[The Snow Beacon Flower.
I will go and fetch it. Please grant me permission.]
The Grand Duke's office.
Raizel, who had suddenly come to see the Grand Duke, held out a sheet of paper with a short request written on it.
Reading what was on it, Kailan was dumbfounded.
"You...... Do you even know what the Snow Beacon Flower is?"
Raizel nodded confidently.
But the Grand Duke did not seem to believe him. Narrowing his eyes, he asked again.
"I trust you know how the Snow Beacon Flower is absorbed?"
That much he did not know. What Raizel had asked Gowen in the first place was only 'what is the finest elixir to be found in the Grand Duchy.'
And after thinking for a moment, Gowen had answered that the root of a flower called the 'Snow Beacon Flower,' which grew on the summit of the snowy mountain in the northwest of the Grand Duchy, was the best elixir to be had in the Grand Duchy.
-Reaching the summit is difficult, but that is because of the brutal cold, not because of any other danger. Once you reach the peak, there is a huge ice cave, and they bloom inside it in clusters. There will be more in bloom than you could ever carry back.
"So you do not know."
When Raizel showed no reaction, the Grand Duke swallowed a sigh.
Raizel clearly did not know what the Snow Beacon Flower was, or how its mana was absorbed.
And in fact, he did not. How would Raizel know?
On top of that, not even Gowen, who had given him the answer, had expected Raizel to go looking for the Snow Beacon Flower himself.
Kailan clicked his tongue in frustration and explained.
"The Snow Beacon Flower is an elixir that only those with extremely pure mana can absorb. The way one pours priming water into a well. What is more, once pulled from the ground it dies almost at once, so it is impossible even to carry it down the snowy mountain. I tried many times myself, and never gained so much as a trace of mana. No matter how much mana an elixir holds, what use is it if you cannot absorb that mana? That is why no one seeks the Snow Beacon Flower."
At those words, Raizel turned his attention to his lower qi center.
So little mana was held there that it would be no exaggeration to call his qi center still empty.
After days of perseverance, that amount of mana was all he had managed to gain.
Yet it was a remarkable result.
For though the quantity was small, its purity impressed even Raizel himself, the Heavenly Demon.
'Not even the elders of the Daoist sects would have inner arts this pure.'
So if not him, no human in this world could take in the Snow Beacon Flower's spiritual energy.
"Only a very few extraordinary people have ever succeeded in gaining the Snow Beacon Flower's mana."
But that only meant it was rare, and still possible, did it not?
Raizel was confident he could take in the Snow Beacon Flower.
"Will you still go looking for it?"
Raizel nodded.
"It will be wasted effort anyway."
"Your Highness, even if he fails, it is experience. Your Highness has been there too, so there is no reason the Young Master should not go, is there?"
Knight Commander Haven Sladin, who had already been in the Grand Duke's office but had held his tongue while Raizel talked with the Grand Duke, spoke up.
"Ahem."
Because the Imperial Family was behind the ruin of Raizel's mana heart, the Grand Duke had made the fact that Raizel could use sword energy a closely guarded secret.
The Knight Commander was one of the few who shared that secret.
When even Haven, the Knight Commander, took Raizel's side, Kailan, as if he had no choice, gave Raizel permission to set out after the Snow Beacon Flower.
"Very well. I permit it."
But what Kailan said next was unexpected.
"On one condition. I am coming with you."
At the Grand Duke's words, Haven's eyes went wide.
"You are barely out of your sickbed. How could I send you up the snowy mountain alone? If you took a tumble in the snow and broke a leg, Alicia would have my head."
Kailan added, looking awkward.
"So I will go with you."
"An excellent idea! It would do father and son good to grow close again, after so long. Camping will be a fine experience."
Even Haven chimed in.
He and the Grand Duke were not exactly close, so it was a little awkward, but if permission came only on the condition that they go together, there was nothing for it.
Raizel nodded, accepting the Grand Duke's condition.
***
-Must you really go to the snowy mountain?
Leaving Alicia's worries behind, Raizel and Kailan climbed the snowy mountain.
"What a nuisance."
Kailan muttered, tugging at his collar.
As the price of going to the snowy mountain against Alicia's pleas, Kailan and Raizel were all but buried in thick clothing.
Bundled in layer upon layer of fur, they looked like bears, or snowmen.
"We even brought a heating magic tool. Why she worries so much, honestly."
She could have fussed over her son Raizel alone, but she had put him in this state too. It was absurd, and yet he did not mind.
Kailan grumbled about the clothes, then looked at Raizel.
"......Is there still no improvement in your aphasia?"
Raizel nodded.
Kailan sighed. His breath rose in a pure white cloud.
"How frustrating."
'Look who is talking.'
The one most frustrated by being unable to speak was Raizel himself.
Bring this, bring that. Even when he was the Heavenly Demon, he had only to give an order and everyone would step forward to present whatever he wanted.
Even now, things were not much different when it came to having people wait on him, but the problem was that he could not give orders at all.
To cure the aphasia he had to find its cause first, and that was harder than he had thought.
'The healer said it was temporary aphasia brought on by mental shock, but that did not seem to be the case.'
As far as he could guess, someone had induced the aphasia deliberately.
Not content with ruining the mana heart, which served the same role as a qi center, they had added aphasia on top.
What was more, when he first opened his eyes in this world, he had been found in a forest, half buried in snow.
Had he not possessed this body, 'Raizel Esselklein' would have frozen to death on the spot, and even his corpse would have been eaten by wolves and never found.
He had been shoved right to the edge of a cliff.
'This is no ordinary malice.'
If the only goal had been to eliminate a political rival, ruining his mana heart would have been enough.
But to go this far.
He could only conclude that personal feelings had been involved.
'What made them so hostile?'
Raizel glanced at the Grand Duke.
He had to keep in mind that it might not have been hostility toward 'Raizel Esselklein' at all, but hostility toward the Grand Duke and the entire Grand Ducal House.
'I will have to look into it later.'
It was not urgent, but to prepare for the day it became known that he could still use mana, he would need to find the source of that malice.
Because Raizel could not speak, father and son climbed the snowy mountain in silence.
The endless white range lay steeped in silver mist, as majestic as the breath of a quietly sleeping giant. Scattered ice flowers and the ringing of icicles struck by the wind whispered that the snow-covered land was alive.
"We are making no headway at all."
Around sunset, still muttering complaints about the clothes, Kailan picked a suitable spot and began setting up camp.
It could not have been easy for a man of a Grand Duke's station to put up a tent and cook with his own hands, yet Kailan got it all done briskly without a single grumble.
Raizel, on the other hand, who had lived so long as the Heavenly Demon that he had not cooked a single meal himself in nearly twenty years, just stood there blankly.
"What are you doing? Sit."
Having soon cut a fallen log into a stool with sword energy, Kailan beckoned him over.
When Raizel sat on the wooden stool, Kailan lit a campfire. Then he sat down facing Raizel across the fire.
"Here, eat."
What Kailan held out was a stew much like the one Vestia brought him at the castle. A stew that killed the appetite just to look at.
'Restorative or not...... is this not going too far?'
Raizel eyed the stew warily, and when Kailan urged him on, he reluctantly began to eat.
And so the night of father and son's first camp together wore on.
***
The next day.
Raizel and Kailan kept climbing the snowy mountain.
Despite the snowy mountain's brutal cold, Raizel showed no sign of strain at all.
When Raizel was not looking, Kailan smiled faintly.
Mana users naturally bore the cold more easily.
That he could endure this cold meant Raizel was a mana user in his own right.
So how could he not be glad?
"We are almost there now."
Kailan said, glancing back at Raizel.
'We have come this far...... but even if he finds the Snow Beacon Flower, it will do him no good.'
He worried his son would be disappointed, but he did not let it show and quickened his pace.
"We are here. This is it."
And soon, at last, they found the ice cave filled with blooming Snow Beacon Flowers.
Looking over the ice cave, Kailan relived memories from his boyhood.
"It has been a long time, this place."
Raizel, meanwhile, cared only about the elixir, the Snow Beacon Flower. He strode deep into the ice cave.
The moment he stepped inside, he felt a cold, dense energy.
'Found it.'
Soon Raizel came upon a thick patch of Snow Beacon Flowers in full bloom.
'A precious elixir, just as the healer said.'
A faint smile rose on Raizel's face of its own accord.
When Raizel began pulling up Snow Beacon Flowers within reach and gathering their roots, Kailan came over and spoke.
"You mean to try it right away?"
Raizel nodded, then found a suitable spot and sat down.
Then he took the handful of Snow Beacon Flower roots he had pulled, shook off only the dirt, and tossed them straight into his mouth.
A fiercely bitter taste and a chill cold enough to freeze spread through his mouth.
'It cannot be helped.'
Whooooom......
It felt as though the cold of the snowfield had condensed and was being drawn into his body.
At the same time, a powerful energy whirled up in his qi center.
'I see. No ordinary person could take this in.'
With yin energy this extreme, far from gaining mana, most would have the balance of yin and yang shattered the moment they ran a heart method, and die then and there.
If anything, it was a blessing that almost no one could take in the Snow Beacon Flower's mana in the first place.
'But it is no problem.'
He began to run the Heavenly Yin Energy Art.
It was a heart method perfected for taking in extreme yin energy.
Hummmmm—
He felt a deep, vast energy seeping into him.
Energy as powerful as a crashing avalanche.
An ordinary person would have lost control of it and fallen straight into qi deviation.
But he was the Heavenly Demon.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump......!
The Snow Beacon Flower's mana he had taken in made a full circuit of his body, then broke through his meridians as if crossing some critical threshold.
And how much time had passed?
"Hoo......"
Raizel opened his eyes.
Before him, Kailan, his face grave, was looking at his son with wavering eyes.
"Raizel."
When their eyes met, he felt a presence clearly transformed.
Kailan spoke as if his throat were choked.
"Congratulations."
An achievement he had never expected.
An achievement so astonishing and dreamlike that it was hard even to believe.
"......The 1-Star realm, you have reached it."
Reaching the 1-Star realm meant breaking through the very first gate on the road to becoming a Sword Master.
It also meant having the ability to be knighted anywhere.
The minimum requirement for inheriting the grand ducal seat of Esseldria was to become a knight.
The history of the Grand Ducal House, which he had thought would be cut off forever, had come back to life like a miracle.
But to Kailan, there was something more important than the matter of the Grand Ducal House's succession.
He spoke with his heart ablaze.
"I am proud of you."
As a father, nothing could make him prouder than his only child overcoming his disability.