The Spirit Body (2)

“Neat.”

Katya, standing beside him, said it with shining eyes. She sounded as though she found the whole thing fascinating, watching Aiden get tossed this way and that like something flapping in the wind.

“Are you getting beaten up by a ghost right now?”
“Don’t just stand there watching, come help me—!”

Before he could get any further, Aiden went flying off in another direction. And in the meantime.

Ghosts exist in the Other Side, a space ‘overlaid’ on the real world, so they can’t exert any great influence on the material plane.

Ordinarily, that is to say.

Not unless the person in question had been fearsome enough to bend even a law like that out of shape. So the ghost slamming Aiden into everything in sight was, indirectly, showing just how powerful a human he had been in life.

— The nerve on you, you little bastard—!

Katya couldn’t hear it, but the snorting, fuming racket the Knight of Dawn was making was truly savage.

His looks, though, were as pretty as could be. Blond hair, blue eyes, a handsome face, and the full plate armour that marked a Knight. If he’d only kept his mouth shut and stood still, you could have passed him off as noble-born.

— What was that, overblown? Small-minded? Still wet behind the ears and begging to die—!

The packaging might even have worked, if he hadn’t kept spitting out lines like that in a snorting rage. That was what Aiden thought as he went sailing through the air once more.

“…Sunbae, calm down for a moment—”¹

— Sunbae, my foot. I’ve got no business being roped in with you by a word like that—!

The Knight of Dawn snorted and raised a fist. He had the look of a man whose temper had shot clean past the top of his head and who was about to haul off and land a blow.

That looked a little dangerous.

“Would you please just cut it out!”

As the words left him, divinity flared up out of his body. At the sight, even the Knight of Dawn stopped mid-pounce, his eyes filled with suspicion and astonishment.

— …Divinity?

The Knight of Dawn muttered the word blankly.

— You reek of a man who handles ki, plain as anything. How is it you handle divinity as well?

“…”

Aiden gave a wry smile and patted the dust off himself.

“Didn’t I tell you? ‘Sunbae.’”

He’d known all along that showing the man several supernatural powers at once would catch his interest.

“Your junior offers his respects. If we’re only counting ‘holders of multiple supernatural powers’, that makes you my senior, doesn’t it?”

People who could handle several supernatural powers were vanishingly rare even if you dug through the whole of history, and the Knight of Dawn standing in front of him was one of them. That was the simple reason he’d been loved in so many places across the continent, too. There could hardly have been another human who so skillfully handled several powers, each one the unique quality of a different nation.

“I need your help.”

And that was why Aiden meant to ‘take this person along’ as well. Search the whole world over, and there was only one person who knew his ‘growth route’ from start to finish and could advise him on it. This one.

“…Honestly, I’m desperate for your help, Sunbae. Otherwise something really big is going to happen.”

The fate of the world, chiefly, was on the line. Aiden was the only one who properly understood the world-class danger called the ‘main scenario’, which was as good as saying that the moment he failed, everyone died together.

— …What is this nonsense. The brat who was calling me overblown a moment ago, and now what—

“That was all a lie so I could meet you, Sunbae. Nothing else would have called a spirit body out like this.”

— …

“Who in the world would actually run down the first Knight, a hero on a continental scale?”

— …

Aiden could feel Katya staring at him in disbelief. She couldn’t hear the conversation, of course, but her look said that surely nobody would fall for lines like those.

…There was one.

A person that simple.

Aiden laughed hollowly to himself and glared at the window. Knowing the man’s character, he’d figured a light touch on that sore spot would win him over, but it had gone so exactly as predicted that it left him dumbfounded instead.

— …You think anyone falls for flattery that half-hearted?

And the fact that he could say so out loud while falling for it anyway made it all the more chilling…

Meyer, the Knight of Dawn, folded his arms and spoke up, still wearing a sulky face for appearances’ sake.

— You said yourself that in this age there’s someone who’d push a man like me into the background. The Lionhearted… was it?

You had to wonder how a ghost knew all that. But as his falling for Aiden’s provocation at the first push showed, this was a man who cared horribly about his ‘honor’ and ‘reputation’, so it would have been stranger if he didn’t care about the human who’d shoved him aside and taken the title of strongest Knight.

But.

“As it happens, I’m the man who’s going to be the Lionhearted’s husband.”

Meyer’s eyes narrowed sharply at that, yet Aiden’s next words twisted his expression into something bizarre in the opposite direction.

“I guarantee it. Even she would have a hard time catching up to you, Sunbae.”

At the edge of his vision, Aiden could see Katya’s mouth twisting too. Her whole air asked what that was supposed to mean, but Aiden meant it in earnest. Leaving aside the simple question of which of them was stronger, add a single condition and it became a proposition that couldn’t fail to be true.

If this man had been given just a little more ‘time’.

Then surely not even Dame Noelle would ever have climbed over this man’s stronghold.

For a dead person’s soul to linger instead of passing on, two conditions both have to be met. They have to be a great figure, the kind whose name is left across the whole of history. And they have to carry a ‘regret’ bound so deep in the bone that they can’t close their eyes even in death.

In the Knight of Dawn’s case.

“The things you never managed. You’ve still got so many of them left, haven’t you?”

The Knight of Dawn’s expression changed abruptly. A moment ago it had been nothing but anger and fury, but now, for the first time, he looked like a man caught off guard.

— …

In the game, the Knight of Dawn had been handled only as part of the setting, yet he’d still left a tremendously deep impression. He’d realized his own talent far too late, and the realm he had ‘so narrowly’ failed to reach was set down in a single short sentence.

‘Not a domain for a human to challenge’, it said.

The legendary tales of valour he’d left in every corner of the continent had all been, so the story went, training to reach that domain.

— …You.

Meyer glared at Aiden for a good while, then snorted out a laugh and spoke.

— You say interesting things. There’s no way the records run as far as that.

“Put it down to the zeal of a junior who reveres his Sunbae.”

— Like hell. You came at me just to use me. You think I can’t tell that much?

“Actually, yes.”

— …

While that ruinous honesty left Meyer at a loss for words, Aiden shrugged and carried on.

“But flip it around, Sunbae. If you want someone to use, you won’t find anyone better than me, will you?”

— What?

“How long do you think it’ll be before another holder of multiple supernatural powers turns up besides me?”

— …

“And what are the odds of someone like that seeking you out in person to talk to you like this?”

— …

“And on top of all those odds, what do you think the chances are of meeting someone who’ll swear to ‘achieve your heart’s wish in your place’?”

Meyer’s face screwed up further and further.

— …You pick out nothing but the things that put a man in a foul mood.

No doubt they put him in a foul mood because they were true. What he said next made that plain enough.

— What is it you want help with, and how. So long as I’m a ghost I can’t do anything much.

Hooked.

Grinning inwardly, Aiden picked up one of the relics nearby. He’d had his eye on it from the moment he walked in: a bracelet, something he could wear naturally and carry around without any trouble.

“—Look at it the other way round. There are bound to be things you can do precisely because you’re a ghost.”

— What?

“To start with, would you try ‘getting inside’ this?”

With that, Aiden went on to explain just what Meyer ‘could help with’.

— …What did I do to get myself caught by a brat like this.

Admittedly, it was the sort of explanation that would wring a lament like that out of anyone.

A little while later.

“Hm.”

Aiden looked at the bracelet, which had taken on a faint glow, and let out a breath through his nose. Every sign said Meyer’s soul had settled into it properly.

This should do…

He’d achieved everything he came here for. Rania’s mediumship, and Meyer’s soul, reached by means of it. And though he hadn’t collected it yet, the First Prince’s skill, which was perfectly suited to handling that soul. It was fair to say he’d gathered every ingredient he needed to resolve Act 1, the ‘Ghost Knight’ commotion.

“Are you done?”
“Yes. Now we just have to get out.”

So he could answer a question like that briskly, without missing a beat.

“Except.”

Katya tilted her head and cut in on him.

“I think we’ve been in here too long?”
“—Sorry?”
“That thing wasn’t there a minute ago.”

At those words he turned his gaze, and.

A crystal set into the wall was plainly giving off a red light. Anyone would have said it was about to sound an ‘alarm’, and the whole room was being stained the same colour, as if in answer. As everything around them turned red, Aiden’s face went stiff.

“Looks like a system that switches on automatically if someone stays inside too long?”
“—Never mind analysing it, we need to stop that thing…!”

Aiden, horrified, moved to get himself going, but.

In an instant.

With a crack, the alarm shattered just as it was about to pour out its red light. It looked as though it had been cut clean in two by a sword strike driven at terrifying speed.

Aiden stared blankly in the direction the attack had come from. Where on earth she’d sprung from, and when, there was no telling, but there stood Noelle, sliding her sword back into its sheath with a sigh.

“I do not know what business you were about, but would you refrain from wandering into a place like this so carelessly? One misstep and you would be in a world of trouble.”
“…Dame Noelle?”

He’d definitely heard from Dame Stella earlier that she’d said she was unwell and gone back.

“Where on earth did you come from…? Didn’t you say you’d gone back?”
“…I did intend to go back. But you were so hard at work slipping past the Imperial Palace’s security with Her Highness, Aiden, that I shadowed you, just in case.”

“…”

“You looked to be in danger, so I helped.”

So she’d seen through all of that as well. And all the while, it had never occurred to her to stop him. She’d simply trailed quietly along behind.

Still, well.

Thanks to her the situation had been resolved smoothly, with no fuss, so he owed her his thanks.

“We got through that nicely thanks to you. Thank you, Dame Noelle.”
“…Yes.”

“…”

What kind of reaction was that?

The voice that came back was so stiff a wooden puppet would have had more life in it, and curt besides. Noelle jerked her head aside and tugged her hat down low, as if she meant, by any means available, to avoid meeting Aiden’s eyes.

“…Would you follow me? I will show you the way out.”

“…”

“Let us go straight back to headquarters. I would rather this night not drag on any longer.”

Puzzled by that oddly curt air, Aiden tilted his head and fell in behind her.

“…Hm.”

Behind them, Katya was glaring at the back of Noelle’s head as though something didn’t sit right.

“Her attitude’s, somehow, just a little different…?”

The mutter never quite left her mouth.

An untimely commotion was drifting through the military headquarters.

If you asked for the reason, it would be Dame Noelle, back from the banquet with her husband-to-be. On her way to her private room after parting from Aiden, she was generating a very great deal of… ‘commotion’.

“Oh, Dame Noelle? Did the banquet go all right today—”

Whoever had started to speak shut their mouth with a snap.

A natural reaction.

Anyone who saw the look on Noelle’s face as she strode down the corridor would have known that talking to her was not a good idea.

“D-Dame Noelle. Are you all right?”
“I am fine.”
“If you’re feeling unwell, we can contact the medical corps right away and—”
“I said I am fine.”
“Eep.”

One of the people fretting around her caught a breath without meaning to. Probably because Noelle’s answer had come with such a blue edge. Ordinarily she showed nothing but a blank face or a manufactured smile, but right now her blank face gave off a powerful sense of something being pressed down and held under.

She must be in a bad mood…

There was no knowing for sure, but something must have happened at the banquet.

As every one of them shrank back step by step with that thought, Noelle stalked on with heavy tread toward her private room. She kicked the door open, went in, set her sword down as though flinging it away, then took off her coat and hat and hung them on the stand.

And then.

“…”

She dropped her head onto the desk as if collapsing, hard enough to make a bang.

The moment she did, a little of the heat escaped her, the heat that seemed to be turning not just her ears but the very crown of her head scarlet. Holding it down, keeping anyone else from seeing it, had been truly hard work.

What is this.

What is this.

What is this, what is this, what is this.

That thought was all that filled her head.

Her breathing was ragged. She’d somehow managed to hold out all the way to her private room, but heat seemed to be racing through her whole body, as though someone had poured a ball of fire into her veins.

“I like her, you see.”
“—!”

As the sentence echoed through her head yet again, she slammed her forehead into the desk yet again, hard enough to bang.

…What is this.

Dragging in ragged breaths, her forehead still planted on the desk, she scrubbed at her hair until it was a tangle, but she couldn’t get the question out of her head. Even she couldn’t make out what on earth had just happened.

That man had said he liked her.

Why? For what reason, on what grounds? So far as Noelle knew, there wasn’t a single reason for him to feel that way about her.

A lie.

His original trade was swindling. By far the likeliest thing was that he’d said it simply to wriggle out of the situation. Her head understood it that way.

The trouble was.

“I’ll do it. I’ll prove my worth. If that’s what it takes to get the engagement through.”

Only, to write it all off as that kind of lie.

“By the way, why did Aiden want to learn dharma power in the first place?”
“For someone he loves, apparently.”
“I told you, did I not? You picked yourself a fine husband. To have a fellow born with that much talent look your way with that much devotion makes a life worth living, does it not?”

There were the things she’d seen and heard up to now.

“…”

Come to think of it, wasn’t it strange in the first place that he’d go so far as to lie to take her side? Going by everything Aiden had done so far, the conditions the Prince had pushed at him fit the attitude he’d shown all along extremely well. He wanted to avoid rough business wherever he could, he thought the world of his family, and he preferred to live quietly and out of sight.

And yet.

What reason could he have to lie, just to refuse an offer that satisfied all of that perfectly?

Making up an absurd thing like that, which was to say.

That Aiden liked her.

“—!!!”

With her forehead still planted on the desk, she brought her fists down. Bang, bang.

She had sold off her decorum and dignity and the whole lot of it somewhere along the way, but she had no room to care about such things.

Why, say a thing like that, Aiden, why on earth—

Through a mind tangled into a hopeless mess, that one sentence alone floated clear, bobbing on the surface.

“…Haaah—”

Nothing but a long sigh poured out of Noelle’s mouth, as though her very soul were being drawn out with it.