DAR Vol. 6 Chapter 23 Part 2

<Have you no pride at all? And besides… if it is a matter of finding yourself a mate, then that is exactly the sort of thing you should go sniveling to that brat about.>

“Roa? About my woman problems?”

Dietrich cocked his head. In his mind, Roa and “woman problems” did not connect in the slightest.

He had apparently sold medicine in the red-light district before, but Coralde Trading Company had taken over all of that now and handled it in his place. As Roa was now, Dietrich could not imagine him having any means of introducing women, or even knowing a single girl of marriageable age.

<That is right. You should ask him for a love potion!>

While Dietrich was still turning the words over in his head, Uncle Gry declared it without hesitation.

“It didn’t work, you know.”

In fact, back when he had only just met Roa, Dietrich had received a love potion from him. It did little more than amplify whatever goodwill already existed, and it could not make someone who felt nothing suddenly fall in love.

Dietrich had used it, and it had done absolutely nothing, leaving him thoroughly humiliated.

<I am not speaking of some dubious medicine that may or may not work. Obviously I mean the love potion that forces the other party to fall in love.> 

“…No. That’s banned by law…”

Dietrich knew powerful, high-tier love potions like that existed.

But they were taboo, and both their use and their creation were forbidden.

Across this continent, in every country, magic potions that significantly warped a person’s will or affected the mind were prohibited. The only ones who would make such things were criminals, or the kind of people in power who could twist the law to suit themselves. Even Roa had refused, saying he would be charged with a crime.

<Do you truly believe that brat, once he knows he can make something, can restrain himself from making it? He is that brat, you know. Such a thing is utterly impossible! He has certainly made it already and is keeping it hidden. The yoke of the law is meaningless before that brat’s curiosity. That is precisely why he is the one I acknowledge as my familiar contract partner!>

Uncle Gry’s words had a strange, unsettling weight to them.

Told that Roa would never be able to refrain from making something he knew he could make, Dietrich found himself convinced.

If it meant satisfying his curiosity, Roa would run rampant without a second thought. The only reason it had not come to light was because he hid it well. There were precedents everywhere, from supreme grade magic recovery potions to magical silver Mithril.

Back when Roa had been with Crack of Dawn, his former party, he had been told not to meddle by people who could not even grasp the value of what he held. On top of that, there had been limits: budget, the risk of having things stolen, and more.

But now, nothing remained to keep Roa in check.

“Seriously…”

Dietrich rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in Uncle Gry’s fur. He ended up in nearly the same posture as the twins lying beside him.

“Yeah, you’re right. There’s no way Roa didn’t make it. Wow. If he already did, I gotta help him dispose of it.”

<Do not speak with your face buried in my fur. The vibrations tickle!>

Uncle Gry complained, but Dietrich ignored him and kept repeating, “Yeah… wow…” over and over.

His voice sounded almost cheerfully buoyant.

“Oh, right. Tomorrow I’m taking Roa to see the ships. You two are coming with us. Sailors are a hard-bitten bunch, so it shouldn’t turn into a commotion even if you show up.”

After saying only that, Dietrich stayed with his face pressed into Uncle Gry’s fur, going still as if he’d sunk into contemplation. Uncle Gry sent him a look of exasperation. Dietrich was surely not thinking anything wholesome.

The knights watching nearby also stared at Dietrich with the same exasperated look, seeing him continue his bizarre behavior right in front of a Gryphon.

𑁋

The next day.

Just as Dietrich had said, Roa and the others had come to the harbor to see the ships.

Large trading vessels were the concentrated sum of each nation’s latest technology. Since every country built them in fierce competition with the others, it was only natural that they would not want rival nations examining their ships in port. No matter what country a vessel belonged to, whatever its exterior looked like, its interior was never opened to anyone but the crew.

The ships were kept under strict control, and those that carried especially many secrets were moored in berths rented within the docks, each vessel separated off by iron fencing.

Roa and the others were standing in one such berth.

“It’s huge…”

Roa stood there staring up at the trading ship in stunned amazement, mouth hanging open. It was probably the first thing anyone blurted out upon seeing one.

Watching him, Dietrich nodded in satisfaction.

A colossal hull towered before Roa’s eyes.

The wooden body of the ship, strengthened with magic, had been coated in resin and polished to a gleaming amber luster. It was over fifty meters long. Its height, from the deck to the very top of the mast, was about the same.

Since the upper limit for an ordinary wooden ship without magic was around ten meters, it made plain just how extraordinary magical reinforcement really was.

Of course, magic was not the only technology supporting shipbuilding. Magic strengthened only the materials. The craft of construction itself was still the work of human hands.

This vessel was the product of the finest shipwrights in the trade displaying the full extent of their skill.

<I can feel mana even from the surface of the hull. This ship can disguise itself, can it not?>

Standing beside Roa as he looked up, Uncle Gry stared intently at the hull. He seemed deeply intrigued, carefully studying each individual plank.

“You can tell that?” Kristoff asked.

<Obviously. One would have to be a fool not to notice something this blatant. It is simple, but this ship is capable of using magic that alters its outward appearance.>

Kristoff had leaned in and lowered his voice so the others would not overhear, and Uncle Gry answered in a smug tone.

Present here now were Dietrich, Roa, the familiars, Kristoff, and…

“So that Gryphon’s taken to Kristoff too, has it!”

…the Sword Saint, who was far more interested in observing Uncle Gry than the ship, along with the knights assigned to watch them.

Originally, Emilia had been the one meant to come along as Dietrich’s minder, since she was capable of reining him in no matter the situation.

But a duty had suddenly arisen that only she could handle as one of the Royal Guard Knights, so the Sword Saint, who could also reliably subdue Dietrich, had come in her place.

Cornelia had gone with Emilia as well, after being earnestly begged to accompany her.

Which meant the Sword Saint was supposed to be keeping an eye on Dietrich, but he paid him no attention whatsoever and looked only at Uncle Gry.

Opportunities to see a Gryphon up close were vanishingly rare. And not only was this one calm, but he could be observed at leisure. If one truly wished, it would even be possible to touch him.

There was no way the Sword Saint would pass up such a chance, so he kept staring at Uncle Gry while muttering disturbing things now and then, like, “If I cut there, I could disable him in a single strike…”

He was probably running simulations in his head, imagining how a battle against a Gryphon would go. No doubt he was probing for the most effective way to bring one down.

He was called the Sword Saint for a reason. He was a battle maniac.

As for Uncle Gry, perhaps he was used to being looked at that way, or perhaps he had simply decided the Sword Saint was not worth bothering with. He paid him no mind at all. The only time he reacted was when someone said he had taken to Kristoff, at which point he frowned in obvious displeasure.

“It really is amazing. Too bad for Mr. Coralde.”

Still gazing at the ship, Roa spoke to Dietrich.

“There are rules from the Merchants’ Guild, apparently. Nothing to be done about it.”

Coralde had wanted to see this trading ship too.

But there were rules set by the Merchants’ Guild, and because of them, he had been unable to come. In fact, part of the reason Coralde had gone out to the Merchants’ Guild the previous day had been to reconfirm those very rules.

A trading company was only permitted to do business with trading ships through the state, but since this rare chance to see one had come up, he had gone looking for some possible loophole.

Instead, he had learned that even going to see the ship was forbidden.

And since he had discovered that fact while checking at the Merchants’ Guild, it was too late now to pretend he had never known. In the end, he had no choice but to abandon today’s visit.

Coralde’s despair at the whole affair, lamenting that he never should have gone to check in the first place if this was how it would end, was enough to make even Uncle Gry worry about him.

If he had remained ignorant, he might have been able to negotiate privately with the sailors at the dock and obtain small imported goods under the guise of personal transactions. He had been so dejected over that missed possibility that he looked ready to burst into tears.

“Dietrich! Been a while!!”

A voice called down from the ship.

Everyone at the berth looked up.

Standing on the deck was a lean old man with an oppressive presence.

“Captain Sabas!”

The moment he recognized the man, Dietrich waved both arms high.

The man, called Sabas, had long white hair that reached his waist, tied back and hanging down his back. The beard framing his mouth was white as well.

A great scar ran vertically across his face through his right eye, and that eye had been ruined.

As if making up for it, the left eye that remained shone with a fierce, predatory light, far too sharp to belong to an ordinary old man.

Captain Sabas was an old acquaintance of Dietrich’s, and the captain of this ship, the very man who had granted them permission to tour it.

He placed a hand on the ship’s rail and then launched himself into the air.

The drop from deck to dock was several dozen meters. Ordinarily, it would have ended in serious injury, but Captain Sabas conjured wind from below with magic and landed on the dock as casually as if it were nothing.

“You little brats! Still alive, are you?! Oh! The Sword Saint’s with you too! Been a long time! And that Gryphon and those magic wolves are the familiars from the letter, eh?! They look strong!”

He rattled it all off in a rush, then gave Dietrich a mighty slap across the back.

<Another loud one has appeared… Is this country populated by nothing but these sorts?>

Given the sheer force of the man’s presence, Uncle Gry could hardly be blamed for muttering that.

“Captain Sabas, good to see you’re doing well. Thanks for this today!”

That blow had nearly made Dietrich choke, but he managed to suppress it and get the greeting out somehow. He looked a bit awkward, probably embarrassed that Sabas had called him a little brat right in front of Roa.

“What’s with that grown-up act?! You’re the little brat who used to chase after my granddaughter!”

“No, that was Kristoff!”

“Hold it, Leader! You were chasing her too, weren’t you?”

Apparently, Sabas went back a long way with Kristoff too, and just like that, the conversation turned warm and familiar. Roa watched them with a cheerful expression, though he felt a faint twinge of being left out.

“Oh, right. I should introduce Roa…”

Dietrich had just said that after they’d talked for a while when it happened.

“A ship under boarding inspection has broken away!!”

A voice amplified by magic thundered across the entire harbor, so loud it made one want to cover one’s ears.

“Boarding inspection?”

Roa tilted his head at the announcement.

“It means officials board a ship to investigate whether there’s been any illegal activity. If you bring a ship into this harbor, you can’t refuse it.”

Picking up on Roa’s murmur, Kristoff explained.

No matter what country a port belonged to, boarding inspections were included in the port’s usage regulations, so if you wanted to bring a ship in, you had to submit to them.

However, if the vessel belonged to another nation, such an inspection could not be carried out without an inspection warrant issued by the state. Since such warrants were not granted unless the charges were extremely solid, the ship in question was almost certainly guilty of some crime.

By their very nature, trading ships were often used for all kinds of criminal activity. The most common of all was the smuggling of illegal goods.

Prohibited drugs, banned items, magic tools, even slaves. There were any number of things this country could not afford to have brought in.

“Find out what’s going on!”

Captain Sabas shouted, ordering his sailors to gather the details. At once, several of them broke into a run toward the harbor office.

<I can see a large ship pulling away from a harbor about five kilometers off. It is moving with magically assisted speed, far too fast for something leaving the harbor area. That must be the one. Incidentally, soldiers and sailors had been quarreling around that ship for quite some time.>

Before the sailors could even report back, Uncle Gry calmly supplied the details himself.

“Five kilometers away…? You noticed something that far off?”

<We are outside my territory, are we not? Keeping up constant surveillance in order to protect that brat is only natural. If I try to follow conversations as well, the limit is about the size of a temporary lodging, but tracking movement alone is no problem.>

Asked by Dietrich, Uncle Gry puffed out his chest as he answered.

By “temporary lodging,” he meant the marquis’s estate where Roa and the others were currently staying. Hearing him imply that he had been monitoring even the conversations there, Dietrich’s eyes widened.

Inside the estate, with the eyes of the supervising knights and servants everywhere, Dietrich had no memory of doing anything especially suspicious. Even so, knowing it had all been observed was not a pleasant feeling.

<Well, I do not do such things at that brat’s home, so you may rest easy. That is merely how I handle things outside my territory. Apparently humans need to keep secrets now and then. I am an understanding good boy, am I not?>

Everyone who could hear him turned an icy gaze his way as Uncle Gry made this proud declaration.

He was saying it all with absurd confidence, but all it really meant was that he had been spying nonstop outside Roa’s home. It was not exactly something to boast about.

“…I see. A ship from Adad, then. They’ve been making all sorts of strange moves lately.”

By then, the sailors had returned and delivered their report to Captain Sabas. It contained everything Uncle Gry had already said, along with details such as the vessel’s registry.

“Boss! The fleeing ship will reach the First Buoy soon. What are we doing with our ship?”

“Quit calling me Boss! In the harbor, you call me Captain!! We’re going after them, obviously! You did make preparations, didn’t you?!”

“Of course we did, Boss!!”

Roa looked up uneasily at Dietrich’s face. From the sound of it, Captain Sabas and his crew were planning to pursue the escaping ship. His eyes were clearly asking why they would do such a thing.

“If they get beyond territorial waters, that means they’ve left the country, and then they can’t be punished. So we have to catch them before that. Large warships have treaties and procedures, so they can’t get moving right away. Other ships have to cooperate in the capture.”

“I see…”

The sailors were already moving about in a frenzy, apparently preparing to set sail.

There was a huge difference in speed between large ships and small ones. And simply because of the difference in size, a smaller vessel would stand no chance at all in a fight.

With the warships unable to prepare immediately, the only option was for another ship already present to cooperate in the capture. It was not an obligation, but Captain Sabas’s ship was taking the lead in volunteering.

“Well, that’s the official line, anyway.”

“Huh?”

“You little brats! What about you lot?”

While issuing instructions to his sailors, Captain Sabas turned that glittering single eye on Dietrich and the others. It was a pressuring stare that practically declared refusal was not permitted.

“Of course we’re going!”

“I’m going too!”

The Sword Saint’s voice overlapped with Dietrich’s.

It was supposed to be for the sake of watching Dietrich, but more than that, he radiated pure delight at the prospect of cutting loose while helping capture the runaway ship.

“Captain Sabas, it’s fine to bring Roa too, right?”

“This boy, too?”

Captain Sabas bent at the waist a little and brought his scarred, one-eyed face close to Roa’s. With that overwhelming face peering at him from such intimate proximity, even Roa instinctively shrank back a little.

“If Roa comes, the Gryphon and the others will tag along on their own.”

“Then bring him aboard!”

The instant he heard Uncle Gry would be coming, Captain Sabas agreed without hesitation. Apparently, like the Sword Saint, he had taken an interest in Uncle Gry.

<It cannot be helped. I shall accompany you. Since this is a capture operation, I may destroy things so long as I do not kill them, yes?>

<Can I burn them?>

<Freeze them!!>

Though Uncle Gry claimed he had no choice, he clearly seemed to be looking forward to the fight. The corners of his mouth were lifted in a grin. The twins were in high spirits, too.

Roa felt a little uneasy, but he was excited just to be boarding the ship. He had assumed the day would end with nothing more than looking over a vessel at anchor, and now he was actually getting to ride one in motion. More than that, he would be able to observe its handling and operation up close. There was no way that would not thrill him.

Roa resolved that he would leave the actual fighting to the battle maniacs and spend his own time carefully studying the ship and the sailors operating it.

<We are going up to the deck.>

At Uncle Gry’s words, wind surged up from beneath their feet. Though it was a gentle breeze, several bodies on the spot were lifted into the air.

“Hey! Without warning?!”

“Oho!”

<Yay!>

<We’re flying!!>

“This is… a Gryphon’s wind magic…”

Each of them cried out as the wind carried them aloft.

Only Captain Sabas seemed to be quietly observing the magic itself. From the way he had leapt down from the deck before, it was already clear that he too used wind magic. He seemed impressed by magic even more refined than the wind he himself commanded.

With only a few seconds of flight, Uncle Gry and the others came down onto the deck.

“All right! Raise the gangplank! Everyone’s here, yeah?! And even if they’re not, leave them behind and go! We’ll be coming back to the harbor later anyway! Anyone not aboard gets no share!!”

“Yesss, sir!”

A coarse roar rose from the sailors in response to Captain Sabas’s words.

Someone was shouting from the harbor side as well. Listening more closely, it turned out to be the knights protesting.

The ones Uncle Gry had swept up with wind magic a moment earlier were Roa and the twins, Dietrich and Kristoff, Captain Sabas, and the Sword Saint. All of Dietrich’s supervising knights had been left behind.

Those knights were apparently shouting to be taken aboard, but the gangplank at the side entrance had already been pulled away.

Unless they possessed the ability to fly through the air with wind magic like Uncle Gry and Captain Sabas, it would be impossible for them to board now.

“Roa, the ship’s moving.”

At Dietrich’s words, the ship began to move slowly. Experiencing departure by ship for the first time, Roa’s eyes sparkled.

The sensation of being gently rocked by the waves. And yet, unlike a small boat, there was a reassuring stability to it.

<It has been a long time since I last boarded a ship.>

At some point, Uncle Gry had moved to the bow. It was the spot one tier higher than the upper deck, where the course ahead was monitored. There he lay in grand ease, basking in the wind split by the ship’s advance, his eyes fixed on the waters before them.

“Uncle Gry!!”

The moment he noticed him, Roa rushed over, intending to drag him down from what looked, by any measure, like a prime seat for getting in the way.

“It’s probably fine if he stays there, right? Hm, Captain Sabas?”

“This is my harbor and I know it like the back of my hand. We keep watch on the surroundings from the lookout up by the mast, so it’s no problem. Let the Gryphon do as he pleases.”

“…Sorry… He seems to like high places.”

Roa withdrew the hand he had been reaching toward Uncle Gry. Looking to the side, he saw Captain Sabas slowly trying to touch Uncle Gry. His hand was trembling slightly.

The sight made Roa smile without thinking. Captain Sabas, for all his fearsome appearance, did not seem to be such a frightening man after all.

“Why don’t you take your time looking around the ship too, Roa? It’ll be a while before we leave territorial waters. We’ll just be cruising along slowly until then.”

“Huh? Aren’t we supposed to catch them before they get out?”

What Dietrich was saying now was different from what he had said in the harbor. Earlier, he had clearly said they needed to catch the other ship before it left territorial waters, because once it did, it could no longer be punished.

“Brat! That’s for ordinary trading ships! This ship is different! If we catch them inside territorial waters, everything gets confiscated and there’s no profit in it!!”

The one who boisterously laughed off Roa’s question was Captain Sabas. His glittering single eye was like a bird of prey locked onto quarry, and his grin was filled with a kind of lunacy far removed from anything refreshing.

And yet, even as he looked like that, his hand was gently stroking Uncle Gry’s back. Uncle Gry had surely noticed, but did not seem inclined to object.

“Raid! Plunder!! That is the very foundation of our nation! Is it not, Captain?!!”

“Of course it is, Sword Saint!!”

The Captain and the Sword Saint, the two old men, burst into mutual laughter in perfect accord, but they did not look like men of lofty station in the slightest. They looked, quite plainly, like ruffians. Standing beside them, even Dietrich seemed refined by comparison.

Still shouting things in excitement, the Captain and the Sword Saint left Roa and the others so they could go issue orders to the sailors.

“So that’s how it is. Until that ship gets beyond territorial waters, we’re just going to tail them slowly. In the meantime, look around however you like. If any of the sailors say anything, just tell them you’re Captain Sabas’s guest. They ought to treat you politely.”

Dietrich turned a composed smile on Roa.

And yet the smile at the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. He was holding himself back, but the urge for battle was clearly stirring in him.

He too was the same type as Captain Sabas, the Sword Saint, and the sailors aboard this ship.

<I see. So this was a pirate ship!!>

Uncle Gry cried out, and Dietrich’s smile deepened.

“More accurately, it doubles as both a trading ship and a pirate ship. It’s one of our country’s prized dual-purpose privateers.”

<Fhm. They say any seafaring nation has privateers, but this is my first time seeing one in person. No, perhaps I should say it is indistinguishable from an ordinary pirate ship.>

A privateer was, in essence, a pirate ship employed by the state.

The seas beyond territorial waters belonged to no nation. Which meant that anything that happened there could not be policed by any country.

If there were unmistakable proof afterward, or political entanglements at play, that would be another matter, but in general, no punishment could be imposed after the fact.

That was why, in the past, pirates had not been arrested even after establishing bases on land that everyone knew about.

Taking advantage of that fact, nearly every country had begun attacking the trading ships of rival nations outside territorial waters ever since maritime trade first emerged. By severing trade routes, they sought to place themselves in a more favorable position.

At first, this was carried out mainly by naval vessels, but naturally such dirty work was always given lower priority, and before long opportunities to do it became scarce.

So states began paying pirates to attack the ships of other nations instead.

That was the origin of the privateer system.

It meant paying pirates vast sums of money, but it was still far cheaper than building warships and maintaining them together with their crews.

There were other advantages as well. The state did not have to take responsibility for deaths in battle, and it did not have to force the soldiers who served it out of a sense of justice to commit the morally ugly act of attacking civilians.

At present, there were no nations on this continent in a state of total, open war. There were minor skirmishes, yes, but no open conditions in which nations were facing each other head-on in battle.

Officially, it was an era without war.

And yet the privateer system remained alive, used as a means of harassing countries that were not officially enemies but were nevertheless a nuisance. Every nation did this, and by carrying it out beyond territorial waters, they all tacitly accepted one another’s actions.

Dual-purpose privateers like this one, serving both as trading vessels and pirate ships, were exceedingly rare.

Only a handful existed in the Kingdom of Nereus.

Perhaps that was only fitting for a nation built by pirates.

Incidentally, there was no reliable way to distinguish a privateer from a pirate ship that raided for its own greed. Pirate vessels themselves often used ships seized from trading fleets or navies, so their forms varied wildly, as did the nationalities one might infer from them.

“Pirate ship? Privateer?”

Though still bewildered, Roa finally understood the meaning of everything that had been said.

What this ship was about to do was an act of piracy, which meant, put simply, that it would be better if Roa did not involve himself in it.

So once again, he resolved to leave matters to the battle-crazed crowd and quietly occupy himself by observing the workings of the ship.