Chapter 835 — Visitors from the North

"Twenty years ago... it was a closed-off age," Byron sighed, then regarded the red-haired dragonkin before him with a somewhat odd look. "So you did not die that year—falling from the cliff..."

"Did you not fail to find my body?" Asharena waved a hand. "That cliff was far 'lovelier' than Dragonleap Crag."

"So you left so suddenly that year because you had to return to the Holy Dragon Duchy?"

"What else?" Asharena laughed briefly. "I had slipped away in secret to begin with, but one cannot slip away in secret one's whole life. When word came that my father was gravely ill, I had no choice but to 'take my leave' of you in that manner. I am sorry, Byron... Captain. I was very young then, too."

"To be honest, if twenty years had not passed, I fear I would have come to blows with you," Byron said, glancing at the dragonkin. "That 'joke' of yours was a little too much."

"...What are our old companions doing now?" After a moment of silence, Asharena swirled the wine cup in her hand, watching the surface ripple in layer upon layer within the crystal vessel, and asked, as though casually, "You became an imperial general—then the others... must be doing well too?"

"...They are all gone. A few years after you left... it is all in the past now."

A sudden silence fell between the two old acquaintances.

Twenty years of separation had set every one of them on a different road, and an unexpected reunion after twenty years could work no miracle of fate—it brought only an astonishing coincidence, and gave those caught up in it a chance to recall the old days; and once the recalling was done, nothing remained but a sigh apiece.

Asarena raised her wine cup and drained the last of what was in it, then sighed softly. "The drink of the human world is still as thin as ever, but this flavor I have not tasted in twenty years... tasting it again now, it is not so bad after all."

Byron laughed. "Don't get misty-eyed over a false memory. We were so poor twenty years ago—how could we ever have drunk fine wine like this?"

"True enough," Asarena said with a smile of her own. "Only I never thought that wandering through the human world back then would one day make me a member of a delegation, and that the one waiting to receive us would be the 'Captain' of more than twenty years ago... Perhaps this is a good beginning after all."

She lifted her eyes to look at the middle-aged knight standing before her, dressed in a crisp officer's full-dress uniform, sash and medals hung upon him.

The human world changed so fast. The nobles of twenty years ago... did not dress like this.

"Tell me about the present," she said with a smile. "How have these last few years treated you?"

Pea's face surfaced in Byron's mind, and the knight, now nearing fifty, could not help but show a smile mingled with gladness and relief. He nodded. "My daughter can already call me papa..."

...

"Ah—choo!"

Pea, sitting in the chair, suddenly let out a great sneeze, giving Pi Yun and Kamal and the others nearby, who were busy adjusting equipment, a considerable fright.

"Caught a cold?" Pi Yun reflexively reached out and felt Pea's forehead. "Doesn't seem to be a fever..."

"It's nothing, my nose just tickled all of a sudden," Pea said, waggling her head from side to side, the synthesized voice coming through the speaker. "I wonder if Father's side has met the envoy from the Holy Dragon Principality yet—by my reckoning it should be about time... I hope he can at least be serious on formal occasions and not always act so unreliable... Ah, though Grand Regent Victoria is over there too... Oh, that's right, Grandpa Pi Yun, do you have a magic-net terminal here that can reach the Northern Border directly? Wait a moment—"

"Stop, stop, stop—" Pi Yun's head was already aching before Pea had even finished, and he hurriedly waved a hand to cut off the girl, who of late had grown ever fonder of rambling. "Don't get yourself so worked up. The Duke of the Northern Border will certainly handle everything properly. As for you, it would be better to focus on the matter at hand."

"Oh." Pea pursed her lips and sat obediently in the chair, letting the technicians fuss behind her with the metal apparatus attached to the back of her neck, only unable to keep from shifting her head now and then when it tickled.

"Things are looking good," Kamal said from the side, watching over the operation of the Neural Thorn, a relaxed and cheerful pale blue light flowing through his form. "This is the final check, Pea. Congratulations—from now on you can use this thing with peace of mind. Of course, since it is still a new technology, you must keep an eye on its condition as usual, and come to us at once if anything unusual happens."

"Don't worry, I'll remember~~" Pea said in a rather lighthearted tone as she hopped down from the chair; then her gaze swept around the laboratory and came to rest, almost of its own accord, on another chair in the testing area nearby—there sat another test subject, likewise with a Neural Thorn connected to the back of his head, but unlike her, he was a man in a researcher's white robe, looking like a technical specialist.

"Is he testing the Neural Thorn too?" Pea asked curiously, looking that way.

Kamal came to Pea's side, and from within his pale blue arcane body came a gentle, pleasant chime:

"Researcher Cohen Bell is working on a different project."