Flight (2)
Flight (2)
The abandoned mine shaft was far too dark for a single torch to illuminate.
On top of that, everyone's expression was grim, making the atmosphere even worse.
The mercenary was exhausted, while Joachim had realized the accusation against him wasn't false.
As for me, my grim expression had less to do with Joachim's true identity and more to do with the people in the Organization.
If Vid, Joachim's older brother, was a member of the Organization, then the incident in the Duchy hadn't been orchestrated by the Empire, but by this so-called organization.
And if it was a group that used necklaces to commit self-detonation, then it was the very organization to which the master of Mirisa and Piar—the ones who blew up the academy entrance ceremony venue in the timeline where I died—belonged.
And those who had caused trouble for my sister-in-law's marquisate family had also been said to come from the Empire.
That meant this so-called organization was a group I had already fought at least three times.
Fighting the same organization more than three times was surprising enough, but I couldn't help being astonished by its sheer scale.
If the incident in the Duchy had been carried out not by the Empire but by this organization, and if this recent incident had also been their doing, it was difficult even to fathom how immense their power and authority must be.
The Organization had the power to send special envoys to the Duchy and pack the delegation sent to the Carlos Kingdom with its own members.
This organization might be a part of the Empire—or perhaps even the Empire itself.
"If Paula sent you, then you must be a member of the Organization too, right?"
"Yes. I was originally a low-ranking member of the Organization. Even after the Organization in the Kingdom pulled back, I stayed behind and worked as a mercenary. But I got in touch with them recently and helped the people who came this time."
Then again, whatever force was pulling the strings in the Empire wouldn't limit its operatives to nobles alone.
They had used mercenaries in the Duchy as well, and only mercenaries had operated at the marquisate.
Incidents caused by mercenaries, huh?
The incident in Balea Territory came to mind, but I shook my head.
That place was only a minor barony.
It was hard to believe the Organization had been involved there.
As my thoughts continued, a sigh escaped my lips of its own accord.
It seemed I had become entangled with a group that offered no straightforward answers.
I had intended to gather information this time without dying, but I never imagined I'd uncover this kind of intelligence right from the start.
I had wanted information that might be useful in my next life, not revelations this terrifying.
Anyway, if they were all part of the same organization, the current situation made some sense.
Joachim found it baffling, but I could understand why the suicide bomb had been detonated.
These were the bastards who had blown up the Academy entrance ceremony venue.
Blowing up a residential area in the capital was something they could easily pull off.
Kidnapping people was certainly well within their capabilities, too.
Since they were the kind of people who diligently crafted unusual items like those necklaces, they might have planned the abduction after noticing Ivana's unique ability.
The only puzzling thing was that they had chosen self-detonation over abduction.
If the kidnapping failed or something went wrong, they could have simply fled.
Yet they had chosen to detonate themselves—it made no sense at all.
Another baffling detail was that the Royal Knights had mobilized.
It sounded harsh to say "only," but this was an incident in which just one female Academy student and a few others had been caught up and killed.
Even though it was a bomb attack in the capital, it wasn't the kind of incident that warranted dozens of Royal Knights stepping in directly.
'Did they overreact because they intended to deal with the Princess or the Grand Archduchess?'
The thought crossed my mind, but I still didn't have enough information to reach a definitive conclusion.
Now that I knew who the opponent was, it was time to put on an act.
"Let's head out again. We need to keep moving if we don't want the pursuers to catch us."
The mercenary stood and resumed leading the way. While we had been sitting and talking, Joachim had filled him in on our situation as well.
The mercenary looked at me with pity.
It was the kind of look one might give an illegitimate son of a duke who had been forced to turn his back on his homeland after things had gone wrong.
I did my absolute best to project just that sort of aura.
I moved forward with a dark, somber expression. Reflecting on the Organization made it quite easy to pull off a depressed expression.
As we continued our quiet, gloomy march, we eventually reached a dead end.
Standing before the wall, I looked up at the ceiling.
Unlike before, the ceiling of the mine shaft was made of iron plates. And I could sense an empty space behind them.
The mercenary drew the sword at his waist and tapped on the ceiling.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang.
The rhythmic tapping echoed through the dark mine shaft.
Clunk.
A moment later, accompanied by a grating screech, the iron-plated ceiling began to rise.
The light that seeped through was faint.
"It's been a while since we had guests."
"What guests? It's me."
"Martin, is that you?"
The person guarding the exit was someone the mercenary knew, too.
More importantly, I finally learned the mercenary's name. I didn't know if it was his real name, but at least now I had something to call him.
Climbing up through the ceiling, we found ourselves in a basement.
It was a small, dilapidated basement piled with tanned hides and trapping tools.
This was the basement of a hunter's house.
The man who greeted us looked unmistakably like a hunter, too.
Since the mercenary knew the hunter, we were able to leave the basement right away.
As expected, this was a hunter's cabin in the forest.
Looking out the window, I could see the outer fortress walls far beyond the trees.
This was a forest outside the city.
The mercenary, Martin, chatted merrily with the hunter, just as he had with the soldiers at the entrance to the mine shaft.
As it turned out, this man wasn't a real hunter, and the soldiers guarding the shaft entrance weren't domain guards either.
"Everyone's a mercenary. Mercenaries who help with the affairs of the big shots on the mining side."
When I asked as we left the hunter's house, the mercenary explained.
The secret passage through the mine shaft we'd just passed through had originally been discovered by miners.
Instead of telling the Lord about the shaft that led outside the city, they'd decided to keep it as a secret back channel to line their own pockets.
It was easy for the mining locals to select the soldiers guarding the entrance to the abandoned mine and replace a few of them with mercenaries.
Using mercenaries instead of doing it themselves was a precaution, just in case.
There was no guarantee the operation wouldn't be exposed someday.
"Even if mercenaries guard it, there's a Divine Contract, so secrecy is guaranteed to an extent. Even if it gets busted by accident, only the mercenaries get caught, and that's the end of it."
It seemed Martin had also entered into a contract at the temple while guarding the entrance.
"I used a bit of a trick to break free from the contract."
Martin didn't reveal what method he had used.
As we began walking through the forest, with the castle wall behind us, I asked the mercenary in a worried tone,
"Where are we heading now?"
Originally, I had intended to part ways after hearing the situation from Joachim.
Moving alone seemed far more convenient.
But after learning their true identities, I had no choice but to change my plan.
Having established a point of contact with this so-called organization, I couldn't just part ways like this.
At first, I had considered interrogating the mercenary Martin, but no matter how I looked at him, he didn't seem to know much.
It seemed I'd have to wait until we met someone with deeper knowledge.
"There's a safehouse where we agreed to regroup if trouble arose. If anyone survived, they'll come there. We plan to wait there before returning to the Empire."
"Come to the Empire with us. To make up for this, I will help you as much as I can."
Joachim spoke while looking at me, as if making a firm promise.
As expected, he wasn't a bad person. Although he had the flaw of putting the Empire above all else, he was decent enough.
But the relationship between us had already become tangled.
Even if time itself were rewound, it was already too late for things with Joachim.
I replied in a gloomy voice,
"I'll consider it favorably."
My conclusion would be negative, of course, but until that verdict was reached, I intended to maintain a good relationship.
Stepping out of the forest, we found a vast granary region spread before us.
Though this domain wasn't particularly large compared to others, it still had its own breadbasket.
We slipped into a civilian home near the woods.
While the homeowner was out in the fields, we took advantage of his absence to steal his clothes and change into them.
Joachim disliked having to discard his formal Academy uniform, but he had no choice if he was going to flee all the way to the Empire.
I changed alone, using my dislike of being watched by others as an excuse.
I put the clothes I had been wearing into the relic pouch and changed into the owner's attire.
The clothes were a little loose on me.
I had thought I'd grown a lot, but apparently I still had some growing to do.
I put on the ring, checked the necklace, and buckled the dagger and longsword to my waist.
I couldn't take out the greatsword just yet without exposing the relic pouch.
While hiding in the farmhouse, I spotted knights galloping along the main road in the distance.
It was the pursuit party.
Fortunately, it seemed they hadn't discovered where we were headed.
Once we had changed, we left the house.
Clad in shabby clothes with our faces concealed beneath worn hats, we looked like farmers rather than nobles.
We trudged slowly along the road like ordinary farmers.
Since our pace felt far too slow, a touch of impatience welled up within me.
That was because I wanted to reach a conclusion before my mother found out about this matter.
Even if this world continued to exist after my death and she eventually learned about it, I still hoped she wouldn't find out while I was alive.
What would become of this world after my death was something I could never know. In the end, all I could do was do my best.
Once we passed the granary region, we picked up our pace again.
But because of the mercenary, we couldn't increase our speed by much.
Dressed as peasants, we couldn't ride horses either, so we had no choice but to keep going on foot.
After walking like that for several days, we finally arrived at the place called the safehouse.
It was a small inn in a village between the Marquisate domain and its neighboring territory.
There were no guests, and flies buzzed around. The only person inside was the burly innkeeper.
He had been dozing, but when he recognized the mercenary's face, he immediately stood and bolted the entrance shut.
After that, he walked into the kitchen and knocked on the inner wall.
What looked like a wall slid open slightly.
"The guests you were looking for have arrived."
The innkeeper's deep voice echoed, and the wall swung wide open.
Someone familiar emerged from within. It was Paula.
"Joachim? Are you all right... Huh? Young Lord Alex?"
She looked at me, thoroughly startled.
She seemed half-terrified and completely at a loss about what to do.
The innkeeper glared at me, his muscles tensing.
Judging by his massive frame, I had guessed he wasn't just an ordinary innkeeper, and it seemed he was a skilled mercenary.
I raised both hands.
"I don't particularly enjoy being treated like this all the time, but I have no intention of fighting."
At my words, Paula shot Joachim a glare.
"Why did he come with you?"
Though we had never had a proper conversation, I hadn't expected her to have such a personality...
Being a spy, her true nature was a completely different story.
Joachim and the mercenary eagerly explained the situation to her.
After listening to the full account, Paula let out a deep sigh.
"Then there's no helping it. We have no choice but to take him along."
She, too, looked at me with pity.
Yet I could sense something else lurking behind her eyes.
It was almost as if she were thinking, 'If you can't get a pheasant, settle for a chicken.'
"More importantly, what happened? I don't understand the kidnapping either, but why did it end in self-detonation?"
In response to Joachim's question, Paula sighed once more.
"I was the one who reported the abduction. Because her ability was unusual, I submitted a report to the higher-ups, and an order came down to kidnap her."
She discreetly glanced down at her wrist. The charred edge of her sleeve caught my eye.
Come to think of it, she must have been present at that scene as well.
Considering that she had managed to escape from there and arrive here even before us, I could roughly guess what her ability was.
"I don't know why they killed her, even going so far as to commit suicide. Nor is this something to discuss here."
As she spoke, she cast a glance toward me.
I smacked my lips inwardly. Unlike Joachim, Paula had good judgment.
It didn't look like getting information out of her would be easy.
"More importantly, we have to move quickly. The longer we wait, the harder it'll be to cross the border."
She led us into a room.
A large map of the Kingdom hung on the wall.
"Going straight down the main road through the Duchy to reach the Empire is impossible. We'll have to take a detour. We'll likely need to go around through Murasen Territory or Morena Territory—which do you think is better?"
As I looked at the territories she pointed out, a certain memory flickered through my mind.
"By any chance, wasn't Morena Territory where Lady Ivana lived?"
"Ah, that's right. How did you know?"
There was no way they hadn't investigated someone with such an extraordinary ability.
Though I hadn't been able to gather detailed information, I had at least learned what region she came from.
"If we have to go anyway, how about taking the route toward Morena Territory? Couldn't we investigate where her ability came from?"
At my words, Paula's eyes glistened.
As expected, she was keenly interested in my suggestion.
Since she had said she reported that fascinating power, she was bound to be curious about its origin as well.
But I was curious about something else entirely.
I wanted to know why the Royal Knights had mobilized.
Since I couldn't go to the capital right now to ask, I intended to inquire of her adoptive father.