Over Here, Assistant-kun!
Charles Alaxia.
The deepest reaches of a sewage treatment plant, where every manner of filth the city produces comes slithering home. I stand at the bottom of that deep, deep bottomless pit — the kind of place where corpses and sin alike bore their way into human flesh. Mountains of scrap and food waste wash in from the city, foul water streaming around them, and the corpses mixed in among the scraps, indistinguishable from the garbage they lie beside, serve as a quiet reminder that this is the darkest, filthiest corner the city has to offer.
What's the point of killing the Demon King, anyway? The filthy corners of the world don't disappear for it.
Two hundred years have passed since I died — since the Demon King and the Old Empire came crashing down. The world I'd hoped would improve, even a little, has stayed maddeningly, stubbornly the same. Some lunatic calling himself the Demon King is alive and breathing, and humans pickled in peace are too busy clawing at one another's throats, blinded by power. Well, I suppose there's one silver lining: those wretched things aren't the ones kneading the world into shape. Not that I'd call that a merit. Nobody calls breathing a merit, after all — a given is a given, not an advantage.
"Haah..."
Letting out a sigh, I began digging through the mountains of scrap and rotting food for anything worth salvaging. What I gathered, mostly, was scrap metal long past its original purpose, along with the circuit boards still clinging to it. Piece by piece, none of it fetched much, but pile enough of it together and I could earn enough to last five days. Five days of studying magic without a single worry in the world. And that was all. Once those five days ran out, I'd be right back down here, mask on, rifling through the trash again. Naturally — in this life, I had the constitution of someone who could never use magic at all.
Ha. If I'd lived properly the first time around, I wouldn't be living like this now.
I accepted this body as the price of the sins I'd committed in my past life. Karma for failing to realize that, to those children, I was more precious than anything in the world — for treating them as means to an end and throwing my life away.
So immediately after being reborn, I scraped together every scrap of information I could find on the other children — where they'd gone, how their stories ended. Partly to lighten my guilt, and partly with the hope of apologizing, if any of them still drew breath. But all that searching ever turned up was rumors and books of dubious origin. I never learned what became of them. By now it had all passed into legend anyway — me, and the story of those children both. The one most likely to still be alive was Alaxia, the Sage... but if that girl ever decided to vanish, she was as good as dead, and I couldn't summon the nerve to even try. And besides, if she was alive, she'd come for my head by any means necessary. Hunting her down would be nothing more than foolish obsession.
That didn't mean I'd done nothing, of course. For that one sliver of a possibility, I sold scrap like this day after day, studying spellbooks so that I could climb the Magic Tower. It wasn't as if I'd ever get to meet her again. But at least my conscience might rest a little easier. And so, once again today, I load my reeking scrap onto the scale — hoping that someday, someday, my sins might finally be paid in full.
The scrap I sold today would be resold tomorrow and land in my wallet the day after that. An inefficient arrangement, perhaps, but I'd never once been stiffed on payment, so I always trusted and waited. Today, however, the shop that bought my scrap had gone under. Well — I'd seen it coming. Dealing in scrap itself turned a profit, but to sell it at a markup, you had to resort to clever little tricks. And this place had been caught red-handed, shut down through all the proper legal channels under imperial law.
It was only a matter of time.
I'd planted a trick of my own among their stock, you see, just so their scheme wouldn't work on my scrap. Why bother? Because I was finally closing in on the sum I'd set my sights on — and reporting them came with a bounty. I don't know who owned that shop, but I'd ask that nobody mourn them. Call it karma.
"Here's your bounty. We caught that wanted man thanks to you."
A heavy pouch of money dropped into my hands — probably part of what those bastards had skimmed off the back of their business. I tucked it inside my clothes and gave the customary word of thanks.
"Is that so? Well, glad it was of help. So listen — have you ever thought about working as a guard? Someone like you could be a real asset even without mana or sword skills—"
"Thank you for the offer. But there's something I want to do."
The officer was reaching out a hand with an expression I could tell at a glance was untrustworthy; I slipped past it and turned my back. He'd probably meant to sweet-talk me into the job, then squeeze money out of me for "training" or some such.
Like I'd ever fall for that.
Either way, the money was gathered. Enough, at least, to make me a member of the Magic Tower. Whether the Tower would actually accept me just because I came bearing cash was another question — but all I could do was shove the money at them and find out.
"Could I join the Magic Tower?"
"...Tsk. No letter of recommendation on you, I see. Membership costs twenty million Pelium. Twenty. Million. You have that kind of money?"
His gaze slid off to somewhere over my shoulder, the corner of his mouth curling upward in a sneer. The mage took one look at my threadbare state and dismissed me, plain as day.
Hah. Right. Mages were always this particular breed of bastard.
I'd forgotten that most of their kind were built exactly like this. If I'd known, I'd have simply plopped the bundle of cash on the table from the very first word.
Thud.
I pulled the money pouch from inside my coat and set it down on the counter, then addressed the man still grinning viciously at it.
"So — can I join, or not?"
"...Twenty million Pelium, confirmed. Work hard in there. Not that you'll amount to anything but a pack mule."
The mage swept the bundles of cash beneath the counter and handed over an access pass, that sneer still hanging on his face. It left a sour taste in my mouth — but for a mage, he was fairly well-mannered. At least he didn't throw the pass at me.
Looks aside, I suppose he really is staff, after all.
Then again — twenty million just to walk in the door. The world truly has lost its mind.
Back before I died, the Magic Association's membership fee had been a mere fifty thousand Pelium a month. And now it was twenty million just to join — without so much as a single lesson included? What on earth had Alaxia been thinking when she wrote a rule like this? It made no sense to me, but there was nothing I could say about it. In I went.
"Bigger on the inside than it looks from out here."
The moment the door opened, what greeted me was a spiral staircase, with levitating platforms drifting up and down between its coils. And when I pulled my gaze from them and looked down, researchers were bustling about their work below, while mages demonstrated spells one after another.
"So this is spatial magic..."
From the outside, it had been nothing more than a slender tower stretching into the sky — and yet this whole vast space had been hiding inside it. They said spatial magic had been commercialized, but I'd never dreamed it had advanced this far. Expanding space on this scale — were there no side effects at all? Or were they simply shipping the burden off somewhere else? Hmm... Nothing here but mysteries my current knowledge of magic couldn't touch.
Enough marveling.
From this point on, my task was to dig through the books in this place for information on Alaxia. The Magic Tower was her creation, after all — there had to be plenty on her here. Surely this time I could find a lead. So first, I would head for the library and lose myself in study while I searched the shelves for anything about her. That was the plan.
"—Assistant-kun~ Over here!"
"...?"
A familiar voice, drifting in from somewhere. I lifted my head toward it — and caught sight of a crack in a corner of the Magic Tower. An ominous fissure, looking ready to split wide open at any moment. And the instant it entered my sight, countless arms came bursting out of it and closed around my throat.
Krrrk—!
The grip crushed down in an instant, and my field of vision slid away. And with that voice, someone came crawling out of the crack.
"Ahaha! That blank face of yours has really changed~! Did you get it done, Assistant-kun? Ahaha!"
Sky-blue hair. Crimson eyes. Charles Alaxia — one of the three known as the Hero's Party, bearer of the epithet Sage. Her face, freshly crawled out from between the walls of the rift, was smiling. But it didn't feel like a smile in the slightest. The only emotion radiating off it was rage. She was genuinely, truly furious with me.
"Ughk... Alaxia...!"
"Why? Why'd you call me, Assistant-kun? Why? Why call me? Why? Got some excuse to make, do you? Hm?"
Alaxia shoved her red eyes right up against mine, pressing in on me. I didn't resist. I simply raised both hands.
Well. I'd anticipated as much.
Her trying to kill me fell squarely within my expectations. The only thing I hadn't counted on was meeting her face-to-face, straight away. So what I needed to do here wasn't so different after all.
"I'm... sor...ry...."
"...Ha."
A scornful laugh spilled out of Alaxia's mouth, and the hands squeezing my throat went slack.
Kehk! Kehk!
I crumpled where I stood, coughing and retching over and over. Apparently the sight was good for a laugh, because Alaxia spoke through a grin.
"Ahaha! I racked my brain over all kinds of excuses you might pull, and that's it? 'Sorry'? You crack me up, Assistant-kun~ Is that seriously what you call an apology?"
"..."
I held my silence. Because whatever I said now was bound to wound her.
"If you'd just told me. If you hadn't kept it a secret right up to the very end — you might not have had to die. Why? Why would you do something like that?"
The laughter stripped from her face, Alaxia demanded to know why I had drawn up a plan that amounted to nothing less than suicide. In answer, I forced down my coughing and spoke as quickly and simply as I could.
"That's... not something I can tell you."
The truth of that day is a secret I could never speak — not even dying, not even after death.