"Grand-Master~ the former lord, Master Aaron, is looking for you."
Übel's voice drifted in from outside the cave.
Nanoda set down the barely-breathing little white mouse in her hand, dispelled the "Glow" spell on the ceiling of the cave, and then casually cast a "Bind into Ice" spell, adding one more ice sculpture to the interior where white mist billowed up.
Little Übel, her hands behind her back and gripping her staff, peered curiously into the pitch-black cave.
A deep, dim space laced with threads of chill, a flicker of mana traces passing in an instant, and then a gust of cold wind blowing straight into her face.
"Let's go."
Like a ghost, Nanoda emerged from the darkness without a sound.
"What on earth is the Grand-Master doing in there?"
Even though Yuna had said not to disturb the Grand-Master, Übel still asked the question aloud.
"Experiments~"
"Alright, this isn't something a child should be touching. Go study properly with Yuna first."
Nanoda brushed her off offhandedly and headed toward the lord's manor.
Übel glanced back at the cave behind her, but in the end she obediently followed along behind Nanoda.
Walking the whole way down streets that had been renovated not long ago, exchanging greetings with the enthusiastic passersby, Nanoda arrived at her destination.
Ever since stepping down, Aaron had built himself an expanded annex behind the lord's manor to live in, and from then on he had kept to himself, rarely going out; even Nanoda couldn't clearly recall the last time she had met with him.
"Oh, Lugner, Yuna."
The current lord, Lugner, along with her own proud disciple Yuna, had both been waiting here early.
"Lady Nanoda."
After exchanging greetings,
Nanoda took the lead and pushed open that dark door panel, then suddenly froze.
The familiar aroma of coffee tangled with sweetness.
That gaunt old man seated on the reclining chair, with his signature bald head, overlapped with the rugged, burly man from her memories, until nearly only a vague outline remained by which to recognize him.
Truly, time slips away, and the years are cruel.
"Heh heh, long time no see. How about it? I actually managed to outlive a Hero even younger than me—impressive, isn't it... cough cough cough..."
Wrinkles, white eyebrows, age spots—Aaron, no, old Aaron squeezed out a smile, straightening himself up from the reclining chair, his trembling hand grasping the staff propped against one side.
"..." Turning to reveal a somewhat helpless faint smile, Nanoda nodded.
Yes, it has been a long time, Aaron.
Lugner stepped forward of his own accord to support him, his eyes plain, silent and wordless.
"Uncle." Even though she came to visit often, Yuna's eyes still sparkled with light.
Everyone took their seats on the two rows of sofas that looked somewhat worn.
"Cough cough cough. Sorry, I've grown old, I really don't have the energy to keep managing Gaderia anymore."
After the coughing that had become habitual, Aaron gathered his spirits, and those eyes gradually brightened as well.
"The one who should be apologizing is me—all this time and I never came to visit you properly."
Nanoda, as usual, reached out to take the pastries on the table.
Like a sovereign and subject who had spent long years together, their conversation was peaceful and unhurried.
"Please wait a moment—there are still some children who haven't arrived."
"Children?"
Nanoda looked at the smiling old Aaron and patiently waited while she ate.
And just as Nanoda finished her first piece of cake, a chattering commotion came from the main door, like a flock of chicks just let out of the coop, as children big and small came bursting in through the door. "It's snacks!"
"Waaah."
"How lively."
"Children, quiet down, come over here."
With a single word from old Aaron, the children who had all been talking over one another stopped one after another, and gathered obediently around his side.
They were children she had never seen before, not the ones taken in at Yuna's orphanage, and yet in their features there were always a few points of resemblance that struck Nanoda as familiar.
"Who are they?"
"Why don't you take a guess?"
Facing Nanoda's question, Aaron lifted his coffee, the wrinkles all over his face tugging as he gave a mysterious smile.
Nanoda looked at this one, then sized up that one, and seeing the composed, normal expressions of Lugner and Yuna beside her,
a flash of inspiration suddenly struck her mind.
"I can't tell at all—you actually hid this many illegitimate children?"
Delivered in an utterly serious, flat tone, it thoroughly wrecked the atmosphere in an instant.
"Cough cough cough cough..."
Aaron nearly had a mouthful of coffee come back up from his stomach.
"Um—"
Yuna started to speak but hesitated.
"Mm—" Even Übel covered her mouth, barely holding back her laughter.
"I really can't tell, Master Aaron."
For the first time Lugner was moved—there were at least a dozen or so human young ones here.
Aaron's flustered look didn't seem quite right.
"What? So I guessed wrong?"
"These are all my nephews and nieces."
Old Aaron set down his trembling teacup and hurriedly explained. "They're all the children of my younger brother—Arue."
"That fat old fellow had no redeeming qualities—drinking, whoring, dabbling in every crooked path. No great offenses, but countless small ones; he was a bit of a disreputable stain, and yet he turned out to be the only one in our Gaderia family to leave behind a bloodline."
With emotion mixed with teasing, Aaron shook his head and smiled, then got to the main point.
"Alright, now that everyone's here, I won't waste too many words. Let me first tell a secret tale passed down from generation to generation by the heads of our Gaderia family... you could also call it a little story."
The moment they heard there was a story to be told, the children who had settled down and were piled around the table eating pastries grew a bit noisy again.
Everyone's gaze converged on old Aaron, and the whole group's interest was suddenly piqued.
"Compared to the minor title of nobility the Northern Empire granted back then, our Gaderia's existence is actually even older than the Empire itself. The story can be traced all the way back to the era of that Unified Empire.
The very first ancestor—people all called him Gaderia—was one of the foremost great merchants of the Unified Empire, and had once been a great noble as well. But for certain reasons, the ancestor, whose family fortune was confiscated, had no choice but to abandon his original standing and could only return to his homeland to carry on as a trader.
Fortunately, the forefather had anticipated it well in advance and left behind no small fortune in a certain place, enough for him to make a comeback once more—a large sack of high-denomination coins from the Unified Empire period.
Just after he set out carrying this big sack of coins, hey, guess what happened? While walking down the road, the money bag he'd been clutching tightly in his pocket, as heavy as a pregnant woman's child, actually vanished into thin air.
It was a street corner with no one around at the time, and that money bag seemed to have evaporated out of nowhere. The forefather turned out all his pockets, dug through the nearby sewer ditches, crawled into dog holes... but nowhere could he find that money bag that had sprouted wings and flown away!"
It was simply unsolvable, as if it had been enchanted by magic that only appeared in later ages.
Fully enraged, wailing to the point of nearly going mad, at the end of his rope the forefather thought of an idea—steal! With the money bag gone, he could just take it back from someone else.
From petty thievery all the way to the city's underground guild, our forefather had smooth sailing the whole way, until he was surrounded and hunted down by the local knights allied with those of other regions. The forefather, taking his few good companions, fled all the way to the remote regions of the north.
It's said that the forefather, already in his fifties or sixties, seized a mountain and built a city, and managed to drive away the Demon Race. Only then was the Gaderia Territory of that time able to settle down, continuing all the way to the present."
Reaching this point, the story too came to its end, and Aaron lifted his coffee to moisten his somewhat parched throat.
"The forefather had it so rough."
One of the children spoke up in comment.
"So amazing! The forefather still overcame all the hardships in the end! I want to become someone just as amazing as the forefather!"
Another child grew eager to try.
Nanoda listened very quietly through the whole somewhat turbulent story, and at the end, faced with this plot, she always felt there was something strange she couldn't quite put into words.
"This is the story that's been passed down in the Gaderia family for a thousand years? It wasn't altered along the way?"
Aaron shook his head and answered.
"Of course, this isn't the earliest version. However, aside from becoming a bit easier to understand, the content is basically unchanged. Mm—these words were told to me by my father."
Seeing that Nanoda didn't continue asking further, Aaron voiced the thought buried in his heart.
"Passing down this story counts as the last duty of the Gaderia lord. From a thousand years ago to the free city of Gaderia, I have already grown as old as every generation before me. Now the future of Gaderia belongs to you all."
Aaron braced himself on his cane to lift his body out of the sofa where it had sunk in, and in this moment he seemed to recover the strength of his youth.
Nanoda saw him—that human who had once asked her to slay the Red Mirror Dragon, that lord who had sorted out everything in Gaderia from behind the scenes, that comrade who had never once betrayed her.
Before Aaron could even bend down, Nanoda had already steadied him.
"You've already done more than enough. Trust in them."
____
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