Ep.3 - Temporary Alliance (3)
Ep.3 - Temporary Alliance (3)
A long, low horn blast.
That sound, echoing out of nowhere in the dead of night, carried a warning that something was going very, very wrong.
"Catch them! Catch them!"
The panicked female knights grabbed their weapons and chased after the two women.
One was a traitor sealed away in the underground prison, and the other was the finest female knight they had called commander and served until now.
Even as they gave chase, the female knights, who still couldn't properly grasp what exactly was happening, dashed fervently to at least capture the traitor Philmark first, but—
"Heok, heok..."
"G-get them...!"
The two women sprinted with a speed that seemed to transcend human limits, and the knights simply could not keep up.
"I don't know whose subordinates they are, but they're pathetically weak, as expected."
"Shut up and run! You're so damn loud..."
The two women, who had banded together for their mutual benefit, bickered even as they gave their all to fleeing.
In their minds, there was only one man, and for that man's sake, they were even willing to borrow the hand of a 'filthy bitch', were they not?
Philmark thought.
'That son of a bitch. The second I see an opening, I'll kill her and run off with just Delin.'
Neva thought.
'I'll just use her on this dragon business and then, when the time is right, seize her again and seal her back in the prison.'
It was an alliance so fragile that a backstab could come at any moment, but since both knew the time for betrayal hadn't come yet, they quietly kept to their truce.
———————————————
Soon, the two women reached the vicinity of Neva's house.
Shattered window glass and Delin's trail stretching from beneath it...
Philmark examined those traces meticulously while continuing to sneer at Neva.
"What's this? He jumped out? Guess he really hated being there. Poor Delin. Tsk tsk..."
"I told you to drop it and hurry up and help with the search...! Hoo... The trail cuts off over there."
The flattened grass... Following the path Delin had struggled to crawl along, the two women once again came upon a truly mysterious trace.
"..."
Even Philmark, who had been sneering so much, shut her mouth for a moment and scrutinized the trace. Just what could have happened in this spot within the forest?
"If you've figured something out, just say it..."
"Shut up for a second. I need to focus."
Philmark, cutting Neva off forcefully, frowned as she looked at Delin's last imprinted traces.
The traces he left behind.
Those faint traces, soon to vanish, had a strange sense of dissonance lingering within them.
They were cut so cleanly and neatly that it almost looked as if Delin had disappeared in an instant.
"...Damn it."
This was turning into something far more troublesome. She didn't know who had taken Delin away, but it was clearly some skilled bastard who had dragged him off.
"I can't find anything here. They completely erased it all."
"Completely erased?"
"Yeah. Erased the traces. Wiped them out completely... Were there no other traces around?"
"There were none. I turned the whole forest inside out and found nothing."
"Fuck. Do they fly or something? If not, that means they're thorough enough to wipe out even their own tracks..."
However, if that were the case, a few puzzling points arose.
Why Delin?
Why go to all that trouble?
"They could have just taken him and been done with it... but to erase everything like this..."
The answer was simple.
Either they truly flew into the sky and fled, leaving no traces on the ground, or they're cunning bastards who never leave any trace behind...
Or both.
"Witches. It's the witch bastards. For sure."
Philmark voiced her conclusion. Her sharp intuition hadn't missed the mark. Precisely correct!
"Witches? I heard they don't interact at all..."
"You're such an idiot. If they lived alone with no interaction, they'd all be dead in a few years, wouldn't they? They just hide their identities among humans. Those bastards wander around and snatch orphans... or young boys..."
A bad premonition crept in. A shadow fell over Philmark's face.
"Snatch them and...?"
"...They turn orphans into fellow witches and the boys they take to play with. It's a place where only women live for a lifetime—you think a man dragged there could endure?"
Neva's expression darkened as well, twisting into one of utter loathing as she clenched her fist tight and seethed with fury.
"Th-this..."
"What a pain in the ass. Hah..."
The two of them, amidst this hopeless situation, thought for a moment about what horrific things Delin might be suffering right now. Delin, being defiled by boiling lust...
"No...! If it was a situation like that, Delin would definitely have used Load. Yeah. He would have..."
"Unless his mouth was gagged or something."
A gag.
If he was being abused with his mouth sealed...
"...Kk-euk!"
Neva bit her lip until it bled, imagining the filthy scene. She couldn't help but imagine it. The mind works in such a way that the more you try not to think of something, the more tenaciously it comes to mind.
"Damn it, damn it! We have to go after the witches right now! Now!"
"How do you plan to go? Those bastards live on an island they've floated up in the sky. It drifts here and there, and they've put concealment magic over the whole island, so you can't just easily climb aboard. Hah, fuck... what a load of shit..."
"Then...! Then are you saying we just sit still? While Delin gets abused by more women, we just twiddle our thumbs!?"
"Shut the hell up! I'm thinking!"
Philmark shoved away Neva, who was shouting in heavy agitation, then rubbed her temples and racked her brain.
But no matter how much of a schemer Philmark was, turning the impossible into the possible wasn't something just anyone could do.
She'd fooled witches who came down to the ground many times and stripped them bare, and she'd crushed those bitches with force and taught them a lesson, but—
Not once had she ever reached the sky island Raftel where witches were said to live.
In this bleak situation, finding and boarding Raftel was...
"...There's no choice but to grab a few witches, threaten them, and make them take us to Raftel. Those bastards can sense where Raftel is floating."
"Good...! Then let's hurr— mmph!"
"(Wait.)"
Philmark suddenly clamped Neva's mouth shut and whispered softly. Taken aback by her ominous demeanor, Neva's eyes went wide as she looked around.
'There's nothing here...?'
But Neva, unable to sense a thing, was about to glare at the thief and peel the hand off her mouth when—
"(Lucky us.)"
A chill energy began to swirl in the eerie forest warmed by blue moonlight.
Now Neva, too, felt something off. The sensation of her hair standing on end...
Byubeut- byubyubeut-
Round birds took flight.
The forest grew restless.
And,
At the moment even the birds fell silent,
A single witch flew over their heads.
-------------------------------
A few dozen minutes later.
A secluded back alley.
"Put this on."
Philmark handed Neva a fairly shabby-looking robe.
Without a word, Neva threw on the robe and adjusted the collar so her face wouldn't be revealed.
"Will this do?"
"You think it will? I'll handle everything, so you just keep your mouth shut and stay still. We'll be in deep shit if we're caught."
Since Philmark was already a wanted criminal, greater caution was needed. If they were caught by the knights and soldiers searching with fire in their eyes, things would spiral into a complicated mess. Neva and Philmark didn't have time to face off against them. They had to find Delin fast.
"Don't cause any trouble and wait."
"No. I'm coming with you. You might run off."
"You dumbass. She's locked in moonstone handcuffs—you think she'd bolt? Wandering around to get killed?"
"They've locked her in handcuffs; you think they'd just let her walk in alone so easily?"
"..."
"Lead the way."
"Hah."
Together with Neva, Philmark slipped out of the dark back alley and followed a witch toward a tavern.
Quite a lot of thieves and bounty hunters, male prostitutes and junkies, even low-grade adventurers...
The knight and the thief entered that tavern where all sorts of humans gathered.
Thanks to Philmark's rather excellent disguise, the guards and everyone else failed to recognize her, letting her pass right through naturally.
Right now, they were just a captured criminal and a taciturn adventurer—a disguised adventurer—dragging the prisoner along.
"..."
Philmark melted into the surrounding atmosphere.
She didn't look around furtively. Yet she still swept her gaze over who was sitting where, reading the room.
"..."
Found her. The witch she had followed.
She moved with the utmost care yet naturally, so that the eyes of those around wouldn't fall on herself and Neva.
"Left corner. Don't be obvious."
Neva, too, glanced at the left corner. There, the witch who had passed over their heads a little while ago was talking with some woman.
At some point she had changed, swapping the clothes that screamed 'witch' for a fairly plain adventurer's outfit. She acted like she frequented this tavern... and also as if the woman across from her was a very close colleague.
However, Philmark saw the blue mana seeping out from her hand. Right now, that witch was touching the mind of the person in front of her.
"Welcome. What'll you have?"
When the two sat down at a suitable table, a server who looked quite old in years and full of life experience came over to take their order. But there was one slight problem:
"Uh... um..."
'Ah. Fuuuck.'
Neva was a woman who'd never been to a place like this, so she couldn't properly pull off the role of a scruffy adventurer who'd been through all sorts of hardships...!
So, Philmark stomped hard on Neva's foot as a signal, then pretended to be nonchalant and placed the order herself.
"What? Not you. Adventurer, sir. What would you like?"
Just as expected.
They didn't seem to take orders from a criminal in handcuffs.
The witch's back stiffened slightly.
As the ordering dragged on, the surrounding gazes began to gather one by one.
"...Just two beers."
"Yep. I'll bring them right over."
In the firmest voice possible, Neva finished the order crisply.
"Ohh, shiit... making a fuss over beer without even any snacks..."
"Shut it."
A decent reaction from Neva.
Not a bad combo for a rookie.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say~"
Philmark grumbled playfully on purpose and slammed her head down onto the table. Now, the conversation was over, and the people's gazes would scatter.
But inside the tavern, a strange tension still lingered.
The others probably couldn't feel it, but—
The three women felt it with vivid clarity.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Silence lingered for a moment between the two tables.
The one to break the silence first was the witch's table.
"So, when did you say you got here? Huh? What on earth have you been doing all this time~?"
"Just got here. You promised."
"Eh? Promised?"
"Yeah. Promised."
"Ah...~ That's right. I think it might've been something like that?"
"Oh dear. Forgot again, didn't you. You always forget promises like that."
Dissonance.
"..."
A scent.
Not the smell of sweat wafting from the tavern, nor the smell of beer...
"Delin."
Philmark noticed that faint fragrance.
Not the sickly sweet scent of candy and pumpkins coming from the witches,
But the scent of the man who had given her the happiest memories.