The Maker of the Paralysis Poison (4)
“Instructor, how…?”
“I anticipated it.”
Ziel replied curtly as he hoisted the unconscious man to his feet. He moved with effortless ease, handling the limp body like a wooden marionette. But that was hardly the only astounding part of the situation.
“He won’t be attacking anyone anymore.”
The man hung completely limp, without the slightest twitch.
How on earth did he subdue him?
Yon hadn’t had his eyes closed for more than five seconds at most. In that brief span, Ziel had slipped inside without making a sound and neutralized the assailant.
“I-Is he dead?”
“I did not kill him.”
“Then…”
“Cadet Yon Riversong.” Ziel inspected Yon’s condition. “You are unharmed. That is fortunate.”
“Instructor…”
Yon’s eyes welled up. He came dangerously close to bursting into tears.
“Were you being questioned by the guards?”
“Yes. Well, not yet, but soon…”
“Understood. I will take this man with me.”
Ziel hoisted the captive onto his shoulder. The man remained dead to the world.
Desperately, Yon called out, “Instructor, what… what should I do now?”
Ziel paused just before stepping through the doorway.
“Do as you wish, Cadet Yon Riversong.” He added, “Have you not already done so?”
Yon lifted his head.
“You received the same proposition, yet this time you refused. Even while your life was on the line.”
“……”
“Continue to do as you wish, just as you did a moment ago. And tell no one of what took place here, as before.”
“I understand.”
“Neither in the past nor now have we ever met.”
Leaving those words behind, Ziel opened the door and stepped out, carrying the man with him.
“I-Instructor?” Yon gasped in shock.
Was it really alright to just walk out like that?
Yet even after the door clicked shut, silence reigned in the corridor. There should have been guards posted outside.
What just happened?
Meanwhile, Ziel slipped away unnoticed, making his way toward an abandoned building on the academy grounds. Not a single soul caught sight of him along the way.
Fortunate that the sun has set.
So long as there were shadows and cover, slipping past watchful eyes in broad daylight was hardly a challenge. In the creeping dusk, it was child’s play. Perhaps it would pose a challenge to an ordinary assassin, but to Ziel, it was second nature.
Creak.
Just as Ziel pushed open the door to the derelict building and entered one of its rooms, the man’s eyes snapped open.
Instinctively, the captive held his breath, reading the room and scenting the air.
Where am I?
He had clearly been in the middle of slitting Yon’s throat. There hadn’t been anyone around capable of ambushing him, and certainly not the boy. The situation defied explanation.
The moment he slit his eyelids open ever so slightly—
“You’re awake.”
Along with the voice came a violent force that sent him hurtling into the wall.
“Ghk.”
A choked sound rose from his chest, but no voice came out. His limbs refused to obey. The only parts of him that could move were his rolling eyes.
Who is this?
Darkness cloaked the room, yet his captor’s face was clearly visible. Even so, he didn’t recognize him in the slightest.
“I was never taught how to torture,” the voice stated calmly.
It was completely unfamiliar.
Who the hell are you?!
With each step the mysterious man took toward him, terror mounted inside the captive’s chest.
“However, I do know several ways to make someone talk.”
Shring.
A dagger appeared before his eyes—the very blade he had brandished at Yon moments ago, the one he had intended to draw across the boy’s throat. The steel stopped a hairsbreadth from his eye. A nudge would plunge it right into his eyeball.
His body trembled violently.
“Blink twice if you intend to answer.”
The utter deadpan detachment of the voice sent a chill down his spine.
This guy… is a professional.
Where he hailed from didn’t matter; instinct screamed it with absolute certainty. Above all, he couldn’t fathom what had happened to him—how he had been knocked out, or how his body had been paralyzed. For an operative like him to be completely blind to the technique used against him meant only one thing.
He’s a step ahead of me. No, leagues ahead.
Was he from the trade? If so, hesitation was suicide. He had handled targets like this countless times himself, and the outcome invariably boiled down to two paths: refuse to speak and die, or talk and improve one’s odds of survival.
Blink, blink.
He blinked with frantic haste. Only then did the dagger pull back slightly.
Tap.
The man tapped a point on his body, and voice finally returned to his throat. A question arrived in the same breath.
“Did you promise five hundred thousand sel to have Deleve Kundel attacked?”
“Y-Yes, that’s true!”
“Where did you obtain the poison given to Yon Riversong?”
The moment he hesitated—
Tap.
The dagger’s tip pressed against his thigh.
“I may not know torture techniques, but I know where to strike to produce the most agony.”
That literally means you know torture!
The man blurted out frantically, “T-The black market!”
“Is that all?”
Just as the dagger dug into his thigh—
“The syndicate—when the Black Sky assassins fell, items were leaked onto the market! I bought it from there! O-Or rather, that’s what I was told!”
“From your client?”
“Yes…!”
At that answer, the man—Ziel—paused for a fleeting moment, lost in thought.
Black Sky.
The organization Ziel had belonged to until just a few months ago, an assassin syndicate that no longer existed.
“Elaborate.”
“It’s just as I said! Word was that along with poisons, even a dagger used by the Phantom was circulating… I heard it was slated for auction.”
A dagger I used?
Did such a thing even exist?
“A dagger used by the Phantom?”
“Y-Yes! Rumor has it that blade claimed thousands of lives… That’s what they were saying.”
Rumors were always exaggerated. It had never been in the thousands. A few hundred, perhaps. Furthermore, whenever he used a dagger, he disposed of it—hurling it into a riverbed or burying it where no one would ever find it. If that proved impossible, he carried it back and melted it down.
“Other relics of the legendary Phantom surfaced as well. T-Though of course, the Phantom himself is currently on the run…”
Someone was clearly trading on the Phantom’s name.
“What other items were there?”
“Poisons like the one I acquired… smoke pellets, lockpicks, and even skin masks.”
It seemed equipment scattered after the fall of the syndicate had made its way across the underworld.
The black market.
He knew several spots. It was likely one of them.
Ziel returned to the matter at hand.
“Now for the important question. Did you orchestrate this?”
Here was the crux of it. The man answered without hesitation:
“I drew up the operational details, but someone else ordered it.”
The captive had already taken the measure of his interrogator. Evading the question or staying silent meant death.
I can’t die here.
Cooperating offered no guarantee of survival, but keeping the odds alive was what mattered. Even so, he couldn’t lay out every detail. Escaping death right now would only invite a far worse demise later.
“Who was it?”
“I-I don’t know either! I’m just an operative acting on covert orders…”
The man knew his captor would suspect him of stonewalling. After all, it wasn’t the answer he wanted.
I can endure a cut or two.
A bit of pain was far better than being dead.
“You’re lying.”
“It’s the truth! W-We’re in the same trade, you must know how this works!”
His captor was a pro, which meant he was likely an underworld operative.
Could House Kundel have hired him?
Whatever the case, if he held out through a round or two of pain while sidestepping the core details, the guy would eventually negotiate—
Slice!
“Ghk.”
A searing burn ripped across his throat.
“You have twenty seconds.”
Something warm trickled, and then blood began gushing in a mad torrent.
“Blink rapidly if you intend to speak the truth before your time runs out.”
Thump, thump.
His heart pounded wildly against his ribs, and his breath grew frantic.
“Then I will spare you.”
Enveloped in the terror of impending death, only one thought filled the operative’s mind:
I picked a fight with the absolute wrong monster.
The man was a Crow.
Operatives closer to information brokers than outright assassins. It was hardly an exaggeration to say that nearly all intelligence within the empire passed through the hands of the Crows before spreading outward.
“Which faction of Crows do you belong to?”
“I-I’m with the Red Shadow.”
Red Shadow.
A syndicate boasting significant scale among the Crow networks. An outfit of that size could probably tell you how many gray hairs sprouted on the head of any given high noble patriarch.
To think I’d get exposed like this.
Normally, Crows were trained to silence themselves if captured—swallowing poison hidden between their teeth, or biting their tongues if all else failed. But the poison capsule in his molars had already been plucked out, currently resting in the mysterious man’s hand. He must have stripped it while carrying him here unconscious.
Nor could he easily bite his tongue. Right after having his throat cut and then miraculously closed back up, the instant he attempted to bite his tongue, his jaw had nearly been ripped from its socket.
Inhuman speed. What on earth is this guy?
His identity remained an utter mystery. Was he an assassin?
I thought they all died when Black Sky was wiped out.
Black Sky had been the empire’s greatest assassin organization, forged by uniting every syndicate large and small under one banner. In the wake of its destruction, other factions had either dissolved or voluntarily disbanded. Strictly speaking, one could consider assassins extinct throughout the Valdrain Empire.
The Phantom was on the run, of course, but there was no way this man was the Phantom.
He looks ancient. He’s practically an old man!
The Crow—Erso—focused his nerves as another question fell upon him.
“Did you intend to kill Deleve Kundel?”
“N-Never! The plan was simply to orchestrate a natural defeat!”
That was the truth.
“And we were deceived as well!”
“Deceived?”
“The initial commission… never mentioned Deleve! It only asked for paralysis poison to be deployed!”
“Yet you accepted it anyway?”
“…The payout was substantial.”
“How much?”
“One million sel.”
Ziel pressed on:
“Who commissioned it?”
Erso answered without a shred of hesitation:
“Dakeus Altman.”
Just as expected.
“The motive?”
“I-I don’t know that either! I only took the contract and carried it out…”
There were two reasons he had accepted such a request despite not being a wetwork assassin. First, the staggering sum of one million sel. With Black Sky gone, the Crow trade had entered an unprecedented boom. Demand that once flowed to assassins had migrated entirely to the Crows. While they generally refused assassination contracts, requests of this nature were fair game.
Damn it all.
Regardless, this was utterly humiliating. To break under threats and torture and spill everything—it was a first in his career as a Crow. He had never imagined crossing paths with a monster like this.
Still, a sliver of hope remained. He had told the unvarnished truth, so perhaps he might be released—
Tap.
His consciousness cut out right there.
Ziel had knocked Erso out once more. Pulling his hand from Erso’s neck, Ziel dispersed the mana gathered at his fingertips.
Skin masks are as uncomfortable as ever.
Ziel touched his aged, synthetic face and sank into thought.
The man who had hired a Crow to sabotage Deleve Kundel was Dakeus Altman, the professor overseeing the second years in the Sword School.
One million sel was a fortune. To spend that kind of money—not receive it, but spend it—just to harm a scion of a specific noble house?
“I do not understand.”
It made no sense to him. Until recently, Ziel had been an assassin, and assassins never questioned the motives behind a contract. Operating under brainwashing meant focusing solely on eliminating the mark.
Yet one thing was undeniable.
Dakeus Altman.
He attempted to harm my student.
Regardless of motive, that alone was more than enough reason to pay Professor Dakeus a visit.
Still, Ziel hesitated.
He was living here under a cover identity. If he wished to make that cover permanent one day and secure a truly new life…
I cannot rely solely on the methods of an assassin.
His entire existence thus far had been steeped in the ways of assassination, but it was time to step away from them.
Ziel pondered for a moment, glanced down at Erso, and hit upon an idea.
He woke Erso once more.
“Gasp!”
Erso still couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
How the hell does he keep doing that?!
Before his mind could catch up, the voice rang out again.
“Crow.”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“From this moment on, you answer to me.”
Erso’s eyes trembled violently. Had his body not been paralyzed, he would have been shaking from head to toe.
I am so screwed.
A distinctly bleak future loomed before him.