The Key (5)
"...You can handle that, can't you?"
"Unlike you humans, I've got these."
The tiger opened its jaws wide. Metallic implants gleamed a dull silver-gray, and the moment artificial aura technology kicked in, they were wreathed in a bluish glow.
CRUNCH!
Two deep grooves scored themselves across the Power Suit's outer plating.
"Thought you had me restrained? It's the other way around!"
The mercenary lunged to tear out Alan's throat. Alan dodged by the skin of his teeth, but the damage kept piling up along the arms and shoulders, and now and then even the helmet took a scrape.
"Close combat really isn't your strong suit, is it?"
"..."
Ignoring the question, the mercenary devoted himself entirely to biting.
Tap-tap.
At the small sound from behind, the tiger's ears swiveled back. He tried to withdraw his jaws and twist away, but the two of them were locked together, pinned in mutual restraint.
The Leopard, which had crept up in silence, raked its claws across the mercenary's back. His military-style uniform was magically treated, and sparks sprayed where the two constructs collided.
"You had a comrade left over! No—wait, it's an automaton."
In his scramble to break free, the mercenary finally managed a glance backward. The mechanical leopard was prowling in lazy circles, angling for his rear.
"And here I thought this was a fair one-on-one duel!"
"It is one-on-one."
"...What?"
"You wouldn't call a spirit wielder or a summoner cowardly for deploying their familiars, would you?"
The mercenary wore an expression of pure incomprehension. Not that the Leopard's string of follow-up attacks left him much composure to spare for it.
He could see his barrier thinning in real time, and at last drops of red began falling onto the asphalt.
"Grrk!"
The searing pain made his struggles all the more violent, but Alan had no intention whatsoever of letting go of the mercenary's hands. Why abandon an open, comfortable road just to slog down a hard one?
"Fight like a proper warrior, you coward!"
"Are you even a real mercenary?"
"Then at least smash me head-on! In my entire life I have never once allowed an attack to my back!"
The lacerations across the mercenary's back multiplied and steadily deepened. Only after his uniform trousers had soaked through with red did he finally go down on one knee.
Alan looked down at him. His mana was spent, the muscles of his back shredded to ribbons—he was in no state to continue fighting.
"Damn it all. To lose so... anticlimactically."
He seemed to lack even the strength to stay kneeling, and toppled face-first onto the ground. From that position, all he could do was roll his eyes upward at Alan.
"I concede. The ending was a strange one, but the way you moved at the start was fluid—yet feral, too."
The fluidity would have been Sion. The ferocity, Taylor.
"Where did you learn—"
The instant the mercenary posed the question, the Power Suit's back plate split open and Alan stepped out. The gaunt body that emerged was no warrior's physique. There wasn't a single trace of physical training to be seen.
The tiger's brow knotted at once.
"You weren't a body cultivator?"
"I'm a magitech engineer. Ha—moving around like this is truly exhausting."
His whole body was drenched. It was June, warm even at night, but he ran so hot by nature that the cool air felt like standing inside a refrigerator.
Alan fished out his rune pen and began tracing something onto the Power Suit's surface.
"What are you doing now?"
"The ventilation function's busted. I won't bill you for it separately, so don't worry."
"How very kinoooownd of you."
Repairs finished in short order, and Alan climbed back into the Power Suit. As the Leopard busied itself re-sharpening its claws, Taylor emerged from Damas Tech's main gate, the mercenaries trussed up in a neat line behind him.
Box, trailing at the rear, snapped one mercenary's arm clean off and stuffed it into its belly—that is, into its drawer. No matter how the mercenaries resisted, it doggedly separated them from their magicware. Alan had no idea who had taught it, but its technique was uncanny.
Having finished that bit of work, Box then approached the prone Lycan. As those sturdy pincers crept closer and closer, the tiger's voice began to tremble.
"H-hold on! We had ourselves a fine fight just now—wasn't the mood one of mercy?"
"Mercy by whose decree? Lying there all spread out like that, you look just like a tiger-skin rug."
"Tigers do leave their pelts behind when they die, it's true."
Taylor chimed in from the side. The mercenary, who had been listening with all his might, felt his eyes shake violently.
Alan lost interest immediately. The spider that had at some point climbed onto his shoulder handed over the treasure it had been so carefully cradling—the key. Its appearance was utterly ordinary, but the energy sealed inside was extraordinarily alien.
'It's cold.'
Not cold like ice—the atmosphere of its aura was simply like that. If anything, the key itself seemed to want to reject Alan's hand.
The key gave off a peculiar sensation. Alan found the thing vaguely off-putting, and the key, for its part, seemed eager to slip free of his grip.
'How am I supposed to put this feeling into words?'
Alan turned the problem over in his head for a while before something surfaced from memory.
Humanity had feared the night right up until it learned to make fire. Night belonged to the nocturnal predators, and when that hour came, humans fell to them helpless, unable so much as to lift a hand. Darkness had thus become, quite naturally, a thing the instincts recoiled from.
'It stirs up ominous imaginings, too.'
Stare long enough into deep blackness, and there were moments when it felt as though anything at all might come leaping out of it—even knowing full well that there was nothing there.
All of this, of course, was Alan's own thinking; he had no way of knowing how anyone else might feel. Individual difference was a wondrous thing, after all—there were surely people who found the night cozier than the day.
He felt the itch to scratch at the key's surface, to heat it in a flame and see how far it would bend.
But it belonged to Lorenzo, so he held himself back. A person cannot live entirely as they please; patience was a virtue to be cultivated. There were times he felt the pull of the Collector's life—living unseen, taking what one wished—but he was not that man.
"Stop it!"
A sudden scream sliced through his thoughts. Alan turned his head to find Box attempting to wedge its pincers into the tiger mercenary's mouth. Naturally, the tightly bound mercenary was squirming like an earthworm in protest.
Alan grasped the reason at once. He had tasked Box with collecting magicware, and the mercenary's teeth were magicware—implants capable of emitting artificial aura.
He could understand the attempt to extract them, but the fight was over, and he had no desire to see more blood spilled. It was much the same reason he hadn't plucked out the man's artificial eye, despite that, too, being magicware.
'Though if it turned out to be something unusual, I might think differently.'
Alan tucked the key into his coat and reined Box in.
"Leave that alone."
"Thank y—"
"It's filthy."
"Filthy? Do you have any idea how fastidiously I brush? I visit the dentist once a month, I'll have you know. If it weren't for that last remark, I'd have been deeply moved by your boundless mercy..."
The tiger mercenary grumbled and muttered, but Alan answered in his usual calm tone.
"It's a weapon, plain and simple. How many people did those attacks of yours kill?"
The technique of lacing one's fingers together to seal an opponent's movement, then driving the jaws home the instant they let their guard down—there was no shortage of ways it could end a fight. Though he supposed it might be different if there were magicware out there that opened its chest and launched missiles.
The mercenary, busy rolling this way and that to escape Box, had gotten dirt and dust all over his muzzle. He spat a few times, then looked up at Alan.
"You're not so much as scratched."
"The Power Suit does have a few new scars. Hmm... maybe I should just pull them out after all—"
"Wh-what?"
The mercenary's eyes went round as saucers, and his mouth fell open. Then a booming voice burst out of him.
"Gerrick! My name is Gerrick!"
"Why are you suddenly telling me your name?"
"Felt like the right moment for it. Making introductions is the act of drawing closer to another person, you see. So this is me saying let's call it quits here. Of course, the choice is yours. Ahh, how I do love peace~"
The appended remark took the shape of a muttered aside, but to anyone within earshot it meant exactly one thing: please, show me mercy.
Alan waved a hand, and Box withdrew. It opened its drawer and kept tucking its pincers in and out of it, for all the world like some creature foraging on a tidal flat.
Alan's plan was to bind Gerrick and his friends up properly and hand them over to Lorenzo's subordinates. A ransom could be collected from them—or perhaps this side might simply hire them instead.
He did not execute people out of hand merely for having stood on the other side. There were those who believed anyone who crossed blades with them deserved death, but even that varied with the person holding the power to choose—a prisoner's fate was decided by their captor.
The tiger's early recommendation to surrender quietly had itself been one piece of evidence for that calculus.
In the mercenary trade, the prevailing sentiment was that dying in a clash of jobs was simply the luck of the draw—but human hearts don't move by sentiment alone. Someone might nurse a grudge and come knife at your back one day, which meant indiscriminate slaughter was never the only answer, either.
When Alan glanced over, Gerrick flashed him a grin. As far as the tiger was concerned, he was no doubt expressing a docile, conciliatory heart—but to any outside observer, he was a ferocious, murderous beast, plain and simple.
Meanwhile, one of the mercenaries in Shiva's custody was asking a question of his own.
"Am I... perhaps going to the Purification Volunteer Corps?"
"Sister, you fail to meet the qualifications. Or perhaps you'd care to make a confession instead? I will hear it and render judgment."
"I'll just... stay very quiet..."
Alan left Damas Tech and placed a call to Lorenzo's liaison. Waiting at the appointed spot was a mage who looked considerably powerful.
Beneath the elevated roadways tangled like a maze, in a darkness that even Maze City's lights could not intrude upon, a deep shadow rose to meet them.
"Swift work."
"The key is here."
"Confirmed. All in order. The commission has been safely fulfilled, so Lord Lorenzo will keep his side of the promise as well. Return to the Primeval Forest."
"When might humans start benefiting from Matter Transmission?"
"..."
The mage held his silence even against the surprise question. Alan had meant to gauge the research's progress from whatever slipped out of the man's mouth, but the gambit didn't land.
"Just as Lord Lorenzo said, I see. Are you also aware that a question can serve as a pretext for an attack?"
"Which is why one must choose the timing carefully. Ideally, when the other party is in a good mood. Ah, those bound mercenaries over there—"
"We'll handle those ourselves. The additional compensation will be deposited to your account."
Of course, every coin added to that compensation would raise the mercenaries' ransom accordingly, and stretch out the years of service they'd owe to earn their release. As the conversation wound toward its close, Alan lobbed out one last question.
"What can the key actually do? Is the research still in its opening stages?"
"I know nothing at all. That will be all."
Darkness welled up from beneath the mage's feet, swallowed the mercenaries whole, and vanished along with them.
Taylor, who had been leaning against one of the pillars holding up the elevated roadway, straightened himself.
"Not spatial movement, then. Some manner of magic that rides shadows like a mount and covers ground fast."
"If that mage had stepped in personally, the recovery would've been far simpler—but with the Tower Lord's orders in place, I suppose that was never on the table."
"Mages hold themselves far too noble to stoop to such labor. 'Let the lowborn spill the blood'—that's the shape of their hearts. And you saw for yourself: not a single mage showed their face in this entire affair."
"Is that truly how they think?"
"Their supremacism runs deeper than you'd imagine. They look at anyone who isn't a mage and see livestock. So tell me—what would you say is the single most important virtue for a mage?"
"Endless curiosity and talent, I'd say."
"Talent is a gift you're born with. That's exactly why they believe themselves chosen. Even if they don't start out that way, bury them in a magic tower long enough and they inevitably turn."
"Have you been on the receiving end of such unreasonable treatment?"
"A few times. There must have been decent folk among them too, but it's those incidents that seem to stick in the memory, curse them. Still, I'll grant they're kind enough to anyone with ability."
Alan's party set out once more for the Primeval Forest research base. Having now witnessed Matter Transmission with their own eyes, the long journey downward felt more interminable than ever.
The same held true for Alan. Every unnecessary battle avoided was a page more he could turn in a book, a rune more he could draw.
When they arrived at the research base, Lorenzo was waiting in his office once again. The moment Alan opened the door and stepped inside, the mage spoke without preamble.
"We are researching the key as well. We have yet to uncover anything."
"Why tell me that?"
"I expected you would ask exactly that. Am I wrong?"
"Correct."
"Thought so. The instant you opened that door, I could see the question already loaded in your throat."
"Then—"
"To business."
Lorenzo understood what Alan wanted all too well. He was a mage himself, so perhaps that much was only natural—in the end, mages and magitech engineers alike were beings thirsting for knowledge.
"Where is the ruin located?"
"That is not part of your reward. Recall the terms of our agreement carefully. It was not to reveal the location—it was to permit an investigation."
"The contract was that anything we find there, we keep."
"Yes, that was included as well."
"Then how are we supposed to find it without knowing the loc—"