Chapter 41

Chapter 41 : Ice Blue (5)

It was a familiar appearance.

Her abundant silver hair fell exactly to the tip of her chin, swaying softly.

Her half-lowered eyes were so cold they seemed to shed frost, and the atmosphere around her resembled the mood of the rulers’ meeting I had once watched from inside a birdcage.

She had neither a uniform nor a sword, but even with nothing in her hands, the aura she gave off naturally called tension to the surface.

I froze with one foot on the stairs and had no choice but to swallow dryly.

She was the Ruler of the Sky, the one even Pan was said to yield a step to.

Since I had called her name outright, she must have found that displeasing.

“Ruler of the Sky?”

When I corrected myself and called her that again, she finally reacted.

“Either come up or stay there. Pick one.”

“Ah…… yes, ma’am.”

I became brisk without meaning to. That was because her voice itself was rather rough, yet carried an intensity that seemed to strike straight into my ears.

What is this feeling?

Etel did not look as though she intended to come down, so I went up.

She stood barefoot in a white dress, arms crossed, merely staring at me as I climbed the stairs.

“There is something I must correct. I am not the Ruler of the Sky.”

“……?”

Anyone could see she resembled that doll, and from her atmosphere to her behavior to her choice of position, everything about her was the Ruler of the Sky.

“You are not?”

“……Are you speaking casually to me already?”

“Um…… for now. Are you certain you are not Etel?”

“I am Etel.”

“Sophistry?”

She let out a hollow laugh, then went up the stairs on the right. Judging by the way she crooked a finger at me, it meant I was supposed to follow.

Openly letting my complicated feelings show, I climbed after her.

What had bewitched me?

An ice ghost?

There was no way a living person could live properly in a space made of nothing but ice.

In such a deserted, silence-filled place, only loneliness would grow, and before long, a person would even lose their sense of time.

As those pointless thoughts continued, I saw Etel stop at the second-floor railing and put some distance between us for a moment.

Whether she was a ghost or a person, it was only normal to find it strange that she could stride barefoot across ice like that.

I thought of Hwipone, who had gathered moisture from the air to create swords.

Could I judge that a woman walking around in this cold wearing only a fluttering, light dress was not my enemy?

She was the only thing moving in this castle where everything was frozen, so why had I not thought she might be dangerous?

I stopped with three steps still ahead of me.

“The Ruler and I are twins. Naturally, I am Etel too. We share the same surname.”

“……Twins?”

“If I were Ingfrek, I would not be spending my time idly chatting here, would I?”

“Ah, the negotiations.”

“Yes. You can understand what people mean.”

The host of the nonaggression negotiations Pan had abandoned me to attend was the Ruler of the Sky. She did not exactly look as though she was idly chatting, but it was true that he would be busy in the main city rather than here.

The reason I made the effort to believe those words was partly because of what Pan had said about an invitation, but the atmosphere also had something to do with it. At the very least, I had a vague feeling that she would not kill me here.

Though I could not know whether I would end up struck from behind, bleeding out as I died.

“What is your name?”

“Why? Do you want to call me by name in a friendly way?”

I had only wondered whether it would be confusing to call her Etel too, when the Ruler of the Sky was also called Etel, but I did not bother making an excuse.

“Just call me Etel, Iwon.”

“……I did not expect you to know even my name.”

After climbing the remaining stairs and standing beside her, I looked out the window she was watching.

The sight of the pure white blizzard whipping violently outside was rather brutal.

“Are you the person who invited me?”

“Hmph, no.”

“Pan said there would be someone here who invited me.”

“Pan was deceived.”

“Is it all right to confess that so confidently?”

“What are you going to do? This is a place no one can enter without my permission.”

That meant I had entered this place because I had her permission.

I stared at Etel, then shrugged.

I did not feel the need to pick apart who had or had not called me here.

“Is Ice Blue here, by any chance?”

So I decided to ask about my own business first.

The commission Selly had given me had not appeared as a separate quest. The reason I still wanted to do it was a small act of rebellion born from wondering how long I had to keep rolling around in front of the system.

A minor protest, as if to say, I can eat well and live well without the likes of you, so stop scribbling my future as you please.

“Do you ask knowing what Ice Blue is?”

“A material for making pigment?”

“……You are hopeless.”

I had tried to take on one commission and become a hopeless man.

Etel leaned against the second-floor railing and waited silently until the blizzard settled. The silence continued for so long that, if there had been a clock, I would have heard it ticking.

Unable to endure even that short span, the crow-tit, which had been sleeping in my pocket, fluttered out.

In a place filled with nothing but white and blue, the bright red creature took flight, and even the usually indifferent Etel turned her gaze toward it.

I would learn much later that her gaze had been the time she spent considering whether to kill the Phantasmal Species.

“I heard you accept Fixer commissions.”

“From Pan?”

“Well, yes.”

“I do not do business trips, but since this is my first one, well.”

Since whether I could leave this place seemed to depend on Etel’s will anyway, refusing was once again an unnecessary choice.

“First, only within the limits of what I can do. Second, any dangerous work must be disclosed in advance. Third, after I complete the commission, please grant me one request. How does that sound?”

Etel quietly listened to the conditions I counted off on my fingers, then answered with a light laugh.

“Good.”

“Um…… you look impressive when you smile.”

“What a foolish joke.”

I shrugged, then caught the crow-tit as it tried to dart out the newly opened window and get swept into the blizzard.

A low laugh came from behind me.

---

The blizzard had stopped.

From what Etel told me, it had entered a stable period, so there should be no problem while carrying out the commission.

That said, I would not deny that the contents of the commission itself stood at the very branching point of whether I could do it or not.

“The Phantasmal Species serving as this place’s foundation has carried us and swum through the sky for quite a long time. They say its original purpose was something else, but now it has become an existence we cannot do without.”

“What was its original purpose?”

“I do not remember. When I piece together what I can dimly recall, it seems to have been waiting for a certain time.”

“The sovereign…….”

“What does that mean?”

“Talking to myself. So, what is the commission?”

“I do not want to ignore the pain that Phantasmal Species is crying out with. They say Phantasmal Species follow you, so comfort our land too.”

“This whale? Do you think that makes sense?”

“Seeing as you tamed that little bird, it should not be impossible.”

Mm. It was impossible.

Beyond the simple difference in size, I had no idea why she would give me such a commission when, if I tried something on this enormous land and it fell or had a fit, the people living on it would have to deal with the consequences.

“Only you and I are here right now, so that is a needless worry.”

Was she saying that if I died, it would end with only me dying? Or that she did not care if she died too?

As I pushed through the deeply sinking snow, I was seized by an uncomfortable feeling and grew angry for no reason.

Etel’s eyes were hollow.

Whether the sparkling blue eyes I had seen on the ball-jointed doll belonged only to the true ruler, this Etel’s eyes were cloudy and unfocused.

The only time she seemed to gain life was when she looked beyond the snowstorm-lashed snowfield.

Once even that had stopped, Etel had completely set down the intense pressure she had first given off, like a person who was nothing but a shell.

She looked exhausted. Or perhaps resigned.

‘Why, exactly?’

The question circled in place and vanished again and again.

Meanwhile, the crow-tit hopped through the snowfield, guiding the way.

In any case, I was currently moving toward the whale’s head to try carrying out the commission.

Even if I was going to talk to it, should I not at least look it in the eye?

“Haa, are we even getting there today?”

No matter how much smaller this whale was than the main one, it was still several kilometers long.

The place where I had first been dropped was near the tail fin, and the castle was closer to the tail than to the front.

In other words, the destination I had to reach by walking across the snowfield was quite far.

On top of that, perhaps because a blizzard had just swept through, the snow was no longer the somewhat crisp kind from earlier. Every step sank deep, and that snow had piled across the vast plain, draining my stamina at a terrifying rate.

Forget comforting anything. At this rate, I would be mourning my own death first.

Ding!

[Searching for a song for pathetic little you, who went looking for trouble.]

Make it Jingle Bells, please. Or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

Would it not be a little better if I had a sled?

Every bead of sweat that formed in my hair froze there on the spot.

I thoroughly mussed my hair, now covered in white frost, and exhaled a cloud of white breath.

We had come halfway, so let us go just half more.

If there was one good thing about this extreme situation, it was that the sun did not set.

The whale swam endlessly toward the sun. Sometimes it became land above the Surface World, and sometimes it became the sky over the Underworld.

I understood why the negotiations were being held in a place like this.

Regardless, since the air was thin and it was freezing on top of that, it felt like climbing the Himalayas, and laughter kept leaking out of me.

I did not even climb the hill behind my neighborhood.

Ding!

[Asking whether you have finally gone insane (´･ω･`)?]

As if. If I go insane, I am dissecting you first.

Snow had gotten inside my shoes, growing wet and then freezing again and again.

Would Pan’s all-purpose medicine treat things like frostbite too?

Rubbing at my hollow eyes, I followed the red path the crow-tit guided me along for quite a while longer before finally reaching my destination.

It was a staircase.

A staircase that descended along the side of a whale flying hundreds of meters up in the air.

This author had no consideration for people with a fear of heights.

If there was one fortunate thing, it was that a single safety rope was tied beside the staircase.

I wondered whether it was really a coincidence that I had been climbing up and down cliffs so often lately, but since the crow-tit fluttered down the stairs first, I had to move too if I wanted to catch it.

The stairs had been carved from ice.

It should naturally have been slippery, and yet, surprisingly, my feet clung to it, giving it a sense of stability. When I looked closely, wondering whether some kind of measure had been taken, I noticed red particles. It was the Power of Phantasm.

The Master of Phantasms was Sek, the Former Underworld Lord, yet the source of that power seemed to extend through many places in the Surface World.

Frames were not entirely unaffected by the Power of Phantasm either…… so I began to wonder what exactly that power was.

As I followed that train of thought, I reached the end of the stairs.

Though it was swimming very slowly, its size was immense, and every twitch sent fierce wind lashing across me.

I gripped the rope tightly, pressed myself close to the end of the stairs, and turned my gaze sideways.

There was a door there that did not fit at all.

I deliberately ignored the iris rolling about right beside it, picked up the crow-tit that had landed before the door and was hopping around, then opened it.

It was a small, cozy room.

In the little chair of the room, decorated with charming trinkets, an unfamiliar creature was knitting when its eyes met mine.

Squeak?!

The creature, startled badly enough to drop its yarn, made a fuss and fled into the corner, while the ball of yarn rolled and rolled until it stopped by my feet.

Squee?

“Ahaha, this is awkward.”