After He Left (7)
Simon went on, never noticing the two pairs of eyes fixed on him in open admiration of a mind that needed no tricks at all—pure, unadulterated brilliance.
"Both of them were dead drunk when they died, or so they say. Not that the drink itself killed them. There was poison smeared on the cups. They must have had something to celebrate and raised a toast... and it just happened to become the farewell drink of their lives. A fine luxury, that. They died swigging expensive wine straight from the bottle. An ending very much in their style."
...For a moment it sounded as if he were ill-wishing them by saying they had died well. Surely that was a misreading?
Regrettably, neither of them could see through Simon's poker face. They only shook their heads.
And then—
"Why would something like this happen?"
Levi did not rise to the joke. She asked him straight back.
She was not pitying the dead councilors. Why feel sympathy for people she had never once laid eyes on? No. The reason she asked was far more practical.
"What do they even gain by killing them...?"
Levi did not look kindly on the Blood Cross Army, but she gave credit where credit was due.
They are a powerful organization. Perhaps the equal of a great noble house. Perhaps more.
It was an uncomfortable admission, but they had power. Even granting Edmund's patronage, in a mere thirty years they had grown into a force that might surpass a great house. And if they were that large, there had to be a sound reason for the way they wielded their strength—so what possessed them to resort to something like assassination...?
"Aigoo, Chairwoman Levi. You mustn't look at those bastards as if they were normal."
"Pardon?"
"Thinking that way is proof you're still trying to see them through common sense. You really mustn't."
"?"
Simon waved a hand, his tone closer to advice than to a scolding.
"Those bastards are madmen. Or, looked at another way, a pack of lunatics gathered from nothing but radical idealists. So the principle behind what they do isn't difficult. They simply remove anyone who falls outside their standard."
"A standard? Idealists?"
They had something like that?
"You can see it in their record. How full of madness they are, and what sort of ideal they carry. ...Only my personal opinion, of course."
"Wh-what is it, then?"
If that old excuse of a prediction was beginning to sound like the truth, were they the strange ones?
Sure enough.
"—Judgment."
Thud. For an instant the back of her skull went numb, as if something had rapped her clean across the head. They had watched every principle of those people's actions, and they had taken in what was known of them the way one gathers the pieces of a puzzle, so Simon's explanation became the decisive hint that fitted the scattered pieces together.
"The judgment of evil. You could call it the judging of whatever they have defined as evil, by their own standard."
"...You mean them."
"As if to prove I'm not simply lying, most of the people they removed were criminals—or worse than criminals."
Most of the offerings made when they summoned the Ghost King had been criminals. The place they had reached into, in order to manufacture Half-Fiends and the Mother Worm, was the Tunnels, the kingdom's greatest prison for criminals. And when they punished the temple, in the end they had singled out only the priests sunk deep in sin and burned them at the stake. And beyond even that...
"At the heart of every incident, there was a wicked man."
Yes. Whether one realized it or not, those they removed were, more often than not, the wicked who had committed wicked deeds. It could be dismissed as coincidence. But if the same thing had repeated dozens of times and more, it could no longer be dismissed as coincidence.
"B-but then how do you explain buying slaves for human experimentation, or researching the mystery-races?"
"That, too, is simple. To them, such things belong to the class of sublime sacrifice."
"...?"
"Didn't I say so? Radical idealists. They decided that a suitable sacrifice was necessary if they were to achieve their purpose and their cause. So they gathered powerless orphans and slaves, and studied the mystery-races. All of it on the grounds that it was for the great cause."
"Th-that's far too strange..."
"Yes. It is strange. But Chairwoman Levi—didn't I tell you? Don't try to understand them on the level of common sense."
"......"
"I'll say it again. They are filthily insane. They prize rules in the strangest places, and they judge evil by their own yardstick. You won't understand it at a glance, and you'll wonder how an organization that absurd can even exist. ...But we already know one organization like that. It's gone now."
"......The Heresy Inquisitors."
"Correct. As expected, it's pleasant talking to people with good heads. My mouth hurts less. Haha."
"......"
Roen and Levi took no pleasure in the praise. The principle of those actions only left their heads ringing.
"Th-then the assassinations at the Noble Council this time, too..."
"Judgment, in effect. They're killing, one after another, the sinners who committed evil by their standard. Well, it's the natural next step. In the kingdom as it stands, the greatest villains really are the Noble Council."
"...This is absurd."
"Again—don't try to understand it. It's easier if you think simply. 'Ah, those bastards are crazy. You can't read their actions by a sane person's standard.' ...Like that."
That would be kinder to one's sanity—.
It was advice edged with warning, and they nodded, heavy with it. There could be no greater folly than trying to calculate human madness.
"......"
...For a long while, Levi did not go on.
Her deliberation looked deep, and neither Simon nor Roen pressed her. They simply waited.
This must be complicated.
It may still be more than she can bear.
However bright she was, she was still a girl of barely nineteen. To meet human madness this directly, and to think that such madness might turn against them from here on, was more than enough to tangle a mind...
"—Guildmaster Simon. Would you perhaps be willing to take the post of advisor to the Alliance?"
"...?"
"I know it's an unreasonable request. I know it may even be rude, asking it of you when you stand at the head of an organization. But even accounting for that, I think we'll need your help if we're to break through the hardships ahead."
"Th-then what you've been worrying over all this time..."
"Yes. I kept hesitating, you see. I was trying to think what benefit I could offer Guildmaster Simon, so that you would stand with us. And once I'd judged it, it seemed there was a price we could provide."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No. It's nothing."
Now that he looked, she had not been unsettled at all. She had been reading the situation with a coldness that was almost startling. Cold enough, in fact, to try to recruit him on the spot.
Well, would you look at this.
On the chance he was wrong, Simon tested her.
"Then, if I become advisor, what price can you give me?"
Just what, he wondered, would she put on the table.
Smooth as a drawn line, she answered.
"I can offer two things in all."
"Two?"
"Yes. One is mages. To be precise, I'll give you the authority to use the mages of the magic faculty who are still at the Academy."
"...Excuse me?"
"You may not know, but around this time last year there was a War Game between the sword faculty and the magic faculty. We won, and as the price of victory we became free to use Lord Odewal, a professor of the magic faculty, however we liked."
"......"
"It's what you might call the usage rights to Lord Odewal. Fortunately, my master transferred that authority to me. Lord Odewal's resistance is fierce, I'll admit, but a mage is not a being who can easily cast a promise aside. So however uncooperative he may be in the details, he'll have no choice but to cooperate."
"...Ah."
"I trust you know how great a gain it is to command a mage of Lord Odewal's caliber. In particular, I heard from my master that your way of fighting, Guildmaster, requires a great many Flame Scrolls. For someone in need of force, I thought it would be no small benefit. And the last thing I can give you is none other than—"
Boom!
"Gomsuni! Kunta got the answer! Warriors of our tribe say they come help Kunta! Kunta is happy—!!"
"...As you can see, it seems I can lend you force as well."
The exchange student had come in excited enough to wreck the door, but no one scolded him for it. The news was too astonishing—astonishing to the point of wonder.
A people called the strongest in raw combat even among the mystery-races. The terror of mages, the nightmare of the temple, the nemesis of knights: the guardians of the jungle.
Word of it could not help but stagger.
"Chances to hire Champion-class warriors as mercenaries don't come often. Well? Are you interested?"
"...Ha."
Simon was dumbfounded. No—what was this.
I thought it'd take a year before they became any kind of proper power.... No. That's not it.
A faction that could command mages and work with barbarians! This was something that could contest the kingdom's hegemony right now...
Wooong—!
"—There is one thing I must say clearly."
"......"
"We will use all of this force, all of this power, for mediation alone. Hegemony and the rest of it don't interest us. So I don't want to give you an expectation you shouldn't have."
"......"
"But..."
Wooooong—.
Simon stared blankly at the girl. No—at her eyes. They shone only faintly, and yet they were eyes one could never forget, once seen. And Simon remembered seeing something like those eyes, last winter.
"I promise I will protect your pride, at least."
"......"
"...?"
"...Ha."
"G-Guildmaster?"
He dropped.
"???"
"I will follow as you wish. Chairwoman—no."
Before the shining Light Source, Simon could not dare hold his head upright, and so he went to his knees.
For a sacred holy spirit, bearing the great Light of Radiance, had descended in this place in a borrowed human body.
How could a mere human look straight upon her?
And so, in the very moment a girl took into her hands the loyalty of a genius that everyone wanted, and a page of a new legend—holy beyond measure—was being written...
"...Y-yes?"
Levi could only wonder why this man had suddenly done such a thing. She turned her eyes as if begging the others for help.
"......"
"......"
...Every one of them only looked up at her, with a gaze of the same kind. Levi still did not know what had come into her eyes. And so, in the midst of this abrupt situation, all she could do was—
Master... everyone is acting strange.
All over again, Levi wanted to see the one she missed every single day.
...Enough to ache.
Thud—!
"?"
He slowly cocked his head.
"Felt like someone called me.... Am I hearing things?"
In mountains this deep, who would there be to call for him? Probably his imagination.
"Have I worn myself thin?"
"Krrrrk..."
"What. One of you was still left."
"!!"
Something of enormous bulk flinched and startled. A giant a good five meters and seventy centimeters tall, with a mass to match. The stone-blue hide, like vivid rock driven into the skin, and the two heads proved it was no man. A monster otherwise called a mountain lord, or an ogre, shuddered and dropped its gaze, as if begging to be spared.
A twin-headed ogre. An elite monster of the upper grade, bowing its head to a human in humiliation.
But...
"Come on, rush me like you did the first time we met. You were confident enough then."
"......"
"Show me a mountain lord's dignity. You can do it!"
The man shouted as if he were cheering the ogre on, and even threw in a bit of fighting spirit. It was no different from a provocation, and for an ogre famous for its trouble controlling its rage, the correct instinct would have been to charge at once.
Slowly...
The twin-headed ogre's gaze went to the end its kin had met, the ones that had rushed the man, and its eyes filled with tears.
Crack. Crunch.
......Because some five thousand ogres lay collapsed in grotesque shapes. Bone and flesh twisted together, they had not even been able to scream, and the twin-headed ogre did not want to end up like them.
"You gutless brat."
"Guoooh..."
"Hm. You are pathetic, I'll give you that."
Gulp...!
"...Fine. I'll give you a chance."
"!!"
Moved by its opponent's mercy, the twin-headed ogre shed tears of gratitude for an instant. It swore it would never attack a human again—
"Let's wrestle. Beat me, and I'll let you go."
"......"
"Arm wrestling's fine too."
"...Guoooh."
"Look at the difference in size. You can win this, easy!"
"J-just kill meee..."
"You like it? Yeah, that's what I—"
"N-no...... Kill me..."
"??"
...The knight tilted his head, genuinely unable to understand why a chance, once offered, was not being taken. A knight—no.
It was Lee Han. Unemployed.