TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 4 Part 1

◆ Chapter 4 ◆

“Court is now in session!”

The presiding judge’s voice rang out through a courtroom that was more cramped than I had expected.

The spectators, who had been buzzing up until then, closed their mouths in unison, and the room was briefly wrapped in silence.

The four of us were currently made to sit in a row at what seemed to be the witness seats.

In my previous life, I had only ever seen the inside of a courtroom on TV, and the only “trials” I had experienced were in games. And in all likelihood, the trials in those games were nothing like the real thing.

So I had no way of knowing how this trial we were involved in now differed from the ones in my previous world.

“……”

“……”

The restraints we had broken in the cell had been repaired with magic only on the surface and were now “securing” our necks and hands.

Of course, they were not actually restraining us. Even Nikka or Grassa could easily break them with a bit of force.

It was so that, if anything happened, we could snap our shackles at once and escape.

The voice-sealing function was still broken, so we simply made sure not to speak and watched the proceedings unfold.

“This trial concerns the suspicion that the Elf tribe, our mortal enemies, has once again reached out to bring calamity upon us Dwarves.”

At the judge’s words, a faint but palpable wave of killing intent swept through the room.

Dwarves were not as long-lived as Elves, but they still lived long lives.

No doubt the ones radiating that killing intent were those who had personally experienced the war with the Elves.

“In view of the gravity of this matter, His Majesty King Grenga III himself has elected to attend these proceedings.”

When the judge continued, the murmuring in the courtroom swelled.

At the same time, snatches of conversation from the spectators drifted into my ears.

“So His Majesty is attending as well… The Grenga family still shoulders our ancestors’ regret, even now.”

“Grandpa, the one the Elves killed was…”

“You were taught this too, were you not? It was the Grenga family’s daughter that those Elves slew by such cowardly means.”

A daughter killed by Elves.

So the Dwarf princess whose assassination had sparked that great war between Dwarves and Elves was actually a blood relative of the current king, Grenga III.

If that was the case, I could understand why the king himself would attend this trial.

However, the talk in the gallery mentioned only the Dwarf princess.

In truth, the Elf prince had been assassinated alongside her, and their child had almost certainly been killed at the same time… I wanted to hear more.

But the old man and his grandchild’s voices were drowned out by the next roar of cheers.

The people shouting turned their gaze toward the door on the right side of the courtroom, and I followed their line of sight.

Three figures entered through the courtroom door.

The first was a lean Dwarf wearing glasses.

He went to stand upright beside the door and bowed his head.

The meaning of that bow became clear the instant the next person entered, wearing a crown upon his head: King Grenga III.

Unlike human kings, the king of the Dwarves was not a symbol of martial strength or political power.

He was, above all, the artisan who had created the finest masterpiece in the entire nation.

So the respect Dwarves paid their king was essentially the reverence they would grant to a great artist.

He looks a lot more scrawnier than I imagined. When I heard “Dwarven king,” I pictured some muscle-bound hulk swinging a gigantic axe around.

The king who entered—King Grenga—had the stocky, barrel-like build typical of Dwarves and a magnificent beard that covered nearly half his body.

However, dark circles so deep you could see them at a glance were etched beneath his eyes, and in terms of physique, the man who had entered after him actually looked much more powerful.

At the head of the three, the king climbed to the highest level of the courtroom where the presiding judge waited, then, at the judge’s invitation, sat not in the central chair but in an ornate special seat placed beside it.

The two who had followed behind the king took up positions behind him, and the judge signaled to a court officer stationed a little below with a meaningful look.

Receiving the cue, the officer walked to the door on the left side of the courtroom and gave it a light knock.

—All right, this was where the real show began.

The door slowly opened, and two Dwarves emerged first, each boasting a physique no less imposing than that of the king’s escort from earlier.

In their hands, they each held a rope, and at the end of those ropes, being dragged along—

“An Elf!”

“No doubt about it. Those ears belong to that accursed race!”

“Death!”

“Don’t let them leave here alive!”

A figure with Elf ears and a head shaved bare, clad in ragged prison clothes, stepped into view.

He—no, she—must have been Cheki.

The moment I saw how utterly lifeless she looked, all light gone from her eyes, I could not have blamed Grassa and Nikka if they had cried out.

Cheki’s condition was that wretched. Even I, who had never met her before, almost let out a shout.

But no sound came from the two of them, and that silence was somehow more frightening, so much so that I did not dare look their way.

Cheki kept her head bowed the entire time, never once raising her face; it seemed she had not even noticed that Nikka and Grassa were here.

The courtroom’s temperature seemed to spike, its murmurs swelling into a roar.

“Silent!!”

The presiding judge’s booming voice instantly quelled the chamber, which had been on the verge of erupting.

“We shall now begin the trial of the defendant, Cheki.”

At the judge’s declaration, Cheki was led by the two Dwarves to the witness stand in the very center of the courtroom, set on a slightly raised platform.

Her expression, utterly exhausted and resigned, was so pitiful it hurt to look at her.

But with her hair shorn—no doubt part of it—the androgyny of her features also made it easy to understand why Nikka and the others had assumed she was a boy.

I had no idea how long her hair had originally been, but if it had been short enough to fit under a hat, it could not have been all that long to begin with. Even if her hat had been knocked off, I could believe people would not realize right away that she was a woman.

While I was studying Cheki, the judge’s voice echoed through the room.

“The defendant, the Elf Cheki, is accused of stealing a magic tool owned by Councilor Luchimada with the cooperation of Beastkin, and of plotting to obtain information on an infiltration route into the Dwarf Kingdom by deliberately allowing herself to be captured by the three Dwarves Olchi, Marsal, and Garaid when they came to reclaim it. Do you acknowledge this?”

The presiding judge hurled the question of guilt or innocence down at Cheki on the stand.

Cheki, however, only continued to stare silently at the floor, offering no reply.

“Shall I take your silence as an admission of guilt?”

“……”

At that, Cheki raised her face and opened her mouth, about to say something to the judge up on the dais.

But only for a moment. No words emerged. Her gaze fell back to the floor, her expression once more that of someone who had completely given up on everything.

“Next, we will hear testimony from the victim, Councilor Luchimada.”

At the judge’s instruction, Cheki was moved from the witness stand to the defendant’s bench.

The defendant’s bench was about a meter in front of where we were waiting; if she so much as glanced back, she would surely notice us.

Yet she never once raised her head. She sat there with her face down, quietly trembling as if simply waiting for her end to come.

“Now then, Councilor, please testify as to how you came to realize your magic tool had been stolen.”

The presiding judge addressed the Dwarf at the witness stand in a gentle tone completely opposite from the one he had used with Cheki.

To be honest, Dwarven faces all looked the same to me under their beards, but the aura—no, the refinement—this man gave off was on a different level.

There was no mistaking it: that man, Luchimada, was one of the kingdom’s upper echelons.

“I do not know the exact date on which it was stolen. However, over the past few months, several Beastkin merchants have visited my estate.”

According to Luchimada, the Bracelet of Oath was usually kept in a cupboard in his private room.

Whenever his blacksmithing hit a wall, he would take the bracelet out and use it as a way to return to his beginnings; it was one of his personal routines.

“The last time I saw the bracelet was roughly three months ago. So I can at least say for certain it was stolen sometime after that.”

“I see. And how did you learn that the bracelet had been stolen and ended up in a human marketplace?”

“As written in the statement already in your possession, I was informed by the only human merchant with whom I had dealings.”

If I remembered correctly, based on that merchant’s information, the Dwarves had gone to the market in Loch, and there they had found Cheki, who had coincidentally acquired the bracelet, and brought both her and the bracelet back.

“And how did that human merchant come by such information?”

“I had shown him the bracelet once before. At the market in Loch, he apparently spotted something resembling it and informed me just in case. I too thought it unlikely, but when I checked the cupboard…”

“You found it gone, in other words.”

“Precisely. If you harbor any doubts, you may have that merchant stand in this very witness box at once and hear his testimony for yourself.”

Luchimada looked up at the judge with a fearless smile.

His words set the gallery murmuring.

Which made sense.

Taken at face value, he had just declared that this human merchant was currently inside the Dwarf Kingdom.

The Dwarves, as a rule, did not allow any race but Beastkin to enter their country except for diplomatic reasons.

When dealing with humans, transactions were to be carried out at a designated market outside the Dwarf Kingdom’s borders.

Even the shopkeeper who had sold the Bracelet of Oath had said he had procured it at that external market.

“I have already been briefed on the matter, but… for the record, may I ask here what justification you had for bringing a human merchant into the kingdom?”

“Very well. He sought my assistance in arranging his defection to the Empire.”

“Defection is a grave thing indeed.”

The judge stroked his long beard and let out a thoughtful groan.

The Empire in question had to be the Volga Empire.

The Volga Empire was ruled primarily by a race known as the Demons, but by actively bringing other races into its borders, it had grown into a powerful multi-racial nation.

It was a rare country that traded formally and fairly not just with humans, but also with Dwarves and Elves.

Honestly, when I first learned of the Empire, just the word “Empire” and the race name “Demons” had been enough for me to slot it firmly into the villain role in my head.

While I was recalling what I knew about the Empire, Luchimada’s testimony continued.

“That merchant was doing business in the royal capital of Preasole when he was suddenly saddled with baseless charges by both his trading partners and his commercial rivals.”

Sensing early on that he was about to be unjustly condemned, the merchant had used his connections to flee the capital in haste.

Judging that he had no chance of evading pursuit if he remained in the kingdom, he had resolved to defect to the Volga Empire instead.

The kingdom and the Empire conducted maritime trade through a port at the western edge of the Glenord Domain in the kingdom’s west.

If one wished to defect, using that sea route was an option as well, but the inspections there were strict, and he believed he would be caught by the kingdom’s soldiers.

So he had turned to Luchimada, with whom he already had a business relationship, and begged for help.

“At first, I intended to refuse, of course. Such a matter could easily escalate into a problem between nations. However, the information he brought me was too valuable, so I chose to accept.”

That information had to be about the Bracelet of Oath.

“And of course, I did not smuggle him into my estate without permission.”

As Luchimada said this, he shifted his gaze from the judge to the king seated beside him.

The king, accepting that look, opened his mouth.

“Yes, it was I who granted that merchant permission to remain within our borders.”

“Is that indeed the truth?”

In response to the judge’s question, the king nodded.

“Luchimada consulted me. As a reward for informing us of the serious matter of an oath-type magic tool having leaked out, I allowed him to stay for a short while.”

After giving this answer, King Grenga leaned back in his chair as if to say, “Is any further explanation necessary?”

“Naturally, the man was not allowed to leave my estate, and when he was brought in, he was blindfolded and had earplugs put in so he could see nothing of the country. Those three escorted him the entire way.”

He pointed as he said “those three,” indicating a trio of Dwarves. They had to be the three idiots from before.

The moment they felt nearly everyone’s eyes on them, they flailed their heads up and down in frantic nods.

Seeing that, the presiding judge steered the discussion back on track.

“We understand the matter of the merchant. Next, please explain why you entrusted the retrieval to that particular trio, and why they brought an Elf back with them.”

“That is quite simple. That bracelet is the greatest stain on my life. I wanted to keep it out of sight as much as possible, especially from other Dwarves.”

“But they are Dwarves as well, are they not?”

The judge voiced the natural question.

“They are such fools that they cannot tell good qualities from bad, or even distinguish one face from another. In that sense, they were convenient.”

I had heard that, for Dwarven men, a blacksmith’s skill was everything.

From Luchimada’s perspective, he probably did not even consider those three idiots to be proper Dwarves.

“I only hired them out of pity, to give them simple work. I did not expect them to fail at a task of such trifling difficulty.”

“So you are saying it was not their intention to bring back the Elf girl?”

“As their interrogation statements should attest, they had no choice but to bring her here because she would not reveal the location of the other bracelet.”

The magic tool was a matched pair.

So the three idiots had reasoned that Cheki must have obtained the remaining one as well and hidden it somewhere.

“I did clearly instruct them, ‘If you find yourselves unable to judge, consult me.’ I certainly never ordered them to bring an Elf into our kingdom.”

Luchimada shot the trio an exasperated look.

“Still, purely by chance, they were half right.”

“In what way?”

“Just as they suspected, one of her companions really did have the other bracelet.”

With that, Luchimada pointed at Grassa, who was standing beside me.

Naturally, the Bracelet of Oath was no longer on her arm.

All our belongings had been confiscated before we were thrown into the cell.

“I have indeed received a report that the second bracelet was recovered. But would the Elves have any reason to do such a thing?”

“Of course. Allowing herself to be captured in order to locate the other half of the pair would have been her first objective. But they also sought to use it for their second objective.”

As the Dwarves in the courtroom murmured, wondering what other objective the Elves could have had, Luchimada went on.

“All Dwarves know that this is a magic tool that links the hearts of those who wear it, do they not?”

That much matched what my mentor had told me.

Luchimada began to speak of the second objective.

“The Elf and her companions, in their foolishness, tried to exploit that power. By linking their awareness to this Elf and extracting information on the Mole Tunnel… Truly, ignorance is pitiable.”

In reality, we had used that very power to make it this far, so his conjecture was not wrong.

But I had no idea what he meant by “ignorance.”

“I see. In other words, they did not know—”

I had been tilting my head in confusion, but the words that followed from the judge nearly made me cry out.

“—that the Oath Ring cannot be used by anyone outside the Dwarf race.”

What did that even mean?

We used Grassa’s bracelet to make it this far, but if I believed what they were saying, that should have been impossible.

Ignoring my shock, the conversation between the judge and Luchimada continued.

“They must have panicked quite a bit once they realized that, do you not think?”

“Indeed. After all, the magic tool they intended to exploit turned out to be unusable.”

“Even so, the fact that they still made it here means they must have prepared some secondary tracking method. For example, a scent pouch that only beasts can follow.”

At the word “beasts,” Luchimada shot Vezzo a sidelong glance.

I had heard that, for Beastkin, being lumped together with mere beasts was the gravest form of insult. Even so, Vezzo simply clenched his fists and endured.

“A scent pouch could indeed allow one to follow after them. But that alone would not suffice as a means of communication.”

“If they lost contact with their comrades, they no doubt arranged to regroup somewhere. They probably thought they could use Elf magic to outwit us with ease.”

“What an arrogant race, as ever. In the end, they failed to escape, caused a commotion, and even got their comrades captured.”

Communication, huh…

There was one thing that bothered me.

The bracelet had certainly conveyed Cheki’s feelings to Grassa, but Grassa’s feelings had not seemed to reach Cheki.

If Cheki had known we were coming to rescue her, she would not have tried to break out on her own.

While I was mulling that over, Luchimada’s performance carried on beside me.

“When I received word that Olchi and the others had been arrested for aiding an Elf’s illegal entry, I hurried here at once.”

“And then you dispatched the military police to that building in question.”

“Yes. When I realized they had ignored my orders and used some illegal Mole Tunnel I knew nothing about to bring in the Elf, it occurred to me that her comrades might attempt to follow that path as well.”

“Oh? So Councilor Luchimada is saying he ordered those three around without any knowledge of that tunnel?”

“Correct. Had I known they were using something so dangerous, I would have turned them over to the military police on the spot.”

Luchimada said this while fixing the three idiots with a look.

The claim that he had not known about the Mole Tunnel was an obvious lie to anyone with eyes.

Yet in this courtroom, that lie had apparently already been accepted as fact.

It was an outright farce.

“I could have feigned ignorance, of course. But once I understood that the Elves were seeking a means of infiltrating this country, I could not overlook it merely to conceal my own guilt.”

He paused for a breath, then turned to face the spectators.

“That is why I stand here today: to testify honestly about my involvement in this incident and the events that led to it.”

He delivered the line with exaggerated gestures.

From where I sat, his theatrics were painfully obvious, yet the courtroom shook with thunderous applause.

…I did not understand any of this.

Every word out of Luchimada’s mouth was nonsense, and he had not even explained why the Elves would need to infiltrate the Dwarf Kingdom, or what they intended to do once inside.

The Dwarves seemed drunk on nothing more than their hatred of the Elves and the atmosphere in the room. For all I knew, a portion of the spectators might even have been plants that Luchimada had arranged himself.

I had to think that, because otherwise my mind simply could not make sense of it.

But how were we supposed to persuade people who would swallow such a lazy story without question?

My head was starting to hurt.

I had thought that if we exposed contradiction after contradiction here in court and proved Cheki’s innocence, we could save her.

That had been naive.

At this point, it would be faster to beat everyone in here half to death and just drag Cheki away.

That was when the thought crossed my mind.

Perhaps frightened by the roaring cheers coming from the gallery behind her, Cheki, who had been sitting with her head bowed at the defendant’s bench, suddenly raised her face and looked back.

Naturally, her gaze met ours as we watched the trial from directly behind her.

Her eyes widened in shock, her stare darting between Nikka and Grassa several times before finally shifting to Vezzo and me at their sides.

It was only natural that, for a brief moment, her expression read, “Who are they?”

After all, both Vezzo and I were meeting her for the first time.

In that instant, something struck me, and at the same time, I understood completely that this trial was a sham in every sense.

From earlier, Cheki had repeatedly opened her mouth wide in the shape of words, as if trying to speak, yet not a single sound had come out.

Now that I thought about it, even during the trial, she had made several attempts to argue back, but again, no words had been heard.

“…I see. They put the same voice-sealing magic tool on Cheki that they used on us, to keep her from speaking.”

If Cheki were an Elf, then putting a voice-sealing collar on her to stop her from casting spells was not strange in itself.

But that also meant she had no way of objecting to anything during the trial.

Did everyone involved in the proceedings know that?

If the presiding judge had been aware of it and still dared to say, “Silence shall be taken as admission,” then that was low, even for them.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing!”

One of the Dwarves standing to Cheki’s left finally noticed her movement, grabbed her by the shoulder, and forcibly turned her back to face front.

It happened at that moment.

Because she was wearing a prison uniform sized for a Dwarf, the collar slipped loose, exposing her shoulder and above.

“Wait…”

Right below the voice-sealing collar, I could see a painful burn scar carved into her skin.

For a heartbeat, I thought it might be the mark of torture, and murderous rage flared up inside me.

But the scar was not fresh, and I quickly understood it had been there from the start.

Placed where it would be revealed the moment her collar was opened, that scar might well have been one of the reasons she had dressed as a man.

“Defendant, you are to refrain from acting on your own.”

The judge’s voice rang down from the dais.

At the same time, indignant shouts about Cheki’s behavior rose from the gallery.

Thanks to Luchimada’s grandstanding, the Dwarven spectators had already branded Cheki as an absolute enemy.

Calling them “pure” would have sounded flattering, but their sheer simplicity made me feel faint.

At that moment—

“You cowards!!”

Grassa suddenly bellowed at the spectators behind us.

“What kind of trial is this! You turn someone into a criminal all on your own, seal their voice so they cannot even argue back!!”

The words she had been desperately holding in could no longer be stopped.

“You all may have impressive beards, but your brains are worse than children’s! Even brats brawling in the sticks have more sense than this!”

While I was inwardly thinking, Tell them, I shot Vezzo a meaningful look.

Now that things had reached this point, there was no helping it… or rather, in a farce like this, there was no way Cheki would be found anything but guilty.

Which meant we had no choice but to resort to force.

“Gwah!”

“Gyaah!”

I went left, Vezzo went right.

We each dropped one of the two Dwarves watching over us with a single blow.

As the Dwarves hit the floor, Vezzo glanced over at me.

“Toa, was this really all right?”

“Yeah. My patience ran out too, same as Grassa’s.”

Then the guards scrambled to surround us.

“What do you think you are doing!”

“Seize them!”

One Dwarf lunged at Grassa, who was still hurling insults; I knocked him out with a punch.

“Vezzo, I am leaving the rest to you.”

After saying this, I turned my eyes toward the dais where the judges sat.

The presiding judge was there, flustered by the sudden commotion.

But he was not my target.

“I have something I need to confirm with that guy sitting up there acting like this has nothing to do with him!”

I shouted to Vezzo and bolted toward King Grenga, who, for some reason, had been staring at Cheki with a complicated expression since earlier instead of looking at Grassa or us as we caused the uproar.

There had to be a reason he was watching her and not the three of us.

“Their restraints are undone!”

“Impossible. Their magic and strength should have been sealed!”

“What were the jailers doing!”

“Just chase him! Do not let him escape!”

When I sprang forward, some of the soldiers who had been surrounding Vezzo and the others broke off in a panic to pursue me.

With those numbers gone, Vezzo would have no trouble defending Nikka and Grassa.

“Hey, he is not heading for the exit!”

“Is he not trying to escape!?”

“He is going for the king! Protect His Majesty!!”

I could hear the shouts behind me, but it was already too late.

Thanks to the 【Silent Casting】 I had been using, the 【Body Reinforcement】 spell I was maintaining kept my speed far beyond what they could match.

“Fool!”

The king’s bodyguard, the same one who had been standing beside him earlier, stepped in front of me and leveled the axe from his back with both hands.

As expected of the king’s guard, the pressure I felt from him was in a different league from that of the other Dwarves.

“Let me through.”

“Charging straight at me? How foolish! Die!”

Without slowing down, I rushed him, and he swung the axe down with murder in his eyes, the blade aimed squarely at my head.

Just before it could strike—

“【Blessing Ice Wall】!!”

I unleashed the spell I had prepared.

In that instant, a wall of ice like jagged icicles erupted upward from the floor at the Dwarf’s feet, thrusting toward the ceiling.

“Gwoah!”

The guard was slammed into the ceiling by the pillar and spat a torrent of blood.

He had come at me intending to kill; I had no intention of showing mercy. Besides, Dwarves were sturdy. Something like this would not kill him.

“Mind stepping aside?”

As fragments of ceiling rained down, I kept my momentum and kicked aside another Dwarf—some attendant standing there in a daze.

“All right, that clears the rabble.”

There was no one left to protect King Grenga.

I drew a shortsword from my storage, slipped around behind the king, who still had not grasped what was happening, and pressed the blade to his neck.

“If you value the king’s life, nobody moves!!”

The first to obey were a few of the Dwarven soldiers who had been chasing me.

The one at the front, halfway up the steps to the dais, froze and, in doing so, caused the ones behind him to crash into him one after another.

“Y-You lot! Do not move!! The king has been taken hostage!!”

The Dwarf king’s role was purely symbolic; his position was entirely different from that of a human monarch. I had not been sure if taking him hostage would mean anything at all, but apparently it worked.

“Let him go.”

The Dwarves who had been grappling with Vezzo hurriedly released him at those words.

Even Vezzo, strong as he was, had struggled to fight Dwarves while shielding two girls. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth, between rows of sharp fangs.

“Coward.”

“So humans are a treacherous race after all.”

Cursing, the Dwarves withdrew from Vezzo, and Nikka rushed in to replace them, reaching up to touch his face and heal him.

I swept my gaze around the courtroom. Once I was sure everyone had stopped moving, I leaned in close to King Grenga’s ear.

“There is something I want to ask you.”

“And what is that?”

The king answered evenly, but I could hear from his voice that he was straining to sound composed.