Since then, I’ve been consistently practicing my shooting skills.
After being caught by the Sword Saint, I trained my stamina alongside Claire, Leo, and Alice, and due to gaining a bit of strength, I started to awkwardly learn swordsmanship.
And—while following that Sword Saint to watch, Jennifer claimed she would teach me close combat and rolled me around everywhere.
To be honest, my confidence didn’t exactly skyrocket. The ‘guarantee’ that I could ‘definitely’ succeed vanished. The reason I hadn’t been shot while traversing the battlefield was because the Goddess had calculated the odds for me, but that could also have faded by now.
But I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. As the Sword Saint said, I’m a guy who knows how to put in the effort. So I had no choice but to increase my skills as much as I could.
And—
Roooooar! A monstrous sound echoed from outside the train.
The bangs that followed were different from the screams.
To describe it accurately,
“AAAAHHHH!”
It was the sound of something falling from the sky and crashing to the ground.
Of all places, it seemed to land near my window with a crash that echoed eerily.
The gunshots that had been distant turned erratic.
“…Uhh…”
Yeah, pretty horrifying, right?
Claire and Leo had lost their words.
While I had experienced the horror of battle before, comparing a person being killed by another person to being brutally murdered by a monster was far worse.
“I had prepared for the Gryphon to follow once the train crossed the border. It seems it heard the gunshots and came down from high in the sky.”
Exactly.
My skills had diminished, so I had to pull out all the stops to cover that loss.
The noise of the airplane was still incredibly loud. If I brought the Air Force behind the train, Velbur might react violently. Even if we weren’t crossing borders, bringing troops up to the border was already a display of military force.
But the Gryphon could fly much more quietly. It was dark at night, so a Gryphon flying high in the sky would be hard for people to see.
Besides, for now, it wasn’t treated as a ‘military.’ To the eyes of the people, it was just my pet beast. As long as it didn’t harm the people of Velbur, I could come up with plenty of excuses.
…Honestly, considering the personality of that one who doesn’t seem to listen properly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had followed us all the way to the skies of Velbur instead of just to the border.
The outside of the window flashed brightly.
It seemed the Gryphon was casting magic.
The Gryphon launched an aerial assault, while a large army inside the train attacked from the ground.
There was no way to win against an enemy that brought armored forces instead of regular troops.
Claire and Leo looked somewhat bewildered, but on the contrary, I felt relieved.
As expected, if you’re going to prepare for something, you need to prepare thoroughly.
As a side note, I had also arranged for the Imperial Army to be deployed if the train didn’t arrive on time.
So, regardless of what happened to us, it meant our opponents were undoubtedly doomed.
*
What kind of crazy person could this be?
If they didn’t realize we were us, that would be a problem in itself. It meant there were robbers inside the Empire that were hijacking trains.
Moreover, the idea of leaving a drunkard on the tracks to stop the train was also absurd. Wouldn’t the train just run over the person? If the conductor hadn’t been someone experienced with operating the locomotive, the train wouldn’t have stopped.
“What happened?”
“Yes, we’ve apprehended them all. Twelve dead, seven alive.”
It was unusually low for a capital.
“Were they disarmed for sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I stood up from my seat.
Accompanied by Claire and Leo, I wore a wide-brimmed hat that obscured my face. If it were during the day, my face might have been vaguely visible, but at night with hardly any light, as long as I wasn’t too close, my face wouldn’t be revealed. By the way, Claire and Leo wore bland masks.
Following the knight’s guidance, we arrived at a place where, just as he had said, there were seven bound individuals. All were men, unwashed and looking rather scruffy. It seemed they hadn’t trimmed their beards in quite a while.
Their clothing was… all different. Since it was winter, they were all wearing thick clothes. Some wore tattered coats, while others had leather outfits.
“P-please, spare us…!”
As I approached, the men, hands tied behind their backs, all pressed their foreheads to the ground and shouted.
“And these?”
“I don’t know for sure yet, but they seem like armed robbers.”
“Armed robbers near the border?”
Originally, border areas often had better security due to their proximity to other countries. Of course, things could change if the two countries had an extremely good relationship, practically making the border a mere drawing on a map, or if the economic differences between the two were so severe that one side attracted people aiming for illegal entry.
But no matter how much Velbur might be smaller compared to the Empire, it wasn’t a place so impoverished that it would be abandoned.
And generally, for security to collapse like that, it would be the side with the lower economic level that would falter.
As I regarded my question with a hint of sarcasm, the knight slightly bowed his head.
…Well, this isn’t his fault. If there really were robbers showing up, then it would be the fault of the person managing this territory.
And where this territory was managed—
“Crowfield…”
“….”
At my mumbling, Claire and Leo nodded heavily.
Considering the state of the Countess, this wasn’t due to negligence but simply a failure to manage things properly.
At this rate, Mia would almost certainly be the next lord, but the next lord is not actually the ‘lord’ yet. The one managing this place right now is Count Crowfield’s lady.
And naturally, I hadn’t given any hint to the Crowfields whatsoever. Sorry, but even Mia doesn’t know that I’ve visited Velbur.
I shook my head, pushing those thoughts away. This wasn’t something to worry about right now. Rather, it was correct to decide how to handle these individuals now.
“Did you happen to find anything notable about them?”
“Yes. Look at this.”
What the knight showed me was a sword in its sheath.
I received the sword he held with both hands and drew it out.
It seemed like it hadn’t been properly maintained for quite some time; the blade was dull and nicked in some places. That said, it didn’t seem completely worn out.
It hadn’t been maintained for years, but perhaps on a monthly basis, it seemed. The blade itself gleamed enough to shine when light hit it.
“…”
But rather than that, something sprang to mind at the shape of the sword.
“Papal State?”
That was the sword used by the knights of the Papal State.
Without needing to think hard, I felt like I roughly understood what was going on.
“…It seems there have been people from the Papal State infiltrating even here in the Empire.”
“It’s not certain yet, but…”
They weren’t wearing the official attire of the Papal State. Plus, they looked too shabby to be people from there.
But they were holding a sword from the Papal State.
“If they are from the Papal State, why would they have this sword?”
Claire quietly asked from the side.
“This sword might have been ‘important.’”
Like the sword I previously saw from Jericho.
If it was a sword crafted using the Goddess’s power, then I could understand.
If they infiltrated the Empire to collect all sorts of information and then suddenly lost their divine powers, all the strength supporting them might have vanished.
If they couldn’t continue their operations and lost all contact with headquarters, and only received news that the Papal State had collapsed…
And if they determined that news as ‘completely untrustworthy,’ then…
“…They are armed robbers, but not the usual kind.”
I placed my hand on my forehead.
Then I would have to revise my evaluation of Count Crowfield’s lady once again.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t managing things. She must have been trying to manage as best as she could.
But the skills of those ‘robbers’ were just too good for them to be completely caught by the soldiers.
If they attacked the village or ambushed a passing merchant, it would bring tremendous losses to the territory. That would be the case even for a count’s territory that happens to have a decent population.
Thus, they would have to exert effort to hunt down those robbers, and as they kept fleeing in dwindling numbers, they would become increasingly desperate and aim for a ‘sure-hit.’
The train we were riding was also selected to run at a time similar to the trains that operate at night, making it hard to distinguish from other trains. At the same time, it wouldn’t overlap with other trains’ schedules, attracting little attention.
However, that would have meant nothing to robbers who had been just waiting for the ‘next train’ from the beginning.
“…You guys were just unlucky.”
If it had been a normal cargo train, their plan might have worked properly. There would have hardly been anyone onboard, and the armed individuals’ skills would have likely been weaker than those of the ‘Holy Order Knights.’
If they secured materials and crossed the border of Velbur, they might have had other hopes.
Truly, they were incredibly unlucky.
Fwoosh, and the Gryphon’s cry echoed up in the sky.
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