Disqualified
Simon had heard the whole story from Pier.
He had taken the blow meant for Erzsébet and lost consciousness, whereupon Pier and Erzsébet formed a temporary alliance against their common enemy. Together they had captured the Priest. According to Pier, it had been an utterly pathetic fight.
"Let her down, please."
Simon decided to hear her out.
The Priest, who had nearly suffocated on the bonfire's smoke before being lowered from the ceiling, knelt bound tightly in cobwebs.
"Thank you! Thank you! *Hic*—waaah! It was so terrifying!"
Sobbing at the top of her lungs, she was young, as he'd suspected. She looked to be his age at most, maybe a year or two older.
"I don't think you're in any position to be thanking me yet. Answer my questions from here on."
"Yes! *Sniff*!"
"Are you a student of Efnel?"
It was a fairly important question. Kizen and Efnel were officially enemies despite the ceasefire, and releasing her could become a problem for Simon.
But she shook her head frantically in denial.
"I-I'm absolutely not!"
[Keh-heh! Lying from the very first question.]
Pier grinned and leveled his greatsword at her. The Priest's face drained white.
"I'm telling the truth! Please believe me!"
[Rise.]
The terrified girl scrambled to her feet. Pier brought his greatsword up from below and sliced through the hem of her robe.
A pair of white legs showed through the parted cloth, then a pure-white skirt. Higher still was a garment anyone could recognize on sight.
The Efnel uniform, made from the Holy Shroud and said to outclass even Kizen's uniforms armed with cutting-edge defensive dark magic.
Even the Efnel crest attached to it was an exact match.
[Honestly, these crafty Priests lie the moment they open their mouths.]
Erzsébet placed a hand on the Priest's shoulder and flicked her tongue. The girl squeezed her eyes shut with a squeak.
[No need to hear her out seriously, I say. Kill her right now and we can go back to our own conversation.]
"Please believe me! I— I'm actually...!"
She hung her head, face flushed. Then, biting her lip lightly, she spoke carefully.
"I was expelled from Efnel two years ago."
...Huh?
Hadn't she been a second-year? Blinking at the unexpected answer, Simon reacted—though Pier and Erzsébet remained indifferent. She gazed at him with pleading eyes.
"Please believe me! It's true I attended Efnel briefly! But I couldn't even survive my first year before getting thrown out—I'm just a mediocre nobody you can find anywhere in the world! Killing someone like me won't gain Kizen a single thing!"
"Then why are you still wearing an Efnel uniform? They collect those when you're expelled."
Her face turned even redder.
"I... I impersonated a student."
"Impersonated?"
"Yes. Back then I was really struggling, and I couldn't accept the fact that I'd been kicked out of Efnel, so... so I forged a fake student ID and a uniform and took missions as an Efnel student to earn money! That's really all it was!"
Her expression twisted with shame and bitterness.
"But word got out in the Holy Federation and no more work would come... so I ended up taking even dangerous jobs here in the Dark Alliance..."
[Do you truly expect us to swallow such an obvious lie?]
Erzsébet sneered and grabbed the front of the girl's uniform.
The girl looked up in confusion—then Erzsébet wrenched the fabric apart with her full strength.
Ziiiip!
"Kyaaaaaah!"
Startled, she shrieked and curled in on herself. Erzsébet examined the torn scrap of cloth in her hand and frowned.
[...She really is just some two-bit fraud, isn't she?]
The girl hung her head, sniffling.
"Don't be so rough with her."
Simon rose from his seat and approached.
She shrank back even further, turning herself away to hide the torn spot.
Rustle.
Simon pulled off the robe he was wearing and draped it over her.
"You okay? Cover yourself with this."
"Oh... thank you!"
The Priest's eyes welled up with gratitude.
And then—
[...]
Watching the scene, Erzsébet felt, for an instant, an extraordinarily tangled storm of emotions.
"I have more questions."
Simon walked back to his seat with a leisurely gait and sat down.
"First of all, hmm. What's your name?"
It was a remarkably gentle question. She quickly knelt facing him and answered.
"E-Ellen Zeil, sir!"
"How did you come by this mission?"
"Through a broker who crosses the border... he said there was an undead extermination job in the Dark Alliance that paid well."
But not a single word of Simon's interrogation was reaching Erzsébet's ears.
"Have you seen the lord of Arnish before?"
"Ah, yes! He told me about the mission personally."
"Do you have any proof you received the mission from the lord? Documents, an advance payment, anything?"
Every last bit of it grated on her, unbearably.
Simon being so sweet to some Priest or other.
And the Priest looking back at Simon with eyes full of warmth.
'...'
Violet petals, drifting down.
As the two of them traded words, Erzsébet felt another scene superimposing itself over them.
It was still vivid. Two lovers whispering sweet nothings to each other in a field overflowing with violets.
The man she had once loved more than anyone—Richard Polentia.
The woman who had stolen that man from her—Anna Cross.
It had been the same back then. Erzsébet, following Richard out of a bad premonition, had hidden in the brush and witnessed the two of them in each other's arms.
She had seen a necromancer and a Priest—kissing.
[...]
She'd thought she had forgotten.
But her heart—that terrible thing called a heart—was once again building an eternity of hell inside her chest.
"Good, this should do it."
Simon had obtained the broker's documents, the advance payment from the lord, and even the forged Efnel student ID. For Ellen, as long as she could save her life, money meant nothing. Whatever happened, all she wanted was to live.
[Boy. What do you plan to do with those?]
"I'm going to visit the lord in a little while."
Simon smiled slyly.
"Squeeze every last drop out of him, that's all."
[Kwahahahaha! Good, good! That's Richard's son for you!]
"U-um..."
Ellen ventured carefully, watching Simon's mood.
"So what happens to me now...?"
[Simon Polentia, was it?]
Erzsébet cut across Ellen's words.
[Your proposal that I join the Legion. Very well—I accept.]
Simon's eyes went wide.
"Really?"
[Yes. On exactly one condition.]
Her eyes flashed dangerously.
[Strangle that Priest to death with your own hands. Right now.]
Ellen's face went white.
[That is the entirety of my condition.]
"..."
Simon lifted his head and looked straight at Erzsébet.
The moment their eyes met, Erzsébet felt her heart hammering wildly.
He really did resemble him.
That man.
She had been certain it would be repulsive. The child born between Richard and that woman whose name she hated to even speak.
But it wasn't.
That expressionless face was setting her heart racing like mad.
It was tearing down the hell in her heart and letting a warm spring settle over it.
Even she herself couldn't understand her own feelings.
Richard again?
So in the end she never forgot him?
Had all those declarations of hatred—hate him, hate him—been just words?
Wasn't her pride wounded at all?
Half his blood was that woman's?
'But—'
Erzsébet squeezed her eyes shut.
As much as she hated to admit it.
She was already—unable to escape.
"I am Erzsébet, commander of the Spider Legion."
At last, Simon's mouth opened.
"Please explain why I should strangle Ellen to death."
[It is a proof.]
Erzsébet said.
[I wish to know whether you are worth serving as my master.]
"In that case—"
Simon's voice had gone completely cold.
"—I'm asking why I should have to prove my worth to you."
[...Pardon?]
"You seem to be under a rather large misunderstanding."
Simon rose slowly from his seat.
"It's true you were once part of my father's Legion, but my father is my father, and I am me. I intend to build my Legion by my own judgment and my own standards. And from what I've observed in the short time we've been together, you..."
Simon's frigid voice.
"—are disqualified."
It pierced straight through her chest.
Smashing her heart and setting the hell within her ablaze once more.
"You're an undead, yet you're drowning in resentment and emotion. You let your feelings toss you around until you can't even see what actually matters. Tell me—what exactly does killing this girl with my own hands prove?"
A jolt of shame, and her heart lurched.
She felt stripped bare.
"And this whole 'prove yourself' business is just an excuse in the end, isn't it? You only ever do exactly what you want to do. You want to control me according to your own impulsive, petty desires. I can neither trust nor rely on someone like that. A presence that unstable has not the slightest value in my new Legion."
Simon turned his back.
"Let's call it a night. Pier. Ellen."
[...]
The instant Simon's back came into view.
Erzsébet nearly, without meaning to, reached out her arm.
"It seems."
When Simon glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes were so terribly cold.
"I've only wasted precious time."
* * *
Late that night, Simon slipped out of the abandoned castle and headed for the lord's castle with Pier and Ellen.
[By the way, boy.]
Pier said.
[Is Erzsébet truly going to give up? Her talents are useful in all sorts of ways.]
"Ha, no way."
Simon answered with a sly smile.
"This was just a contest for the initiative. If I didn't want that obsessive personality of hers jerking me around from now on, I had no other choice. But one thing's certain—eventually, she'll have no option but to come looking for me."
The corners of Pier's mouth curled up.
[Don't tell me... even taking that holy spear to the chest was all part of your script?]
"No comment on that one."
Pier snickered.
[Tiny little whelp... scheming just like your rotten father! Kwahahaha!]
Ellen, who had been quietly watching Simon's mood from the side, chimed in.
"I'm sorry about that attack earlier."
"Don't be, Ellen. It's not like she aimed at you on purpose."
"But are your wounds really all right? Your chest was pierced by a holy spear..."
Simon rubbed his own chest as he replied.
"Perfectly fine. Luckily, it seems the spear didn't go straight through my Core."
"Oh, thank goodness!"
In truth—
though Simon didn't know it, the holy spear had pierced his Core cleanly through.
Pier had witnessed it too. In his fury at the absurd prospect of losing his contractor, he had intended to shred Erzsébet and the Priest alike to ribbons—but when he checked, Simon's Core was unharmed. The Legion contract, likewise, had taken no damage at all.
It was something that should have been impossible by all common sense, so Pier could only conclude that the spear had simply, by sheer luck, missed the Core.
'An unfathomable thing.'
A Core that refused to be destroyed even when pierced by Divinity.
...No matter how he turned it over in his mind, it made no sense.
"Pier? What are you doing over there by yourself?"
[Nothing. Let's go.]