Wandering Malice (5)
"Ahem."
At Reika's signal, I cleared my throat twice from behind — precisely twice. It was the cue I'd arranged with Irene. Everything had been planned out with the two of them beforehand. She would have caught on without any trouble.
"What's this about?"
"We've received multiple reports of theft in this area. The incidents took place right in front of this house."
"I don't know anything about that."
"Based on the testimony we've gathered, we're going to need you to come with us for a few questions."
"I don't know what you've heard, but I've got nothing to say."
The man waved them off, but Irene didn't budge an inch. She stepped straight into the room.
"It would be in your best interest to cooperate. Otherwise, I'll have you detained on the spot."
"What?!"
The man glared at Irene for a moment. But he seemed to realize that picking a fight with the guards wouldn't end well for him. He tucked his tail and reluctantly nodded.
"I don't know what you think you're going to hear, but don't come complaining later that you wasted your time."
He turned and started to walk away — and that was when Irene drew the blade at her hip and leveled it at his throat.
"……!!"
"That won't be a problem. You can stop worrying about it."
"What the hell do you think you're—!"
"Answer my questions honestly, and I'll spare your life."
It might have been a little heavy-handed, but these were people we suspected of kidnapping. That alone, combined with everything else tangled up in this mess, made a swift takedown the safer option. That was my call.
"……Who the hell are you?"
"You must not have heard me. I said if you answer my questions honestly, I'll spare your life."
"……."
No reply came. Irene posed her question slowly and deliberately.
"Where is Jennis?"
Even after the question, the man didn't move for a long moment. Then, at the sound of that name, his shoulders gave a brief, involuntary shudder. He let out a short breath —
"……Ha."
— and with a sneer, he roared,
"I'll answer you from the afterlife!"
"……!!"
In that instant, a human silhouette flashed across the edge of the room — an ambush aimed straight at Irene. And at the same time —
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!!!
A jagged pillar of ice erupted from the floor of the room.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"Haaah!"
Clang!
The man who'd lunged for Irene had his footing thrown off by the ice pillar, and the sword in his hand went flying. I didn't waste the opening. I snatched the blade out of the air and pressed it to the throat of the man who'd been shoved back.
"Make another move and you die."
"Ghk— damn it…! What is this?! What the hell is going on…!!"
Of course he was shocked. An ice pillar had just burst out of the floor in front of him. After all — this was magic.
The second instruction I'd quietly given Reika: prepare ice-element magic in advance and keep it ready for use near me at any moment.
After sending Ioline back, just before we began the search in earnest, we ran a few light tests in an empty lot where no one would stumble across us. It was land Irene had been granted by Serpina — near the estate where we would be living together going forward.
"Haaaah!"
First priority: determining just how far I could control Reika's magic through my rapier.
Sending Ioline back to the estate had been partly for the reason I'd given her — having someone who looked identical to Jennis hanging around would create all kinds of complications. But it was also because I intended to use magic if necessary, and coordinating with Reika would be far easier without Ioline present. Explaining magic to her one piece at a time would eat up a considerable amount of time, and it would mean exposing our hand to an outsider.
Ever since that moment not long ago when I'd blown a hole in a castle wall, I'd been turning a thought over and over in my mind: with this ability, I might be able to make the moniker people had slapped on me — the White-Haired Mage — half true.
Reika told me that while we'd been apart, she'd kept diligently practicing her magic on her own. For reasons she couldn't explain, this place seemed richer in mana than Valharat Castle where she'd lived before, and to her credit, she'd faithfully repeated the training routines we'd developed together — routines that hadn't held much real meaning at the time — without any instruction from me. Whether that had genuinely helped or not, I couldn't say. But the result was clear: Reika's magical ability had grown dramatically since I'd last seen her.
"All right. Let's run a few experiments. Understood?"
"Y-yes…!"
First, I tested control over a basic fireball. I caught the flame sphere she generated with my rapier and hurled it at a distant boulder.
Whoosh!
It vanished with a sharp bang, and I was certain of it.
If I don't hold the magic for long — if I release it as quickly as possible — I can regulate its destructive power.
Back then, everything had happened so suddenly that I'd let the fireball build up in the rapier for quite a while. And since I'd launched it more or less by accident, a considerable amount of force had gone into it.
Next, we tested the ice magic she'd been growing confident in lately. Like the fireball, holding it longer amplified its power. And most importantly —
CRACK!
By driving the rapier into the ground, a wall of sharp ice spikes erupted across a fixed distance in front of me.
"Whoa…!"
So this kind of application works too.
I'd thought of this method because "ice erupting from the ground" was one of the spells that existed in the game. When casting magic, characters would plant something like a staff into the floor — and when I copied that motion exactly, it worked the same way here.
"So this is the power of magic… If this ability were applied to the front lines, it would certainly change the face of warfare in no small way."
Irene spoke with genuine awe, her expression one of disbelief.
"It's still not ready for that."
"Hah… hah…"
Reika, after the continuous experiments, had dropped to one knee, gasping for breath.
"To use it meaningfully on a battlefield, you need the stamina to back it up — and at her current stage, that's not feasible. The first deployment would certainly make an impact, but the word Mage has already spread to some degree because of me. Once the enemy figures out how to weather a few attacks, it would just devolve into the same war of attrition as always."
"I see. Stamina, then… Still, assuming this ability can be properly utilized, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it could decide the fate of the continent. Even an ordinary general like me can already start imagining how it might be applied."
Judging by everything I'd heard, Irene was anything but ordinary — she was an exceptional commander — but that was beside the point.
"How are you holding up, Reika?"
"I think I can still use it a few more times…"
"Good. Then let's end the tests here."
Magic was essential for subduing our targets cleanly, so draining Reika completely beforehand was out of the question. And according to her, casting magic consumed mana not only from herself but from my rapier as well.
Ideally, we won't need to use this at all and can handle things cleanly…
I'd run the tests just in case, but if we could get through without incident, that would be best.
Or so I'd thought.
As always, life refused to go according to plan.
The moment I registered the second man lunging out, I caught the magic Reika had prepared in advance with the rapier at my hip and drove it into the floor. Exactly as in the experiment, a sharp ice pillar erupted from the ground and effectively blocked his strike.
According to Reika, Jennis hadn't been speaking with a single man alone — he'd been surrounded by several of them. I'd fully expected there to be others besides this one, and this time that prediction had proven correct.
Good. If we keep coordinating like this, I might be able to use magic freely whenever the situation calls for it.
Channeling through my rapier also amplified Reika's magic. As long as I kept her with me, it meant I could use magic myself. For someone who could make nothing but accurate predictions yet had no means of protecting his own body, that fact was immensely reassuring.
Once Reika fully awakened to her abilities, I too might one day stand on the battlefield alongside Irene. People already believed I'd called down a meteor from the sky — no one would question my power.
"D-damn it…!"
"Well? What's it going to be?"
Irene dropped her voice low and pressed the blade closer to his throat.
"……What… do you want?"
Part of me wanted to just kill these bastards right here for trying to harm us — but there were things we absolutely needed to hear from them.
"You know about Jennis Al Kaski. You're not going to claim otherwise at this point, are you?"
"……."
"Just tell us where he is right now."
Silence. So that was how it was going to be. I hadn't wanted to go this far, but if they wouldn't talk, there was no other choice.
"W-wait…!"
I took the confiscated sword and lightly grazed the throat of the man I'd brought down. A bead of blood welled at the tip of the blade —
"I'll talk! I'll talk, so p-please…!!"
Getting the information out of them wasn't difficult after that.
From the two men bound hand and foot to their chairs, we heard a rough outline of what had happened.
"So you're saying you were just errand boys?"
"That's right! Someone wanted us to bring them a man named Jennis Al Kaski so they could persuade him — we just delivered him…!"
"Then who was the client?"
"……."
"Why did they say they wanted to persuade Jennis Al Kaski? Persuade him of what, exactly?"
"……."
So they planned to stay silent to the end. I sighed and approached the man I'd taken down myself.
"Hey."
"……W-what."
"You saw the ice pillar come up out of the floor, didn't you?"
I rested a hand on his chest and spoke in a cold, even tone.
"What do you think would happen if one of those came out from inside you?"
"Eek—!!"
I didn't want to resort to threats. But if they still wouldn't talk even in a situation like this, it was highly likely they were under some threat of their own. When people stayed silent because their lives were on the line, you had no choice but to put their lives on the line yourself.
They had no idea how magic actually worked. After what they'd just witnessed, they had no choice but to take my words at face value. Something impossible had unfolded right before their eyes.
"I-I can't talk… If I talk, we're really dead…!"
"Would you rather die now, or talk and live a little longer?"
"D-damn it…!!"
Irene, who had been listening, spoke from behind me in a solemn tone.
"We came here already knowing the broad strokes. Speak honestly. Do that, and I will personally spare your lives."
"What can a common guard like you even do?!"
"……."
Without a word, Irene pulled back the hood she'd been wearing. Beneath it, a breastplate engraved with the clear crest of the royal house was revealed.
"……!!!"
"I am one of the generals who serve my lord. If you make a full confession, I swear on my honor that your lives, at least, will be spared. You may face punishment and imprisonment. But I promise you will not be killed. You don't have many options left either, do you?"
To open the mouths of people who feared losing their lives, you simply had to give those lives back to them. The classic good-cop, bad-cop routine. I couldn't help a wry smile.
Before coming here, I'd explained my full working theory to both Irene and Reika: that this entire chain of events was likely connected to a conspiracy of rebellion, and that Jennis Al Kaski had been caught up in it. It was a rather far-fetched claim, but both Irene and Reika seemed to place a fair amount of trust in me. Irene was one thing, but having Reika believe me as well was heartening… though I still wasn't entirely comfortable dragging a civilian like her into something this ugly.
"All right. Speak honestly."
"……You'll… really spare our lives…?"
"Of course. Naturally."
I met the man's eyes and put on the most benevolent smile I could manage, wondering just how much of my theory would turn out to be correct.
"……Open the door in the back."
I threw open the door the man indicated — and there —
"……!!"
— was Jennis, bound hand and foot, locked inside a small wardrobe.