The Demon's Curse (5)

"A black mage, then."

"Y-yes! That's right, my lord!"

Just as I'd expected, the word that came out of the bandits' mouths was black mage.

"Th-those bastards burned everything—our families, our fortunes, our homes, all of it!"

"And the Capital? Did they offer any aid?"

"None at all. They drove us off, calling us a pack of thieves. And when we tried to ask other villages for help, most of them were already nothing but ash and rubble."

I was starting to see the picture. The reason black mages did this sort of thing was to harvest fresh sacrifices and slaves. And there was only one place near the Capital that needed those things.

Ambrosia. They were burning villages to the ground so they could rise again. A chain of events clicked together in my mind. A demon's curse was a specialty of black mages. Even I contracted with demons constantly and put those contracts to use. So I made a guess.

The Bishop collapsing, Besia being framed by the Church—was that all a plot by the Black Magic Tower? No. It couldn't be that simple. If it had only been the Bishop falling to a curse, the Black Tower Master could have managed that alone. But taking Besia as well—that was another matter entirely. Someone even bigger had to be backing this.

"...This is getting complicated."

"Wouldn't it be better not to worry about it? The Bishop is more urgent, isn't he?"

I would have liked to let it go. But this incident was definitely connected to black mages, which meant that while I was saving the Bishop, I also needed to stop Ambrosia from rebuilding. Quietly. Without making too much of a show of it. Handle it poorly, and I'd draw far too much of the royal family's attention.

...Honestly, I'd already drawn more than enough of it.

"Listen well, bandits."

I addressed the ones kneeling before me. If I didn't have the luxury of handling this myself, the right move was to put available manpower to work.

"I'll give you a chance to have your crimes pardoned."

"Is that true?"

"You're going to spare us?"

I could see the life returning to their faces.

"I'll spare you, and I'll give you fair compensation for the work you do."

"Then give us any task you want!"

"We don't want to die as thieves either!"

The persuasion was working quite well. A bandit's life was lawless, and you never knew when you'd die. Nobody became a bandit unless they were facing a famine so terrible they couldn't even find a blade of grass to eat. Offering people like that a chance—of course they'd cling to hope.

That was when Franc spoke up.

"I don't know what you're planning to have the bandits do, but can we actually pardon them?"

"Of course not. I'm just the second son of a baronial house, and Laeli is nothing more than a viscount's daughter."

"...That's a complete lie."

"They're bandits. What's a little lying between us and them?"

I had no shame about it. What promises and rewards did bandits deserve? They should be grateful I wasn't killing them. Leaving Franc to wrestle with whether this was right, I issued my orders.

"Your job is to find any surviving villages or small groups you can, and guide them as far from the Capital as possible."

"That's all we have to do?"

"It's to get them away from the black mages raiding this area."

The bandits nodded. On the surface, my proposal looked reasonable enough. Which meant I needed to put a leash on them before I was done. If I trusted a pack of bandits with no restrictions, I'd be the only sucker in this deal.

The Origin of the Star began to spin, and a blue light swallowed the air around me. The bandits flinched at the display of magic. At a flick of my hand, contracts woven from that same blue light were distributed to every last one of them.

"Sign. If you flee without following my orders, this power will deliver you death."

"...What happens if we run?"

"Your heads will burst, and you'll die."

Trembling with fear, yet buoyed by the promise of pardon and reward, every last bandit signed. It was only a single signature, but the atmosphere shifted. I had hired them. I held their lives in my hand. And they had become loyal hounds bowing before their master.

"Go, then. There'll be time enough to praise you once the work is done."

"Understood!"

"When you're finished, come find me at Russelmani."

"H-huh?! The ducal house...! We'll do it, we swear!"

And so the mountain bandits scattered to carry out their task.

Franc recited every last one of my lies, her eyes gone thoroughly cold.

"First of all, a mana contract only works between mages, so that thing has no effect whatsoever."

"It doesn't?!"

Laeli, who hadn't known that, had simply been watching the whole majestic spectacle with both hands pressed to her pounding chest. It had been pretty majestic, to be fair. An entire pack of bandits turning over a new leaf and bowing their heads before me.

"Laeli, snap out of it! If a mage ever comes up to you and asks you to sign a contract, do not trust them!"

"R-right. Got it."

"And why did you drop the name Russelmani?! Reinhardt isn't even here, and you're impersonating them?!"

"It is a Russelmani carriage."

It wasn't a procession of a noble belonging to Russelmani, so we hadn't hung any crests or banners—but it was a Russelmani carriage all the same. Franc was horrified by the sheer scale of my lies, but there wouldn't be any fallout anyway. The mana contract was fake. Russelmani was a stretch. But I did know the young master there. And the people I'd lied to were a pack of bandits.

A perfect lie is indistinguishable from the truth. Therefore: the perfect crime.

"Do you actually think that makes sense?! Argal needs a moral education."

"This isn't what's important anyway."

"Right. The Bishop is waiting for us, isn't he?"

"Nnngh..."

On top of that, we'd delayed so long that Changseong, who'd been stuck inside the carriage, was cautiously poking her head out.

"...Um, what's going on...?"

"Stay put! Stay put! Patients need to stay still!"

"I-I can talk, at least...!"

Rattle—slam!

Franc slammed shut the window Changseong had opened. For the sake of complete isolation, the carriage she was riding in didn't even have air holes. Whenever Changseong cracked a window, complaining it was stuffy, Franc would shut it immediately.

Was that just Franc taking her frustration out on her...?

Regardless, the carriages started rolling along smoothly. It was about a two-day journey, so camping time arrived soon enough. We didn't need to make any complicated preparations. The maids who'd come along were all professionals; they finished setting up camp in no time.

We huddled together near the crackling firewood and talked. Changseong, driven by a fierce determination not to stay cooped up in the carriage, had joined us despite Franc's interference and was drinking porridge. My meal was porridge too, of course. I was a patient myself, after all. I needed to eat food that was as easy to digest as possible.

"Argal, how do you even break a demon's curse?"

Franc asked, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠apparently out of genuine curiosity. Demons were beings shrouded in mystery to begin with. A bad deal would cost you your life. Even black mages didn't approach them often, and ordinary mages only knew about them from books. Even Franc, who seemed to have hunted down and read forbidden texts, didn't know that much about demons. If there was anyone who knew them well, it would be the Professor—and even the Professor couldn't outdo me when it came to dealing with demons.

Then Laeli asked a more fundamental question.

"I'm more curious about what a demon even is. Are they monsters that belong to the Demon King's army?"

"Not exactly. Demons are essentially independent beings."

The dimension the demonkin belonged to and the one demons came from weren't even the same. That said, I didn't know the details either. I'd contracted with the Great Demon, the pinnacle of demonkind, but we didn't share any special communion, and I had no desire to commune with a demon.

But one thing was certain: the Great Demon had the power to regulate authorities. If you could pay the price, it could even temporarily halt the Demon King's own power. So the two of them could hardly be called allies. Demons had nothing to do with the Demon King at all. They were bystanders who took the price humans offered and granted tremendous power in return, whether the world burned or not. From a black mage's perspective, they were just one of many transcendent beings who accepted obscure rituals and sacrifices.

"I asked first, Laeli."

"I'll answer that too."

Back to the main point: what was a demon's curse? It could never be removed by ordinary means, because this wasn't an ordinary transaction. A black mage seeking to lay a curse offered a sacrifice to a demon. The demon, having received that sacrifice, cursed the target—either killing them outright or inflicting suffering indistinguishable from death. That was the curse's purpose.

Ordinarily, because the curse was laid through a transcendent being like a demon, it left almost no traces and couldn't be blocked—making it an extraordinarily powerful tool for assassination. Of course, the royal family—the most likely assassination targets—knew the power of such curses well. They received constant blessings and inspections, and they stayed within safe sanctuaries like the royal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠palace, so they rarely fell victim to a demon's curse.

Which made this all the stranger. Why had a Bishop residing in a church, of all people, been struck by a demon's curse?

Franc seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"That's what I mean. How did the Bishop get cursed? It shouldn't have been easy to curse him."

"...We'll have to figure that out as we go."

If he'd left a church that was practically a sanctuary, and if he'd exhausted all of his own Holy Power, then the conditions for a demon's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠curse would have been met. It wasn't an impossible scenario.

As we talked, the sun sank quickly. The sky grew dark, and it was time to sleep. Laeli, nodding off with her head dipping, suddenly brought up something important.

"Don't we need a night watch?"

"We do, actually."

We hadn't considered a night watch on the way to the Capital. This was supposed to be a well-policed region, and yet we'd run into a bandit pack, and black mages were raiding civilian homes. If I'd known, I would have hired mercenaries from the start.

"We can stand watch."

"If anything dangerous happens, we'll wake you immediately."

The maids volunteered to take the night watch. It seemed like a good offer, but Franc said she'd rather handle it herself and cast a spell.

"I'll set up a detection spell, so just sleep easy. This should be better."

"That's not a bad idea either."

A detection spell could catch even opponents invisible to the naked eye, so it would be more effective than an ordinary night watch. Most mages simply lacked the skill to use it, but Franc, whose abilities had advanced a step, cast it with ease.

And so we spent the night. Even as I closed my eyes, an ominous Magi brushed through my nostrils.

...Something might come tonight.

I thought, and shut my eyes.

A black mage. Dead, and turned into a Lich, the black mage dragged a broken gait forward. What the monster sensed was the scent of the living.

The black mage, Gaudium, smiled. Even in death, there was no rest. And so he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠paid for his sins, and committed new ones.

Over there: two carriages, and the traces of a fire recently lit. Gaudium moved, drawing on black magic, intending to kill everyone in those carriages.