There Is Still Hope (7)
Why is the guy who told me I stink even here?
“That’s how it turned out!”
No, Kimchi Dumpling. I didn’t hear a single word. What do you mean, “that’s how it turned out”?
“That fellow was running his mouth about something, and this thickheaded oaf overheard him and dragged him here.”
Fortunately I had Dev, our friendly resident explainer. He’d summarized things a bit too roughly himself, and he’d stepped out claiming an urgent bathroom emergency so I hadn’t caught the full story—but I got the general idea.
This guy must’ve been flapping his gums without a thought for the people around him, just like yesterday, and got himself caught. I knew it!
I casually crossed my legs as I regarded the man who’d suddenly found his carefully hidden secrets about to spill. Kankan sat before me with his head bowed low, sweat pouring off him in rivers.
The single earring dangling from his ear was the only thing about him that still looked carefree.
“Look, I’ve got nothing to say. I’m truly grateful the priestess healed me, and I’ll make a donation for that, so…”
“I did not heal you because I wanted money.”
Right. Our Inquisitor only throws full-count fastballs. Once you know her she’s just honest and easy to fool, but if you don’t know her she’s a steamroller like this.
“I mean…”
Thanks to that, Kankan couldn’t easily continue. Whether his earlier cynicism had fluttered away like a butterfly or whether the Inquisitor’s headlong charge had simply scrambled his brains, I couldn’t tell.
“I’ve got nothing to talk about.”
Or was he just watching his words? After a few dry-washes of his face he spoke firmly, and I watched him carefully. Somewhere in his eyes a very solid resolve had hardened.
“We merely wish to know something. Perhaps in the process we may even be able to help you.”
“I already told you. There isn’t anything.”
The Archmage stepped in and tried to coax Kankan gently. But the more he did, the more resolute the man’s face became.
“Since I’ve received help from the priestess, I don’t want to treat you people rudely. But no means no. Could you please not put me in a difficult position?”
“Hmm. The fact that speaking of it would put you in difficulty suggests the threat to your life is real, then.”
“That’s not—!”
But the man was far too transparent. What was he thinking, flaring up with a guilty look right at that part? Anyone with even a little sense would catch on.
“Then let me ask just one thing. The reason you would ‘be put in difficulty’—does it truly have nothing to do with the rumors about the Martial King?”
“……!”
And yet someone like him was perfect for us. The moment the Archmage drove the final wedge home, Kankan shot to his feet.
His face held less the anger of a man forced to speak of something he didn’t want to, and more a thick, choking fear of something.
“Stop.”
Kankan clenched his fists tight and whirled this way and that, scanning the surroundings. Knowing he was under surveillance, the act wasn’t entirely out of the blue. He was just a little late.
“Any further and it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous, is it.”
“This has nothing to do with any of you!”
I uncrossed my legs a little. Flutter. That was the moment the cloth hanging in place of a wooden door at the entrance to our room shifted.
“Caught ’em.”
So when he said he was going to the bathroom, it hadn’t meant he was going to relieve himself—it had meant he was going to deal with the ones hiding in the bathroom.
“That bastard—!”
“Mmph, mmph!”
“Looks like you’ve been leaving quite the trail of bread crumbs.”
And it wasn’t even just one.
I gave the two humans Dev tossed down a glance, then closed my eyes as if I weren’t paying any attention to the conversation. Even with my vision shut I could clearly feel Kankan gaping like a fish.
“Well, we’ve cleaned up all the little rats, so how about we have a proper talk now?”
The conversation that had been spinning its wheels finally began to move.
“…and that’s how it ended up like this.”
Once the watchers had been exposed and dragged in, there was no way for us to extract ourselves from this affair.
Kankan seemed to realize it too; he stopped stalling. He told us the whole inside story without holding anything back.
“How wicked!”
Naturally the Inquisitor was the first to explode with fury. She was also the only one among us who did.
“Ha. I came to recruit one talented person and now I’m stuck cleaning up a crime cartel.”
“For someone who sounds so put out, you look rather pleased.”
“There is nothing that brings me greater joy than delivering judgment upon the wicked who use power and wealth to bury their sins and escape justice and punishment.”
“…So everyone but the priestess already knew.”
“I only found out this morning, mind you.”
Dev, on the other hand, merely shrugged. Even accounting for his personality the reaction had felt too muted; it seemed he’d already scooped up the information on his own in the meantime.
I knew he could manage fine even without me telling him.
“We should report this. This is a matter that must be reported.”
“That won’t work. The one who buried this is the castle lord.”
“…Even a castle lord has no right to conceal a crime. He can simply be punished as well.”
At the Inquisitor’s words Kankan made a face that said he found this somewhat absurd. If put into words it would probably have been something like, “As if that could ever work.”
“How naïve. There’s no way that would work.”
Because of the debt he owed, the words Kankan couldn’t bring himself to say were delivered by Dev instead. The Inquisitor’s eyebrows shot up.
“Why do you think it wouldn’t work?”
“There’s no evidence.”
“There are clear victims, are there not? And there must be bereaved families of the dead as well.”
“You think the bodies are still around? They’ll have disposed of them all. And the bereaved families? The moment they testify their heads might go flying—do you really think they’d be willing to speak?”
“But you yourself said we should deliver judgment!”
“Judgment has to be delivered, sure. Just not that way.”
If crimes concealed by power could be solved by the proper channels, the world’s chaos would shrink by half. The fact that they can’t is exactly why things look the way they do.
I decided I couldn’t take Kimchi Dumpling’s side this time and began reviewing the whole chain of events again.
Most of the clues that had come up so far were tied to the Martial King. And now the true nature of the incident had all been laid bare.
But was this really the end? On the front lines of all places, the whole affair just wrapping up with the Martial King’s corruption alone?
No way. It absolutely couldn’t end like that.
If it passed without any demonic involvement, the name “front lines” would be crying.
“The victims will certainly have been subjected to measures to keep them silent. If we recklessly stir them up, their safety may be put in even greater danger.”
“…If we request protection from the temple—”
“We don’t know whether the temple is involved or not. Even if it isn’t, if the other side sends assassins it would be difficult to protect them. It’s not as though only the faithful can come and go from a temple.”
“Th-then what about this man! Is there nothing that can be done for him? Isn’t he a victim as well?”
“If we’d stepped in while he was still injured, perhaps, but it’s difficult now. Moreover he challenged and lost today, didn’t he? People will be more inclined to think he’s simply spreading slander because he can’t swallow the humiliation of defeat than to believe it’s the truth.”
“Guh…”
While the Archmage explained reality to the Inquisitor, I kept probing at a subtle unease that wouldn’t leave me alone.
The “wrongness” the Inquisitor had mentioned still hadn’t been clarified. That kept needling at me.
“Damn it, so even you people have no options. If I’d known it would turn out like this I wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Hey now, Lord Red Mane. You think anything would’ve been different if you hadn’t talked?”
“At least they wouldn’t be paying attention to you. No watchers are stuck on you people, so no matter what deductions you made they wouldn’t catch on.”
No matter how I thought about it, those bastards seemed connected to demons. The fact that Dev wasn’t saying anything made me wonder if it was nothing special after all.
But this kind of thing always came back to bite you later.
“…This won’t do. I’ll have to challenge him again tomorrow.”
“…You mean the Martial King?”
“Yeah.”
“No, but why…”
“Unless I force him to turn himself in, there’s no way to blow this case open! In that case I should at least force him to stop so there are no more victims…!”
“Uh, I feel a little bad saying this, but with your skill level I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“@(%#*%#(!”
Was there really no further connecting thread?
“Is there truly no way? Must we truly leave that criminal alone like this?”
“Hmm.”
“Well, skill is the problem, but cutting the matter short the way Lord Red Mane attempted is possible enough. Of course in that case you’d only be able to ease the victim’s bitterness; making it public would become even harder.”
“That would be nothing more than revenge through a loophole in the law!”
“I figured you’d say that. But there’s not a single method here that you’d like.”
“There is a method, then?”
“It’d be stranger if there weren’t. What’s protecting the Martial King right now is the castle lord’s backing, because the castle lord loves the Martial King’s career. If you smash the Martial King’s career, the castle lord won’t protect him anymore, so a path opens that way as well.”
“You mean seize his champion’s seat?”
“That’s possible too, but it would take a while. Better to make him lose face socially. For example, create—no, find and expose—a secret so big the castle lord himself would decide he can’t protect him any longer.”
Wait a second. I thought I’d just glimpsed Meat Dumpling’s true colors, but that had to be my imagination.
“The best would be if it connected to demons… but the odds of that are low, so no. As for a flaw big enough that even a castle lord who covers up murder would cut the Martial King loose…”
I broke out in a cold sweat inside as I watched the genre suddenly shift to conspiracy, intrigue, and politics.
If I thought about Deathbringer Gans this was correct, but it felt distant from everything I’d seen of him so far.
“Is there something like that?”
“Uh, no. He only got weird starting three months ago. Before that… he caused trouble, sure, but nothing this bad. There won’t be anything like what you want.”
“That’s a real shame. And what’s this about three months? Did something happen?”
“I don’t really know… We were friends, but we never opened up about everything.”
“I see.”
Dev accepted Kankan’s words easily enough. That only made my chest tighten further. It felt like he was about to go with, “If there’s no attackable fact, we win with agitation and fabrication!”
And if that happened Meat Dumpling and the Inquisitor would have an extinction-level battle…
“Ah.”
“……?”
“Come to think of it, I felt that wrongness from the Martial King as well. Has nothing come up about that?”
That was when the Inquisitor posed the question. “Expose a greater evil.” That itself apparently didn’t grate against her upright nature.
If someone suggested inventing and spreading something she’d reject it a hundred percent, but searching out and reporting what already existed was fine. That was the price that was originally supposed to be paid, after all.
“That… nothing so far, no. Wait—the Martial King too?”
“Yes.”
But she’d felt the wrongness from the Martial King as well? Ah, no matter how I look at this it’s the demon angle?! The angle where he made a deal with a demon?!
“Well, they did say the Martial King’s skill shot up right around the time he first became champion. Looking at it this way, maybe it was only natural.”
“What are you talking about?”
Kankan, who didn’t know about the “wrongness” the Inquisitor felt, asked bluntly. Dev and the Archmage both floated exclamation marks over their heads at him.
“After that thickheaded oaf came to this city, there’ve been a few people he said ‘felt wrong.’ Not that their behavior or anything was off-putting—just that when he looked at them, something felt strange.”
“I get it. So?”
“Since it’s the priestess’s instinct we figured it couldn’t hurt to look into it, and amazingly enough there was one common point, wasn’t there?”
“A common point?”
“At some moment their skill rose sharply. Just like how five years ago the Martial King, who was about equal with you, suddenly beat you and went straight to the champion’s seat.”
“Do you know anything about that? We do not regard this as coincidence. And if it is not truly coincidence but something entangled…”
“There is no greater scandal than the idea that the Martial King took the champion’s seat through some trick rather than legitimate skill. If this is real, even the castle lord won’t be able to cover it.”
Thanks to them explaining it to Kankan, I obtained a puzzle piece I hadn’t known either. I’d been pretending not to care, but they could have shared the information with me… Still, better late than never.
“…I-I don’t know about any tricks.”
More than that, what did this guy even know?
“But… at the time I thought it was a little strange too. There was no sign of any fortuitous encounter or special training, and then he suddenly got stronger… Wait!”
Correction. He did know something after all.
“You said earlier there were people who felt wrong. Are all of those people fighters?”
“From what I’ve heard, yes.”
“Do you know their names or descriptions?”
When Kankan seemed to have caught on to something, Dev quickly held out the documents.
“…I can’t read.”
“…I’ll read them for you.”
There was a slight problem, of course, but it wasn’t a major hardship. It just took a little more time.
“That’s right, yes! Those guys were all like that too! There was no reason they should have gotten stronger, and then they suddenly did! I’m sure of it!”
“…Wow, we really hit the jackpot.”
“There is no power in this world without a price. There must be something.”
“It doesn’t seem like a contract with a demon. What they put up as collateral for that power will be the important part.”
And at last a way forward opened.
“Inquisitor! Inquisitor!! Are you here?!”
“…? What is it?”
“Ah, you are! Excuse me for a moment!”
“Brother? What has you in such a hurry…”
“A b-beacon fire has gone up! The demons have begun their invasion!”
I only thought it had opened.
Anyway, if things ended easily it wouldn’t be life!