Tracking (2)
"You're saying there's an illusion layered over it? The mana flow reads as perfectly normal, though?"
"Concealing abnormalities in the mana is the very foundation of illusion-type magic, sir. If a simple scan of mana could expose it, the spell would be pointless from the start, wouldn't it?"
"Ah... fair point, I suppose."
Come to think of it, what even was magic?
I'd seen plenty of enchanted items — magic tools and the like — but I'd never once had the chance to observe magic itself in its raw form.
Hmm... now that I think about it, that's strange.
Every rumor I'd picked up described magic as techniques with rigidly codified forms, straight out of a fantasy novel.
But could ordinary people — not cultists — really be learning identical, standardized techniques?
It wasn't that overlapping skills didn't exist among people, like Noah's Healing — but in general, techniques that harnessed mana bore such an intensely personal imprint that teaching someone the exact same skill was all but impossible.
Just as I could never copy Rena's Provocation.
"I take it you've never actually met a mage before, sir."
"I don't think there were any among the guild members."
"That would make sense. Not universally true, but mages and their sense of elitism are a real headache. They tend to operate on a temporary basis, only attached to higher-ranked parties."
"Elitism, huh...? I've got a lot of questions, but this doesn't seem like the place to get into it. Anyway — so what's this method of yours?"
"I have an artifact I brought out of my family's storage."
Henry rummaged through the bag slung over his shoulder and produced a small lamp.
The design was nothing special — the kind of lamp you'd find in any inn — but the moment it was ignited, the difference announced itself at once.
The flame burning inside it was gold.
"And that is...?"
"An item capable of neutralizing magic. Or rather, not so much neutralizing as... making things visible despite concealment? Either way, please come over here. You need to be inside its range."
"Got it. Everyone, over here."
We huddled together like children steeling themselves for a courage test.
Henry raised the lamp with its golden fire aloft.
Shuaaa—
"Ooh—"
Just as Henry predicted, there must have been an illusion spell woven over the cliff face.
As the lamp came alive, golden mana poured out like mist and spread in every direction, and where that mana touched, a transparent curtain flickered into view before my eyes — there one moment, gone the next.
That, I supposed, was a piece of the illusion magic.
Henry lifted the lamp again and spoke quickly.
"If we go inside now, we should see its true form. But we need to find our way through as quickly as possible."
"Why? Is there a problem with the artifact's operating time?"
"To be honest, this thing eats gold coins. One coin per minute."
"...Insane."
Without another moment's delay, we stepped into the territory where the illusion held sway.
"That's unexpected."
"Hardly any different from before the illusion was in place, sir."
I'd assumed that once we were beyond the illusion's influence, some cave or other would appear in place of the cliff — but reality had other ideas.
There was still nothing but sheer rock.
The only difference was that at the base of the cliff, unmistakably man-made objects had come into view.
I couldn't tell what they were, but this had to be where the people creating the Chimeras were staying.
"Ah, just as I thought. There's a staircase here."
Following the Chimera's tracks yet again, we uncovered a hidden stairway, cunningly concealed.
Even without the illusion magic in place, it was positioned so that no one would ever find it without combing the entire cliff face inch by inch.
"This looks pretty dangerous, doesn't it?"
"I'm afraid we have no choice — I don't see any other way down."
"Noah will be fine, but... Rena, what about you? Think you can make it down?"
The staircase carved along the cliff's slope looked genuinely treacherous.
No handrails or safety features to speak of — that went without saying — and because snow had fallen and melted in endless cycles before freezing solid, a thin film of ice glazed every step.
Worse, as if the passage had never been intended for human use, there were natural gaps scattered at intervals along the stairs.
One misstep could send you plummeting off the cliff — but Rena only shrugged.
"Eh... stuff like this is nothing. Just gotta not slip, right?"
"No fear in her at all... Noah, keep an eye on her from behind."
"Of course, sir."
"Alright, let's go."
The golden flame inside the lamp still swayed and wavered.
By Henry's account, that meant we were still within the spell's influence.
We descended toward the base of the cliff along the rough, crudely hewn steps.
Roughly thirty minutes later.
Rena's foot slipped out from under her a few times along the way, but mercifully, we reached the bottom of the cliff without any real accident.
By then, the lamp's flame was burning straight and steady, without a single tremor.
That meant we were no longer under the spell's influence, so Henry snuffed the lamp and tucked it back into his pack.
"A relief, truly. The gold coins I loaded it with were nearly spent."
"It's refillable? Wait — weren't you burning way too many coins? We should cover the cost—"
"No, please don't. Using the artifact without permission was my decision, and... this is the last leg of my training journey anyway, so it hardly matters."
By even the simplest calculation, he'd melted down thirty gold coins, yet Henry's expression didn't change a hair.
Knowing his personality, he probably hadn't taken a single coin for helping those civilians... just how much money had he walked out of home with in the first place?
Henry somehow caught my puzzled stare and launched into an unprompted excuse.
"Ahaha... when I first left home, I had absolutely no sense of money... I just grabbed everything in sight on my way out, so it turned out I had quite a comfortable sum."
"Well, if that money went toward helping people, it was money well spent."
"I may have spent quite a bit of it in some... rather strange places, too... Ahem! In any case! Let's consider it this way — you provided the muscle, senior, and I provided the funding."
"Works for me. Ah! Wait a second!"
Even as we chatted, we kept tracking the Chimera's footprints — until at last we spotted something like a structure that we'd been gazing down at from above.
To be precise, it wasn't a building at all.
"A tent, sir. A rather large one, mind you."
What blocked our path was a ger — the kind of dwelling nomads of ages past would have used.
Big enough to hold a good ten people, easily.
Light leaked out from within, so someone was definitely inside.
Whoosh— whoosh—
I signaled silently.
We'd never set formal signals, but my companions took the hint, muffling their breathing and moving with care as they advanced.
Crunch, crunch.
No amount of caution could keep the snow from crunching underfoot, but because we were in the sheltered ground beneath the cliff, the wind was unusually loud, and it muffled our sounds to a degree.
As we drew near the tent, voices drifted out through the slightly parted entrance.
The howling wind was a nuisance, but if I strained my ears, the conversation came through clearly enough.
"...Damn it all. Why do we have to come out to a place like this in the middle of winter?"
"Freezing to death out here."
"Boss's orders. Walk back if you'd rather die."
Three men were talking in rough voices.
Every word dripped with complaint, the grumbling bitterness soaked straight into their tone.
I kept listening.
"But seriously... I get that it's orders and all, but who the hell are these people? Dragging around those hideous monsters — they're anything but normal."
"Mages, maybe?"
"Since when do mages kidnap people with monsters? Far as I can tell, they're in the same line of work as us."
"Heh heh... criminals, you mean?"
What the hell?
Something about this conversation was off.
From the way they talked, they sounded like they didn't actually belong here.
Then why were they camped here?
As if to answer my puzzlement, the men kept going.
"Anyway, I want to get back to the city already."
"We've got two more months of this at least, don't we?"
"Hey, just get some sleep. Nothing to do anyway. Boring as hell."
"...Speaking of which, I think a new hostage came in earlier. Service is still a while off, so we've got time to spare, yeah?"
"Is she pretty?"
"Cut the crap and sleep. Don't you get how dangerous these people are? One wrong move and you might end up as material for one of those monsters."
"Ugh..."
Rustle.
The man who'd brought up the hostages first apparently ran out of things to say and went quiet.
A bit of lewd banter followed... and then, having apparently decided to sleep, they left the inside of the tent in silence.
No more information to squeeze out of that, I supposed.
I glanced back over my shoulder.
Just as I thought... these men belong to a different organization than whoever's making the Chimeras. Their tent is pitched quite a distance away, too.
Scanning our surroundings, I spotted more tents clustered far off in the distance.
Unlike this lonely, isolated one, those were huddled together in cozy clusters, as if sharing their warmth.
Almost certainly, the other organization had given these men this separate spot out of wariness toward them.
I approached Rena, crouched near the tent, and asked in a low voice.
"The three inside. Think you can land your Provocation on them?"
"Hmm... probably? Never tried it on more than one person before, though."
"Give it a shot. Even if something goes wrong, we've got your back — so don't be nervous."
I'd decided to secure the men inside the tent first.
There was a very long list of things I needed to hear from them.
Belonging to a different organization, they'd have less reason to keep secrets; judging from the flow of their mana, they were unawakened; and they were pitched a good distance from the other tents — ideal conditions for a live capture and interrogation.
Still, there was no telling whether they carried some emergency signaling device... and in situations like this, nothing beat Rena's Provocation.
"I'm going in first..."
Fwoosh!
With Rena in the lead, we burst into the tent in one swift motion.
Just as expected — men sprawled across cots.
Startled awake by the flap of the tent door whipping open, they blinked their eyes open.
"Wh— who—!"
Provocation!
The men never managed to string together a single full sentence before they fell straight under Rena's skill.
Just as I once had, they wore blank, vacant expressions and lunged clumsily to grab at Rena.
Ordinary civilians losing their minds already, subduing them was easier than eating cold porridge.
THWACK!
Me, Noah, and Henry each took one of the three men, slammed them bodily to the floor, and stuffed the prepared gags into their mouths.
Barely a few seconds later, the Provocation's effect wore off — and the men, coming to their senses, found themselves pinned face-down and bound, and could barely contain their horror.
Not that all they could manage was to squirm like worms.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
"Miss Rena's skill is truly remarkable. Not only against monsters, but so useful for infiltration as well..."
"Heheh... thank you, sir."
Whatever the choking men were trying to say, Rena scratched the back of her head at Henry's admiration.
That one was always a pushover for a compliment.
I settled Rena, who had splendidly done her part, onto one of the cots, then forced each of the gagged men down onto his knees, one by one.
"Save the flattery for later — first, let's open these gentlemen up. Henry, you wouldn't happen to have an artifact that makes people spit out the truth?"
"Unfortunately, I didn't bring anything of the sort. Far too bulky, I'm afraid."
So it does exist, then?
I found myself wondering anew just what kind of household Henry came from.
But there was work to be done — it could wait.
I looked the kneeling, whimpering men over.
I could say this with certainty: they were no civilians.
Vicious-looking bunch. If I'd run into them in my past life, I wouldn't have spared them a second glance.
They'd gone down so easily it was hard to tell at first, but on closer inspection, the men were hulking masses of muscle.
Perhaps 180 centimeters tall, and bodies that had to weigh well over a hundred kilograms apiece.
The scars packed densely across every inch of them, and the imposing tattoos inked near their throats, declared plainly that these were no ordinary men.
For now, though, they were nothing more than my source of information.
"Now then, friends. I have a great many questions... so I'd very much appreciate your honest cooperation."
I stepped up to one of the kneeling men and met his eyes.
Naturally enough, there was still defiance smoldering in them — or so I expected, but no. What stared back at me was the gaze of a man who had given up on everything.
Well, fair enough — if they had any brains at all, they'd have realized by now that every one of us was Awakened.
This might just go smoothly after all.