What Is Justice? (2)
What Is Justice? (2)
A room filled with books.
Behind a large desk in the center of the room, a man sat filling out documents.
On the guest sofa in front of the desk, a woman whose age was impossible to guess sat alone, drinking wine.
The room was quiet.
A gentle breeze drifted in through the half-open window, making the room look almost like a painting.
Flutter.
A white bird flew into the picture-perfect room.
It circled the room silently before landing on a towering stack of documents.
Neither the man nor the woman was surprised by its sudden appearance.
The man furrowed his brow slightly and untied the paper fastened to the bird's leg.
He unfolded it and scanned its contents.
"In the end, it turned out like this."
He clicked his tongue and clenched the paper in his hand.
Whoosh.
The paper began to burn in his grasp.
"As always, things unfolded exactly as your prophecy foretold."
"...It's too late. A prophecy that can't even prevent failure is utterly useless."
"Well, no matter how powerful the ability is, it's impossible to foresee every single future."
"But they all acted on the prophecy I gave them. They must have gone ahead because they trusted me..."
"A plan can't succeed every time. Perhaps we've succeeded too easily all this time because of you."
"But my ancestor accounted for almost every possible future and guided the other heroes onto the right path. And I, too, in the past..."
Ten years ago—or even five years ago—the woman drinking wine before him had possessed such powerful precognitive abilities that she was called the reincarnation of the Prophet who had once foreseen the future of the heroes of old.
But starting ten years ago, minor details had begun to go slightly awry. Then, five years ago, her prophecies began to change and were even flat-out wrong.
Still, aside from her ancestor, she was the greatest prophet, and most of her prophecies weren't particularly wrong.
The man recalled the words written on the burned paper.
It was a note from an agent dispatched to the Hierro Marquisate.
It said that they had discovered the secret passage and would proceed with the planned operation.
Although the message had been sent using an ability that could deliver news quickly, the distance to that location meant the operation would already be underway.
And he had known the operation would fail even before reading the message.
But the Prophet had realized too late that the future had changed, making it impossible to stop the operation from proceeding.
He had planned to send someone to salvage whatever remained of the Organization after the failure, but...
"To think sending someone to salvage the survivors would be even more dangerous..."
"I couldn't see it clearly, but I saw that if we sent people, a red energy would ride on those we dispatched and approach us."
She hadn't seen the future as clearly as she had at other times, but that alone was more than enough to understand.
"Which means, in the end, we'll leave a trail."
After hearing her prophecy, he abandoned the remaining organization in the Hierro Marquisate.
It was a force they had nurtured within the Organization for a long time and grown to considerable size, but he cleanly cut the line.
"...I am truly sorry."
"You did nothing wrong. No matter how I look at it, this doesn't seem to be a problem with your ability."
It wasn't that all her prophecies were wrong; problems arose only in specific regions and specific events. There was clearly some external factor at play.
"Well, we'll look into that separately."
It was an incredibly important matter, but not one they could uncover immediately. The Organization had already been searching for the reason for five years.
"More than that, to think the operation could fail and we could be tracked. Does the Marquisate have someone with such an ability? I underestimated Marquis Hierro too much."
Perhaps he had taken the Marquisate too lightly after seeing his trashy children.
"Then again, Martin was the Marquis's child, too."
Thinking of Martin brought to mind the subordinates who would be abandoned along with him, making his stomach churn.
He got up and sat on the sofa opposite the woman.
As he held out his empty glass, the woman filled it to the brim with wine.
"Alcohol is the best way to forget pain."
But both she, as she poured the wine, and he, as he held the glass, knew very well that alcohol couldn't truly make anyone forget pain.
Even so, it seemed enough to at least settle his unsettled stomach.
After gulping down the wine, he spoke.
"Let's put this aside for now. We can't succeed every time, and there are still plenty of other places where we can carry out operations."
"Will you be all right?"
Seeing the man's grim expression, the woman asked gently.
He shook his head.
"I should be the one apologizing. The future you see must be completely filled with blood."
"It's fine. I'm only watching. You're the one walking that path of blood yourself."
The man let out a dry chuckle at her words. At this point, their words were nothing more than meaningless mutual consolation.
"I've said enough useless things. This is a path we both prepared ourselves for, after all. We can't stop here."
"Yes. As long as this power has been bestowed upon me, this is my mission."
"And mine as well."
The two of them drained their glasses, pushing the memories of those they had abandoned into a corner of their minds.
After entering the secret passage through the temple's secret door, the mercenaries were able to make their way safely to the basement of the Lord's castle.
They couldn't bring a large force and still maintain secrecy, but dozens of fully armed men were on the move.
If not for the secret passage they were now walking through, there was no way they could have sneaked into the Lord's castle.
The group also had to move with extreme caution.
"Ah! Watch out!"
A low shout came from the middle of the silently advancing group.
One of the wooden barrels some of the mercenaries were carrying was about to tip over.
It looked like an oak barrel meant for holding alcohol, but the mercenaries looking at it wore expressions far from those of men eyeing a drink.
Thanks to the mercenaries around him quickly lending a hand, the barrel stayed upright, but several others kicked the shins of the man who had been carrying it.
"What the hell are you doing! Are you trying to get us all killed?"
"Are you still drunk? This isn't ordinary oil! If you can't carry it, hand it over to someone else!"
The mercenary who had been carrying the barrel meekly accepted the others' curses, his face deathly pale.
And for good reason: the oak barrels they were carrying were central to today's operation.
They were sneaking in to burn the Marquis and his entire family to death, clearing the way for Martin to become the legitimate successor.
They had to burn everything to leave no room for suspicion, so they needed to prepare.
That preparation consisted of the oak barrels they were carrying.
The barrels contained something prepared by those above: hellfire, said to have been sealed away since the Great War.
As everyone held their breath, Commander Benjamin, who was leading the way, called out in a low voice.
"Everyone, get ready! Slaughter the Marquis's family down to the last soul, and eliminate all witnesses so no evidence remains."
The secret door leading to their destination, the Marquis's study, was just ahead.
He had repeated this several times already, but the Commander warned the mercenaries once more.
"Divide and move as planned, and detonate the hellfire as soon as you reach your positions."
He confirmed that the mercenaries were ready, then nodded to Martin.
At Benjamin's signal, Martin tapped on the wall, just as Adria had told him.
Grind.
A section of the wall slid downward, revealing a staircase leading up.
Perhaps because it was late at night, the study above the stairs was pitch-black, making it impossible to see even an inch ahead.
As the passage opened, two agile mercenaries cautiously climbed the stairs as planned.
They vanished into the darkness above, and the mercenaries below waited for them to send a signal.
One, two, three...
As time passed, Commander Benjamin's brow twitched.
The signal was taking too long.
An ominous scent also drifted down from above: the smell of iron and blood.
The mana throughout his body began to vibrate.
Benjamin's face stiffened.
"Is it a trap?"
The enemy was waiting above.
"Shields forward! The rest of you, slowly fall back."
When he said that, the mercenaries' expressions froze.
Just as the shield-bearing mercenaries were about to move forward—
Whizz!
Arrows flew out of the darkness.
"Urk!"
"Aaargh!"
"I'm hit!"
Screams and shouts filled the passage.
"Kill them all! They're bastards trying to assassinate the Lord!"
A mana-infused shout rang out from the direction the arrows had come from, and armored knights poured in alongside a barrage of arrows.
"The operation has failed! Everyone, run!"
Commander Benjamin roared.
As he spoke, he flung himself backward.
They had been completely set up.
It seemed the prophecies had been going wrong lately, and, unfortunately, the prophecy for this operation had been wrong.
'It's a good thing Noah pulled out. Her intuition is uncanny, as always.'
The Marquis's knights were pouring in from all directions.
It seemed they had descended not only through the study where the door had opened, but also through other secret doors.
'Was it a deliberate trap? Or were we caught in the middle of it?'
The question flashed through his mind, but at that moment, it didn't matter which it was.
'Where is Martin?'
Fortunately, Martin was nowhere to be seen. It seemed his ability had let him escape first.
Roar!
Screams continued to echo from all directions.
The mercenaries had trained for a long time, but they were no match for fully prepared knights.
The mercenaries collapsed after exchanging barely a few blows, and the number fleeing together dwindled rapidly.
At this rate, they would be wiped out before they could even escape the secret passage.
"Damn it! This is crazy heavy. Can I drop this?"
"You crazy bastard! Have you been running with that on your back this whole time?"
After pushing back a knight swinging a sword at him, Benjamin looked back toward the mercenaries' shouts.
One mercenary was running with an oak barrel strapped to his back.
Seeing the barrel, Benjamin snatched a torch from a mercenary running beside him and hurled it at the man carrying it, packing the torch full of mana.
Whoosh!
The burning branch, infused with mana, flew toward the oak barrel like an arrow.
The moment Benjamin threw the torch, he channeled all his mana into his legs and dashed madly toward the temple.
"Get down!"
"Block it! Commander! Are you trying to kill us al—"
The mercenaries who saw Benjamin throw the torch screamed, but before they could finish, it pierced the oak barrel.
The next instant—
Boom!
A massive explosion erupted where the oak barrel had been.
The mercenary carrying it was blown to pieces as it exploded, and flames surged in all directions.
"It's fire! Circulate your mana!"
"Evade!"
"Save me!"
The mercenaries near the barrel couldn't even dodge before being engulfed in flames, and more than half the knights fighting them were caught in the blaze as well.
The fire continued to spread. If not for the lack of air in the secret passage, it might have burned down the entire castle.
"The fire won't go out!"
"This isn't ordinary oil!"
"Call a priest, call a doctor!"
The mercenaries and knights who failed to escape the flames all perished.
The mercenaries were consumed by the fire, and although a few knights were dragged out of the secret passage by their comrades, they couldn't extinguish the flames clinging to their bodies.
In the end, the pursuit was halted and the mercenaries were wiped out. The knights pursuing them had also suffered heavy casualties.
Though all the other mercenaries had died, one managed to flee all the way to the temple.
It was none other than Commander Benjamin, who had thrown the torch to detonate the hellfire.
He emerged from the temple, now billowing black smoke, covered in black soot.
And there he saw the people blocking his path.
They were the very people who were supposed to have left the Lord's castle: the knights and soldiers of the Gracia Dukedom.
"Are you the leader of these sinners?"
Simon pointed his sword at him.
Benjamin sighed as he looked at the boy glaring at him with his sword raised.
He had thought they might be surrounded, but to be backstabbed like this...
Absurdly enough, it seemed he was about to become prey to a young noble lord.
That noble boy was no match for him, and he could easily handle the other knights, but he had absolutely no confidence against the middle-aged knight and the old man standing behind the boy.