Chương 11: 05-1: North, the Pass, and the Mountain

I carefully fitted a clear crystal and a crimson fire crystal into the intricate magical circuit board mounted beside the bathroom—its surface etched with dense, fine-lined arrays. Click. The moment the crystals locked into place, the dormant metal conduits seemed to wake. Soft light crept along the panel inch by inch. The inscription arrays hummed quietly to life—like some great beast stirring from sleep, rolling over lazily in the depths of the carriage.

I watched the glow stabilize, confirmed there were no sparks and no face-full of scalding steam, then turned to look at the two women behind me. Both had let me in there right now written plainly across their faces. Jessi looked thrilled, eyes shining like someone about to raid the royal treasury. Erina was still working to maintain her composed, dignified expression, but her eyes were noticeably brighter than usual—and her fingers had unconsciously gathered the fabric of her skirt.

I sighed and made my voice as serious as I could manage.

"That should do it. But remember—don't overdo it. Ten minutes maximum per session." I tapped the circuit board for emphasis.

"Unless you genuinely want to watch Lucas end up foaming at the mouth in the corner like a sun-dried river fish after recharging the crystals." Jessi immediately burst out laughing.

"That actually sounds entertaining."

"Other people's suffering has always been a reliable source of amusement for you."

"You understand me so well, little lordling. I'm almost moved."

"If you're really moved, keep your bath under ten minutes."

"Absolutely not. That's a matter of dignity." She said it with complete conviction, without a moment's hesitation. Erina dipped her head slightly.

"I'll be mindful, Lord Cedric." Right. One treating bathing as dignity. One treating it as etiquette. And me—the poor fool calculating whether the crystals will last. I looked around the carriage interior again, unable to help myself. Honestly, calling this thing a carriage no longer felt adequate. The inside was easily twice as large as the exterior suggested—spatial expansion magic pushed to its limits.

From the entrance inward: a rosewood table that could seat four to six, padded benches fixed along both walls, storage cabinets and luggage compartments, and further back, a partitioned sleeping area and bathroom. You could fit a family of six comfortably. Possibly even a loud, chaotic extended family, provided nobody had too short a temper.... Though if it were House Rosa, the question wouldn't be whether everyone fit. Someone would reach for a dinner knife within the first week.

I shook off that unpleasant association and pressed my palm against the tabletop, feeling the smooth finish of quality wood. If I'm being pathetically honest—not just Jessi, who'd grown up in the slums and had never seen anything like this—even I, bastard son raised in a margrave's estate, had never encountered such an extravagant "travel accessory." This wasn't a carriage for going on a journey. This was half a manor house bolted to wheels and dragged down the road. Outside, something rustled.

Then Lucas's voice drifted in as he climbed up to the driver's bench, muttering under his breath:"I'm retracting my hundred-gold estimate... this thing might not have an upper limit. Cross-racial magical integration like this—dwarven framework at minimum, elven enchantment overlays, then handed off to those greedy human craftsmen in the capital for interior finishing."

"Could you tone down the reverence when you say things like that?" I glanced outside.

"You sound like you're about to propose to the carriage."

"If it could get me into the Royal Academy's advanced research wing, I wouldn't rule it out."

"... I sincerely hope that's a figure of speech."

"For now." That for now made me want to kick him off the driver's bench. While Erina retreated to wash away cold sweat, dust, and whatever humiliations she had no desire to revisit, Jessi and I spread a map across the rosewood table. I'd gritted my teeth and paid good money for this map yesterday. The merchant had sworn it was a "relatively accurate" edition. Relatively accurate, I'd learned, meant: if you die on the road, at least you'll know you died heading in the right direction.

I pressed my finger to a tiny, unnamed black dot in the northeast.

"We're roughly here." My finger traced the winding dotted line upward—meandering like a drunken earthworm—until it stopped at a dense mass of mountain shadow across the northern edge.

"To reach the capital's heartland, we have to cross this." I tapped the label.

"Slaughter Peak." Jessi had a piece of straw between her teeth from somewhere. She squinted at the name for a few seconds, then delivered her verdict with complete sincerity.

"Holy hell—Slaughter Peak? That's the most ominous name I've ever seen. Normal people see a name like that and either take a detour or write their will."

"Which is why I'm doing the former, trying to avoid the latter." She ignored that, sliding her finger sideways to a region marked with a large sword-and-shield emblem.

"What about this? Legion Fortress." She looked up, eyes bright with the kind of interest that never meant anything good.

"Little lordling, does House Rosa have connections with the Northern Duke? If we can smile our way through the fortress gates, we wouldn't have to climb a mountain whose name is basically a death threat." I looked at her and sighed with genuine feeling.

"That fortress guards against demon incursions year-round. Security's tight enough that a fly needs to submit its genealogy to get through. Now look at our group—" Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I tapped the table and started counting.

"A mage whose power fluctuates wildly and who might collapse from mana depletion at any moment." Lucas's indignant voice came immediately from outside.

"I've been much more stable lately!"

"Yesterday you nearly chanted a disguise spell into an ignition ward."

"My tongue slipped!" I continued as if I hadn't heard him, raising a second finger.

"A thief with sticky fingers who also sexually harasses people when the mood strikes." Jessi immediately spat out the straw.

"Excuse me—harassment? I call that creating atmosphere."

"You touching my chin last time wasn't atmosphere. That was assault."

"Your face went so red I thought you liked it."

"You should stop talking."

"Aww, the eternally virginal bastard lordling is embarrassed again." She fired back instantly, leaning forward with that fox-smile she deployed specifically to weaponize people's dignity.

"Red as a boiled shrimp. Adorable."

"... I take it back. You're not asking to be hit. You're begging for it." Jessi looked even more delighted. I gave up on reason entirely and raised a third finger.

"And one sheltered young woman who's probably never split firewood in her life." A faint splash came from the bathroom. I wasn't sure if Erina had heard. Knowing her, even if she had, she'd quietly file it away and then go find an axe to prove me wrong next time. The mental image alone gave me a headache.

"The point is," I pressed my hand flat against the map, voice settling back to serious, "the real problem isn't that we look like a traveling circus. It's the carriage. Too conspicuous. The moment we enter a military fortress, no illusion or disguise will fool their detection arrays. We wouldn't just have trouble with our faces—we'd have trouble explaining the carriage's origins. That's a losing proposition for all of us." Jessi chuckled, eyes still roaming the interior.

"Besides, you don't actually want to give it up, do you?" I was quiet for a beat. Then answered honestly.

"... No. I don't." The moment I said it, Jessi burst into open laughter, shoulders shaking.

"You actually admitted it."

"It has a bathroom, beds, shelter from wind and rain, and eliminates the stable problem entirely." I rolled up the map without expression.

"Pretending otherwise would be hypocritical." Besides, just thinking about surrendering this carriage produced a sharp pain in my chest—like throwing a full bag of gold coins into a river. I tucked the map away, listening to the soft, intermittent sounds of water from the bathroom. The unease in my chest refused to settle.

"I'll explain the full route tonight at camp." My voice dropped.

"If we really are crossing Slaughter Peak, we need proper cloaks and cold-weather blankets first." For once, Jessi didn't fire back. She just stared at that dense black mountain shadow on the map, the smile fading at the corners—her expression settling into something rare for her. Serious.

"Yeah," she said.

"I won't argue with you on this one. That mountain... just hearing the name makes my skin crawl." Dinner was the simplest possible fare—hot soup and smoked meat. By any reasonable standard, food like this only qualified as shove it in before you starve—nowhere near what you'd call a meal.

But inside this absurdly luxurious carriage, with gentle mage-light spilling across the rosewood table and steam rising from rough wooden bowls, even black bread hard enough to serve as a weapon seemed to acquire a filter that whispered: Actually, I'm not so bad.... People really are susceptible to their surroundings. After her bath, Erina had changed into a set of plain clothes Jessi had picked out for her.

The fit was slightly loose, sleeves a touch too long—but at least she finally looked like someone who'd survived an ordeal and was still breathing, rather than a fragile ice statue about to shatter on a chapel altar. Her golden hair still carried traces of dampness, falling softly over her shoulders. Color had returned to her face. If not for her impeccably straight posture, I might have forgotten she had no business being on a rough journey like this.

Jessi chewed on her wooden spoon, looking Erina up and down with a complicated expression.

"Hmm. Clothes really do make the person." She nodded like someone appraising a recently acquired treasure of questionable provenance.

"You still look like you'd fall for any con, but at least you don't look like a sacrificial offering about to blow away in the wind anymore." Erina blinked, then said quietly:"... Thank you, Miss Jessi." Jessi seemed briefly choked by the excessive formality and waved it off quickly.

"Don't be so serious about it—makes it sound like I actually did something good. That makes me uncomfortable."

"You didn't do anything particularly good," I added helpfully.

"Shut up. You paid, I had the taste." She shot back with complete confidence.

"Without me, she'd be walking around dressed like a tablecloth."

"... I genuinely can't argue with that." I set down my spoon and spread the map across the center of the table, letting my tone settle into something more serious.

"There's something we need to address first." All three looked at me. I pressed my finger to the black mountain region marked Slaughter Peak and laid out the route, the necessity of the detour, and our near-pathological dependence on this carriage we absolutely could not afford to lose. When I finished, Lucas was the first to look relaxed. Not just relaxed—he actually looked like he considered this a non-issue.

"That's simple," he said, polishing a lens he'd disassembled from somewhere with a chamois cloth, voice utterly casual.

"Have you all forgotten I only mentioned the first three of the six external magical arrays on this carriage?" I frowned.

"When did you say there were six?"

"I was waiting for you to be in a better mood."

"Say it now, before I decide to bury you in Slaughter Peak." Lucas cleared his throat, visibly pleased to finally have the floor.

"The three confirmed so far: weight reduction, spatial expansion, basic shielding. As for the fourth—" He paused, tracing a slow, intricate spiral in the air with one fingertip.

"If I'm reading it correctly, it should be Folding Logic." I repeated the words.

"Folding Logic?" That didn't sound like a convenience feature. It sounded like something that might accidentally fold you into it and leave you as jerky. The moment Lucas touched his area of expertise, that half-dead aura evaporated completely. It was like someone had reached behind him and wound a key labeled knowledge—his eyes lit up and he started talking faster.

"It's a high-tier storage-class utility magic." The excitement in his voice was approaching something almost reverent.

"Very popular among senior mages in the capital. The most impressive case I've heard of involved folding an entire two-story holiday villa into a pocket-sized carrier. Though the caster was a court archmage—a genuine monster. Ordinary people shouldn't attempt it." Jessi's mouth had drifted open. She didn't notice when the piece of meat fell off her spoon back into the bowl.

"Into a pocket?" For once, she looked genuinely astonished.

"What happens to the people inside? Do they get flattened into meat pies?"

"Not if you don't lock living people into the folding core." Lucas gave her a withering look.

"The internal spatial coordinates get temporarily anchored in a sub-spatial layer. In simple terms—as long as you don't volunteer yourself to be folded up like luggage, everything inside stays intact." Jessi was quiet for two full seconds. Then delivered her verdict with complete seriousness:"This magic is terrifying."

"I thought you'd say it was convenient."

"The two aren't mutually exclusive." She turned to look at me, eyes bright in a way that had nothing to do with transportation logistics and everything to do with mentally cataloging which valuables would be easiest to pack and steal.

"This kind of thing is perfect for doing terrible things."

"Could you please not make criminal activity sound this natural in front of Erina?"

"I'm conducting a practical feasibility assessment." I pressed my fingers to my temple and decided not to pursue that line of thought any further. Instead, I looked at Lucas.

"So what you're saying is—if this carriage really does have Folding Logic, we don't have to drag it over the mountain?"

"Correct." Lucas nodded, sounding genuinely confident for the first time since I'd known him.

"If this is truly dwarven-framed, elven-enchanted, and capital-finished, Folding Logic is essentially standard equipment. Even the most extravagant nobles don't want their luxury carriage wedging them to death on narrow mountain passes." I let out a slow breath.

"Lucas, you'd better start praying right now that this thing actually has that function." I stared at the map, a vivid and deeply absurd image already forming in my head—all four of us, like absolute lunatics, hauling an entire luxury carriage up a sheer cliff face, then tumbling down Slaughter Peak together.

"Because once we reach the cliffs, my options narrow to two: sell the carriage and survive, or keep it and die together."

"I'll need time to test the activation sequence." Lucas drained his soup in one gulp, expression unusually serious.

"But I'll need high-quality mana medium. The fire crystals and clear crystals you bought earlier won't be enough—I need purer raw mana stones."

"Money's not the issue." I patted my coin pouch.

"The priest's second payment had a few decent-quality pieces. I was saving them, but it looks like we don't have that luxury." I turned to Erina, who had been listening quietly throughout.

"Erina." She raised her eyes slightly.

"If the carriage actually folds down, you'll be walking across the mountain with us. Slaughter Peak isn't a chapel courtyard—nobody's going to pave the road for you. Those feet of yours, that look like they've never met a gravel path in their life—will they hold up?" Erina paused. Then she actually reached down and lifted the hem of her skirt slightly, revealing slender, pale bare feet.

They still carried warmth from the bath, and her ankles were so cleanly sculpted they looked like something carved for an altar piece. I looked for exactly one second, then jerked my eyes away with great purpose.... Not for any noble reason. Purely because Jessi was already making that specific "Ooooh—" expression beside me.

"I can manage, milord." Erina's voice was soft but carried unexpected firmness.

"If the Lord wills that I walk to the capital on my own two feet, then this discomfort is simply my trial." She said it like receiving divine instruction. I was silent for half a beat, then surrendered with a nod.

"... Fine. Consider that your first test passed." Jessi immediately leaned back in her chair, smile turning wicked.

"Little lordling, did you just go red?"

"No."

"You did."

"I did not."

"Your ears are red."

"Jessi, say one more word and I'll throw you off this carriage and let you walk to the capital yourself."

"So scary." She propped her chin in both hands, grinning brightly.

"But you won't actually do it."... This woman is going to die from her own mouth someday. The problem was that I'd probably die of exasperation first.