Kays Translations

Chapter 33 – Lost in the Fog

Rain began to fall little by little around them.

Sudden changes in the weather were common in a place like this, so the rain itself did not seem unusual. A light shower was hardly enough to concern them. Once it stopped, however, a thin haze began to rise. It gradually deepened from pale white mist into fog, and then into a dense bank of white.

The new anomaly began then. Ren and Licia stopped walking and drew close as though to protect one another. In the space of a blink, every human presence around them vanished. Sera and the others who had been beside them were gone. So were all the other visitors.

“Ren…”

“I know. Do not leave my side under any circumstances.”

Ren stood still and surveyed their surroundings.

The pressure radiating from him was unlike anything Licia had ever felt. He had possessed a formidable presence during the battle with Yelquq, but the strength he had attained since then placed the pressure he emitted now on an entirely different level.

Ren moved in front of Licia to shield her and silently summoned the Iron Magic Sword. It had been a very long time since he had openly summoned a magic sword in her presence. Without showing surprise, Licia drew Byakuen from her waist and took up a fighting stance.

The two sharpened their senses, prepared for anything that might attack without warning.

Nothing came.

Ten seconds passed, then a full minute, yet they remained standing in the silent space without encountering anything.

Strangely, not even the wind appeared to stir the dense fog around them.

“I cannot sense any people. No monsters either.”

“…What should we do?”

“…That is the question.”

Faced with such an inexplicable situation, they relaxed their stances by the smallest degree.

Several more minutes passed without any change. Nothing happened, as though their vigilance had been entirely unnecessary.

“I will try something.”

Ren swept the Iron Magic Sword through the air around them and invoked Mighty Sword Art: Star Slaying. He felt no magic being erased, nor any resistance suggesting that the Art had struck something it could not dispel. Whatever had happened, they did not appear to be trapped inside an active spell.

That only made the situation more incomprehensible.

Ren drove the Iron Magic Sword into the ground and summoned the Great Tree Magic Sword.

Without hesitation, he invoked Nature Magic and caused a single tree to grow beside them. It was tall, with a thick trunk.

“W-Wait… Ren made that!? It is completely different from the one I saw before!”

“Well… I suppose you could call it an evolution, though that does not explain everything.”

The word evolution was nowhere near sufficient. Ren decided that another matter took priority and placed one foot against the tall tree he had created.

He had no intention of separating from Licia in this space. That left only one answer.

“I am going to climb the tree and look at the surrounding area.”

“Then should I wait here?”

“No. I do not want to risk something happening to you. We will climb together.”

Licia assumed he meant they would climb from separate sides. She was about to say that she did not mind when Ren extended a hand toward her.

“Excuse me. May I?”

“May you what? What are you planning to do?”

“I will carry you and run up the tree.”

“All right… Wait, what?”

Licia answered in a daze, almost without thinking.

The next moment, Ren lifted her in a princess carry. Her eyes widened as she stared up at his face, which remained clearly visible even within the deep fog.

“Huh?”

“Here we go.”

Before Licia could decide whether he was serious, Ren leapt.

He kicked off the trunk, landed on a branch, then sprang from that branch to the next. In moments, he had climbed to the top of the tree.

Still held in his arms, Licia stammered,

“R-R-Ren! I-I’m not heavy, am I?”

“You are not heavy, and this is hardly the time to worry about such things.”

“That may be true, but do not suddenly answer me with perfect logic!”

The situation had left Licia thoroughly flustered, but she made no unnecessary movement that might interfere with Ren.

After two more leaps, Ren stopped on a branch.

“I cannot see anything at all.”

They had climbed to a considerable height, yet the dense fog prevented them from seeing any part of the surrounding landscape.

Ren soon returned to the ground and lowered Licia gently. Standing on her own feet again after roughly a minute, she gave a small smile.

“We really could not see anything.”

“Shall we try walking for a while?”

Had they merely been lost, remaining in place might have been the wiser choice. But no one would describe a situation in which every other person suddenly vanished and the two of them alone were left in a strange space as ordinary misdirection.

Standing still did not seem useful either, so they began moving again.

“Let us go.”

Ren dismissed the Great Tree Magic Sword, and the tree he had created vanished with it.

Watching from beside him, Licia remembered a question she had once held back.

“What a mysterious power…”

She understood that it came from the swords Ren produced from nowhere, but out of consideration for him she had never asked for the details.

Now Ren hesitated.

Her murmur had reached him and forced him to think.

(Maybe I should tell her here.)

Truthfully, that would have been acceptable. Ren had intended to explain everything once the Lion King Grand Festival ended, so telling her today would not fundamentally change his plan.

He wondered, however, whether revealing such a confusing secret in an already bewildering situation was wise.

In the end, being able to coordinate properly with Licia mattered more. Ren was about to explain Magic Sword Summoning when—

“Ren!”

Licia stopped abruptly as they walked.

The fog had begun to thin, allowing them to see a little of their surroundings.

What Ren and Licia saw there stopped them cold.

“What… is this?”

“What is happening?”

They stood beyond the place where the choir should have been, in front of the stone steps leading up the mountain path and the seal itself.

They had somehow crossed to the sealed side. The deep, foglike barrier of the Cage of Time now surrounded them, leaving both speechless.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

There was no other conclusion: they were inside the Cage of Time.

Ren frowned at the nearby stone staircase while Licia stared at the wall of fog forming the barrier. The dense mist concealed the world outside, leaving them no way to know what was happening beyond it.

Whenever they attempted to touch the Cage of Time, an invisible wall pushed them back.

(Now that I think about it, the dream I had before felt like this.)

On the morning after their magic ship had flown near Roses Caitas, Ren had awakened from a strange dream he could not remember. Then came the bell only he and Licia could hear, and the miragelike wavering of their vision.

(Are Licia and I the only ones trapped in this situation?)

If so, this was not a purely sudden accident. There had to be some reason the two of them alone had been drawn inside the Cage of Time. They did not know what that reason was, but the sequence of events could not be entirely coincidental.

Or perhaps…

“Do you think God became angry because I said something strange?”

“What strange thing?”

“What I said during the gathering aboard the magic ship.”

“You mean when we wondered what was happening inside the seal?”

Ren nodded, and Licia laughed softly.

“Do not be silly. God would not become angry over something like that. Besides, if anyone deserved to be scolded, I spoke about the same thing.”

Jokes aside, they still needed to decide what to do.

They remained close while watching their surroundings. The limited scenery now visible to them was unmistakably the land that should have lain beyond the Cage of Time.

No one could have guessed why this had happened, but one thing was certain.

“We have to find some way out.”

As Licia said, that was the whole of the problem.

They could not think of a method. Could one boy and one girl truly break from the inside a mighty seal that had imprisoned and purified the Demon King’s army? Neither said it aloud, but both understood how impossible that sounded.

(Still…)

Ren considered the problem calmly.

What they needed, for example, might be overwhelming destructive power. A sword with the might of Flame Sword: Asval could perhaps break the barrier. But Ren could not summon that magic sword, so the thought led nowhere.

With her hands clasped behind her back, Licia turned toward the pensive Ren.

“Ren? Have you thought of something?”

“Well…”

Unsure how to voice the idea, Ren looked away uncomfortably.

Licia stepped around him and peered up into his face.

“Tell me what you were thinking.”

“It is only that…”

“Say it. If you refuse, then—”

“Then what will you do?”

Licia herself had no idea what threat should follow.

Still holding Ren’s cheeks, she blinked several times and sank into thought. The pose looked rather pathetic, and even she began to wonder what exactly she was doing.

“In any case, what were you thinking?”

“You changed the subject because you could not think of anything, did you not?”

This time Licia looked away.

Ren almost raised his hands to return the gesture, but stopped himself. Doing the same thing to a young lady would hardly be appropriate.

“I was wondering whether there might be a way to break the seal.”

“That is impossible. This barrier contains the power of a god. Even you could not possibly…”

Ren’s expression, however, did not look as though he were joking.

They looked directly into one another’s eyes. They understood each other so well that words seemed almost unnecessary, yet nothing could replace a spoken confirmation.

Eventually, Licia lowered the hands she had placed against Ren’s cheeks.

“What about that power?”

Licia had not seen it clearly with her own eyes, and Ren himself had only glimpsed it just before losing consciousness. Neither of them, however, could forget it. Ren had placed a hand against Licia’s chest, drawn power from the magic stone within her, and manifested a magic sword.

Perhaps that sword could break the seal.

“No. I do not want to try that.”

Ren shook his head.

Even without hearing an explanation, Licia sensed what troubled him.

“Wh-Why? It was an incredible power, was it not? I do not know how you used it, but it might allow us to escape!”

Ren’s hesitation did not come from reluctance to reveal the magic sword. He hesitated because Licia’s magic stone was involved. Even if he could call upon that power again, he had no idea what might happen afterward. Ordinary humans did not possess magic stones within their bodies, but an exceptionally powerful saint such as Licia did. By the common sense of this world, placing a burden upon that stone could not possibly be harmless.

“Tell me.”

Licia persisted for Ren’s sake rather than merely from a desire to escape.

At last, Ren looked into her eyes and explained.

“That power is dangerous for you, Licia.”

“Dangerous in what way? Do you mean that the tremendous light might engulf me and make me disappear?”

Ren shook his head, raised both hands, and placed them over Licia’s.

He slowly guided her hands downward. By coincidence, they came to rest together over her chest as though she were praying, close to the place where her magic stone lay.

“I will tell you everything.”

One after another, Ren summoned the Great Tree Magic Sword, the Iron Magic Sword, the Flame Magic Sword, and the other swords he could produce from empty air. Licia stared at them in astonishment.

“My power is the ability to summon swords that possess special abilities.”

Surrounded by several magic swords, Licia said nothing. She merely watched Ren in silence.

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