Chapter 56: Magic Armour
Iodin.
I was startled by that na.
It seed Lorraine had interpreted my reaction a little differently.
“Yes. Lady Iodin Serom~! The Knight of Blue Thunder. Don’t you know? A man who wields a sword can’t possibly not know the Knight of Blue Thunder~ Are you going to keep making anxious like this~?”
Iodin Serom.
It seed that really was the sa Iodin. My senior.
But the Knight of Blue Thunder?
‘Co to think of it... wasn’t it the year 4681 now?’
That ant eight years had passed.
Since the ti when Iodin and I had suffered together in Glowingsteel.
And in the anti, she had gained such a splendid epithet?
Then my senior was already thirty-two?
She was older than .
A rush of mixed emotions welled up.
I had already seen her gravestone in the far future... but here she was, alive and well.
She must have grown even stronger than she was back then. Had she already beco a Peak Expert by now?
‘Will I be able to see her?’
Since Iodin couldn’t co and had hired in her stead... would that make it difficult to et her?
It left a little regretful.
Caught up in these thoughts, I forgot for a mont.
Both the woman in front of , and the situation I was currently in.
“Sigh....”
What brought back was Lorraine’s sigh.
“Lord Ransen Banroa?”
“Yes.”
I quickly answered.
Either way, from the situation it seed she was my employer.
“As a First-class rcenary, your commission fee was quite expensive, you know? You’re even paid weekly.”
“I suppose so.”
I didn’t know the details, but I figured that was how it was set up.
Lorraine bead brightly.
“But if you don’t earn that money’s worth... you’ll be fired on the spot, all right? You don’t mind, do you?”
I couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t the sort of thing to say while smiling like that...
“Of course.”
I accepted.
The commission fee didn’t matter to anyway. To be honest, I was confident.
“Good. Then let’s start right away. You’re not tired, are you? Even if you are, there’s no helping it~ Every single second is money, you know.”
Lorraine briskly walked past .
Even though I was 185cm tall, her height didn’t feel small at all.
She must have been around 176cm?
With such a tall figure, striding with those long white hems fluttering, she cut quite an impressive sight.
Clunk!
She opened a door.
“Ah....”
Only then did I realize.
Why there had been a constant faint vibration and shaking all this ti.
Beyond the door lay a half-dug-up mountain.
The scenery shifted little by little.
That ant,
this building I was standing in—
“Welco! To Lorraine’s Moving Laboratory!”
—was moving along the mountainside.
Good heavens.
A building that could move.
So this truly was the Age of Magic?
But that wasn’t the only thing astonishing.
“You know our laboratory is the one developing Magic Armour, right?”
Magic Armour? So kind of armor?
But Lorraine must have assud I already knew, because she skipped any explanation.
“From now on, Lord Ransen will wear our prototype Magic Armour and explore the ancient ruins buried in that mountain.”
A single word snagged in my mind.
‘Ancient ruins’?
Ancient?
That sounded strange.
Because this place was already in the ancient past.
A whole ten thousand years ago.
Searching for “ancient” in the ancient era itself... it felt incredibly contradictory.
But the concept of “ancient” was always relative.
Even ten thousand years ago, there could still exist a past old enough to be called the “Ancient Era.”
“Your mission, Lord Ransen, is to retrieve samples from there that could help with our research. Relics from none other than the Mythic Era!”
Wow.
The Mythic Era.
That I could accept. Compared to the Age of Magic, that was indeed ancient.
Weren’t there those lunatic scholars who sotis claid—only to get beaten up—that a civilization far more advanced than the Age of Magic had once existed?
That was what they called the Mythic Era.
....
But it actually existed?!
* * *
Here, everything defied my expectations.
This place wasn’t even a re moving building.
It was more accurate to call it a village.
A moving village...!
Kurururur—
Enormous steel wheels called continuous tracks crushed the earth as they carried it forward.
From tall chimney towers, pure white steam gushed forth like clouds.
Wooden suspension bridges, dangling like ladders, connected buildings here and there.
But what was that?
From the largest central building, a massive hollow tallic rod jutted forward in a straight line!
“Do you see it? That thing attached to the Academic Hall! That’s it! The weapon that neutralizes any threat! The pride of our laboratory—our Mana Cannon of the 10-Refim class~!”
Ah, so it was a cannon. A weapon, apparently.
I decided to leave it at that. I wouldn’t understand it anyway.
In Glowingsteel, being a city of knights, most things were recognizable at a glance... but here, in a place devoted to the study of magic, everything was unfamiliar.
Even,
the long white garnt Lorraine wore—it wasn’t a design I had ever seen before.
But it looked quite stylish.
“Nice, isn’t it? My outfit?”
Lorraine spun around to face .
Hm. Sharp instincts.
But her mood suddenly seed brighter.
Just a mont ago, she’d been subtly mocking —so why the change?
“This is from the Mythic Era. Well, to be precise, I reproduced it after studying an actual relic from that ti. Fufu. The great magicians of the Mythic Era all wore clothes like this, you know?”
The Mythic Era.
That word carried a resonance all its own.
Excitent?
Radiance?
She spoke it filled with a trembling fervor.
Before I knew it, I blurted out,
“You seem to like the Mythic Era.”
“Of course! Isn’t it incredible? A civilization fifty thousand years ago that was unimaginably more advanced than now.... Isn’t that mysterious?”
Whoosh! She ca so close I could sll her hair.
But... fifty thousand years?
Then by the reckoning of our Continental Calendar, that would be sixty thousand years ago?
‘The so-called Mythic Era... wasn’t it absurdly ancient?’
And yet, a civilization from that long ago was said to have been more advanced than this brilliant Age of Magic?
Could that be possible?
No wonder scholars of my ti dismissed the Mythic Era as a fignt of imagination, fiction at best. Whenever soone dared to believe in it seriously, others would descend on them and tear them apart.
But ta-da.
Now they said it truly existed.
“After all, Magic Armour originated from a Mythic Era relic! Master Dalstein is a true genius! Can you believe he analyzed a relic from the Mythic Era—sothing no one had ever understood before—bam! And established that great theory at the re age of twenty?”
Once the subject she loved ca up, Lorraine grew ever more fervent.
“They say the mont Master Dalstein thought of it, he ran out of the bath stark naked. Do you know what he shouted? [Rising! Thunder! Kick! Risingthunderkick!!] He kept going around like that. Isn’t it hilarious? Like, what on earth was that, hahaha!”
Chatter, chatter.
“He was probably so excited he just scread whatever ca to mind, right? But still, Risingthunderkick... pfft!”
Babble, babble.
It was as if she had turned into another person.
Her tone was different from earlier.
She was extrely talkative.
“Anyway, thanks to that, they were able to analyze the armor the warriors of the Mythic Era wore—and that was the beginning of Magic Armour! That’s why the magician I respect most is Master Dalstein!”
Lorraine never stopped talking the entire ti she guided .
The history of Magic Armour. The great magicians who laid its foundation. The theories applied to Magic Armour, and even their limitations.
Drowned in that flood of information, I was left with only one thought.
...I’m hungry.
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten.
Of course, since she was my client at the mont—
my mouth just chanically put in responses.
“Oh.”
“Amazing.”
“Hmm~”
“I see.”
“Excuse .”
Suddenly, Lorraine called out to . The eyes that had always been smiling, even when she mocked , now looked sharp.
“You’re not listening to , are you?”
Ah.
Busted.
* * *
I stood together with a slightly sulky Lorraine in front of a building called the “Prototype Testing Chamber.”
She cleared her throat with a hem-hem before smiling brightly again.
“Now, do you see it? That hollow spot in the mountain.”
I followed the direction of her finger, and there it was.
The mountain looked as though soone had scooped out one side with a spoonful, like pudding. Inside that hollowed section, a building had been wedged in.
On another angle, on the opposite side of the mountain, there was another small hollow. Inside that too, I could glimpse a building.
Lorraine pointed toward the smaller hollow.
“That’s the newly discovered entrance. We found it using exploration magic infused with new technology.”
She must really love the Mythic Era.
Lorraine’s voice grew fervent again.
“Going in through there lets you reach much deeper into this vast ruin! And it’s so astonishingly well-preserved!”
So her commission was for to go in there and bring back relics.
While also testing the laboratory’s prototype Magic Armour, by wearing it inside.
‘Ah... is this it?’
The mont I heard the explanation, certainty struck like lightning.
In there, inside those ruins...
Couldn’t there be sothing related to the Cultists?
The Book of Fate never sent to any random place.
Sothing would happen. Sothing tied to the Cult. And it would surely happen inside those ruins.
“So, here’s the thing~”
Her black-gold hair suddenly leaned right into my face.
Those faint green eyes curved in a smile.
Her attitude shifted once again.
When speaking of the Mythic Era, she had been giddy like a child, but now her gaze was once more that of an adult calculating gains and losses.
“Since you’re a First-class rcenary, I won’t question your sword skills. But handling Magic Armour is different from swordsmanship, isn’t it~? So, we’ll start with a test. The Magic Armour Aptitude Test!”
She was truly rcurial.
“Let warn you in advance~ Even if you’re offended, there’s nothing I can do. If, by my standards, you fail, the contract will be terminated imdiately, all right? Naturally, since the fault would lie on your side, no penalty fee would be imposed. On the contrary, we might have grounds to claim damages from you, so I should make that clear~ But don’t take it personally—it’s just business~”
The conditions were downright vicious.
Still,
“Fine.”
It wasn’t my concern.
I answered indifferently and stepped into the building.
It was a wide, circular structure.
By the entrance stood rows of racks, displaying sleek breastplates in neat alignnt.
Beyond them stretched a spacious area, scattered with all sorts of obstacles and tallic training dummies set generously apart.
“Director, you’ve arrived?”
A man suddenly appeared, greeting us.
His bow carried discipline.
An old man with snow-white hair, elegantly dressed in a fine suit.
‘...He reminds of a royal chamberlain.’
The royal chamberlain... the one who had stayed behind until the very end to cover our escape.
This old man, with his disciplined posture and manners, reminded of him. It made feel an unexpected sense of fondness.
“Yes. Master Eodran. Are the preparations ready?”
“Of course.”
“We’ll begin right away.”
“Yes.”
The old man called Eodran approached .
“Lord Ransen? It is an honor. My na is Eodran. Please, this way. I shall help you put on the Magic Armour.”
I followed him and looked at the Magic Armour,
and felt a bit disappointed.
‘It’s just a breastplate...?’
Of course, if it were an armor imbued with magic, even a breastplate that only covered the chest would have great value...
Other parts could be supplented by acquiring separate pieces...
But still, it was disappointing.
‘If it were a full suit of armor, it would fetch a much higher price.’
The truth was, right now my only thought was to bring this so-called Magic Armour back to the present.
Whether Lorraine gave permission or not, I planned to sweep up as many as I could and take them to the future.
What could they do?
To , this place was nothing less than a vast treasure vault.
If I wanted sothing, I would take it.
If they resented , they could live ten thousand years and co after .
That was exactly why Lorraine’s talk of wages and firing hadn’t made bat an eye.
If it ca to bad intentions, I was probably worse.
Still, it was a pity.
If I sold it, a full suit of armor would be far more valuable, and yet all I had was a breastplate.
“First, we’ll test with this one.”
Eodran lifted up a plain white breastplate—the dullest-looking of them all.
‘The fit isn’t bad.’
Wearing the Magic Armour, I stood at the center of the testing chamber.
But when had the old man moved over there?
Eodran was already offering a refreshing-looking lemon drink to Lorraine.
His devoted, respectful service to Lorraine truly evoked the image of a chamberlain.
...It made the tip of my nose sting again for no reason.
Lorraine took a long sip of the drink and began her explanation.
“This is your first ti with Magic Armour, right?”
“Yes.”
I had worn magical armor from ancient tis before, but from what I had heard on the way here, Magic Armour seed to be sothing very different from ordinary magical armor.
“Then let’s activate it first.”
“Yes.”
I answered flatly, but in truth, my heart was racing.
The Magic Armour that Lorraine held with such boundless pride.
From the explanations, it seed to be sothing far beyond a simple piece of magical armor.
What kind of performance would it show?
If I brought this back to the present, would it strengthen our forces?
My heart thumped with anticipation.
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