Investigating the Imperial Family (2)
The next place I found was a city outside the imperial capital.
I rose into the air with a casual flight spell, snagged a cloud, coated it with mana, and gave it a gentle push of wind magic from behind. That alone turned the cloud into a perfectly comfortable ride.
With a warmth spell sealing out the cold, I reached another city in the blink of an eye.
I cast invisibility and leapt from the cloud. Target in three, two, one.
KRA-BOOM!
“Wh-who the hell are you?!”
“What’s a damn brat doing here?!”
“The ceiling just caved in, you bastard!”
I was currently disguised as a seven-year-old through Polymorph. The rough-looking men inside the building seized their weapons and surrounded me.
The ugliest one at the front bellowed.
“What are you?!”
“I came to place a request.”
“A request? What kind of bullshit is that?! Do you even know where you are?”
“Where am I?”
“This is an assassin guild deeper in the shadows than any thieves’ guild! I don’t know how a brat like you found us, but we don’t take jobs from kids!”
Right. The place I had come looking for was a long-established assassin guild. They lived in tunnels dug beneath the vast plains, yet their technology was good enough that those tunnels boasted better facilities than most entertainment halls on the surface.
“So about my request—”
“I said we don’t take requests! You barged in uninvited, so you’re already a dead man! We don’t go easy on brats! Attack!”
Shashashashak!
A man in a black mask burst out from behind the ugly one and lunged at me. Perfect. According to my information they were thoroughly rotten bastards, and they were living up to the reputation.
The tip of the blade stopped a hair’s breadth from my eye.
“Ugh?”
The black-masked men sucked in sharp breaths. They hung frozen in midair, just short of stabbing me.
“A m-mage?! And an Unvoiced Caster at that!”
“You really shouldn’t treat a client this roughly.”
Thud, thud, thud.
A few simple punches sent every black-masked man flying. I didn’t take their lives, but a few of their organs would never work properly again.
“Damn it, it’s a mage! Designate him a top-priority threat and kill him!”
“Enough.”
BOOM! I poured mana into my leg and stamped the floor. Instantly the entire interior of the assassin guild burst into roaring flames.
“Wh-what?!”
“If even one of you points a blade at me again, this place burns. Kill me and it still burns, and none of you will escape. Let me give you a demonstration.”
I yanked a sword from a fallen assassin and tossed it into the fire. The moment the blade touched the flames it evaporated.
“……!!!!!!”
“See? Anyone else feel like burning to death?”
The clatter of weapons that had filled the room fell silent at once. The ugly man—probably the guild master—opened his mouth, sweat pouring down his face.
“What the hell are you?”
“Want to know?”
“No. Forget it. What do you want? Anyone a mage of your level can’t kill, we can’t kill either.”
“Who said anything about an assassination request? I came to hire you for information.”
The boss’s face turned beet red.
“Then go to a thieves’ guild! Why the hell come here?!”
“Because you’re better at digging up information.”
Assassin guilds were always excellent at gathering intel. To kill a target cleanly you needed to know everything about them. On top of that, this particular guild’s main income came from eliminating high-ranking people. Their information network was correspondingly superior.
“Will you take the job or not?”
“A-advance payment?”
“Isn’t the fact that you’re still breathing advance payment enough?”
Against the backdrop of the raging flames, the boss’s face went deathly pale.
“You’re still thinking about money in this situation? You absolute idiot. I already know every single filthy thing you people have done. The only reason I’m leaving you alive is because I need you. So what do you think you should do?”
“…….”
The silent boss slowly sank to his knees. That was when it happened.
“Boss! You’re really going to kneel to a kid like that?!”
“Hey! Stop!”
“He’s using a spell that’s burning the entire guild! That means he can’t cast anything else!”
A green-haired man charged at me. The boss screamed.
“Ankel! Don’t!”
“Die!”
“Well, every organization has its idiots. I’ll let one of them slide.”
Fwoosh!
A spark leapt onto the man called Ankel. That was the end of it.
The one who had rushed me never even managed a scream; not so much as bone dust remained. A silence heavier than before settled over the room.
“Anyone else want to try?”
“…….”
“No one? Then I’ll place the request. It’s a confidential matter, so I’d like a private word with the boss.”
“……Follow me.”
As expected, the ugly man was the guild master. I followed him deeper into the guild.
Surprisingly, the interior was clean. I had expected it to be decorated with every sort of grim and sinister thing, but apparently not. Even a place like this was still home to people, I supposed.
I spoke to the guild master walking ahead of me.
“Count yourself lucky. I was planning to clean this place out myself one day.”
“…….”
“Given the organization I belong to, I figured the day would come when I’d have to get my hands dirty. When I learned about this place while working, it made me sick. A lot of the people you killed were genuinely good.”
“…….”
“But you’re useful, so I won’t kill you. Don’t worry. Got it?”
“Just who…”
The guild master’s voice trembled.
“Just who the hell are you?”
“I already asked—want to know?”
“I don’t know who you are, but stop. This place you just hit is only a branch.”
“Oh?”
“Are you planning to make every assassin guild operating in the empire your enemy?”
“Every single one of them?”
Ahaha. These guys were genuinely hilarious.
The reason I had gone so long without friends wasn’t simply because the butler work kept me busy.
“So other organizations have been sending you regular contact until now?”
“Of course. This isn’t the only assassin guild.”
“And the most recent message was ‘requests are drying up,’ right?”
“……How do you know that?”
“I sent it.”
“What?”
The guild master whirled around, eyes bulging. I gave him a bright smile.
“I said I sent it. The fifty-one regular contacts that come here—every single one of them for the past three years was from me.”
“What kind of insane bullshit is that?!”
“Don’t believe me? I can hardly believe it myself.”
I wanted to smash the guild master’s head open right then and there.
“What kind of lunatics would try to assassinate someone so precious?”
“……?!”
“I won’t tell you who. You people tried to lay hands on someone you should never have touched, and you received the proper retribution for it. And you need to understand something: of all the assassin guilds that once existed in the empire, this is the only one left.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Here. Take this.”
Since he still didn’t believe me, I tossed him the proof. The moment he caught what I threw, his face went white.
“These are the tokens of the assassin guild masters…!”
“I wiped them all out.”
Yes. I had killed every last one of them.
I still didn’t know who had placed the original request, or what the goal had been. But the execution teams had existed.
Three years ago an assassin had ambushed Lady Aylin. Fortunately I was there, so nothing serious happened, but the mere appearance of an assassin was an unforgivable offense.
With the Duke’s permission I spent a month throwing a slaughter party across every assassin guild in the empire. The groups that had accepted the contract on the young lady got to experience pain so thorough that death would have been a mercy.
Assassin guilds shouldn’t exist in the first place. So I cleaned them all out—except this one.
They strutted around calling themselves an assassin guild, but cleaning them up had been laughably easy. The strongest among them were only about as good as third-year Academy students.
“Behave yourselves. Show even the slightest suspicious sign and this place will become the last assassin guild.”
New assassin guilds had sprung up afterward, of course. But I cleaned them out on a regular schedule, so things would stay quiet for a few more years.
“Want to kill me right now? Were you close with the other guild masters?”
“…….”
“I’ll bare my heart. Go ahead and stab it. I give you permission. Even if you do, I won’t kill you.”
“……?”
The guild master stared at me with a baffled expression. He was probably wondering whether I was setting a trap to kill him.
But he soon finished calculating that it wasn’t a trap. Even without one, he had already realized he could die at any moment.
“You told me to stab you.”
“That’s right. Go ahead.”
“U-uaaaaaaah!”
The guild master went berserk and drove his sword straight into my heart.
Shunk.
“Hah! Hah! Ha…h?”
“Hmm, hmm. About that much, I see.”
“What is this…?”
Seeing me completely unharmed, the guild master yanked the sword free. Then he stared in blank despair at his blade—everything but the hilt had melted away.
“My mana runs hot, you see. When I carefully deploy it, it protects my body on its own. Means I don’t get hurt by ordinary weapons, which is convenient. Ah, I can’t use it while cooking, though. Wouldn’t want the kitchen knives melting, right?”
The guild master said nothing. He simply stood there trembling, head bowed.
“Now that no one else is around, I’ll tell you the request. Gather every scrap of information on the Third Princess, Iren von Valencia.”
“That is far too dangerous.”
The guild master’s speech had shifted to formal language. Hmm, formal speech felt awkward. Still, hearing casual speech from a guy like him would be even worse, so I decided to leave it.
“I’ll make sure it isn’t dangerous. Take these.”
I tossed him a bundle of badges.
“These are…?”
“Badges with built-in concealment magic. The spell is so refined that even most high-ranking mages won’t detect it. Use them and the work will go smoothly. Oh, and if you use them for anything unauthorized… you already know, right?”
The guild master nodded vigorously.
“Investigate for one day, report the next. Understood?”
“Understood! Completely understood!”
“The badges also have a communication function linked to me, so contact me through those. I’m leaving now.”
The guild master remained prostrate as he saw me off.
Haaaah…
Riding the cloud back toward the capital, I thought to myself.
If this gets found out… I’m going to get scolded so hard.