Side Story 55. Raven Company (1)
"Do you know each other, Chief-nim?"
A subordinate with a st.u.r.dy physique and long, braided black hair behind his back asked me.
At that question, I looked at the prime minister, Lisbon, and Alphonso under the clock tower as I ate chocolate gelato.
"Pushover... No, they"re friends with the financier. We"ve known each other since I was 16, so we"ve been friends for 20 years."
Whenever I visited the Empire for my maternal grandfather"s health, they always found out and would come to the duchy to see me. It was the first time in seven months that I saw them like this.
It had been a long time since Yuria reached the level of madosa, and Alice has already almost crossed the wall of the Magic Way; most likely because of Yuria"s help. It was funny that she was still using a magic wand for children that I’d given her as her 17th birthday present.
"Remember those faces well. Especially the old man with gla.s.ses. He"s the one who provided great support when we started the company," I said.
Come to think of it, the war against the Curse Specialist and s.p.a.ce Specialist was already 17 years ago. After the war, I did quite a lot with the reward I had taken from the prime minister. I heard that in order to protect the war compensation funds, he robbed the corruption funds found in the corruption book I had sent through my aunt. However, it was not enough, and it seemed that he had eventually laid hands on the war compensation funds.
"But t.i.tan, I believe I told you to call me President when we’re here," I reprimanded.
t.i.tan bowed his head and said, "I apologize, President Denburg."
"Here, it"s not Denburg, it"s Ryu Chein... No, never mind. What can I expect from a native of our hometown?”
I sighed as I looked at the luggage that I put on Hestia noona to use for escort and as an errand runner whenever she left the village. She had been managing the overall administration of the village. Well, t.i.tan had been honest and stupid since he was young.
"If you don"t like the word president, just call me "Hyung" like when you were young."
"I wouldn’t dare of calling Chief-nim... And if I’m so informal, my brother will try to kill me."
Seeing t.i.tan hesitate, I comforted him, saying he had been through a lot.
"Tell Lancelot that I ordered you to call me that. To begin with, Lan calls me by my name, too.”
If he had to be scolded for being informal, Lancelot should be the first recipient. And in terms of physique alone, his younger brother, t.i.tan, was much bigger. So I couldn"t imagine Lancelot hitting him because of Lancelot’s personality, even if the person getting hit seemed to be scared.
Well, since Lancelot"s skills were now considered one of the top among younger people in our hometown, it was not that strange because he became the captain of my personal guards. Even though the t.i.tle of personal guards was just in name and they just ran my errands. If someone was trying to harm me, they were personal guards, but mostly they were luggage that I needed to run away from.
"But what"s going on? Coming to see me while I’m out."
"I got a call that someone came looking for Chief, no, Hyung…-nim." t.i.tan added the t.i.tle "nim" awkwardly, perhaps feeling blasphemous to say ‘hyung’.
"I thought it might be someone from our hometown because they said the person had black hair...”
Someone from our hometown?
Since communication was done through magic, they wouldn’t have sent a person which would take a longer time. So there’s no way Hestia noona or an elder would have sent the person.
Hmm, my father and great-grandfather had already come over to my house and were living together, so was it my grandfather?
My grandfather was currently the chief’s deputy and wouldn’t leave the village.
"What’s the person’s name?" I asked.
t.i.tan took a crumpled note out of his pocket. "Let"s see... They said it was Uranos."
Oh, my nephew had come to see me. Come to think of it, was he already an adult? Why did he come all the way to Dimitrion?
"Let"s go to the main store."
It"d been a while since I"d been to the main store, leaving everyone below me to take care of the work unless it was really important.
I smiled as I saw my old friends disappearing between the streets down there. With even the Empire’s prime minister coming, things had become quite interesting.
-o-
"Guest-nim! Please wake up! Guest-nim!” The carriage driver woke up the black-haired boy sleeping against the corner of the carriage.
"Huh…? Cold. Where are we?" the boy asked.
The carriage driver sighed. "What do you mean, where? It"s the last stop of the carriage. Jeez, by the way, no matter how good Dimitrion’s public order is, how can Guest-nim sleep so defenselessly?"
The boy was fl.u.s.tered. "Last stop? Huh?! I was supposed to get at Dimitrion City Hall!"
Seeing the boy hastening, the carriage driver sighed and pointed to a bag. "Rather than that, you"d better check if your luggage is intact. Even if security has improved since the owner of the b.l.o.o.d.y land settled in Dimitrion, it doesn’t mean petty thieves have disappeared."
Once he saw the bag, the boy scratched the back of his head and smiled lightly. "Hehe, it"s okay. I don"t keep important things in my bag." It only had jerky, coat, extra wagon tickets, notebooks, and ballpoint pens.
"Excuse me, this carriage has a circular route, so if I stay on it, wouldn"t I go back to Dimitrion City Hall?"
Maybe because he had slept well the entire way, he didn"t think he would be able to sleep anymore.
"That"s right," the carriage driver said and reached out his hand.
"What?" The boy tilted his head because he didn"t know what the carriage driver"s hand meant.
The carriage driver frowned and said, "Carriage ticket. Yours was a one-way ticket, so you have to pay more to go."
"Oh! I see.” He searched the bag to take out the extra carriage tickets he had put in his bag. "Huh? What?" He couldn"t find them.
Seeing the fl.u.s.tered boy, the carriage driver clicked his tongue. "Tsk, tsk, you slept so soundly you got robbed.”
Tickets for carriages traveling around Dimitrion were on the very expensive end. Tourists dressed in foreign clothes such as the boy often bought carriage tickets in bundles, so they were often targeted by carriage ticket thieves. The boy"s carriage tickets were probably already sold to other foreigners near the immigration gate.
Still, the boy thought it was fortunate. The most expensive thing in his bag was a coat made of fabric woven from dragon mane, which was still there. If you asked if the coat was important, it wasn’t in his hometown because it was common.
The boy smiled awkwardly and asked, "Uh, do you sell carriage tickets here, too?"
The carriage driver shot the boy a pathetic look. "No. Since this is the last stop, there are only things like horse food like hay, carriage repair nails, and extra wheels."
The boy became solemn. "Then where can I buy a carriage ticket?”
The boy had only been once to Dimitrion via the Empire, which was the closest to the place he lived in, let alone been to other countries. So there was no way he would know the way.
The carriage driver pondered and asked, "Your destination is the city hall?"
"Yes. To be exact, it"s my uncle"s store nearby."
"Then it would be better to just walk from here. The nearest ticket office is next to the city hall."
"Oh! Is that so?" He cheered up.
Since the nearest ticket office was near the city hall, it meant that it was not very far from here.
"If you go to the right from the main gate of the maintenance shop, you will find a big road, and if you turn to the left corner from there and follow the main road, you will see the city hall building from a distance," the carriage driver explained.
The boy took his coat out of the bag, put it on, and got off the carriage. "Thank you! I"ll return your favor if you come to my uncle"s store! Ah, my name is Uranos!” After shouting that, he quickly ran toward the maintenance shop"s main gate and disappeared.
"Hey!"
He called, but the boy had disappeared in a blink of an eye. He muttered to himself, "Hey, I need to know the name of your uncle"s shop to find it. Wait, does he even know what the city hall building looks like?”
While the carriage driver was brooding, the boy had run for a long time and past the city hall building.
And that"s how he reached the city-state border of Dimitrion.
-o-
After a big adventure on the border with Cherrell, a small kingdom adjacent to Dimitrion, Uranos returned to the very city hall he had pa.s.sed by before.
He looked up at the city hall building, which was only large in size but did not have any unique characteristics, and took out a crumpled note from the pocket s.p.a.ce. He had memorized all of the notes because he had looked at them over and over again, but there was still a risk of getting lost because it was his first trip. In particular, he was more careful because he got lost and got caught up in an incident just now.
"Let"s see, 75 meters to the right from the main gate of the city hall, and 15 meters around the corner along the toy store."
Following the instructions, he met a wall at a dead end.
"When you meet the wall, put your hand on the fifth brick from the right and the third brick from the top and inject mana. At this time, the mana wavelength should be between 50 and 75 hertz, and the intensity around 100 or so of international standard units, three times a second."
As he followed what was written in the corner of the instructions, a large hole appeared on the right that people could come in and out of.
"Ohhh! That"s amazing!"
He entered the hole, it led to a place blocked with high walls on all sides. It had a small garden and a two-story building that was small to be called a mansion and large to be called an ordinary house. A large signboard was hung at the entrance of the building.
Uranos looked at the signboard and smiled brightly. "I think I"ve come to the right place. But since it"s the main shop, are there a lot of stores? As expected, Uncle Chief does things on a big scale."
As he entered the building with a grin, a strange mana pa.s.sed by his whole body.
"Wow!"
The interior of the building was very s.p.a.cious, unlike when viewed from the outside.
"Is it s.p.a.ce expansion magic? How many times is it magnified? 100 times? 120 times magnification? Amazing!"
As Uranos looked around in excitement, his curiosity was answered.
"It is 1275 times magnification. This is the lobby, and there"s more s.p.a.ce inside."
In response to the sudden answer, he turned his head to confirm the owner of the voice.
The beautiful red-haired girl with white wings behind her back flashed a business smile.
"Wow, pretty. Is she from the Bird Tribe?" he muttered his innermost thoughts.
The girl frowned. "Guest-nim, can you tell us the purpose of your visit?"
"Oh! I... I"m Uranos! I"m here to meet the president!"
"The president? If you came here, and not the company housing, it doesn’t seem like you made an appointment. May I know the reason?"
"My mother asked me to deliver a letter to the president...”
When Uranos took out the letter from his pocket, the girl was surprised and spread the wings behind her back wide.
"Did you say your name is Uranos?"
"Yes!"
In response to the lively answer, she wrote something in a notebook and put mana into her bracelet.
"Summon Chirps. Please deliver the note to the head of security.”
"Ohhhh! It"s an alchemic life form!" Uranos looked at the white bird flying fast with a note in its mouth. He thought it looked just like the bird that sat in his mother’s office in his hometown.
"Please come inside. I will take you to the reception room." The Bird Tribe girl folded her wings and guided him.
Uranos followed her looking around the shop curiously.