Shura (1)
The wooden magic beasts had gone still.
Their countless branches did nothing now but gaze up at the sky. Perhaps the giant's appearance had frightened them; perhaps they were content with the water that had soaked into them. Either way, Harad and Kubel were able to reach Ellen's side without incident. She was pointing at the ground.
The earth was a churned-up mess thanks to the giant, but the hole was still recognizable. A familiar one.
"A tunnel."
Harad let out a dry laugh at the tunnel Ellen had found. It was a coincidence — though not so staggering a one as to defy belief. Luck on par with that of the Ivory Tower and Tower of Meteoric Iron magicians who had combed the area around the Sacred Ground of Fire.
It's the route they came by.
The tunnel lay close to the Deep Sea's path.
"We'll return through this. There may even be a Deep Sea magician who went in ahead of us."
"You want to head back now?"
"I'll trust that you weren't asking in earnest."
"……"
Exploring any further would have been greed. She hadn't merely crossed paths with the giant — she had attacked it, no less. Granted, the giant hadn't so much as counterattacked, hadn't even seemed to notice it was under attack, but that didn't erase Ellen's lapse.
"You nearly killed the three of us."
If the giant had noticed, Ellen would certainly have died. Harad and Kubel would have followed right behind her.
"I might be one thing, but Kubel is a man who cannot be allowed to die like that."
Shura had no one in the world but Kubel.
"……I'm sorry."
Ellen apologized without protest. Even by her own reckoning, it had been a foolish thing to do.
"I'm quite all right. Please don't trouble yourself over it."
Kubel gave an awkward smile at her apology. The side of Ellen's personality he had come to know this time was certainly unexpected — but that was all. To Kubel, Ellen was yet another of his saviors.
"I'm sorry."
She said it to Harad as well. Only then did she get a proper look at his face. It was smeared with blood — the white fire's doing, no doubt.
"Better than last time, at least."
When he'd fought Cassion, he had been in a state where dropping dead on the spot would have surprised no one. This time Harad could not only speak — he could even walk. He had manifested the white fire more weakly than before, and the favorable affinity had helped too. Water feeds the white fire.
Of course, the spoils of this expedition had been the decisive factor. Thanks to the hearts he had absorbed one after another, his mana reserves had grown by no small margin.
"Still, I'll need to convalesce, I think."
He was far from unscathed, after all. He could walk; running was beyond him.
"……It won't happen again."
"Good."
Harad's reaction was almost insultingly plain. It left Ellen feeling like the exasperated one instead.
"That's it?"
"What else is there to do but trust you?"
"……"
"I do trust you, you know. More than you trust me."
Harad smiled gently.
In truth, he didn't trust her all that much. Set against death's edge, Ellen was exactly the sort who would do it all over again. Reining in that kind of person was Harad's role. Which is to say — what had happened earlier wasn't a failure to stop her. It was a choice not to.
A giant so numb that even the trampling of its Manifestation drew no response seemed unlikely to react to Ellen's sword, either.
Still, no harm in a scare. It would keep her sharp. She'd be a little more careful from now on. Probably.
Harad pointed at the tunnel. On the way back, Ellen took the lead, Kubel held the middle, and Harad brought up the rear.
Not a tunnel worth much, I'd wager. The exit's location left much to be desired. It was in the 2nd Boundary, technically speaking, but it sat closer to the deep frontier than to the Outlands. A tunnel that led nearer to death than to asylum. Not that a magician seeking asylum would be in any position to be choosy.
The tunnel was as cramped as ever. Ahead of Harad, Kubel groaned and grunted his way forward.
Maybe Kubel ought to be posted to the knight order's search parties instead. Tunnels did not suit the man. It was pitiful enough to make Harad wonder whether the poor fellow might come unhinged if this kept up.
"I was the one who won, you know."
How far had they crawled when Ellen's voice abruptly rang out from up ahead? She seemed to have the Deep Sea's 5th-tier magician on her mind.
"We won. Not you."
"……"
She couldn't argue the point. Without Harad, that magician would have completed his Manifestation that much sooner.
"……Even without the giant, you'd have stopped me?"
"No."
The lake's Manifestation and Ellen's blade cleaving through the magician's heart would have landed nearly at the same moment. The magician would die, but the manifested Origin would deal her a blow in return. She still wouldn't have died, though. Moderately wounded, and that was all. A profitable trade, all told — with Heavenly Might behind it, Ellen's recovery bordered on the unbelievable.
The last aura had been the deepest of them all. In exchange for a moderate wound, Ellen grew by visible leaps.
For her, death's edge wasn't a choice. It was a necessity.
Harad the regressed knew a great deal about Heavenly Might — more than the Ellen crawling along ahead of him. It was a blessing that couldn't be chalked up to mere constitution.
"Then next time, promise you'll let me."
She seemed, in the end, genuinely disappointed not to have killed that magician by her own hand.
"I'll make the attempt."
Harad was a little disappointed himself. If not for the giant, he could have taken the heart. A 5th-tier heart held mana that nothing he had absorbed so far could hold a candle to.
"But I won't promise."
"Why not?"
"The human heart is a fickle thing, isn't it? Like a reed."
Most of the time, she'd know she wasn't going to die. But that was easier said than done.
"I'd rather not watch you get hurt."
"……"
No answer came. Instead, for whatever reason, her crawling pace picked up.
He lifted his head slightly, and that particular cozy glow of torchlight came seeping in. They had reached the entrance without his noticing.
In the same moment, Harad felt the stir of people. Someone was outside — two someones, by the feel of it, posted on either side of the tunnel mouth. Brokers, most likely. Or a Deep Sea magician who had found the tunnel and gotten there first.
They've already caught on, then. The sun, no doubt. He could guess why they'd split to either side. Waiting to part the head from the shoulders of whoever popped out of that hole.
Good thing I put Ellen in front. She would have sensed their presence long before now, and she would deal with them properly.
KAANG!
That was when the strange sound rang out. To Harad's ear, it was metal striking metal.
"The fuck?"
What came next was Ellen's voice. Bewilderment first — and then, unmistakably, fury.
"What's going on?"
Harad asked Kubel, who had frozen solid. From where Kubel was, he'd have a rough view of the scene.
"Th-the… a sword came down at Lady Ellen's neck."
Kubel was trembling like a leaf.
There had been two brokers waiting at the entrance. Not as fact — as conjecture. All Harad knew for certain was that the two had used swords, because by the time he climbed out of the tunnel, it was already over.
Two bodies with burst skulls lay on the ground. The weapon had been Ellen's bare hands, and both of those hands were dyed red. He glanced back; the tunnel entrance was wrecked. Judging by the traces, she had swung her fists from inside the tunnel, pulverizing the ground and the men's heads along with it.
Just as he'd guessed, they hadn't been magicians. Their hearts had held no mana.
A thick, coppery reek hung in the air. With both of Ellen's hands soaked, it was Kubel who bent down to light the cigarette between her lips. The sight was fearsome in its own right.
"Anyone watching would take us for gangsters."
To a stranger's eye, this was less Serzila than some underworld crew's back lot.
"I could have died back there."
It sounded like drama to Harad's ear, but she had cause to be sour. A sword swinging at her throat out of nowhere — had she been anyone but Ellen, she'd be dead.
Having burned through an entire cigarette in no time, Ellen clamped a fresh one between her lips. This time Harad lit it with magic. At the sight of that flame, her eyes curved into a smile.
"Well. That one got off easy."
Behind Ellen, Harad found one more corpse. Unlike the other two, only this one's head had been taken off.
"Hm? Oh — that one wasn't me."
Harad's eyes narrowed. Sure enough, the stump of the neck was ragged. The handiwork left much to be desired.
He read a faint residue of mana from the corpse — the sort of trace that lingers on a magician dead quite some while, his power dissipated from neglect.
"Deep Sea Tower, then."
So this was the one who had found the tunnel and crossed over. The cut across his neck differed from the one across his body — two blades, falling at the same instant.
He had died the way Ellen nearly had: the moment his head poked out of the entrance.
It worked on him. It just hadn't worked on Ellen.
The corpse was naked. The brokers had killed him and stripped him of everything, then.
"If it weren't for those two, we'd have missed the magician altogether."
Ellen pointed at the head-burst brokers with an empty laugh. Even dog droppings have their uses, as the saying goes.
"Not quite. If the tunnel hadn't been there in the first place, none of this would have happened."
Harad wouldn't take a broker's side even in jest. Come to think of it, he had never once let a broker live.
"Want me to go up and catch the rest of them?"
"I'd be grateful."
"Grateful? It's for Serzila's sake."
Deep underground like this was one thing; within the territory proper, Harad had to be as careful as he could possibly be. If he manifested magic, there could be no witnesses.
Only the knights and a handful of the Inner Castle knew that Harad was a magician. Serzila could keep that circle discreet, but nothing beyond it. In the North, his very existence was a secret kept down to the bone.
"The highest-ranking one we'll need alive."
"Why?"
"It's time we caught the Tunnel-Digger."
The Outlands had found the tunnel.
Ios's death had meant a great deal. He had been the stepping-stone between the Outlands and the tunnels, and Harad had severed that bridge before anyone could cross it — cutting off the connection between the Outlands and the tunnels outright.
The Outlands would still infiltrate the North regardless, but their numbers would surely thin.
In his previous life, the tunnels had been an immeasurable boon to them. And now the Outlands had gone and discovered one anyway.
Out hunting me, they tripped over a tunnel instead. A windfall caught by pure accident.
Even luck has its limits.
Harad smiled bitterly.
Had he not burned the watchtower, the Outlands would never have combed the area around the Sacred Ground of Fire. The tunnel would never have been found, either.
There was no telling when the Outlands might find the next one. The second discovery would come easier than the first. Before that happened, his side had to know where every tunnel lay.
That was beyond Harad alone. Even in his previous life, he had never charted them all.
He had to catch the Tunnel-Digger. But how?
"The Tunnel-Digger. You know of him?"
This tunnel had opened out beneath a shabby tavern. The tavern keeper could only shake his head, his face drained white. Shock seemed to have stolen his voice.
The tavern's interior had been painted in blood — Ellen's work. Dozens of mercenaries lay scattered about in pieces, undone by her sword.
"Talk, and you live."
"……"
The keeper only shook his head. He genuinely didn't know, it seemed. Harad reached out and snapped his neck.
"You're not going to question him?"
"He wouldn't have known anything anyway."
Such was the Tunnel-Digger — meticulous to the last, and timid as a mole. He left no trace anywhere. That was why catching him had been put off so long.
Harad didn't know the man well either. Not even in his previous life had he met the Tunnel-Digger face to face.
"Let's get going for now."
"Where to?"
"We need to rotate out."
Harad said it pointing at Kubel. What they needed now wasn't him — it was Cassion.
"We need knights posted at the tunnel entrances."
Counting the one they'd just found, three tunnels were known. The 2nd Knight Order would have to be stationed at all three mouths. Even at this very moment, Outlands magicians might be crawling up through them.
"There'll be other tunnels, won't there?"
"Then we find them."
"How?"
"We only need to find the Tunnel-Digger."
The man would remember every tunnel he had ever sold.
"And how do we do that?"
"We start with Arika. She may have something for us."
"Oh — right. We could just narrow the suspects down a little."
"By killing them all?"
Harad tilted his head. Ellen wasn't that harsh by nature.
"What are you talking about? You can tell just by looking, can't you — whether someone's a magician or not."
"Ah."
A cold sweat broke out.