The Blood Feud of the Steppes
Byul-Ya Tun Sokum Marlart.
A woman whose name resembled Hong Peng's, and whose build and appearance were almost the same as well.
But everything else about her was different. Hong Peng had an exotic air about her, yet she was a person of genuine character who carried both the dignity of a Kizen professor and a warm kindness. This woman, on first impression, looked closer to a wild beast than to a human being.
And this woman was—
'The new Toxicology professor!'
The replacement of the Hemomancy professor had come suddenly, but the arrival of a new Toxicology professor had been a certainty. Even so, handing that professorship to someone like her struck Simon as an astonishingly unconventional appointment.
"Since we're on the subject, here's a proposal!"
She thrust her head forward, tongue flicking out.
The saliva pooling on her tongue wasn't clear — it was a pale grass-green. As it dripped onto the table, the table's surface began to melt away.
"Special Admission No. 1, you little runt! Become my direct disciple!"
"……I'm sorry?"
A swarm of question marks bloomed across Simon's face.
What was this? Where had this sudden development come from?
"Might I ask why?"
"What kind of reason do you need!"
She spread both arms wide and cackled.
"You made it into Kizen, so you ought to aim for the very top! I'm going to climb higher than Hong Peng could ever dream of looking up at! And you're my first pick for getting there!"
She shot up her index finger.
"You're Special Admission No. 1! I'll drag No. 2 and No. 3 in under me too! There are three of them, right? A true top professor ought to have students like that, shouldn't she?"
Was she saying she'd force Serne and Shatel into the Toxicology major as well?
Simon had no idea what was going on in her head, but he lowered his head anyway.
"If those are your reasons, then I must decline."
"Aaaaaaang?!"
Furious, she hoisted both legs high and slammed them down onto the table with a BANG!
Simon didn't so much as flinch. He continued calmly.
"I don't know what kind of person you are, Professor. I've never attended your class, and I don't know what I would even learn from you. If I'm simply to be used as a tool to realize your ambitions, that doesn't strike me as sufficient reason to join you."
He had chosen his words as earnestly and gently as he could. Please, let her understand……
"Then let's fight it out right here! If I win, you're in!"
She didn't understand a word of it.
"Y-you're not serious, are you?"
"Not fair, you think? Fine, I won't use one arm."
"……I decline."
"Then I won't use either arm or my legs."
"It's not a question of difficulty. I have no intention of dueling you at all."
They said that against limitless illogic, logic itself loses. He'd never dealt with anyone like this before, and it left him a little rattled.
But right now, there was something far more important. Simon pulled himself out of Byul-Ya's orbit and spoke.
"There's something I'd like to ask you, Professor."
He drew a newspaper clipping from his coat and spread it open for her to see.
"This dead man here in the paper — you know him, don't you?"
"Yep. I killed him."
The answer came back so matter-of-factly that Simon was briefly at a loss for words. Byul-Ya cackled and popped the cork off a fresh bottle of liquor.
"What's this! The little runt wants to interrogate me, does he? Ah — right, he can. I'm not technically a Kizen professor yet. I don't officially receive my authority until tomorrow."
So she was in the same situation as Walter. But that wasn't the point.
"Just today, my friends — students currently enrolled at Kizen — were kidnapped."
Simon lowered the newspaper, his expression grave.
"I haven't been able to pin down the reason or the purpose behind the abduction, but I believe these people are the prime suspects, and I'm pursuing them."
"That'd be the Hoopa Tribe."
The Hoopa Tribe? Simon reacted instantly, filing the new information away.
"Who are the Hoopa Tribe? And what is your relationship with them, Professor?"
"A minority clan on the opposing side, back when I lived on the steppes. We clashed with them plenty in those days."
She grinned crookedly.
"They want my head."
"Ah……"
"Same thing happened in this city. They came at me swinging blades with poison smeared on them, so I paid them back in kind. Simple as that."
A flicker of unease crossed Simon's mind.
"Do you know where the Hoopa Tribe is, Professor?"
"Couldn't care less about that! And they don't know where I am anyw—"
FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP!
The sudden thunder of beating wings made both of them look up.
Above the open-air roof, an enormous flock of birds swept past in a low flight. They were scattering leaflets indiscriminately, each one gripped in their talons, and a few of them fluttered down into the tavern where the two sat.
Simon picked one up and read it.
"!"
His eyes glinted with fury.
In the photograph, taken by a mana camera, Meilin sat bound to a chair, her eyes and mouth covered — and behind her stood Dick.
A Kizen student is being held captive.
Byul-Ya Tun Sokum Marlart is to abandon her claim to a Kizen professorship and return alone to Lion Rock on the steppes by tomorrow night.
Should she fail to comply, these students' lives are forfeit.
"What is this."
Byul-Ya caught one of the leaflets too.
"……'Holding a Kizen student captive. Byul-Ya Tun Sokum Marlart is to abandon her claim to a Kizen professorship and return alone to Lion Rock on the steppes by tomorrow night. Should she fail to comply, these students' lives are forfeit?'"
PFFT-HA!
Byul-Ya burst into loud, unrestrained laughter.
"These bastards are getting downright pathetic, aren't they?"
Simon's expression turned grim.
So the reason they'd kidnapped the two of them was to flush out Byul-Ya, the incoming Toxicology professor? Just how deep did this grudge run, that they'd resort to something this extreme?
"Guess we're doing this, then."
She shuffled across the room, dropped into a chair, and crossed her legs. Her eyes flashed.
[Find them.]
Screeee—
Rats and insects that had been lurking in every corner of the tavern scattered in all directions, and the crows gathered on the roof took to the sky.
'The power to command animals.'
It was the ability of the Druid lineage — a bloodline now thought to have vanished from the world entirely. Hong Peng, too, had once demonstrated a power to control hippopotamuses back in class.
Whatever the case, for now there was nothing to do but trust Byul-Ya's powers of detection.
"Professor. What kind of grudge do you have against the Hoopa Tribe, that my friends — people with nothing to do with any of it — got dragged into this?"
"What, are you blaming me?"
"No, ma'am. I'm just curious."
She fetched a fresh bottle and held it in her hand.
"That's a long story."
Snik.
Wichasha, chief of the Hoopa Tribe, untied the strap gagging Meilin's eyes. As it slid free, her blue eyes — dyed with fury and humiliation — blazed as if they might catch fire.
"Forgive us. We had no choice but to take such a photograph."
"Oh, sure."
She forced the irritation out of her voice.
"So the plan is to use our lives as collateral to lure in that Toxicology professor candidate — Byul-Ya, was it?"
"That is correct — so I state."
Byul-Ya was a wandering drifter with nowhere in the world to call home, and Wichasha and the Hoopa Tribe had been chasing her for years in pursuit of a blood vengeance.
Then something had happened that turned their whole world upside down. Kizen had made contact with Byul-Ya — and offered to accept her as its new Toxicology professor.
The seat of a Kizen professor was the absolute pinnacle of the Dark Alliance, a position no one could dare touch. The moment she backed her strength with that kind of power and crossed over to Roc Island, the Hoopa Tribe's blood vengeance would be out of reach forever.
"No — it wouldn't end there. Her retaliation would begin."
Wichasha ground his teeth.
"I have heard that a Kizen professor can move even the necromancers of the main branch at will. If she dispatches even a handful of them, the ecosystem of the steppes will collapse and our clan will be slaughtered to the last man. For us, this is a matter of the clan's very survival."
"So you're going to stop her from becoming a Kizen professor, drag her out, and kill her?"
Meilin smiled viciously.
"Ridiculous. If you're that terrified of someone you've wronged holding power, then just have your whole clan go crawl to her and beg for forgiveness. Give up the revenge completely."
"……We cannot give up our vengeance. And kneeling before her — that is even more impossible."
"Wait, hold on."
Dick, seated across from them, turned around and cut in. He seemed to have finally gotten his wits back about him; there was life in his eyes again.
"Why are you guys so obsessed with revenge? What exactly did this Byul-Ya person ever do to you?"
Wichasha's face hardened. One of his men behind him had signaled that no more needed to be said, but Wichasha shook his head and opened his mouth.
"On the steppes, our Hoopa Tribe and Byul-Ya's Marlart Tribe were enemies. Our nomadic routes overlapped, and it bred constant conflict. I accept that warriors dying in those clashes was simply the way of things. But!"
His eyes went bloodshot.
"Byul-Ya broke a taboo!"
"What did she do?"
"She did not merely kill our warriors in battle. She came into our villages and slaughtered the women and children as well."
"……Oh."
Wichasha, still trembling with rage, let his head fall.
"Among those victims was my wife. I can never forgive her. I swear by everything that I will destroy her by my own hand, by any means necessary."
Dick's jaw hung open, his eyes darting — but Meilin's fury boiled over instead.
"Then settle it yourselves! Avenge and square it away on your own time! Why are you doing this to people who have literally nothing to do with it?!"
"For that, you have my apology."
Meilin, who had been squawking out her rage, abruptly froze.
She shut her mouth, went quiet for a while as if thinking, then spoke again with a look of cold steel.
"Old man. Answer me straight."
"Very well."
"If Byul-Ya ignores your demands and crosses over to Roc Island and becomes a Kizen professor anyway — what then?"
"……"
Byul-Ya didn't know Meilin's or Dick's faces. She wasn't even a Kizen professor yet. There was every chance she'd simply ignore whatever happened to two strangers and cross over to Roc Island regardless.
But Wichasha shook his head in denial.
"She will not. Byul-Ya has enormous pride. She will rage that we dared lay a hand on her, and she will accept our challenge—"
"I'm asking a hypothetical. If she ignores the demands, what will you do?"
As Wichasha fell into silence, Meilin pressed the blade in.
"You people seem to carry one seriously deep grudge. You're not just going to swallow it, say 'nothing we can do,' and head back to the steppes — are you? Even you can't claim that with a straight face, can you?"
"……"
After a long quiet, he spoke.
"If it comes to that, then our response must change as well."
Having answered as if dodging, Wichasha turned his back and walked away.
Watching him go, Meilin was certain of one thing: these people could not be trusted, period. She should have known it from the moment they kidnapped innocent people for the sake of their purpose — revenge or otherwise.
'I have to get out of here under my own power, somehow.'
Meanwhile, Dick in the back row was already joking around with the other Hoopa tribesmen, laughing it up noisily.
Good for him, having such an easy time of it. Never mind that their fates could be decided tomorrow.
Furious, Meilin tilted her chair slightly forward — then shoved it back with all her strength, driving the back of it into Dick's skull.
"Ow! What was that for?!"
"Just because!!"
Wake up, you idiot!
Her indignation felt ready to burst out of her, but she couldn't let it show. For now, she had to play the obedient captive while she searched for an opening.
And above all else—
'If it's Simon, he's definitely going to find us.'
The Hoopa Tribe's greatest mistake hadn't been Simon and Camibarez — it was kidnapping her and Dick.
Simon was moving now, his eyes burning a ferocious blue. She had faith that that boy would find them, no matter what it took.
Her bound hands shifted slightly, twitching against the ropes.
The moment for a counterattack would come without fail. She had to be ready when it did.
'Haaah.'
Her head tipped back toward the ceiling. Being tied up like this again — somehow it felt like déjà vu.
'……He probably won't come for me, will he?'
Pion.
An absolute powerhouse who had fought the Saintess one-on-one.
Whenever she was in danger, he had appeared — every single time.
His identity remained a mystery, but Meilin was certain Pion was affiliated with Kizen. Someone skilled enough to fight a Saintess was no student — a TA, maybe, or one of the professors?
Or perhaps an inspector dispatched from the main branch, or an agent of the Crow?
Whatever the case—
'He probably won't really come. But there's no harm in daydreaming, right?'
She lifted her head, picturing Pion's figure. Even now she could see it — the tyrant who had ruthlessly crushed that perverted old man in Deathland and carried her out to safety.
If she could just see that man again, she felt like she would pay any price at all.
For a moment, she let herself imagine it — Pion appearing out of nowhere, smashing those filthy tit-freaks into the dirt, and coming to rescue her.
'But why?'
She bit her lip.
Why, of all faces, was it Simon's that kept surfacing in her mind instead of Pion's?