A Shout in the Dead of Night
SKRAKAKAKAK─
With a sound of grinding metal ringing out just before my hand — a sound so ominous it defied comparison — the dagger that had been plunging forward came to a dead stop, right where it was.
"Yawwwn... hey, Grandpa, why'd you bother coming all the way out here... what a hassle."
It had been stopped — by a single girl so small that no matter how much she grew, she would never come up past my chest.
"...."
"Hm? Sorryyy... did I startle you..?"
My dagger had buried itself into the very center of her small palm. The problem was that it had buried itself only a very, very little.
A black bead of blood welled out from the tip of that blade — artistically honed, so beautiful in its frost-chilled edge — and for the briefest of moments, surprise circled in the girl's eyes.
"Whoa... what... are you?"
A black aura, achingly familiar. The same dark power that had bloomed again and again from that old man was now rippling through the girl's hair.
Without leaving behind even the slightest trace of pain.
"Whoa... it really has been ages... since anything hurt?"
"...."
"..Hm? What's with that face?"
"..Because this is so goddamn fucked up."
"...?"
"Where the hell do you people keep crawling out of?"
I hadn't meant to, but the profanity came spilling out all on its own. What kind of opportunity had this been? Even now, smoke was still billowing from my mouth; something hot was smoldering in my throat; my legs were trembling with the screech of an unoiled machine — and despite all of it, gritting my teeth, enduring and enduring, I had run here and clawed this chance into existence.
And it hadn't even been the old man's heart it stopped — just the palm of one tiny little girl. There was no way curses weren't going to come out.
"Why now of all times... fuck, fuck..."
"Ehhh...? Why the sudden cursing─"
"..What business do you have, coming all the way here."
In that instant, the old man's arm turned an eye toward me and this girl. What do I mean by that? Exactly what it sounds like — an eyeball had sprouted, sometime along the way, from the old man's skeletal arm.
"Grandpa... they told me to bring you."
"Who? Dares to summon... me?"
As if the duke clamoring for my neck didn't even exist, the corners of the old man's mouth began to curl into a grin — and before long, his voice shifted once again.
"Summon. Me?!"
It was a first for me — a shiver raised by nothing more than a voice.
It was a second — the sight of that skin-crawling voice corrupting, little by little, into something else.
"..Hey, Grandpa, don't overdo the theatrics.."
Yet standing up to that voice, bold and unflinching, was the girl who couldn't be bothered to hide her drowsiness.
"..What?!"
"This... dagger. It just went into... my palm."
The instant she said it, the old man's red-and-yellow gaze swung straight to me. Even with his neck bent backward, it was as though he meant to pluck out his own eyeball and hold it up, just to catch me in his sight.
"That. Punk. Really?"
"Yep."
"..Tch. So even looking like that, he's the one That One chose?"
As the old man's voice returned to what it had been at the start—
FWAACK─
The shadow that had clung to his back, strangling him, was flung away. All it took was one casual wave of the hand — the kind you'd use to shoo off a bug.
"So then — who is it that dares to say they called for me?"
"..Ugh, this is a pain. Can't we just go?"
"Do you seriously think that─"
"Bell called you. The [Revelation] has arrived."
"...."
"..We going?"
"Tch."
Clicking his tongue once, as if we were beneath his notice entirely, the old man drew his monocle back out from his breast. Even that spine-chilling voice had reverted to an ordinary old man's — though there was no mistaking that it remained, at its core, something inhuman.
"..You're going, then?"
"Yes. If it is That One's word."
And in that same moment, my blade slid free from the girl's hand — and when I shut my eyes and opened them again, my body was soaring through empty air.
'..Huh?'
"..Let's gooo... hehe."
That was the last scenery I would ever get to see with my own two eyes.
"—My lord."
"...."
"Lord Charlotte..!!"
"Ghhk... hark... haa... haa..."
"My lord, are you all right?!"
KRRUMMBLE─
A person burst out from within the massive mound of rubble. No — to be precise, a shadow wearing the shape of a person.
"Hahk... haaah..."
"My lord, are you back with us?"
"Yes, yes... I hear you."
The shadow clung over the frame of a grown man — and suddenly it began splitting itself apart, and out of it tumbled Duke Charlotte, utterly drained of strength. Save for his chest, his body looked almost untouched. If no one had witnessed it firsthand, not a soul would have believed this was the very man who had just fought that ferocious battle.
"Treatment — get him treatment, quickly..!"
"..Save it. What happened to that creature?"
Despite the long, serpentine scar carved across the very center of his chest, the duke simply dusted off his head as though it were of little consequence. At that composure — so casual one would think he'd merely skinned a knuckle — a flicker of bewilderment passed through the eyes of the Hounds surrounding him.
"..Do you not remember, my lord?"
But that, too, was momentary. With the situational judgment befitting Hounds, they offered up the answer their master wished to hear.
"Right. Shameful as it is to admit, the moment I got a rope around that creature's neck was the last thread of my sanity."
"...."
"What is it? Don't tell me that creature still lives?"
How were they to answer? If he was asking whether it lived, they could answer with absolute certainty that it did. But if he was asking whether it lived within this Empire, the matter grew murkier. Either way, they had vanished to who knew where — and no one could say whether that somewhere lay inside the Empire or not.
"..Yes. It would appear so."
In the end, that was the best answer they could give. They dared not speak falsehood before their master.
"..Now that, I did not expect."
Even so, the duke had his own share of consternation. He had been certain that the attack that boy unveiled at the end would be enough to kill the monster. The possibility that the strike had simply missed from the very beginning existed as well — but he believed, firmly, that there was no way.
'With eyes like that, there was no way he'd collapse partway from his body or his mind... was there?'
And he had every reason to believe it. The little brat was, at most, the same age as his own daughter — and those eyes had brimmed with a still, quiet grudge packed to the seams. How could an attack from someone like that possibly have gone astray?
They were the eyes of a boy who had compressed his rage to the limit of its limits. A boy with those eyes would never have halted his strike midway over a little pain. The duke would have staked his life that the boy was prepared to throw that life away, if only to land his blow on the monster — to a degree hard to believe of someone barely seventeen years old.
Which left only two possibilities. Either the old man had taken the boy's attack head-on and endured it—
'...or a third party had stepped in to save him.'
"M-My lord."
"Hm?"
While he sat deep in thought, two of the Hounds prostrated themselves before him. With a resounding crack, their foreheads struck the ground hard enough to drive in a stake.
"We beg your forgiveness.."
"..Hm?"
Blood streamed freely from their foreheads, yet from their mouths came not cries of pain, but apologies.
"And what, precisely, have you done wrong?"
"..As you commanded, we evacuated the people nearby and were making straight for this place, but.."
"But?"
"We were all taken down by a single girl who sprang out of nowhere."
A single girl. In all likelihood, she was the one who had intervened. And she must have flattened the boy and slipped away from this place at her leisure — for if she was on the old man's side, then the odds were high that she, too, was a monster.
"Hmm... And what did this girl look like, exactly?"
"Violet bobbed hair, my lord. A frame less than half the size of mine."
Which would put her at around 140 centimeters tall...
Frankly, the duke took their account with a generous pinch of salt. A girl of such slight build, single-handedly flattening his Hounds — Hounds who prided themselves on skills quite respectable even by the Empire's standards?
"..Hard to believe."
"Forgive us, my lord. Take these guilty lives as payment, gladly─"
"No, there is no need for anything of the sort."
The Hound's blade had been creeping toward his own throat — the price of falling short of their master's expectations — but the duke had no wish for it. If one assumed the girl was a monster, then their total defeat was hardly beyond understanding. Besides, he had lost nothing in this fight.
"..My lord?"
"Did I not rescue my daughter and her companions, every last one of them?"
"Yes... that is so, but."
That half-ruined mansion had belonged to the Reinhardt family in the first place, and his daughter and her group were safe and unharmed. Which meant that, at the very least, he had suffered no loss whatsoever. Had one of the Hounds died, that might have stung in its own way — but in the end, every one of them had walked away alive.
"Then all is well. Mansions are not my department."
"..Yes, my lord."
"We head back."
The duke rose from his spot, straightening his once-bowed spine with delicate care. Blood was still dripping from his chest, but he tore at the clothes he wore, pressed the cloth against the wound, bound it tight, and began to walk as though nothing in the world were the matter.
"Ah, that's right... I nearly forgot. You there."
"Yes, my lord."
"Did none of you happen to see a boy anywhere around here?"
"...?"
"He may well be collapsed somewhere... or else─"
"Do you mean this person, my lord?"
Out of the black cloak one of the Hounds had been carrying tumbled a black-haired boy. Completely unconscious.
"Oh, yes!! He certainly doesn't look... all right."
"He is a friend of the young lady's, so we administered emergency treatment as a precaution."
"Is that so? So my daughter was friends with this one?"
"..It is presumed so, my lord."
The Hound had spoken without much thought, reasoning only that if the boy weren't the young lady's friend, he would never have been tangled up in all of this —
"Ohh... so that's how it is."
— but seeing his master's face wear an expression unlike its usual, the Hound thought, if only for an instant, that he had misspoken. That is, until he understood that the look on the duke's face was one brimming over with interest.
"Is something the matter?"
"No, no... I was only thinking my daughter keeps rather interesting company."
"...?"
"For now, take that boy back to our estate and put him to bed."
"Yes, my lord."
"And the moment we return, we begin gathering intelligence on those creatures."
"Yes, my lord!!"
And so Jenison — who had thus been forcibly taken in and laid up under House Charlotte's roof — would not regain consciousness until a full day had passed since the incident.
"AAAAAAGH!!"
"..Who the hell shrieks like that in the dead of night..!!"
Accompanied, on both sides, by roars brimming over with fury.