Chapter 259

Woah. This stuff is incredible.”

“Indeed. I did not dream of such a thing.”

Velnoir now hung on the right side of my belt. Daniela was looking at the Hollow Bracelet on her right arm. As the wind dragon cape might attract attention, she kept it stored in the bracelet for now. Combined, the gold added up to four thousand and five hundred pieces. Add that to the four thousand from the auction, and we had nine thousand and five hundred. While we had spent some money on Daniela’s suit of armor, the expense was hardly noticeable now.

“To be honest, we could live quite comfortably with this.”

“If we did it modestly, we could live off of it for the rest of your lifespan, Asagi.”

Of course, that’s not what I wanted. We had made a promise to travel the world.

The imperial castle was in the center of the city, and there were entrances to the north, south, east, and west districts. However, the actual entrance to the castle was on the east side. This was so they could march out with the sun, apparently. It sounded superstitious.

And so Daniela and I left through the north side and went straight towards our lodging facility. This was because we wanted to get some more rest.

I called to Mister Hipericam when we reached the front.

“We’re back. Mister Hipericam.”

“…You sure are a considerate one.”

He said in his usual lazy voice. He lowered the book he was reading just enough so that he could peer at us over the edge.

“I’ve told you that you don’t have to tell me every time. Just take the key over there…”

“Ahaha. Well, old habits.”

“Ahh…yes-yes. So, the Imperial Sword Tournament is finished. The inns should start emptying out within a week, so you’ll have to move to one of them.”

“Oh, really? I quite like it here. It’s very comfortable.”

“That may be, but this place is for military… It’s not exactly for civilians.”

We had only been allowed to stay here because one of Mister Tames’ subordinates had given us a priority pass. Though, we were currently wearing bracelets with the same function.

“Well, I guess it can’t be helped then…”

“You. You were thinking of just staying here forever, weren’t you?”

“Why not?”

“Huhh…”

He sighed with exasperation and waved his hand for us to go. He didn’t seem to be the most passionate about his job, but I understood that it was business as usual for him, and so took the key and headed for our room.

The door opened with a loud click and the now quite familiar white room greeted us. It was currently littered with Daniela’s things… We had been quite busy recently. But we’d have to clean up if we were to leave soon.

“Asagi. Asagi.”

“Hmm?”

“Look. It is just wonderful.”

“Huh…whoah!”

The hollow bracelet on Daniela’s wrist was sucking up all of her things from off of the floor. It was like a vacuum cleaner…

“Hey, don’t suck up your dirty clothes with everything else.”

“We can just wash it all together later.”

“You’re so careless…”

If only the Emperor could see this. He would probably be filled with remorse.

Once Daniela was finished vacuuming and the floor was quite clean, we both collapsed onto the bed. The sun was still high in the sky, but we didn’t want to move anymore. Hell, I wanted to sleep until the morning. That was how tired I was.

However, it also came to me that we had achieved everything we had set out to do in the imperial capital. So, what next? I asked Daniela about this, and she thought for a moment.

“…Indeed. Now that we have done everything, perhaps we should leave.”

“Do you have a destination in mind?”

Walking without a destination seemed very dangerous. And we didn’t have an unlimited supply of food.

“I suppose we should stay here until we decide that.”

“Yeah…”

I had been curious about ‘dungeons’ ever since Manager brought it up. But I was completely ignorant about them. Still, if there were any nearby, I might like to do a little dungeon crawling.

As I considered that possible future, the demon of sleep ambushed us, and we drifted off to the world of dreams.

Then a week passed, and the city calmed down after the festive season. We had left the lodging facility and moved to a single room in an inn. It was a quiet and relaxing place.

Daniela and I had nothing to do during that week, and so we just spent our days lazing around. When we did go outside, people would swarm around us, as we were the ‘winner and runner-up duo.’ Though, it did mean that people would buy us food and drink at night. Daniela got to eat to her heart’s content. I felt a little bad that people were spending money on us, but I had to accept it, as it was all part of their festival tradition.

But even that started to fade after a few days. People returned to their jobs and normal life continued. We had gone to a Lambrusen restaurant yesterday, and it was pretty quiet.

Today was the day we finished moving. It so happened that Lemon’s inn was nearby, which meant we had already seen much of the area and knew that there was no point in exploring it.

Daniela was standing by the window now and staring at her hollow bracelet. It was times when I caught her like this, that I wished I could paint. Then, without warning, Daniela’s rapier materialized in her hand.

“Woah.”

“Watch.”

As she said this, the sword disappeared and her bow took its place.

“The bracelet?”

“Aye. Now I will be able to switch weapons much more smoothly.”

“I’m so jealous.”

How nice would it be to be able to switch between a one-handed sword, greatsword and a spear on the fly… It was also pretty impressive that Daniela even thought to use it like that.

“I am not giving it to you. It is my prize for winning.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for it…”

That being said, watching her was like rubbing salt in the wound. If only I could do something similar with the hollow bag…

But speaking of prizes, I had Velnoir. I took it out of the bag and inspected it. The blackness seemed to suck in all the light. It was pretty cool.

“I didn’t expect to get an actual Emperor’s sword.”

“Aye. It was a surprise.”

We had talked about what the prize might be before the fight. And the possibility of receiving such a treasured sword had been brought up. But it was still a surprise.

The Black Empire Blade was longer than the demon sword. It was two-edged and had a ‘sword breaker.’ So…it was for fighting humans… Certainly, it was something that could come in handy against bandits. Not that that was a very appealing use for such a sword.

Apparently, it had been wielded by an Emperor known as Kisaragi. Unless my guess was wrong, this person was from Japan. Perhaps he was called the ‘Black Emperor’ because of his hair. Hmm…Black Emperor. Black Rabbit. What caused this difference in treatment, I wonder… I suppose it was the good old ‘protagonist compensation’ thing.

“Ah, Asagi.”

“What?”

“I took a walk to the guild recently, and heard a rather interesting rumor.”

“An interesting rumor?”

“Aye. About a labyrinth town to the south.”

“Labyrinth town?”

A town that was like a labyrinth. Who would want to live there?

“Yes. The labyrinth is underground. Below the town.”

“Uh, wouldn’t that make it a sort of dungeon?”

“Yes, a dungeon. And the rumor is related to this dungeon.”

A dungeon under a town. And a rumor regarding it…

“They say that the dungeon has been cleared recently.”

“Uhhh… And I was just thinking about going. No point now.”

“Hold on. I have not finished. This dungeon is supposed to have a core deep within, and when touched, the formation of this dungeon shifts. That seems to be what happened. And the result was that half of the town was swallowed up.”

“That sounds like a complete disaster?”

“It is. And the guild is going to investigate it.”

This was pretty big. So someone went dungeon crawling and caused half of the town to be swallowed up… Perhaps it was a trap for treasure seekers…

“So, we have our next destination then.”

“Uhh…we’re going…? I don’t like the sound of this place at all.”

“I do not see how it would be possible to ignore something so fascinating.”

Daniela showed that she had every intention of going. And we had only just got our new room. It seemed like a big waste of money.

“I want to go.”

“Yeah, but…”

“I want to go.”

“Still…”

“I want to go.”

“…”

She was being unreasonable… She had been like this when we decided to enter the tournament as well… In that case, there was no other option but to go…

“Fine. Let’s go…”

“I love you, Asagi.”

“Yeah-yeah…”

And that was the moment that our next destination was decided.

Still, a town swallowed up by a dungeon… Sadly, the words had an adventurous ring to them that began to stimulate my sense of curiosity.