The Price of Salvation
I was the one who took the lead in switching seats and steering the conversation forward.
I laid out everything without omission—Shirogane Ichiro’s current condition, the method to resolve it, the temporary measures I had already taken, and even the possible aftereffects that might linger even after the matter was settled.
After nearly a full hour of exhaustive explanation, Shirogane Tohru wore a blank, half-comprehending look, and Shirogane Rui was no better. No—rather than failing to understand, she had deliberately tuned me out with the attitude of He’ll handle everything just fine on his own.
Only the person most directly involved, Shirogane Hanabi, listened with genuine seriousness, asking questions about every point of doubt and making a real effort to grasp it all. Those two were parties to this as well, yet the gulf in their passion was almost pitiful. Was this the weight of being the head of a family…?
“...Haa.”
Once every last question had been answered, Shirogane Hanabi finally let her expression ease and exhaled a long breath, as though a crushing weight had been lifted. The tension drained from her body all at once, leaving her completely relaxed—like frost that had been locked solid finally beginning to melt.
For a moment she simply sat there blinking, dazed. She wasn’t gasping for air, yet she looked exactly like someone who had been running through endless darkness and had only just found the light.
Mother and daughter truly were alike; the expression they wore when they finally released everything they had been bottling up was identical.
I glanced sideways at Shirogane Rui. She was still watching her mother with a sulky face, then sensed my gaze, tilted her head, and looked puzzled.
…No. Scratch that. They weren’t alike at all. Ignoring Rui’s stare, I turned forward again. Shirogane Hanabi, having collected herself, tensed once more and rose to her feet.
“I failed to recognize the benefactor who saved my husband’s life. I have committed a truly grave discourtesy, and for that I am deeply sorry.”
She bowed with perfect formality.
What pleased me most was how she immediately understood her position and dropped her head without hesitation. Unlike the pathetic full-body prostration I had once seen from Hong Su-ah, this was a beautiful posture that radiated natural dignity.
The Japanese dogeza. Yes—that dogeza.
Comparing a clumsy imitation to the real thing from its homeland made the difference in class painfully clear. Just how sincere did an apology have to be for someone to choose this posture? I felt an almost irresistible urge to grind my heel into the back of her head. It was that perfect.
Admiration aside, receiving this kind of emotion did nothing for me and only added to the hassle, so I waved a hand dismissively to tell her to stop.
Shirogane Tohru let out a sigh and shook his head at the sight of me making no effort to hide my annoyance toward his mother, and at his own sister who was openly agreeing with me.
Yeah, I know that feeling. This is pure chaos. You’ve had it rough too. Still, I won’t pity you. I’m in the same boat.
Thud!
“Myaah…!?”
I smacked the back of Shirogane Rui’s head as she sat there acting up beside me and shoved her straight toward her mother. Shirogane Hanabi, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, seized Rui’s head and forced her into the exact same posture.
“W-why meee…”
“A family’s shame is the clan’s shame. Accept it quietly, Rui.”
“Hueee… if anything, I was the one who stopped youuu…”
Her words carried no strength at all. It was obvious Rui was half-enjoying this. A fixed match, almost. Having just been staring so intently at their souls, I could see those undercurrents whether I wanted to or not.
I deliberately shut off Reaper. The colors that had been glittering bright enough to sting my eyes, and the thoughts that had been subtly unbalanced like static, gradually faded away. The sudden difference brought a natural wave of eye strain; I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose between them. It was a meaningless gesture, but the sense of relief alone was enough.
It’s going to take a while to get used to this.
Controlling the power was harder than I had expected. Even with Battle King restoring my body, the fatigue was this severe—proof that a single misstep wouldn’t end with mere damage to my eyesight.
Squeeze.
Business was finished, so I ignored the mother-daughter banter and tried to leave, intending to join Comet and the others. Suddenly someone grabbed the hem of my pants.
I turned. Shirogane Hanabi had already approached and was looking up at me with a perfectly composed smile.
“What is it?”
“If I offer no repayment to the benefactor who allowed our clan’s bloodline to continue, our ancestors will surely scold me most severely.”
Honestly, it was a hassle. I didn’t need anything right now, and their future was already set to be swallowed by Lee Se-rin anyway. The way she kept glancing at me even now was proof enough.
This was getting old. Every last one of them was starting to piss me off.
“…So what’s your real intention?”
“With our current strength alone, we lack the capacity to follow the blueprint of our plans. I would like to request your assistance.”
The smile that accompanied those words was brazen and refreshingly direct in a way that made my skin crawl. No wonder people called her a cunning old snake.
“If you’re going to put yourself in my debt, wouldn’t it be better to make the debt even larger?”
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I shall take that as acceptance.”
Even my sigh didn’t stop her from casually advancing her plans. Should I call her tenacious, or simply good at her job? Either way, she looked like she’d make an excellent subordinate.
Belief aside, people like her were utterly faithful to their own desires, which made them easy to use. The only thing driving her right now was Shirogane Ichiro’s safe return.
Lee Se-rin would be drooling over that pure, single-minded devotion. She was probably screaming Pure love! Beautiful pure love! and throwing a fit somewhere even now.
…Don’t tell me the reason she wanted to acquire this place was because of that?
Come to think of it, every company that had recently come under the Dragonia Group’s umbrella seemed to be run by devoted couples or people with that level of pure love.
I was still turning the thought over when a slimy, sweeping gaze made my skin crawl, and I stopped thinking about it.
…Whatever. As long as she’s competent, pure love or not isn’t my problem. I’ll just move in my own way.
She looked ready to dash off immediately, but I had no intention of going that far just to deepen the debt. Honestly, what I had already done was more than enough to handle Shirogane Rui.
The way she had moved to protect me even against her own mother earlier had confirmed it. Right now, my priority inside her was equal to—or higher than—her family’s.
Maybe she had reacted so fiercely because she knew my strength and was worried her mother would get hurt. But thinking that far made my head hurt. Thinking itself was a form of labor. I shaped a chair out of shadow with my mana and sat down.
Ever since my reincarnation I had spent most of my life sitting in proper seats, so sitting on the floor like this never quite settled me.
I made ones for the others as well. The quality was lower, but sitting alone would have looked bad. I also reinforced the tatami itself with shadow so the chair legs wouldn’t crush the flooring—nothing to worry about.
“…This is impressive.”
“Right? Our Shinwoo dongsaeng is totally all-purpose. All-purpose!”
“Correct your disrespectful way of addressing our benefactor, Rui.”
“Ehh, Shinwoo dongsaeng doesn’t care about that stuff, does he? He’d just say it’s a hassle and tell us to do whatever.”
In that short exchange Rui had read me perfectly. Shirogane Hanabi looked momentarily flustered and checked my expression.
“…Just sit.”
When the person in question offered no reaction and simply changed the subject, she calmly nodded in acceptance.
“I shall listen carefully to our benefactor’s words.”
Then she knelt on the floor in a posture that was beautiful in a completely different sense from before. I had gone to the trouble of preparing chairs, yet she insisted on sitting on the floor. Sensing her stubbornness, I sighed inwardly and continued.
“The one helping won’t be me. It’ll be my summons.”
To be precise, only Hive and Shiz. I planned to sit back and watch. Of course I would stay nearby so I could revive them if they died, but I would keep completely clear of the actual fighting. That was the whole reason I had chosen to be a summoner in the first place.
“…Ah, now that you mention it, there was a report that you were a summoner. I had naturally assumed you were a warrior.”
I wondered what about me had made her think that, then a flash of information about Battle King crossed my mind. Absolute combat correction also meant constructing a body suited for it.
I hadn’t been scrawny before, but now my body was packed with dense, solid muscle while still retaining flexibility—exactly the kind of physique built for fighting. At first I had simply been amazed that a body could change this much overnight, but to someone who didn’t know me it would look like I had talent for the martial path.
Once again reminded of how broken the skill was, I steered the conversation back on track.
“Anyway, you were already planning to go save your husband right away, weren’t you?”
“Yes. With our benefactor’s help, that process will undoubtedly become much smoother.”
“And that conviction comes purely from my abilities, not from any personal excellence of mine.”
Snap!
I flicked my fingers. The shadow at my feet stretched, and a sparrow-sized Hive peeked out, then hopped up onto my shoulder. Shiz appeared right after, draping a cloth over me and floating a lantern.
Even with Reaper deactivated, Shiz’s form was still faintly visible. After settling the cloth on my shoulders, she wrapped both arms around my neck and took her place there.
Just as Battle King had reshaped my body for combat, Reaper must have influenced my soul and everything connected to it. The skill was packed with soul-related effects, after all. The same went for Agony of Arsan, whose full effects I still didn’t properly understand.
I needed to start experimenting in earnest, but nothing suitable had come up. In that sense, this opportunity wasn’t bad at all.
My current job level was 37. Reaching 35 last time had given me one more summon slot; at 40 it would increase again. Using that as a foundation, I intended to begin properly utilizing souls.
And the front lines will be crawling with monsters I’ve never seen before.
Time was short. My mana, resonating with my emotions, trembled faintly around me, openly displaying the unpleasant feelings within—like a beast growling a threat.
“Speak your true intention. You’re trying to use me to drag in the woman behind me.”
“…”
Silence was as good as affirmation. So my connections counted as an ability too? She really was a black-hearted woman.
Shirogane Hanabi hadn’t lied. She had simply concealed part of the truth with skill. It was a method I used often myself—there was no way I wouldn’t notice. What irritated me most was that she had flattered me as a way to slip that fact past me.
She was an assassin skilled enough to lead both a corporation and a family. For someone like that to bow purely out of gratitude was far too convenient.
Wanting Shirogane Tohru’s safe return as her top priority was true, but there was also something she was using that as a shield to hide.
She had a goal. She had hidden it. Why?
Simple.
There was someone she suspected as the mastermind behind Shirogane Ichiro’s current state—and she knew exactly who it was. In other words, she didn’t want me to find out.
So who was the mastermind?
Her past. The Shirogane family’s position. The repercussions that would follow. Weighing all of it, I reached a single conclusion. At the same time my shadow contracted and settled over my body like clothing.
I casually flipped the mask that had formed over my face up onto my head like a helmet visor, ready to pull it down again at any moment, and uncrossed my legs.
Now I understood why they had been unable to give Shirogane Ichiro proper treatment. This woman had been wary that anyone she called in might be under Yashiro’s influence.
For some reason she regarded Yashiro as an enemy.
“Yashiro wants the fall of Shirogane. The reason is that they want to bring you back to the main family.”
“…Ugh.”
As if I had struck the bullseye, Shirogane Hanabi ground her teeth. Rui and Tohru looked shocked.
“Mom? What does that mean?”
“Why would the main family…?”
It meant severing the long-standing relationship between main house and branch—cutting off their primary, reliable supplier. Yet Yashiro had judged that the gains would more than compensate. That was why they had offered no proper support even in this state. No—they might have been the ones applying pressure first.
In that light, my appearance must have looked to her like a rope dropped from heaven.
So that’s why she clung to me so desperately.
I was publicly known as Lee Se-rin of the Dragonia Group’s fiancé. Therefore she could be certain I would never fall under the influence of the likes of Yashiro.
It wasn’t a calculation of the power difference between Dragonia and Yashiro. She simply knew exactly what kind of monster Lee Se-rin was.
In the past, Hanabi had been a prodigy talented enough to be marked as the next head of Yashiro. Watching someone like that rot away as a mere branch-family wife must have been unbearable for them.
Destroying Shirogane was the first step. Smash the place she belonged, then take the lives of the people she held dear as hostages. A classic dark scheme—and for that very reason, extremely effective.
If there was no weakness, create one. That was the trade of assassins, and of contract killers in general. In that sense Yashiro had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Humanity, however, they had thrown to the dogs. Those who had sought to understand darkness in order to fight it had instead been swallowed by it—the arrogant karma of the first Yashiro coming full circle. They were willing to use even their own family as disposable pieces; the fire at their feet must have been enormous.
Tap.
Having organized my thoughts that far, I rested my hand on the chair’s armrest out of habit and drummed my fingers.
This was the crossroads.
Do I accept this and shoulder the hassle, or leave things as they are and gain this woman as an unknown future threat?
A branch abandoned even by its main house. Lee Se-rin had surely calculated all of this when she decided to acquire Shirogane. That meant I could dump a fair portion of the hassle onto her.
But that would also mean handing her the authority to interfere in whatever I did afterward.
A creature for whom everything ultimately served her own amusement—an extreme hedonist so thoroughly insane she looked almost normal. Expecting anything from her was a mistake from the start.
It’s a bit early… but should I start laying the foundation now?
Using Comet as the core to build a company was still beyond her current capabilities. If this woman could fill that gap…
Is there any profit…?
Even if Comet simply absorbed her way of thinking and her skills themselves, it would lead to future-oriented gains. And if I could strip Yashiro bare and obtain their assassination techniques while I was at it, Ea’s power would grow as well.
If I was going to do it, I might as well clear away the hassle completely—then negotiate with Lee Se-rin. A half-baked Shirogane would be far less useful to her than a Yashiro she could “use” in all sorts of ways.
Thud!
“Answer.”
I had made up my mind, so I forced an answer from the woman in front of me.
Perhaps because I had laced the word with mana, Shirogane Hanabi’s shoulders flinched once. She let out a long breath, then looked up at me with unwavering eyes and spoke.
“…As you have already guessed, the ones who orchestrated this affair are Yashiro. The current head—my father—wanted me to return to the main family, but I refused.”
Just as I thought. I jerked my chin to tell her to continue.
“The Yashiro of today… have lost the heart of the founder. Ironically, it was the branch family, untouched by the main house’s hands, that still carried that original spirit.”
“So you abandoned the position of next head of Yashiro and married a man from the branch?”
“Yes. Those who opposed me were all persuaded through Yashiro’s unique form of ‘dialogue.’ Of course, they were nothing but trash who cared nothing for the old codes, so it was half an escape.”
In short, she had crushed them with force and run. At the time she had possessed that kind of power, and Yashiro had lacked the strength to keep her bound.
“I have not the slightest desire to return to that blood-soaked, frigid den where people are seen as nothing more than tools and sources of profit. More than anything… at the time, I already had a family I had to protect.”
“…Meaning?”
“When I left the family, I was already pregnant with Rui.”
“Me?!”
Hearing her own name suddenly, Shirogane Rui let out a high-pitched cry of shock.
“It really is a nostalgic past. I first met him at the Academy. As a branch family member I already knew the basic information about him… but yes, I can say that was when I first truly came to know the person called ‘Shirogane Ichiro.’”
As she spoke, Shirogane Hanabi’s expression softened into a gentle smile completely at odds with the rigid blankness of moments before, as though she were gazing into the past.
“Meeting him was the first time I felt what it was like to be human. What had been a mere relationship of information between main house and branch developed into one of warrior and craftsman, and then into that of a woman and a man. Compared to the cold main house, his embrace was so very warm. His heart was no empty shell either, and that drew me even more.”
Even at a young age she had already been confirmed as the next head—in a sense the person closest to the first Yashiro. The main house had probably regarded her as the reincarnation of the founder who had made Yashiro the brightest star in Japan.
Having already shone their brightest, they had only decline left. So they clung to the woman who would bring them new wind and revival. An ordinary person they might have let go, but they had tasted even a fragment of her excellence and could not give her up. Few things cling as tenaciously as the obsession of those who have nothing.
Yet they judged that their current strength was insufficient. So they would wait. Wait until her blade dulled and things as precious as her own life appeared—then seize those weaknesses.
A dulled blade could be sharpened again. But if her heart strayed, their own safety would be at risk. Therefore they would make her return of her own will.
Making someone who left on their own feet come back again. A common rhetorical flourish whose true meaning was forcing a person to break their own will. Whether by their own choice or another’s did not matter; the act of breaking it with their own hands was what counted.
What they wanted was a tool that would bring glorious prosperity—not a monster who might turn a dangerous blade upon them. Having already been burned once by that spark, if she returned this time they would never let her go by ordinary means. Something even more horrific might occur. To prevent that, she had moved.
“I had desperately planned for the day something like this might happen, but…”
The very thing she had feared had finally erupted. She had succeeded in raising the Shirogane Union to the peak of its generation, yet she had failed to protect the most important thing—her own weakness.
“What a foolish man. The charm I gave him in case something like this happened… he handed it over to a guild member who was joining the expedition for the first time, just to ease their nerves. And yet he always said that when he was targeted, the people around him were in the greatest danger, so he deliberately stayed apart and carried everything alone…”
That was the part of him she had fallen for—and yet he was so unfair.
“Unable even to protect a single family… what kind of reincarnation of the first Yashiro is that supposed to be… It’s just laughable.”
“…Mom.”
Tears welled in her eyes as the words spilled out. Beside her, Shirogane Rui tightly clasped her hand.
Shirogane Tohru, having only now learned of the family circumstances he had never known, clutched his head as though his brain had reached capacity and let out a deep sigh.
The rough outline matched my expectations almost perfectly. That alone was enough justification. The only question left was whether Lee Se-rin would accept it.
“Let’s make the conditions clear.”
I presented her with two choices: Did she want the fall of Yashiro, or the safe return of her husband?
“…Is there even any meaning in choosing?”
If Yashiro was not destroyed, resolving the immediate crisis would change nothing. Shirogane Hanabi’s choice had been decided from the start.
“I need both.”
“The price is steep. You might lose everything you have built up until now.”
“…This incident has made it perfectly clear to me. As long as I can protect my family, I don’t care. Even if it means selling my soul.”
She had already been driven into a corner. I had no idea what she had originally been like, but she must have been “perfect” enough for the people of Yashiro to go to such troublesome lengths to reclaim her.
That woman had gained humanity and grown soft.
I watched her for a while, then spoke toward empty air.
“I know you’re watching. Come out.”
Fwaah—
At the same moment, a thick, sweet citrus fragrance brushed the tip of my nose.