The Simulacrum - Chapter 90~ Part 1

Naoren’s handshake was firm, yet not overbearing. I tried to make mine the same, though I wasn’t sure I succeeded in the attempt. I’ve got a mark out of it either way, so I couldn’t exactly complain.

“Goodbye senior, and thank you for your teachings!” the small girl at our side grinned ear-to-ear and gave me yet another fist-against-palm salute. I had no idea why she was thankful, as I only shared a few common-sense platitudes with her, but if she was happy with that much, I wasn’t going to rain on her parade.

I expected that her lively voice would turn at least a few heads in the lobby, but the hotel staff and assorted Feilong personnel more or less ignored our little group gathered in front of the main entrance. Was it because they were placeholders, or because they were already used to the sight? I couldn’t tell. Though again, they didn’t even as much as glance our way since we stepped out of the elevator, so maybe they simply didn’t dare to dawdle around because Naoren was with us.

After my negotiations with the bespectacled clan leader finished, we headed over to the dueling room as promised. I half… two-thirds… fine, I totally expected to find Rinne and odango girl locked in a sparring match. To our surprise, they were amicably sitting on the mat-covered floor, with an array of empty fruit juice bottles and candy wrappers strewn between them, no doubt the victims of their discussion. After they cleaned that up, I was forced to play the role of a knowledgeable ‘senior’ for half an hour, and once the kid was happy, we said our farewells. Or would’ve, if not for Naoren insisting that it was traditional for the head of the clan to see off his guests at the gates, which in our case meant the hotel’s entrance.

“I hope our cooperation will prove both lasting and fruitful,” he told me, and after vacillating between just agreeing and telling him not to jinx it, I ultimately nodded along.

“Same here. If there are any new developments in the situation, I’ll inform you.”

“I’ll strive to do the same.”

We left it at that, and after saying our goodbyes, for real this time, I left through the door with Mountain Girl right behind me. It was already dark outside, and somehow, in the span of a few short hours, the weather went from fairly mild to bone-chillingly cold.

“We’re taking a shortcut,” I told the highly visible ninja, and she let out a thoughtful hum before pointing to our left.

“Rinne believes there should be a secular alley that way.”

“The word is secluded, and do you mean the one where we encountered the first mini-Chimera way back when?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good enough.” I picked up the pace, but even so, I figured it would take a couple of minutes to reach our destination. As such, I inquired, “So? What did you talk about with odango girl?”

“Does Leonard-dono mean Xiao-chan?” I nodded, and she considered her answer for a while. “We have discussed many things.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“We talked about martial arts, balance, and our favorite foods.”

“How am I not surprised… I guess that means you got along with her.” She let out a hum I interpreted as a yes. “What’s your impression of her?”

“Xiao is a smart child, and she is magnanimous. When there was only a single candy left, she gave it to Rinne, despite the blood of the mountain deities running thick in her veins.”

I had no idea what those two things had to do with each other, so I just said, “Meaning her draconic lineage is strong.”

“Yes.”

“… And? What else?”

“Her knowledge of Yin and Yang is also outstanding for one so young.”

“Did you really only talk about martial arts and food?”

“Yes. Mostly. She also asked some strange questions.”

That comment perked up my waning interest right away, and I pressed her.

“What exactly did she ask about?”

“She wanted to know if Rinne was betrothed to anyone. She also wanted to know what Rinne thought about Naoren Feilong.”

“… And how did you answer?”

“Rinne told her he seemed strong and wise.”

“I suppose the former is obvious, but where did ‘wise’ come from?” I asked with a frown, and my self-ascribed retainer gave one of her trademark ‘Is he dense or just messing with me?’ kind of looks.

“Naoren Feilong decided to befriend Leonard-dono, proving he possesses great wisdom.”

“Did you tell her this too?”

“Naturally. Rinne also expressed that Naoren was far more pleasant than Rinne expected. Xiao was really excited when Rinne said that, but Rinne doesn’t understand why.”

“It’s a mystery,” I uttered a touch ambivalently, though I naturally had my own ideas.

More importantly though, we reached our destination. The alley behind the large Chinese restaurant was more or less the same as I remembered. Plain, dim, and despite the rows of trash cans by the wall, completely clean. The fact that things were mostly spotless even after all this time was still immersion-breaking as ever, but at this point I was so used to it I’d probably get culture-shocked if I ever ran into a piece of litter on the street.

“Wait, Leonard-dono! Rinne will scout the perimeter first!”

Before I could react, Mountain Girl dashed into the alley and meticulously checked behind every thrash bin and garbage container.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“Cats,” she blurted out, only to freeze and nearly drop the lid in her hand. “Enemies! Rinne wanted to say enemies!”

“Inside a trash can,” I said a touch flatly.

“Yes! Leonard-dono must never underestimate the lengths foes could go to catch their target off-guard.”

“… Just admit you’re looking for cats. It’s already out of the bag.”

“No, Rinne definitely isn’t looking for any!” she denied, only to then immediately turn on a dime and add, “However, if any cats were to appear while in the process of searching for evildoers, Rinne would consider it a welcome coincidence.”

“Fine, fine. Keep looking then, but be quick about it. I can barely feel my toes in this cold.”

Mountain Girl paused what she was doing, and after a long moment, she put the lid back onto the trash bin she was inspecting and walked over to my side.

“In that case, Rinne is already finished.”

“Are you sure? You haven’t checked that container yet.”

“No. It is for plastic bottles only, so there’s no reason for them to be there. If there were any in the vicinity, they would’ve chosen to linger around the cans holding the leftovers from the restaurant.”

“Are we still talking about random enemies?”

“Yes,” she insisted, and I left it at that. “Should Rinne enter Leonard-dono’s shadow?”

“No need, let’s just go home.”

Saying so, I wrapped a phantom limb around her with practiced motions, and we both reappeared inside the reception area of the base. Maybe because I was chilled, but the room felt positively balmy, even though it had only minimal heating in the form of a single electric radiator. The heating system was still under construction, so most of the rooms were using these, with only the barracks and the communal areas getting a more robust heating solution. It was good enough for now, as we had lots of other things to focus on, but since I was still a little cold, I urged Mountain Girl to move along, and we entered into the considerably warmer central hall.

“My liege.” The moment I stepped through the door, I was greeted by Arnwald, apparently passing by just by pure chance. I waved to him, and he probably mistook my greeting for something else, as he quickly made his way over to us. I didn’t mind, as I wanted to talk with him later anyway. “Did you succeed in your negotiations?” I was just about to wonder how he knew where we were when he added, “Sister Rinne said you were to visit the head of the Feilongs.”

“We did, and we came to an agreement,” I told him while gesturing for him to follow, and we began walking towards the lounge area, where, by the looks of it, Brang was once again acting as the barista. Lately, he even started experimenting with cocktails, and went as far as to ask if we could add one of those huge, professional espresso machines to the counter. While I generally wasn’t fond of coffee, so long as he had fun with it, I saw no reason why he couldn’t add it to the requisition list during the next budget meeting. After all, everyone needs a hobby.

Speaking of which, how come everyone around here seemed to have one, except for me? Sure, I still went online to mess with fan communities by over-analyzing their favorite movies and TV shows and pretend they were full of references to Russian literature and postmodern philosophy, but I wasn’t entirely sure that counted. Not to mention, I haven’t been doing it lately anyway, because Judy kept nagging at me about it, calling it unhealthy and a waste of my brain cells. One of these days, I really had to come up with a proper hobby, preferably one we could do together with the girls. Maybe fishing?

In any case, by the time we reached the bar counter, Brang already had a pot of tea brewing on a portable stove. I gave him an appreciative nod and turned to Mr. Eagle, and the moment our eyes met, he asked, “If you had indeed come to an agreement, does that mean the Feilongs approve of the formation of the Ordo Draconis?”

“The what now?” I blurted out in surprise, and the man lightly cleared his throat.

“Over the past several days, we have repeatedly discussed the topic of the name of our fledgling organization, and ‘Ordo Draconis’ is my personal recommendation. I hope my liege approves it when the time comes.”

“It doesn’t sound bad, but let’s hear out the other options as well, just to be fair.” He acquiesced, and in the meantime, Mountain Girl took a seat and started drinking a glass of lemonade, with actual ice cubes in it. I would’ve asked why she’d do that, considering we were walking outside just a few short minutes ago, but it would’ve undoubtedly resulted in another lecture about yin and yang and whatnot, so I focused on Arnwald again. “On the topic of the negotiations, while Naoren was receptive, let’s not count our chickens until they hatched.”

“Do you believe he only agreed in word, but not in spirit?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted with a shrug. “He might honestly think our proposal is neat, but considering we butted heads over Elly… or at least we were supposed to…” My words trailed off as I realized this point mainly concerned our narrative predictions, so I shook my head and stressed, “Let’s ignore that part. In any case, he changed his attitude too smoothly, and that’s just plain suspicious. For now, we can consider him a tentative ally, but I’ll have to keep an eye on him, just to be sure.”

“A prudent decision, my liege.”

“Rinne didn’t see any falsehood in Naoren Feilong,” the highly visible ninja noted between two sips from her drink. “Rinne believes that Naoren Feilong truly wishes to be nakama with Leonard-dono.”

“He wants to be a what?”

“Nakama,” she repeated with a frown. “It means trusted companion.” My first reaction was to ask why she didn’t just say that, but I swallowed it down when she firmly proclaimed, “Leonard-dono can trust Rinne’s intuition. Rinne is a great judge of character.”

“… I don’t even know where to begin objecting, so let’s just leave it at that,” I murmured, then took a deep breath and resumed the previous conversation like this sidetrack never happened. “Let’s just say that while I don’t fully trust Naoren, he probably won’t backstab us if we don’t give him a reason, so we should focus on more pressing issues. For example, I’d like if you could tell me everything you can about Morgana and Agravain.”

“… Are they already on the island?” Mr. Eagle inquired with a guarded frown.

“Not only that, they’ve made a deal with the grand elder of the Feilong clan to do something during the upcoming tournament,” I explained, and he accepted my words without a hint of skepticism.

“I have to say, that does not sound like something sister Morgana would do.”

“She apparently believes you’re captured by the Dracis and she wants to cause a scene to force them to release you.”

“Ah? In that case, that does sound like something she would do after all,” Arnwald turned on a dime. “She wouldn’t be entirely wrong in her assumption either.”

“Does this kind of thing happen often? Working together with Draconians to conspire against other Draconians, I mean?”

After considering my question, Mr. Eagle hesitantly nodded.

“Not often, but it’s certainly not unheard of. There is no shame in exploiting the schemes of our enemies against each other. Though, I suppose I should no longer call them that…” His voice trailed off, but then he shook his head and continued with, “Sister Morgana is rather conservative, but if she thought we were still alive, and it was the only way to rescue us, she would certainly use the opportunity to use the Feilong elder, even if she herself would be used in return.”

“Do you have any idea why she didn’t try to contact me or Penny first? Both of us are in the open, after all.”

“Knowing Sister Morgana’s personality, she might not even have considered the option,” Arnwald mused, and a beat later he added. “Either that, or she concluded that you are compromised, and avoided contact on purpose.”

“That’s also a distinct possibility…”

In the meantime, my tea was ready, and I graciously accepted it from the Faun general. I took a couple of sips, and while it warmed me from the inside, I tried to put together the puzzle pieces of this situation.

Let’s say this Morgana came to the island after she lost contact with the rest of the Entitled Knights. She snooped around and discovered that I was not only dating Elly, but that Penny had been attending school from the Dracis manor for a couple of weeks. She most likely concluded that we were either kept in check with hostages, or had betrayed the others. Either way, she wouldn’t show herself in front of us, lest her presence would be revealed, so while looking for allies to mount a rescue operation, she got into contact with the grand elder, and the rest is history. It sounded plausible enough, but it also raised a question.

“For the record, how exactly did you keep in contact with her in the past?”

“Messenger pigeons,” Arnwald answered with a straight face.

“Seriously?”

“It works,” he insisted, but then let out a sigh. “Unfortunately, we cannot use them to contact sister Morgana anymore. Our pigeons were set loose during the battle in our temporary headquarters, and even if we could find them again in the wild, she most likely wouldn’t believe our message and suspect a ploy behind it.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning to go out searching for pigeons in the first place, so I guess trying to contact her is not going to happen either way. What can you tell me about her abilities then?”

“Sister Morgana is the Gorgon Knight,” Mr. Eagle told me, and it immediately made me scrunch up my brows. “Is there a problem, my liege?”

“No, I was just wondering—” I almost said ‘why she’s wearing an armor with feather motifs?’, but halfway through I realized Leonard Dunning wasn’t supposed to know about that yet, so I changed it to, “What kind of gear does she use?”

“Sadly, the Gorgon Knight’s armor was irreparably damaged during The Blitz in the second world war.” That made me raise a brow, but before I could ask him to elaborate, he continued with, “Last I’d seen her, she was using parts of the Great Owl Knight’s armor to replace the missing pieces. You should be able to quickly recognize her by the plume decorations on her helmet.”

Oooh? So that’s what the ears were! Stylized owl horns! That made waaay more sense.

“So she’s not using her proper gear?”

“Unfortunately, many of our armors had been lost over the centuries, so mixing multiple compatible pieces became common in recent decades. I believe brother Duncan’s boots originally belonged to the late Ogre Knight.”

“Really?”

“Boots, gauntlets, and helmets are easier to recover than cuirasses or greaves. I believe brother Percival had over fifteen helmets in his possession, serving as mementos of Knights of old.”

“Did you say fifteen? Just how many Entitled Knights used to be out there?”

It was only a stray question, but it made Arnwald sigh in melancholy.

“Brother Percival once told me that, in the golden age of the Brotherhood, there were over a hundred Entitled Knights in active duty.”

“And now there are, let me see… Seven?”

“We have indeed fallen on dire times,” the middle-aged knight sighed, but then he perked up at once when he added, “Thankfully now our liege is here, and with your efforts, we might yet reach even greater heights than we would ever dare envision.”

“I would personally be okay with a more peaceful and productive organization, really.”

“There is honor in that as well,” Mr. Eagle concluded with a smile, and I nodded along, though I would be blasted if I knew what he meant by that.

“So, Morgana is the Gorgon Knight. What about Agravain?”

“Brother Agravain only recently took upon himself the mantle of the Raven Knight, and he’s sister Morgana’s nephew,” he explained smoothly, not at all bothered by the way I forcefully changed the direction of the discussion. “Last I’d heard, he was still recovering from an injury, but he must have heeded sister Morgana’s call. He is a master of subterfuge and reconnaissance.”

I suppose that description fit the ‘Raven’ moniker pretty well, and while I was tempted to ask about the inventory artifact, I once again reminded myself that I had to make sure I wouldn’t talk about things only Bel would know about, and instead I inquired, “How dangerous are they?”

“In terms of combat prowess? Sister Morgana is a veteran of the Brotherhood, and due to her unique abilities, she is a dangerous opponent to face in a duel. As for brother Agravain, he is…”

“… He’s what?”

“He… was not particularly combat-minded, if my memory serves right. He was rather focused on the logistics and overarching strategies of the Brotherhood, and he… used to get into frequent arguments with my liege over various things.”

“Such as?”

“Nothing major, I assure you. If you cannot remember it, maybe it’s for the best.”

“… You do realize that dancing around the issue like that only makes me want to know about it even more, right?”

Arnwald remained staunchly silent, despite my best disapproving frown. Nevertheless, from what he said so far, I’d already gathered that I didn’t get along with the Raven Knight guy before my amnesia.  That could potentially mean trouble, so I’d have to keep an eye on the guy. As soon as I could mark him, which will happen as soon as we can find them.

Either way, I made a mental note, and moved on, just in time for Mr. Eagle to clear his throat and ask, “What are your plans, my liege?”

“I wish I had any,” I grumbled. “Or rather, I have a vague idea about how we could use this whole situation to our advantage, but the details are still fuzzy. For now, I’ll keep an eye on the grand elder and his ilk and see if I can figure out what exactly they’re planning, and then I’ll work something out from there. I doubt anything significant would happen on that front before the tournament, so for now, I’ll focus on more pressing issues.”

“Does Leonard-dono require our help?” Mountain Girl inquired while Brang refilled her empty glass, but I shook my head.

“No, it’s not something you can help with.” This time all three of them gave me odd looks, so I explained, “I meant the upcoming school festival and some other, more personal matters related to it.”

“Oh. Rinne understands.”

“I wish you the best of luck, my liege.”

Even Brang was giving me an encouraging thumb up, which made me wonder just how much of my troubles they were aware of. Anyhow, I dismissed the issue with a wave of my hand, and was about to get going when Arnwald called out to me again.

“My liege. I almost forgot to mention it, but brother Duncan was looking for you.”

“Duncan of all people?”

“He said he wished to take you up on your offer to modify his Uniformer outfit. He also mentioned something about hoping to ask for a sparring match.”

“I get the first part, but… Sparring? Really?”

“[The young ones are beyond excited by the prospect of the upcoming martial tourney,] Brang spoke up for the first time since we came over, followed by a soft chuckle. “[Be glad, Blackcloak. Such spirited temperaments are bound to give birth to swift improvement among thine followers.]”

“Yay,” I uttered in my best deadpan voice, but as I thought about it, I told Arnwald, “I have some time to spare, so lead the way.”

He practically beamed at me, almost like he knew I would play along despite my protests, and the three of us headed over to the barracks to get the big oaf. I said three, because Rinne decided to tag along so that she could witness what kind of pointers I would give to my subordinates. Her words, not mine, and I wasn’t planning to do any of that.

Still, considering how hectic things were getting again, and how stuffed my schedule was promising to be with the school festival, the Christmas ball, the tournament, and the auction coming up one after the other, I figured I might as well just consider today’s meeting as a success, and celebrate it by beating up Duncan. Who knows? Maybe I’ll make that my new hobby.