Episode 29: King Kong and the Hybrid Collide (3)
"It's been a while."
"......"
"Hmm. This cake is rather good. Age must be catching up with me—I keep seeking out sweets. Heh heh."
"...Why are you here? Haah. That was a stupid question."
"Recognizing one's own dullness is no small virtue."
"......"
"Your eyes lack respect."
A high-end café in the Royal Capital. Nobles were its usual clientele, and if one wished, a private room could be had—time to oneself, or a place to slip free of other people's eyes. Popular for exactly that reason, and popular enough that the reservations were always full.
...And in a place like that.
"Allow me to ask it differently. What business does the North have being here, Grand Duke?"
A certain father and son had come face to face.
Roen narrowed his eyes. The young man savoring the cake—no. He only looked young. Nearing sixty now, he was the sovereign who ruled the North's vast territory. Not a domain. A nation.
"Still as insolent as ever, in any case. To your own father—'Grand Duke,' as if he were a stranger. I must have failed at raising you. Tch..."
Magnus Julia de Lionel.
He was none other than the reigning Grand Duke of Lionel.
"Ha! And when, exactly, did you raise me?!"
Roen did not hesitate to flare, unlike himself. Nothing like the man who always tried to hold a cold posture. The defiance toward the Grand Duke, and the old sediment beneath it, ran deep.
The Grand Duke, for his part...
"Mm. Still whimpering. Nothing but a greenhorn. Your caliber as a knight is splendid, but as a sovereign you barely, barely clear sixty points.... Insufficient. Woefully insufficient."
"......"
Only a scolding, as if the boy's qualities were a profound disappointment. Roen was called the greatest genius in the history of Lionel, and still Grand Duke Magnus's assessment of him was stingy in the extreme.
Even under a rebuke that provocative, Roen stayed relatively calm, as if he had taken the measure of his own quality a long time ago.
"I know it too. That I lack a sovereign's quality, at least that much. So I gave up the Grand Duke's seat long ago. Better to pass it to those children of yours who actually want it, rather than to me."
"Regrettably, the rest of the bloodline brats are all much of a muchness. If you are barely the average, the others sit below it. Which is to say, they fail. Therefore you must inherit."
"......"
"And among the lions of this generation, you alone have been acknowledged by the Black King. ...Whether that is thanks to the 'thing' you are hiding, I could not say."
"...!"
Roen flinched. Surely not—! Ah. He knows?
A man one must never grow careless around. Grand Duke Magnus. Even someone who had lived through a miracle that turned back time still found him a difficult, troublesome match.
...Damn it.
Roen ground his teeth, his feelings harder to govern than usual today. Other people he could manage. In front of this man, staying cold was always difficult.
Why?
Because he was a human being cold without limit, and heartless besides? Or because, however sharp the edges, the man was still his father?
...Or something else.
Tak.
"Do not worry. For the moment I have no mind to control you. Do what you ought to do. I shall do the same."
"......"
A teacup struck the table, cutting through the tangle of his thoughts, the sound ringing at his ear.
"This thing they call coffee, and the cake—both quite fine. You've built a good shop."
"Ha.... You knew about that as well?"
"Naturally. What father would fail to know even the shop his own son owns?"
"......"
...A frightening man, as expected. He had hidden his part completely when the café was made.
"The nobodies will notice nothing, but those who have lived twice your years will mostly have caught on—that the owner is someone else. So take care. Gathering information on the nobles is well enough, but a long tail gets stepped on."
"...I know that without you telling me."
"...Hah. Not a scrap of courtesy. I wonder if the previous head, the one who raised me, felt like this."
The previous family head—Grand Duke Magnus, who had deposed his own father. Realizing he had no right to scold Roen for this, he shrugged. So this was what people meant by karma.
And then:
"I came to see your face once. It occurred to me that since arriving in the Royal Capital, I had not once looked upon my own child's face."
"...You came for a reason that absurd?"
"What is so strange about a father looking at his child's face?"
"......"
"...Mm. That was certainly unlike me. In any case, I am glad you seem to be well, my son."
"...I'd rather you called me 'you,' or 'that one.' Spoken so tenderly, it turns my stomach."
"...I felt odd saying it myself."
...Seen this way, the two of them seemed alike. Not in the face—in temperament, in air. Whether they were simply unused to showing affection, or their personalities had been knotted from the start, they were plainly not a close father and son.
Heavy steps.
At last Grand Duke Magnus rose to go outside, as if seeing the face once had truly been the whole of his purpose.
Watching him...
"Where is Uncle Max? I was under the impression the two of you always traveled together. He isn't with you today."
"...So I am 'you,' and that Max brat gets to be Uncle?"
"I owe Uncle a great deal. I don't owe you."
"...It is the truth, so I cannot even argue."
For the first time, Grand Duke Magnus grumbled, a somehow aggrieved note in his voice. But that too was surely an act. A man like him, hurt over something like this? Unlikely.
Then:
"...Max is doing the thing least suited to him."
"Least suited?"
"He said he would try his hand at being a spy."
"...??"
Roen looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Who was playing the spy?
"Uncle, you mean?"
"...Do not look at me so. I tried to stop him as well."
"......"
"Ahem."
Grand Duke Magnus wore an abashed face, and for a while Roen could not find a word to offer. The story was that preposterous.
A spy? ...That uncle, who stands out like a beacon?
...Better to make a lion do tricks. Calling up an uncle utterly incapable of hiding his own presence, Roen shook his head.
People would decide he was suspicious long before he managed to conceal himself. He is not a man who can hide.
His uncle, the valiant knight called the Black Lion of the North. Rated a knight among knights—hearty, admirable, a man of character.
...The problem is he has no sense at all.
Roen wore a bitter smile. He could see, all too clearly, what sort of situation the man must be in right now.
—And sure enough.
"There he is!"
"Suspicious bastard! Seize him at once!!"
A suspicious band was chasing Maximus Iron de Lionel as if they meant to kill him. It had the feel of a driven hunt, yet the man moved at an unhurried pace as he dealt with them, tilting his head as if the situation itself were the puzzle.
"...Why was I found out?"
He showed a genuine bewilderment at having been caught as a suspicious man. All he had done was...
"I only asked whether your god was an 'evil god'.... Why are you this angry?"
He had only asked if it was an evil god, seeing as they were doing an evil god's work. Was the question so very wrong?
Maximus simply could not make sense of their reaction.
From ancient times, the power of religion had been formidable. Especially in the Middle Ages. More so still in an age with no internet and no newspapers.
The reason? Some said that because so many of the religious were the literate class—intellectuals—respect and reverence for them arose of themselves. Others said the common people were simply numerous, and wanted to forget a hard life through faith in a god.
Whatever the reason, religion's power was always fierce. And that fierceness did not fade even after the information age arrived. No—if anything, the further the age advanced, the more cunning religion became, and the more vicious the things that came out of it. People appeared who abused the power of religion itself, and the foremost of those groups could only be called the cults.
"When I was a student, three out of ten people you passed on the street asked, 'Do you know the Way?' and five out of ten threatened you with, 'Don't believe, and you're going to hell.'"
"...Haha. I had it worse than you. I saw even more of them, and got recruited even more."
"Those types always go after the innocent ones."
"Were you innocent too, Instructor?"
"Back then I was innocent enough, in my way. No—I was frail."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Ah, no. It just really doesn't sound like you, Instructor...."
"I wasn't strong from the start either."
Lee Han shrugged. Sometimes this kid rated him far too highly.
"Everybody has a time when they're weak."
"Haha...."
"Anyway, this is seriously fucked. To think I'd end up fighting cults in this world too...."
"...It's a dreadful business."
As he had just said, the power of religion was immense. Even in the world they had called the information age, cults had been everywhere, and it was not uncommon for countless people to follow them as if bewitched. That was what those cult bastards were.
And this world? A world where the Mystery of magic and of knights truly existed. If anything, a world like this made it easier for cults to run wild. Because they had power. And because plenty of people were perfectly willing to use even gods for the sake of their ambition and their authority.
......Like that.
The prisoners roared the moment the speech ended.
The instant the speech was done, the prisoners went wild. Some even wept. Others laughed like madmen. Watch it long enough and the stomach turned. An alien scene, a frenzy sickening to the gut.
What Lee Han felt, looking at it...
"Did these bastards snort something? Or is it mass brainwashing? How is every single one of them this crazy?"
"Maybe it's both—the brainwashing and the drugs you mentioned."
"...Yeah. Otherwise there's no way."
......There was no way this was normal.
Lee Han scowled at the rally raised in the middle of the Tunnels, a gathering like an opium den. Vicious beyond words, just to look at.
As a soldier who guarded the Tunnels once put it, the Tunnels were a labyrinth. Make a map if you liked; every month the worms' movements blocked the passages and paths you had laid, and new paths were forever being born. So even the soldiers who managed the place had all but given up on grasping the Tunnels entire.
But one thing was certain. There were exactly two passages by which a person could enter the Tunnels. And the soldiers guarding those two places numbered fully three hundred, every one of them armed with spear, armor, and matchlock, so the prisoners could never escape the Tunnels. They might have abandoned a complete grasp of the place, but the will to stop a prisoner from getting out, by any means necessary, was resolute. In all the history of the Tunnels, no prisoner had ever escaped!
That could only be the pride of the soldiers who guarded them.
......It certainly should have been.
"The bastards guarding the Tunnels—did they only hire blind men with their eyes open? No. There's no way they got the gear to build a place like this from in here."
"Th-that's right. Materials you could never get here...."
Deep inside the Tunnels that boasted ironclad security—in a place where even the air was thin, a depth that might as well have been fifteen floors underground—a village had formed.
And more than that.
"Well, I'll be."
"P-people are living here...."
People were huddled together, living. Houses thrown up anyhow from wooden planks and dirt.
And besides.
"Bright. Damn bright. These bastards have money."
"Haha...."
At a depth like this, dark would have been normal. Instead it was blinding.
"An artifact."
An artifact—a treasure of the magical world, said to hold astronomical value no matter its use. One that seemed meant to shed light was illuminating the underground dark like a moon lighting the night.
"...Is the kingdom incompetent, or are these people competent?"
"......"
"Hss. Both?"
...Derek could not bring himself to answer either way.
While Derek smiled in awkward dismay, Lee Han felt an unaccountable unease.
Hm. Where have I seen this?
Looking at the moon-shaped artifact lighting the underground ceiling, he felt a déjà vu. Moon-shaped ornaments were common as dirt in the Royal Capital, so the feeling might have come from that—but he knew it wasn't so.
A moon, yes, but a dingy color like a waning crescent. And along the crescent's rim, numbers carved from 1 to 12. Not a clock. What was the point of a thing like that? Even so, he had seen a moon emblem of that sort somewhere. Quite young, at that.
And then, all at once—
"From today on, you're Number 8. Understand?"
"......Ah."
He succeeded in calling up one forgotten memory from childhood.
Black Moon.
Confirming an artifact identical to the emblem of the assassin order he had once belonged to in his youth—no, been kidnapped into—Lee Han blinked.
Which meant this.
"These bastards. They didn't vanish. They got absorbed?"
Or else.
......They had been one from the start.
Right. Wait. If that's how it is...?
Lee Han arrived at one grave fact. If his former workplace had originally been one and the same as the cult....
Then I... I was a cultist too...?
...Ah. No. Surely not. There was no way.
Ha. They got absorbed, obviously! Yeah! Of course they did...!
Lee Han shook the thought out of his head, telling himself he had taken it too far.
......Leaving one sliver of unease in a corner of his heart.