The Second Boundary
There had been twenty-one of them in all. Twenty of those heads now lay rolling across the floor. The inn, once spotless, had been freshly painted over with the blood their bodies poured out.
The gap between them had been exactly that wide.
Just as ordinary people had their ranks, aura had its own. Ellen's aura, born of Heavenly Might, overwhelmed even aura of the same tier — let alone a pack of sneaky rats like these. Barely a few minutes had passed before she had cut down all twenty. Her breathing never so much as wavered. She wiped her blade clean on the clothes of the tidiest corpse and sat down beside Harad.
“There'll be a backer behind this.”
Twenty-one. Quite the operation. There would be more scattered elsewhere in the tunnel, no doubt. As expected, this one seemed to be an expensive tunnel.
Neither the Outlands nor the Liberation Magic Tower. There had been no magicians among the mercenaries. It was a tunnel absent even from Harad's memory — which meant it was a pure broker's tunnel, one he had never learned of in his previous life.
“They won't be Serzila folk. Setting loyalty aside, an ordinary tunnel only ever tempts magicians or men dripping with greed for money.”
The tunnel's backer had no ties to the North. The North was a frugal place, on the whole. Had any retainer grown wealthy, the intelligence bureau would have picked him apart long ago.
“Shouldn't we find out who it is, then?”
No one had looked into it in the previous life. It had been Grand Duke Elaine's order — and that Grand Duke had pitied the continent's magicians. The tunnels had been a commercial venture for some money-hungry soul, but at the same time they were the only escape route a continental magician had.
“No need for us to look into it. We have an intelligence bureau, don't we?” Harad said, looking at Ellen. An agent capable of uncovering this place would be capable of uncovering the rest.
“Truthfully, we don't even need to catch him. If spite is reason enough, any reason will do.”
This was a man who had defiled the North's land. Reason enough to catch him and beat him to a pulp.
“The one who truly matters is the tunnel-digger. There's a magician out there who takes commissions and digs tunnels through the Boundary.”
Ellen's eyes went round.
“Catch him, and no new tunnels will spring up. We'd have the locations of every tunnel already carved, too.”
“And you're only telling me this now?”
Before the tunnel-digger, catching Ios — the one meant to collude with him — came first. The tunnel-digger was timid as a mole. Left alone, he was no threat. He was no match for Ellen whatsoever.
“I thought him impossible to find. The man's nothing if not careful.”
“...Just you wait. I'll find him.”
Ellen burned with resolve. Of course the task would fall to another agent, not her — but that agent would now have to root out the tunnel-digger like a man with hounds at his heels.
Won't take long.
Harad smirked. He grinned openly right in front of her, and Ellen didn't notice — she was staring straight at him, and still didn't. Everything in sight was blurred, far too blurred. It was hazy, as though fog had settled across the ground floor. This was no ordinary smoke; it was magic. Even Ellen could not have seen her own hand without wielding aura.
“He makes the smoke with tobacco, then handles it with magic.”
“I know that.”
“Because I told you yesterday.”
In a knight's terms, the tobacco was his sword. One could swing aura barehanded, but a sword was always more efficient, more powerful.
“...But the way he's going, isn't he going to drop dead on his own before anyone kills him?”
The smoke already looked like plenty. Yet Kubel kept lighting up — three or four at a time, no less — and each time he set a fresh one between his lips, Harad struck a light for him.
“We can only pray his lungs are as formidable as his frame.”
Ellen had no faith she could ever burn through that much tobacco. Health aside, wouldn't his mouth reek like a garbage heap?
“It must be his first real fight. He doesn't know how to ration himself, so he's trying to give it everything he has.”
According to the parchment, Golas had been rated equal to a Serzila knight. In a magician's terms, the 3rd Tier. But even if Golas had been an ordinary man, Kubel would have smoked exactly this way. He had never fought before, so he was giving it his all.
“Can you see him? Tell me what you see?”
“I can.”
Just as Ellen peeked past the smoke through her aura, Harad had his Sun turning as he watched Kubel. The smoke seemed to move at Kubel's will — filling the ground floor, blinding every eye while becoming a weapon all at once. The smoke became a fist, became a wave; this time, it was a hammer.
“Fuck!”
Golas howled as the smoke slammed into him. The smoke was everywhere — which meant Kubel's weapon was everywhere. When Golas focused on guarding his head, everything below it took the beating. When he guarded his whole body, his defense thinned, and the smoke burrowed through his aura.
WHAM! Golas's body rebounded off the wall. The smoke had hardened like a massive boulder and rammed him into it. He scrambled upright and swung his war hammer, but it did nothing to the smoke. His aura was far too weak to break the magic. Forget the magic — he needed to go for the magician himself. When he pooled his aura into his eyes, the magician came into view. But he couldn't close the distance. The moment he tried, the fog that had been a weapon became an obstacle. Part of the smoke hardened into a wall, severing the path to Kubel; the instant he leapt, the smoke in midair turned swamp-thick and stopped him dead.
“Fuck!”
Golas went down mid-sprint. Hardened fog had cracked across his shin. The fog came down on his fallen body, heavy as a collapsing wall. Golas gritted his teeth and powered through it. One swing of his hammer drove the smoke back. Whoosh — and even as it was expelled, the emptied space filled itself with smoke again.
“Magician!”
“...”
“Your goal is the tunnel, isn't it! I'll lend you the tunn—argh!”
Golas bit through his tongue mid-sentence. The fog had snapped at his jaw. Blood flooded his mouth; it welled up from inside him, too — the smoke had driven into his solar plexus.
He couldn't flee out a window either. This inn had no windows, only a door — and the smoke magician's companions had dragged chairs up to it and seated themselves there. Among them, the woman: the monster who had cut down twenty men in one sweep.
“Then just kill me!”
Realizing no answer would come through the smoke, Golas screamed.
The smoke never became an edged blade, but it served admirably as a blunt one. It beat Golas, and beat him, until he was spent. Who knew how long it took — at last, Golas lay sprawled across the floor.
Then the smoke filling the ground floor simply vanished. Somehow, that was the most fucking humiliating part of all. He felt, anew, the sheer unfairness of magic.
“Goddamn magician bastards.”
Run a tunnel long enough, and you inevitably cross paths with magicians. Most were pathetic; very occasionally, they were terrifyingly dangerous. Today was the latter. Still, none of them had ever been a problem before. Magicians were simply that kind of creature.
“Kill me, and you'll never get to use the tunnel.”
Golas spat it out, all bluster.
“...”
Kubel looked down at him and licked his lips. To Golas's eyes, he seemed to hesitate. To Harad's eyes as well. Kubel was hesitating, right now.
“Kubel.”
Kubel's eyes, meeting Harad's, were unmistakably trembling.
“Congratulations. You've proven your usefulness.”
It sounded like a pass. But Kubel couldn't manage a smile. There was something oddly cold in Harad's gaze.
“You'd have earned it, if you weren't a magician.” Harad pointed at the fallen Golas. “Why didn't you kill him?”
Kubel's eyes wavered like disturbed water. Have you ever killed a man before? That was what Harad had asked him earlier. Even then, Kubel had sensed it — that the day would come when blood would have to stain his own hands. But it wasn't as easy as his heart pretended. That was what murder was.
“I understand. You don't want blood on you. It being your first only makes it harder.”
“...”
“But a magician cannot afford that fate.”
Harad pointed at Golas, who lay fallen with nothing but his eyes rolled wide open.
“Even in defeat, that man is looking down on you. Because on the continent, the magician is the weak one.”
A magician born on the continent fears ordinary people, and yearns for the Outlands.
“If you don't kill, you die. Because the one you spared will report you.”
Plenty of people tattle after losing a fight. But few listen to them. When it was a magician, though, the church always listened.
“Kubel — you must become a man to be feared. A dangerous man. If anyone glimpses your magic, kill them. If anyone gets their hands on your weakness, kill them.”
Never being exposed as a magician was the best outcome — but once exposed, he had no choice. That was how magicians born on the continent survived.
“Only then can we stand equal to the rest of them at last.”
We. Harad had said it that way, and Kubel knew that "we" held Shura within it.
“The more feared and dangerous you become, the lighter the shackle that is you grows.”
To Shura, Kubel was a shackle.
“She doesn't say a single word. To the adults who worry over her, that is. She's only ten.”
The North was a land uniquely cruel to children. In that frozen country, Shura had waited, so long, for nothing more than Grex's return. Even under the guard patrol's protection, she had never once opened her mouth — all to hide that her own father was a magician.
“That was because of you.”
“...”
“Right now, you are far too heavy for Shura to carry.”
“...”
Kubel set a cigarette between his lips. Harad lit it for him. Only then did the smoke become a blade.
Truthfully, the killing had been a bonus. Nice if it happened; a shame if it didn't. He hadn't expected much. People change. Difficult now — later, they can kill a man as easily as they eat a meal. Hardly a pleasant thought, but Harad was confident he could remake a person that way. So what mattered was not whether Kubel had killed before. It was whether the man followed his word — or didn't.
He follows well.
On the way here, Harad hadn't explained a thing to Kubel. In Kubel's eyes, it might well have looked as though Harad had picked a quarrel with the inn's people out of nowhere. He had half hoped for exactly that. Of course, Golas and his mercenaries had bared their true natures faster than expected, so it hadn't played out quite that far. Even so, it had been worth the trouble.
Kubel had hesitated to kill — but never to fight. Harad told him to fight, so he fought Golas, and he won. As long as Shura lived, Kubel would keep doing so. If Harad wished it, he would kill a man too. Which meant a structure of trust, of a sort, had taken shape.
Fortunate.
Harad had likened Kubel to a shackle, but in truth it was Shura who was Kubel's shackle. Seize Shura and shake her, and Kubel would have no choice but to be wielded.
No need to go that far.
It was a mercy that Kubel moved of his own accord. For Elaine's sake, Harad could do anything.
“Well? Do you follow?”
“Y-yes, yes. So that hole leads down into the Boundary, and if we're lucky, we can cross over into the Outlands...” Kubel pointed at the tunnel, turning Harad's explanation over in his mouth.
“That's right. You really are a genius.”
It wasn't empty flattery. Kubel had stepped into the 3rd Tier while still ignorant of everything — for an ordinary man, the equivalent of mastering aura entirely on his own. From the continent's perspective, Kubel was, in fact, a genius. In the Outlands, where Origins were prized above all, he would rank as mediocre.
“The Golas you carved into ten pieces was the broker of this tunnel.”
Kubel had killed Golas more brutally than expected. Perhaps it was interest paid in advance on his resolve; perhaps it was flattery — proof he would keep performing this well, so please look kindly on him. Either way, it didn't matter. What mattered was that they had reached the tunnel. And that of the ten brokers dealt with along the way, he had absorbed one magician's heart and perfectly shed the aftereffects of his earlier battle.
“Is the Outlands truly a paradise for magicians?”
Kubel asked, careful.
“It may be. It may not be. Why — do you want to go?”
“I don't want to go.”
Kubel answered without a moment's hesitation. The Outlands was a land for magicians. It was not a land for Shura.
“You're a good father.”
“...I couldn't say. I'd like to become one, starting now.”
“You will. Serzila is a better place to live than you'd think.”
Kubel's face brightened. For all his bulk, he was a gentle, guileless man. Which was exactly why Ellen looked a touch uncomfortable — as though the memory of how loudly she had once screamed for such a man's death still weighed on her.
“Ellen. What do you think?”
Harad picked her out and asked directly.
“I don't trust him. He's holding back because of Shura.”
“...”
Kubel, so bright a moment ago, deflated.
“I'll be watching. Kubel — what good you become to Serzila, and how dearly you love Shura.”
Tolerate, and observe the results. It was the best choice the present Ellen could make.
“You'd best work hard, then.”
“Yes, yes!”
“Now, off with you — set out breakfast for Shura. She should be stirring awake about now.”
“Huh?”
Kubel, who had been standing rigid as a soldier at attention, went blank.
“Nothing would please me more than to bring you along, but I suspect it would get you killed.”
If it were a tunnel they used regularly, perhaps — but the tunnel before them was a first. Even Harad didn't know what lay beyond it.
“Your task today isn't being any help. It's loving Shura.”
Kubel's face clouded somewhat. He was feeling his own helplessness at contributing nothing. Harad took that for a good sign.
“Prepare a late-night spread as well. Drinks to go with it. This one has a taste for liquor.” Harad patted Ellen's shoulder.
With his face somewhat lighter, Kubel climbed back up to the surface.
“We're leaving right away?”
“Is there a reason not to?”
Only then did Ellen's face split into a full smile. She had been aching for another brush with death.
Harad surveyed the bodies strewn around him and picked out the best-looking sword among them.
“You needed a sword? You should have said something.”
To Ellen's eye, it was cheap junk. Serzila's storerooms had better swords rolling around loose. Had Harad mentioned it in advance, she'd have packed him one of those.
“I'll ask next time. A good one.”
Harad glanced at Ellen's own sword. Plain to the eye, but surely a masterwork — the proof being that it endured her Heavenly Might.
“Not this one. It's precious.” Ellen shielded the sword with her hand.
“I didn't expect you to.”
The tunnel was narrower than the last one. Longer too, Harad was half certain. An expensive tunnel — that was why he'd grabbed the sword. Hardly befitting a magician, but preparation was preparation.
“This is the expensive tunnel?”
Ellen, who had crawled in after him, wrinkled her whole face. Apparently she had assumed the pricier the tunnel, the more comfortable it would be. She was out of breath already, her torso wedged tight; every inch forward dragged her shoulder blades raw across the earth.
“I'm the one suffering here.”
He meant it. Harad was the bigger of the two. To Ellen it sounded like pure whining. He was bigger, granted — but he wasn't any more full-grown than she was.
“And I haven't even any aura.”
“...”
Ellen, aura humming around her at that very moment, flinched. Unlike her, Harad was crawling through the tunnel on raw flesh alone — at an unwavering pace. His grit was, frankly, worthy of respect. It was because of moments like these that Ellen sometimes found Harad impossible to understand. The Harad Iagar in the intelligence bureau's files and the Harad before her eyes were two entirely different men.
A reinvestigation is in order. Only then could Elaine even begin to attempt trusting him...
Ellen thought this while watching the soles of Harad's shoes press rhythmically against the ground. Now that she looked, his shoes were worn down dreadfully as well. Come to think of it, there had been no maids in his annex, either. A sword was not all he lacked. Harad had far more missing about him than present.
His trousers are torn, too. Judging by the marks, a patchwork beast had gotten to them. And he was still wearing the same pair from back then. Looks were all he had going for him; in what he wore and ate, he was no different from a beggar.
Well — he is a hostage. He hadn't even been granted recognition from the 1st Knight Order, had he? Crippling three of their knights had been an outrage, but that was no reason for him to live like a beggar. ...Still, the man ought to be treated like a human being. Right — he's a hostage. She would see to it when they got back.
Harad pressed on at a steady pace. Every time his soles scraped the ground, he could feel them wearing away. His trousers, too, were fraying. Once he'd begun noticing, there was no end to it. The idle thoughts actually helped. They ate up the time. It felt like no time at all, yet light was seeping into the tunnel. Astonishingly, it was red. The smell vanished as well — it had been nothing but damp, clinging loam, and then, all at once, nothing at all.
“Prepare yourself.”
Harad spoke. He was directly ahead of her, yet his voice felt far away.
“Ah. Ah. Say something for me?”
“Ah — ah.”
“Indeed. It carries a long way. No scent, and illusions besides. An environment that scrambles the senses. Ah, ah. I see. Wrap yourself in aura. ...Better.”
Following his words, Ellen stretched her aura wider. At once, her senses returned to normal.
Directly overhead, crimson clouds. The exit. Unlike the cramped tunnel, the mouth was wide — broad enough for Harad and Ellen to emerge side by side. Their eyes met, and together they climbed up into the open air.
The ground was hard as stone. Its distinctive chill flowed over the rock. The whole world was in an uproar of wind — it was like standing before a typhoon. From the sky fell not snow but something like dust. Dust as red as the clouds themselves.
On Harad's skin, the chill felt almost refreshing. The typhoon wind was bearable. Crimson dust settled on his shoulder, then ran off in a slow trickle.
“Blood. From a magical beast.”
Harad said it, wiping the dripping stuff with a finger and tasting it on his tongue. Ellen copied him — blood, unmistakably. Whether a beast's or a human's, she couldn't say.
Far away — no, perhaps not so far at all — the rim of the sky was visible. A fissure, pulsing, warping everything around it. The sky of the Outlands.
“...Huh?”
Lightning struck through Ellen's mind as she stared at the fissure. A wrongness. That was the Outlands' sky. But if she was looking at it, the Second Wall should have come into view first, beneath that sky.
Ellen whipped her head around. The Second Wall was behind her. Which meant she was standing in front of Serzila's Second Wall.
“As expected of an expensive tunnel.”
Harad and Ellen were in the Second Boundary.