Infiltrating the Octagon (5)
Even as I followed Cain toward the Octagon, a lingering bitterness seemed to coat the back of my tongue.
Carrying the memories of my previous life meant I had already watched the Lemterte Plague slowly hollow out and consume the Principality. Because of that, judging the severity of the symptoms allowed me to roughly calculate how far the infection had progressed.
I had known the moment I laid eyes on her. Left alone, Lumia would reach a point of no return within days.
That was why I adjusted the plan slightly and curbed her symptoms. Her condition was still at a stage where my crude intervention could buy time, and considering Cain and Lumia's desperate situation, there was no need to resort to intimidation. Besides, Cain had always maintained a neutral, level-headed stance in the previous timeline, making him far easier to approach than my other former comrades. It was a calculated decision born from weighing every factor.
Of course, just because my trick had worked for the moment didn't mean her future was secure.
Once enough time elapsed, the parasitic blue spots caused by the devouring of her mana would inevitably flare up again, indistinguishable from every horror I had witnessed before. When that happened, repeating the same technique would yield diminishing returns. Unless an actual cure was administered, Lumia would meet the exact same end. That cold reality refused to leave my thoughts.
Perhaps that was why a strange, bitter taste coated my mouth as I walked behind Cain, even though I hadn't eaten anything foul.
No. If I don't move now, the casualties will only multiply.
It didn't matter if Cain ended up branding me a piece of scum who fed him false hope. I had given him fair warning beforehand, and even if there was no guarantee an antidote would be synthesized in the meantime, the fact remained that I had made the best immediate play available. Even if Lumia took a turn for the worse later on, he wouldn't have grounds to resent me.
Indeed. Right now, curbing the slaughter of frontline and support specialists trapped in the Octagon—a bleeding wound tied directly to the upcoming Schytz Great Subjugation Campaign—took absolute priority. If I stopped to accommodate every single hardship in his personal life, I would never finish what needed to be done.
"Cain."
"Yes?"
"You remember what I told you back there?"
I was referring to the instructions I had given him right after treating Lumia, when I demanded he lead me into the Octagon.
Cain gave a faint, reluctant reply, showing he hadn't forgotten.
"...Are we really going through with this exactly as you said?"
"Yeah."
Cain turned back, his face clouded with worry as he pressed me again. Considering the four conditions I had laid out, it would have been stranger if he hadn't second-guessed them.
First, absolute silence.
I told him this method of mana extraction would draw dangerous attention, so he had to keep his mouth shut. He had to act as though today, and the very hour of our conversation, had been completely erased from his memory.
Second, prior warning.
I made it clear that until a true antidote was developed, this disease could not be cured. I had merely halted its progression temporarily; she wasn't saved. Therefore, he was not to hold me accountable when things went south.
Cain had already braced himself for those first two terms. Lumia was already a wanted fugitive who couldn't show her face outside anyway, so my offer of shelter and protection was actually a tremendous blessing for him.
The third condition, however, was an entirely different beast.
Anywhere but the Octagon...
Third, assistance in infiltrating the Octagon.
I had demanded that he guide me straight into that living hell on my own two feet. It put him in a painfully awkward and agonizing position. For the man who had visibly stabilized Lumia—when no medicine in the underworld had produced even a flicker of improvement—to walk voluntarily into the slaughterhouse was something Cain desperately wanted to prevent.
"Considering what you did for Lumia, I truly don't want you going in there. To be honest, I wish you wouldn't even look in its direction."
"Why?"
"It's... hell. Once you get caught in that web, you can never climb back out."
Cain knew it all too well. It was a living purgatory where the penniless were caged. Once you stepped onto the sands, there was no telling how thoroughly your body would be shattered before they discarded you. Because he understood the belly of the beast better than anyone, he wanted me as far from it as possible.
Just as he was agonizing over how to piece his warnings together, raw mana flickered to life over my fingertips.
It was a Magic Armament. And notably, it bore no weapon-like shape at all.
"Sunbae-nim... don't tell me..."
"So you don't need to worry about me. I already scoped out their fighting strength the other day anyway."
"...Excuse me? You scoped them out...?"
"I broke in. Those bastards were so obsessive about security that whenever an emergency cropped up, every guard had to wear masks enchanted with cognitive-interference magic. I just ambushed one of the patrols, took his gear, and slipped right past the perimeter. Won't work a second time, though."
Possessing a Mizar-type Magic Armament was startling enough, but an infiltration? How could anyone pull that off single-handedly?
The Octagon was an illicit playground crafted exclusively for high nobles, remaining undetected even by the Principality's central authorities. Slaves who had attempted to break out during the chaos of the auctions and ended up dragged back in chains were too numerous to count. Learning that someone had infiltrated that fortress and walked out unscathed left Cain's jaw hanging slack.
"So just lead the way. Don't forget what I told you. Oh, and calling me 'Sunbae-nim' will give away that we're academy students, so just call me Hyung-nim."
"Y-Yes... Understood, Hyung-nim."
Mizar-type mana. With that singular revelation, Cain's anxiety evaporated. He had been half-skeptical when I claimed to have a natural constitution immune to the plague, but seeing the depth of my preparation, he began to wonder if that, too, had been the honest truth.
Because of that, the underlying purpose of ordering him to withdraw from the arena finally clicked in his mind.
The third condition... meant completely passing his position in the Octagon over to Hyung-nim.
Recalling that brought the fourth and final condition back to the surface. It felt as though every single variable had already been weighed and measured within Junon's grasp.
Flanked by two armed guards, Cain's deep-seated standing within the syndicate was enough to secure our initial entry past the iron gates. Of course, that didn't mean the rest of the path was clear.
"I'm sorry, but that's out of the question."
"Excuse me...? But why!"
"Because the man you brought is an outsider."
The Octagon's organizer pointed directly at me, rejecting Cain's introduction without missing a beat. Slipping into an underground parlor with such a cutthroat agenda was never going to be simple. The standoff aligned almost precisely with what I had anticipated. However, the reason they refused to let me onto the roster was somewhat different.
"Academy student or not, you've established quite a reputation with the patrons. If the fighter suddenly changes without warning, our guests won't take kindly to it. We aren't in the business of losing money by swapping you out for some unproven stray who might not even know how to swing a blade."
Cain was currently the most lucrative spectacle in the entire Octagon. The nobles adored his raw grit, and the emcee deliberately arranged harsher, deadlier brackets to engineer his eventual fall. Yet Cain had defied the odds and walked away victorious time and again, transforming into a bona fide underground celebrity known by every patron in the arena.
If that was the issue, the solution was straightforward enough. Conveniently, the stage props needed for a demonstration were standing right beside me.
"Guh...!"
"H-Hyung-nim...?"
"You bastard, what the hell are you doing?!"
"I knew he had an angle! This is why you never trust an outsider!"
The moment my fist sent the guard on my left crashing unconscious to the tiles, the guard on my right drew his short sword. Confusion rippled through the room. A fine development.
"You little rat!!"
The arc of the blade was plain as day. Predictably, it was a lethal, sweeping trajectory meant to sever everything from collarbone to hip—a strike calculated to ensure I didn't leave this chamber breathing. Far too crude. Handling it required nothing more than bare hand-to-hand combat.
"Urgh..."
With a clean redirect and an elbow to the sternum, the armed guard joined his partner flat on the floor.
Turning toward the stunned pair at the desk, I spoke in a cool, leisurely tone.
"I believe that should be more than enough to prove my skill. Wouldn't you say?"
Silence hung heavy in the room.
Cain had received no prior warning about this stunt, so naturally, he was staring in wide-eyed shock. The organizer likewise remained motionless, his eyes darting between me and the two unconscious brutes sprawled across the rugs. Then, a sharp snort broke the quiet.
"Pfft... Pwahaha! Ahahahahaha!!"
It wasn't Cain laughing. The laughter belonged entirely to the man running the Octagon, dripping with perverse delight.
"I see. So this was the merchandise you wanted to showcase...?"
"My pride took a bit of a hit when you suggested I'd cause you a financial loss. Well, if that wasn't convincing enough, I don't mind putting down a few more of your men."
"Heh-heh-heh. Fair enough. You have my apologies. Underestimating your capabilities was my oversight."
The organizer glanced back and forth between the two limp bodies several times. Grinning with unmasked greed, he turned his gaze back to me. The fish had drifted right to the hook. To reel in a beast this size, I needed to make the bait wriggle just a little more naturally.
"Just pay me the lump sum I'm asking for upfront in cash. As long as that condition is met, I'll gladly serve as your finest fighting dog."
"Oho? And how much are you demanding?"
The bait dangling on the line was plump and appetizing. But the man was an experienced predator who would immediately suspect a barb beneath the flesh the moment he struck. Unless I presented a blatant, selfish motive to convince him this was merely reckless greed rather than a trap, his instincts would warn him off.
"Twenty thousand Alte in advance. I won't accept a single coin less."
"Twenty thousand Alte, is it...? That's a rather steep price tag."
"If you intend to purchase a prime war hound, you ought to pay the market price. Wouldn't you agree?"
Asking for a modest sum would only breed suspicion—why would someone this capable settle for pocket change? By aggressively demanding a fortune to satisfy my supposed pride, I reinforced the illusion of unbridled avarice. It was a calculated bluff, dangling the lure right before the jaws of the Octagon's master.
"I'll give you twenty-five thousand in advance. In exchange, you will report here at the appointed hour every single day. How does that sound?"
How did it sound? Why...
"Deal."
I gave the line plenty of slack, letting him swallow the bait whole so all doubt vanished. It was an irresistible proposition for him, and a flawless setup for me. After all, this bait wasn't just cast to reel in the big fish—it was meant to herd every fattened fingerling in his net straight into the cage.
Whenever high summer arrived with its sweltering heat, goods designed to stave off the sun found eager buyers. When the frost of deep winter settled in, commodities that warded off the biting chill commanded the markets. Far beyond simple seasonal shifts, wealth constantly circulated through society, propelled by climate, hours, days, and tides.
Yet not all accumulated capital followed that natural cycle. Those skilled in deciphering the invisible flow of coin were the first to notice the leak.
"I knew something was rotten. Just as I suspected."
Setting aside a delicate mask enchanted with cognitive interference, Charlotte let out a heavy sigh the moment her eyes scanned the ledgers. The total volume of currency in the Principality was theoretically fixed, yet the quantity of unaccounted capital vanishing into thin air was simply staggering. Cross-referencing the irregular funds moving year by year, the vaults of certain noble houses had either bloated unnaturally or emptied without any paper trail. Even the wealthiest lords wouldn't let fortunes sit completely idle; the money had to be turning over somewhere. Convinced of that truth, Charlotte had traced the scent straight to a colossal gambling enterprise in Mirpark Province.
"There's no doubt about it. Tearing this den down is our best move."
The unstable prices rocking the domestic market could be stabilized quickly once the hoarded currency trapped inside this parlor was dragged into the open. All they needed to do was seize the assets of the decadent nobility who squandered fortunes on illicit bloodsports without giving a thought to runaway inflation. The interior of the parlor was an absolute cesspool of state-prohibited vices. To clear the board and resume Team Tembris's official duties, this tumor had to be excised with surgical speed.
And yet, one detail continued to prick at her thoughts.
"...I borrowed the identity of a disgraced house from the borderlands that lost its title after the Dubhe Hall terror incident. There shouldn't have been any risk of anyone recognizing me."
Because the head of that peripheral family had been stripped of noble standing in the aftermath of Demian's bombing of Dubhe Hall, forging the necessary entry pass had been trivial for someone with Charlotte's merchant connections. That pass was the very reason she had managed to uncover the den's coordinates in the first place.
Once inside, everything had proceeded according to plan. Not a single person had looked twice at her. Nobles from desolate frontier territories were complete nobodies to high society. Even if someone engaged her in idle chatter, she could simply play along before slipping away into the crowd. There was no danger of being entangled with degenerates drowning in gambling, wine, or narcotics.
Yet the man she had brushed shoulders with near the Octagon arena lingered persistently in her mind.
Could he have seen through my disguise?
"No. He was probably just an ordinary mercenary hired to patrol the perimeter."
Charlotte shook her head, dismissing the unease. Even if someone had looked closely, the guests and staff in the parlor wore cognitive-interference masks commonly used in masquerades. Identifying an individual was virtually impossible unless you knew the exact family crest stamped onto the enamel. A low-ranking patrol guard couldn't possibly possess that kind of insider knowledge.
"In that case... all that's left is..."
Re-investigation and securing decisive evidence.
Since bringing the rest of Team Tembris into this place was impossible without blowing their cover, she needed to retrieve the ledger and the official transaction receipts during her next infiltration. The moment that ledger fell into her hands, Tembris would pull the snare tight and haul up the entire catch in one clean sweep.
Fixated on that singular moment, Charlotte waited for tomorrow to arrive—ready to return to the Octagon and hoist the noose high.