd assumed it had something like a voice function, but if it was capable of actual conversation, that implied a consciousness of its own.
‘I'm not a fan.’
Kael retrieved Balmung with an expression like he'd bitten into something foul.
[Stop being so exasperating.]
The tone was thoroughly unpleasant.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"……Excuse me, do you know me? Where do you get off speaking to someone you just met without any formalities?"
[Wha, what……?]
"I mean, really. You're the 1 who startled me, and now I'm exasperating? That's rich. And I barely even dropped you—"
[Y-you impudent wretch! How dare you, before me, speak such insolence……!]
A voice trembling with indignation.
Kael blinked at Balmung for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
"Hah, I was trying to keep this civil, but I can see that's not going to work. Listen, would you like to visit the outhouse? Come to think of it, no one would ever find you in there."
[Wha, what……? The, the outhouse……?]
Balmung couldn't believe what it was hearing.
The shock was that complete.
The outhouse.
Never, not once, had it imagined it would be threatened with being thrown into an outhouse.
"Actually, the more I think about it, the better it sounds. What kind of lunatic would think to look for the Empire's national treasure in the outhouse?"
[I—I was wrong! So please, enough of this!]
Balmung cried out in desperation. Even at the cost of its pride, it could not bear the thought of ending up in an outhouse.
***
"……Haah."
Adelia stepped out of the mansion and exhaled.
Her heart felt heavy. As though a massive boulder had been placed on her chest.
‘1 of the Seven Deadly Sins is dead.’
She couldn't begin to guess what kind of ripple effects this incident would send out.
It was not something she could simply rejoice over—that 1 of the most heinous criminals in existence was gone.
The Seven Deadly Sins were not ordinary criminals.
Each of them was a human weapon, among the most powerful individuals on the continent.
When they moved with purpose, toppling a small kingdom was little more than a passing errand.
A member of that monstrous group had just lost their life.
Inside the Empire, no less.
‘Of all the times this could have happened.’
Had the Empire been in a stable state, they could have managed the fallout.
The Seven Deadly Sins were a formidable threat, but a fully intact Empire could handle them.
The Empire's 5 Swords were rivals in strength to the Seven Deadly Sins.
But the Empire at this moment was deeply unstable.
1 of the Empire's 5 Swords had turned traitor.
Simultaneously, Balmung—the national treasure and Sword of Heaven's Decree—had been lost.
And the Emperor was gravely ill.
On top of everything, effective rulership had been transferred entirely to the Crown Prince.
It was a disloyal thought, but Adelia did not trust the Crown Prince. In her eyes, he was a deeply dangerous man.
The Empire had begun to rot from the inside.
‘How did it ever come to this?’
Regret came flooding in. But regret, no matter how swift, always arrives too late.
Adelia slowly drew her hand down her face.
‘……It's too soon to give up.’
A hero who had thrown his own body into harm's way for the Empire without hesitation. A powerful warrior who had cut down Harkan, the Sin of Violence, in a single blow.
That man was the key to saving an Empire on the brink of ruin.
***
"Just thinking about you is enough to wake me up in the middle of the night, I swear. I can't believe the nerve."
Kael poured out every grievance and resentment he'd been bottling up.
A single sword showing up out of nowhere had been the beginning of everything going wrong.
The endless runaround that had started under the banner of the State of National Emergency and recovering Balmung.
‘And the whole time, it's been right here with me.’
What an utterly pointless farce.
Pretending not to know was only amusing for so long—at this point, every day was agony.
[Insolent wretch! I saved your life when you were half-dead, and this is what I get?!]
"None of this would have happened if you hadn't latched onto me like a leech in the first place. Do you have any conscience at all?"
[A, a leech……?]
Balmung's voice trembled with shock.
There was 1 more thing that had been bothering Kael.
‘If it could talk this openly the whole time, then it was just keeping its mouth shut until now.’
This thing is genuinely unbelievable.
From the very start, Kael's dislike of Balmung was through the roof.
National treasure, Sword of Heaven's Decree—none of that mattered to him.
To Kael, Balmung was nothing but a nuisance of a sword he'd rather not be dealing with.
[I've been sitting here listening patiently, and you just keep climbing further and further. If you're testing the limits of my patience……]
Balmung warned in a voice gone cold.
But Kael was not someone threats worked on.
"We're not getting anywhere. Fine—guess I have no choice."
Kael sprang to his feet. His body still complained a little, but it was manageable.
As Kael strode forward without hesitation, Balmung felt a creeping unease.
What on earth is this brat planning to do?
Balmung was rarely shaken by anything, but the look in Kael's eyes—completely unhinged—made it difficult to maintain even a pretense of composure.
Kael threw the door open with a bang.
The maidservant who saw it nearly jumped out of her skin.
"A-are you feeling better now, sir?"
The maidservant's voice came out thin and unsteady. She couldn't meet Kael's eyes directly. His gaze looked that dangerous.
‘W-why on earth did Lady Adelia bring someone like him……’
She was terrified, but there was nothing she could do but hold it together.
"Where's the restroom?"
"The, the restroom……? If you mean the facilities reserved for honored guests, I can show you the way—"
"No, I'd actually prefer somewhere as dirty and unsanitary as possible. Something the servants use."
"……Pardon?"
Passing up a clean restroom to go looking for a filthy one?
It was simply incomprehensible by any normal standard.
Human beings, as a rule, fear most what they cannot understand.
The maidservant, thoroughly terrified, gave him the location of the restroom.
"The servants' facility is just that way, sir."
"Ah, I see. Thank you."
The complete absence of hesitation in his step—
Struck a primal fear into Balmung as well.
[……Wait a moment.]
When Kael showed no sign of listening, Balmung finally played its last card.
[I'll tell you. I'll tell you, so please, just stop!]
Kael came to a dead halt, and a slow grin spread across his face.
‘Should've done that from the beginning.’
***
At last, the Empire's 5 Swords had converged on the capital.
From the moment they crossed the city walls and arrived at the heart of the Imperial Palace, every step they took echoed with weight.
The moment they arrived, they went directly to the Round Table Chamber at the center of the Imperial Palace.
The 5 blades representing the Empire had gathered in 1 place.
A heavy silence hung over the chamber.
Amid the solemn atmosphere, the doors opened.
The heads of those seated at the Round Table turned naturally toward the entrance.
"Oh, you're all here already?"
A bright, hearty voice filled the chamber.
The man who strode in with easy confidence wore not a black mantle but a pale crimson formal robe.
That color was one that symbolized the authority of the Imperial House.
"Well then—shall we begin?"
He was the man who led the Empire in the Emperor's stead.
The Crown Prince of the Empire.
Cassian Alberich.