Lupin Doesn't Understand a Woman's Heart
In the southwest of the continent, that long sideways sprawl of land, there existed a dead country that could not even be called a wasteland.
Needle-pointed hail fell there and turned the earth into a hedgehog. Bolts of fire howled down and reduced everything upon the ground to ash. Such was the nature of the land humans called an erosion zone.
And the ones who made that land were human.
Two great bruisers, contesting the hegemony of the continent, had slipped on Infinity Gauntlets packed with Grandmaster gems and gone around snapping their fingers. It was a catastrophe so complete that even the people who had been cheering those supreme forces on—drive the wicked North Country bastards off this land!—were forced into an immediate, total about-face.
The Grandmasters who caused it, meanwhile, still sat snug in the seats of the Rounds and the Seven Stars. Nukes could be regulated. Grandmasters could not. In the first place, there had been no one capable of killing them even if someone had tried to call them to account.
Even so, as if to prove they were more than mere nuclear weapons, the Rounds and the Seven Stars thereafter placed themselves under a voluntary penance. The ones left choking on it were the Imperial Alliance and the North Country. With their strongest assets bound, they needed new hands.
On the surface they looked like the Rounds proper and the Seven Stars proper. In truth they were cleanup crews, forever busy wiping the backsides of the walking disasters who only issued orders from on high. Thus were born the Sub-Rounds and the Seven Stars Corps.
"They're picking a fight with me right now, aren't they?"
Red and Blue were talent scouts belonging to the Seven Stars Corps. They exploited the fact that an adventurer's contract with the Association was free rather than exclusive, and they never stopped worming their way into adventurer parties active in the Imperial Alliance. Honey traps were only the beginning. Undercover employment, poaching through friendship, bribes paid in coin or in fame—they balked at none of it. The shape of the thing differed, but it was hardly different from modern companies stooping to every base trick to steal one another's talent.
"Of all the places to sit, they had to sit there..."
"Right? They're picking a fight, aren't they? Am I supposed to just take this?"
"First, calm down. If they're Sub-Rounds like you said, we have to be careful."
"Uggghhh... Do you have any idea how much work I put into this?!"
She had invested a full two years. And then Lupin had appeared out of nowhere and was acting thick as thieves with Yegor. It felt exactly like watching quarry she had already bagged slip the snare. Worse, because they had begun to suspect Lupin might be Sub-Rounds, Association Administrator Tasili had naturally landed on the list of suspects as well. It went without saying that the Sub-Rounds and the Seven Stars Corps did not get along.
"The Administrator. That old man is a stooge of the Alliance too, isn't he?"
"I can't say he isn't. The Association operates across the whole continent, but it's also an organization that moves for money..."
"That old man smelled something. That's why he sent Lupin."
If every man in the world were a beast, their work would have been far easier. Unfortunately, walk the martial path long enough and worldly passions and idle thoughts tend to fall away with it. Those who strayed onto the demonic side paths sometimes indulged their lust freely enough. Orthodox Aura Users who trained with any consistency rarely sank into women and pleasure and went soft.
An ideal type, though, was a thing that could sometimes bring even that warrior's spirit crashing down.
Blue's gaze drifted, ever so casually, toward her own chest and Red's.
"So. He was sure Yegor's type was Lupin, and that's why he sent her?"
"Must be. That old man looks like a goat, and there's no viper alive who schemes the way he does."
But Yegor treated Lupin easily because she was strong. There was no other reason. One only had to listen to the talk passing between Lupin and Yegor beside the campfire.
"You're insane. Ten younger siblings?"
"What our parents earned didn't even come close. So I became an adventurer. Becoming a knight of the Imperial Alliance was an option, but they said a posting to somewhere I actually wanted would be difficult."
A survival-type adventurer, through and through. To Lupin, who had felt a certain freedom in possessing not a single blood tie, hometown tie, or old-school tie, Yegor was a genuinely impressive guy. Like meeting in the flesh one of those civilian heroes you only ever saw on the internet.
"This bastard... Take away the one weird taste and he's a hell of a good guy."
"...Weird taste?"
"Ah, no, no. So. You making any money?"
"Well. I've cleared a fair number of requests, but I'm only in my second year. I can't just accept an expensive commission because it pays well. If I drop dead out of nowhere, my siblings are the ones who suffer."
Lupin made up her mind to give Yegor a few of the gold bars she had shaken out of Milwi. Vatslava would be sad about it, but unfortunately, the longer they talked, the more overwhelmingly his Good Person score climbed.
"You are qualified to receive gold bars."
"Gold bars?"
"When this job's done and we get back to the Association, I'll give you as many as you want. You have to receive this month's Upstanding Citizen Award!"
Yegor tilted his head, unable to follow the flow of the conversation.
An ordinary gold bar was a hundred gold. A hundred gold, in modern value, came to about a hundred million won—roughly a hundred thousand dollars. It was difficult to imagine anyone handing over that kind of money for nothing in return. And the bars Lupin carried were no ordinary ingots. They were a thousand gold each, ten times the usual size. A billion won a bar. Somewhere around a million dollars apiece.
Red and Blue didn't know that much. From the conversation, though, they had caught on that Lupin was making a play for Yegor.
"I think she really is Sub-Rounds. She's just going to give him gold bars!"
"Nngh..."
Even Blue was past convincing now. Red's eyes had rolled back in her head, true to the color of her hair.
"Still—wait. Just a second. We don't even know how strong she is. We can't just jump her out of nowhere."
"It's two on one. We're at an advantage no matter what."
Unless it was forcibly suppressed, a Master's pure, dense aura streamed outward in threads in every direction. An Aura User, therefore, inevitably sensed other Aura Users close by. From Lupin, the two of them felt nothing of the sort.
That, if anything, was suspicious.
"What if Lupin's actually a Swordmaster hiding her strength?"
"Come on. Sub-Rounds hiding their aura? For them that's considered cowardly."
In the Imperial Alliance, concealing one's aura was treated as a cowardly act. If you were carrying out a secret mission, though, there was no reason not to hide it thoroughly.
"Still, you never know. They came out here to subjugate someone on the level of the Maze Rat. You think they'd send a person who isn't even an Aura User?"
"...You've got a point."
"First we make her show her skill. And if we do deal with her, better to do it inside the labyrinth."
"...Tch. Fine."
And so Red and Blue's plan to eliminate Lupin was prepared. The person in question knew nothing of it, and was in the middle of a tug-of-war with Yegor.
"No—why won't you take it?!"
"A reward received without effort is empty. Give me some request to handle and pay me as compensation for that, and I'll take it."
"Oh, for— You just wait till this job's over. I'm dragging you there by force and stuffing gold bars in your pockets, so you know that now."
"Then I'll put them right back in yours."
"Sure. Then I'm giving them to your parents."
"......I should tell them to move house. Quickly."
Bubble, bubble. A pot boiled over the head of Red as she watched.
Blue, to whom the language of her feelings was painfully obvious, asked. No matter how you looked at it, this was not anger born of a job gone sideways.
"Hey, you... You really are mad because of the job, right?"
When a person feels a great rage, they often cannot hear the sounds around them. Red, her face flushed crimson, was exactly that. She only reacted the second time Blue called.
"Tamara?"
"What?! Why?"
Looking at a coworker on the verge of going berserk, Blue thought back over two years of adventuring. Yegor had been kind, and reliable, and he cooked. Vanguards were rare enough already, and on top of that he volunteered as porter, handled the cooking and every odd job without a word of complaint—and he was handsome besides. Sometimes, when she drew close to him in front of the fire, she couldn't tell whether it was the firewood burning or her heart. Even for Blue, to whom the mission came first, holding out had not been easy.
So when Red had declared, Let's use a honey trap!, and said she would make the aggressive move herself, Blue had felt a little relief. By shoving the opportunity onto her, she had been able to slip free of the powerful pull exerted by the man named Yegor.
"It's nothing. Just... calm down a little."
"Nngh..."
But looking at her now, the one who had carried out the honey trap was not Red.
"So. Let's go eat, first. If we stay away too long, they'll think it's strange."
Red had been well and truly caught in the honey trap.
The plan to get a look at Lupin's skill fell apart that very evening.
"What? The two of them are taking the vanguard together?!"
"Shh. Your voice is too loud."
"Ah. Ah... sorry."
Yegor had changed the party formation on a whim. By rights it should have been Yegor, then Lyudmila, then Tamara, then Lupin—Blue and Red tucked neatly into the line. Out of nowhere, Yegor and Lupin were walking abreast at the front.
The caves inside the labyrinth were narrow enough as it was. What, were the two of them planning to keep rubbing shoulders the whole way?!
Yegor, of course, only wanted to see the trap-nullification skill of the Lupin who had taken the vanguard.
"I do not accept this."
"Then is there a better formation?"
"A better formation... there is!!"
Red squeezed her eyes shut and drew a formation chart in her head. She had to watch Lupin. To do that, she had to stay close to Lupin. She needed a proper look at her skill if they were going to eliminate her inside the labyrinth...
"Like this!"
The order drawn anew in the dirt with a wooden stick? Lupin, Red, Lyudmila, Yegor.
Even Lupin, who didn't much care about this sort of thing, couldn't keep her thoughts to herself.
"This is no different from the original forma—"
"Y-you, be quiet!"
Red barked it. What is wrong with her. Lupin recoiled, openly revolted. Lupin did not understand a woman's heart very well, so she avoided her on the grounds that she was a nuisance.
"Your reason for insisting on the old formation?"
"M-my back feels empty."
Yegor accepted Red's formation, as if there were nothing else for it.
"Then we'll do as Tamara suggested."
"G-good. Yeah. This'll do!"
Lupin, however, did not like this arrangement at all. A trap had to be touched before it could be nullified, and there was no guarantee that could be done before the trap went off. On top of that, Lupin slipped past most traps without a thought, which could spell trouble for the party members coming along behind. She would dodge by habit, glance over her shoulder, and—ta-da—two hotteok, smashed flat.
Red and Blue dying was no great matter. Lupin simply didn't want to hear that someone had died because of her. Her master's honor was on the line with this temporary companionship!
"I really think the formation Yegor suggested is bet—"
Killing intent closed in.
Only then sensing she was about to be stuffed into a mimic, Lupin shut her mouth and retreated ten steps. Red was glaring hard enough to burst a blood vessel, and she looked exactly like that doll with a mop handle for a head from a horror special Lupin had caught by accident—the one that came chasing with a knife.
A very small mutter escaped Lupin's mouth. Fluster, disbelief, that sort of thing, all mixed into a perfectly natural reaction.
"Why is she that mad. Is it that day."
Even while she bled every month, Lupin did not understand a woman's heart.
