Phantom Thief? Detective! (4)
A half-elf with a gaping hole in his shoulder screamed bloody murder as blood poured down his body. “Grrrrrr……! You damn hybrid mole bitch!!” Mole? Was that some kind of slur for dwarves? What a colorful insult.
“……You’re one to talk, being a half-elf yourself.” The younger sister phantom thief only stated the facts, but the little elf didn’t even pretend to listen. People who obsess over bloodlines and race usually do so because they’re insecure failures who never amounted to anything. There’s no room for logical reasoning once an emotional pissing contest begins.
“I’ll drown you in the most painful way possible!” He swung his staff, and another water dragon materialized, lunging at Franc. The creature’s scales, which had been glittering under the sunlight, darkened as it entered the shaded hideout. Stripped of its light source, the now pitch-black water dragon somehow gained a strange sense of menace.
I leaped using pure leg strength and thrust my palm forward.
The cold qi spread through the water dragon’s body, freezing it solid from head to tail.
Ding! A masterpiece ice dragon sculpture!
“Kuh! An ice mage?!” The elf desperately tried to regain control of the water dragon—now an ice dragon. His face turned beet red as he struggled to shake off the heavy mana I had embedded inside it. I simply smirked at his pathetic state.
You really think you have the luxury of fighting me in a mana contest right now?
“──Khuk?!”
By the time the elf noticed my silent mockery and snapped back to his senses, my core knife was already buried across the entire body of the water dragon he was riding. Franc began chanting.
"Rise as a god."
⟨ Dd.f xa m nTr ⟩
The evenly spaced knives embedded in the dragon swelled like they were taxidermying a serpent. A golem’s head formed as earth materialized inside the water dragon.
“GO! go! Go! gO!”
Boom─! The water dragon couldn’t withstand the pressure and exploded. The sight of the golem’s round head popping out amid a spray of clear water was strangely comical, but the little elf who had lost his footing in midair must have felt his heart drop into his stomach.
“You son of a bitch!!”
The elf finally spat out a thick stream of curses. He created another water dragon to carry him and charged straight at us. A bold move for a mage. Or maybe this bastard was just that confident in his skills? They say the distinction between mage and warrior disappears once you reach mastery.
But you’re not the only one confident in close quarters.
I released Odin’s Eye before the side effects could dull my mind and grabbed the ice dragon. I had roughly figured out how it moved. The principle wasn’t all that different from the Blood Demon Arts. If anything, this was basically the ice version of a Kaiser Phoenix.
“Grant life to the sculpture!!”
Shwaaaaaah─!! I manipulated the mana of Beast Regression that was roaring like a dragon from within. The frozen dragon lifted its head, scattering frost everywhere.
The jaws of the ice dragon and water dragon collided in a dragon deep kiss. Living in this other world sure lets you witness all kinds of ridiculous sights.
I clicked my tongue and added spin to the ice dragon. Like an alligator’s death roll, it spun 720 degrees while the water dragon twisted to match! Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh─!!
Of course, the elf who wasn’t one of the chosen ones couldn’t stay mounted on a spinning Digimon. He clicked his tongue just like I had and jumped off the water dragon’s back.
“You bastard! You think you can win once I get back on the ground? How shallow of a thought is that──”
I cut him off and pointed at the sky. The little half-elf paused for a moment, then let out a sneer.
“Stupid human. You think I’d fall for such a cheap─?!”
Thud!!
From above, Franc swung a hammer fitted with the golem’s head and smashed it straight into the elf’s skull like she was driving in a nail. The shockwave kicked up dust as his body sank into the ground up to his knees.
“You should’ve been careful when I told you to be careful.”
“Khuk……” He let out a weak groan and passed out.
Clap clap clap! I applauded and whistled.
“Wow. He didn’t die even after taking that? That’s insane.”
Maybe Franc’s craftsmanship also affected her ability to control power? Franc brushed the dirt off her hammer and smiled gently.
“Once you get hit by the knife, you get a feel for how sturdy they are.”
“True, you have to bite the gold to know its worth. Our Franc is amazing.”
We tied up the unconscious bastard with rope and sprayed him with a heavy dose of sleeping gas. Even with a blade at his throat he wouldn’t wake up, so he was definitely out cold. We could interrogate him later.
As I worked, I spoke to the presence behind me.
“Stop right there.”
“Hik.”
The younger sister phantom thief, who had been trying to carry her older sister and bolt, shrank back.
“Where do you think you’re going? If you run, you get ten smacks per step.”
“R-run? What are you talking about! I was simply taking my sister away so we wouldn’t interfere with your fight!”
Tap! She quickly returned, set her sister down, and knelt. I liked how fast she could read the room.
“Wake your sister up.”
“Yes ma’am!! Sister, wake up! Our lives are screwed!!”
Slap slap! The younger sister smacked her older sister’s cheeks with crisp, loud strikes.
“Mmm……?”
While I watched the older phantom thief wake up, Franc picked up a half-finished magic item from the wreckage of the table destroyed by the water dragon’s emergence and examined it.
“Nord. What do you think this is?”
“Looks like a tool they use when doing their phantom thief work. Where the hell do they even sell something like this?”
“Maybe homemade? Looking at the carving habits, both pieces were definitely made by the same person. The finishing is a bit sloppy though. Probably an amateur.”
The older phantom thief’s face briefly showed displeasure at the evaluation she heard right after waking up. I turned to her.
“Did you make this?”
“Ah, yes!”
This one had snapped to attention too. Good.
I picked up a fragment of the magic item I had destroyed earlier. It was enchanted with Silence, but hidden within some of its components was a tracking spell. That was how the twins’ location had been exposed. That half-elf brat must have realized they were leaving the city and chased them all the way here.
Fuck, these bastards really don’t miss a thing, do they?
“It doesn’t seem to meet my wife’s standards, but the craftsmanship isn’t bad. Still, why make it yourself instead of buying ready-made? Some phantom thief pride?”
“W-well… we figured the people trying to catch us would be staking out the shops.”
“Hm. Would buying parts be any different? If it were me, I would’ve hung your wanted posters in every back-alley shop in the underworld.”
I said it without much thought, but the twins were watching my reaction carefully.
Oh?
That look strongly stimulated my intuition. I smiled wickedly.
“Heh heh. So you bought some of the parts using your real identities?”
“T-that’s……”
They trailed off, but their silence was answer enough.
“Since going as ‘phantom thieves’ to buy would risk falling into a trap, you bought them from legitimate shops using your real identities. Right?”
“……Yes.”
I had caught an unexpected weakness. Even if we let them go, we now had evidence to claim that they were the phantom thieves. I clicked my tongue at the thought.
“But that creates another problem. That long-eared bastard didn’t seem to know you two were phantom thieves… which means he was tracking your ‘above-ground identities,’ doesn’t it? What exactly did you do with your real identities?”
Even when I asked, the twins hesitated to answer. So I hesitated too.
……Should I just close my eyes, hit them with cardiac arrest, then revive them for questioning?
Beat them first, then interrogate their souls. A legendary interrogation technique that would make even the FBI sob and beg me for tips.
But these girls aren’t exactly the world’s worst bitches who deserve that level of ruthlessness.
Their goal and way of speaking might be impure, but they were basically this world’s proletarians—stealing only from the wicked and redistributing wealth. They hadn’t harmed us, so it felt wrong to get angry on my own and smash their heads in the name of justice. Besides, Odin’s advice to control my anger still lingered. It wasn’t good to surrender to the libido of rage like I used to.
I let out a sigh. This is why civilized people have it hard. I miss the days when I could just flip out and beat everyone up.
Of course, if I had actually done that, I would’ve beaten up that merchant who was leering at Dana and gotten kicked out of the caravan. Then I wouldn’t even be here.
Most men do mellow out a bit once they get married and have a family……
Anyway, regular interrogation seemed like something I should abandon. Just as I was trying to come up with an interrogation method that would even impress my mother-in-law─
Flap flap!
Out of nowhere, an eagle descended from the ceiling. It must have been trained as a messenger bird; it landed expertly, then made a dumb face when it realized the nest it was supposed to return to was buried under bedrock.
At its appearance, all color drained from the phantom thief sisters’ faces.
“……Shoo, shoo!! Shoooo!!”
The older sister waved her hands, making shooing noises. What the hell? Was she imitating an orc?
Ah, she’s telling it to get lost before it gets caught.
Then I can’t let that happen. I took out some jerky and said,
“Here, here, here. Piiiep kiiiep (want some)?”
I deliberately made it sound like meaningless animal babble. But the eagle, which naturally understood its own kind’s speech, was lured by the jerky and perched on my arm.
“Kiaaaaaak─!! (Meat─!!)”
I let it bite the jerky, then pulled the letter from its back. It must have been well-trained; it flapped its wings when I touched the bag I had put the letter in, but calmed down once I released a little killing intent.
Punk. Acting tough when you’re just a flying mailbox.
Flip. I opened the letter stamped with a plain seal and read it. The fact that it had come here meant it was addressed to these phantom thief sisters. The important part was whether it was sent to them as phantom thieves or not.
Thinking I could get information without interrogation, I read the letter with a grin, but my face hardened from the very first paragraph.
“……What the fuck?”
I stopped reading and looked at the phantom thief sisters, who had gone deathly pale. No matter how I looked at it, the letter said what it said.
I blew out a breath like I was exhaling cigarette smoke and asked them.
“……Your names were Gwen and Stacy, right?”
“Y-yes!”
I know those are obviously fake names, so stop answering so stiffly, damn it.
“Read it.”
Whoosh─. I tossed the letter I had finished reading. Gwen hesitantly picked it up and read the contents. The request letter, written in neat Romanian, said this:
To the honorable Audrey Heswald of the problem solver office ‘Tick Tock’.
I am Maria von Hennessis, a noble of Britannia.
— Maria von Hennessis
Even though the target was a citizen of another country, it was extremely polite for a noble. And the handwriting looked very familiar.
“……A B-Britannia noble?”
“She’s our client. The world really is small, huh?”
I exhaled a white breath into the winter air that had grown even colder from the aftermath of the ice dragon. It seemed the “local collaborator” our employer had chosen was none other than these two.