"Let's calm down."
I put a little pressure into the hand gripping Aizel's shoulder and spoke in the calmest voice I could manage.
"Mmph, mmmph!"
Still gagged, Aizel drew a deep breath and barely managed to steady himself.
I kept my voice level as I spoke.
"You know who I am, right? So let's not make this exhausting for either of us. We talk, and we talk calmly."
But Aizel's trembling pupils still hadn't found their focus.
He hadn't gotten his bearings yet, it seemed.
SMACK!
I clapped him lightly on both shoulders and spoke as threateningly as I could.
"Nod if you understand."
"Nngh, nnngh!"
Aizel drew another deep breath, and only then did he nod.
Ah, this one is really hard to handle.
Dealing with mentally fragile types is harder than I expected.
It's because guys like this lose control of themselves the moment their nerve breaks.
Think of it as the panic-run state of a cat that bolts blindly the instant it's startled, heedless of everything around it.
So you have to press down on them like this and settle them down.
Haa, watching him do that with my face makes me want to beat him senseless.
I might have been a mage, but I was one hell of a man.......
I undid the gag and asked Aizel, that is, Kalian, who was clearly inside my original body.
"You're Kalian Facial, right?"
"Y-yes, I am. No, I mean, yeah."
Timid as he is, he's apparently got his pride.
I went on.
"And I'm Aizel Renhardt. Which means the two of us swapped bodies, right?"
"Y-yes, it i....... It is."
"Talk casually or talk formally. Pick one."
"Uh, o-okay."
"All right, then. The two of us have things we need to discuss seriously, don't we?"
"We do."
Aizel's breathing and expression grew noticeably calmer.
He was badly shaken, but he wasn't stupid, and he seemed to have a rough grasp of what needed to happen now.
I pointed at the passage behind the study that I'd come in through.
"That's the emergency escape route for House Renhardt's direct line. I'm going back out through there."
"W-why?"
Haa, what do I do with this? Just looking at him, getting him to pull his own weight is going to be rough, isn't it?
Seriously, how is a guy with this much talent for the sword this timid?
"What do you mean, why?"
"You're already inside, so why go to all that trouble......."
Is this one maybe seriously slow?
"Are you planning to leave this mansion?"
"N-no?"
Thankfully he's got that much sense.
Wearing an unfamiliar body that belongs to someone else, cut off from any support from his House.
That makes him nothing but a helpless nobody.
The moment he walks out of this house, he's perfectly set up to starve.
"Then for now you'll have to adapt and live here without drawing suspicion, won't you?"
"I will."
"You'll have to learn magic from me, and you'll need to know the House's situation and everyone's names too, won't you?"
Aizel nodded with a blank face.
"Learning all that takes more than a day or two....... So a stranger suddenly turns up at the Renhardt mansion and sticks to the second son everywhere he goes? That would look perfectly natural, wouldn't it?"
"Ah, you're right."
Officially, I needed to be able to move around the mansion without anyone restricting me.
For that, I needed the standing of Aizel's valet, or something like an attendant.
"So I'll go out through that passage, and you leave the inner castle through the main gate."
"O-okay. And then?"
"Come to the 'Shelton Tavern' in the Roden District, west of the outer castle. I'll be there."
Stepping into the secret passage, I stressed it once more.
"Make sure you find it."
"O-okay!"
Aizel nodded hurriedly.
Haa, no matter how I look at him, he's a dimwit.......
Still, there's nothing to be done about it.
In my current situation, there won't be a better collaborator than him.
I'll just have to mold him into something decent.
GRRRRND!
The entrance to the secret passage closed, and darkness came over the tunnel.
But only for a moment.
SNAP!
With a light sound, the light returned.
The magic lamps set into the wall came on and lit the dark interior.
A long passage two meters high and one meter wide was revealed.
Floor, ceiling, and both side walls were all neatly finished in brick.
An extravagant secret passage beyond compare, one you couldn't even dream of without the wealth of the continent's Three Great Houses.
More than that, the Renhardt inner castle held a luxurious secret passage like this for every direct-line member's room.
Who else would dump this kind of money on a secret escape route that would almost never be used?
Honestly, it's a serious case of pissing money away.
Of course, before the regression, I made frequent use of this secret passage.
After walking a long while I reached the end of the passage and found a blocked wall.
I pulled the handle set in the right corner of the wall.
RUMBLE!
With a noisy grinding of friction, the wall slid aside.
The end point of the escape route.
Beyond the passage lay a small underground cavity.
On one side of the cavity was a small pond with a radius of about two meters.
An underground pond formed by welling groundwater.
Beside the pond lay a Magic Diving Suit.
Velkarion, who had kept his mouth shut since my earlier warning, spoke up abruptly.
-That diving suit really is impressive.
'I never gave you permission, and you're opening your mouth?'
-Ack! We're out of there now, so isn't it fine?
'Tsk!'
I decided to let it slide just once.
He's a creature who can't prove his own existence by any means other than talking.
'So what's with the sudden flattery?'
-It isn't flattery. I don't say things that aren't so. That really does seem impressive.
'You do, though, don't you? For instance, that bit about you being a shut-in Archmage?'
-I-I told you I'm not!
The way he flares up settles it.
Still, that Magic Diving Suit really is impressive.
It's a Magic Diving Suit that lets you breathe underwater for about an hour.
Diving suits on the market with that kind of performance have the bulk of a heavy-armored knight's plate, and this one is incredibly thin.
Beneath this pond runs a waterway.
That waterway runs all the way to Ballonia Lake in Ballonz County.
It's a small stream, but this groundwater is one of Ballonia Lake's minor sources.
This waterway was the secret route I used before the regression to slip in and out of the Empire without even telling my House.
And this Magic Diving Suit was made for traveling that waterway.
'I made it myself.'
-Hoh, I was starting to think your self-praise was excessive....... So you weren't all talk after all?
'Obviously. I'm not some shut-in like you.'
-Ah, come on!
Ugh, so loud.
***
"Tsk!"
Chloe Facial wrinkled the bridge of her nose deeply and screwed up her face.
At the end of Chloe's gaze, an uncommon sight was unfolding.
Sturdy young men were busily digging around a large pit.
And another group was hauling something up out of the pit.
Corpses.
Five or six bodies had already been laid out beside the pit.
"Lady Chloe!"
A powerfully built man in his mid-forties called out to Chloe as he ran over.
It was Hans Bantein, captain of Chloe's escort guard.
"Well? The result?"
"The sword marks left on the bodies are all traces of Facial-style swordsmanship."
"So Kai really did do this?"
"Yes. It appears Master Kalian wiped out the bandits here."
At Hans's answer, Chloe's face crumpled into a scowl.
Then she turned to her teacher Jane, standing beside her, and asked as though pleading.
"The boy who was kidnapped hasn't come home to the House, and on top of that, why is he off playing hero in some ridiculous place?"
Chloe truly could not understand it.
"Haa! If my elder brother finds out, there will be an uproar......."
Kalian had been kidnapped while the eldest son, Walter Facial, was away from Summer Castle for the Snowfield Subjugation.
Chloe had set out in haste to rescue her kidnapped youngest brother.
But her brother had vanished, leaving only traces of Dark Magic.
She had rushed along the trail in the face of that absurd turn of events, only to find this out-of-nowhere situation.
There were no traces of Dark Magic, only traces of her brother having dealt with the bandits.
"Ha!"
Chloe Facial let out a hollow laugh in spite of herself.
"What on earth is this boy doing?"
Just then another knight came running and reported.
"Lady Chloe! There are traces of a fairly large group leaving this place."
"And Kai?"
"It hasn't been confirmed whether it was Master Kalian, but there were separate traces of someone leaving here alone."
Chloe had to press a hand to her forehead against a sudden throbbing headache.
She quickly gave Hans her orders.
"Pull a few men and have them investigate the trail of the group separately. The rest are to track Kai's trail."
'Kai, when I find you, don't think I'll let you off!'
Chloe cherished her younger brother dearly, but this time she absolutely could not let it slide.
***
Ah, I made a mistake.
For a moment I forgot that I was fifteen.
At seventeen it wouldn't be a problem, but at fifteen, drinking is a stretch no matter how you look at it.
No, they wouldn't even let me in to begin with.
That's right. I'm sitting propped against the outer wall of the Shelton Tavern.
Damn it!
The whiskey here is seriously incredible.
GULP!
Ah, my mouth is watering.
-What are you smacking your lips over?
'That's because you don't know the special malt Shelton makes. It's a secret-recipe malt you can't buy anywhere.'
From what I'd heard before the regression, it was a malt whiskey brewed in truly tiny quantities at a private distillery.
-Then just drink it.
'This body is still fifteen.'
-Does that matter?
'To a shut-in Archmage like you, who knows nothing of principle, face, or public image, it wouldn't matter.'
-No, I said I'm nooot a shut-in!
'Sure you're not.'
That was when it happened.
STEP.
A pair of feet came into my view along with hesitant steps.
I looked up, and it was Aizel.
"You made it?"
"But why out here......."
"Think about our age. How are we supposed to get in there?"
"T-that's why......."
He looked ready to ask why I'd called him here if I knew that.
Cut him off first.
"All right, shall we move somewhere else?"
"Uh, s-sure."
"Follow me. I'll show you a fantastic place."
The place I took Aizel to was a small eatery in the same Roden District called the 'Wheatfield Pig'.
A fantastic place to eat, run for three generations in the Renhardt outer castle.
"T-this can't be!"
Aizel looked down at the dish he'd been eating, eyes wide.
The name of the dish was about as simple as it gets: stir-fried pork.
Pork and vegetables fried in a secret red sauce.
The signature dish of the Wheatfield Pig.
The tension gradually drained from Aizel's face as he crammed meat into his mouth without pause.
Humans are made so that satisfying even one of their senses raises their sense of closeness.
That's why children are told not to follow the man who offers to buy them sweets.
"Whoa, isn't this a seriously amazing dish? What in the world is this red sauce?"
"I don't know exactly either. Only that it's a secret sauce learned in some country in the East."
What fool would hand over the capital of his own business?
"Whew!"
Aizel's face went completely slack with satisfaction.
"Don't they feed you at home?"
"Uh, w-well, I was afraid of being found out......."
"So you've been picking at whatever food was brought to you."
Aizel nodded.
Frustrating, but there's nothing for it.
I got to the main point first.
"You don't have a valet or an attendant, do you?"
"Apparently not?"
"That's because I always found being followed around a nuisance and refused."
It was Aizel's circumstance, but originally my own doing, so it made for a strange conversation where I asked the question and I gave the answer.
"Which gives us a convenient excuse. Say I'm an attendant when you go into the mansion. A valet suddenly disappearing would look odd."
"Disappearing?"
"Once my business here is done, I'll have to go back to your House Facial, won't I?"
"Ah! That's right. My sister must be worried......."
Aizel muttered with a worried look.
And as for me.
'Ah, that damned witch!'
That guy's elder sister, I mean the elder sister of Kalian Facial, the soul inside that body, was none other than Chloe Facial.
The insane mage who had performed absurd human experiments on my body before the regression.
Ah, the trauma is flaring up again.
For now, that problem would need slow deliberation.
Right now it was time to have an important talk with Aizel.
"Do you happen to know how this happened?"
As if on cue, Aizel asked with a heavy expression.