Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians (5)
At the same hour, the Immigration Office.
"You have maintained a consistent account throughout, and the information you provided corroborates it. Your identity stands confirmed."
I said this calmly to the last traveler of the day, seated across the desk from me.
The traveler's face brightened at once.
"Really?"
"Yes. Only the final step remains."
However the world turned, however the Intelligence Department's operation was unfolding out there, an immigration officer had to do his job all the same. Namely: receiving entrants.
Because that is my duty.
Which was why, even with Erzena off at the Count's castle with the Intelligence agents, I showed not the slightest waver. I trusted without a shadow of doubt that she would handle it.
Who was Erzena, after all? A Saintess who had once performed before audiences of thousands, was she not?
I'm worrying over nothing.
If I simply carried on with inspections as usual, as though nothing were amiss, she would naturally come home before long. That was what I believed, firmly — and four hours had already passed since I sat down to work on that conviction.
Everything had gone smoothly.
There was only one thing different from usual—
- Drrrrr.
Call it my leg, trembling wildly of its own accord. I tried pressing it still with a hand, but even the hand shook.
I spoke as if nothing were wrong, as much as I could manage.
"Therefore, this officer judges that no grounds for restriction whatsoever apply to your entry, and guarantees it accordingly."
- Drrrrr.
The merciless tremor set even the documents and quills on the desk dancing.
"Um... are you all right?"
"Pardon?"
"It's, ah... you seem terribly tense..."
Even the traveler was asking after me, voice thick with concern.
"This officer is perfectly fine. Ha-ha."
A lie. I was anxious — genuinely, desperately anxious, worried to the point of madness. My eyes stayed fixed on the traveler before me, but my mind was miles away, out the window and off toward the Count's castle.
Erzena...
It should have been me going instead. Far from protecting her — the woman granted Temporary Asylum under my own custody — I had handed her the single most dangerous part of the operation.
But Melanie's words had left me no choice.
"Whatever happens, honey, you are not to step out front. Those people must never find out you're tied to this operation."
She had barred me from appearing in person to the point of outright obstinacy. I understood why. If Black Hand learned that I had planned the whole thing, the situation would turn filthy-complicated in a heartbeat — and it would not be only me endangered, either.
Which had left Erzena as the only person for the job.
At the very least, I should have sent the Smell Officer along with her.
A woman who had subdued Black Hand's vice-master would at least have served as a minimal safeguard. Why on earth hadn't I thought of that?
How are things unfolding over there right now?
Every thought tangled itself around the worry. I sat frozen like that for a long while, until my personal attendant nudged me quietly from behind.
"Um... Central Officer, sir? You need to stamp."
Only then did I realize I had left the final stage of the entry process hanging.
Right. Finish this first.
I hurriedly wrenched up the corners of my mouth and said, kindly:
"Welcome to the Crossline Kingdom."
I stamped.
- BAM.
Red characters bloomed sharp and clear across the document.
...Red characters?
Hold on — no. I lowered my eyes.
There it was, printed for all the world to see:
"Ah."
I've actually lost my mind.
"I-I'll take care of that for you right away."
To think I'd stumble into the one mistake I never made. At lightning speed I rewrote the paperwork, stamped the entry approval, and bowed my head in apology all over again.
"...Welcome to the Crossline Kingdom."
Only then did the last traveler rise and leave, wearing the look of a man who had now witnessed every species of strange there was to see.
My attendant announced the end of the workday in my place.
"That concludes today's entry processing. Thank you all for your hard work."
At that, the office staff finally stretched and rose from their seats one by one. Only I stayed where I was, wearing the face of a man at a funeral.
"Haaah..."
The moment I heaved out that leaden sigh, the Five Senses Officers came over.
"She'll be fine. The Intelligence agents went along with her, after all."
"She used to be the Saintess. Whoever shows up, she'll handle them."
Funny how you all have more faith in her than I do.
"That may be so, but—"
And then it came.
- Creeeak.
The sound of the door opening — and with it, a warm presence washed over the room.
"I-I'm back..."
Erzena walked in flanked by two Intelligence agents, a faint weariness on her face.
"Oh, you're back!"
"How did it go?"
"Central Officer, Miss Erzena is here!"
The Five Senses Officers welcomed her warmly on the spot. And I—
- CRASH!
I vaulted the desk in a single bound, sprinted to her, and shouted:
"Are you unharmed?! Are you hurt anywhere?!"
Without waiting for an answer I snatched up her hands.
"Wh-wha—? C-Central Officer...?"
Erzena's startled face flooded red in an instant, her eyes going wide. Good — no wounds on her hands. I gripped her shoulders, stared straight into her eyes, and asked once more:
"Tell me those bastards didn't lay so much as a finger on you?!"
"N-Nathan! If you do this here, people will see!"
At her flustered cry, the staff who had been drifting toward us froze mid-step.
"...Nathan?"
"Did the Central Officer just get called by his first name...?"
"Am I hearing things?"
She snapped back to her senses and hastily clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Oops! N-no, that's not it... Central Officer Nathan Kell... is what I meant..."
No one looked the least bit convinced.
"..."
Every gaze swung toward the Hearing Officer. The elf among us with the keenest ears pointed at her own and said:
"I heard it, plain as day. 'Nathan.'"
The Five Senses Officers and the attendant all narrowed their eyes at the two of us in perfect unison.
"Hmmmmm~."
Suspicious, nasal hums rolled in from every direction. The Smell Officer and the Taste Officer, above all, were wearing smiles of positively indecent glee.
"This would be conclusive evidence, would it not, Taste Officer?"
"Yeees. All we ever had was a hunch — but now, at long last, sworn testimony."
Those bastards are making their freaky little faces again.
Only after confirming that she was safe and sound, without a single hair harmed, did I address them.
"It's a misunderstanding. Miss Erzena and I agreed to speak casually in private."
"You told us never to call you by name, though."
"Because this officer is your superior. Erzena is a protected charge, not staff."
Just try calling me by name at the office — I could picture the chain of command detonating before my eyes. And addressing each other by job title at home would be absurd in its own right.
"...That is technically correct, yes."
Confronted with logic, they withdrew their suspicious looks one by one. The Touch Officer, the only one of them indifferent to such gossip, stepped up to Erzena and asked:
"So. How did it go?"
The answer came from the agent who had followed her in.
"The operation was a success. Though it diverged somewhat from the plan."
"Diverged how?"
"You would have had to see it yourself, sir."
Honest awe was written across the agent's face. A brief account followed, laying out everything Erzena had done in the underground dungeon — and with every sentence, astonishment deepened on the faces of the Five Senses and me. By the final part, where she had invoked the Raven Harpy as an ill omen and made her proposal, even the Touch Officer's composure cracked.
"Good heavens, Erzena. You picked a verbal fight with the head of an assassin guild?"
"Well... ahaha, I was, just a little angry..."
Erzena shrugged, sheepish.
"Now that is spirit for you. Ramming headfirst into a Raven Harpy."
the Smell Officer muttered, sounding half in admiration.
The agent took up the thread again.
"Now that the Master has personally accepted Erzena's request, the collision between Black Hand and the Evil God Cult is confirmed."
He declared:
"The operation is a success."
Operation successful.
At those few words, everyone present let out a breath of relief. At the very least, the first hurdle had been cleared without incident.
"We'll be returning now. We're due to report to the Director."
"Thank you for your efforts. Oh — before you go, please take this with you."
I handed them Melanie's cipher book and the decoded translation.
"...We spent a full year on this and never cracked it."
Fair enough. Written in the tongue of an extinct race, it would have been near impossible to decipher.
"I've translated it all into the common tongue, so you should have no further trouble."
"Central Officer."
The two agents looked at me with unconcealed respect.
"We hope to count on you as a partner agency again in the future."
"Of course."
I shook his hand.
"Ah, and do pass along my thanks to the Director for her cooperation."
Melanie deserved the lion's share of the credit for this one. Without her, the whole affair would surely have proceeded by far more dangerous means. I wanted my gratitude delivered, whatever it took.
The agent tilted his head.
"Well... our Director rather prefers it when you contact her yourself, sir?"
"Pardon?"
What is that supposed to mean?
"Oh, you don't know? On the days she contacts you, the Director stares into her crystal ball all da—"
His colleague clamped a hand over his mouth at speed.
"Hey, hey, hey. That's classified."
he added, with a strained smile.
"In any case — just give the Director a call sometime. That's all we ask. She's... been having a rough time of it lately."
That last part knocked the surprise straight onto my face.
Melanie? Having a rough time?
I'd seen her bored plenty of times, and seen her having the time of her life, but never once burdened.
"Has something happened to Melanie?"
The good humor drained out of the agent's face, and in its place settled something grave.
"...A Dragonewt has been coming and going at the Intelligence Department."
Dragonewt.
The moment the race's name landed, two names lined themselves up in my head. Dhin Askyrin, and Incansus Vermotem.
Not Officer Dhin Askyrin. She holds the Northern Border — she has no leisure to visit the Intelligence Department. And by rank, Melanie stood above her anyway; Dhin would hardly be the type to cow her.
Which meant the visitor outranked the Director herself. Among all the Dragonewts I knew, exactly one could put that kind of pressure on the head of Intelligence.
Incansus Vermotem.
The King's Proxy.
"..."
I did not say the name aloud. Why would the King's Proxy be visiting the Intelligence Department? And why would an agent go out of his way to tell me so? This was no simple courtesy — of that much I was certain. I nodded, slowly.
"...Understood. I will bear it in mind."
"Then, good day to you. What was the phrase again — no exceptions at the border."
The agents exchanged farewells in the greeting used only within the Immigration Office, and then they were gone. What remained behind were the Five Senses Officers, myself, and the Saintess.
"So... what happens now?"
the Taste Officer asked, an edge of nerves in her voice.
"What happens is that it's out of our hands now. It's left them entirely. Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians, working exactly as advertised."
The werewolf dropped into a chair with a thump.
"All that's left for us is to watch the fire from across the river. Let the two of them beat each other black and blue."
He smacked his lips like a man savoring the thought.
"A full-scale war between an assassin guild and the Evil God Cult. Villains against villains. Honestly — who could've dreamed up this ending?"
Hearing that, Erzena sank into a long silence of thought, then murmured, quietly:
"Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians... answering evil with evil... unimaginable..."
Her brow drew tight. Amid the officers' noisy back-and-forth, she suddenly went rigid — as if something had just fallen into place.
"Don't tell me... is that why that person stopped the Holy Crusade...?"
Divine power shimmered faintly around her.
Only the Hearing Officer and I caught the words.
Deep in the night — an abandoned village somewhere in the north of the continent.
"Hahh... hahh...!"
A man ran with a torch in his fist, something on his heels.
"Damn it — damn it!"
Breath crowding up his throat. His eyes wheeled wildly in every direction while his legs drove him onward with the last strength left in his body. Each swing of his arm sent the torch dancing like something gone mad.
- Fwoosh, fwoosh.
Beyond the swaying light, dozens of crows sat on branches and broken walls, silently watching him pass beneath.
I never even felt a human presence. They just—died!
Kol Mannov.
A mid-tier agent of the Evil God Cult, he had been given exactly one task in this abandoned village: to rupture the flow of mana and poison the land. The cult's power repelled mana and divine power alike, and soil consumed by that energy became the most hospitable ground imaginable for their work. A wasteland no one ever visited made an ideal second forward base — so he had come here with two comrades to prepare an unholy ritual.
But in the moment his attention strayed—
- Thwip!
—a short, wet pop, and both comrades were simply gone. All that remained of them were shriveled stains of blood.
He understood at once: someone was hunting them. And that someone had now set their sights on Kol himself.
"Fuck — who the hell even are you?!"
The answer came from directly in front of him.
- WHUMP!
Something vast and birdlike dropped out of the sky and landed a hand's breadth from Kol's nose.
"..."
A silhouette shrouded head to foot in jet-black wings. Enormous talons flashed in the torchlight.
"Bastard—!"
Kol frantically crushed the blood-filled vial from inside his coat and shouted:
"Zirua Venatria!"
At once the thick blood rose and took the shape of a spear, then hurtled at the monster with murderous speed.
- Ssshhreee!!
The Evil God Cult's power was wrought from blood and sacrifice. It used no mana — instead it drew upon an energy far crueler and more twisted, and the magic it produced was many times stronger than any common spell.
But—
- KRRANG! ...fsss.
The blood spear broke apart, limp and effortless, against a wing flicked out with idle contempt — crumbling into a brief mist of red and nothing more.
"Wh-what in the...?"
Blood magic that could tear steel apart. And it had been stopped?
In that instant a single thought tore through Kol's mind. Materials that nullified magic were exceedingly few: mithril, the pearls of the deep sea, dragon scale. And...
The feathers and talons of a Raven Harpy.
But unlike those rarities, treasured as they were, there was a reason the Raven Harpy was called an ill omen. Where those treasures merely negated magic, the omen's talons and feathers shattered every form of energy there was. Mana, the strength of the earth, blood magic, dark energy — even divine power itself. They had been born carrying a power that spurned every law of the world.
That was why the Raven Harpy had always been treated as a thing of ill fortune: a monster that had no right to exist, and a species hunted down through history all the same, prized as priceless research material.
And Kol knew of only one Raven Harpy.
"D-don't tell me — the Black Han—"
The words never finished.
- Thwip!
Talons shot out in an instant and pinned his whole body to the earth.
"Gkk... hrrgh...!"
Kol lay crushed against the ground, dragging in ragged breaths. The pain, oddly, was not severe — thanks to the defensive ward and pain-suppression spell the cult's Saintess had etched into his flesh. All he felt was a heavy, crushing weight.
A counterattack...
His hand crept slowly back into his coat, groping for another vial. At a range this close, even if she blocked with those wings, the spray was bound to find its mark.
But he had forgotten one thing.
The wings were not the only part of her that nullified magic.
The Raven Harpy bore down with her talons.
- Krrk-kkkk...
In the same breath, the ward and the pain-suppression spell written into his body began to warp into grotesque shapes.
"I will ask you once."
With that sunken, cold voice, talons keen as knife blades sank through his skin and slowly began to close.
"AAAAGH!!! GGRRRAAAH!!!"
He screamed at the violent pain — the first he had felt in a very long time. Feeling her talons at last rend through muscle and touch bone, Eliza asked:
"Where is Hatensilla?"
The instant the Saintess's name reached his ears, Kol understood two things. That Hatensilla's operation had failed. And that a power as threatening to them as the Holy Church itself had just become their enemy.
The ill omen said:
"Where are the ones who killed my brother?"
And Kol saw it — Black Hand's Master, Eliza Corvus, and behind her, dozens of Black Hand operatives walking out of the dark.
The night of vengeance had only just begun.