Chapter 188: Keeping a Promise
Sebas and Touch Me were still talking.
The old butler was slightly inclined forward, and there was something in his expression that bordered on reverent. Touch Me stood straight, his gold hair catching the sunlight, making small gestures as he spoke — something about how to look after Leno now that she was awake, from the sound of it.
The light in the warehouse doorway shifted. The soldiers Pestonya had resurrected were helping each other out, their steps still loose and uncertain — the particular slowness of people who slept too long and weren't fully back yet. One of them leaned against the door frame and rubbed his eyes, blinking into the brightness, his pupils not yet adjusted to the transition from dark to light. But there was a gleam in those eyes now that hadn't been there before.
Lakyus swept her gaze across the soldiers as they emerged. Something moved in her expression — a flash of surprise she pulled back quickly.
She remembered the state of some of those bodies when she'd tried to work on them. The damage on several had been well beyond what Tier 5 could recover. She'd seen enough resurrection cases to know that. She kept the surprise to herself and made a mental note to ask Lucian about it later.
Lucian watched the soldiers without any particular expression. Internally, he was experiencing something he could only describe as unexpected luck.
He'd left those badly damaged bodies there on a "might as well" basis. The reasoning had been simple: if someone was already coming to resurrect Leno, there was no harm in putting a few extra hopeless cases in their line of sight. He hadn't actually expected it to work.
He turned it over quickly.
Ainz wasn't generous enough to deploy a valuable group resurrection item for one small human girl. That kind of item was an irreplaceable consumable — even Nazarick's treasury would have limited stock. The more likely answer was that whoever Ainz sent had simply used high-tier resurrection magic directly. And given that they'd been willing to spend that magic on a group of ordinary soldiers, their karma value was almost certainly positive.
The other possibility: Sebas had told Ainz the job required resurrecting multiple people, which would explain the scope of what just happened.
Either way, what Lucian needed to do right now was the same.
He stepped forward and gave Sebas a small nod of acknowledgment. "Thank you, Sebas."
Sebas turned. A warm expression settled across his lined face, and he waved the thanks off. "Lord Lucian, you're too kind. This was my responsibility — and the soldiers' deaths were partly my fault to begin with. Though it wasn't I who performed the resurrection. I borrowed a friend's help."
Lucian noted this. Sebas had offered that detail with no apparent hesitation, no defensive calculation. His guard around Lucian was remarkably low.
"Please pass along my gratitude."
"Of course."
The adjutant was already herding the soldiers toward the row of stone buildings on the western side of the garrison. Their bodies needed time to settle back in — the adjutant walked at the front and kept glancing back to make sure no one was falling behind.
Touch Me had already slipped back into the warehouse. He was probably with Leno.
Sebas's gaze followed the boy's retreating back and showed no inclination to let go. The expression on that lined face was practically visible from a distance — affection that had no particular interest in hiding itself. Lucian noticed it and decided, with great practicality, to notice nothing at all.
By the time everything was sorted — the revived soldiers settled, Leno properly looked after — the sun had climbed to midday.
It sat directly overhead, baking the stone road of the garrison just slightly warm, and the air carried the dry smell of dust and cook-fire smoke drifting from somewhere nearby.
Lucian turned toward Lakyus.
She was standing a few steps away, the sunlight in her gold hair, one hand raised to block the glare. "Lakyus," he said, and there was something in his manner that was noticeably more relaxed than it had been. "Let me take you around the city for a while."
Lakyus lowered the hand shielding her eyes and tilted her head. "Aren't you busy, Brother? The beastman situation only just wrapped up — there must still be a lot of loose ends to handle."
Lucian looked at those pale green eyes and gave her a mild smile. "Of course I'm busy. But a promise is a promise."
Lakyus blinked.
"Didn't we settle this back in the capital?" Lucian continued, keeping his tone deliberately offhand. "Once Blue Roses finished with Eight Fingers, I'd bring you to the Dragon Kingdom next time. Isn't this exactly that?"
He raised a hand and rested it on top of her head as he spoke.
Her hair was soft, still carrying the warmth of the sun. The texture was unexpectedly smooth — his palm pressed down slightly without quite deciding to.
Lakyus's eyes closed for a brief moment, like a cat being stroked in exactly the right spot. Her head tilted a fraction into his palm. It was a small movement. But it was there.
Then her eyes opened.
Something had changed in them. "Brother." Her voice had picked up a faint, measuring quality. "You seem... in quite a hurry to fulfill this particular promise."
Lucian's hand stilled.
Lakyus was looking at him directly, and the look was sharp.
He remembered this. Every time he'd tried to hide something from her as a child, she had found him with that exact same expression. He let out a silent, resigned sigh.
This kid had somehow funneled her entire intelligence quota into reading her own brother.
"You're overthinking it." He pulled his hand back and gave her the look that said she was imagining things. "There just happen to be no urgent matters today."
Lakyus didn't move her eyes. "Really?" The measuring quality in her voice deepened. "Something feels off to me, Brother."
Lucian's expression shifted — for less than half a second — and he pushed it back down. "You're overthinking..."
"No," Lakyus said, with complete certainty.
Sunlight cut between them, dropping their two overlapping shadows onto the stone path. From somewhere in the direction of the cook fires came the clatter of pots being knocked together — lunch was probably almost ready. A few small birds landed on a rooftop nearby and tilted their heads.
Lakyus took half a step forward, closing the distance slightly. She looked up at him. In her eyes were two things at once — the same measuring quality as before, and something that looked distinctly like fear. Like she was both the judge and the person waiting for the verdict.
"Brother." She finally asked the question she'd been building toward. "Are you planning to stay here and marry the Dragon Queen — and just not come back to the Aindra domain?"
Lucian went completely still.
He had been turning over the possibility that she'd picked up on something wrong — or maybe that she'd started to sense there was an extraordinarily powerful presence lurking somewhere in the shadows. He'd even been considering whether to carefully release a fragment of information about Sebas, just enough to redirect her focus.
The thing she was actually worried about was this.
Something moved at the corner of his mouth involuntarily. A short, quietly helpless laugh got out. He raised one hand, curled a finger, and flicked it against her forehead.
Lakyus swayed back slightly. Both hands came up to cover her forehead. Those pale green eyes filled immediately with a shimmer of moisture. Her whole posture deflated, lips pulling down, the expression of a small animal that had just been wronged. A muffled, indignant sound came out.
And through the gap in the fingers covering her forehead, those eyes were very clearly still sneaking glances at him.
"Ow~" Lakyus announced, hands still pressed to her forehead.
Lucian looked at that thoroughly committed performance — every detail of it, from the brow to the lip corners, communicating pure aggrieved suffering — and felt the mild exasperation deepen by a degree. He hadn't used any actual force. On his own sister, he would never. Wouldn't even leave a mark. But Lakyus was putting in the full dramatic effort regardless.
"Drop it," he said.
Lakyus lowered her hands immediately. The wronged expression wiped itself clean in an instant and was replaced by a sly look. She blinked, and while the mischief was back in her eyes, the probing quality from before hadn't fully gone.
"But what I said just now..." She seemed to remember something that dimmed the brightness. Her voice dropped back to that quieter register. "I was being serious."
"There are rumors all over the Dragon Kingdom — people saying Lord Aindra defeated the beastman nation and now the Queen is going to offer herself in return. I heard it everywhere on the way here."
Her tone was steady enough. But her fingers had started to work at each other without her noticing. She wasn't as relaxed about this as she was trying to appear.
Lucian was quiet for a moment.
Already everywhere?
For it to spread that fast, the Dragon Kingdom's upper tier must have been actively pushing it. Bergmann, that old fox — Lucian had only just wrapped up the beastman situation, and the moment he turned around, this was already circulating across the whole kingdom. Coincidence was not a word he would use to describe Bergmann's involvement.
What he couldn't immediately work out was the angle. The beastman crisis was resolved. The threat was gone. Bergmann shouldn't need to run this kind of campaign anymore.
Unless the man was already so thoroughly convinced about the loli-con angle that he'd simply skipped the sounding-out phase entirely.
Is he that confident about the loli-con thing?
Lucian felt mildly injured by the implication. He kept this entire chain of reasoning to himself.
He looked at Lakyus's eyes, still waiting for an answer, and let out a quiet internal sigh. He'd slightly overestimated the direction his sister's threat assessment was pointing.
"Don't worry." He put on the expression of someone mildly bewildered at needing to clarify this. "I'm not marrying Queen Draudillon." He said it with enough certainty that it left no room.
Lakyus stared at him for a few seconds, as though checking something.
Then the corners of her eyes curved. The smile opened slowly. Everything about her seemed to lift.
"Good." Her voice had gone bright again. "I thought you were planning to mortgage yourself to the Dragon Kingdom permanently."
"Idiot." He used the head-pat.
Lakyus stuck out her tongue. She reached out and caught hold of his sleeve — a natural, unthinking motion, the same way she used to when she was small.
"Then let's go." The wariness in her voice had dissolved entirely, replaced by straightforward anticipation. "You said you'd take me around. You can't take it back now."
Lucian let himself be pulled forward two steps, and then kept pace with her as they headed toward the road leading to the market outside the garrison.
The noon sun came down from directly above, the buildings on either side casting thin pale shadows onto the path. There was a small dark water stain at the base of one wall — someone had been washing there earlier in the morning.
Lakyus walked half a step ahead of him, moving a little faster than usual, her long gold hair swaying with the rhythm of her steps. She glanced at shop fronts along the way, then turned forward again.
Lucian walked behind her. He watched her back.
Sunlight on her shoulders, catching on the red-and-white leather armor.
His expression was its usual relaxed ease — corners of the mouth curved, brow settled, the look of an entirely normal older brother on an afternoon outing. But in the depths of his eyes was something that required a closer look to find.
He was, in fact, a little anxious. Nazarick's movements had diverged from the original work. He couldn't predict what came next. And just as much — he didn't know when, if he let this chance pass, the next one would come.
At the street corner ahead, the smell of bread reached them. Lakyus's steps slowed slightly. She turned her head and followed the smell.
"Brother," her voice drifted back to him, "the bread here smells different from the capital's."
"Mm," Lucian said. "The Dragon Kingdom is close to the Theocracy. The baking style picked up some influence from that side."
"Then I want to try it." The end of her sentence lifted, carrying a simple and uncontainable delight.
Lucian smiled. His sister had never changed. A bread with a different flavor was enough to make her light up like this.
The bakery was small. The facade was coated in pale yellow lime, with a faded wooden sign under the eave — a lopsided illustration of a wheat stalk on it. The front was open to the street, the trays filled with bread stacked in neat rows, the edges lightly golden, steam curling from the gaps between them.
Lakyus leaned over to look at the trays, then turned to Lucian with anticipation she wasn't bothering to hide. Lucian stepped up to the counter and bought a small bag, which he handed to her. She took it, pinched a piece out of the opening.
The bread was still warm. The edge was crisp — she could hear the faint crack when she bit into it. The inside was soft and white and gave off a thread of steam.
She took a small bite. Her cheeks filled slightly. She chewed with deliberate slowness, working out carefully exactly how this differed from what she was used to. She swallowed. Her eyes closed for a moment. Then she gave Lucian a small nod.
"Different," she said. "Sweeter. But not too sweet."
Lucian, watching that completely serious evaluation, found himself mildly curious. Lakyus held up the piece she'd bitten, offering it toward him with one hand, arm out.
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