Complex Collision (4)
The special prison located in the imperial capital was a place that received extremely polarized evaluations from those connected to it. To people chasing glamorous achievements and rapid promotion, it was quite literally a prison in every sense of the word—a dead-end post so stifling that one could grow confused about whether they were guarding the prisoners or being guarded alongside them.
It couldn’t be helped. After all, a prison exists to confine people, yet the current Barhart Empire had almost no occasion to actually use one. Whatever the situation looked like to the citizens of the vassal states, to the empire’s own people the previous emperor was a war hero who had raised Barhart—from a mere kingdom—to the undisputed strongest power on the continent, a wise ruler who had practiced benevolent governance.
For a commoner to be dragged into the special prison, they would have to be a dangerous demagogue spreading subversive ideas, an assassin targeting imperial family members or high officials, or an anti-imperial activist. Yet such individuals had almost no room to operate; the people’s support for the imperial family was simply too overwhelming.
And what of the nobles? The story was much the same. At the founding of the kingdom, the royal family had simply been the strongest faction among the nobles, elevated to the role of leader. Each noble house maintained its own massive private army, and lords could rule their domains like kings, independent of the kingdom’s framework. While they needed to show the king they had chosen a certain level of respect, if nobles with twisted ambitions joined hands against the royal house, even the king could not treat them lightly.
Negotiation, appeasement, threats, alliances, betrayal—the battles between king and nobles were waged not with spears and swords but through shadowy schemes. In those days this very prison had housed a great number of inmates, each occupying a cell and counting the stains on the ceiling.
But that was ancient history now.
Emperor Ludwig had championed thorough meritocracy and performance-based advancement. So long as one possessed outstanding ability, he paid no heed to low peerage, humble birth, or social status—he promoted them all the same. The nobles who held military power naturally rebelled, but this was the era of the War of Supremacy, when the four kingdoms fought fiercely for dominance over the continent. The boy king’s authority as an undefeated god of war had pierced the heavens. Those who opposed him had their fangs and claws ripped out before being forced to bow, or else they simply lost their heads.
Complete dissolution of private armies never occurred—there were practical limits to the central government’s ability to directly manage every disturbance across the territories—but the forces that had once been capable of turning their blades against the royal family were drastically reduced, weakened until they could do nothing more than administer their own lands. The newly empowered rising factions were mostly Ludwig’s followers, so rebellion was unthinkable, and even if they dreamed of it, they could never have succeeded. The very power they held would vanish the instant Ludwig looked away. What could they possibly do?
In the present day, with the imperial family’s authority soaring to the skies and the nobles’ status greatly diminished, even if their children faced life-threatening danger or were worked like mercenaries simply because the imperial house permitted it, they could not properly voice a single complaint. Any grand intrigue capable of shaking the entire empire had become an exceedingly distant prospect. Thus the special prison had become a quiet place with nothing to boast of except its long history and solid construction.
“Damn it, and I liked it that way.”
Yet what is the worst flaw to one person can be an advantage to another. To Pan Lien, a guard at the special prison, that very quietness was the ideal working condition.
It made sense: no prisoners meant no work for the guards. Aside from minor chores, the job consisted of standing at one’s assigned spot for the designated time and handing off to the next shift. His peers shuddered at the thought of being stuck in such a place, claiming they would never reach a high position in their lives, but for Pan—who lacked great ambition and possessed a laid-back personality—this was true paradise.
The work wasn’t hard, he rarely had to deal with nagging superiors, and since the post was officially part of the imperial central army, the pay was more generous than that of most territorial knights. They even provided separate training hours during duty on the grounds that standing around all day would dull one’s skills. On top of that, while his other central army colleagues faced budget cuts and personnel reductions, he enjoyed complete immunity simply because he had taken a job everyone else avoided. Wasn’t this exactly what a hidden honey pot looked like?
Or so it had been.
“Geez, you must be suffering every day in a place where sunlight doesn’t even reach. The damn things on this side refuse to come out even when told to go for a walk outside.”
“It’s fine, sir!”
At the words of the old man wearing an antique robe—the very picture of a classic mage from storybooks—Pan answered while standing at perfect attention. Calling the empire’s elite court mages “damn things” was extreme profanity, yet the old man before him was someone for whom such language posed no problem whatsoever.
After all, he was the head of those very court mages.
Normally, when a person of such stature remembered your face and even offered kind words, one might hope for some small benefit. But for Pan, whose only dream was a peaceful life with a decent salary, attention from someone perched near the peak of the mountain was merely burdensome. If this had been a chance meeting elsewhere he might have avoided it, but lately the old man had been visiting his workplace every single day. It was enough to drive a man insane.
Yes. It had all begun with a certain prisoner incarcerated here not long ago.
When he first saw her, he had simply found it puzzling. He had heard that a comrade of the terrorists responsible for enormous casualties had been captured, so he expected some vicious character—yet no matter how he looked at her, she was nothing more than a small young girl.
Of course, working in this field quickly taught one that appearance and danger level did not necessarily correlate. Still, there had to be limits. For a brief time he had been able to relax, imagining various scenarios: perhaps she had been framed for political reasons, or maybe she had been educated in a dangerous place and used as a tool.
That ease lasted only a moment. It began when his superior—who normally was rarely seen—gathered the staff and delivered a stern lecture that they must not make a single mistake or show any opening. From then on the once-peaceful prison had been placed on full emergency alert.
Military executives, groups that clearly did not belong under the bright sun, and high-ranking figures such as the chief court mage came and went at all hours. Pan and the rest of the staff remained in a state of constant high tension. Sympathy and curiosity had long since flown out the window; now they simply wished these people would disappear as quickly as possible.
After the chief mage departed, a colleague who had been standing ramrod straight like Pan let out a long sigh.
“Haa, I’m really going to die from exhaustion. At this rate we’ll collapse under the director’s pressure before the case is even solved. The man’s eyes have been gleaming with killing intent lately.”
“If anything happens to that prisoner it’ll be entirely his responsibility. If an escape occurred he’d have to hang himself.”
“With security forces spread thick outside, how could anyone possibly get in here?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
The prison’s security posture, reinforced several times over, was akin to an impenetrable fortress. Pan and his colleague had passed the central army’s entry test, yet the personnel guarding the exterior were on an entirely different level. No matter how bold the culprits who had struck at the heart of the Mars Duchy, pulling any tricks in the heart of the capital should have been impossible.
—Step.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, both Pan and his colleague instantly clamped their mouths shut. Their bodies snapped to attention as though their uniforms had been freshly pressed. The two exchanged rapid glances.
‘Shift change?’
‘It’s not time yet.’
When they looked toward the source of the sound with anxious expressions, relief and wariness flashed across their faces at the same time. Relief at recognizing the face—followed immediately by wariness because the person was none other than the prison director, the last man they wanted to see these days.
Given the harsh atmosphere lately they had kept their chatter to a minimum, so it probably hadn’t been heard… but who could say for sure? He might find some strange fault again. The saving grace was that the director appeared to be in a fairly good mood and that he had brought one companion along. Had he come alone it might have been different, but with witnesses present he was unlikely to openly berate his subordinates.
The companion wore a rather peculiar mask, an object difficult to evaluate. It looked as if a child had scribbled freely with paint on a white cloth, then twisted the cloth halfway; viewing it from above might produce such an effect. The shape was distorted, the colors bizarrely complex, and the only indication that it was a mask were the two holes left for the eyes. If someone asked later, “So what exactly did the mask look like?” the only possible answer would be, “It was just… messy.”
The person wearing it gave off a similar impression. Loose-fitting clothes. A physique that could belong to either a man or a woman. Such an ambiguous impression should have felt unpleasant, yet it did not. If anything, it inspired a strange sense of familiarity—the same feeling one had as a child when approaching an unknown object out of pure curiosity.
“The keys to the special cell?”
“Here they are.”
The director took the keys Pan and his colleague handed over and, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, proceeded inside and began opening the door to the room where the prisoner was held. One lock with Pan’s key. One with his colleague’s. One with the control-room key. The triple-lock system prepared for any contingency was released one by one.
Even as they watched the director’s companion enter, release the prisoner’s restraints, and lead her out, neither Pan nor his colleague sensed anything strange.
─Beeeeeeeeeep!
If not for the sudden sharp alarm and the high-tier mental protection spell that wrapped the entire prison, they would have simply stood there blankly and watched the prisoner leave with the intruders.
“Huh?”
Like someone jolted awake from a doze, Pan blankly looked around for a moment. Then an ice pick seemed to stab down his spine and goosebumps erupted across his skin.
What the hell did I just do?
No matter that the other party was their superior and the administrator of this special prison, his actions had clearly crossed every line. Suddenly bringing an outsider inside without even explaining their identity was bad enough, but actually releasing a confined prisoner? And while such an absurd act was taking place, why had he simply watched in a daze?
“Hey! Snap out of it!”
Shiiing!
As he shouted and drew his blade, his colleague also seemed to regain his senses. The man jumped in surprise and hurriedly pulled out his own weapon.
“Eh? Eh?”
His voice still sounded somewhat dazed, as if he hadn’t fully grasped the situation, but the training they received daily was not in vain—his movements were swift. While his colleague stepped forward to shield him, Pan seized one of the chains hanging on the wall and yanked it with all his strength. A loud bell rang out, distinct from the earlier alarm, and the entire prison began to stir.
“You bastards! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
At the director’s shout—his face flushed with both embarrassment and rage—Pan and his colleague offered no reply. Under normal circumstances they would never have dared, but according to the prison’s special regulations, the director was now to be treated as an ‘enemy.’
Meanwhile, unlike the director, the unidentified masked figure showed no sign of panic.
“A wide-area spell that activates if conditions are met even without a caster… and it’s high-tier at that. As expected of the empire—it seems a truly capable individual prepared this. Hmm.”
Gently cradling the unconscious prisoner in both arms, the masked person began walking toward the entrance—directly toward Pan and his colleague—without the slightest concern.
Standing before the unprecedented trouble that had invaded his once peaceful workplace, cold sweat trickled down Pan’s cheek.