Parasite (3)
The short break was over.
The Northerners, including Princess Daina, had finished their preparations to crush the Monster Wave. Dante had also gathered plenty of data by experimenting on and studying Akchichi's Bug. When the day of departure dawned, the knights formed ranks and waited for the order to march.
“Take care of yourself, Lord Dante.”
Before leaving, Princess Daina called Dante aside and handed him a handkerchief. It was a Northern tradition, she said.
“They say if you carry this, you’ll be able to return home later.”
“Then I’ll have to make sure I don’t lose it.”
“Let’s meet again here, later.”
Daina left the castle with the knight order. Even though she was surrounded by armored knights, her presence didn’t feel out of place at all. After all, she was the Grand Duke’s daughter who had roamed the North with knights since she was a child.
I should get going too.
Dante also left the castle. To put an end to Elder Lacravan.
Before setting out, Dante sent the servants back home.
“Libera.”
“Lord Dante…!”
“You’ve worked hard all this time. Thank you for teaching me so many things I didn’t know and for being my travel guide.”
Libera sniffled, tears welling up. In what felt both short and long, she had already grown attached.
“If I hadn’t met you on the train…! I would have ended up in a far more miserable state than I am now…!”
Libera bowed deeply several times.
“Thank you so much for helping me…! I will never forget this kindness for the rest of my life!”
“Good. Take care of Charlotte. I believe you’ll do well.”
Libera had been an excellent servant, but Dante couldn’t take her into dangerous territory. She was scheduled to avoid the Monster Wave and head to meet Charlotte with her father.
After sending Libera off, Dante went alone to meet Sirdan’s Liberation Army.
“Are you Lord Dante?”
The Liberation Army soldier greeted him with perfect courtesy. Sirdan must have said something in advance.
“The captain is waiting for you.”
“Lead the way.”
Following the warrior, a small village came into view. There were no residents—only warriors everywhere. It seemed the villagers had abandoned the place and fled when the Monster Wave began. Thanks to that, the warriors were resting under roofs.
“You’re here.”
“Sirdan.”
Sirdan welcomed Dante. He naturally offered him a seat. Dante didn’t refuse and settled among the warriors.
“There were quite a few interesting things.”
“Interesting things?”
Sirdan tore off a piece of dried meat, swallowed it, and laughed.
“That bastard Lacravan. When he saw us come out of the ruins alive, he nearly fainted on the spot.”
Dante nodded. Of course he had. Lacravan had sealed the entrance to the ruins with the intention of eliminating both Dante and Sirdan. The place had been swarming with countless parasites and monsters, plus the dragon controlled by the mage Nameraz. He must have judged there was no way they could survive.
But… Dante was a Bug Tamer with the ability to deal with parasites. Lacravan’s plan had failed, and Sirdan had survived. He was a warrior who had once joined hands with Lacravan. A former friend was always far more troublesome than a simple enemy.
“While looting the facilities he cherished, I gathered some information.”
“You’ve done well.”
“Nah. It was actually fun. You should’ve seen the faces those cult bastards made when they saw us.”
Sirdan gladly shared the information with Dante. Most of it was high-quality intel.
“Lacravan is the head of the Northern branch of a religious group called the Hand of Power. You already knew that, right?”
“Of course.”
“I thought the guy wanted to create an independent Northern kingdom… but now I see there wasn’t a single move made for the North.”
Lacravan had been sponsoring the Liberation Army with enormous sums of money. That was why Sirdan had trusted him as a comrade without suspicion. After all, no one would throw around that much gold for no reason… or so he had thought.
But when he became enemies with the man and started digging, Lacravan was moving in a direction Sirdan had never expected.
“They call themselves a religious organization, but they don’t seem like one at all.”
“Then what?”
“… More like a gathering of mages, I’d say.”
Dante flinched.
“Mages?”
Sirdan handed over documents he had stolen after raiding a certain “temple.” Dante read through the materials Sirdan gave him and fell into deep thought.
This is…
If Dante hadn’t traveled to the North, he wouldn’t have been able to interpret these documents. But he had seen magic similar to what was described here during his time in the North. It was exactly like…
The things I saw in Dorkuns’s laboratory.
It had been in the underground ruins teeming with parasites. The ancient mage Dorkuns. And the bugs of the great demon Akchichi that he had been researching. While Dorkuns had studied Akchichi's Bug, his more fundamental research had been on otherworldly beings.
Elder Lacravan… and the Hand of Power.
Sirdan said he had stolen these from a temple of the Hand of Power. But these were clearly magical research documents. According to Dante’s interpretation… they contained data on tearing open the gap between reality and another world and widening that hole.
Why? He didn’t know what purpose they had for widening the holes to another world. However… the “ones who pierce holes into other worlds” that the Guardian Dragon Pecaraxis had mentioned were undoubtedly the priests of the Hand of Power.
Sirdan spoke as if he found it absurd.
“What does research like this have to do with creating a kingdom for the Northern people?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Yeah… Lacravan never cared about an independent kingdom from the beginning.”
Sirdan stared at the swirling snowflakes and continued.
“From the start… it was an impossible dream.”
He had given up on the absurd notion of an independent kingdom. Sirdan’s goal had been one thing from the very beginning: to create a land where Northerners could live well. He had thought that with Lacravan’s help, it might be possible.
But Lacravan had merely used the Liberation Army as pawns. His true objective had been something else entirely.
“I’m not specialized in dimensional magic, but I can still understand these documents.”
“Right. What does the mage think, Dante?”
“If the holes to another world grow larger, the number of monsters crossing over from that dimension will increase.”
“…!”
“It means the Monster Wave will grow even bigger.”
Dante told Sirdan.
“It would be good if there were more documents.”
“There’s a whole pile over there. Go read them.”
Dante quickly skimmed through the materials and reached a conclusion.
“We need to capture Lacravan immediately.”
Sirdan agreed with that.
“But moving right away is…”
“There’s a way.”
“?”
“There’s a spell I want to test out.”
The documents Sirdan collected made one thing perfectly clear: the Hand of Power was opening dimensional holes all across the North.
Of course, opening a dimensional hole wasn’t easy. It originally required powerful magical rituals to tear open the dimensional gap. Only by performing rituals that periodically opened those gaps could a true dimensional hole be created.
That meant…
“Lacravan must be conducting the ritual to open dimensional gaps on a regular basis.”
Sirdan brought out a map and pointed.
“Here. This White Night Mountain is both Lacravan’s residence and the center of the Northern branch of the Hand of Power.”
Although treated as a cult, the Hand of Power was still a religious organization in name. Villages formed by its supporters had sprung up around White Night Mountain. With temples and military facilities as well, it was no exaggeration to call it a fortified temple city.
“… I want to attack the bastard right now, but charging into White Night Mountain without any preparation is suicide.”
Even as Sirdan said that, Dante shook his head.
“We don’t need to face everyone. Our enemy is just Elder Lacravan, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand what you mean. To catch Lacravan, don’t we have to subdue White Night Mountain first?”
“No. We create a gap in White Night Mountain, infiltrate, and suppress only Lacravan. That ends the situation.”
“…?”
Sirdan looked bewildered. Dante’s claim was perfectly logical, but… it wasn’t as if they didn’t know that. Capturing only Lacravan would end everything, but the man was a religious leader who lived entrenched at the peak of the mountain. He would be surrounded by countless believers and guards. How were they supposed to break through all that?
“Is there a way?”
Dante answered immediately.
“There is. We use parasites.”
“Parasites…?”
Dante pulled out a glass bottle from his pocket. Sirdan stared at it intently, then shouted with a pale face.
“Hey! The things inside this…!”
“You recognize them?”
“The ones from the ruins…! Aren’t those the bugs?!”
Inside the glass bottle, hundreds of parasites—at the very least—swam so densely that the bottle looked pitch black. The sight alone sent shivers down the spine. These were Akchichi's Bugs that Dante had mass-produced using culture medium.
Dante smiled as he spoke.
“While researching them for the past few days, I figured out how to handle these bugs. There are several methods, so let’s test them out.”
“…”
Dante simply wore his usual warm smile, but Sirdan thought that smile looked incredibly wicked…!
What a creepy mage…
The one holding a bottle filled with hundreds of parasites and smiling while claiming to be ‘normal’ was clearly the crazy one. No matter which way you looked at it, Bug Tamers were incredibly unsettling beings.
Despite the discomfort, Sirdan secretly let out a sigh of relief. This mage was truly a horrifying one…! But right now, he was on their side!
“What are you going to do with them?”
“First, select a small elite team. We’ll use these parasites to break through White Night Mountain’s guards and infiltrate all the way to Lacravan’s sleeping quarters.”
“Break through the guards with parasites… is that even possible?”
“You’ve experienced it yourself, so you should know. These bugs can make a host move against their own will for a short time.”
“…”
“If applied well, it’s not that difficult.”
As Dante explained, Sirdan let out a chuckle.
“It feels like we’re the parasites now.”
“Well. It is an infiltration operation.”
“Fine. Bug Tamer Dante. Let’s join forces once more. We will definitely separate Lacravan’s head from his body!”
Sirdan extended his hand. Dante clasped it firmly. For a moment, Sirdan examined his own hand from various angles.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just checking if I got infected or not.”
“…Want me to put one in you?”
“No thanks.”
Sirdan selected a small group of elite warriors. Dante headed toward White Night Mountain with Sirdan and his party. The closer they got to the mountain, the more clearly the Hand of Power’s fortifications came into view.
The claim that it was heavily fortified was no exaggeration. Tall walls, blazing braziers. Soldiers armed with spears and bows guarding the ramparts… Dante asked, momentarily dumbfounded.
“Is that really a religious order?”
Sirdan answered casually.
“The North has a lot of monsters. People tend to overlook moderate armament. Even taking that into account, this is excessively overdone.”
The surveillance was strict. As Sirdan said, a frontal assault would come at a tremendous cost in lives. However—Dante had Akchichi's Bugs.
“Your turn, Bug Tamer.”
Dante nodded and stepped forward. Sirdan was curious what trick Dante would use to pass that wall. The secret was simple and clear.
Dante released a mana wave from the bugs and summoned the insects around him.
“Come.”
The North was a land of cold ice. Most insects had extremely limited activity ranges and couldn’t easily respond to Dante’s call. But there were bugs that could move freely even in the freezing North.
Snowstorm Bugs.
As pure white beetles began flapping their wings and appearing, Sirdan unconsciously turned his gaze toward them. He couldn’t help it—he was a Northerner, after all! When the Snowstorm Bugs, messengers of the goddess Aurora and symbols of good luck, appeared, one’s head would turn on its own!
Dante opened the bottle and released Akchichi's Bugs. Then—he began inserting the parasites into the bodies of the Snowstorm Bugs.
“…!”
Sirdan watched in shock. How blasphemous! Putting parasites into the Snowstorm Bugs, symbols of good fortune?!
But Dante remained indifferent. Northern symbol of luck? Who cared? The important thing was that they could move freely even in snowstorms.
“Good. Kids.”
Around Dante, Snowstorm Bugs had gathered in a cluster.
…All of them already infected by the parasites.
“Go.”
Dante sent the Snowstorm Bugs over the wall. From now on, the Akchichi's Bugs would take care of the rest. From their primary hosts, the Snowstorm Bugs, to their secondary hosts—the soldiers.
“Now we just wait until the soldiers are infected.”
“…”
Dante had spread the parasites with ridiculous ease. Having experienced infection himself, Sirdan knew the soldiers wouldn’t even notice before they were taken over. And he was certain.
The situation would unfold exactly as Dante intended.