I held my breath until I could count every one of Kaito’s girls. If one had been missing, I would have had to make myself scarce. I wasn’t sure what the rules were for replacing dead members, and I didn’t want to find out.

That entirely selfish concern dealt with, I was glad to see that they were okay. They walked up to the front gate and went out of my line of sight. Presumably, they were let in. It wasn’t long after, that a messenger found me, asking me to accompany them to see the King.

Oh, now he wants to see me.

That thought was a bit unworthy of me. The King had responded to my message, and gotten the Guild out on the streets. With everything that was going on and key people out of the city, he was probably pretty busy. It made sense to wait and see all of the Chosen in one go.

I followed the messenger and found myself in a waiting room with the other girls. Squeals and hugs were had all around. It seemed that the girls had decided they liked me, and that meant hugs. I wondered if all beast-kin were this touchy-feely, or if it was just them.

Only Isidre and Kaito held themselves apart, though they did smile at seeing me. Once I’d wrested myself free, Kaito greeted me.

“It’s good to see you made it out, Miss Kandis, we were all quite worried!” she said. The “Miss” meant that she was using the -san suffix, which… I was okay with. “How did you make it out before us?”

“I managed to get a token that teleported me to the entrance,” I explained. “Only to the entrance, or I would have tried to check up on you. Then… I didn’t really feel like dealing with Finley’s men, so I slipped through the castle.”

Kaito frowned. “The castle wasn’t manned by Duke Finley’s forces when we came through,” she said. “The Duke was quite upset by that.”

“What? Did the King’s forces take over?” I tried to figure out if that had been the case when I came through. It had been… a mix, I thought? Soldiers here wore a bewildering array of uniforms depending on their allegiance, rank and unit, but I was pretty sure that I’d seen uniforms belonging both to the Duke and to the King.

If that was the case, then it might explain why the King’s guard wasn’t out on the streets. Half of the forces in the city were keeping the other half under arrest.

“They did,” Kaito confirmed. “The Duke was arrested when he came out… at least nominally. He’s been confined to his quarters.”

“He agreed to that?” I asked. I didn’t think there was anyone in the city right now who could make the Duke do anything— aside from the King.

“Yes…” Kaito said. She dropped her gaze to the ground. “He was… somewhat subdued after what happened in the dungeon. His son…”

“Didn’t make it?” I suggested when Kaito didn’t look like she wanted to continue. She nodded.

“One of the Dukes’ companions, his son, and one of his son’s companions,” she said, sighing. “We held off the ogres, but the giants disposed of our fortifications like they were made of sand. It happened so quickly, we might all have died if the Break hadn’t ended at that moment.”

“Some of us would have survived,” Ettalle put in. The catkin grabbed a hold of Kaito’s arm and held herself close. “We’ve got good dodgers, and the back-line could have fled. But… it wouldn’t have been good.”

“Yeah! It was real lucky the Break ended right then!” Nori said, coming up on Kaito’s other side. “So how’d you do it, huh?”

“Yes, how did you do it?” a voice said from behind me. I turned. The King was here.

We arranged ourselves decorously to face the King. Two couches were not quite enough to fit eight people, but the harem was used to fitting large groups in tight spaces. Ettalle, Nori and Fassi squeezed onto one couch with Kaito, while Zichy stood behind. That left one couch for Isidre, Orino and me.

Once we were all settled, the King started speaking.

“First of all, while your modesty does you credit, Councillor Hammond, there is no point in denying that you were responsible for ending the Break. Even if Duke Finley wasn’t complaining about only receiving twenty-five percent of the total, I can see that you’ve gone up a Level.”

I really needed to learn how to hide that aura. The King’s words set off a bunch of gasps and exclamations from the girls, and one smug look from Fassi. She’d noticed, apparently. Isidre, sitting next to me, touched me on the arm to attract my attention.

“Congratulations,” she said and managed to make it sound sincere.

“Ah, well, you’ll all get there soon enough,” I said.

“I’m sure,” the King agreed. “Now, as to how?”

He was keeping it polite, which I appreciated, but that monstrous [Intimidation] was at his fingertips any time he wanted. I would have to play this very carefully.

“There are Guild secrets involved with that story, your Majesty,” I said, carefully.

He frowned. “I wasn’t aware you were fully initiated,” he said.

“I’m not,” I agreed. “I came upon these secrets through my own investigations, and was later informed by the Guild that I was trespassing on their domain.”

“Then you’re not bound by oaths,” he said, leaning forward.

“No, but it puts me in a delicate situation. I’m dependent on the goodwill of the Guild for a lot of my agenda in Talnier. In the interest of maintaining that, I’ve agreed to not spill their secrets— but I don’t know what they actually are.”

“Wait, you don’t know their secrets?”

“I know what I know,” I explained. “And I know that some of what I found out is considered a secret. But they weren’t willing to tell me what they were keeping secret. Without the Guild master here to guide me, I don’t know what I can say that doesn’t infringe upon that trust.”

“The Guild— and the Guild-master— answers to me,” the King said with a frown.

“However— and correct me if I’m wrong on this— you have allowed the Guild to keep its secrets. As part of the grand balance established by your grandfather.”

The King glowered at me for a moment and then sighed. “So you want to wait for Voight to get back before you talk. Why did I bother summoning you then?”

“With respect,” Kaito put in. “There are matters more important to discuss that require Miss Hammond’s presence.”

“Oh? And what makes you think you can judge importance, girl?” Irritated, the King’s [Intimidation] skill flared up. I winced, even though it wasn’t directed at me. Isidre flinched and grabbed my arm and the other girls quailed, but Kaito was unbowed. Her ears drooped, and she swallowed nervously, but she kept talking.

“The Break is over, so information about how to end it can wait a few days. The burgeoning Spawn Points are a current concern.”

“If you want to go and sign up with the Adventurers guild to fight monsters, that’s no concern of mine,” the King said dismissively.

“I have a different suggestion,” Kaito said politely. “While no one doubts the competency of your Theurges—,”

“Despite the fact that they haven’t managed to repair those obelisks yet,” I interjected. Both the King and Kaito shot me a look. The King’s was irritated, Kaito’s was more imploring.

“I suspect that their style of mana manipulation is less suited to the current situation than one would like,” she continued.

“Explain,” the King said.

“Ah… as I am not a mage, it is difficult for me to explain,” she said. She looked over at Ettalle, but she was still whimpering from the King’s earlier bout of irritation. I decided to step up.

“I’m not sure where she’s going with this, but Kingdom Theurgy is mostly about moving mana efficiently from one point to another,” I said. “It avoids Spawn points by draining the mana out of an area.”

“Yes, and in the current situation in the city?” Kaito said, half of her attention on me, the rest on trying to revive Ettalle’s spirits.

“It’s… got nowhere to go,” I said, thinking about it. “The free mana is penned in the city by the wards, and without a dedicated obelisk to suck up the mana, it just sloshes around until it gets sucked up by a dungeon or a spell.”

Obelisks must absorb mana more efficiently than dungeons, I realised, or over a wider area. I’d never seen a vortex over an obelisk as I had for dungeons.

“Yes, it is a turbulent pool, when what we need is a river!” She shook Ettalle, finally convincing her to participate.

“Uh, that’s how we do it in the Great Forest, your Majesty,” Ettalle said nervously. “The shamans concentrate the mana in a stream that flows naturally. Done right, the river absorbs nearby ambient mana, and keeps buildups from forming.”

“And so you want to try this… barbarian technique on our streets,” the King said.

“Well, we’re not shamans,” Ettalle explained. “Orino and I might become such, eventually, so we’ve had some training, but we don’t have [Theurgy]. We were hoping that if we explained the technique to your people, that they could manage it.

“My Scholars of the Sacred Breath are a little busy right now,” the King said wryly.

“Are they? Because they don’t seem to be accomplishing much. Couldn’t they spare a few people to try this out?” I shot back.

“I suppose that’s true,” he conceded. The look he gave me wasn’t friendly though.

“So if you could put something down to show your support of the idea, we could try and convince them to try it?” Kaito said hopefully. “If we could take Miss Kandis along as well, she’s very good at getting people to accept new things.”

Royal warrants weren’t just hastily scribbled notes with a seal attached. They had to be constructed. So there was a brief wait, while the King went off for other meetings, and we waited for the document to be delivered.

“Are you sure you’re not going to get into trouble for sharing your people’s secrets?” I asked.

“They’re not secrets,” Ettalle said. “They’re sacraments.”

I raised an eyebrow in response, so she continued.

“The way the Kingdom constrains mana is an offence to Naldyna,” she said. Despite her words, she didn’t look offended. She was just too good-natured to pull it off. “I’m more worried that, after we show them how to do it properly, they’ll just write it off as barbarian stuff and throw the technique away.”

I nodded in agreement, but I suspected that the truth was less one-sided than that. Latora’s methods worked well for Latora and the Tribe's way worked well for the Tribes. The current failures here didn’t look good for the Scholars, but I knew that the Tribal method was not without failures. Moving mana naturally meant that sometimes the mana moved on its own. I had heard that villages occasionally had to be evacuated because a mana stream had decided to pass through, bringing monsters with it.

There was more than one reason that the Tribal villages were little more than glorified campsites. They weren’t nomadic, but they lived as if they were, always ready to pack up at a moment's notice. Not that they were complaining about such a life, but it wasn’t for everyone.

To our surprise, when the King’s warrant came, it was accompanied by another, which had a note attached. This second warrant was given to me. The note said:

Consider this both a reward for your help but also a sign that I’ve decided that I don’t want to keep you here any longer than necessary.

It wasn’t signed, but the warrant was actually my—Talnier’s— Charter, all properly signed and sealed. He must have had it all ready to go.

I tsked under my breath. If he thought this was all the reward I was going to require, he had another think coming. The others looked at me, but I didn’t say anything, just stored the note and the scroll in my ring.

“Let’s go and see the wizards,” I said.