A Cold Dagger, Part 4
"—!"
How much time had passed since I lost consciousness? I bolted upright and opened my eyes, only to find that the scenery hadn't changed much.
"Ugh..."
Looking around, I found myself lying on a sofa that had somehow survived the fierce battle intact. A suit jacket was neatly draped over me, making it glaringly obvious who had taken such meticulous care of me.
They even took off my shoes...
I got up gently, taking care not to step on the glass shards littered across the floor, and tidied my clothes. Though, of course, there was nothing I could do about the tears in my dress.
"Pavel?"
I called out for my subordinate, who I knew wouldn't be far. An answer immediately came from deeper inside.
"You're awake!"
Pavel came rushing toward me with a loud clatter. I brushed off the jacket and handed it back to him as I asked,
"How long was I out? It doesn't feel like it's been that long."
"About fifteen... no, twenty minutes. As you expected, it wasn't long."
I took stock of the damage to my soul. I didn't lose as much as I thought... If I had to put a number on it, maybe about ten percent. There were probably several reasons for this. I had been slightly away from the epicenter of the most intense magical flames. The duration of my vulnerability hadn't been that long. Even when my wrist was grabbed, I hadn't completely let down my defenses. But the reasons didn't really matter. What mattered was that I had made it out alive, and that it was likely thanks to my head of security.
I scanned the ruined battlefield from left to right, then asked. My eyes locked onto the distinct, shimmering magical residue lingering right where Pavel had been taking cover at the final moment. "How did you do it?" The question lacked an object, but we both knew exactly what I was asking.
"Earlier... I mean, right after we beat down those low-level guards, we were suddenly ambushed, weren't we?"
"Yes, we were."
"From that moment, I found myself quite interested in this thing called a Magic Bullet."
The dense magical residue left where Pavel had taken cover was unmistakably from a Magic Bullet. Though compared to the one the materialist mage lying over there had first shown, or the one I had copied, his felt far rougher and sharper. In short, it was raw, unrefined magic. It felt as though he had ignored efficiency entirely, focusing solely on the sheer fact of making it manifest.
I let out a low hum of surprise and asked again, "So, you managed to replicate it just by watching it a few times?"
"Well, it wasn't just a few times... If you count the remote attacks in the main hall, it was probably closer to a three-digit number."
"Unbelievable."
"As you can see, I somehow pulled it off. Once you started using the Magic Bullet alongside that commie, it became much easier."
What he meant by "easier" was self-evident.
"Since the two spells weren't completely identical, it was actually easier to filter out the common elements... is that it?"
Pavel nodded.
"I wasn't sure if it would work, but somehow, the Magic Bullet you fired was much easier to understand."
"You're probably right. Structurally speaking, the spell that guy used had all sorts of extra branches attached to keep it stable."
Of course, I fully understood all those superfluous branches cluttering the spell. I knew exactly where they went, what they did, and what could be discarded if the sole objective was simply to fire the damn thing. I had stripped away everything non-essential for my quick replication, leaving only the bare minimum required to trigger the spell. It was that streamlined version that had allowed Pavel to grasp it and help me.
He brought over a bottle of water from somewhere and handed it to me. I quenched my parched throat and asked for a final confirmation.
"So... looking at the end result, you saved my life, Pavel?"
"Uh... I suppose so...?"
At his hesitant affirmation, I beamed at him.
"Thank you."
...
"Why so shy? It's the truth."
I meant it. If Pavel hadn't blasted a full-power Magic Bullet into that commie's back at the last second, there was a very high chance my soul and body would have been permanently severed. In that scenario, the materialist blocking my path would have fallen with me, but a ship without a captain cannot stay on course. The Syndicate would have collapsed all over again, rendering all my efforts to rebuild it utterly pointless. So, it was only natural to thank Pavel for preventing that disaster.
I dispersed the heavy magical residue lingering in the air as I continued to praise him. "Still, it's quite impressive. You've never been formally trained, yet you managed to copy it just by watching it several dozen times."
"Delice copied telekinesis the moment she was baptized, didn't she? I couldn't do that."
"...Delice?"
"Ah, I mean Bloomfeld."
It was rare for Pavel to slip up on a name like that. But it wasn't important. I quickly shifted my thoughts back.
"True... but that's not a fair comparison. Simple telekinesis and a Magic Bullet are on entirely different levels of complexity, aren't they?"
Even as I said this, a win was a win. How could I not be thrilled to have subordinates whose talents far exceeded the norm?
After getting up, I went over to inspect the now-pacified communist. Deeply stabbed wounds surrounded the hilt protruding from his chest. Judging by the depth and length of each wound, it was a level of damage no normal human could possibly survive. And as I realized only now, the reason it defied logic was because he wasn't truly human anymore.
He irreversibly overloaded his own soul... I see. That's why he was able to push himself so much harder than usual.
The commie, prepared for death, was already dead the moment he uttered that Russian activation phrase. No matter how many times I stabbed him, ruptured his groin, or tried to activate Charm, it was utterly pointless against a corpse.
Typical materialists... even treating their own corpses as disposable tools.
His body had been nothing but an empty shell from the moment he spoke the trigger word—a mere machine designed to bind his bloated, swelling soul for a mere ten-odd minutes.
"Then, Miss, could we consider his body at the end to be a type of Golem? Since his soul was detached but still controlling his physical form."
"Hmm... that's not entirely wrong. In this case, he was a Golem programmed with a single, absolute command: 'Kill me.'"
Ultimately, the materialist's life-or-death gamble had failed. I had laid the groundwork by repeatedly driving my blade into him, and Pavel's raw Magic Bullet had torn wide the resulting rift in his soul. If you're going to sacrifice yourself, you should at least keep your wits about you. What good is turning into a mindless Golem and throwing away your capacity for independent judgment?
Using telekinesis, I yanked the knife out of the corpse. The muscles, contracting upon death, had clamped down hard on the blade, forcing me to exert a considerable amount of telekinetic force. There was no benefit in leaving dried bloodstains behind, so I summoned my shadow to clean up the rest. Tossing the knife into its gaping maw, I followed Pavel toward the location of the Marseille traitor.
"Ugh, what terrible taste."
It wasn't just my imagination that the layout felt identical to the one I had first encountered. The design of this panic room indeed incorporated the standard architectural style used throughout the Syndicate. The door had already been completely torn off. There was only one person capable of doing such a thing. I glanced sideways at Pavel.
"I found some automatic rifles nearby in addition to pistols. Combining those with telekinesis made breaching the door a breeze."
"Good job. He's inside, right?"
I made a mental note to reinforce our panic room design standards. Real combat had proven they couldn't hold out long against mages. But that could wait. The Marseille traitor lay bound tightly with ropes in the middle of the panic room.
"Tsk, damn it."
Bang!
Annoyed by the sight of him, I drew my pistol and shot him straight in the hand.
"Aaargh!"
Why the hell was he sprawled out like I had been in the beginning? It was irritating. But one shot was enough to vent my frustration. Since the materialist mage was dead, this was the only source of information I had left. I stared directly into the eyes of the traitor, who was face-down on the floor, panting heavily. Charm, which hadn't shown any sign of activating while I was fighting a proper mage, flared to life as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.
If not for the mage dispatched directly from Moscow, things wouldn't have dragged on this long. But as it happened, the interrogation had to continue for several days. We couldn't stay in the ruined casino forever, so we loaded the pacified communist and the traitor into the trunk of a car and transported them to a secluded mountain valley. I left Durand in charge of cleaning up the casino and taking over the Marseille branch, which had fled with their business assets. Durand, who had brought along all the core members of the Paris branch, repeatedly reassured me and promised a flawless cleanup.
It was a stroke of luck that the mage and the traitor had guided me to a private room near the VIP lounge. Otherwise, it would have been incredibly difficult to manage the inevitable chaos among the other casino patrons. Getting tangled up with the French authorities or the British Ministry of Magic, who were likely still monitoring my movements in Paris, would have been an absolute nightmare. Fortunately, none of that happened, and I faced the traitor once again in the valleys of the Alps.
"So... you had no intention of betraying me, but that commie coaxed you with sweet words?"
"Yes! I, Francis, never had the slightest intention of betraying you, Miss!"
"But you already did it, didn't you? Oh, and don't tell me Durand would have done the same in your shoes. Not unless you want me to shoot your other hand."
Francis Jangdal, the former Marseille branch manager, vehemently insisted that his betrayal was not of his own free will. He claimed he had been forced into the decision by the mage who had suddenly approached him from Moscow, and that otherwise, he would have sworn loyalty to me alongside Durand. As if I could believe that. Shifting all the blame onto a dead man who could no longer speak made his crime seem even more malicious. Any chance of the traitor proving his innocence was gone forever. I could have dug into the other middle managers of the Marseille branch, but I didn't care to go that far.
"It's the truth...! If you give me a second chance, I will prove myself to be your most loyal servant! Just give me any order...!"
At this point, he looked like nothing more than a pathetic dog rolling over on its back to show submission.
"Francis Jangdal, do you know why I brought you all the way to this mountain valley of all places?"
"W-why...?"
"If I chop up a corpse and scatter the pieces across the Alps, who could possibly find them? It's not like Hannibal is going to march through here with his elephants."
"N-no... please, Lady Yerina...! I have committed a mortal sin, I know...! But surely you know how much of a help I can be to you in securing the south...!"
...
"So please, I beg of you, have mercy...!"
"You talk too much. It's getting pathetic."
I had absolutely no intention of showing mercy to an opportunist who had betrayed me once. Whether he had been threatened by the now-dead mage or not, he had clearly calculated that switching sides was more profitable than maintaining a stubborn—and likely non-existent—loyalty. If the rope you clung to turned out to be rotten, you had to pay the price. The karma of miscalculating his odds ran deep.
I had extracted all the information I could get from him. All that was left was to compile the data gathered during the takeover process, which I had entrusted to the Paris crew. In truth, after chopping up and burning the bodies of the mage and the traitor, then scattering their ashes across the Alpine valleys, there wasn't much left for me to do. Unless it was receiving urgent, critical updates, most of the remaining work was just grunt work for the boots on the ground. It was only after the turn of the month that I learned Moscow viewed me as a far more profound threat than I had ever anticipated.