Chapter 73
By now she had grown used to organizing the old books in the Mage Tower’s library.
It turned out the tower’s library was alive.
If a desired book sat high on a shelf and she reached for it, the shelf would slide down by itself so April could see it.
In an instant the shelves would rustle up and down, and when April gasped at a book right in front of her, Lucael added an explanation.
“Sometimes the library even recommends books when it sees you picking one. Not helpful to me at all.”
At Lucael’s remark, the shelf—perhaps feeling snubbed—began to tremble as if protesting.
When Lucael glared sharply, the shelf fell silent like nothing had happened.
Lucael naturally knew the contents of any old book, so nothing could amuse him; but April found that many of the library’s recommended books matched her tastes.
It truly was the world’s greatest library.
After finishing her letter, April missed Liriana and Jaina even more.
She set herself a small goal.
“As soon as I learn portal magic, I’ll go home! And that day, I’ll sleep in Liriana’s room for once and tell scary stories.”
April wanted to tell her sisters the tale Anna had told her—the story of a headless chicken said to wander the farm at night.
She imagined Liriana might be so frightened she’d cry.
Jaina would put on a brave face, folding her arms and saying such things don’t exist, but at dawn she might wake April up and ask to go to the bathroom together.
And Helene?
Helene would scoff and calmly argue why a headless chicken couldn’t exist.
“How would it breathe without a head?” she’d say.
April hadn’t known Helene was so clever.
She had more than once secretly laughed while overhearing Helene’s mutterings.
“My dress—what on earth is it made of so many layers? Couldn’t it just be one layer down to the knees?”
“We should have vacuum cleaners that suck up dust, not dust beaters!”
“This mansion has too many stairs. Are there no moving stairs that go on their own?”
Thinking of Helene made April suddenly crave Helene’s cooking.
The Mage Tower’s meals were feast-worthy because of magic, but Helene’s food had an addictive quality.
The spicy, the sweet, the salty—April found herself salivating without realizing it.
When they met again she’d ask for that chewy long bread that used to come with red soup—was it called tteokbokki?
But she couldn’t write such things in a letter. …At least not in this one.
When April had finished the letter, she stretched and greeted the full moon outside the window, which flaunted its presence loudly in the sky.
Jaina and Luighart returned safely to the camp, but the atmosphere there was like a funeral.
It might indeed have been a funeral—after all, their comrade, the youngest soldier Melland, had been devoured by the giant monster.
Hearing the news from Jaina and Luighart, the soldiers held a spot outside the camp to mourn Melland.
They placed Melland’s favorite apple pie and flowers there.
Every soldier wore a somber expression.
It seemed they had lost not only a comrade but also their will to fight.
“There’s no way we can face that monster. We’ll just end up dead too…”
No one wanted to face that creature again.
The soldiers were still shaken by the sight of Phemos.
Fear had frozen them; some couldn’t even draw their swords.
Anyone could be the next to be eaten by Phemos.
A middle-aged knight who’d bragged about his long service tried to justify his fear.
“Look at the Crown Prince—he ran off at dawn because he never wants to see that giant monster again, right?”
After returning to the camp, the middle-aged knight could not stop drinking wine.
He spoke and drank again.
After they had been utterly defeated by the giant Phemos and returned, Luighart had vanished at dawn and only came back when night fell.
Jaina, who was a guard knight, had asked to join him wherever he went, but Luighart coldly refused.
The other knights concluded that Luighart had fled because he couldn’t face them.
“I wish the Crown Prince would just admit his incompetence and run to his father, the Emperor, begging to be saved.”
That had somehow become the soldiers’ only hope.
The defeated men who had completely lost their will blamed everything on the Crown Prince.
“It’s not us—if it had been Duke Zighart instead of the Crown Prince, we’d have had a chance!”
At this point Jaina felt pity for Luighart.
She wanted to lash out at them for their words, but knew making a scene would only let Luighart hear it.
So she glared at them with a killing look that said if they made another peep she would cut them down.
The more chaotic the situation, the more Jaina’s desire to stand by Luighart and face Phemos grew, instead of fearing it.
She began to understand why Luighart felt such inferiority toward Duke Zighart.
When she was young, Jaina had resented being a head taller than Liriana.
She had been jealous of Liriana’s small, delicate frame.
If their father hadn’t told her that she too was strong and special in her own way, she would have kept envying her sister.
Luighart had no one to tell him that.
Before going to her own quarters, Jaina checked Luighart’s.
There was still no light in Luighart’s tent; he had left at dawn and not yet returned.
“…Jaina.”
Someone was shaking her.
Drowsy, Jaina rubbed her eyes to see who it was.
It was none other than Luighart.
From the bluish light filtering through the tent, it was still before dawn.
It was one thing to be urgent, but to enter someone’s tent at this hour!
But clearly he must have a reason.
“…Your Highness?”
“I finally figured it out!”
Luighart spoke with a face full of joy.
Everyone had expected him to be crushed and hopeless, thinking they could never beat the giant monster; his discovery dashed that expectation.
Seeing Luighart’s bright expression, Jaina silently hoped this was not a dream.
“…What? What do you mean?”
“I finally figured out how to kill the giant monster Phemos.”
It was the confident face she’d not seen in a long time.
Seeing it so vividly, Jaina smiled with relief.
It was not a dream.
Luighart had been researching how to kill Phemos all this time.
They rode for more than an hour to the place Luighart had led them.
They arrived at a cliff where the path was cut off and the forest grew thick—nothing special at first glance.
Why here?
Jaina wondered if he had lost his way and watched Luighart for signs.
Luighart dismounted and sat on a nearby rock.
He opened the packed lunch he had carried.
The Crown Prince Luighart ate the same simple food as the soldiers: two boiled eggs, jerky, and bread.
While Jaina looked puzzled, Luighart, perfectly at ease, handed her one of the eggs.
“You should eat breakfast.”
“…Th-thank you.”
Jaina took the egg in a daze.
“There was a brilliant sage from the East among the academy’s professors. He compared fighting an unbeatable opponent to cracking an egg on a rock.”
Luighart mimed smashing the egg on the rock.
An unbeatable opponent.
He meant Phemos and them.
That meant they were the egg.
Jaina pictured an egg colliding with a rock.
The egg would shatter into countless pieces; the rock would remain unscathed.
The cruel analogy fit too well, and Jaina nodded.
“So I thought: what could let the egg beat the rock?”
Luighart then actually cracked his egg on the rock.
Now fully drawn in, Jaina was surprised to see the egg crack but not shatter completely.
“Ah, don’t worry—that’s a boiled egg.”
Luighart peeled the shell away to reveal the white and took a bite.
An egg would never win against a rock by colliding with it.
Conversely, for the egg to win, it must never strike the rock at all.
Luighart admitted, though it bruised his pride, that he was weak.
Not only that he couldn’t use a sword, but that a small number of weak soldiers could not possibly defeat the giant Phemos.
Even if they attacked en masse, the result would be the same.
Even hundreds of eggs thrown at a rock would leave the rock intact.
Only a rock could crack a rock.
So what could injure the giant monster would be the giant itself.
Luighart had learned something the day they faced Phemos.
Although Phemos had terrifying strength and ferocity, he was not particularly clever.
The monster relied more on animal senses—sight, hearing, smell—than intellect.
When they’d changed direction quickly and plunged into a reed bed while being chased, Phemos braked sharply and failed to follow Luighart and Jaina.
It had kept running forward and even tripped, despite no human ahead to chase.
If it had been a cliff ahead…
Since then Luighart had spent every day wandering the forest, searching for cliffs high enough that Phemos would fall to his death.
And they had found this place.
Luighart looked down at the cliff.
The drop to the ground was far below—five, no, six times taller than Phemos’s own height, it seemed.
Even the giant Phemos, if he fell here, would not come out unscathed.
If he died instantly it would be perfect, but even if only his legs broke, attacking him then would give them a chance.
