An Integrity Knight, the ultimate realization of law and order and symbol of goodness, killed a white dragon that served as protector of the human world. In eleven years without ever doubting the way of the world, Eugeo had never considered a concept as difficult as this. He agonized over a suspicion he could neither swallow nor chew, and he shot his partner a pleading glance.
“…I don’t know,” Kirito muttered, no more certain than Eugeo. “Perhaps…there was an incredibly strong knight from the land of darkness who came and killed the dragon…But if that was true, then it doesn’t make sense that the armies of darkness never once crossed the End Mountains to attack. And it certainly doesn’t seem like whoever did it was after treasure…”
He walked over to the dragon’s remains and placed the claw back on the pile, then reached down and dragged out something long from the bottom.
“Whoa…this is really heavy…”
He unsteadily dragged the object about a mel and showed it to Eugeo and Alice.
It was a longsword with a white leather sheath and platinum pommel. There were fine inlaid patterns of blue roses here and there on the handle, making it clear from a glance that it was more valuable than any sword in the village.
“Oh…could that be…?” Alice wondered, eyes wide. Kirito nodded.
“Yeah. It’s got to be the Blue Rose Sword that Bercouli tried to steal from the sleeping dragon. I wonder why whoever killed the dragon didn’t take it with them…”
He crouched down and, grabbing the grip with both hands, tried to lift it, but the best he could do was get the tip a few dozen cens from the surface of the ice.
“…I can’t!” Kirito shouted, and dropped the sword. It clattered heavily to the ice, causing fine cracks to form in the thick layer. It had to be unbelievably heavy for such a slender weapon.
“What do we do with it?” Eugeo asked. His partner shook his head as he stood up straight again.
“It’s no good. We couldn’t get this back to town even if the two of us carried it together. All it takes is a few swings of that ax to get us wheezing, remember. But it does look like there’s other kinds of treasure down under the bones…”
“Yes…but I don’t feel in the mood to go taking it out of here,” Alice murmured gravely. The boys shared her opinion.
They wanted a tiny little prize from a sleeping dragon to show off to the other children, but taking treasure from this place would be little more than grave robbing. The taboo in the Index about stealing applied only to other humans and not here, but just because something was not in the Taboo Index did not mean it was justified.
Eugeo looked again at his friends, then nodded. “Let’s just take the ice, as we planned. I’m certain that the white dragon would have allowed us to do that, if it were alive.”
He walked over to a nearby icicle and kicked at one of the countless ice crystals growing from its base like plant buds. It cracked off cleanly, and he picked it up and offered it to Alice, who lifted the lid of the empty basket and tossed it inside.
For the next few minutes, the trio gathered up shards of ice to put into the basket. When the base of that pillar was clean, they moved on to the next one to repeat the process. Before long, the large basket was completely full of little blue ice crystals that sparkled like precious stones.