Chapter 19

Note to self: Not even the people of another world will let you oversleep in peace.

What is the use of an alarm clock if something else is just going to wake you up anyway? Not like my body needed sleep, but the feeling of being woken up on something other than my terms was annoying.

To be honest, though, an alarm clock would be much preferred to something like getting my door kicked down.

"..." I looked at the two men standing in the doorway, down to the bits of wood that used to be my inn room's door, and then back at them. "why?"

One of them slowly backed out of the room, and the other was forced to say something. He cleared his throat.

"We're leaving. " He said in a gruff voice.

Must be a hard job, being a messenger of the Emperor.

---

Not much out of the usual really happened after I hopped into the carriage prepared by the two men and we took off in what I assumed to be the direction of the Capital. They stared at me with confusion in their gazes for at least a full minute before going back to their own devices. They must have really expected me to try and run away or something.

To be perfectly honest, I did consider running away. Who wouldn't have? If two buff dudes showed up to their house, even the most trustworthy and confident members of society would turn the other way and run as fast as they could. The mere sight of them was terrifying. The only reason I could sit there as calm as I was was the obvious.

I wasn't human. That'd been evident the moment I woke up in this world. I had wings which I could keep hidden, physical ability that could send rocks flying faster than bullets, and reaction time so quick that I could dodge an arrow that I didn't even see get shot. Even against the strongest of humans, those abilities sounded way too unfair. Maybe that's where the confidence came from. Or perhaps my uncertainty was a human trait that I no longer had. Thinking of it that way, it was almost as if I had ascended to a higher plane of existence. That thought alone made me laugh a bit. That's right. I was above human. While I didn't doubt that humans had magic or something similar of their own, I knew, in the back of my mind somehow, that not a single person had a chance against me.

I looked out at the scenery as the carriage continued its bumpy journey to the Capital. That's right. If I wanted to, I could have easily escaped, and the two in the carriage with me would have had no ability whatsoever to stop me. However, my curiosity got the better of me. What was an Emperor ruling over this sort of time period like? How would I be expected to act, and most importantly, how did they manage to find me? I considered myself a bit of a history buff despite struggling the hardest in that subject during school, and the idea of meeting the ruler of a nation set so far in the past excited me. I mean, what was the worst that could happen? Execution? I was sure that mere humans would not be successful in an attempt to do that, no matter the method.

Riding in a carriage really allowed me to take a look at the scenery of this world. Much more so than zipping above it all. While most of the ride was just through the middle of nowhere, with a few trees sprinkled throughout, we did pass a few small towns. I even saw one or two people wave.

Ah, but riding in a carriage was just so slow...

---

If I had just flown, I could have reached the Capital in a day, tops. By carriage, it took a very long-and very boring-three weeks. I never had the ability to sleep on car rides, and even less so on a bumpy carriage. Luckily, I no longer needed sleep. Unluckily, I had no other way to spend my time.

At one point I just zoned out for hours at a time and only came back to reality whenever we hit a significantly larger bump. I assumed this would have been the round-trip for the men riding with me. How they dealt with the boredom, I had no clue. Trying to read them was like trying to read the Queen's Guard. Fitting, I guess.

Somewhere along the line, I started drawing out plans to build a commercial aircraft from scratch in my head while watching the endless green go by outside the carriage. In terms of how practical that would have been, it was somewhere along the lines of not at all. How would a medieval world have the resources to manufacture a massive cylinder with wings capable of flying around the world? It was a nothing but a time-killer.

After what seemed like ages, the carriage finally slowed, and walls as high as the clouds came into view. Why those were needed, I had no clue. It was nice and magnificent, so I didn't question it too much. We stopped at the gates, went through a quick check, and continued through.

Now that I was past the walls of the Capital, I felt a sense of panic that hadn't been a part of my emotional expression for a long while. I was about to speak with an Emperor here. As a 21st-century highschool student, I had no clue how I was supposed to act in front of the ruler of an entire race. Should I try to mimic what I had seen in movies? Should I try to act all egotistical and declare myself superior? Should I just straight-up start speaking English and pretend like I didn't know the language? I didn't even know what could have been considered offensive. What if I somehow made the man mad just by stepping foot in his presence a second too soon or something of that sort? No amount of otherworldly power is going to get me out of a situation like that, unless I somehow miraculously gained the ability to rewind time itself.

Luckily, I wasn't given the chance to turn around and run the opposite way the moment I got out of the carriage, since my "escorts" straight-up grabbed me and dragged me out of it first. One of them muttered an apology and clamped a pair of what I could only assume to be handcuffs around my wrists. All of this happened before I could even process the fact that we had reached our destination already.

"This was not what I signed up for." I said under my breath.

"My apologies." The man apologized once again, and started leading me towards the gates of an absolutely massive castle. Upon further inspection, it seemed as if the castle was a school of sorts, and students wearing the same uniform occupied all of the rooms, doing student things.

"This place looks more like a school than the home of an emperor." I pointed out

"None of the students have been told this, but the emperor's residence is right above them, and takes up the top three floors of the building." The man leading me explained. It was only then that I realized that I was only being led by a single person.

"That's... a strange place to live."

"Nobody knows of his reasons for doing so, since nobody knows that he's there in the first place."

"makes sense."

I was led up several flights of stairs, occasionally being given a strange look by a passing student or teacher, and finally coming to realize just how revolutionary the elevator was, until we reached what appeared to be the top floor. The man leading me traced a wall to my left, and a magic circle appeared where his hand came into contact with the wall. I stood there, stunned. It was the first time I'd seen anything remotely like a movie depiction of magic in this world. He motioned for me to stand closer.

There wasn't a flash of light or anything like that, which was what I had been expecting for being teleported, but instead I was suddenly in a completely different room from before, one that was huge and took up the entire floor, with a man sitting in a throne on the other side of it. A total of four knights stood beside him, but other than that the security wasn't as tight as I'd expected.

I looked around, hoping that the man who had led me here would give me an idea of what to do before an emperor, but he was nowhere to be found. I silently cursed him for tossing me into this situation alone. Before I could do anything, the emperor stood up and took long, slow strides towards me, his shimmering purple robe nearly touching the ground. Without a clue of what to do, I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the appearance of the emperor, who had rich, purple hair that matched the color of his clothing and the general theme of the throne room. He had sharp facial features that made him look really mature, but in terms of physical age, the man looked like he was in his early 20's. None of his knights moved a muscle as he approached me, and I could feel my heart trying to explode out of my chest with each step he took. The stress I felt was worse than cramming for finals three hours before the test.

He continued at the same pace until he was about ten feet away from me. He then stopped and looked me up and down with a piercing glare that sent chills through my bones. I wondered if I should be saying anything, or kneeling, or shrinking into a corner.

Then, before I could do any of the above, the emperor's flowing robe came into contact with the purple carpet, seemingly blending with it. He fell to his knees, and brought his forehead to the same carpet in a perfect koutou. Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed one of the knights flinch momentarily. I couldn't judge him, I was probably still flinching.

"Please, join humanity's battle." His voice was still intimidating, despite him being folded over on the ground before me. "I beg of you."

Of all the things I could have thought at that moment, my mind chose to do the most amusing thing of all, and I thought,

Ah, so this was what they meant by he was requesting an audience with me.