The Investigation Begins
"I thought I was going to lose my mind from all this suspense!"
The moment Duke Randert stepped into the room, Crown Prince Lindemann sprang to his feet and hurried over. He was not alone. Professor Rotheus and Count Leonett had been waiting for the Duke's arrival all along.
"Who on earth is this Chairman? Who could he possibly be, that you regarded him with such wariness? And what about Death? The way I see it, he is anything but an ordinary servant."
No one had told him anything. He had lost count of how many times he'd been told to step aside and wait. The Crown Prince had convinced himself that Duke Randert would finally free him from this maddening ignorance.
"Arkin, you've got the order of things all wrong."
Professor Rotheus apologized to the Duke on his nephew's behalf.
"Forgive him, Your Grace. This boy survived thanks to Bayul. You must have been worried sick."
"Oh, dear."
Only then did the Crown Prince realize his blunder at his uncle's reprimand. This was no time to press for answers out of curiosity. The Duke had come here upon hearing the false report of his son's death. What was more, Bayul had died saving him. Even though Bayul had been brought back to life in the end, the Crown Prince had just committed an enormous breach of courtesy.
"Duke Randert, I apologize. I have no excuse, not even with ten mouths. I spoke without giving any thought to the anguish you must have carried on your way here. I am truly sorry."
"No need. Bayul lives again, and that is enough for me. Think nothing of it."
The Duke knew the Crown Prince's temperament well. With Bayul and Quinn both miraculously surviving, and strange events continuing to pile one atop another, the boy must have been chafing at the bit terribly.
If even the Duke himself was this unsettled, how much worse must it be for the Crown Prince?
It was time to answer his son's questions in his stead.
"First of all, perhaps we should all sit down and talk."
At Count Leonett's suggestion, cane in hand, everyone nodded and gathered around the round table at the center of the room.
"Forgive me for being late to greet you. It has been a while, Count Leonett. I'm relieved to see you're still in good health."
"And you're looking as hale and hearty as ever yourself. Your son did a magnificent thing, I hear!"
He was praising the deed of saving the Crown Prince — something he could say precisely because Bayul had been revived.
"And I'm beyond grateful that Quinn came through unharmed as well."
He had nearly lost two beloved students. Professor Rotheus still could not quite believe that Bayul and Quinn were alive again.
"It was pure fortune that the Eye of the Ocean happened to be with me. Everything worked out because the Chairman knew about the Primordial Relics."
"How did he know about those?"
Not just the Crown Prince — Professor Rotheus and Count Leonett were hearing for the first time that such a thing as a Primordial Relic even existed.
"As it happens, he is a high-rank mage."
"A mage?"
"Yes. He has apparently been researching the Primordial Relics for a very long time."
Duke Randert labored to keep his expression composed, praying that his hastily fabricated excuse would sound like the truth.
"I'd heard of the rings called the Eye of the Ocean as well. At first I couldn't bring myself to believe it, but after seeing Quinn with my own eyes, I changed my mind."
"They are objects imbued with the power of the divine. One would do well not to doubt them."
"That those three rings should gather in one place, as if drawn by a promise — isn't that marvelously providential? As if it was never their fate to die at all."
"I think so too."
"Two young lives saved — a toast would be in order, I'd say!"
Yet even as the words left his mouth, Count Leonett's face was far from bright. So many lives had been snuffed out. They had died defending the Crown Prince, so suitable compensation would surely follow — but nothing in this world was more precious than life itself.
"Will you come to my house for dinner this evening?"
"Bah, what's an old man like me doing crashing your place! I'll pass."
If not for the assassination attempt on the Crown Prince, he would have been sprawled comfortably at home, deep in an afternoon nap. With age had come a distaste for going anywhere at all.
"By the way, it seems the Chairman's abilities are nothing to scoff at?"
He had heard that Duke Randert had been utterly thunderstruck upon seeing Rayegar. If the Duke himself had been startled, the man had to be a great mage of at least the seventh circle — and yet, strangely, no one had ever heard of him.
"The Primordial Relics, and now this. I can't believe how much I still don't know. I'll have to do some reflecting."
A merchant needed to be quicker than anyone when it came to information. As the master of Carrington, whose reach spanned the continent and beyond the Empire's borders, Count Leonett was in a sour mood indeed.
"I was equally without advance information. To prepare for any eventuality, I simply took it upon myself to protect His Highness the Crown Prince."
"...Then who exactly is Death?"
The emergence of an unregistered great mage was unsettling, to be sure, but he had never met a mage who wasn't an eccentric, so it wasn't impossible to accept. He could let the Chairman slide — what he wanted to know was who Death was.
"Ah, Death serves under me."
"Pardon? He serves under you?"
"Yes, that's right."
"But... at the dormitory that day, even Sir Ian seemed completely unaware of him?"
"He is a man I planted there in the strictest secrecy, hidden even from Ian."
"I know exactly how skilled Sir Ian is, and on top of him you had a secret guard knight embedded as well? Wow. Now that I think of it, your love for your son is no joke."
"So, are you mocking me now?"
"Of course not. A word just came to mind all on its own."
"...What word?"
"Fool for his son."
"Uncle!"
The Crown Prince whirled around to glare at Professor Rotheus in shock. However close their bond might be, his eyes were full of reproach — how could anyone say such a thing to Duke Randert?
But the Duke himself merely chuckled, not so much as a flicker of displeasure crossing his face. It was, after all, not an untrue statement.
A fool for his son...
It was not a phrase he could deny even if he wanted to.
"In any case — have some of your questions been answered now?"
The Duke's lie had been an unavoidable choice. The true identities of Rayegar and Death were better left unknown, for everyone's sake. Watching them carefully and maintaining his own quiet vigilance was the best he could do for now.
"This man Death — or should I call him Sir Death now?"
"Call him whatever is comfortable for you."
"I'm curious about Sir Death's abilities. A secret bodyguard for Bayul — something tells me he must be extraordinarily skilled."
Crown Prince Lindemann was a swordsman himself — and a rather talented one at that. As had happened every time he encountered a capable knight, his competitive spirit seemed to be surging once more.
"I'm sure you'll have the chance to see for yourself one of these days. All I will say is this: had Death been at the scene that day, the outcome would have been very different."
Had business in the Demon Realm not called him away, things would never have spiraled that far. The faces of his unfortunate subordinates who had perished flickered through the Duke's mind.
"But why would they go so far as to stab Bayul through the heart?"
"Uncle, that again?"
It was the question Professor Rotheus had been pestering the Crown Prince with every single day for the past few days.
"What's strange about wondering that?"
All Duke Randert knew was that Bayul had been struck down by the blade in the Crown Prince's stead while trying to save him. The how and in what manner he had not yet heard.
He had rushed to confirm his son's survival the moment he reached the train station, then revived Quinn with the Eye of the Ocean and exchanged only a few brief words with Bayul. Not a single wound remained on Bayul's body, so there had been nothing even to examine.
"According to Arkin, Bayul shoved the boy aside just as the assassin's blade was about to cut him down, and the two of them were struck — one across the neck, the other across the chest. Neither wound was fatal."
"And?"
"Think it through. For whatever reason, the assassin was expending the last of his strength. He had exactly one thrust left in him. So why stab Bayul instead of Arkin, when both were within the blade's reach? Your Grace, don't you find that strange?"
To be sure, Professor Rotheus had not witnessed the scene with his own eyes either. It was only as he listened to his recovered nephew recount the events of that day that the suspicion had suddenly struck him.
The idea that a man who had come to kill the Crown Prince had, at the very last moment, slipped just enough to kill Bayul instead — it kept feeling contrived, forced.
"...So what you're saying is that they may have been after Bayul from the very beginning, not His Highness. Is that it?"
"It sounds mad, but... yes. That is what I'm saying."
"Your Highness, are you certain your memory of it is accurate?"
"I watched Bayul die before my eyes. The instant the blade cut me, I felt a searing pain — but the moment I saw the sword plunge into his heart, I felt nothing at all. Because I believed that the first friend I had ever given my heart to was dying because of me."
"That's not the only strange thing, either."
Count Leonett, who had been listening in silence until now, cut in.
"Over the past several days I've reviewed every report coming in from across the Empire, and I could find no trace anywhere of an organization capable of producing assassins on that scale."
"There were over a hundred of them, weren't there?"
"Of course, my investigation may not have been perfect. But one thing is certain: to turn out that many skilled operatives, someone had to have fed, clothed, and trained them over a considerable period. That requires no small expenditure of resources. And yet, no matter how deeply I dug through the ledgers, I found nothing."
For all his self-deprecation about being a has-been in his dotage, Count Leonett was the very man who had built one of the Empire's wealthiest houses. His reputation was already legendary — he could divine an entire financial situation and the flow of goods at a single glance at a page of densely packed numbers.
"Then if not the Empire, they must have been brought in from a foreign land."
"Tell me — have you earned yourself any grudges?"
"...Grudges?"
"Yes. If they truly were after Bayul, would it have been out of hatred for the boy? Look at what a child he still is — what could anyone possibly hate enough to kill? More likely they hated his father. You."
He had never once entertained such a thought. It had never even crossed his mind to imagine that Bayul might be endangered because of him.
"Duke Randert is hailed as a hero not only in the Empire but abroad as well. You ended the Ten-Year War — every soul thanks you for it. There's no way you could have earned a grudge."
"No — just one man. Emperor Royan is another matter entirely."
"A moment ago it was mad talk, and now you've already got a mastermind picked out."
"It is merely a hypothesis. There was that incident where His Grace nearly came to armed blows with the court at the imperial palace, was there not? And their sudden visit to the Empire as a diplomatic delegation has always sat ill with me."
"Royan..."
That the man held a grudge against Duke Randert was an undeniable fact. After all, the Duke was the very man who had severed the four limbs of Royan's father, the retired Emperor Barachel.
But to act on such a scale for that reason alone was far too reckless.
It does trouble me that Barachel's death was ruled a suicide, though...
Knock, knock!
"Your Grace, you need to come out and see this!"
Just then, Sadad's voice called for the Duke from outside. Urgency rang clear in it.
"Let's all go together."
Sitting still did not suit their temperament. The Crown Prince, Professor Rotheus, and Count Leonett all rose hastily to follow the Duke.
"Kneel!"
They were near the entrance of the temple. A man was being dragged in by the Full Moon Knights, his legs and both arms bound behind him.
"Who is he?"
"We caught him trying to slip out through Carrington's main gate. The identification he carried was years out of date, so we asked him a few questions — and he refused to answer."
The Duke had divided the knights into two groups upon arriving at the train station. One would remain at his side; the other would sweep the city, rounding up any stragglers or suspicious characters before they could cause trouble.
By his appearance and his clothes, the man seemed fairly respectable. Small and wiry though he was, the Duke recognized at a glance that he was a well-honed master of his craft.
"Kill him."
Without warning, Duke Randert ordered his execution. The Full Moon Knight beside him drew his sword without a moment's hesitation. The captive man, by contrast, recoiled in terror with a strangled gasp.
"So he's not a mute."
Shing!
This time it was Duke Randert who drew his blade. He leveled its gleaming point at the man's throat.
"I do not ask twice. Where were you going?"
Whether it was the Duke's murderous bearing that cowed him, the man who had been darting wary glances about finally parted his lips.
"I, I was... I was on my way to see my wife, who lives in a neighboring city. Your men were so aggressive that I was too frightened to speak. I swear I've done nothing wrong."
"The neighboring city — you mean Hoian?"
"Yes, that's right! My wife's family is from there!"
"Which village in Hoian?"
"...A place called Ohara."
"Throw this liar in a cell!"
Even though the man had answered smoothly and without hesitation, the Duke abruptly turned on him. As those around him looked on in bewilderment, the Duke explained.
"His speech carries the accent of the Dwyer Empire. That is why he would not speak at first."
"...The Dwyer Empire?"
It seemed the time had come to give Professor Rotheus's hypothesis serious consideration after all.
"Sadad."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Convene a company-commander meeting. Have everyone assemble immediately."