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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 52

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Master of the Central Magic Tower

"Ngh..."

Rombel, who had been knocked out, woke up before long.

He touched his jaw, thought for a moment, then let loose a string of curses at Elbridge.

"Why the hell did you hit me out of nowhere?"

Elbridge sighed. It would've been clean if Rombel had just lost the memory.

But no such convenient thing happened.

"I had a reason even you would agree with."

"Let's hear it."

"The moment I woke up, your face was less than a hand's width from mine."

"So?"

"Which would bother you more? Me lying there holding you without doing anything, or me punching you?"

"Well... hmm."

Rombel almost got talked into agreeing, then scowled hard instead.

"Say something that makes sense. Why should I get hit when it's not even my fault?"

"How is it not your fault? You climbed into my bed."

"Elbridge. That's not your bed, it's my bed. I came back to my room after finishing my work and found you sprawled out asleep in my bed. I was going to beat you awake, but I just decided to pull the pillow out instead... Wait. Why am I even explaining myself here?"

Rombel had been rambling, but now his face turned serious.

"Anyway, you usually sleep like the dead. Why'd you react like that today?"

"I had a dream about the old days."

"Old days? Two hundred years ago?"

"Yeah. From when I was a kid, before I became a paladin."

A faint curiosity crossed Rombel's face. Marcus, who'd been polishing a sword he hadn't even used, looked the same.

"Now that I think about it, I've never heard your backstory... How'd you end up a paladin, anyway? Did a demon kill your family?"

It sounded like a rude question at first, but by the standards of old paladins, it wasn't rude at all.

Back in those days, it was rare to find a paladin who hadn't lost family to a demon or demonic beast.

"I don't really know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I haven't seen my family since I was a kid."

"Funny, considering how much you seem to hate demons."

"It's not that I hate demons so much as... I was in a situation where I had to hate them."

Marcus didn't understand what that answer meant. But Rombel did.

"Sold?"

"Yeah. My mother sold me."

It had been an era when plenty of people wanted to become paladins out of nothing but grudges.

But not everyone could become a paladin, and even those who managed it often died soon after.

Paladins were always in short supply back then.

And when people were in short supply, someone had to go looking for them directly.

The church would pay orphanages a modest sum to take children off their hands.

By today's standards, that would be something worth condemning. But back then, it was different.

It wasn't a bad deal, not for the orphanage staff, and not for the children being sold, either.

The fact that a child could be sold to a church was one of the strongest reasons an adult would take in a child with nowhere else to go.

Better to be rescued by an adult, live in an orphanage, and eventually get sold off, than to die helpless in a burned-out city.

And it wasn't only orphanages. Parents struggling to make ends meet often posed as orphanage staff to sell off their own children.

Church officials surely knew the difference between real orphanage staff and actual parents, so it was a transparent little charade. But it was the kind of thing the times demanded.

Children, parents, the church. Everyone needed that kind of arrangement back then.

"I had two younger siblings, and my older sister's leg was bad. In the end, I was the one who joined the church. Before my mother sold me, she held me tight and told me to say I hated demons... I hugged her back. That's the dream."

Marcus made a pained face.

"...That's a sad story."

"I never really thought of it that way. Every paladin had some story behind them, and mine wasn't even that bad, compared to most."

"Even so, you seemed to carry a fierce hatred toward demons."

"Kids who didn't show hatred and hostility toward demons got sent back. And of course, the payment got taken back too... I had to wear that look of hating demons every single day. Hatred was a duty I had to carry as a child."

But that kind of shallow hatred only mattered at the start.

Anyone who fought demons ended up losing plenty. Loss brought deeper anger and hatred with it, so after a while, there was no need to force the feeling anymore.

Rombel looked displeased.

"Still, your parents went a bit far."

"Why?"

"They should've gone to a different church, at least. Why sell you to the Order of the Rusted Shield of all places?"

Elbridge laughed.

"I wasn't part of the Order of the Rusted Shield from the start, either. It took a lot of twists and turns before I ended up there."

"Did you ever go back to see your family after that?"

"No. Never did."

"Why not?"

"If they'd lived happily without me, I figured I'd feel bitter about it somehow. And if they hadn't lived happily, I figured it'd be sad. So I don't know how long my family lived after that."

"That's a ridiculous reason."

"That's just how a person's heart works, I guess."

Rombel and Marcus stretched and got back to their own business.

Rombel studied some blueprint intently, while Marcus kept polishing his unused sword to a shine.

Watching them, a thought crossed Elbridge's mind.

Why now, of all times, had he dreamed a dream he hadn't had in so long?

'Is it because of the oracle?'

Before the fight with the demon, the Goddess of the Rusted Shield had told Elbridge to fight the demon, but not to hate it.

Thinking it over again, it was an oracle hard to make sense of, so Elbridge offered a prayer to the Goddess of the Rusted Shield.

"Goddess. Are you listening?"

But no oracle came down.

After the demon was sealed underground, the way the mages looked at Elbridge and Marcus changed beyond recognition.

"...Feels strange somehow."

"You'll get used to it."

Until just a few days ago, the mages had treated Elbridge and Marcus like invisible men, or like Rombel's subordinates.

But now the mages showed open interest, curiosity, and respect.

That went for Elbridge, who had sealed a demon, and for Marcus too, even though he hadn't done anything particularly notable.

The mages no longer saw Marcus as a middling mercenary, but as someone strong who simply hadn't shown his skill yet.

Sharp as ever, Marcus felt the crushing weight of that gaze.

"People's expectations are getting way too heavy..."

"Don't worry about it."

And Elbridge learned something interesting.

His name was better known in the central continent than back home in eastern Solenion.

"Sir Elbridge. Might you have some connection to Sir Elbridge, the Silent Knight?"

"He's a distant ancestor of mine."

There were plenty of possible reasons.

Unlike the eastern continent, people in the central region didn't treat demons as some far-fetched legend.

Or maybe it was simply that so many mages loved keeping records, so old accounts never got buried.

But whatever interest the mages showed was nothing compared to the knights.

Unlike the mages, who showed only curiosity and interest, the knights wanted to test their skill against Elbridge directly.

All kinds of knights came.

Some requested a sparring match out of simple interest and curiosity. Some wanted to gauge the strength of demons through Elbridge's skill. Some wanted to beat Elbridge and take the honor he'd won for themselves...

"Would you do me the honor of a single sparring match?"

"That would be difficult."

Of course, Elbridge turned down every request. If he accepted even once, he was certain five times as many knights would come flooding in to demand the same.

Half by choice and half out of necessity, he'd gone into hiding for a while, when the person they'd been waiting for finally came to find the group.

An older female mage. The Vice Master of the Central Magic Tower.

The Vice Master spoke with an air full of goodwill.

"You said you came to see the Master."

"That's right."

"Follow me."

Elbridge had heard the Master of the Central Magic Tower stayed at the very top of the tower.

But instead of leading Elbridge's group up the stairs, the Vice Master headed toward the center of the tower.

"Is there another staircase in the middle?"

Marcus asked quietly, and Rombel answered with a puffed-up air.

"No. There's a lift at the center of the Central Magic Tower."

"What's a lift?"

"A device that lets you move between the upper and lower floors of a building without using stairs. It burns through a fair amount of mana to run, so nobody but the higher-ups can really ride it."

"Sounds like you've ridden one before, Mr. Rombel."

"Rode one twice, way back. Once going up, once coming down..."

The lift turned out to be a cylinder the size of a small room.

When the four of them stepped inside, there came a whirring sound, and a strange sensation followed.

The Vice Master and Rombel stayed calm, but Elbridge and Marcus tensed up at the unfamiliar feeling.

A moment later, the lift's door opened on its own.

Ssss-

The first thing they saw was a short hallway.

But what caught their eyes was a small window set into the hallway.

The window held a view of the very top of the Central Magic Tower.

Marcus, and Elbridge too, gasped openly in awe.

"Whoa..."

People spend their whole lives living at roughly the same eye level.

They might climb a roof or a tree now and then, but standing any higher than that is rare.

But right now, Elbridge and Marcus were looking down at the entire wide world at once.

The hill at the center of Solenion. Looking down on Solenion from the Hillside Slums had felt completely different from this. Because here, the clouds were beneath them.

"I still remember the day I first came up to the top floor."

The Vice Master said that, then waited, letting Elbridge and Marcus take in the view as long as they wanted.

After staring blankly for a long while, Marcus suddenly burst into tears.

"I guess I really made it. I thought I'd live and die like a stray dog. Never imagined I'd end up higher than the birds, above the clouds, even... I could die right now and have no regrets. I really mean it."

Marcus couldn't stop crying, choking on his own sobs.

While the Vice Master patted Marcus's back, Elbridge found himself caught up in a different question.

'Would my prayers reach better if I prayed from up here?'

Elbridge offered a small prayer.

"Goddess. Goddess. Can you hear my prayer?"

The Goddess of the Rusted Shield answered.

- I hear you fine, Elbridge. It's good to see you happy, standing somewhere so high up.

"Does my prayer reach you more clearly right now, by any chance?"

- Not much different than usual. And, your goddess happens to reside a bit higher up than you'd think...

While Elbridge murmured back and forth with the Goddess of the Rusted Shield, Marcus's tears finally stopped.

The Vice Master pushed open the door to the Master's chamber at the end of the short hallway and said, "Go on in."

Elbridge's group stepped into the Master's chamber.

The chamber wasn't as large a space as they'd expected. Understandable, given that it sat at the top of a tower that narrowed the higher it went.

Across the room sat a man whose age was impossible to guess.

His hair was white as an old man's, but his skin was as smooth as a young man's, without a single wrinkle.

His features looked like they belonged to someone in their forties or fifties, but his eyes were deep and gloomy, like an ancient tree a thousand years old.

Everyone in Elbridge's group tensed up.

'One who was once a god of heaven but came down to the earth. The Master of the Central Magic Tower...'

The Master glanced briefly at Elbridge's group, then gestured toward the fine chairs set across from him.

There were exactly three chairs prepared.

Once the three of them had taken their seats, the Master of the Central Magic Tower spoke.

"Rombel. It's been a while. How long has it been?"

"About thirty years, I think."

"I see... And the other two. You said you helped with the seal. Thank you for that."

Elbridge felt a quiet sense of relief.

Being someone who'd come down from heaven, he'd half expected an arrogant, overbearing sort, but leading with thanks made the Master seem like a decent person after all.

"You said you had business with me. What brings you here?"

Elbridge didn't answer that question directly. Instead, he asked one of his own.

"There's something I'd like to ask first. That demon underground. What exactly was that?"

"...That's an experiment to seal a demon using only the mages' own strength. This time there was a hiccup, but next time will be fine."

Elbridge was a little taken aback.

"Wait. You mean to say you're going to undo the seal on that demon again?"

"That's right. Since we didn't fully succeed, we have all the more reason to run the experiment again. That's how we, the Central Magic Tower, prepare for the chaos to come. This isn't something for outsiders to weigh in on, so don't argue the point."

"But..."

"I plan to observe it myself next time, so there won't be any major problems."

The Master of the Central Magic Tower said that, then asked again, a bit stiffly.

"Anyway, what reason brought you all here to see me?"

Rombel answered first.

"I want to know what it takes to become a god."

And Elbridge spoke as well.

"Two hundred years ago, a paladin ascended to heaven and became a god. Sir Leonhardt of the Order of the Rusted Shield. I want to know what became of him."

The Master of the Central Magic Tower thought for a long while before answering.

"I'll say this up front. Elbridge. I can't answer your question."

Elbridge had half-expected this kind of response.

But he found it hard to hold back his frustration.

"Is it because of the heavenly rule against carelessly disclosing another god's information? But the Master of the Central Magic Tower isn't a god of heaven anymore..."

The Master of the Central Magic Tower shook his head.

"There's a more important reason than that."

"What is it?"

"I don't know who Leonhardt is."

Elbridge thought that sounded deeply significant.

Almost as if some enormous secret had been buried from the very moment of Sir Leonhardt's Ascension.

But the moment the Master of the Central Magic Tower added one more weary line, Elbridge's thinking changed completely.

"I never had many friends among the gods, so I can't tell you news about any of the others..."

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