EP.39 – Two Men Go All the Way (5)
…Rak de Duron could tell that, looks aside, the bastard was thorough to the bone.
And with good reason.
"What matters isn't the flowing river, and it isn't the salmon. You look at the numbers written after them, and at the Morse code. The heart of it is reading what that salmon is a metaphor for."
"…I cannot tell what you are saying."
"Ignorant. Swing a sword and a spear well, and you think that makes a knight? A knight reads a book now and then."
"!?"
Heat surged up from somewhere around his chest. Had it been anyone else, he might have let it pass. Hearing a scoundrel call him ignorant sent a fury he could not govern boiling through him. Unfortunate as it was, the one who needed something here was himself, so he ground his teeth and listened as far as he was able. Being furious, however, remained its own affair.
Without military ciphers and a literary eye, it would have been a code nearly impossible to break.
Who would have thought a man whose face would make even an ogre or a troll yield a step could handle a cipher like this…
"There is a reason one ought not judge a man by his face."
"Keep picking a fight and I might just leave."
"A pity. I had paella ready for dinner."
"……"
"Well? You leaving?"
"…Not bad. Face like bad luck itself, and you still know how to bargain?"
"…Not a thing I wished to hear from you."
Two men, neither willing to yield a single word.
But then—
"That said. There's something I'm curious about."
"What."
"You could've just asked me to decode it. Why go and suffer through cracking it yourself?"
"……"
"You collect hobbies that are nothing but asking for pain?"
"…I-If I had asked, you would have taught me?"
Thrown badly enough that he stumbled over the words, Rak faltered for the first time. The other man only shrugged, unconcerned.
"Our goals were more or less the same anyway, weren't they?"
It was as good as saying he meant to cooperate. Rak blinked and asked.
"…You did not follow merely because food was offered?"
"What kind of lunatic tags along just because somebody promises him a meal? I followed because I was willing to work with you."
"……"
"Ridiculous bastard, this one…"
"Ahem—!"
The talk of how absurd he was kept coming, and Rak, hearing it, cleared his throat hard. He was embarrassed.
Honestly, whether the faction that came to him was Galahad or Tristan, he had meant to cooperate from the start.
More capable than I thought.
The cleanup was clean, and the rest of their skill was excellent besides. People like these would be help enough. Doing it alone would certainly leave him more at ease, but Lee Han knew that bearing the Sultan and the Magic Tower by himself would be tricky. If that was the case, he might as well commit. He slurped his tea.
"Working with other people is the obvious thing."
"A thoroughly cold judgment."
"Right? So why doesn't your brother get it?"
"It cannot be helped. The Vice-Captain is ignorant— no, he simply has a rather simple side to him…"
"Quiet, Luna."
"Do not address me by name in an official setting. Call me Sir Bridget, Vice-Captain."
"……"
Lee Han drank his warm black tea and meekly listened to the siblings' affectionate exchange. Only his face was meek. All the while, he was taking stock of his condition in real time.
A medicinal spring, was it? Works as well as Vulcan's hot spring.
Sure enough, once he gave his body over to a spring into which rare herbs and potions had been poured without stint, not only the fatigue but the injuries that had stacked up unnoticed were restored. Toxins, wastes, and the rest drained out of him, and his body felt as comfortable as a body could. Fill his stomach on top of that, and the condition held at its peak. At this rate he could move this very moment and not fall short.
A place with money really is the jackpot.
People said money could not solve everything. He thought he understood, all the same, why the paradox existed—that most things, in fact, could. He was just settling into that conclusion when the question came.
"—Why do you not seek the royal house's cooperation?"
"Hm?"
"I understand seeking another's help when the work is difficult. What I do not understand is why you limit yourself to Galahad or Tristan, and not Pendragon."
"……"
The spearman's question was pure puzzlement, and Lee Han found it nothing short of absurd. The man was asking something utterly obvious.
"…You really don't know, so you're asking?"
"?"
"If you were me, would you trust the White Cats? Rather than team up with that lot, I'd sooner do it alone."
Why was a fellow who ought to know better asking a question this plain? Honestly. It wasn't even a matter of pouring oil on a burning house.
"Hmm… Was the Silver Lion not the knight order to which you belong?"
"Which is exactly why I know. Those bastards will never be any help. Well, my friend and my junior might be some use, but they're busy minding a brat of a prince."
"……What manner of place is the Silver Lion, then?"
"A place where things beyond anything you can imagine are just laid out in the open."
"……"
"Don't look at me like you pity me, you bastard."
"…Should you wish to be fed, you may call at the safehouse whenever you like."
"I said don't pity me!"
Lee Han was genuinely riled. He had just reconfirmed that somehow, every workplace he had ever had—past life and this one alike—was a complete wreck.
…A man with a cruel fate.
"Galahad's objective has not changed. We find the fanatics, tear them out by the root, and burn them. That is the command His Grace has given us."
Galahad held no personal grudge against illegal mages, not the way Lee Han did. They were only hunting a cult of fanatics.
The Blood Cross Army. Those cowardly, filthy things.
"If what you have uncovered is correct, then Greg Bin must be a mage of that fanatic order."
"Mm. About an eighty percent chance, I'd say."
"…The remaining twenty percent troubles me. Even so, it is reason enough to take that mage."
"Catching that one spell-slinger won't be the end of it."
"What do you mean?"
"……"
Here Lee Han held his tongue. He was weighing whether to speak, and while he stalled—
"Sir?"
"…Mm."
With the knight named Luna adding her little prompt, hiding it no longer seemed the wise course. Lee Han scratched his head.
"…You've read enough of my notebook to know the shape of it, but the Magic Tower and the spell-slingers are still in touch. Lately, especially, Greg Bin and the Tower have been talking often. The reason's simple. Greg Bin's experiment has hit its stride, and the Tower is using that data to move into preparations of its own."
"Preparations?"
"They mean to get their hands on a Mystery counted among the finest even in Pendragon. They call it a plan. It's extortion and theft, is what it is."
Sultan or Magic Tower, cowards thought along much the same lines.
"And?"
"Mm. Among their targets…"
The instant Lee Han let loose the information he had been at such pains to hide, the spearman—
Force roared outward.
"……Vicious bastard. Is he really a Heaven-Slaying Star?"
In the next breath a dreadful killing intent blanketed everything around them, enough to make a man doubt whether energy like that could even be the sum of killing intent one person was allowed to hold. It writhed like a living thing and made a wreck of its surroundings. Crack—crunch. The chair he sat in, the desk beside him, even the teacup, all of it shattered. The lady knight had already fled clear of him. Lee Han alone sat unmoved before that red wave of killing intent.
"S-Sir, are you all right?"
"I'm fine. That guy, though—he's dangerous. Leave that energy uncontrolled, and the energy alone would kill ten men."
"…Rak's baleful nature is a sword without a sheath."
"And he still managed to become a knight."
Lee Han was certain the killing intent was something the man had been born with, and he could not help being impressed that anyone carrying intent this monstrous lived anything like a normal life. Simply passing one's days while holding energy like this was little short of a miracle. Put one way, the man carried a poison that could kill on a breath, and he had kept that poison leashed all this time. Admiration was the only honest response.
"It is His Grace's grace."
"The Duke?"
"Yes. That the two of us are alive like this, and that Rak can live an ordinary life—all of it is thanks to His Grace. Had he not been there, Rak would surely have died long ago. In that sense, to touch His Grace is Rak's reverse scale. It means laying a hand on the benefactor of his life… on someone who is as a parent to him."
"…I see."
Certainly, learning that someone meant to aim at the man who had saved your life would make you angry. But that one…
Get angry, and he'd wreck a whole crowd.
A soft crackle. Unable to endure his killing intent, a desk collapsed like sand, and at some point even the teacup had powdered away to nothing. Lee Han clicked his tongue. Was a feat like this possible on killing intent alone?
No wonder those fists had such a bite.
Set beside Lee Han, the man was far smaller in frame. Even so, in their first clash he had not given an inch. A lightweight who did not lose to a heavyweight… Tell that story anywhere and no one would believe it. Wear killing intent this fierce upon the body at all times, though, and the story changed. It was no different from going about forever in armor by the name of killing intent.
For me, the match would be a technique like Gyeong. For him, it's that killing intent.
Strength wrapped in killing intent. So-called Killing Gyeong. A power it would not be strange to name exactly that.
The world really is interesting.
If the northern champion he had met the day before was a man born in the mold of a Hercules or a Xiang Yu, this one was a flame and a blade in human shape—ready at any moment to burn everything, to destroy everything, and to cut everything down. For Lee Han, it was finding, besides Maximus, yet another talent that surpassed every knight. Rather than jealousy or a sense of inferiority, interest came to a boil.
I'd like to take it on properly sometime…
He wanted a closer look at the Killing Gyeong the spearman carried. Dig into that in earnest, and he had a feeling an interesting technique would come of it.
…But that was something he could save for another day.
Right now—
"Quit being angry, and let's get to the work. Looks like there's a lot of it."
"…What is it you mean to do?"
"What else. Smash every last one of them."
"??"
"You lot seem set on nothing but how you'll track the fanatics' traces. I'm different."
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean. I…"
"I'm going all the way…"
His low mutter carried it without his knowing—resolve, the will to fight, and sheer mettle.
"……"
"……"
For an instant, a chill crawled over both siblings. It was a spirit fierce enough to wipe away, in a single moment, the killing intent poured out by Galahad's Dire Wolf, whose baleful nature was famous far and wide. Seeing it, a slight trick of the eyes came over Luna Bridget.
A mountain lord clad in iron?
For a heartbeat she seemed to see the great monster men called a mountain lord, and she blinked. If one of them was a wolf burning on overwhelming killing intent for fuel, the other was a beast holding a mighty spirit that called that same great monster to mind…
Humans like these—no. Monsters like these, gathering in one place…
Somehow, she found herself pitying the ones who had drawn their eyes. She doubted so much as a shard of bone would be left.