The Name Nocturne
Just as he had expected.
Leaving the alley, Arteon made a circuit of every blacksmith's shop in the capital. For a city of this size, there were a fair number of them — and yet.
…So that merchant wasn't lying after all.
Not one of them forged anything better than the shabby little smithy he had found in that first alley. No — to call it a slight difference would have been an embarrassment. The gap was vast.
"What kind of man is he, exactly…?"
How someone with skill like that could be running such a tiny, rundown forge was a mystery. But —
"I've let it get far too late."
He had finally found a decent smith, and in the time he spent touring the capital's forges just to make the comparison, night had fallen without him noticing.
"Besides, lodging somewhere a little quieter is more comfortable anyway."
Arteon headed for an inn with its lights still burning. It was a rather small place, but being the capital, the prices were a world apart from what they had been in Almers, the northern city.
"…Unbelievable. Highway robbers, the lot of them. Twelve silver a night for a room this small."
Feeling as if his very soul had been shaken down, Arteon muttered under his breath and stretched out on the bed. Before long, though —
"……"
— he calmly began to turn over the events of recent days.
In his previous life, at this point in time, retaking Helikel Canyon had never even been on the schedule. And that victory had become a major turning point capable of reshaping the entire situation on the Northern Front.
How the Empire moves from here…
Would it simply hold the line as it always had? Or would it push forward? If it advanced, the timeline would have been shortened by a good five years or more — which meant that even within the Empire itself, this affair could set a great many things in motion.
And those people… how will they move?
The one he would have to watch most carefully was almost certainly Velkain. In his previous life, Velkain had been an outstanding soldier, but because he never involved himself in political struggles, he had met a meaningless death in the north. This time, though, with Helikel Canyon retaken, he might well rise to the rank of legion commander. It was not impossible that the Northern Front from here on would turn around Velkain as its center.
Naturally, from the perspective of the central powers, which side managed to win Velkain over would become a matter of enormous consequence.
"But he's no easy man to handle."
Money. Power. Those were not the kinds of sweet things that could sway him.
Thinking ahead to what was coming, Arteon closed his eyes. So many things had rushed past him like loosed arrows.
And then —
"……?"
Arteon opened his eyes again.
A presence, climbing the rear wall of the inn. Arteon sharpened every sense and tracked the figure's movements. There was always the chance the target was some other room.
"……"
But a bad premonition had never once been wrong. Arteon suppressed his presence as far as it would go and slowly rose. He had no idea who had sent the man — but the purpose seemed clear enough.
Pressed flat against the wall beside the window, Arteon held even his breathing still. A moment later, with the faintest creak —
Slither.
— the window of Arteon's room eased open. And the instant the man carefully poked his face inside —
Grab!
"Gh… mmph…!"
Arteon's left hand clamped the back of the man's skull; his right sealed the man's mouth shut. The assassin instinctively reached for him, but —
Crack!
"……!"
— Arteon wrenched the man's neck and hurled him to the floor.
Thud!
With a clatter the man hit the boards and convulsed. His cervical vertebrae had been damaged; nerves torn, paralyzing agony flooded his entire body. He was still alive, of course. Arteon had not broken the neck clean through.
…An assassin.
Not entirely unexpected — but still a surprise. He had not thought they would move this quickly. Then again, assassins of this caliber —
…The Kar Tribe's killers were far more dangerous, and far stronger.
Arteon set aside the old memories for a moment and looked down at the fallen assassin.
"I already know you won't talk. So… don't. Not to the end."
With that, he rolled up a section of the blanket and jammed it into the man's mouth. Packed tight into a jaw forced nearly out of joint, the cloth left the man unable to make a sound — only choked, muffled grunts. His startled eyes locked on Arteon.
Outwardly the boy still had something of a youth's face. So why… did he reek of a seasoned torturer?
Tap.
"If you do happen to feel like saying something… blink both eyes, fast."
There was no need to waste much time on small fry. A few sure methods. He would either die — or talk.
Arteon drew up his mana and focused it into his leg.
Crunch!
"Gaaaaaaah—!"
The calf bone shattered. The man flopped and thrashed like a landed fish. A scream leaked past the tightly packed gag. But this much he ought to be able to endure. A crushed bone was something training could prepare a man for.
But what about this?
"All right. I'll show you just once. Hold out through this as well, and next time I'll simply kill you."
Arteon seized the man's calf where bone fragments jutted through the flesh. Into a body already wounded like this —
If I shape the mana into thorns and force it in…
Of course, transforming the form of one's mana was no easy feat. Even among those who could wield mana, only a vanishingly small elite at the very top could manage it. But when it came to mana control, Arteon was confident he yielded to no one. What might be impossible for others was, for him, well within reach.
And so Arteon reshaped his mana and drove it into the assassin's body.
In that instant —
"……!"
— the man could not even scream. An agony he had never known made his whole frame shudder and shake. Answering was out of the question; even clinging to consciousness was nearly impossible. It lasted a mere three seconds or so — but to him it must have felt like an eternity.
Arteon asked him,
"Looks like you can take it. Shall I continue?"
Blink-blink. Blink-blink. Blink-blink.
The assassin's eyes fluttered madly. As if he had expected nothing less, Arteon took his hand from the man's leg.
It was the single worst method of torture he knew — one that had broken even those vicious Kar tribesmen. A man would rather die than endure it a second time.
Arteon pulled the blanket free of the man's mouth.
"Affiliation."
"No… No… No… Nocturne…"
"Nocturne?"
Arteon's face twisted sharply. He had heard the name before.
I'm certain… Moldrek once…
He dragged up a conversation from his previous life, something he had spoken of with Moldrek. He no longer remembered the exact operation, only that something had gone wrong involving support troops for the north —
"Don't concern yourself. Nocturne will handle it."
He said it just like that.
At the time, Arteon had not understood what the words meant. He had only made a rough guess. But if Nocturne were the pawns of the faction that kept manufacturing conflict in the north —
It all fits.
Looking back now, it did. That front had been a battlefield where they should have yielded ground to the Kar Tribe, fallen back a step, and reorganized their lines. Doing so would have preserved their forces so that, once the reinforcements arrived, they could have driven the Kar out in a single stroke. Instead, unscheduled support troops had been thrown in as an emergency measure, and the fighting had simply dragged on. And the result —
Our own casualties only… swelled beyond all reason.
Arteon felt a raw impulse to crush the skull of the man lying in front of him then and there. Rage flooded the whites of his eyes with red.
"Answer one more question, and I'll spare you."
"Ghh… uk."
"Who is behind you? Who is the one pulling Nocturne's strings?"
"Th-that's…"
Staring up at Arteon's face, twisted like a demon's, the man felt pure terror. With his reason half paralyzed, he spilled what he knew without any filter.
"Pe… Pe…"
And in that very instant —
Whhhhhhhp!
Something came flying at tremendous speed. On pure instinct Arteon snatched up the assassin's fallen sword and spun his body.
CLANG!
The force was so violent he nearly lost his grip. Arteon's expression contorted.
What kind of…?!
He looked at the dagger that had clattered to the floor. Anyone who could throw a short blade with that kind of destructive power —
At minimum… three-star or higher.
Arteon cast his gaze out the window — and saw a man standing on the roof across the way. Dressed head to toe in black assassin's garb, only his eyes left bare. The classic look of a professional killer. But the pressure rolling off him was formidable enough to feel even at that distance.
And then —
Whoosh.
The moment their eyes met, the man was gone. So sudden that tracking which way he had moved was impossible.
"…Damn it."
Arteon turned his head back to the assassin on the floor. A stiletto the thickness of a finger was already buried deep in the man's skull. The thrower had launched the dagger to draw Arteon's eyes — and in the same breath cast the killing blade. From the start, the target had never been Arteon. It had been this assassin.
…Why?
If that man had simply come in hard from the beginning, he could almost certainly have killed Arteon.
"Haa…"
For now, he was going to have to figure out what to do with this corpse.
A wavering candle flame cast long, rippling shadows. Looking down at the man kneeling on one knee before him, Kaltes furrowed his brow.
"A failure, you say?"
"I apologize."
Kaltes, a middle manager of Nocturne, was a man who enjoyed considerable trust within the organization for his clean, efficient handling of affairs. And yet an operation he had ordered had failed.
Kaltes asked,
"…Was a mid-rank assassin not enough?"
"He was not even in the same class. The man was captured and interrogated without accomplishing a thing. I eliminated him myself."
"Bashnel. If you had stepped in, you could easily have killed the target. Why did you simply withdraw?"
"…I apologize."
The man's name was Bashnel. But Kaltes's brow only tightened further at the answer.
"I am not asking for that empty apology. I am asking why you did not kill him — why you pulled back."
And then —
"…Surely not."
Kaltes started and stared at Bashnel. Among Nocturne's upper assassins, Bashnel was one of the finest. Anywhere there was darkness, even knights of three-star rank and above were no match for him. And yet —
"Are you telling me that even with your strength, killing him was impossible?"
"…Had I intended to kill him, I would have done so without fail."
"And yet?"
"However — once my presence had been revealed, killing him discreetly was no longer possible. If I had taken his life… it would have caused a considerable disturbance."
"…That serious, was it."
He had been told the target was a young boy soldier. To think the boy possessed that level of strength.
So retaking Helikel Canyon… was not mere luck after all.
The operation had failed, but the justification stood firm. And they had revised their intelligence on the target. That was enough.
"I will handle the aftermath. Keep yourself out of sight for a while. We went after someone who received a personal commendation from the Imperial House — opportunities will be scarce for the time being."
"Understood."
Bashnel inclined his head, and a moment later melted into the shadows. Kaltes sat down and began rapidly scratching something across a sheet of paper.