Marius led me to the enormous archive located inside the castle.
"How much time do we have left?"
"Seven minutes."
"Plenty."
Seven minutes was more than enough to find the book I wanted.
"Where are the history books or fairy tales about weapons?"
"All the way at the far right."
Since I could ignore anyone in Lacia who was after me for the moment, I should look for the information I needed first.
"Can you help me look too?"
"What are you looking for?"
"Something about a golden sword."
"...Be more specific. And where did you see it?"
"A two-handed sword that gave off a golden glow. A woman like an Evilus member was carrying it when I met her in the Dungeon."
"At that point, isn't that basically a magic sword?"
"It seemed more like a holy sword from an old tale than a magic sword."
"...Evilus got hold of something like that?"
"I don't know the details either, so let's just look."
The archive held a surprising number of books from other countries, which made sense for Lacia, a nation that waged war whenever the mood struck it.
"Instructions for tending a world tree...? Why is this here?"
"The basics of magical studies... the essence of alchemy...? Shouldn't this be in a scholarly city?"
We spent five minutes rummaging through books that had absolutely no business being in Lacia's archive.
"By the way, is it really okay to go through the royal archive like this?"
"I'm the crown prince. Why wouldn't it be?"
"Didn't you say you were going to become an adventurer?"
"...Oh, wait. Could this be it?"
Marius lifted a very old book decorated with gold.
"Let's see..."
"Cough! Dust..."
It was old enough to be riddled with holes from insects, and quite a few pages were torn.
"..."
"..."
"This is... a fairy tale, isn't it?"
"...Hmm."
The contents were roughly as follows.
Before the gods descended to the lower world, a blacksmith who had once forged a sword for a being called a hero used the last of his strength to create a sword that protected the world.
For a fairy tale, it had no illustrations and no author listed, and the writing was surprisingly polished.
It went into detail about how the hero at the blacksmith's side died, who the blacksmith ended up with, and even the final moments of his life.
"It doesn't even have a title or a table of contents. Is this even a novel? And it's not realistic at all. How is it supposed to make sense that some ordinary blacksmith ends up with a princess?"
"...Doesn't that sound a lot like my situation?"
"Ah."
"Let's look for something else for now."
"Right... oh, wait a second."
"?"
"Ten minutes have passed."
"..."
"They'll be swarming in soon... what do we do?"
"Wouldn't it be fine if they found us?"
"...Come to think of it, yeah?"
"Let's look for another book."
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