Therefore, You Who Shine So Bright
The first word that surfaced was who.
As for why anyone would pull off something like this, I had already found a vague answer, so I set that question aside — what bloomed instead was the matter of which wretched soul was behind it.
Anyone capable of orchestrating a terrorist act on this scale would hardly let the one who interfered with their experiment go unpunished.
It was a simple thought, but one born of plain self-preservation. An utterly ordinary thing to think.
This was the Underground City, after all — a lawless wasteland the royal court had long since given up on governing. Everyone living here was dangerous. If they died, no one would so much as blink.
Right. There would be no problem at all. No one would blame me for running away from here, and no one could.
It couldn't be helped. It was a problem that couldn't be helped.
Couldn't be helped…….
"So I'm compromising……?"
The words tumbled out of my mouth — my own voice, yet it pierced straight down to my depths.
And at the same moment, I recognized it. The contradiction in my own thinking. I believed Robin's murder was unjustifiable, so why did I consider this an acceptable kind of cleanup?
The common trait of those who cry out about justice and goodness with nothing but their lips: the instant their own interests are threatened in even the smallest way, they compromise. Immediately.
The ugliness I had always scorned in others had appeared right before me — inside me.
This was something only I could do right now. If not me, no one would do it.
If I didn't act this very moment, everyone here would die for no reason at all.
"……Spear."
Tap. The instant the incantation left my lips, mana stretched out long and thin from my hand.
A sharp yellow hue befitting the name "spear." I steered it slowly, aimed it at a magic stone, and pinned it in place.
My reasoning was simple: rather than shattering the Allurement Magic Stone here and now, it was more efficient to lock onto the others scattered elsewhere and destroy them all in a single coordinated strike.
If I broke even one, the culprit might notice something was off and throw a wrench in everything.
So the plan was to set the spell and leave it in place — once every preparation was done, I would shatter all the stones simultaneously, and the rest would come to their own judgments and find their way out on their own.
As for the bomb itself, I lacked any ability to dismantle it, so I never even considered it.
I moved fast. No sooner had I reached the fourth floor than I was chanting the same spell again, aiming at another stone and pinning it at the center. The scene before me was identical to the third floor in every particular. Tended to. Back up the stairs.
Even in the middle of all this, my mind and my pupils were working overtime, shaking, doing exactly what they were made to do — but the only mercy was that my legs never stopped.
My breathing was ragged, sweat trickling down with the anxiety. What would I do if I ran into someone?
There was a chance no one would be here at all, given how dangerous the bomb was — but still.
"They'd need at least one person around for maintenance……"
Someone had to be here. That was the conclusion my short-sighted brain arrived at.
And yet, given that no one had shown themselves so far, was that luck — or was something twisted somewhere?
An unease I couldn't pin down trailed after me all the same.
"Haah…… haah……"
Even as my mind churned away, my body kept moving.
I had only made it to the fourth floor, and already I was drenched in sweat, my breathing in ruins.
"This is…… the seventh floor."
Somehow I'd finished up through the seventh. The building had ten floors in all, so once I cleared the remaining three on the way up, I could sweep back down and handle only the second and first.
It was going smoother than I'd expected, and I let myself breathe a little easier — but every undertaking has its variables.
In the urgency of the moment, I failed to register that fact.
And it would become a cruel result.
"……!!"
KWAAAAGH!! A ripping detonation tore through the air, and a piercing eeeeng shrieked at my ears, tangling my senses into knots.
The source was above — the tenth floor, almost certainly. Judging by the situation, this was, without a doubt—
"It's begun!"
I understood. The reason there had been no one in a space that clearly demanded at least one supervisor was that all the preparations were already complete.
Instinct blared its alarm, and I wheeled around and sprinted downward. The tenth floor had blown — the ninth would surely be next.
The ninth, likely already collapsing in a chain reaction, was beyond saving. Which left one choice: try for the eighth floor, or don't.
"……Better two floors I can save for certain than one I can't."
That was the compromise I made.
"Detonate."
Mana unleashed — and from every direction came the sound of something bursting apart.
It was indirect proof that my operation had worked. The mental interference pressing in on me had genuinely thinned, and I shouted at once.
"Everyone! Get out of here, now!"
The voice I squeezed out was warped and cracked, but it was the best I had. After running without a single pause, I had nothing left to pad it with.
I hadn't even shattered the stones on the first and second floors yet. Moving came first, above everything.
A low murmur rippled through the corridors — the people freed from the trance, unable to grasp the situation that had slammed into them, wandering in confusion.
Fortunately, or perhaps not, there was no need for me to explain anything further.
-KWAAAGH!!!
Because a perfectly instructive example arrived on cue.
The shockwave from the floor directly above sent the ceiling cracking and crashing down.
Only then did the people understand the peril they were in, and they began pouring out of the building fast.
At the head of them all was me. Not because I wanted to be the first to flee — it was a decision born of knowing that the only person who could save the first and second floors was me.
Indeed, the magic stone still lingered on the second floor. The moment I arrived, I destroyed it.
No explanations were necessary for any of them. The building had already begun to come down, and the quick-witted were already running.
Whew. A great gulp of air. One floor left — the first. I dredged up strength I didn't have and ran.
And in the midst of it, I thought: I did the right thing. The people on the eighth and ninth floors couldn't be helped. This was the limit of what I could do.
It was self-defense — a shield against the final screams of the eighth and ninth floors still ringing in my skull, tormenting me even now.
"……Please. Focus."
Grind. I clenched my teeth. Self-loathing could wait. Right now, saving whoever remained came first.
As resolve wrapped itself around me, the black voices receded into the sky once more.
Holding myself together, I finally reached the first floor. I briefly considered smashing straight through a wall to escape faster, then abandoned the idea just as quickly — it might bring the whole building down on our heads.
The scene before me matched every other floor exactly — with one exception. Here, there was an exit. And one other strange thing.
"What are you doing standing alone in a place like this?"
A woman, standing motionless, staring at — not a magic stone — a wall. It was unnatural to the point of grotesque, alien.
There was no stone over there at all.
Even that merciless black seemed to cling to her — but in the end, she too was someone in need of a helping hand. Or so I thought.
"It's dangerous — hurry! This way!"
My body was already moving. The whole reason I existed in this place was to save people.
I seized her arm in a hard grip and pulled. The woman finally turned to look at me, flustered for a moment, but her steps followed mine.
And at the same time, I shattered the magic stone on the first floor. The spell, once again, was the Spear, carried on a short chant.
The woman watched the display quietly, then shifted her gaze to me. An achingly clear, elegant pair of eyes — utterly striking.
What they reflected was red. Deep as blood, glinting like the hour before dawn — a color that carried some ironic, nameless something.
Was it because I'd found something in those eyes? Because I'd been transfixed by that passionate red?
No — maybe I simply wanted to say it.
"……I don't know why you're in a place like this, but you should get out of here as fast as you can."
No answer came, of course. She only stared at me with eyes unnervingly calm, and so I didn't press on either.
Whatever the case, getting her out of the building was the best thing I could do right now.
And so — tak, tak, tak — I ran like a madman, and the light of the exit finally coming into view had never looked so welcome.
Still gripping her arm, I dragged us both out of the building at last.
"Haah, haah……"
Outside, the crowd was mostly people who had fled the collapsing building without understanding why.
They murmured, straining to make sense of the moment, supporting one another, tending to the injured.
A small ember of pride flickered in me — the effort hadn't been wasted — but the thought of the people I'd abandoned sleeping in the rubble below filled my head with black again.
How many had I saved? How many had slipped through my fingers?
Had I judged just a little faster, I could have reached the eighth floor too.
The thoughts tangled like a snarl of thread, tail chasing tail, refusing to let me go. Regret, fear, anxiety, discomfort — that was most of it.
"……"
And now someone would come hunting the fool who sabotaged their experiment.
After agonizing over it all that while, what remained in the end was an hour of fear and regret.
Unable to breathe properly, I clutched my head and faced the fear head-on.
I decided there was no more good in keeping my face visible. I made to move quickly.
"……Excuse me — might I have your name?"
The voice that reached me was a woman's. The one I'd saved last.
I raised my head slowly and met her face.
Just as before, she was calm to the point of strangeness — not at all the look of someone who had just brushed past death.
Looking closer, the corners of her mouth were even curved faintly upward.
But my earlier warning had been sincere. Whatever she was, getting out of this Underground quickly would be better for her health.
"Forgive me."
Which meant being entangled with me would do her no good either. That was what I believed.
Those words were the end of it. She didn't hold me back, and my exhausted body wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place. In every way, it was complicated.
And so it ended.
"……"
After every last person had gone, the red-eyed woman stood alone, quietly gazing at the ruined building.
There was no apparent intent behind it. She simply stared into the empty air, endlessly, endlessly — her eyes seemed devoid of purpose altogether.
"Thanks to our adorable little saboteur, the lethality test was only half a success."
She was simply standing there. Burning.
Approaching anyone who carried such an alien atmosphere was something any sane person would shrink from — but the man who emerged from the shadows was not so deterred.
Without the slightest hesitation, he approached and bowed his head.
The exquisite deference of the gesture spoke volumes about the relationship between them. As expected, the man stood beneath the woman.
"May I ask why you simply let them go? You invested considerable effort into this experiment. Do you not regret it?"
"It was entertaining. Watching them scramble so hard to keep those things alive."
The woman's finger pointed at the people who had clawed their way back from the cliff of death.
Those things. That was what she called them. A single short sentence — yet it laid bare the way her mind worked.
The second word worth noting was entertaining. The man's question was answered — and dismissed — in a single word.
It was a profoundly selfish, unjustifiable reason. But he chose to accept it rather than understand it.
"That aside, you were far too reckless this time."
Yet one question remained — one that leaned closer to worry than to doubt.
This too the man voiced without hesitation.
"You said you wished to see its power for yourself, and then you walked straight inside the building. Had you fallen under the Allurement spell, the consequences could have been……"
"Why? I saw something good, thanks to it."
A single cutting remark severed his words mid-air, and frost began to bloom across the air between them.
Sensing the shift, the man quietly took a step back and bowed his head deeper still. An unspoken apology.
Seeing it, the woman seemed to feel marginally better — the crease between her brows smoothed out. She looked up at the sky.
A merciless black. The moon's hour, now.
"Look into someone for me. Name, residence — everything."
"I beg your pardon? All of a sudden, what—"
"That one from before. The gray hair, scar over the eye, running around for all they were worth."
As she spoke, she looked down at her own wrist. It was, without question, the place where Zeo had seized her to pull her to safety.
Perhaps he had squeezed far too hard in his urgency. Her wrist was faintly red.
Falling infinitely short of what lived in her own eyes — and yet, in the end, a similar color. The same family of hue.
"……Understood. Vice Master."
And so the man resolved, firmly, that he would not disappoint his superior — the Vice Master of Tocalos.