Chapter 23

Chapter 23 — Gatess Trafviche (1)

"First, let us observe the rites in honor of the Great Ancestor."

The resounding toll of a gong. The Great Ancestor's Hall was roughly twice the size of a soccer field. This entire hall was packed with people in ceremonial uniform, all facing the center. At the center, a sculpted, handsome Great Ancestor gazed down upon the ground.

"Glory to His Majesty the Great Ancestor!"

"Glory to His Majesty the Great Ancestor!"

Voices echoing in unison, resonant enough to reverberate. Between having fought this man until dawn and knowing his face more intimately now, I couldn't quite focus.

"The Great Ancestor shall share his glory with you all!"

Another toll of the gong. The medieval bureaucracy made these procedures infuriatingly complicated... While I was thinking that, the platform where the Great Ancestor stood began to rotate. Some kind of mechanism, perhaps.

With that, the eyes of the Great Ancestor's statue—sculpted as a handsome man, or rather, beauty-doctored—began glowing gold. Everyone in the path of the statue's gaze pressed both knees and foreheads to the ground in obeisance. I took the hint and did the same.

"Appari, what did you bring?"

"Bring what?"

"An offering for the altar—obviously."

Kanna, who happened to be bowing beside me, whispered. The person who currently knew my abilities best. So of course she was curious.

Even a romance novice like me knew what to do at times like this. Play hard to get. I closed one eye and raised a single finger to my lips.

"It's a secret."

"...That qualifies as contempt of a superior officer."

So it didn't work in the medieval era. What a tragic world. Then again, it hadn't worked back on Earth either, which was why I'd never been in a relationship. Maybe if I just did the opposite of whatever I was thinking, I'd succeed at romance. I gave it serious consideration.

"In any case, look forward to it. You may anticipate mine as well. I am confident it will produce at least an orange flame."

Kanna declared with full confidence. Right, you're at least a major supporting character, so you'd better bring something decent. But that last part threw me.

"What's this about flames?"

"You don't know... ah, right, you're Yensi. My apologies. Well, to explain: the Great Ancestor evaluates the offerings' grade and burns them."

Kanna caught herself mid-rebuke and shifted to an apologetic expression.

To unpack her kind explanation: when an offering was placed on the altar, it burned, and the color of the flame determined the offering's grade.

The lowest grade was gray, then blue, then yellow, orange, red, purple... something like that.

But the interesting part was that she said this tradition was only a few years old.

"The Great Ancestor evaluates them personally?"

"Of course. Are you doubting the Great Ancestor right now?"

No, that wasn't it. It was just that when I met the Great Ancestor this morning, he'd never mentioned anything like this. The whole thing smelled like a lie.

"I apologize. I didn't know because I'm from Yensi."

"You're the first person in the Empire to use being Yensi as a weapon rather than a weakness."

Kanna read my thoughts and glared. Oops, busted. Well, the Yensi shield couldn't remain invincible forever.

"His Imperial Majesty enters!"

A drumbeat. Boom. Unusually, it was drums instead of the gong. I was about to turn toward the Emperor, but nobody else moved. Ah—because the Great Ancestor ranked higher.

"The twenty-fifth Emperor, Henri Trafviche, offers glory to the Great Ancestor, Trafviche Trafviche."

The Emperor's solemn voice echoed through the Hall. It sounded like he'd amplified his voice with Mana and added a touch of reverb. A bit theatrical, perhaps, but stirring all the same.

"Today, the warriors have prepared their finest offerings for the Great Ancestor. May you take pleasure in them."

Boom.

With that, a roar erupted from everyone gathered in the Hall. What was there to be so happy about? They'd risked their lives to bring those things.

Then again, I still didn't understand the concepts of glory and honor. I'd need to start learning, if I intended to live as a person of this world.

"We shall now open the altar. Company-grade officers and enlisted soldiers shall offer first, followed by field-grade officers and above."

Even this had a set order. Soldiers of the 1st Legion's Guard began offering one by one, paying their respects at the altar.

Most produced gray to blue flames. But no one mocked those who got gray. They believed the Great Ancestor himself had burned it. No matter how low the quality, it was glory offered to the Great Ancestor. It belonged to the Great Ancestor. To mock it was to mock the Great Ancestor.

Commanding respect without coercion, leading the masses without a single word—this must be what they meant by sovereign dominion in the medieval era.

"Our company's turn. Everyone brought their offerings, right?"

Kanna's 2nd Guard all snapped to attention. They marched out crisply. Kanna, our captain, offered first. Unfortunately, she was still stuck at company grade, so she offered alongside us.

What Kanna presented was a peculiar-looking something. Two heads fused together like conjoined twins. Each head had two additional horns.

"A Twin Head Minotaurus......"

"Captain Kanna really went through hell for that."

Amidst the soldiers' murmuring, an orange flame blazed to life. The first orange flame of the day. People began buzzing. Kanna looked at me and grinned.

As if to say: think you can top this? Sorry, but I wouldn't be meeting that expectation.

"Next, Guard Appari Tion."

The emcee standing beside the altar solemnly called my name. I gave Kanna a slight nod beforehand. She floated a question mark above her head. She'd find out soon enough.

"I apologize. I did not prepare an individual offering."

"Huh?"

I mean, if I'd known the atmosphere would be like this, I would've grabbed something in the dungeon. I'd assumed offering glory was optional.

"I participated in this event as a pair, and my pair holds the offering."

"A pair?"

The emcee repeated in disbelief.

"Throwing away the chance to offer glory on a pair—Yensi people truly have no honor."

"Who on earth paired with that Yensi? I'd love to see their face. And crush them."

You—I'm remembering your face. Could you say that in front of my pair? In any case, this must've been why Kanna turned down the pair arrangement I'd proposed. Splitting glory in half apparently carried serious weight here.

"Then I shall simply pay my respects and step back."

"Very well."

I paid my respects and withdrew. I could see the surrounding glares. Kanna watched me with concern, but it was fine. I had nothing to be ashamed of, so all I had to do was stand my ground.

After that, it was mind-numbingly tedious. Gray, blue, gray, blue, gray, gray, blue, gray... Like some gacha game, watching nothing but dull outcomes was so thoroughly monotonous it was almost entertaining—almost enough to make me burst.

"Appari, you should've brought something. Or I should've lent you one of mine. I brought quite a few offerings."

Kanna sidled up and murmured. Suddenly, I wished this moment would freeze in time. This was fun. So fun.

"I'm fine."

"I didn't teach you Trafviche customs precisely enough—it's my fault. I'm sorry."

"There's absolutely no need for that."

Kanna looked deflated. Why was she going this far?

And so the company-grade offering ceremony ended. By the Emperor's order, we got a brief break, and I tried to head to the bathroom.

Going further inside the Great Ancestor's Hall led to the imperial palace, so I had to go back out to the guard quarters. About fifteen minutes one way. Thirty minutes round trip. With the break being an hour, it wasn't too tight on time.

As I left the Great Ancestor's Hall and walked, people around me whispered while looking at me. Judging by their uniforms, they were guards. Still at it? What did I do that was so wrong?

I tried to ignore them and pass by, but they suddenly surrounded me.

"Are you the classless Yensi who doesn't even know Trafviche customs?"

"Mm, not really. I hunted it together with my pair. Judge me then."

"How dare a lowly guard use informal speech to me! I am Lieutenant Otsuka Hapim, Baron, of the 3rd Legion."

"Ah, sure."

I slipped through their encirclement, ignoring them, and walked toward the guard quarters.

"Wh-what? How?"

Baron Otsuka's subordinates were flustered and surprised. I'd slipped out and was already moving before they knew it. Not the kind of movement meant for their eyes.

When I ignored them and kept walking, they surrounded me again. Ah, seriously. I needed to pee. I wanted to beat all these nuisances and tie them up in some corner.

"I don't know what trick you used to slip out, but is it acceptable to walk away this rudely before a superior officer?"

"You're not even my direct superior."

"And that makes it okay to blatantly ignore a superior?"

Baron Otsuka and I glared at each other.

"Oh? You won't lower your eyes?"

Now he was talking like a market thug. Nope, I won't. If that bothers you, lower yours. I'm a man who didn't lower his eyes even in front of the president.

Hot-blooded men had an uncanny nose for a fight, and soon soldiers and officers had gathered around us in a ring. Ah, great—this was making it even harder to take a piss.

"I won't lower them."

"Would you look at this? Do you even realize you're committing insubordination right now?"

"You insulted me first, did you not, sir?"

"Unbelievable."

While we were locked in a battle of wills, I sensed a group of soldiers marching crisply toward us from the distance. At the center was a man on a white horse, clad in leather armor.

He seemed to approach very slowly, yet he was very fast. The fact that their formation held despite that pace meant these were extraordinarily well-trained soldiers.

Soon the man dismounted from his white horse and approached us where the soldiers had crowded.

The moment I saw him, I instinctively knew who he was.

"Hail, 1st Legion Commander Gatess!"

"Hail, 1st Legion Commander Gatess!"

The cry of everyone who saw him. Among those watching us, there must've been a general too—one wearing a single rose emblem on his epaulettes saluted. Otsuka started to salute, then quietly lowered his hand. When a senior officer was present, it was proper for the senior to salute. Baron Otsuka's military protocol was bottom-tier.

The man who'd dismounted from the white horse looked at me and Otsuka and smirked. He'd read the situation instantly.

"Fighting before the glorious Great Ancestor's Hall—you all must have more guts than sense."

Gatess smiled coldly.

At those words, everyone froze.

This was my first meeting with Gatess Trafviche—the male lead of 「The Bed Strewn with Rose Petals」, the Ice Prince, later dubbed the Black Cat by readers of the Rose Bed.