The Butcher's Cigarette
"...Honestly, I never imagined a single student could give me this much trouble."
The One-Eyed Gentleman tapped his cane against the floor as he spoke.
Before him, Hector stood propped against the wall, drenched in blood. Drops of it fell steadily from his brow.
"You truly are the children said to carry the Dark Alliance's future on their shoulders. I concede my mistake in underestimating you all."
Jet-black shadow stretched like a living thing from the tip of his cane, and besides Hector, it had pinned two more students against the wall by their throats.
"Speak."
The One-Eyed Gentleman studied his new captives. He tightened his grip on the cane, and the students felt the pressure closing around their necks, their faces twisting in agony.
"Simon Polentia's location. That is all I need, and I'll let you live."
"Go to hell."
Even choking, struggling to breathe, one of the captured students raised his middle finger.
"I don't particularly like the bastard, but he's Kizen all the same. You really think I'd tell you?"
The student beside him glared up with pure spite blazing in his eyes.
"You think I'd sell out my own classmate to save my sorry neck? Just kill me already, you son of a bitch."
The One-Eyed Gentleman raised an eerily elongated index finger and scratched at his head.
"Your camaraderie is admirable, if a foolish course of action driven by momentary emotion."
His single eye turned back toward Hector, still bleeding.
"Hector Moore. Speak. If you don't answer within ten seconds, I will snuff out these classmates' lives, one by one."
10.
9.
The One-Eyed Gentleman began counting, slow and deliberate.
8.
7.
The numbers fell, but Hector showed no reaction at all.
"You seem to find Simon Polentia rather irksome."
But at those words, Hector's brow twitched.
"I could remove him from the school for you. Then the most promising student in your department would be you, wouldn't it?"
"..."
"How long do you intend to content yourself with being forever second?"
5.
4.
The One-Eyed Gentleman resumed his count.
Then Hector's shoulders began to shake as a low, snickering laugh spilled out of him.
"You're a joke."
"?"
"What worth is there in some 'first place' that has to be handed to me by the likes of you?"
Hector's blood-smeared face split open into a grin, white teeth bared in a laugh.
"The one who breaks Simon Polentia will be me. If you people drag him off, I'll tear every one of you apart, put him back where he was, and break him with my own two hands."
2.
1.
Having finished the countdown, the One-Eyed Gentleman squeezed his single eye shut.
"A pity."
He began channeling jet-black into his cane, intending to relay it to the captured students—
"A pity indeed."
A cold voice from beside them chilled the air to the bone.
At the sudden intrusion of a third party, the One-Eyed Gentleman whipped his head around.
Flap!
There stood a man in a picture-perfect winter coat, short sleeves and shorts visible beneath it. A middle-aged man with unkempt, shaggy hair, a scruffy beard, and deep dark circles under his eyes stared back with a face of blank stone.
"Wouldn't you kindly release my students now."
Though his expression betrayed nothing, the emotion packed into his voice was thick and smoldering.
"So it's your turn to step in, is it?"
The One-Eyed Gentleman turned, feeling a chill crawl up his spine.
"Aaron Deia. Head Professor of Summoning."
Aaron had done something with a flick of power, and the black magic gripping the students' throats dissolved. They collapsed to the ground.
"Good work, all three of you. Break off and get yourselves treated."
As Aaron swept his hand through the air, crimson skeletons came streaking in and latched onto Hector and the other two students, carrying them up into the sky.
'...'
Even as his captives were stolen from him, the One-Eyed Gentleman could not move. He could not so much as twitch a finger.
Because if he took his eyes off the enemy before him for even an instant—
He felt certain his head would leave his shoulders.
This was a new kind of fear for the One-Eyed Gentleman.
"Now, then."
Just as the scene settled into stillness, a voice without inflection flowed out.
"Shall I hear why you trespassed into Kizen's operational zone and attacked my students?"
"..."
The One-Eyed Gentleman lowered his stance warily.
"I—"
BOOOOOM!
A colossal greatsword suddenly came swinging in from the flank.
A Dullahan. The One-Eyed Gentleman hurled himself backward.
Shshshshshshshk!
Crimson skeletons pouring from the undead airship loosed a torrent of arrows. The ground, skewered by thousands of blood-red shafts, was vivid enough to call to mind a field of roses in a watercolor painting.
"You can give your answer—"
A sinister killing intent flashed through Aaron's eyes.
"—after I take you apart."
'He is thoroughly furious.'
The One-Eyed Gentleman summoned jet-black beneath his feet.
'Every single Kizen professor is a continental-class powerhouse. Engaging one is absolutely out of the question.'
His body shrank and sank into the pool of shadow, then shot away at high speed. The arrows rained down like a storm, but the One-Eyed Gentleman weaved through them with ease.
'If I flee toward where the students are, even a professor can't—!'
Thwung!
But he felt a wall where empty air should have been. He couldn't get out.
"Grave Creation."
At Aaron's murmur, tombstones rose one after another from the ground bristling with red arrows. Black mist swallowed the surroundings.
"You won't be leaving this place."
'A barrier—the power of a summon!'
Among the graveyard-line of summons, the very pinnacle: a Crypt Lord stood revealed in all its imposing majesty. Facing that thing head-on would be sheer folly.
Grooooooar!
And now it had even torn through the graveyard's ceiling, revealing Aaron's undead airship above.
Truly a banquet of the highest-tier summons.
And on top of that, the airship's hatch was opening. One more moment and he'd be caught in a wide-area bombardment.
'Then I'll—'
The One-Eyed Gentleman burst from the pool and charged straight at Aaron. The cane in his hand warped and reshaped itself into a crescent blade of condensed jet-black.
Striking the summoner directly was the most fundamental tenet of dueling a master summoner.
Aaron was completely unguarded. Even as the One-Eyed Gentleman closed in, burning every last wisp of his jet-black, the man showed no thought of fleeing.
Snick—
He merely snapped his fingers.
SHRRRRRRRRRRRRK!
Shrrrrrrrk!
Bones of minuscule skeletons, far smaller than the ordinary kind, flooded over Aaron's body.
In the blink of an eye, they formed a helmet, boots, and a breastplate—a suit of armor taking shape around him. Bone Armor.
'Ghk!'
The face was still uncovered. Just as the One-Eyed Gentleman swung the crescent blade down at his head—
CLANG!
With a shriek of metal, the jet-black blade stopped dead. The helmet of the Bone Armor had formed in a heartbeat, and even his cutting curse, fueled by every drop of his jet-black, hadn't left so much as a scratch.
"That—"
Then one of the One-Eyed Gentleman's pupils dilated sharply.
"That form... is—!"
Aaron, unbothered, gripped the crescent blade in his hand and tightened his fist.
CRACK-KAKAKAAAANG!
The blade shattered into pieces. The One-Eyed Gentleman stumbled backward in horror.
'Impossible. Why is a man of this caliber not one of the Crows?'
KIIIKIKIKIKIIK!
Black-hooded skeletons burst out of the graveyard's walls next, drawing staffs and activating their dark magic.
High-grade binding spells. The One-Eyed Gentleman's body locked rigid in place.
'Liches, too!'
"Let's finish this."
Aaron, from within his armor, activated his dark magic.
Beyond the graveyard's barrier, something jet-black was writhing through the air. A winged creature with a long, serpentine tail.
The One-Eyed Gentleman struggled desperately to break free, but the Liches' binding magic would not yield.
Before long, the creature poked its maw through the ceiling of the graveyard.
"...Ah!"
He felt a terror that stopped his breath.
Jet-black poured from an enormous, skeletal skull. And then, from its gaping jaws, a breath of darkness engulfed the One-Eyed Gentleman's entire field of vision.
As his body crumbled to ash, one final thought crossed his mind.
I am utterly sick and tired of dragons.
"Hoo. Hoo."
The Butcher limped through the city inside the fortress. Behind him lay three students sprawled on the ground.
"Damn it all! Where the hell are they! Blue hair! Platinum blonde! Blue hair! Platinum blonde!"
Then one of the fallen students raised a trembling index finger.
"Stop... right there!"
The student hurled a curse, but the Butcher simply drew the small kitchen knife at his hip and gave it a careless sweep. The curse ricocheted off the blade and flew back at its caster.
"Guhk!"
It seemed to have been the petrification curse, Petrify—the student's body froze solid like stone.
But he had no chance to finish the job before more students came swarming in.
"Hoo. Haaah."
He dragged his feet and slipped behind a building at the edge of the city.
"Blue hair, platinum blonde, blue hair, platinum blonde."
The students here were all strong, without exception.
Not one of them was an opponent he could beat easily in his current state.
And then—
"...Tsk."
Along his side was a massive bite mark, as if a beast had taken a chunk out of him.
A wound from Grelion, the Professor of Summoning Materials.
"How many times does that monster transform?! Seriously!"
He had barely shaken Grelion off and escaped, but he was running on fumes now.
"Just a short rest. Five minutes, exactly five minutes, and then I'll find the blue-haired—"
He slipped into a nearby house.
Thud! He plopped down roughly on something like a sofa and leaned back, letting out a long sigh before pulling out a cigar and lighting it.
Fuuuuu—
His vision blurred and softened at the edges.
"Damn it."
Wounds like these could be treated later, one way or another.
But failing the mission was another matter entirely.
Sooner or later, the Cabal would send someone to kill him— if only to keep the mission's contents from leaking.
'Blue hair, blue hair, blue hair.'
Sllik.
Just then, he heard movement inside the house.
Sshhhk—
The sound was coming from the direction of the kitchen. The Butcher slowly brought his hand behind his back and rested it lightly on his kitchen knife.
"Who's there."
Tap. Tap—
Now the footsteps were coming openly, without pretense.
The one who emerged was a boy in a Kizen uniform. He looked like he'd just been woken from a nap, yawning with drowsy eyes.
"Hello there."
The boy said, and then casually sat down directly across from the Butcher.
"We meet again since the village. Mr. Butcher, sir."
"...Blue hair."
He hadn't expected the boy to show himself so openly.
The dazed, slightly foolish expression on his face broke into a smirk.
"How was the reindeer meat?"
He sucked on the cigar's smoke and asked. Simon answered.
"We ate well. Eshu was particularly fond of it."
"Glad to hear it. I may not look it, but I do my job properly."
Fuuuuu—
The Butcher exhaled a cloud of smoke, and his gaze locked directly onto Simon.
"Because the next cut of meat I'd like to handle is standing right in front of me."
Simon smiled faintly.
"Funny—the next person I'd like to take down is standing right in front of me, too."
Kukukukuku.
The Butcher's shoulders shook with laughter. Something about it struck him as hilarious, and soon drool was leaking from his mouth as he cackled and wheezed.
Hahaha.
Simon laughed out loud along with him. The laughter of the two men echoed quietly through the empty house.
The instant their eyes met once more—
PAF!
The Butcher exploded to his feet, the kitchen knife hidden in his sleeve already in his hand. At a speed neither fast nor slow, Simon drew the teal coffin he'd kept hidden behind him and set it upon his head.
KWAAAAAANG!
Crunch!
At the same moment, the wall behind the Butcher blew apart, and a storm of teal swords came pouring through, skewering his body.
⟨ Simon Original — Royal Guard ⟩
Drip, drip, drip—
Blood rained down.
The kitchen knife had stopped just short of Simon's face. And six teal blades were jutting out through the Butcher's body.
Simon pressed the coffin he held at its tip down deep over his brow, as if shading his eyes, and rose to his feet.
"Assassin of the Cabal."
Thud!
The Butcher collapsed to his knees before Simon. Simon regarded him with eyes gone cold as ice.
"I have a lot of questions for you."