TBAGM Vol. 3 Chapter 4 Part 1

Chapter 4 – Before the Battle

A few hours after I, Lloyd, had formed a cooperative arrangement with Kyros, the representatives of the guilds connected to Veiled Moonrise had gathered at the Adventurer’s Association.

From the Adventurer’s Association was Chairman Orgus.

From Veiled Moonrise were me, its guildmaster, along with Ellis, Nero, and Serina as my guards.

From Greenpeak came Mint, with Alterna and Marcus as her guards.

From Azure Sea Whitecaps came Loren, with Leone and Luce as his guards.

And finally, from Incarnation of the Sun came Kyros, with Allen and Edgar as his guards.

In the conference room, each guildmaster sat at the round table, with their guards standing by on either side.

“Then let’s get started right away. I’d like to begin this strategy meeting against Noir.”

“Please wait, Lloyd.”

“What is it, Nero?”

Just as I had expected, someone stopped me when I tried to begin the meeting.

“Why is that trash bastard Kyros here?! I accepted the matter with Rei after seeing the way she’s behaved up until now! But this bastard is different!”

Nero spoke while glaring at Kyros.

Mint and Loren apparently felt the same way, and both of them nodded.

“It’s true that we need every bit of strength we can get right now. But I can’t trust them enough to watch our backs!”

“I understood what you meant, Nero. But even if we shut Kyros out here, he’ll probably just act on his own.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I explained my connection to Noir before, didn’t I? That he was the one who killed my older sister, Lishia. And that she had been killed so her skills could be transferred to me and my older brother.”

“Yes…”

“That older brother is Kyros, the man sitting here.”

“““Huh?”””

Everyone other than Kyros and me cried out in shock as though it had been rehearsed.

If Kyros’s name came up, the story became more complicated, so I had deliberately kept his existence hidden when I told them about the incident in the past.

And learning that Kyros was my older brother did not make Nero back down.

If anything, it only made the anger on his face deepen.

“Hey, Kyros… there was a limit to how much bullshit you could pull, you know?”

“Lord Kyros!”

Nero unleashed an overwhelming killing intent at Kyros.

Allen, who was serving as Kyros’s guard, instantly stepped in front of him and drew his sword.

“I am fine. Stand down, Allen.”

“But…”

“This is the sin I committed. I am the one who must atone for it.”

Allen reluctantly sheathed his sword and returned to Kyros’s side.

In contrast, Nero kept radiating that cold killing intent as he calmly questioned Kyros.

“Kyros. So you really did all that to your own little brother, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“To the younger brother who was the driving force behind raising Incarnation of the Sun from the very bottom to the number one guild in the kingdom, you told him you didn’t need him anymore and threw him away. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Incarnation of the Sun was the place Mr. Lloyd called home. You cast out your own brother even though you knew it would leave him all alone. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And even that wasn’t enough for you. You kept getting in Mr. Lloyd’s way every time he tried to stand back up again, didn’t you? You tried to destroy your own brother’s future for the sake of your own selfish desires, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

Kyros answered Nero’s questions without so much as twitching an eyebrow.

And then, at last, Nero’s emotions spilled over.

“Cut the crap!! After Lishia was gone, you should’ve been the only family Mr. Lloyd had left to rely on! And yet, and yet, you threw Mr. Lloyd away with your own two hands! Mr. Lloyd… Mr. Lloyd, what must he have gone through…!”

“……”

Nero’s face was twisted with anguish.

I could not even begin to express how grateful I was to have Nero there, getting angry for my sake as though it were his own pain.

If he and Ellis had not been there to support me, I might have gone astray somewhere along the way too.

Yes, Kyros had never had someone like that.

He had rushed too single-mindedly toward his goal, and because of that, he had never been able to find anyone around him who truly understood him. There had been no one to stop him after he strayed from the right path.

He had carried everything alone, and agonized over everything alone.

In that sense, Kyros himself had also been a victim.

Kyros, who had remained silent until now, slowly opened his mouth.

“Nero is right. Saying I had a purpose was only a pretext. In the end, I lost sight of my true objective and treated my younger brother, who should have been precious to me, as something disposable for the sake of my own selfish desires. I am truly sorry, Lloyd.”

“An apology now isn’t gonna change the past…”

Nero’s anger was not something that would settle with a single apology. Kyros surely understood that too.

That was why he lifted his head and stared at Nero with eyes burning with fighting spirit.

“That’s right. But the future can still be changed.”

““…!!””

Ellis and I were the first to react to those words.

They were the very words she had said to me a few hours earlier.

The words that had stirred me back to my feet when I had been unable to move.

Kyros had never stopped from the beginning.

All this time, he had kept looking ahead on his own.

“I will tell you the conclusion first. Lishia is not dead yet.”

“““…!?”””

Everyone except me widened their eyes.

I had not told the others about the additional information Kyros and I had uncovered through our discussion. Part of that was because there had been no time, but more than that, I had thought the best way to bring Kyros into this operation was to have him explain everything in his own words.

There was no trust between Kyros and the others. But if they heard the words straight from him, surely some degree of comradeship would begin to take root.

Orgus, who had been quietly listening all this time, finally spoke.

“Kyros. Can you explain it from the beginning?”

“Yeah. First, let us go back six years.”

After that, Kyros spoke openly about everything that had happened up to now.

He told us how he had happened to find Lishia in a deathlike coma six years ago. How he had then begun investigating Noir on his own in order to save her. And how, in order to be ready to oppose Noir if he ever appeared again, he had founded a guild and aimed for the top.

“That is everything. My sole objective now is to defeat Noir and save Lishia. Once that is over, I will accept whatever demands are made of me.”

Not a single person argued with Kyros after he finished speaking.

He certainly was not someone who could be praised.

But neither was there anyone there who truly had the right to condemn him.

“Kyros, I get what you’re saying, but what do you mean by saving Lishia?”

“Right. Even if you defeat Noir, that doesn’t necessarily mean Lishia will come back, does it?”

Loren and Mint tilted their heads in puzzlement.

That was something I had also been wondering about this whole time.

Kyros had spoken as though he were convinced that Lishia would awaken if Noir was defeated, but we did not know the basis for that belief.

Then Kyros said:

“As far as I have been able to determine, no magic exists that allows skill transfer. If that is the case, then this must be a skill unique to Noir himself. And if that is true, then once Noir is killed, the transferred skills will return to their original owners. If the skills return, then Lishia should regain consciousness as well.”

It was not enough to call it proof, but the logic behind it was understandable.

If the user of a skill died, then the benefits produced by that skill would vanish as well.

For example, if the holder of a brainwashing-type skill died, the one who had been brainwashed would regain their sanity. Of course, because that could not alter the past, if someone had only been brainwashed temporarily in the past, then nothing in particular would change afterward.

If Kyros’s assumption was correct, then the skill transfer placed on Lishia was still in effect, and things were still at a stage where its effects could be undone.

Then Loren raised another question.

“Wouldn’t it be better to capture Noir and make him release the skill? That sounds more reliable to me.”

“That was my plan until now as well. But after hearing that it took three S-ranks just to barely fight him on equal footing, I changed my mind. If we go in intending to take him alive, we will be the ones who die. If our goal is only to undo the skill, then killing him is enough.”

What Kyros said made sense.

To be honest, of course I wanted to choose the method that gave Lishia the highest chance of waking up.

But if we failed to finish Noir here, there would only be more victims.

From that standpoint as well, I could accept the decision to kill Noir.

“Please wait. If the skills return to their original owners, does that mean Lord Lloyd’s 【Appraisal】 will disappear as well?”

“That’s right. And Lloyd’s original skill, 【All-Rounder】, will likely return to him.”

Ellis’s expression was clouded as she asked Kyros that question.

I understood the reason immediately.

“Does that mean Lord Lloyd can no longer remain an Advisor?”

“…Yes.”

“““…!?”””

Kyros hesitated a little before answering.

And everyone except me drew a sharp breath.

Yes, if the skills were returned to their original owners, then I would lose 【Appraisal】.

Which meant I would effectively lose almost all of my ability as an Advisor.

I would no longer be able to discover talented people or those whose potential had gone unnoticed the way I had until now. I would no longer be able to train people according to their talents or identify their weaknesses and help them overcome them.

“Th-Then isn’t there some other way?! Like beating that bastard Noir and making him transfer some other skill to Lishia!”

“No. There is no guarantee that Noir possesses multiple skills.”

“Th-Then I’ll give one of my skills to Lishia! Wouldn’t that wake her up too?”

Nero shouted desperately as he tried to persuade Kyros.

“The risk of transferring yet another skill is far too high. And if Lishia dies because of it, Nero, can you take responsibility for that?”

“That’s…”

Faced with Kyros’s harsh answer, Nero could say nothing back.

Why was it that Lishia alone, unlike the other victims, had remained in a deathlike state?

The most likely explanation was that there had been an irregularity in splitting her skill between two people.

If the skills were returned, she would awaken. That hypothesis was probably correct.

But that still did not explain why she had not died.

If that was the case, then…

“If the skill had been completely lost, Lishia would have died long ago. The most likely possibility is that traces of her former skill still remain within her. It would be beyond foolish for us to crush that possibility with our own hands.”

Kyros voiced the exact same thought I had reached.

Traces of Lishia’s skill still remained within her, and that remnant was the faint flame keeping her alive.

If that hypothesis was correct, then once the skill returned to her, Lishia would awaken.

On the other hand, if we transferred some entirely different skill into her, then there was every chance it might conflict with those remnants.

Just as Kyros said, there was no need to take that risk on purpose.

“It’s okay, Nero. I’m prepared too.”

“Mr. Lloyd…”

If someone asked me to choose between my work and my sister’s life, there was nothing to think about.

【Appraisal】 had originally belonged to Lishia in the first place.

It would simply be returning to its rightful owner.

That was all. It was not a problem.

“Besides, I have no intention of quitting as an Advisor. Even without 【Appraisal】, I want to keep going as an Advisor by making use of everything I’ve experienced and learned.”

I said it clearly.

I knew full well that I was saying something unreasonable.

Even so, I was not going to give up on continuing as an Advisor.

Not because it was atonement, and not because it had been the path Lishia should have walked.

It was because I wanted, from the bottom of my heart, to keep doing it.

Because I wanted to be an Advisor who could guide everyone.

“Mr. Lloyd…! Mr. Lloyd really is Mr. Lloyd!”

“Haha, what was that supposed to mean?”

Nero’s eyes sparkled as he beamed with delight, and I could not help letting a smile soften my face.

“Ellis, are you okay with that too?”

“Of course! If Lord Lloyd is satisfied with it, then I have nothing to say!”

Ellis, who had been looking worried until just moments ago, nodded firmly as well.