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Translator: M.S
Chapter: 56
Chapter Title: Magic Armor
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Iodine.
The name surprised me.
Lorraine seemed to have misunderstood my reaction.
“Yes, Iodine Serom! The Knight of the Azure Lightning. You don’t know her? A swordsman like you can’t possibly not know the Knight of the Azure Lightning. Are you going to keep making me nervous like this?”
Iodine Serom.
It had to be the same Iodine. My senior.
But the Knight of the Azure Lightning?
‘Come to think of it… she said it’s the year 4681, right?’
So eight years had passed.
Since Iodine and I went through all that hardship in Glowingsteel.
Had she earned such a cool title in that time?
Does that mean she’s already thirty-two?
She’s older than me.
A wave of emotions washed over me.
In the distant future, I had already seen her gravestone… but here, she was doing well.
She must be even stronger now, right? Has she reached the peak of the Expert class?
‘Will I be able to see her?’
She said she hired me because Iodine couldn’t make it… so it might be difficult.
It was a little disappointing.
Lost in these thoughts, I momentarily forgot.
The woman before me, and the current situation.
“Haa…”
It was Lorraine’s sigh that brought me back.
“Sir Lansen Vanroah?”
“Yes.”
I answered quickly.
From the looks of it, she seemed to be my employer.
“You’re a 1st-class mercenary, so your fee is quite expensive, you know? And you’re even paid weekly.”
“I suppose so.”
I didn’t know the details, but I figured it was something like that.
Lorraine smiled brightly.
“But if you don’t live up to that price… you’re fired immediately. Is that all right?”
I wondered if that was something to say with such a smile…
“Of course.”
I accepted.
The fee wasn’t important to me anyway. And honestly, I was confident.
“Good. Then let’s get to work right away. You’re not tired, are you? Even if you are, it can’t be helped. Every minute, every second is money, after all.”
Lorraine strode past me.
I’m 185 cm tall, but she didn’t seem that much shorter.
She must be at least 176 cm.
With her tall frame and the long, white hem of her clothes fluttering as she walked, she cut quite a figure.
*Clank!*
She opened a door.
“Ah…”
Only then did I realize.
Why a faint vibration and tremor had been ceaseless since I arrived.
Beyond the door, a half-excavated mountain came into view.
The scenery was moving slightly.
Which meant,
The building I was standing in,
“Welcome! To Lorraine’s Moving Research Lab!”
was moving along the side of the mountain.
My goodness.
A moving building.
Is this truly the Age of Magic?
But that wasn’t the only surprise.
“You know our lab develops Magic Armor, right?”
Magic Armor? A type of armor, I guessed.
But Lorraine, assuming I already knew, skipped the explanation.
“From now on, Sir Lansen, you will be wearing our Magic Armor prototype and exploring the ancient ruins buried in that mountain.”
One word snagged in my mind.
‘Ancient ruins?’
Ancient?
It was a strange thing to say.
Because this *was* the ancient past, wasn’t it?
A full 10,000 years ago.
Searching for the ancient in the ancient. It sounded incredibly contradictory.
But the concept of ‘ancient’ is always relative.
Even in the ancient past of 10,000 years ago, there could have been an even older past referred to as the ‘ancient era.’
“Your mission is to find samples there that will aid our research. From none other than the relics of the Mythical Era!”
Wow.
The Mythical Era.
Well, that settles it. It was certainly more ancient than the Age of Magic.
Some crazed scholars in my time would occasionally make such claims, only to be shouted down. That a civilization more advanced than the Age of Magic had existed. That it was the Mythical Era.
…
But it was actually real?!
***
Everything here defied my expectations.
To begin with, this wasn't even just a moving building.
It was more accurate to call this place a single village.
A moving village…!
*Rumble—*
Giant steel wheels, called caterpillar tracks, crushed the earth as they moved forward.
White steam billowed like clouds from tall, tower-like smokestacks.
Wooden suspension bridges were strung about like ladders, connecting building to building.
But what was that?
On the largest central building, a massive, hollow metal rod-like object jutted straight forward.
“See that? Over there at the academic hall! That is! The pride of our research lab that can neutralize any threat. A 10-lepim Mana Cannon!”
Ah, so it was a cannon. A weapon, it seemed.
I decided to just leave it at that. I wouldn’t understand it anyway.
Glowingsteel, being a city of knights, had mostly been filled with things I could recognize on sight… but this place, which dealt with magic in earnest, was full of things that were completely foreign.
Even,
Wasn’t the long, white garment Lorraine was wearing a design I had never seen before?
But it looked quite cool.
“My clothes are cool, right?”
Lorraine spun around to look at me.
Hm. She’s quick-witted.
By the way, she suddenly seemed to be in a good mood.
Just a moment ago, she was subtly taking jabs at me. Why the change?
“This is from the Mythical Era. Well, to be precise, I made it by copying a relic from the Mythical Era. Hehe. The great mages of the Mythical Era all wore clothes like this, you know?”
The Mythical Era.
The resonance of those words was different.
Excited?
Radiant?
She uttered the words, filled with a certain tremor.
I found myself asking without thinking.
“You seem to like it. The Mythical Era.”
“Of course! A civilization from 50,000 years ago was far more advanced than our own… isn’t that just mystical?”
*Whoosh!* She came so close I could smell her shampoo.
But… 50,000 years?
By our continent’s calendar, that would be 60,000 years ago.
‘The Mythical Era. It was an absurdly long time ago.’
A civilization from that long ago was more advanced than this brilliant Age of Magic?
How could that be?
This must be why the scholars of my time all dismissed the Mythical Era as a product of imagination, a fiction. Whenever a scholar who seriously believed in it appeared, they would all pounce on him.
But, ta-da.
Turns out it was real.
“Magic Armor itself originated from a Mythical Era relic! Master Dalstein is a true genius! He analyzed a relic from the Mythical Era that no one had understood until then! And can you believe he established that incredible theory when he was only twenty?”
As the topic turned to something she loved, Lorraine grew more and more fervent.
“They say the moment Master Dalstein thought of it, he ran out of his bath naked. Do you know what he shouted? ‘Rising! Thunder! Kick! Rising Thunder Kick!!’ He kept running around shouting that. Isn’t that hilarious? What does that even mean? Hahaha!”
She chattered on.
“He was probably just so excited he shouted the first thing that came to mind, right? But still, Rising Thunder Kick… pfft!”
She babbled on.
She seemed like a completely different person.
Her way of speaking was different from before.
She was incredibly talkative.
“Anyway, thanks to him, we were able to analyze the armor worn by the warriors of the Mythical Era, and that was the beginning of Magic Armor! That’s why the mage I admire most is Master Dalstein!”
Lorraine didn’t stop talking the entire time she was guiding me.
The history of Magic Armor. The great mages who laid its foundation. The theories applied to it, and its limitations.
Amidst the flood of information, I felt only one thing.
…I’m hungry.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten.
Of course,
since she was currently my client.
My mouth mechanically chimed in.
“Oh.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Hmm.”
“I see.”
“Excuse me.”
Lorraine suddenly called out to me. Her eyes, which had been smiling brightly even when she was taking jabs at me, were now a little sharp.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?”
Ah.
Busted.
***
I stood with a somewhat sulking Lorraine in front of a building called the ‘Prototype Test Lab.’
She cleared her throat once, then smiled brightly again.
“Now, do you see that? That indentation in the mountain.”
Following her finger, I saw it.
A mountain with one side completely carved out, like a pudding someone had scooped with a spoon. A building was nestled inside the excavated part.
And from another angle, on the opposite side of the mountain, there was another small, excavated area. A building was faintly visible inside it as well.
Lorraine pointed to the smaller excavated area.
“That’s the newly discovered entrance. We found it with a new exploration magic.”
She really must love the Mythical Era.
Lorraine’s voice became fervent again.
“If we go in there, we can get much deeper into these massive ruins! And it’s surprisingly well-preserved!”
So her request was for me to go in there and bring back relics.
While also testing the Magic Armor prototype produced by the lab, by wearing it myself.
‘Ah… is this it?’
The moment I heard the explanation, a certainty struck me like lightning.
There, inside those ruins…
Isn’t there something related to the cult?
The Book of Fate would never send me to just any random place.
An incident was going to happen, it would be related to the cult, and it would definitely happen in those ruins.
“So, you see…”
A head of black and gold hair suddenly appeared before my nose.
Faint, light green eyes smiled sweetly.
Her attitude had changed again.
When talking about the Mythical Era, she was as excited as a child, but now her eyes were those of an adult calculating profit and loss.
“You’re a 1st-class mercenary, so I won’t doubt your swordsmanship. But, handling Magic Armor well is a different matter from sword skills, isn’t it? So we’re going to do a test first. A Magic Armor aptitude test!”
She was truly a person of many faces.
“I’ll tell you this in advance. You can’t be upset. If, by any chance, you don’t meet my standards, the contract will be terminated immediately. Of course, since this would be a termination due to Sir Lansen’s own fault, there would be no cancellation fee, right? In fact, I should probably mention in advance that we might even claim damages. This is business, so let’s not get our feelings hurt, okay?”
The terms were… quite vicious.
Still,
“As you wish.”
It wasn’t my problem.
I replied indifferently and entered the building.
It was a wide-open, circular structure.
Near the entrance, sleek breastplates were displayed in neat rows on stands.
In the spacious area behind them, various obstacles and metal scarecrows were arranged with plenty of room between them.
“Director, you’ve arrived.”
A man appeared suddenly and greeted her.
He carried himself with a disciplined air.
An old man with white hair, who looked good in a high-quality suit.
‘…He reminds me of the royal chamberlain.’
The royal chamberlain who had held the rear until the very end, letting us all escape…
This old man, with his refined demeanor and etiquette, reminded me of him. I felt a strange sense of fondness.
“Yes. Master Eodran. Are the preparations ready?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s begin immediately.”
“Yes.”
The old man called Eodran approached me.
“Sir Lansen? A pleasure to meet you. My name is Eodran. Please come this way. I will help you put on the Magic Armor.”
I followed him and saw the Magic Armor,
and I was a little disappointed.
‘It’s just a breastplate…?’
Of course, if it was armor imbued with magic, even a breastplate covering only the chest would be valuable enough…
And I could always find separate parts for the other areas…
But still, it was a bit of a letdown.
‘Full-body armor would have been much more expensive.’
The truth was, all I could think about right now was taking this thing called Magic Armor back to the modern era.
Whether Lorraine allowed it or not, I planned to sweep up as much as possible and take it to the future.
What could she do about it?
To me, this place was nothing short of a massive treasure vault.
If I wanted it, I would take it.
If she had a problem with it, she could try to live for 10,000 years and catch me.
With that mindset, I hadn’t blinked an eye when Lorraine went on about my fee or firing me.
When it came to being bad, I was probably worse.
Anyway, that’s why I was disappointed.
Full-body armor would sell for much more, but this was just a breastplate.
“We will begin the test with this one.”
Eodran took out the plainest, white breastplate.
‘It feels comfortable enough.’
I put on the Magic Armor and stood in the center of the test lab.
But when did that old man get over there?
Eodran was already presenting a refreshing-looking lemon drink to Lorraine.
His devoted appearance, courteously attending to her, truly reminded me of the old chamberlain.
…My nose is tingling again for no reason.
After taking a long sip of the drink, Lorraine began her explanation.
“First time with Magic Armor?”
“Yes.”
I had worn ancient magic armor before, but from what I’d heard on the way here, this Magic Armor seemed to be something quite different from typical magic armor.
“Then first, let’s activate it.”
“Yes.”
I answered calmly, but my heart was pounding.
Magic Armor, the source of Lorraine’s boundless pride.
Listening to her explanation, it didn’t seem like simple magic armor.
Just how good was its performance?
If I took this back to the modern era, would it help improve our forces?
My heart thumped with anticipation.
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