Chapter 94: Latte is horse...(2) As much as he wanted to put Jason or Oswald in the driver's seat instead, the only person who knew how to drive the food truck was Jinseo.
In the end, Jinseo had no choice but to let Charlotte's nonstop rambling go in one ear and out the other.
"A thousand years ago? Fifteen hundred? …My memory's hazy, but there was a time a locust swarm ran rampant around here. I cast large-scale fire magic to wipe it out and ended up making a huge pit. But when I came back five hundred years ago, they'd mistaken it for a meteor impact site."
"Yes."
"Ah! Over there, there used to be a pretty big commercial city. It must've been five hundred years ago—there isn't even a trace left? Did it collapse already?"
"Yes."
Jinseo did not look in the direction Charlotte pointed. He just kept repeating the same answer.
"There was a ruin site in the thicket behind that hill… it's still there? Want to go?"
"Yes."
"Really? Then I'll take you. Hold on a second."
"Yes?"
Paaaat.
A massive magic circle spread out, centered on Charlotte in the passenger seat.
A blinding light wrapped up everyone—including the food truck and the entire delegation—and Jinseo's vision turned white.
A moment later, Jinseo realized they were no longer on a quiet road but in the middle of a forest thick with undergrowth. He pulled the food truck to a stop and clutched his head.
Did I do it again?
It had only been a few months since he had taken Kraide's group to Korea because of an absentminded reply.
Jinseo had sworn, firmly, that he would never half-listen to someone again and answer carelessly.
"W-What? What just happened?"
"Did someone use teleportation magic?"
"If it's enough mana to move all of us at once… other than Lady Charlotte, there's no one who could."
While the delegation wandered around in a daze, Charlotte casually opened the door and stepped out of the passenger seat.
"Surprised, right? All right, all right—don't just panic. Look around carefully."
When Jinseo got out of the driver's seat, he couldn't help but marvel.
Here and there stood structures built of faded marble.
In the scene of trees surrounding those buildings and shadows cast over the brush below, sparkling particles drifted slowly through the air.
"Lady Charlotte, what is this?"
"Mana particles. I scattered them around here long ago to protect the area, but they're still here."
When Jinseo pointed at the air and asked, Charlotte answered while flicking one of the glittering particles with her fingertip.
"It's… truly mysterious."
For Jinseo, a modern Korean, it was a spectacle he could not just pass by.
He pulled out his smartphone and filmed a video.
"It's the kind of place that kid who serves him would like to see. Ah, there you are. Come here!"
Fedora hurried over to Charlotte, who was beckoning her.
"You called for me?"
"Yeah! Something like this—do you think it'd be worth reporting to the order?"
Charlotte pointed at a stone stele standing before a building that was only half intact.
Fedora narrowed her eyes, stared at the stele, and brushed away the dust with her fingertips.
"Th-This is…!"
The moment the faint remaining emblem of the Heirem Order entered the center of her vision, Fedora's eyes widened.
"Told you."
"L-Lady Charlotte! Where is this?"
"I don't really know the place name, but it was probably a refuge your order built in the early days. Back then you were being suppressed, pushed out by other religions. The last time I stopped by here was… roughly… a thousand years ago? I vaguely remember the third pope, or maybe the fourth—some girl—asking me to protect it. So I helped, but it's still somehow here, which even I find surprising."
"A thousand years… ah!"
Fedora could not hide her excitement. She made the sign of the cross with vigorous gestures, then dropped to her knees and began reciting prayers.
At a speed so fast it was practically rapping.
Then she lit fire in her eyes and started combing through the entire site.
Each time she found something she had missed at first—traces of a cathedral, relics such as old books—Fedora repeatedly made the sign of the cross and exclaimed in awe.
"This is incredible! I need to report this to the order immediately!"
"That big a deal? Back in my day, buildings like this were common. I guess a thousand years really is a long time for you. Looks like even I've gotten pretty old, if I've known about this place since then."
Even with a discovery that would be recorded as significant in the Heirem Order's history right before her eyes, Charlotte spoke as calmly as ever.
Fedora, swept up in excitement, moved all over the ruins, and Jinseo followed, recording video of the site.
After nearly an hour of touring everything, Fedora begged Charlotte to take her to the holy land right away.
"That'll make the procedures complicated, won't it? Just leave it to me. I'll finish the whole thing in one go and come back."
Charlotte took Jinseo's smartphone with the ruins footage and vanished in an instant using teleportation magic.
Ten minutes later, she returned with ten clergy members from the holy land.
The clergy, seeing the ancient ruins with their own eyes, trembled as they were overcome with emotion, and Charlotte left them to it and climbed back into the food truck's passenger seat.
"This is only the beginning. On the way to Orte Harbor, I'll show you even more places, so look forward to it."
After that, Charlotte kept telling old stories the entire time as they traveled in the food truck.
"See that mountain peak up there? I was passing over it in my true form, and I saw some insignificant creatures gathered, so I turned into a human and went down to take a look. Those creatures charged at me without fear, so I roasted them with my breath. But the smell was incredible. I took a bite and it was quite excellent—so much so that even after two thousand years, I still can't forget it."
After recalling the taste of a monster she had hunted long ago, Charlotte teleported everyone again.
The monsters—massive pigs—rushed at her human form exactly as they had two thousand years ago, and exactly as they had two thousand years ago, they met the same fate: roasted by a single breath.
"See that valley over there? You can't tell just by looking, but deep inside there are quite a lot of gemstones, so I once went mining myself. Then I failed to control my strength and the whole area collapsed, though."
During lunch, when Charlotte muttered while pointing into the distance, the dwarves all set down the gimbap they were eating and started pulling pickaxes out of subspace storage.
The dwarves ran to the valley she had visited fifteen hundred years ago and began digging up gemstones and ore like mad.
This kept happening—Charlotte would ramble about the past, and when something sounded useful, everyone would rush off in a swarm.
As a result, their schedule to return to Falstead Castle was delayed again and again, but not a single person complained.
"O greatest, wisest, strongest supreme being, if I may..."
As Geshtain rubbed his hands and started flattering her, Charlotte frowned slightly and drank some fish cake broth.
"I've heard that 'supreme being' modifier so much my ears are about to get calluses, so cut it out. Same goes for everything you tacked on in front of it."
"Yes! I would like to ask, with all due boldness, whether you could also tell old stories in the Ashred Continent, the home of us dwarves."
"Ah, that's impossible."
At the first word "impossible" to come from Charlotte's mouth, everyone eating bunsik focused their attention on her.
"You don't know this, but I'm bound to the Francia Continent, so crossing to another continent is impossible in the first place. I kept trying, but it never worked, so I gave up long ago."
"What? Is that so?"
"For that reason, I can't use space-travel magic that crosses to another continent. I want to visit other continents too, like you do. But his power forces me to remain only on the Francia Continent, so it's frustrating."
"Th-That is so?"
At the word "him," Fedora could not hide her shock.
No passage in the Heirem Order scriptures mentioned anything like that.
"I don't know why he imposed that restriction, but I can guess. If an existence like me runs around from continent to continent showing off power, balance would break, wouldn't it?"
Charlotte picked her ear with the ring finger of her left hand, then blew away the earwax that came out.
Right now, she was acting favorably toward people because she liked Jinseo's bunsik, but she knew better than anyone that she was someone no one could control.
"Still, staying only on the Francia Continent gets boring sometimes. That's why I periodically sleep in my lair. No matter how vast the Francia Continent is, if you wander around for a few hundred years, you experience most things. When that happens, I sleep for a few hundred years. When I wake up, there's usually plenty of new entertainment. If you live as long as I do, you'll understand."
That's like… deliberately letting a webtoon or web novel pile up because you like it but the pacing is slow, then binge-reading it later. Yeah, I get it.
Jinseo interpreted Charlotte's complaint in modern terms and nodded.
"Of course, nothing was as novel as Jinseo's bunsik."
Charlotte lifted a huge bundle of jjolmyeon with her chopsticks, picked up gimbap on top, and slurped it straight in.
As if she had no intention of sleeping until she had conquered every last one of Jinseo's bunsik...
Caw, caw.
When Jinseo arrived at Orte Harbor, the cries of seagulls and the scent of the sea greeted him warmly.
Orte Harbor, which he was visiting for the third time already, looked clearly different from before.
Many more ships were lined up at the pier, and the vendor street packed with tourists overflowed with liveliness.
It was a shame the modest feel from his first visit was gone, but it was far better than the bleak street after the kraken attack.
"Oh! Jinseo! It's been a while!"
The village chief, still short but now even more solidly built, greeted Jinseo with delight.
"I'm really glad to see you looking healthy. Have you been well?"
"Of course! I've been training my body by eating fried kraken every day."
The village chief raised his right arm and showed off his even bigger bicep, proving he was thriving.
"But the short guests you brought with you—could they be...?"
Looking down at the dwarves he had never seen in his life, the village chief asked cautiously.
"They're a dwarf delegation. They wanted to see the seaside, so I recommended this place."
"Ohh! Last time you came with Sir Kraide, the solitary swordsman, and now you've gone even further and brought dwarves with you! I never thought I'd see such a fantastic other race!"
The village chief stared down at the dwarves—far shorter than him but sturdily built—with astonished eyes.
"Come, come—if you want to see the sea, this way!"
The village chief led the dwarves to the sandy beach beside the pier.
"I've never seen such a wide lake. I can't see the end. This is the sea?"
"Whoa! It's really salty! Fish can live in water like this? That's truly mysterious."
The dwarves could not stop exclaiming as they looked out over the vast sea.
For those who lived underground, the blue sea and the endlessly spread horizon were a breathtaking sight just to behold.
Jinseo also folded his arms and gazed pleasantly at the blue sea and rolling waves.
"It feels like just yesterday we charged at the kraken without any fear."
As he recalled last year, when he had unintentionally become the "Kraken Slayer," Jinseo scratched his temple.
"You were truly strong. Honestly, it feels like a waste for you to live as a cook."
"I-I'm not that strong."
Was it because there was an existence right beside them so powerful that a kraken did not even compare?
Jinseo could only give a bitter smile at the village chief's praise.
"Since you mention it, why not take another kraken with you? I have one we caught two weeks ago! It's very fresh!"
"Two weeks ago? Tsk, tsk. That isn't fresh."
Charlotte, who had been quietly listening to the conversation, raised her right index finger and wagged it side to side.
"Wait a moment."
At Charlotte's "wait a moment," the delegation reflexively moved away from her.
Paaaat.
"..."
The village chief forgot how to speak as he watched Charlotte transform into a massive dragon and fly up.
Just from the fact she came with Jinseo, he had guessed she was not an ordinary human, and her appearance and strange clothing were already unusual.
But he never imagined she would transform into a colossal being that filled his entire view.
"Just wait a moment! I detected traces of a kraken nearby, so it won't take long!"
Saying "nearby" by dragon standards, she flew toward the horizon.
"J-Jinseo! What in the world is going on?"
"That person is, hmm… Lady Charlotte. As you can see, she's a dragon."
"A dragon? Not long ago, rumors spread that a dragon woke up in its lair—so it was true?"
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