I rose in confusion and looked around.

But nothing particularly unusual had happened. There were simply so many monsters nearby that their presences blended together into one mass, and the rising sun was spilling light between the trees.

After staring at the morning sunlight for a moment, I turned in puzzlement toward the white-haired man.

The man with the same golden eyes as mine rested a hand on his waist and said,

“You really don’t know?”

“I don’t, but....”

“Why are you using honorifics again?”

Rei’s expression immediately turned sulky.

“We agreed to drop the formal speech.”

That was true.

After wandering through the mountains, we had finally found drinkable water, only to discover a monster there. It had been coiled beneath a rock in a ravine far deeper than it looked.

Killing that huge monster together had made us close very quickly.

Even now, though, he still hadn’t told me his full name.

He was clearly a noble, so I had no idea why he refused to tell me his name.

In any case, he kept insisting I just call him Rei.

Was he some noble who had fallen out of favor with the Emperor?

Or maybe a ruined noble?

Not that I had any way of knowing for sure, since I hadn’t memorized noble crests or family names.

“What exactly are we screwed about?”

I asked after watching him tap the elegant hilt of his sword for a moment.

“Everything looks fine to me.”

“The imperial road is nowhere in sight.”

Rei answered,

“Before we went looking for the ravine, we could still see it whenever we climbed a tree.”

“Ah.”

So we were lost again.

I turned my head and took in the surroundings.

“We really did stop paying attention to the path while looking for water.”

“Exactly! The imperial road we barely managed to find is gone!”

“Still, we probably didn’t stray that far.”

These new mountains were difficult.

The denser the forest, the harder it became. But years of constantly climbing mountains hadn’t gone anywhere, so I could still roughly tell direction.

“As long as we find the imperial road before noon, we’ll be fine. You said it leads all the way to the Imperial Capital, right?”

“Right.”

Rei answered confidently.

Then he looked down at me again as if I were the strangest thing in the world.

“How can this be your first time walking the imperial road?”

Rather than answer a question that was starting to grow tiresome, I gave a crooked smile and rose to my feet.

We had slept beneath the roots of a giant tree, buried in fallen leaves.

As always, I had used the thick trunk as a pillow, while Rei—still not used to tree pillows—had picked up a piece of cloth and placed it beneath his head.

Seeing things like that, it didn’t really feel like he was a completely ruined noble either.

Still, since he clearly didn’t want to talk about himself, I hadn’t pressed him.

I stood and brushed myself off.

“Let’s go... no, let’s head out.”

“You sure I can trust you?”

“I found the imperial road last time too.”

I smiled at Rei.

In any case, I didn’t dislike this unusual knight who, for reasons I still didn’t understand, had ended up wandering the mountains.

He was definitely a noble, but he lacked the arrogance nobles usually carried, which made him easy to be around. As a person, he wasn’t bad either. Whenever I evaded a question because I didn’t want to answer, he never forced the issue, and even in miserable situations where irritation would have been natural, he stayed surprisingly positive.

More than anything, he was excellent with a sword.

We had discovered that while fighting the monster in the ravine.

I found myself captivated by swordsmanship different from mine, yet every bit as powerful. Rei too seemed fascinated by my style, his eyes lighting up as he asked me to spar.

That had been the decisive reason we started speaking casually.

“It’s not like I don’t know what the imperial road is. I just never used it.”

That was because Gale hated using the imperial road.

Still, I deliberately didn’t bring up my late master.

“I also didn’t have money.”

“Charging tolls is illegal.”

Rei grumbled immediately.

“They crack down on it regularly, and yet it never disappears.”

Instead of answering, I smiled.

“Let’s go for now.”

And we started descending the mountain.

***

“They charge tolls?”

At Ami’s puzzled question, I paused the story for a moment.

“Then is the imperial road kind of like a highway?”

The seniors had all finished getting ready for bed.

Under their gazes, I had been slowly unraveling the story. Before I knew it, the time was nearing midnight. The station, where people almost never came and went, felt cool and hollow. We were gathered in a fairly clean room for a rarely used building, clearly a place previous Badgers had used before missions.

Sleeping bags arranged however each person wanted.

Light snacks placed in the center of a loose circle.

Above our heads, a bulb hanging from a wire cast bright light. Tiny particles of dust floated around it. The light was surprisingly bright, yet outside the station windows was almost total darkness.

Far away, the cry of a coyote echoed.

I listened for a moment to the strangely lonely sound before answering.

“You can think of it as the largest road the Empire ever built.”

Ricardo silently approached and handed me a cup of steaming tea.

“Thank you, Rick.”

“Is it really that strange that you’d never walked that road?”

“The other roads were in terrible condition.”

Ricardo returned to his sleeping bag without a word.

Ami, already holding milk tea, lifted her paper cup to her lips. Even then, she never took her eyes off me.

Sophia, stretched out in her sleeping bag, propping up her head, was watching me too.

Feeling the warmth spread through me as soon as I drank the tea, I continued.

“Back then, unless you were a mage or an exceptionally skilled handler, there was no way to travel long distances in one go. That meant it was difficult for the central government to manage infrastructure, and if you walked roads other than the imperial road, there was a high chance of being attacked by bandits or monsters. Tolls were illegal, but honestly, the people maintaining those roads were usually the people living nearby. Since the tolls also helped cover maintenance costs... they never fully cracked down on them.”

Kai, who had been scribbling something in a notebook, lifted his head slightly.

“Why did your master hate walking the imperial road?”

“For one thing, he had a lot of enemies.”

To be fair, Gale hadn’t exactly had the best personality.

And he definitely wasn’t gentle with his hands.

“He was a mercenary. Which also meant he was strong enough to just beat up any bandits or monsters we ran into. And he absolutely despised paying tolls.”

“Where exactly is this story going?”

Yun, sitting with his lower body inside his sleeping bag while cleaning his gun, suddenly asked.

I took another sip of tea.

I let my eyes sweep over the seniors, each fully prepared for sleep in their own way.

“I was planning to tell you about the first time I arrived in the Imperial Capital and took the knight order entrance exam.”

“Oppa! Don’t interrupt Hilde’s story!”

“You’re not planning to tell the entire journey from the mountain to the Imperial Capital, are you?” 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

No.

To begin with, I didn’t remember the entire journey.

I only vaguely remembered bickering lightly with Rei as we descended the mountain. I also remembered that I really did find the imperial road before noon.

And when we stopped at a new village while walking the road, I remembered Rei stubbornly insisting on paying with his own money so we could eat duck with cherries and buttered peas.

But everything else was blurry.

After explaining that, I asked,

“It’s getting late, so should I stop here? It’s not an especially exciting story.”

“No! It’s fun! I want to hear more!”

“It’s not that late.”

Sophia said flatly.

I smiled awkwardly.

“We have to take the train out tomorrow.”

“And then we’ll be on that train for ages. Finish the story. It’s interesting.”

“So you joined the knight order voluntarily?”

Weren’t you the one acting uninterested?

I looked at Yun in confusion when he asked.

Still, I answered.

“No. I got swept into taking the entrance exam.”

“There was an entrance exam?”

“Yes. The Imperial Knights used it to recruit knights from commoner backgrounds.”

“Tell us in detail, Hilde! As long as it’s not too hard for you....”

“It’s not hard—”

...No.

I couldn’t answer that confidently.

Every time I said a name I would never call again, my heart ached sharply. There was no guarantee I wouldn’t suddenly start crying like a madman while tracing back the past.

So °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° I let the answer trail off, and only after noticing all the seniors’ eyes turn toward me at once did I smile.

Seeing Ami’s face instantly crumple, I softened my eyes.

“If it gets difficult, I’ll stop on my own.”

“Okay.”

The senior nodded enthusiastically.

“Don’t push yourself, got it?”

“Yes.”

After answering, I returned to the story.

I should start from the moment we arrived at the Imperial Capital.

Because everything that happened from there was still fairly vivid in my memory.

“Unlike other towns, entering the Imperial Capital itself wasn’t easy.”

The security was on an entirely different level.

“Especially for someone carrying a sword like me....”

***

“My apologies for not recognizing you!”

I thought they were going to confiscate my sword.

But once again, the one who helped me was Rei.

“Stop making such a fuss.”

Though Rei clearly didn’t seem pleased about it.

“And don’t report this up the chain. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Let’s go, Hilde.”

Rei turned back to me and pulled his hood lower.

“It’ll be hard to find an inn room soon. Let’s secure one first and move after.”

He must be a far more important noble than I thought.

I widened my eyes as I watched him walk into the Imperial Capital.

The guards who had tried to seize my sword had been subdued instantly by Rei.

And it wasn’t even as if he had said anything threatening. As we drew closer to the capital, Rei had pulled his hood low and wrapped cloth over even his nose. Then, frowning, he simply approached the guards and revealed his face.

The moment he did, the guards who had been eyeing my sword greedily while muttering strange things about my eyes and skin color froze stiff.

“An inn?”

We passed the rigid guards.

Following him as he expertly entered the capital, I murmured quietly,

“Do we really need an inn? I was just going to sleep under some tree.”

“You can’t do that here! A guard might drag you off.”

“No, but don’t you have... uh, a house here?”

Though I wasn’t sure whether to call it a house or an estate.

In any case, I had been about to tell him not to worry about me, that he should go home and sleep while I found somewhere on my own.

I had also meant to thank him for helping me keep my sword.

But the moment the Imperial Capital suddenly spread out before my eyes, I lost my words.

A city unfolding like a fan.

I stood there, entranced by the cityscape laid out beneath the clear sunlight.

The city didn’t fit in a single glance.

It seemed endless.

Buildings packed so densely they made me dizzy.

I was overwhelmed by the sheer density they created. There were even shapes of buildings I hadn’t known could exist.

I hadn’t known buildings could rise that high in such strange forms.

And why were there so many people riding Skybirds in the air?

Ah.

Overall, there was simply too much of everything.

There were many monsters too, but more than anything, there were so many people it was almost overwhelming. It couldn’t even be compared to other villages. The city’s noise crashed over me like waves.

Their presences too.

I stood frozen with my mouth hanging open.

Only when Rei turned back to me in confusion did I come to my senses.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s that building?”

I asked, forgetting even to thank him.

Rei looked at me in surprise for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“That’s the Mage Tower! Come to think of it, you really wouldn’t have seen that before.”

“The Mage Tower?”

I muttered blankly.

“What’s a Mage Tower?”

“A tower full of mages.”

Mages.

I had never properly seen one.

The leader of the village where I had once been held captive seemed to use something like magic. But he himself didn’t think of it as magic.

He had said he was fundamentally different from those low-grade things....

Ah.

Thinking about that made my stomach turn, so I shouldn’t dwell on it.

Anyway, if I went there, would I really get to meet actual mages?

Would I get to see real magic with my own eyes?

When I was little, I had only imagined it while listening to Gale’s stories....

I was staring intently at the Mage Tower when someone suddenly bumped my shoulder from behind as they passed.

“Don’t stand there blocking the way!”

“Ah, sorry.”

Flustered, I stepped aside.

Rei frowned slightly at the person who had shouted, but without saying anything, he grabbed my arm and pulled me along.

“Come on.”

As he tugged me forward, he said,

“We need to get an inn before dark—”

“What’s this?”

The man who had shoved past me suddenly approached.

Then, without warning, he thrust his face close to mine.

“Golden eyes?”

He growled.

“You too? Did you come here after deliberately cutting down the Divine Tree so you could enjoy the Empire’s benefits too?”