Chapter 105: Want to See the Outside World
Rast put away the Chronicles of the Silver Wing and placed it in the bookshelf beside the bedchamber.
On the soft, white bed, the girl with ice-blue hair still held the pillow tightly in her arms.
Her eyes looked dazed yet dazzling, and Rast could see the flickering candlelight on the nightstand reflected in them.
Helen was still immersed in the story Rast had just told from the Chronicles of the Silver Wing, the tale of the knight Lyle and the Plague Witch, unable to snap out of it even though she had read this fairy tale countless times before.
『Have you seen the places Lyle visited in the story?』
Just when Rast thought Her Majesty the Queen had fallen asleep, he saw ice-blue specks of light begin to dance in the air before him.
Unlike the swift appearance of characters when Helen issued commands, the formation of words from the blue light this time was slow, carrying a hint of hesitation and uncertainty.
“Yeah.”
Rast nodded. “I’ve seen them.”
“Those places outside, beyond this palace, are nothing more than ordinary landscapes.”
Perhaps it was because he, like Helen, had also been imprisoned in Deep Blue Port for three hundred years—Rast sharply sensed the reason behind her hesitation.
All along, this lofty queen who was, in truth, like a caged bird... her understanding of the world was based solely on her fairy tale books.
Especially Chronicles of the Silver Wing, whose first half was a travelogue in which the protagonist Lyle journeyed across the continent with an amnesiac girl, experiencing the customs and cultures of various lands.
Helen loved this story dearly—partly because the romance between the main characters moved her deeply.
And also because that travelogue in the first half was the only way she could imagine what the outside world might look like.
On countless starless nights, Helen would sit on her bed clutching her pillow, flipping through the fairy tale by dim candlelight.
Relying on those rows of black-and-white words, she would fantasize about becoming Lyle, the young knight in Chronicles of the Silver Wing, or the witch... embarking on a pilgrimage across the continent.
She dreamed of traveling through the imagined world in the storybook, painting vivid pictures in her mind of the thousands of rivers and mountains, the resplendent galaxy described in its pages.
But in the end, Chronicles of the Silver Wing was just a fantasy, a fabrication—stories from different fairy tales often contradicted each other.
Helen had always longed to confirm whether the world she imagined from those words was real.
However, having lived in the palace for so long, the only people she could interact with were the maids—
And those maids were also residents of the Paradise.
Most had been in the palace for a long time and knew little about the outside world.
Their remaining memories had long since blurred in the eternal passage of time and could not provide the answers Helen sought.
She yearned for the outside world, yet at the same time feared that the real world would be entirely different from the one she had fantasized about, unable to bear the emotional blow from that contrast.
That was why, when Rast appeared, her questions were filled with hesitation, like someone too timid to approach a long-awaited home.
But in the end, her longing and curiosity triumphed over fear.
The ice-blue letters slowly gathered in the air.
『Then... deep in the ocean, do mermaids who sing beautifully and like to bewitch sailors really exist?』
That was the biggest crisis the protagonists faced early in Chronicles of the Silver Wing.
While sailing, the ship's crew was enchanted by the mermaids’ singing, causing a shipwreck.
They ended up stranded on a deserted island... and after countless hardships, they finally reunited.
Along the way, they also met a mermaid princess, gained the merfolk’s friendship, and the mermaid tribe even played a role in the story’s final battle.
“They do exist. Both the Siren race and the merfolk are real.”
Rast recalled the records from the Tower of Arcana.
“Back when human civilization entered the Age of Exploration, there were frequent shipwrecks due to sirens and merfolk singing near sea routes. So humans started sending hunting ships to carry out large-scale exterminations of the two races.”
“Prolonged hunting and targeting caused the numbers of both sirens and merfolk to drop drastically. For a long time, they could only be found in remote ocean areas.”
“Later, as human civilization stepped into the Information Age, advanced technology significantly reduced the occurrence of shipwrecks. People gradually recognized the importance of biodiversity and began enforcing policies to protect endangered sirens and merfolk.”
“Today, their populations have started increasing again. However, there are laws strictly forbidding them from singing near popular shipping routes.”
“So if you want to hear their singing, you’ll likely have to go to their ancestral homeland to do so.”
“The sirens’ homeland lies in the deepest parts of the ocean, but for someone with your power, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
『Then... do airships really exist?』
On the soft, white bed, Helen hugged her pillow, and the drowsiness in her eyes had completely vanished.
She tilted her head to listen, as ice-blue words began dancing in the air before Rast’s eyes once again.
“They really do exist.”
Rast nodded. “Older airship technology was rather flashy and impractical, but recent advancements in rune matrix technology have led many nations and powers to begin mass adoption.”
『What about goblins? Are goblin nests truly that terrifying? And is it true that no matter how powerful a princess knight is, once she enters one, she’ll never make it out alive?』
What kind of strange things have made their way into your fairy tales...?
Rast shook his head. “That’s pure artistic exaggeration. The goblins, whose original form is the gremlin race, do exist, but those princess knight and goblin stories... were entirely fabricated to satisfy certain peculiar fetishes.”
“In reality, while gremlins are a bit hot-tempered, their alchemy skills are top-notch. They’ve established a flourishing gremlin nation underground, with their own independent social and cultural systems.”
“They’re absolutely not the drooling green-skinned monsters living in caves, who can't defeat anyone except prideful princess knights.”
...
Their back-and-forth conversation continued for quite a long time.
It finally ended when the white candle on the round table had nearly burned down.
“Your Majesty, it’s time for bed.”
“Here’s your warm milk before sleep.”
Rast poured the kept-warm milk into a glass and brought it to the bedside.
He stood by, waiting for the queen who loved bedtime stories to finish her milk and fall asleep, so he could take the glass away to clean it.
On the soft, white bed, the girl with ice-blue hair hugged her pillow and blinked her violet eyes at the glass of warm milk… a flicker of reluctance flashed in her eyes, as if she wanted to keep talking a little longer.
But in the end, she obediently accepted the glass from Rast, following his suggestion to go to sleep.
After spending a long time together, Rast had discovered that this Queen of the Underworld was actually easier to get along with than he had imagined...
Her mental age was relatively young, and her relationship with Rast felt less like “Her Majesty the Queen and her attendant,” and more like the noble lady Shatia and her old butler Sebastian.
Helen sipped the milk in small mouthfuls. Just then, the room darkened—the white candle had finally burned out.
Rast stood up, intending to change the candle.
Although the bedchamber was now pitch black, the “Instinct” of the Chariot sequence and the “Pathfinder” of the Tower sequence ensured he wouldn’t get lost in the dark.
But just then, Rast heard a soft sigh behind him.
It wasn’t text forming in the air, nor was it speech—just a long, breath-like exhalation, almost like a whisper of admiration.
Rast turned back, following the girl’s gaze toward the window in the darkness...
Suddenly, a plume of pale-blue firework soared into the black night sky, accompanied by a faint crackling sound.
When it reached its peak, the firework burst apart in the sky.
It turned into countless glowing lotus blossoms that bloomed in the air, then fell to the ground as scattered flecks of light.
Above was a pitch-black sky dome, below were rolling hills, and in between was a silver-white rain of light, like a meteor shower from the heavens.
The falling light illuminated the mountain range—on one side was the sea, and on the other, the brightly lit royal capital.
As the kingdom of the dead, the Paradise’s capital was supposed to be solemn and quiet at night—fireworks were not allowed.
But recently, too many refugees had flooded into the capital. Since they weren’t blessed, they weren’t bound by the rules of the underworld... No one knew who had brought fireworks from the outside world and set them off on the hills beyond the city, lighting up the night sky.
Helen stared in a daze at the fireworks outside the window.
Among the fire-lit mountains, there were lush forests—identical to the place where the protagonists lived in seclusion at the end of Chronicles of the Silver Wing.
The rain of light reflected in her eyes, shimmering with the radiance of stained glass—like a river of stars.
Slowly, her dull and lifeless gaze grew lively again—
Like a kitten seeing its cage door swing open.
Rast felt a faint tickle in his palm—slender fingers were writing in his hand, cool to the touch.
『Want to see the outside world』
“Alright. Tomorrow, let’s put on disguises and go out to play,” Rast said softly.
He, too, was gazing at the fireworks scattered across the night sky.
But his gaze was deep and still—like a shadowed pool that devoured the light, lost in thought.