Chapter 48. Time to Reap (3)
Meanwhile, outside the Cradle, public attention had remained firmly fixed on Raviata’s expedition.
Large numbers of reporters had gathered outside, carrying magitech image-recording devices…… cameras, spending one tedious day after another waiting for the expedition to emerge.
Then, one day—
“H-Hey! Over there!”
“Huh?! Wh-What is that?!”
The dark clouds visible over the distant Great Forest began gradually disappearing.
And that was not all.
Mystical streams of light began shimmering across the sky like curtains hanging from the heavens.
The reporters, who had been playing cards out of sheer boredom, instinctively grabbed their cameras and began frantically pressing the shutters.
“Wow…… I’ve heard about this before! I think ancient records said something like that appeared in the polar regions.”
“What was it called again? Aurara?”
“Ah! Aurora!”
“Right, that!”
“But has anything like that ever been observed over the Mezaia Great Forest?”
“Of course not. All it ever does over there is rain endlessly.”
The reporters were all familiar with one another.
They chatted among themselves even as their hands remained busy printing the photographs taken by their cameras onto Magic Parchment.
“What in the world is happening?”
“Who knows? It looks like the expedition must have done something……”
Just as the reporters continued wondering—
“WH-WHAT?!!”
One reporter who had formerly belonged to a Magic Tower suddenly screamed in shock.
“The…… the seal! The seal has been lifted!!”
“What? What seal?”
“The Cradle! Th-The Cradle has opened!”
The moment those words left his mouth, every reporter suddenly froze as a strange sensation crawled down their spines.
It was an instinct every reporter possessed.
The instinct for a scoop.
And this one felt larger than anything they had ever encountered before.
“Opened? W-We mean the same kind of opening, right? The Cradle was cleared?!”
“I’m telling you it was!! The Mana Barrier unique to the Cradle has disappeared from the entrance!”
“Hey! Damn it!!”
The reporters hurried back toward their carriages, grabbed their respective Crystal Orbs, and began shouting excitedly at whoever was on the other end.
“I’m telling you!! The Mezaia Great Forest just opened! It opened!”
“Yes, that!”
“It’s the first Cradle to open in a hundred years!!”
And this enormous scoop was practically a priceless treasure that would keep reporters screaming with joy for quite some time.
—
Had anyone ever seen a crowd surge forward like a tidal wave?
One week after the Cradle opened—
With the Elves’ assistance, the expedition finally emerged from the entrance of the Great Forest.
They were immediately bombarded with an unexpected barrage of questions.
“They’re out!”
“Raviata’s there too!”
“Huh? But there are way fewer of them than before.”
“Just run!”
The reporters closest to the entrance sprinted straight toward the expedition.
Every one of them shoved forward boxes containing Crystal Orbs enchanted with Voice-Recording Magic and shouted their questions.
“The Cradle’s seal has been lifted! Please give us a statement regarding what happened!”
“I’m from the Yobram Magic Tower Academic Society! The dark clouds over the central region of the Mezaia Great Forest disappeared alongside an unidentified curtain-shaped phenomenon of light! Is this connected to the Cradle’s seal being lifted?!”
‘Whoa.’
Delilah looked thoroughly overwhelmed by the sight.
Ever since entering human society, she had lived in the capital of the Allied Nations and believed she had seen her fair share of crowds.
But this was on an entirely different scale.
Even the insect-type monsters that had charged the expedition had not swarmed them this aggressively.
Raviata, on the other hand, seemed to have expected something like this.
She spoke without the slightest change in expression.
“I’ll do interviews later. There’s something I need to report to the Adventurer Association first. An official announcement will be released by this evening, so everyone wait until then. I’ll arrange a time by tomorrow at the earliest.”
But reporters were hardly the sort of people who would retreat after hearing only that much.
Raviata’s reputation meant nothing to them when they had the biggest story of their careers unfolding directly before their eyes.
“P-Please, just one quick statement!”
“Ancient records say Elves once lived within the Mezaia Great Forest! Did you encounter them?!”
Before long, however, the reporters were pushed aside by the representatives dispatched from the various kingdoms.
Now that Raviata’s intentions were clear, their priority was to separate the reporters from the expedition and hear what had happened inside.
The entire expedition was eventually escorted to the castle of a nearby city.
The local lord sat nervously in one corner, while the seat that would normally have belonged to him was surrounded by senior officials from various nations, all competing to hear an explanation of what had happened.
Then, the following morning—
Just as Raviata had promised, a separate press conference was held.
From that day onward, the entire world was thrown into an uproar.
[Exclusive! Humanity’s Future Grows Brighter! Mezaia Great Forest Opened!]
[The Secrets Hidden Within the Mezaia Great Forest—and the Elves!]
[How Did Raviata’s Expedition Turn an Exploration into a Successful Cradle Clear?]
[Imperial Guard Knight Order Annihilated by an Unknown Group! What Truth Lies Behind the Incident?]
[A Story Like a Novel, Written by Fifty Heroes!]
Naturally, the opening of the first Cradle in a hundred years drew enormous attention.
And that was not all.
Unlike every previous Cradle, which had been cleared through repeated subjugation, this Cradle had been opened through acknowledgment from its Ruling Race.
The Magic Towers did not take the event lightly either.
Their representatives visited the kings of their respective kingdoms practically every day, begging them to secure permission to enter the Great Forest.
And they were hardly the only ones growing impatient.
Countless Adventurers were deeply interested in the new dungeons that would become accessible now that the Mezaia Great Forest had opened.
Fundamentally, opening a Cradle did not mean that every region within it automatically became accessible.
The remaining dungeons remained sealed.
And no matter how many times those dungeons were subjugated, they did not disappear.
In other words—
It was effectively the same as discovering an enormous reserve of untouched natural resources.
There was no possibility that Adventurers would remain uninterested.
Meanwhile, in stark contrast to the chaos outside, Shane and his companions were spending a peaceful time together in a large mansion prepared specifically for them.
Raviata and James, who had led the expedition, were handling most of the public matters.
During that time, the Knight Order of the Kingdom of Hiel finished preparing to depart and sought Shane out separately.
Adam bowed his head.
“Before I leave, I would like to apologize to you.”
“…….”
“I apologize for everything I said and did when I looked down upon you at the beginning of the expedition. I was wrong.”
“W-We apologize as well.”
The remaining knights bowed alongside Adam.
Among them was one particularly amusing face.
Wells.
He was the knight who had been swept away by the torrential waters near the beginning of the expedition.
Just as Dominic had suggested at the time, Wells had been fortunate enough to be carried by the current all the way back toward the entrance of the Cradle.
Realizing that following the others alone would be impossible, he had chosen to leave the Cradle.
When he later learned that many of his fellow knights had died over the following months and that the Imperial Guard Knight Order had been completely annihilated, his jaw practically dropped.
In any case—
Unlike during their first meeting, Adam now treated Shane with genuine respect.
Shane therefore handed him a letter he had prepared in advance.
“What is this?”
“Consider it proof that I accept your apology. You may find its contents unpleasant, but please read it later when you are alone.”
“Ah…… Understood.”
“You must read it when you are alone.”
Perhaps Adam sensed something from the way Shane repeated the warning with an expressionless face.
Having always possessed sharp instincts, he did not take those words lightly.
After Adam and the surviving knights left the large mansion provided by the Kingdom of Hiel, Ilexa of the Lampert Adventurer Party was the next to depart.
“I suppose we’ll see each other again someday, Shane.”
“Yes. I will see you then.”
Adam and his knights had left after being summoned back by their kingdom.
The Lampert Adventurer Party, however, was leaving to escape the excessive attention currently surrounding the expedition.
In truth, they probably would not appear publicly again until the current commotion had died down considerably.
Someone above them would not welcome such attention.
Once Adam and Ilexa had both departed, the vast mansion suddenly felt remarkably quiet.
Still, it was not entirely silent.
Klein spent every day outside training with his sword, organizing the realizations he had gained from his battles against Alpha and Dominic within the Cradle.
Delilah trained beside him, communing with the earth and developing her own abilities.
Aneis, however, was different.
Wearing an expression of deep contemplation, she came to find Shane.
“There’s something I want to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“The person who killed the Imperial Knights. Was it you?”
“…….”
At Aneis’s question, Shane quietly stared into her eyes.
Her light-violet eyes, reminiscent of the sky just before dawn, appeared indifferent at first glance.
But Shane could read the emotion hidden within them.
Distrust.
Deep-rooted distrust was gradually consuming Aneis from within.
Those eyes reminded Shane of the Iron-Blooded Justice he had known in his previous life.
After a long moment of thought, Shane answered.
“Yes. I killed them.”
“…….”
Receiving an answer without the slightest trace of falsehood, Aneis remained silent for a moment before asking another question.
“Why?”
“Because they are harmful to humanity as it currently exists.”
“You know something?”
“To some extent.”
Aneis briefly closed her eyes.
“What is this ‘Unification’?”
“A delusion cherished by the current Crown Prince.”
“A delusion?”
“He desires war in the name of creating a humanity without war.”
“……That’s a contradiction.”
“Yes. It is.”
Shane continued explaining.
“One unified nation incorporating every country. He wants to destroy the system of the Allied Nations and create a world governed solely by the Empire. He wants a war to achieve that. At least, that is the justification he presents on the surface.”
“On the surface.”
“Once you look beneath that, he is simply a warmonger. A vicious opportunist filled with nothing but desire for the power he believes will belong to him.”
If that were all, however, he would not have been especially threatening.
The true problem lay elsewhere.
“The problem is that he possesses the will, ability, and forces necessary to make it happen. And the possibility of his success is extraordinarily high.”
“……And that’s what they call justice?”
“One could call it justice. He created a mask to conceal his contradictory nature, and somewhere along the way, he began believing that mask was his real face.”
“…….”
Aneis finally fell silent.
For a long time, she had contemplated the contradiction-filled lies spoken by the Imperial Family.
Yet astonishingly—
Her ears told her that every word spoken by the boy before her was true.
As Aneis sank deeper into thought, Shane added,
“Aneis. Thinking alone and reaching your own conclusions is certainly a useful ability, but do not attempt to handle everything that way.”
“…….”
“At the very least, as the person who has become your fiancé, I would like to offer you that much advice.”
It hardly sounded like a conversation between two people who were engaged.
But neither Shane nor Aneis was the type to care about something like that.
Aneis quietly nodded.
“When facing an enemy stronger than yourself, there are three methods you can use.”
Aneis listened carefully when Shane abruptly continued.
“The first is preparation. It is the method you use when your enemy knows nothing about you, while you know your enemy.”
“The second?”
“The second is to wait for the current of events. Rather than grasping desperately for some uncertain opportunity, wait for one you know will come. The important part is predicting when that current will arrive.”
“…….”
“The third and final method is to possess both.”
“Difficult.”
Shane nodded at Aneis’s brief response.
For Aneis, who had been taught that justice itself was strength, it could only feel difficult.
Within an Imperial Family overflowing with contradictions, Aneis had lived alone, recognizing those contradictions and struggling with them.
That was why Shane told her,
“There is nothing difficult about it. You have practically solved two of those problems already.”
“I have?”
“Yes. I will handle the preparation, and I will create the current of events. Since you are my fiancée, you already possess both.”
“Arrogant.”
“You are not wrong. But there is no complacency in my arrogance.”
Shane’s Roseberry eyes looked directly into Aneis’s without the slightest wavering.
“When that opportunity arrives, I will show you.”
Shane spoke with absolute certainty.
“What my preparations—and the current I create—will ultimately produce.”
In the end, Aneis could only nod.
Even now—
Her sensitive ears told her that Shane had not spoken a single lie.
