The Capital’s Current Situation

“What in the world was happening?”

“Probably… people were evacuating before the ‘End-of-the-World Cat’ appeared… It looked like things were worse than we had expected…”

Naturally, moving the residents who lived in the royal capital had not been easy. The fact that they had relocated on such a massive scale meant there had already been signs of revival.

“For now, I wanted to head to the royal castle, but the crowd was bad…”

Unfortunately, most of the roads had been packed with evacuees. If they said Arthur’s name, they could get through, but it would likely cause a huge loss of time.

It was while Arthur was worrying about that.

“Arthur-sama, you have returned!!”

When he turned toward the familiar voice, Erin—wearing not her usual maid uniform, but refined clothes a merchant would wear—ran up to them.

“I had heard the situation. You had gone to search for the ‘holy sword’ in order to defeat the Five Great Calamity Beasts, hadn’t you?”

“Y-yeah…”

“Merchants’ information networks were pretty amazing, you know.”

Erin grinned at Arthur, who looked confused about how she knew, and continued.

“Right now, I heard Mordred-sama was commanding an elite force of knights as they fought the ‘Five Great Calamity Beasts.’ And apparently even the saintess from Glastonbury had come.”

“Mordred and Elaine!?”

Arthur reacted without thinking at the names of the two people who were practically his natural enemies. That was understandable—Mordred was the one who had killed him, and as for Elaine, she was his rival whom he competed with in healing ability.

“That inconspicuous Prince Mordred was in command… Was he trying to gain the upper hand in the succession?”

“No, I don’t think so. Mordred-sama removed Agravain from office for treason, and he renounced his right of succession, saying only the one who obtained the ‘holy sword’ was worthy to be king.”

“What was going on?”

“Seriously… Without Agravain, there wouldn’t be anyone left to support Prince Mordred. Was he truly giving up on becoming king?”

Arthur and Morgan raised voices of surprise, but for different reasons. Morgan was simply bewildered at whether Mordred would really abandon the throne, while Arthur was thrown off by how things differed from what he remembered.

The Mordred that Arthur had known had betrayed Britannia alongside Agravain and led the revolution. Normally, it should have been wiser to pin responsibility for this turmoil on the nobles.

“…I didn’t get it.”

Arthur struggled for a while, then gave up. His specialty was healing, and what he needed to do now was to save Britannia using the ‘holy sword.’

He could just shove that kind of thing onto someone who was good at it.

“Morgan, I didn’t know what Mordred was thinking either. So if anything happened, I wanted you to cover for it. Got it?”

“Leave it to me. That was my specialty.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Maybe because he had been able to rely on her, he felt his chest warm as he looked at Morgan, who seemed pleased. Yeah—that must have been what reassurance felt like.

He felt a similar emotion from Morgan as when he was with Kei, and he laughed, thinking it wasn’t bad.

“I’d heard rumors that Arthur-sama and Morgan-sama were in a political marriage, but it seemed that was fake news.”

“Hehe. The two of them were steadily nurturing their love.”

Tristan was feeding unnecessary ideas to Erin, who looked surprised, but they didn’t seem to have time to care.

“If you’re going to the royal castle, this way!! There’s a route only merchants use, so I think it’ll be a big shortcut!!”

“Yes, that helped. Arthur… what’s wrong?”

Morgan was about to move forward with Erin guiding them, but she frowned at Arthur, who had stopped.

“That’s right… He said if I had this warm feeling, I could win… In that case… Erin!!”

“Y-yes. What was it, Arthur-sama?”

“Where was Kei?”

“That child? Probably… I think she was preparing at the orphanage with Marianne-san to bring the children along…”

“Those guys…”

Arthur hadn’t expected things to turn out like this, so of course he hadn’t ordered them to do anything. They had gone on their own to look after the orphanage children.

“Hey, Morgan…”

“You’re going to the orphanage, right? If you’re taking a detour, we’ll have to hurry.”

“Was that okay?”

“It’s something we need to do, isn’t it? Hold on to me. Tristan, you’re coming with us no matter what!!”

Nodding as if they understood each other without words, Morgan took Arthur’s hand, used ice magic to freeze the ground, and then—skating as if on ice—she dashed off together with Arthur.