Point of Contact
Point of Contact
"A colleague of mine said he'd seen it in person. He said the blade seems to flash, and in the next instant the enemy's head is already off. He couldn't stop praising your skill."
"Looks like I'll finally get to see the famous technique myself on this request. I'm looking forward to it."
At first I'd thought they were flattering me because they felt bad about calling me Mad Dog, but every reaction looked completely sincere.
I was so bewildered I wanted to ask what the hell they were talking about, but in this situation it would've been a seriously awkward question, so I decided to just let it slide.
Light Sword. Better than Mad Dog, sure, but still painfully embarrassing. I'd only swung my sword fast and somehow people had turned it into something grand enough to make my face burn.
I'd been stuck brooding over that nonsense—and over why everyone except me seemed to know my own nickname—while Yekaterina, who didn't have that problem, leaned toward me with naked curiosity.
"What exactly do you do to make your sword glow?"
"It probably just glinted when the light hit it, right?"
"Pfft, so it's a trade secret? Can't be helped then."
I'd given her the most sincere answer I could, but she'd apparently decided on her own that I was protecting a secret technique. She leaned back in disappointment, and nobody else would've pressed me.
Yeah. I figured this was better than floundering to explain something I didn't even understand myself, so I just turned my gaze to Engrim.
"There's a simple reason I chose all of you. The request is confidential, so I needed people whose sudden gathering and movement wouldn't attract much attention, and who had abilities suited to the task. These selections weren't mine alone; I pooled the opinions of the guild's senior members. You're something of a dream team, so I have very little concern about whether you can complete the job."
"If the party itself isn't a worry, then there's something else you're worried about, I take it?"
Gin pointed out the core issue precisely, and Engrim nodded in response.
"Yes. One single worry. Maintaining confidentiality."
"Come on, Guildmaster. We're not amateurs. Aren't you worrying a little too much?"
Unlike the others, who laughed along with Gaendal, I thought I finally understood why Engrim had tried to recruit Sheryl and me after the bandit request. Frankly, even without me, this party looked capable of tearing through almost anything the guild normally handed out.
"You're not worried about secrets leaking from among us."
Everyone's gaze except Engrim's focused on me. If I'd guessed wrong it would've been humiliating, but judging by Engrim's reaction, that didn't seem likely.
"Because we're going to kill more people than monsters. You're worried about anyone surviving long enough to talk."
"......That's correct."
"No, wait. I'm not trying to doubt you since this is the Guild Master's quest, but! We are dealing with criminals, right?"
"Of course. The targets are Demonfolk worshippers."
Engrim stated it as casually as anything, but the content was anything but light. I didn't know about the others, but for me, something that ranked among the most important things I'd ever encountered in my life had suddenly leaped out.
Demonfolk Worshippers.
In a war that had dragged on for years against the Demon King's Army, that meant treason. They'd previously colluded with the Demon King's Army or Demonfolk and sold out the kingdom, so if there was proof, summary execution was entirely on the table.
But I couldn't give a single shit about that.
"Have Demonfolk actually been sighted?"
Because after seven years, I might finally meet an actual member of the Demonfolk face to face.
"We're only speculating, based on the circumstances, that Demonfolk connected to the Demon King's Army are involved."
"Even so, is this really something we need to hunt down and stamp out this secretly? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to call in the army?"
Yekaterina's argument was valid. And perfectly sensible. She probably couldn't imagine why adventurers would have to step up and secretly handle something that amounted to treason.
But I could easily guess that this was similar in context to striking the Demon King with a Hero.
"After years of war, the mere idea that Demonfolk have established themselves inside the kingdom is already damaging public confidence. This request came directly from the royal family."
Assassination.
Of course, it wasn't assassination in the sense of slipping in alone and quietly killing someone without a witness. Here it meant hitting so suddenly and wiping the targets out so quickly that no sign of the operation could reach the public.
As far as tradition was concerned, if nobody found out, it counted as an assassination.
"So it's that the army would be too conspicuous."
"No wonder the party's composition felt like it leaned heavily toward assault..."
Surprisingly, nobody reacted much to learning that the royal family itself had commissioned the job. The war had dragged on long enough that saying it was about 'public confidence' was apparently explanation enough.
Honestly, I thought it was a remarkably intact country considering it had been sustaining a war for close to seven years, but for ordinary people living their lives, it probably didn't feel that way.
"Suppose there really is Demonfolk involvement. What do we do if we take one alive?"
Gin had asked exactly what I wanted to know. Naturally, the moment we captured a member of the Demonfolk, I wanted to squeeze out every scrap of information they had, but...
"You may attempt to extract information, but if it fails, you must kill it without hesitation."
"And if it succeeds?"
"Same thing. Kill it."
It was ruthless, but because the target was Demonfolk, it also sounded perfectly reasonable. Not because every Demonfolk had to die as an enemy of the state, but because they were simply that dangerous to hold alive.
Demonfolk society was built on raw strength. Unlike humans, the stronger someone was, the more important the position they held and the more dangerous the missions they received. They didn't really have the concept of throwing a weak pawn away for nothing.
Succeed or die. It was a brutally simple system, but they'd waged war on the kingdom for seven years with it.
If people like that were operating in the middle of the kingdom, they'd have good reason to believe they could survive most situations alone. We knew nothing about who we might be dealing with, so unless we treated that assumption seriously and stayed cautious, one of us could get our skull cracked open.
Even then, someone who hadn't been sent to the war was probably only second-rate by Demonfolk standards. Their true elites would be on the battlefield, guarding the Demon King, or tearing up the front with guerrilla operations.
Which meant... this job could become an unexpected opportunity for me.
"I've actually got a lot I want to ask Demonfolk. If I get the chance and I can do it without endangering the party, I'd like some discretion to pursue it."
When I casually raised my hand and broke the ice, everyone's gazes converged on me.
"You mean you want to talk to one of them?"
"Threatening somebody still counts as talking, doesn't it? I've studied Demonfolk pretty extensively because I wanted to learn more about them. Unless somebody else here is especially good at extracting information from one, I'd like first shot at it."
When I naturally answered Gaendal's question, Engrim couldn't hide his incredulity and asked this time.
"You studied Demonfolk? I don't doubt you, but that's honestly unusual. There's a reason, I take it?"
Know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear a hundred battles. That was reason enough for me to study them. Still, I understood why Engrim thought the question itself was perfectly natural.
The kingdom was strangely bad at gathering and using new information about Demonfolk despite being at war with them. Far too often, armies fought them as though they were just another human enemy, with almost no special research at all.
That didn't mean information on Demonfolk didn't exist. A visit to the Royal Library was enough to show that scholars had been researching, testing, and publishing work on Demonfolk biology and society since long before the war.
Why the kingdom so often ignored all of that and did incomprehensible stupid shit anyway was beyond me, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I couldn't rant my way into influence; at the moment I was only a Green-rank adventurer whose opinions carried no weight. Who was going to listen? Self-study was the best option I had.
Thanks to that, I knew quite a bit more about Demonfolk than the average person.
And since that knowledge and my reaction could easily look suspicious here, I decided to lay my cards on the table instead of trying to hide anything.
"I'm the sole survivor of the first attack on the outskirts of Ogwen seven years ago. I want revenge, so I've been studying Demonfolk pretty obsessively."
"...Huh."
"Wow. Seriously. For real?"
"I'd heard no one survived..."
Everyone's shocked attention landed on me, which was only natural. I'd ignored it and kept my eyes fixed on Engrim, silently pressing him for an answer.
For some reason Engrim looked more shocked than anyone else. He thought for a long moment before finally speaking.
"What do you intend to find out?"
"That's going to depend on what they know. If you mean what I personally want, then obviously I want the name of the commander who ordered the attack on my village."
If this chain of coincidences had created a real opportunity, maybe this time I'd finally learn at least the name of the person I was hunting.
Just that fact alone made my heart race.