Chapter 32 — A Legacy, Truly a Legacy
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
To be honest, Rebecca was truly hopeless at matters like this. Even after Gao Yang had explained it to her once, she only half understood—but one thing she did grasp: her ancestor seemed to hold no great fondness for the present king, Francis II.
"Hostility would be overstating it, but vigilance is absolutely necessary," Gao Yang answered when he heard Rebecca's question. He glanced at Amber standing nearby, but spoke openly nonetheless. "The Second Dynasty—don't forget that it is the 'Second Dynasty' we live under now. For a royal house whose legitimacy was never quite beyond question, the Cecil family can be called the descendants of founding heroes, but equally... people of the previous dynasty. Even if we harbor no such intentions, Francis II, as king, cannot help but worry about it—and his worries are what dictate my vigilance."
"So you're going to make trouble for His Majesty the King?" Rebecca asked, blinking.
"No, I don't actually want to make trouble for him," Gao Yang shrugged. "I'm just stirring things up."
Rebecca: "Huh?!"
Gao Yang really couldn't find a way to explain this to Rebecca, so he simply changed the subject. "Never mind—none of that matters. Let's continue what we were discussing. Amber..."
Before he could give any instruction, Amber raised both hands to show she understood. "I know, I know—go keep watch outside, right? Ugh, what a drudgery-filled life..."
"No," Gao Yang raised an eyebrow. "What I mean is you can stay right here. Of course, if you find it boring, you're welcome to go back to your room and rest first. After all the commotion tonight, you must be tired?"
Amber stared at Gao Yang in disbelief. "Hey, is this sudden burst of kindness for real?"
Then she shook her head and shuffled over to the desk. "I'm not going back! I want to see what you two are actually up to... Say, this isn't really about dividing up an inheritance, is it?"
Gao Yang shook his head, ignoring the half-elf, and once again placed the platinum disc on the table.
"You said earlier this is a key," Rebecca said, still remembering what Gao Yang hadn't finished explaining. "Could it be our family's secret treasure?"
Amber's ears perked up at once, though she still made a show of glancing around—as fake as could be.
Gao Yang smiled. "It is indeed a treasure—a hidden vault at the southern border, but it was originally prepared for the Kingdom of Anseth. Of course, to the kingdom of today, it probably no longer counts as any great fortune. But for the pioneer expedition that had just fled to this land back then, it was half the wealth of the expeditionary army."
Rebecca's eyes went wide.
"It was originally a safeguard for the Kingdom of Anseth—after all, in those days, no one knew what the next day would bring," Gao Yang said, revealing the true purpose of this journey to the capital. "The pioneer expedition fled north all the way from the wastes of Gondor. As we moved, we took in and gathered the surviving remnants of the wastes while collecting all manner of resources, and so the column grew larger, more bloated, more conspicuous—until, while crossing the Dark Mountains, a great horde of monsters that had been roaming out from the wastes caught our trail. A host guarding civilians through the mountains, of course, could not outpace those monsters that never slept, and so a bitter battle ensued. The losses were heavy. When we tallied our losses afterward, Charles and I realized one thing: those monsters would not let it go. If we continued hauling our entire baggage train over the mountains, the whole column would likely die on the road. So the two of us made a decision...
"We left behind a portion of the baggage that would seriously slow the column, hiding it deep within an abandoned frontier fortress, and we laid powerful seals upon the vault. Then the column lightened its load and pressed on north.