A Day In The Grand Duchess’ Life (6)

“They seemed like good people.”

He remembered how, lately, some Haime merchants had occasionally shown generosity.

Maybe someone had been put in a good mood by the luck those two had handed out.

Haime had many wealthy districts.

Even so, commoners’ lives could not help but be harsh.

Luck did not come easily.

Oliver was bothered that the people who had given him a good memory were heading down a dangerous road, but there was nothing he could do, so he fidgeted in place.

Then he recalled a recent rumor: the few alley thugs Haime had to begin with had been taught a brutal lesson by some righteous figures and were now limping around.

He prayed that some righteous encounter would reach that kind couple, and that nothing would happen to them.

Alicia and Reichardt had stopped in the middle of a dark road.

“Well now, where do you think you’re going without paying a toll?”

Ill-looking men surrounded the two of them.

Every thug bore knife scars and vicious-looking wounds on the parts of their bodies that showed.

Some were big, but most were smaller than Reichardt.

“Not a single day passes quietly.”

Reichardt said indifferently, holding a large bag of bread.

At his blunt attitude, one of the thugs tried to menace the bag with a kick.

“Rei, why is your nickname ‘demon’? These people look far more like demons.”

Alicia lightly slipped aside from the hand that reached for her.

The thug, who had thrust his arm out violently into empty air, lost his balance and tilted sideways.

Thud!

Alicia took advantage of the opening at his waist and kicked.

“Ghk!”

The staggering thug collapsed with a groan.

To the other thugs, it must have looked like their comrade had reached for a fragile lady, clawed at air by himself, and toppled over alone.

“Alicia.”

Reichardt called her in a tone that sounded like reproach.

They had been bickering every time they came out for a late-night snack.

Reichardt insisted they should go home via the main street, even on the way back.

Alicia insisted on taking the shortcut.

Every time, the argument ended with Alicia’s “reasonable” position being followed.

And every time they took the shortcut, they ran into thugs.

Reichardt had told Alicia he would handle it, so she should not step in.

Alicia always promised firmly when they entered the shortcut—yet when an unpleasant thug came close, she kicked before she even realized it.

“I know. We can’t kill them, okay?”

Alicia chatted idly as she took the bread bag from Reichardt, looking regretful.

“…Hey. Do you not know who we are?”

The thug leader, with a grim knife scar running from under his left eye to the corner of his right lip, asked in a rough voice.

“I don’t.”

Alicia answered brightly.

A young lady of a noble house was, by nature, ignorant of how the world worked.

Even so, there was something strange about the way she faced thugs.

Normally, she should have been frightened—screaming or shrinking back.

To begin with, noble ladies did not come to back alleys after sunset unless they had no choice.

“Do you know, Rei?”

Alicia wore an unadorned sky-blue dress and not a single piece of jewelry.

It was plain, yet anyone could tell at a glance she was a great noble lady.

“I don’t.”

“Let’s finish this quickly and go home. Don’t forget—we can’t kill them.”

“I know.”

Because the two of them were so relaxed, the thugs began to grow uneasy.

There was no reason for it, but their gut feeling was bad.

The man’s build was good, but not to the point it should have been a problem.

It was one man and one woman against them—seven in total.

Suspicious of how strangely at ease their targets were, two of the thugs charged Reichardt at the same time.

Reichardt, still talking with Alicia, did not even turn his gaze.

He seized the hand coming for his temple and crushed it.

At the same time, he turned his back to the other attacker aiming for him and whipped his elbow out.

Crack, thud.

The horrifying sound of bones breaking rang out with a disturbingly brisk clarity.

“I told you not to kill them….”

Alicia scolded him as she checked the bread bag.

Boom! Thwack! Smack.

So that there would be no troublesome international incident between the Rune Empire and the Grand Duchy of Tessen, Reichardt paid attention to controlling his strength.

After disarming the entire group in an instant, he returned to Alicia’s side.

“They’ll be hurt, but they won’t die.”

“If you shatter the bones in the instep, an ordinary person suffers enough to die. I said I’d do it.”

Alicia subtly pointed out Reichardt’s earlier mistake—on the first day, he had nearly killed a Rune Empire civilian even if the target had been a thug.

“They won’t die from that. People are tougher than you think.”

Reichardt said something that would horrify anyone else, calmly taking the bread bag back from Alicia.

Alicia stuck close to the bag in his hands and pulled out a potato bun.

“Fine, injuries heal. …Do you want one too, Rei?”

“I’ll eat when we get home.”

Alicia stepped back from the bread bag and glanced at Reichardt.

Truthfully, she had something else to say—more than just taking out a bun or offering him bread.

“Shall we go?”

Reichardt whispered as he pressed a light kiss to Alicia’s cheek, where her gaze had lingered on him with special intent.

“Coming out for late-night snacks ends today.”

Alicia nodded.

Even as they walked, she kept peeking at Reichardt’s expression.

They took the shortcut, and home was close.

Camille had been waiting for them, worried, saying that eating late-night snacks every night was not good.

Alicia hugged her, then handed her a carefully chosen bread.

Camille let out a small laugh at Alicia’s gesture and turned away.

“Go to sleep early.”

At the concerned words, Alicia waved.

“Yes—good night.”

Camille could guess that Reichardt and Alicia would run around the rear garden until dawn and only then sleep, but she did not press further.

Just as she expected, Reichardt slipped out to the rear garden through the bedroom window.

Alicia sat by the window with the large bread bag tucked at her side and watched Reichardt play with the Lusa.

For him it was training, but to Alicia it looked like a game.

Reichardt’s sound signals grew more delicate and precise by the moment.

It was astonishing progress in a short time.

Alicia occasionally interfered with the signals he sent to the Lusa, disrupting his training.

Reichardt strode up to the giggling Alicia.

“What are you doing?”

The man’s face, leaning only his upper body in through the window, was sullen.

“Rei, I have something to say.”

It was deep night; everything around them was pitch-black.

In the dark, the sight of Reichardt playing with the jet-black Lusa felt especially vivid to Alicia.

“Something to say?”

Reichardt tried to climb through the window, as if wondering what she meant.

“Don’t you have something to give me?”

Alicia said to the man vaulting over the sill.

Reichardt came in with long strides and kissed her.

Alicia drew her neck back slightly at the sudden touch of lips to her lips.

“Something to give you—what kind?”

Reichardt whispered as he pulled away.

“A pendant….”

Alicia spoke carefully so she would not lick the finger that wiped her lips.

“A pendant?”

A question mark seemed to float on Reichardt’s face as he repeated it.

“It looks like a pendant, but it’s actually a clock. It’s mixed black and gray. It looks rough, but if you look at the surface, there’s an angel carved into it. It’s a very complex clock—you can read the year, month, day, hour, and minute….”

Alicia explained as best she could.

It was a little embarrassing to ask for what was surely an imperial heirloom steeped in history.

It felt like extortion.

As he listened, Reichardt casually slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket.

“This?”

In his hand was the pendant clock Alicia had been desperately searching for.

“…!”

Alicia froze, flustered by the fact that what she had been hunting for had been right beside her all along.

She was so shocked she could not speak.

Yes, that.

Reichardt placed the pendant—likely a precious imperial heirloom—into Alicia’s hand.

“It’s broken.”

“What?”

“It’s the Tessen Grand Duke’s astronomical clock. It’s an imperial heirloom passed down through the Grand Duke of Tessen, and once you write the marriage oath, the Grand Duchess of Tessen is supposed to keep it. But it broke, so we left it out of the wedding gifts. We showed it to every clockmaker in Baden, but it isn’t structurally damaged. Still, it’s broken.”

The last time Alicia had seen the clock, it had been working perfectly.

As she listened, she opened the pendant.

“If you want it, take it.”

Reichardt handed over the tremendous heirloom as if it were nothing, then went back out through the window.

“Good, let’s try it once.”

From the rear garden, Alicia faintly heard Reichardt speaking to Rusa.

His voice, trying to persuade a beast that could not understand words, was intensely serious.

“Broken….”

Alicia stood dazed at the clock’s unexpected appearance.

It had turned up in the strangest place.

And the claim that it was broken was just as startling.

Just as Reichardt said, the clock did not move.

The dial—impossible to decipher unless you could read astronomy and ancient languages—was complex and ornate.

Year, month, day, hour, minute.

Sunrise, sunset, twilight.

The refined, difficult clock that even displayed the length of day and the length of night had stopped.

“But what is this…?”

Outside the rim of the black dial, four tiny dots were marked at the cardinal directions.

Beside each dot, the first letter of east, west, south, and north was written in Lin Text.

Unforgettable names surfaced in Alicia’s mind.

White West Alik, East Noah, North Kaya, South Penz.

As Alicia stared at the intricate dial, something unusual caught her eye.

At the center of the black dial was a gold dot she had never seen before.

When she lifted her hand over the glass that protected the dial, the gold dot moved, following her fingertips.

“…!”

Instinctively, Alicia dragged the gold dot with her finger toward one of the four newly noticed dots.

In that instant, the world darkened and wind sprang up.

A savage gust raked across her tucked-in neck.

And then—

When the wind died down and Alicia lifted her face, she was standing in an unfamiliar place.

She was inside North Kaya on Mount Kaip.

The empty fortress grounds were silent.

“No way….”

Alicia checked the astronomical clock in her hand.

Click.

The astonishing events continued.

The broken clock was now moving, indicating the exact time.

Alicia checked the time and left North Kaya.

When she opened the door, the real Mount Kaip lay outside.

She could not believe it even as she looked at it.

“…This is really Mount Kaip….”

Alicia scanned the area with a stunned face.

Mount Kaip’s monsters were being steadily dealt with by the Blackstone Knights, and the region was recovering.

With North Kaya revealed again, the severed routes were also being repaired.

But the area around North Kaya Castle at the mountain’s summit was still collapsed, and people could not come there.

Shocked and flustered, Alicia ran a quick circuit around North Kaya.

She still could not believe she was truly on Mount Kaip, where the real North Kaya stood.

“What on earth is going on…?”

Alicia could only stare in bewilderment at the fortune brought by instinct and curiosity.

Unfortunately, that fortune came with a small side effect.

She was outside Tessen, all the way at Mount Kaip—so returning to Haime south of Baden would take a long time.

Even so, she had discovered a possibility.

A possibility of reaching White West Alik.