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Chapter 271: 143. An Enthronement and a Celebration -1 (Part One)

Translated by A Passing Wanderer

Edited by RED

**

Two weeks after the felling of Mist Calf…

Around the time the effects of the Tide of Death had more or less subsided, a search party had been dispatched from Ronia. It consisted of five hundred or so convict soldiers.

They sifted through the collapsed ice castle and dug around the inert pile of mud that used to be the now-dead Mist Calf.

{Please recover the heart of Mist Calf, sir! The demonic energy contained within it began dissipating the moment it died, that’s for certain, but a humongous amount of energy should still remain in it. It will provide a great help later down the line, sir!}

After listening to what Hans had to say, the Seventh Imperial Prince issued a direct command. He commanded the convicts to search for and recover all the data related to the warp magic, as well as the mud giant’s heart.

One of the convicts rummaging through the debris of the castle brightened his face. “Found it!” he called out. He had stumbled across a large torn bag. It was filled with the data related to the warp magic.

“I also wanted to participate in the subjugation battle, though…” Gril muttered, smacking his lips in disappointment while performing his job as the member of the search party.

He recalled the face of his adopted daughter, Charlotte, before she set off for the decisive battle.

{It’ll get dangerous, so stay behind and protect Ronia, please!}

She said those words while wagging her finger and massaging her forehead. Although her expression back then could be described as indifferent, Gril still found her attitude quite adorable anyway.

“Mm. Yes, one should definitely have a daughter.”

Just as Gril began smiling like a content dad, he spotted a crimson jewel sparkling away within the mud. It was so large that it didn’t fit in a man’s palm.

Gril lifted it out of the mud. “I wonder, just where would something like this be of use?”

He placed the crimson jewel inside his bag. There were quite a few large shattered jewel shards inside already.

“Not enough…”

Gril turned his head after hearing someone muttering that out.

Harman, who was in charge of the search party, was currently standing on top of Mist Calf’s corpse and looking around with a slightly concerned face.

“What do you mean, Sir Paladin?”

“According to Mister Hans, the jewel is supposed to be at least one metre in diameter. It shattered into pieces so its size might have gotten smaller than before, but still, it’s too small.”

They had been digging through the mud and under the fallen bedrock for the past few days. But all they had recovered so far had been shards of shattered jewels of varying sizes.

Harman thought that for a heart around one metre in diameter as Hans had described, the resulting pile of shards seemed a little inadequate overall.

“I can only pray that it’s my mood affecting my judgement.” Harman felt rueful about it, but he still shouted out at the convict soldiers, “We shall conclude the search!”

**

(TL: In 1st person POV.)

I climbed aboard the carriage headed to the capital of the empire, Laurensis. Our plan was to head back to the Imperial Palace with Count Jenald in tow, now that we were finished taking care of the aftermath of the defensive battles in Ronia.

The carriage provided by the Imperial Palace was quite large inside, but various items of luggage filled it up, making it seem rather cramped.

While I was sitting inside, a knock came from the door.

“Are you going to open the door, sir?” Hans asked while holding piles of documents in both of his hands. He was sitting near mountains of other documents.

“…Do you have to look at them here? Besides all that, why are you even riding in my carriage in the first place?”

Hans waved around the documents detailing the data on warp magic, which I had given him permission to look at, and giggled brightly. “How can I not take a gander when such amazing and wonderful pieces of information are now available to me, sir? And also, I was wondering if you’ve heard something from Count Timong, as well.”

“Well, aren’t you a dedicated Warp enthusiast.”

“It’s a long-held dream of every Alchemist after all, sir!”

I recalled the mug of Count Timong, then extracted a book from my item window and tossed it lightly to Hans. “Here, take it.”

He caught the book in an awkward manner, and almost immediately, his brows shot up high.

Since his discerning eyes were so highly attuned, he probably latched onto the fact that the book’s quality and the letters written on it were foreign to this world in a matter of seconds.

“The material quality is something I’ve never seen before, sir. How was this book manufactured in the first place? Not only that, the ink and the letters themselves are so precise and consistent, too…” Hans resting his chin on his hand and pondering this new quandary, suddenly hardened his expression. “…Wait a minute, which era did this book come from? W-what kind of a title is it, what material…? I, I don’t recognise any of it. Oh my goodness…! An ancient language that even I don’t recognise?!”

Knock, knock…

I reached out and grabbed the carriage’s door handle. “That’s not a book of this world.”

Hans flinched and froze up when I said that. His gaze hurriedly locked on me, and I grinned mischievously while pointing at the novel in his hand. “It’s a book that has crossed dimensions.”

“Eh?”

“It’s an item you Alchemists dream of acquiring. It’s a gift, so take it.”

Hans’s eyes shook powerfully. But before he had a chance to say something, I opened the door.

Harman, riding on horseback, was right outside.

“Oh! Harman, you managed to join us.”

I figured he’d arrive later due to him being in charge of the search operation up north, but he joined us on time in the end.

He seemed to have something to report, because after offering a short greeting, he turned his head to look behind him. A wagon carrying the data collected from the vampires, plus crimson jewel shards inside a large leather bag, could be found there.

“These are the data and the parts of Mist Calf’s heart recovered during the search, Your Highness. We did our best to find them all, but some portion seems to be missing, my lord.”

“Really?”

I signalled with my hand, and Harman had a portion of the data and the crimson jewel transferred to my carriage. Hans received them and laid them out on the floor, making the already-cramped carriage even more cramped.

Hans fidgeted around as if there was a seriously bad itch he wanted to scratch right now. He sneaked a glance in my direction. “Excuse me, sir, what were you saying earlier…”

Harman closed the carriage door.

I glanced back to Hans and replied, “That’s what Count Timong said. I don’t know all the details.”

“…”

Hans’s shoulders slumped visibly, as if all of his energy went flying out the window just now. It was probably because he knew that Count Timong was devoured by the mud giant Mist Calf.

He seemed to be trying to comfort his aching heart or something, because he began fidgeting around with the data and the shards of the crimson jewel Harman had brought over.

He put the data away in an orderly fashion before taking the shards of the jewel to piece them back together, like some kind of a jigsaw puzzle.

I asked him. “By the way, Harman said there’s a portion of the heart missing. Will that be alright?”

“Ah, that. Yes, it should be fine, sir. I’m almost certain that some zombies or other undead took them away. As this is an item containing demonic energy, even those undead without functioning ego would still be attracted to them instinctively.”

“And what are the odds of vampires taking them away?”

Hans continued to stack the jewel shards, while replying to my question in an unconcerned tone of voice. As a matter of fact, most of his attention seemed to be focused on carefully joining up all the shards at the moment. “They were most likely planning to use this Jötunn’s heart to complete the Warp Gate, but with it shattered so completely, opening one up now would be next to impossible, sir.”

“Impossible, you say?”

Hans nodded before looking back at me. “If that Count Timong or whatever his name was, was still around, then sure. But now that he’s dead, it’ll be exceedingly difficult to bring their Warp Gate to reality no matter how smart they are, sir.”

“But, doesn’t that mean it’s still possible to make it happen?”

Hans froze up when I said that. A bitter grin floated up on his lips soon after as he stared at the crimson jewel-shards he had stacked together by then. “What those vampire bastards were trying to create isn’t simple warp magic, sir. It was to create a pathway that leads to another dimension. A doorway that doesn’t just lead to the Titan Realm, Spirit Realm, or Purgatory, but a completely new world beyond them, only accessible by boring a hole straight through space itself. That’s what they must be aiming for.”

He resumed stacking the shards while continuing on, “And its purpose isn’t simply to summon souls or things similar in nature, but for them to directly travel there. I’m sure that is what they wish for, sir.”

Wasn’t that the ultimate dream of all Alchemists, though? An unknown, different world that none of them had seen nor heard before, and being able to travel there.

They saw that as seeing the truth of the world.