The Curtain Falls on Vincent
KWA-BOOM!
An ominous tremor shook the entire building.
Arthur instinctively looked up.
"What the—?"
It was no illusion.
KUUUUNG!
The same vibration rang out again, and the lit chandeliers swayed with a rattling clatter.
It wasn't the golem.
Tap. Drip-drip.
Arthur, every nerve strung tight, caught the ominous sound of a massive crack tearing open in the ceiling.
Directly above the heads of Helen and Benjamin, who were locked in a standoff with the golem.
CRACK.
At the sound of something breaking apart, the two finally looked up.
"Huh?"
"Damn it, move!"
With no time even to sheathe his sword, Arthur threw himself forward, seized the backs of both their necks, and hurled them to the opposite side. Before Helen and Benjamin could even steady themselves, the ceiling there collapsed in its entirety.
Through the gaping hole, fragments and boulders came pouring down in a grinding cascade.
It was only after a long while, when the dust had settled somewhat, that they spotted two figures slumped amid the wreckage.
"That person is—"
"Arendt!"
While Benjamin's lips trembled, Arthur snapped to his senses and started running toward the rubble—then froze.
Amid the shattered debris, Arendt was staggering to his feet. There wasn't a spot on his body that wasn't damaged, but the eyes glaring at Vincent were as cold and sharp as freshly honed blades of ice.
"Lunatic."
Blood surged up from between his irritated muttering.
Vincent was hardly in better shape.
Snickering as he shoved fragments aside and rose, one of Vincent's arms was frozen completely stiff.
On top of that, covered in the large and small gashes he'd suffered breaking through the ceiling and now dusted head to toe in debris, he looked utterly disheveled.
"Looks like the stalling tactic failed. Oh dear."
A deranged voice drawled mockingly.
No one had a chance to interject. That single remark was as good as a signal—clack—and Arendt, gripping his sword anew, kicked off the ground in a headlong charge.
Unlike everything before it, his movements were plainly laced with impatience.
SHRAAANG!
The sword flying straight at him was, of course, deflected with ease.
"HAHAHAHA! So where might today's honored guests be hiding?"
Bursting into wild laughter, Vincent spun around and bored into the depths of the mansion at high speed.
"Stop him!"
At Laios's shout, Arthur, Benjamin, and Helen immediately tried to give chase—but the still-unbroken golem barred their path.
"Damn it!"
SWISH!
Arthur's sweeping blade cut the golem's thick body clean in two. In that gap, Arendt charged ahead and went after Vincent.
"Hey! What are you gonna do alone?!"
Arthur yelled after him, but Arendt didn't look back.
Vincent's aim was easy enough to predict.
If the civilians who had evacuated to one place were taken hostage, it would all be over.
"You stay and clean this up!"
The hand pressing down on Arthur's shoulder, who looked ready to bolt at any moment, belonged to Laios.
At some point, the Commander was already launching himself toward the spot where Arendt had disappeared.
* * *
Vincent ran down the corridor with a grin plastered across his face.
With golems rampaging inside and out, there was only one place the people could have evacuated to.
"HAHAHAHA!"
His mirthless laughter rang thunderously down the corridor turned battlefield.
My victory. The brat had evidently used his head, but the outcome wouldn't change all the same.
Through a half-open door, he glimpsed the terrified nobles. A quick glance back confirmed that the young knight—young beyond even the word—was chasing after him desperately, his body in shambles.
The urgency clouding that handsome face that had done nothing but spout insolent nonsense was, frankly, delicious.
KWA-BOOM!
He kicked the door open and burst inside, and torn screams erupted.
Vincent activated the artifact toward the sacrificial lambs.
"Those who defy me shall meet only ruin!"
But that was where it ended.
The room simply stayed quiet. No change of any kind occurred.
The terrified people looked around at each other in confusion.
Then—
Crisp.
With a small sound, a tiny bead on one lady's hair ornament turned to powder.
"Huh?"
It wasn't just that one.
The beads set into the gentlemen's brooches, the ladies' hair ornaments and necklaces, turned to dust one after another and scattered away.
As if his desperate sprint had all been a lie, Arendt came strolling leisurely into the parlor, step by unhurried step.
Vincent, frozen stiff where he stood, managed only to turn his head toward Arendt.
And at that very moment—
Gurgle.
A mouthful of black blood burst from beneath the mask.
The mana had been completely reversed.
"Idiot."
"Y-you—"
At the short, careless sneer from Arendt, Vincent gave a strangled metallic roar even as he retched up blood, gulp after gulp.
But that didn't last long either. In the end, he crumpled where he stood, collapsing to his knees.
Arendt limped closer.
"I told you clearly."
Blood was now streaming down through the eyeholes of the mask as well. To the opponent who had already lost his mind, Arendt calmly spat out:
"You're the only one who dies."
And then, the next instant—
SWISH.
The icy blade cleaved through Vincent's neck in a single stroke.
"......."
Thud.
Like a puppet cut from its strings, Vincent's body crumpled lifelessly to the floor.
Silence fell.
Only the sound of Arendt slowly catching his breath mingled with the heavy smell of blood in the air.
As he gazed down at Vincent's rapidly cooling corpse with a complicated expression, his grip loosened and the sword slipped from his hand.
Gurgle.
The thing welling up to the back of his throat came out, and a mouthful of blood spilled down the front of his uniform.
"Hah... almost bit the dust there."
Not a single hand retained the strength to move, so he simply flopped down onto the floor in a heap. Whether the people murmured around him or not, he had no leisure to care.
"You all right?"
"...No. I am not all right."
At the familiar voice calling urgently from the doorway, Arendt grumbled without even lifting his head.
Laios strode over and gripped Arendt's shoulder firmly.
"Where are you hurt?"
"Everywhere. Torn, stabbed, sliced—it's a disaster. So don't touch me. It hurts."
Arendt swatted Laios's hand away with an irritated snap.
The same cold reaction as always.
Only then did Laios breathe a sigh of relief and let out a short exhale.
His gaze, weighted with complexity, turned to the apprentice knight slumped on the floor.
This kid...
Everyone in this mansion had been played by Arendt. One look at Vincent, who had died without ever understanding why, made that plain enough—even though Arendt had faced an opponent he couldn't have handled alone.
But he couldn't pin down the boy who had fought himself to rags and demand a full accounting.
In the end, the Commander simply shook his head.
"...I'll go tidy things up, so rest for now. Guildmaster Neumann, I leave this place to you. Leave the body as it is—do not touch it."
"Yes? Yes, understood!"
At Neumann's glance, the servants moved swiftly, throwing cloth torn from somewhere over the corpse.
Watching this quietly, Arendt slowly released the breath he'd been holding.
His head, drained of strength, dropped onto his knees.
It worked.
He had excised Vincent completely from this godforsaken stage.
A few golems were nothing—the absurdly strong knights would clean them up on their own without him lifting a finger, and whether the nobles who had watched a man die right in front of them were thrown into uproar was none of his business.
"Sir Arendt, are you all right? I'll summon a healer at once."
"Don't know about anything else for now."
Arendt wiggled his hand weakly toward the worried Neumann. Reading the gesture, Neumann bent down and drew close to him.
"First, grab that whatever-it-was—the gem that was supposedly its heart. We'll be retrieving that."
"......!"
"Don't talk to me anymore. I don't have the strength to answer."
With that, Arendt dragged his body, as good as crawling, over to the wall, leaned his back deeply against it, and shut his eyes tight.
It was, as ever, an utterly self-willed attitude—this, after accomplishing the staggering feat of cutting down the mastermind of it all with his own two hands.
Neumann smiled faintly.
He had been told not to speak to him, but this one line simply had to be said now.
"You've worked hard. Thank you."
Naturally, no answer came back.
* * *
He had only meant to close his eyes for a moment, but he'd genuinely conked out. By the time he opened them in a hazy daze a long while later, a blanket had been draped over him down to his shoulders.
"Aigoo, my aching body."
Vincent's corpse had apparently already been cleared away somewhere.
As he hauled himself into a half-crouch, Laios's voice came from right beside him.
"Awake?"
"Wah, jeez. You scared me. What are you doing here?"
"Things are wrapping up, little by little. Time to prepare for our return."
To the thoroughly startled boy, Laios explained flatly.
Even amid all this, Arendt—perhaps not fully awake yet—blinked a few times and asked blankly:
"What about that cursed gem?"
"Sir Kendrick took possession of it. Those who had been trying to buy it gave up without much fuss."
No surprise there.
After witnessing something like this, no one would go out of his way to keep a jewel said to summon misfortune.
"And... Baron Cromwell was found on the third floor. The moment he came to, he asked me to pass along his thanks to you."
"Ah, right. I just left him lying there. Forgot all about him."
Arendt nodded as if that settled it, and Laios said calmly:
"You shouldn't say things like that after knocking a man unconscious."
"So what? He'd be dead if it weren't for me."
Entirely correct, and yet a remark that inspired not the slightest desire to praise him.
The Commander simply changed the subject.
"We're transporting the body to the Imperial Palace, but I conducted the first examination before that."
Laios drew out a bead slightly smaller than a fist and showed it to Arendt.
By rights a green-tinged orb, it was now smeared with blood and stripped of its color. He didn't need to think hard to guess what it was.
"I found it searching his body. There was a prosthetic eye hidden behind the mask. It seems to be the artifact he carried."
"Then why are you giving it to me?"
Laios answered flatly.
"It's my personal judgment."
"Well, if you say so."
When Arendt reached out his hand, Laios's hand—which had seemed ready to hand the artifact over at once—retreated.
"In exchange, I'd like you to explain the whole story. About what happened today."
"......."
The gaze fixed on the artifact slid up and settled on Laios. Laios calmly met the golden eyes brimming with faint irritation.
After a moment, the reply came back steeped in open displeasure.
"My, my. You're proposing a trade, of all things? How unlike you."
"I know commands don't work on you."
A very accurate assessment.
Grumbling, Arendt nodded stiffly, and only then did Laios hand over the artifact.
"Did anyone else see it?"
"No."
"Good."
Rolling the artifact around in his palm for a moment, Arendt channeled mana into it and activated it. In an instant, the Eye of the Ruler became a lump of pure white ice.
And then, a moment later—crack—the artifact crumbled away.
Arendt let the powder scatter straight to the floor and, as if venting his frustration, stomped down on it once, hard.
"You can just say it got smashed in the fight, right?"
Other artifacts were dangerous too, but this one especially had no business existing in the world. The power to control living humans was far too vile.
After a brief pause, Laios spoke.
"...So this is the end?"
Arendt nodded as if it were nothing.
"Yes. It's over."
His face was still sullen, but the look of it seemed considerably lighter.
There was plenty he wanted to ask, and plenty he ought to hear.
But now that this black-hearted brat had said it was over, surely he could allow himself a breath.
Only then could Laios finally ease some of the tension from his shoulders.