The Nervous Mentor and the Holy Gate
The mood on Team Seywir could not have been higher.
They'd come expecting nothing more than a slightly intense taste of professional fieldwork, and instead they'd been handed a critical mission: retrieve a Saintess candidate. A high-difficulty assignment, no less — one that could bring them into open conflict with Efnel.
"Once we get back to Kizen, this is at least two months' worth of bragging rights!"
Ecstatic, Dick threw an arm around Simon's neck. "We're the ones intercepting a Saintess! So this is what it's like working with someone truly great — you get assigned missions like this!"
Meilin shot him a warning look that said quiet down. "It's an important mission even without you overhyping it, so shut up."
"Yay~ yay~"
Dick glued himself to Seywir's side as the agent walked ahead, eagerly firing off every question that came to mind. It wasn't empty flattery, either — it was one hundred percent genuine admiration.
"Hey, Simon."
"……"
"Hey!!"
Simon flinched and turned to find Meilin standing with her hands on her hips, deliberately putting on an annoyed face. "What are you brooding so hard about?"
"It's just……" Simon tilted his head, choosing his words. "I was wondering if we should really be taking on a mission this important."
"What are you talking about? It's not our mission — it's Agent Seywir's," Meilin corrected him. "We're just the side bonus. He's a Vengeance intelligence ace, so of course he handles missions like this no problem."
"Hmm."
The uneasy feeling still wouldn't leave Simon's mind.
Meilin looked past him to Camibarez. "Our Kami still adjusting? You've got a storm cloud sitting on your face."
When she asked so gently, Camibarez shook her head. "N-no, I'm fine now! As long as you're all here with me."
"Then why do you look so gloomy?"
"……"
As she fidgeted, Simon spoke up in a kind voice. "It's okay, Kami. You can tell us anything."
She wiggled her small hands nervously, hesitated, and finally blurted it out. "Are we…… are we going to 'abduct' that girl — the Saintess candidate?"
A beat of uncomfortable silence. Meilin flinched, then forced a bright, flowery smile. "A-abduct! What are you even saying? Haha! We're going to protect her from the Efnel bastards first!"
Camibarez's expression didn't budge. Meilin started thumping Simon's arm with her elbow, mouthing do something! at him.
In the end, Simon spoke. "If Efnel reaches the girl first, they'll take her to the Holy Federation regardless of what she wants. That much is certain."
In the Holy Federation, every newborn was required to undergo a Divinity Test. Score high on holy aptitude, and you were declared chosen by the Goddess Deva — and from that moment, your own will counted for nothing. You walked the path of a Priest whether you liked it or not, and every step of the process was sanctified beyond question in the name of religion.
"But if we reach the girl first……"
"We would ask for her consent."
Seywir cut in smoothly. "If she agrees, it's protection. If she refuses, it's abduction."
Camibarez swallowed hard. "Th-then what happens after you take her?"
Seywir swept his bangs back with the back of his hand and winked. "We wait for the higher-ups to decide. Our mission ends with bringing her in."
It would be a disaster if the residents of the Neutral Zone turned their backs on the Dark Alliance entirely, he explained. Her life wouldn't be taken — but she would most likely be sent to the Dark Alliance. And if she insisted on staying in the Neutral Zone, a condition might be attached: opening her Core. Open the Core, and she could never become a Priest.
"This is just my take," Meilin said, arms crossed, "but whatever life she ends up living, it beats being Efnel's puppet. At least with us she'd have some freedom."
"……Okay."
Camibarez steeled herself and nodded.
"Right, then — onward to the mission site."
At Seywir's words, Dick pumped his fist, having clearly been waiting for this. "We're taking the teleportation circle, right? Right? A mission of this urgency — time is of the essence……!"
However.
They arrived at a carriage station. Seywir exchanged a few words with one of the coachmen, then turned to the students. "Everyone, aboard."
"W-we're seriously taking a carriage? All the way to the mission zone?"
When Dick asked, flustered, Seywir rested his chin on his hand with a radiant smile. "Of course! A teleportation circle would be faster, yes — but this is the Neutral Zone. Our coordinates could be exposed to Efnel's side. A shabby ordinary carriage is the best way to travel without drawing a single eye."
"See! Everything an agent does has layers of meaning behind it!"
Dick and Seywir climbed aboard first, and the other three followed them to the carriage.
Same time, roughly five hundred meters from where Simon's group was boarding their carriage, a man stood stock-still in the street.
"……Didn't sleep a wink last night."
Dressed in a crisp suit, with broad, squared shoulders and a bear-like face, the middle-aged man was grinding his teeth and bouncing his leg. "Kids these days are terrifying, I tell you."
Beside him, a hard-featured woman who appeared to be his secretary was frowning. "Terrifying how? They're children."
Block popped his thumb into his mouth and gnawed on it. "No, they're Kizen kids. The one and only Kizen! Their parents are all big shots, and some of them are high nobility themselves!"
In a way that ill-suited his enormous frame, Block hunched up like a frightened rabbit. "I heard it from the seniors — getting chewed out by a student for sloppy work is just the baseline. The kids summon their superiors whenever they feel like it and bleed them dry, and one of them complained through a communication crystal that the break-room snacks were subpar, so the entire executive staff lined up and bowed their heads in apology."
"Are you seriously believing that nonsense?" The secretary scolded him. "And besides — you're a war hero who clawed your way through countless near-death experiences and built a solid career. Why on earth are you cowering in front of children?"
"……Do kids these days care about any of that? These days, the moment you start with 'back in my day,' their faces freeze over and they stop listening."
"Oh, come on!"
Block finally clasped his hands together and started pleading with genuine desperation. "Please just let them be good kids. Good kids. I swear I'll treat them right……."
"I'm sure they'll be sweethearts. Not everyone at Kizen is a brat."
"Y-you think? But one of my assigned students happens to be Special Admission No. 1. Guaranteed to be an arrogant, violent high noble."
"Good grief."
Block checked his wristwatch slowly. "Hmm, the kids are a bit late. Heh heh."
He had been waiting outside the Vengeance building a full hour before the appointed time. And now, a full hour after the appointed time, no Kizen students had appeared.
"Hnngh, I get it. This is one of those silent tests, isn't it? I'll wait here for as many hours as it takes, kids! Just please, please show up……"
The secretary heaved a long sigh. "Let me make this perfectly clear. At the dispatch site, you are the one in charge — you! However wild those kids might be, Agent Block holds the authority to grade their performance!"
Block, sunk in despair, was muttering to himself and heard nothing at all. "Agent Seywir! Agent Seywir!"
Just then, a man came bursting out of the Vengeance building, frantically searching for someone. The moment he spotted Block and the secretary, he came running over. "Agent Block! Madam Secretary! My compliments on your hard work! Have you by any chance seen Agent Seywir?"
The secretary shrugged. "Can't say we have."
"I'm losing my mind, honestly! Where the hell did that walking disaster go this time!"
"What happened?"
The man clutched his forehead and groaned. "He walked out carrying not his usual infiltration work, but a maximum-priority assignment. A target-acquisition mission meant for the combat division!"
"What?"
"If you see him, please let me know!"
The man bolted off toward the market district to question the locals. The secretary watched him go for a long moment, then turned her head. "Agent Block, did you hear that? That lunatic Seywir seems to have caused yet another disaster."
Block still wasn't listening in the slightest. "Oh, and I heard this rumor too. Apparently, when Kizen kids ask where you went to school, if you name anything other than Kizen, they start treating you like dirt from that very moment."
"Agh, enough already!"
"*Sob*… I'll bow my head and wait," Block whimpered. "I'm a Moiran dropout."
"Me? Why, I graduated from Kizen, naturally!"
Inside the carriage rumbling toward the mission site, Seywir puffed out his chest — and Dick let out a gasp of awe. "Goodness! You're our direct senior, then!"
At the claim that he was a Kizen alumnus, even Meilin's face showed surprise. This man was elite through and through, as if measured with a ruler.
Dick pressed on. "First year alone nearly kills us — and you survived three years there! I genuinely respect you!"
"Heh heh. Second year gets even harder, and third year is pure hell."
Then Meilin studied Seywir's face for a moment before speaking up. "For someone your age, Agent…… would you happen to know Professor Bahil or Professor Aaron?"
"Ah, those two? As if I wouldn't."
Dick's and Meilin's mouths fell open. Calling two active Kizen professors those two!
"Let's see…… they were my juniors back when I was a third-year."
"Whaaaat!"
"They stood out from their early years, so I taught them quite a lot. Even now, when I have business at Kizen headquarters and run into them, they bow to me with impeccable courtesy. Haha! I always tell them to stop that — they're Kizen professors now."
"Impeccable courtesy? Professor Bahil and Professor Aaron?"
As if he'd been waiting for the opening, Seywir launched into one tale of his glory days at Kizen after another, and Dick and Meilin — even Camibarez — leaned in and listened with delight.
Hmm.
Simon, arms crossed, was the only one who sensed something off.
"Oh, right, that reminds me. Back then, Bahil wove a web of blood to catch a friend of ours who was running away."
"Wow! He's a Curse professor now, but I guess he used Hemomancy back in his student days too!"
"Hm? Ah — yes, that's right. He was Hemomancy early on, but later switched to curses……"
Simon closed his eyes.
It was nothing more than suspicion — not enough to raise, not enough to accuse anyone over. For now, he decided, he would simply watch carefully.
The border between the Holy Federation and the Neutral Zone.
The Holy Gate.
The Holy Gate was a kind of checkpoint; anyone leaving for the Neutral Zone had to pass through it, no exceptions.
Right now, Efnel students were filing through the Gate. Every one of them had been assigned a dispatched mission in the Neutral Zone.
"It's my first time in the Neutral Zone, Sister Lethe!"
The speaker was Lethe's roommate — a girl with twin braids named Lirinet. Lethe, hands tucked inside her robe as always, was scowling ferociously. "It hasn't been that long for me."
"Pardon? You've been here before?"
"……Ah, don't ask. It brings back nightmares of being stuffed inside a cramped little box."
"? I have no idea what you mean."
Just then, three girls in Efnel uniforms were approaching, calling out Lirinet's name.
Lethe eyed them with her usual air of bored indifference. "Your groupmates?"
"Yes!"
"Honestly, you picked nothing but bland ones."
"Sister Lethe, are you really going alone?"
She nodded and yawned. "Tagging along with other people would only get in my way. I'll wrap this up in a flash and head back to the Holy Federation."
"That's our Sister Lethe! Even the way you move is revolutionary!"
"What mission did you draw, Lirinet? Something brutal?"
Lirinet waved a hand as if it were nothing. "Oh, just the usual — securing a Saintess candidate."
"Be careful out there. I hear Kizen's kids are headed this way too."
"Oh my! Are you worried about me right now? I'm thrilled!"
The instant Lethe's scowl deepened into a full glare, Lirinet snapped into a reflexive defensive stance. "S-still, before we part — is there anything you'd like to say to your roommate, one last time?"
Hands jammed in her robe pockets, Lethe frowned and pondered for a long moment, then spat it out bluntly.
"The boy with blue hair."
"?"
"If you see a Kizen boy with bluish hair during your mission, assume you're already dead and run."
"Hoho! Me, run? I'll have you know my combat abilities rank near the top of all of Efnel."
"Top rank or not, that's not the point."
Lethe fixed Lirinet with a grave, unblinking stare.
"If you get caught by him, something like you will genuinely die."