I Am the Criminal, Rihan (4)

"The Blood Cross Army? What is that supposed to be—some knockoff blood cult?"

"Right? You think so too!"

Perhaps the only voice in the world that understood Lee Han's particular sense of taste and romance, the System Window's remark was a welcome one. So he hadn't been the only one who thought the name sounded like a cheap fake.

Taechang, though—no, Derek—was genuinely blank.

"A faction out of the temple? A parasite that survived even after the Military God destroyed it? ...What is any of this supposed to mean?"

Derek muttered to himself without pause, utterly at a loss. The appearance of a power he had never once heard of had thrown his thoughts into a tangle.

"I—I was on the development team, yes, but I wasn't exactly high up. So I don't know everything in the game. The Blood Cross Army might be a setting the planning team made later, or one they scrapped. Or it could be original material I simply never saw."

"The game, and the original..."

"If you want, shall I tell you?"

"...No. Forget it. Sure, knowing might be convenient. But learn too much and all you get is a complicated head. ...Like yours."

"I—I can't even deny that...."

Right. Just as the man had said, Derek's head was always complicated. He knew too much. There were people who would envy him, who would think that with information like that they could do anything.

"It's awful. Seriously...."

But as Derek saw it, knowing a great deal was poison. However much information you held, using it—and forcing it through—required authority and strength to match. Not ordinary authority. Not ordinary strength. At the bare minimum....

"Unless I had the Military God's authority, and strength on the level of an Aura User, I couldn't use what I know however I pleased."

No. Even one of the two would have been a mercy, and of the two, Derek had neither. He had known beforehand that monsters would appear the day before, and still there had been nothing he could do. And so he lived under constant stress, and nights when he lay awake until dawn were more common than not. Only recently, with a reliable ally beside him, had he been sleeping properly. If not for that...!

"Haaah. As you said, Instructor, not knowing sits easier. I think I'd be more comfortable just being an information vending machine."

"Kid. Don't talk like that. Put in the work, and become an Aura User. Or a power on the Military God's level."

"...Neither would be easy. And I don't want to, either...."

An Aura User was not a height you climbed with skills or achievement points. Becoming a power on the Military God's level required the political skill to draw other people in beneath you, and he had neither the ability nor the nerve for it.

"A guy who'd be fine doing anything, if only the confidence would overflow."

"...You rate me far too highly, Instructor. Anyway, what matters now is that an unidentified faction has shown itself."

"You really don't know a thing? You foresaw the monster incident."

"I know there are villains. But there was nobody using a ridiculous name like 'Blood Cross Army.'"

"......"

"There's an error somewhere, or a deviation has opened. And to understand that deviation, I think it would be better if I moved together with you, Instructor."

"Hoh. What's this—taking the initiative?"

"...Haha. It's nothing much. I'm only copying what you do."

"What did I do?"

"You said it yourself. Whatever work you take up, carry a sense of responsibility. I'm trying to do the same."

Responsibility, as a maker of games. Derek was making the effort to act on it.

And so, now—

"Whoa. How long has it been since water was this clean?"

"The bread is soft, and the milk is as fresh as if it had just been drawn. How in the world do they distribute something like this all the way to a place this harsh?"

"Mmmph!!"

"Ah, Sir Aren. Please eat a little more slowly. You'll choke."

"Khak! W-water...!"

"...The instant I finish the sentence."

Thanks to Derek, the knights were taking in a warm meal and fresh milk like farmers drinking a drought-breaking rain. It was an astonishing Mystery, possible only for a Player who possessed the absurd skill Inventory.

"To think you knew a collaborator this capable. I'm seeing you differently, Lee Han."

"Your connections run quite wide, Senior."

"This once, I acknowledge it."

"All of it?"

"...I acknowledge it."

"...Right. What did I expect from you."

"......"

As ever, Lee Han raked the pushover of an Eighth Prince over the coals, and at the same time kept his attention on the talk with Derek.

"So. Find anything?"

"......It was that big?"

He had known the place was large. He had not known it was that large. Then again, it was a facility that had to supply fertilizer to the whole kingdom—no, to the entire southern continent. If anything, it was true that the work would have been impossible unless it were this huge.

"Searching it won't be easy."

"Hmm."

That, too, was probably only the minimum. If they meant to look more closely, even a fortnight might not suffice. They were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not merely glancing around. They had to learn what they could of an organization that might be hidden anywhere.

Is this really the place?

A suspicion, in a single breath. In truth, the candidate sites Isis had chosen were three, and they had come to the one she picked on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instinct alone. What if trusting nothing but that instinct had been a mistake?

...No. This is definitely it!

But Lee Han decided he would not doubt her instinct. She was a woman who, from time to time, displayed abilities that defied explanation. An ability that bordered on Mystery. So he had to believe, and he had to be certain that this was the place. The more he distrusted, the more certain he was to find nothing.

"Hm. Looks like I'll have to ask you to suffer a little more. I'll search hard on my end, but being a criminal puts quite a lot of limits on me."

"Yeah. See you this evening."

A breath of wind. The presence vanished.

An astonishing art of concealment—no. A skill. If that skill developed even a little further, might even Lee Han fail to sense it?

The System Window really is a cheat.

Invisibility, concealment, and an acceleration skill, all combined. If that wasn't a man-shaped stealth craft, what was it?

While Lee Han was busy envying it—

"Hey. You. I hear you knights are from Britannia."

"?"

"We've never met, but the trained bodies alone tell me enough. Clearly men of some skill. A pleasure. Mustang de Varga."

Out of nowhere, an idiot announced his own name. As if they would tremble at the mere sound of it. But they—

"??"

—gave him nothing but a look that said, plain as day, What is that imbecile?

"...Y-you don't know my name?"

Just as the flustered Mustang's eyes began to swim, a reaction came at last.

"...Mustang? The Britannian general who led the Third Legion?"

From the mouth of Jake—the knight among them who, for what it was worth, read the most newspapers—the man's history emerged, and Mustang brightened, but...

"Ooh!"

"The one they call Pendragon's hidden supporter, and a spy—the man who helped Pendragon's victory with his idiot command...?"

"...Oh......"

"That lunatic said to have thrown a party in the middle of a battlefield...."

"E-enough! Enough...!"

Having his history aired seemed, if anything, to have been a misfortune. Every time his past came out, the general called Mustang crumpled in the face and shouted in haste. But for men who had already heard all there was to hear—

Wow. I'd heard Britannia deserved to fall, but it really did. A guy like that was a general?

They say an incompetent ally is more dangerous than the enemy....

A-astonishing. Even a man like that can become a general?

If you think about it, you're a captain too, so isn't it possible?

Wh-what is that supposed to mean!!

—they offered nothing but gazes that cold. Among fools, he was an incompetent fool. It was genuinely hard to look on him kindly.

And, as if to prove that incompetence, he turned toward the men who were openly scorning him with their eyes.

"Ahem. W-well. If you know my name, then you know I was your superior. State your names and your posts, and show the proper courtesy!"

"......"

He began to whine, outright, for courtesy—no, for treatment—and this time they truly lost whatever they might have said. Did he have no sense of the room at all?

Wow.... So even incompetence can inspire awe like this.

If incompetence had realms of its own, this one was surely on the order of the Flower Realm, or the Profound Realm. Otherwise he could never have drawn forth admiration to this degree.

And then—

"Hmph! Demanding special treatment even inside a prison—have you no conscience!"

The White Lion of Pendragon, whose pride in his station could pierce the sky—no, Geumjjoki—wore his distaste plain on his face and started a needless war of words.

"You called me wretch! How dare you hang that title on me, the legitimate heir of the noble House Varga!"

"Speak of a base wretch. What is a Varga of that sort supposed to be."

"What! This man dares...!"

A small-hearted quarrel, Pendragon's Geumjjoki and Britannia's wastrel barking at each other. The answer was not to mix words with a man like that, and yet here he was doing it. Geumjjoki was Geumjjoki, after all.

The fight heated in an instant. Was that not how it always went? They were men of fierce pride, and of confidence in their blood. Men like that did not fold their will with ease. They fought, until the other bowed his head first.

And so—

"This man, truly—!"

"At whom do you dare point that finger!"

They seized each other by the collar, and the brawl began in earnest. It had happened within five minutes of their meeting, and not a single person moved to stop them.

Or, to be precise—

"What are those two?"

"Th-they've got strength to spare."

—the people around them had no strength left with which to stop it. That was the accurate version. They were already spent from fighting the mini-worms. How could they have had the strength to watch a brawl, let alone break one up? From the prisoners' side of things, whether a fight broke out, and who won it, did not matter in the least.

However—

"General Mustang. Please, don't. Are they not countrymen, met after so long? Isn't this precisely the time to join our strength?"

"But this bastard started it...!"

"Haha. Compose yourself. Compose yourself."

"...Hmm."

One man, whose face looked unusually good-natured, stepped in front of Mustang and calmed him, and the uproar came to a pause.

"My apologies. It isn't that General Mustang meant any harm by this. He was only glad to hear that knights from Britannia had come in. I say it again—he bears no ill will. Haha."

"......"

"Ah, I was late to introduce myself. Roy Bant. Please, call me Roy."

"...Hmm."

Roy Bant, who came forward smiling and offered his hand, was a young man who looked truly upright. He had the air of a capable civil official, and seemed nothing more than a harmless man with no combat power to him at all.

"Sir Bant! Are you telling me to leave such lawless men alone!"

"General. Even so, they are knights of your homeland, are they not? And isn't it fortunate they aren't from the legion you commanded?"

"Th-that is, well..."

As if he knew the wrong he himself had done, Mustang flinched. Well, his own trolling had as good as lost the legion. If he didn't know even that, he would be a man worse than a beast. Mustang fell silent, and Roy Bant, a trace of relief on his face, turned his eyes back to them.

"I've shown you an embarrassing sight."

"No. Aside from one of us, we weren't even taking him up on it, so it hardly mattered."

"Haha, that is a relief, then.... Ah. Your name?"

"Lee Han."

"...Rihan?"

"Mm. Been a while since I heard that one."

"Pardon?"

"Forget it. Just remember me as Rihan."

"...Have I committed some discourtesy...?"

"No. Nothing like that. More than that—you. What's your relation to that one?"

"...?"

There was something sudden, and unnatural, in the goodwill of Lee Han's words, and Roy Bant looked at him as if he were strange. Even so, he answered in earnest.

"...General Mustang and I formed a bond in the Tunnels. I was about to die to the worms, and the general saved me. In truth, he is the savior of my life."

"Hahahaha! That's right, that's right, there was such a thing!"

Mustang laughed with exaggeration, as if it were something he had forgotten, and—however one looked at it—patted Roy Bant's shoulder as if to say, go on, speak more of my excellence. It was enough to give offense. Yet Roy Bant kept the smiling face, and just as the company's liking for Mustang was about to sink still further—

"—That's strange. You don't look incompetent enough to need help from someone less skilled than you."

"......"

For the first time, at Lee Han's words, Roy Bant's smiling face went stiff.

"Really. Strange."

"...I'm not certain what you mean...."

"You don't get what I mean? I'm telling you to your face. You're suspicious."

"?!"

A rush of air. A clean, hard smack.

"......"

"Nice block."

"...Ha. This crazy..."

The fist Lee Han had thrown was never something an ordinary man could block. Had it landed, it was a blow that could certainly have killed. And yet Roy Bant stopped it with ease, and that was already—

"Feels good, doesn't it? Taking the antidote, and leaving the savior out of it."

"......Damn it."

—proof that he was using a Fighting Art. Killing intent pooled in Roy Bant's eyes. The moment Lee Han caught it—

A suspicious one.

Delighted, he drove his fist toward the man.

BOOM!

Lee Han's fist and Roy Bant's collided. A violent rupture of air, like a tire bursting, spread again and again, and every time it broke, a sound loud enough to pain the eardrums rang out.

Roy Bant's leg drew a trajectory like a snake and lashed a kick into his opponent. A complicated path—the sort one might imagine if a man who truly had a snake for a leg threw a Brazilian kick. Those kicks came in a chain, threatening Lee Han, but his eyes were not seduced by the festival of complex movement.

Thwack!

"That all?"

"!"

He blocked it with far too much ease. It was, literally, seeing and then stopping, and shock rose over Roy Bant's face. This seemed to be the first time he had been stopped so easily.

But the instant his technique was blocked, Roy Bant unveiled a chain of skills still more powerful, and still more dazzling. A fighting art whose practicality and killing power stood out—reminiscent, as one watched, of Muay Thai. At a glance, a skilled man who had learned the art properly and completed it in real combat.

KRA-KOOM!

A high proficiency of technique, a body, and Fighting Art. When those three reached full maturity, a knight's blow held the power to break rock and tear even a beast apart. A kick came with a rooted stomp that left a footprint in the earth—footwork even more protean than a moment before, leading the eye astray.

Well now. An artistic kicking form.

He had heard that, unlike the knights of Pendragon, among whom fist-arts and wrestling were the more developed, Britannia stood at an extremely high level in footwork. He had never properly fought a knight of Britannia, so this was his first time seeing it, but it was a kicking art that had truly reached the realm of art.

And for that very reason—

A shame. Fly and crawl all you like. You're still second from the bottom.

It was clearly a fine technique. Unfortunately, since the year began, he had witnessed arts of a higher order several times over. And so Roy Bant's technique was merely second from last—only a little better than Aren. The dazzling footwork that sought to threaten him met something else entirely.

WHAM!

"Ghhh...!"

"A bit light. Put some weight on it."

He showed it, outright, what it meant to break straight through with a simplicity that was pure stupidity. A discordant sight: the one who had struck was the one in pain. But it was only to be expected. It may have been power enough to strike rock apart. It was not power enough to strike steel apart.

It fell miserably short of reaching his body. Lee Han seized, in one hand, the ankle of the man writhing in pain.

WHOOSH!!

KWA-AANG!

And slammed him straight into the floor. A mindless swing, with no technique in it whatsoever.

"Aaaagh...!"

"I've only brought ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you down twice. Milking it already?"

"Th-this can't be...!!"

"Still in one piece."

Before the man could say whatever he meant to, Lee Han paid it no mind and slammed him down again.

Thud!

Partway through, the man did attack him again with a foot, thrashing as if in a last struggle. Even so—

"Still, you're three times better than Geumjjoki."

As if in respect for that venomous will and that skill, Lee Han lifted him high, just as he was.

WHOOOSH!!

...and granted him rest.

KRRRCK!

Something broke. For an instant, Lee Han thought: oh.

Ah.... I wasn't supposed to grant him rest, was I.

Only then was he swept by the worry of what he would do if the man's head had cracked.

...A worry that could not have come any later.