Date (3)
“Cain, wait a second. The flow of mana cuts off here.”
Liа stopped short, one hand still extended in front of her as she walked.
She pointed with her index finger at what, on the surface, looked like nothing more than an ordinary wall and went on, “That mage you mentioned, Grace—I think she’s inside here.”
“You mean Grace is in this wall?”
“Mm-hm. Definitely. Grace is inside the wall. There must be an empty space beyond it.”
At the wall Lia had indicated, I stepped close and rapped my knuckles against it as if knocking on a door. Sure enough, just as Lia had said, it sounded like I was tapping hollow stone. A peculiar, resonant thrum rang in my ears.
This whole area of the labyrinth was made of solid rock, so it made no sense for only this part to be hollow. In other words, the space beyond had to be something artificially built by someone.
That Grace—whatever her real name was—must have customized the labyrinth’s core to suit herself. This wall was probably just camouflage.
I made Lia step back a couple of paces, then drew my sword, poured mana into it, and brought the blade down vertically on the unnaturally thin section of wall.
──Kugung, crack!
It felt as though an invisible barrier had been sliced apart. The wall split in two along the path of my blade and collapsed inward. Ochre dust billowed up thickly, then slowly settled, and at last the hollow space beyond came into view.
Just in case, I took Lia’s hand and led her inside for safety.
But the moment I set foot in there, I flinched and froze. Lia, following behind me, startled as well and stopped where she was.
And no wonder—because right in front of us, Lia and I were looking at.
“P-please, save me! Please, just spare my life……!”
A grown woman with long, flowing gray hair was on her knees, bowing so low her forehead nearly touched the floor.
……What is this? Is this some trap meant to throw us off balance?
For only a moment, I was startled. Then I tightened my grip on Lia’s still-rigid hand and leaned close to her ear, whispering softly, “Lia, let’s handle this calmly. First, please check whether you can feel any suspicious mana flow nearby. I’ll look for any obvious traps.”
“Ah… okay. Hold on.”
With my sword leveled forward in case I needed to react at any moment, I slowly swept my gaze around the room.
There was a table strewn with vials of reagents and monster corpses. A section of the floor was etched with a suspicious magic circle, and countless books were packed into shelves made of packed earth.
It was only inside a labyrinth, but the atmosphere was like a mage’s workshop drawn from a picture book. I couldn’t see anything especially suspicious, and apparently Lia couldn’t either. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and shook her head.
“Cain, I think it’s okay.”
“Yes, it seems so to me as well.”
At nearly the same moment, our gazes shifted to the woman still bowing on the floor.
Perhaps sensing our attention, the woman with the striking gray hair slowly lifted her head.
──Flinch.
When her eyes met mine, the woman jerked and immediately bowed her head again.
“Please wait here for a moment, Lia.”
I walked over to the woman, crouched down, and murmured quietly, “Grace, lift your head.”
“Y-yes, sir…!”
She didn’t react by asking who I was. Instead, she snapped her head up and began quailing. This really did seem to be Grace, the demonic human from the original story.
Now certain of it, I dragged the tip of my sword across the floor, producing a harsh metallic screech.
When you’re threatening someone, it’s best to use all five senses if you can. And clearly, it worked; Grace’s pupils were shaking violently as they followed the sword tip.
“I have a few things I want to ask you. If possible, I’d like you to answer honestly.”
“Y-yes, of course! Ask me anything, and I’ll answer with all sincerity….”
“……But if I say it like that, I have no way of knowing whether you’re lying or telling the truth, do I?”
I shifted my grip on the hilt and turned the blade in reverse, then drove it into the ground right beside her body.
With a heavy thunk, the floor caved in deeply. A vile sound escaped from the impact.
“Swear it on your mana.”
“O-on my mana…?”
“Yes. If you answer all of my questions truthfully, and if you accept two of our demands, I’ll promise that your safety and this workshop will be guaranteed.”
“E-even so, swearing on my mana is…….”
Grace trailed off, wavering. It was a natural reaction. If a mage failed to keep a mana oath, the penalty was the loss of all their mana, which meant they could never use magic again.
But that wasn’t my problem. Grace was a demon human. And demonic humans were vicious scum who indulged in antisocial acts and harmed or killed innocent people.
In other words, whether I cut Grace’s throat here or left her unable to cast magic ever again, there was no one who’d pity her.
“What was that? Weren’t you just saying you’d answer sincerely? If you’re honest, nothing happens to you. Or what, were you planning to lie to me?”
“N-no! It’s not like that…!”
“For the record, I hate liars the most. Hate them so much I could rip them apart.”
“…….”
Grace swallowed dryly.
Since I was about to say something Lia didn’t need to hear, I lowered my voice further so only Grace could catch it.
“So if you don’t swear on your mana, I’ll take that as proof you’re a liar, and I’ll cut out your tongue so you can never lie again. Then I’ll cut off your arms and legs and hand you over to some fat old noble with disgusting tastes—”
“I-I’ll do it! The mana oath! Please, let me do it!”
With a face half on the verge of tears, Grace sank to her knees in front of me. I rose slowly, sheathed my sword, and motioned to Lia.
“Lia, you can come over now.”
“O-okay….”
Lia edged closer and stood beside me. I placed my hand over Grace’s bowed head and began the Mana Oath ritual.
“The contracting party, Cain Reinhardt, shall conclude a mana oath with Grace under the following conditions.”
“R-Reinhardt? N-no way. You mean that Reinhardt with nothing but monsters in it…?”
“First, from this moment on, Grace will answer every question posed by Cain Reinhardt and Lia von Elleves with complete sincerity and nothing but the truth. Second, Grace will accept two demands from Cain Reinhardt. Third, within a one-kilometer radius of Cain Reinhardt, Grace may not use magic without mutual consent. Fourth, in exchange—”
“O-oh, so that’s it! Your sword skills were incredible, and your skin was so pale. And your eyes—those ridiculously red eyes…I knew it. You’re from the Reinhardt family, aren’t you, you little—!”
“Cain Reinhardt promises the safety of Grace and her workshop until the moment he leaves this labyrinth. However, if Grace has already harmed Cain Reinhardt or Lia von Elleves, or attempts to do so first, this compensation shall become void. Grace, do you agree?”
“If you’re a human from the Reinhardt family, a family full of monsters, then everything makes sense. Yeah, that explains it. There was something off from the start. There’s no way some red-eyed pretty boy could be that strong unless it was one of the monster-like men from Reinhardt—then it all makes sense—!”
……Why was she calling perfectly normal people monsters when she herself was a demon human?
She just kept babbling instead of swearing the oath, so I pressed the sword up to just below her throat. Only then did she seem to come to her senses, and Grace nodded furiously.
“I-I agree! Grace agrees to all of the conditions proposed by Cain Reinhardt!”
The instant she shouted it, a strange sensation rippled through the tip of my finger, and something electric seemed to flow up my arm and into my chest.
It was the second time in my life I had felt anything like it. I knew instinctively that a Mana Oath had been sealed between Grace and me.
I crouched in front of Grace and got straight to the point.
“Grace, you’re well-versed in dark magic, aren’t you?”
“—Guh! Y-yes! That’s right….”
Grace tried desperately not to answer, but the compulsion bound into the mana oath forced the words out of her mouth, and her face stiffened at once.
She had just confessed, with her own lips, that she practiced black magic—a forbidden art in the Empire. But I already knew that. I’d read the description of Grace in the original story.
“Then do you know how to lift the Curse of Misfortune?”
“T-that is….”
“……Cain.”
The instant I was about to ask the most important question, Lia called my name in a low voice. Grace, who had been about to answer, closed her mouth, and I turned my head to look at Lia.
“How do you know about the Curse of Misfortune?”
“Huh? Well—”
I was about to say, “I saw it in the original story,” when I snapped my mouth shut.
I didn’t know how Lia, who was only ten years old now, knew about the Curse of Misfortune, but if I said something like that to her—Lia, who had no knowledge of the original work and no way of knowing it—she would undoubtedly press me on what it was and what I meant.
And even if I were honest from the start, she wouldn’t believe me anyway. At best, wouldn’t she just think I was insane? Or look at me like I was a lunatic?
So for now, I’d have to smother the bomb with a bigger bomb. Having made up my mind, I spoke.
“Um, Lia. Please don’t be shocked when you hear this. The truth is….”
“Mm, I won’t be shocked. Actually, I’d already pretty much figured it out.”
“……Pardon? Is that really true?”
“Mm-hm. I mean, Cain’s behavior has been really strange. You kept looking at me with these terribly wistful eyes, and you were always overprotective of me. And today, you brought me to some weird place without explaining anything. More importantly, you just asked about the Curse of Misfortune….”
“Ah…….”
Watching Lia act almost embarrassed, I went blank for a moment.
……So Lia had figured it all out.
I’d tried my best to hide it for her sake. I really had. But all along, she must have known everything.
Come to think of it, it made sense. Normally, no matter how much she trusted the words of her guard knight, she wouldn’t have followed me to an underground labyrinth like this without the slightest doubt.
Lia must have known I came to the underground labyrinth looking for a way to lift the Curse of Misfortune. And the reason she’d figured it out, as she’d said herself, was my painfully obvious behavior.
“…….”
As expected, Lia really was clever.
She’d shown businesslike instincts at such a young age. She’d learned magic at ten, even though most people only managed it by fifteen. And she’d pieced together my goal from nothing more than scraps of information and the symptoms of my behavior.
When I thought about how everything had been in the palm of Lia’s hand, she seemed different all over again.
“It’s okay, Cain. I understand. Confessing something that huge takes a lot of courage. And even if you did work up the courage to tell me, I might not have believed you.”
“……Yes, Lia.”
“Mm-hm. And for all that time…you must’ve had a hard time, carrying that alone.”
With eyes that said she understood everything, Lia gently stroked my hair.
Realizing painfully that there was no point in hiding it any longer, I slowly opened my mouth.
“Yes. I’m sorry I hid it from you all this time. Just as you suspected, Lia……the Curse of Misfortune is now within your body.”
“Right, Cain. So now you can relax and…… huh?”
“Pardon?”
“……Cain, what did you just say?”
“I said the Curse of Misfortune is within your body, Lia.”
Why ask the same thing twice when you already know the answer?
That was what I thought for one brief instant.
“Wha—eh? W-what, whattt……?!”
Lia’s mouth fell open, and she screamed.