36. Darkly and Secretly
36. Darkly and Secretly
A dagger flew out of the darkness.
The dagger grazed my earlobe and lodged in the wall behind me.
No poison.
But it was rusted.
Clicking my tongue at a concealed weapon steeped in sheer malice, I slipped deeper into the shadows.
What awaited me there were clown masks.
"Cult of Enchantment..."
After cleaning up the capital and tracking down the people who had continuously supplied it with minions, I arrived here.
My gut told me this parish had already cut its tail and run.
The moment contact with the capital grew sparse, they would have fled without a shred of attachment.
The ones standing before me now were probably expendable grunts meant to buy time, or brainwashed junkies.
Empty husks with no nutritional value and no significance.
My mission was all but over, since the cultists in the capital had already been purged.
Even so, the reason I was finishing them off to the last was that I had no way of knowing what kind of atrocities might unfold if I left them be.
The World War had been sparked by the power-lust of those in authority, but the fuse that burned until the moment it actually exploded was made of people's indifference and irresponsibility.
As long as I couldn't know what sort of fuse these cultists might become, if I had the time, I needed to snuff them out in advance.
There was just one problem.
After fighting cultists all over the place for the past week, my body was a wreck.
At full strength, I could take out grunts like these and have strength to spare, but right now my condition was poor.
I wouldn't die, but I had to brace myself for fractures or lost limbs.
'I pushed too fast.'
Maybe I would have been better off resting up before coming here.
But I shook my head and dismissed the thought.
An agent fighting cultists was really no different from a walking bomb.
With no way to know what damage the plague of cultists might suddenly cause around me, it was difficult to stay anywhere.
If I idly stayed at an inn and the innkeeper got hurt as a result, I didn't think I could endure it.
I gritted my teeth and focused on the pistol's front sight.
I pulled the trigger at the crying mask visible beyond the sight.
One mask collapsed, struck by the bullet.
Yeah.
If I lose an arm, I can just have the church stick it back on.
I forced my drowsy eyes wide open and seized one of the masked figures.
Looked like sleep was off the table again today.
.
.
.
After crushing the last remaining mask, mask and all, I slumped down to the floor.
Luckily, my limbs were fine.
Contrary to my expectations, the ones they'd left behind to buy time didn't amount to much.
Had I been lucky?
No. That wasn't it.
Based on what I'd traced so far, an archbishop-tier figure was directing the attack.
There was no way a faction belonging to someone like that would be this small.
In cases like this, more often than the enemy being careless, it was usually me missing something.
The nagging unease didn't leave me as I sank into thought, but no matter how long I thought, there was nothing I could figure out.
Maybe that was the reason.
I was slow to react to the cultist behind me who had been playing dead.
"Die!"
"Tch."
Guess I'd have to give up an arm.
I thrust my left arm toward the approaching axe and gathered mana in my right hand.
But the axe didn't take my left arm, contrary to my expectation.
Before the axe could reach me, a crossbow bolt flew from somewhere and knocked it off course.
Thwack.
After my right hand burst the cultist's innards, I looked in the direction the bolt had come from.
There stood a knight holding a crossbow.
No, to be precise, there stood the lord of this city.
"...You are?"
I wasn't asking why he was holding a crossbow.
In a world where everybody walked around with a fireball in their heart, maintaining a city of this size meant a count was bound to have at least the bare minimum of martial power.
What I was questioning was why he was here.
Wasn't the timing a little too perfect?
Harboring the worst possible assumption—that the lord was the mastermind behind all of this—I steadied my breathing.
As I picked up the axe the cultist had dropped and faced off against the count, the count raised both hands and smiled.
"I understand what you must be thinking. But my loyalty lies solely with the Parma Imperial Household."
"..."
"Sigh. Do I really inspire so little trust? This is a request from your friend."
"This mission was a solo mission."
"But your life isn't only missions, now, is it. Would you believe me if I told you that friend's name... is Nikolai?"
As if to prove it, the count showed me a seal.
It was one I had given to Nikolai.
Only then did I lower the axe.
"Follow me. I’ll take you to Sage Cervantes."
*
While I was guided by the lord and escaped the darkness, I could see the corpses of those I hadn't dealt with.
They had likely been personnel prepared to strike me from behind while I fought in the dark, and thanks to the count, they hadn't been able to provide support.
The place we arrived at, following him, was the top floor of a hotel.
When I stood before the guest room as instructed, I could sense someone inside restlessly pacing around.
The moment I opened the door, Nikolai's face lit up at the sight of me.
"Boss!"
Jeez.
I wasn't crazy about women, but a grown man approaching with open arms was creepy.
"Don't come closer."
"What, I was so worried I even sent backup, and that's how you react?"
"Never mind that. How did you find out?"
"I saw you getting out of the terminal."
"No, I mean, how did you pick me out of that crowd?"
Spare me some creepy talk about spiritual resonance between guys—I needed a rational reason that would convince me.
"So I just looked and knew, okay?"
"How does that make any sense?"
"It might well make sense."
The count, who had been listening quietly, interjected into the conversation.
"The Cervantes Baronial House has been exceptionally observant for generations. Enough to see through barriers that inhibit perception, even."
"Is that what it was."
I hadn't known the guy had an ability like that.
Come to think of it, even during our time at the academy, he'd always been oddly perceptive—maybe that had been foreshadowing.
Still, I had to say my piece.
I laid into the idiot who was pointing at himself like 'Me?'
"Even so, you've gone too far. Are you stupid? What were you thinking getting involved in this side of things."
The count was one thing—he had a history of once having been part of the Counterintelligence Department and even maintained his own private agents—but Nikolai was a civilian.
In situations like this, pretending not to know until the very end is how you stay in the light.
If you start rambling about justice or camaraderie or whatever, you end up dragged into the mud together.
The shadows are like the abyss: the moment you gaze into that existence, it gazes back into you.
Once a person comes to know the shadows, they can never again be free of them.
"I'll erase the record of what happened today, so forget it and go back to your life. There's nothing good waiting for you in this world."
"Boss."
"I'm grateful you helped, but you're not supposed to do things like this. I understand not knowing the laws of this world, but still."
"Boss. I did it knowing full well."
"What do you mean, you understand? Is knowing something in your head the same as knowing it in your heart?"
"I've also prepared myself."
"Resolve? Did you just say resolve? Why would you make that kind of commitment for someone you haven’t even known six months? Don’t be ridiculous. Resolve isn’t that cheap."
"Yes. That's why I'm telling you my resolve is not light."
Nikolai's somber eyes met mine.
"I don't know your circumstances, Boss, but resolve doesn't need some grand process to begin. You eat with someone, work with them, grow attached, and before you know it, that attachment makes the decision for you. That's resolve."
As I listened to Nikolai, a certain scene played back in my head.
- Sergeant! Didn't I tell you to leave me and fall back!
- Ah, how could I go anywhere leaving the Captain behind.
- If you stay here it's a dog's death! You're so young all that hot blood must have rushed to your head, but you don't throw your life away that lightly—
- If you're talking about resolve, I've already made mine. Whether I live with you, Captain, or die here with you.
- Resolve isn't something that light!
- The start can be light. You sign up for the NCO corps without thinking, and then a sense of duty fills the empty shell, and as you eat and shoot together, camaraderie fills it up. Resolve? It's surprisingly impulsive, you know?
- You damn fool...
Right. I'd gotten an earful back then too.
"Well, the origin might be a casual closeness, but my resolve is still heavy. This is what we call loyalty."
-Anyway, we'll be nothing but bleached bones on the battlefield, so isn't loyalty the only thing we'll have to take with us to the afterlife?
"Besides, from the moment you hired me, I decided to tie my career to yours. Sages and Prophets are practically soldiers too, aren't they? So I chose the adjutant career path. If you abandon me now, I'll be left high and dry. You're not really going to do that, are you?"
- I’ve been in your camp since I applied to become an NCO. If you die, Captain, what happens to my career?
Why did all men end up saying the same things?
With a bitter smile, I recited verbatim the words my own superior had once said.
"Damn brat... if only he weren’t so good with words."
"So, do I qualify as your adjutant?"
"Yeah. But I can't bring myself to take you out into the field, so stick to staff officer work rather than assistant gunner."
"Exactly what I was hoping for, Captain."
"I was a sergeant."
"Here, you're a captain."
Leaving the count bewildered by words only the two of us understood, I shook his hand.
That day, I gained a solid partner.
"Boss. The cultists you captured this time—are you going to interrogate them?"
"I will for now, but you—"
Before I could even get out the words telling him not to participate in the interrogation yet, Nikolai clashed two large spikes together and said to me:
"Wake up, and you need to be focused. (Get up. If that doesn’t work, I’ll bring you to your senses.)"
"Hey."
You adapted way too fast.