The Ledger and the Old Key
Having parted ways with Hugo, Luden strolled the streets with Sarah at his side.
The sun had already sunk low, and a dark night sky had settled over Resen.
“Luden.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Luden let out a dry chuckle.
'I didn't expect them to make their move this quickly.'
Well then—what to do about it?
Walking along with perfect calm, Luden counted the presences clinging to his back, then changed direction. He moved from the lamp-lit main street into a dark, narrow alley, and from there once more to a spot where no passerby would ever wander.
Still, the presence trailing them lingered.
“Sarah.”
“Grr. I'll take care of every last one, yep!”
“Don't kill them. I have questions to ask.”
Whoosh!
The words had barely left his mouth before Sarah leapt.
In a single bound she scaled the wall and dropped down behind the hidden watchers. Only then realizing their tailing had been made, the men dissolved into a flurry of noise.
“Damn it! We're made—everyone draw your weap—ghk!”
“Wh-where is she? Where'd she go?!”
“GYAAAAAH!”
Shouts and curses erupted on all sides. The screams, thick with terror, rang out for a while before quickly falling silent. By the time Luden went over to check, everything was already over.
“Uuuugh.”
“Shhh. Quiet now.”
The fallen men lay groaning, every one of them with broken arms and legs. Sarah turned to Luden with a perfectly innocent face and announced, proudly:
“I can control my strength now! Yep!”
“I know. You did great.”
Giving her head a light pat, Luden walked over to the man among the fallen who looked the least battered.
“Shall we start with introductions? Where did you people come from?”
“……”
“Silence isn't a good choice.”
Shk.
“GAAAAAAAH...!”
The moment the knife sank into his shoulder, the man shrieked in agony. Luden showed no mercy, twisting the wrist that held the blade.
“AAAAAAGH!”
“Keep your mouth shut if you like—there are plenty more where you came from. It's not like your kind has any loyalty or devotion to speak of. Think it over wisely.”
“A-alright! I'll tell you everything, so spare my life!”
“That part's up to you.”
Truth be told, he had a fair idea already. He'd done nothing in particular since arriving in Resen, so there was really only one reason anyone would be glaring at him like this.
'The one with a target on their back isn't me—it has to be the Vivre Magic Tower.'
And sure enough, the man opened his mouth.
“Kgh. We're with Charles's crew.”
“Charles? You mean the man who loaned old man Basel money?”
“Th-that's right. We were watching you on Boss Charles's orders.”
“Why? I've never even met the man.”
“That's... old man Basel suddenly paid off his debt, see. They told us to find out where the money came from...”
“Hmm.”
So that was it. They'd tailed him to trace the source of the money. And what that implied was—
“So the goal was never just simple money after all?”
“......?!”
“I thought something was off from the very beginning.”
While looking around Basel's laboratory, one question had nagged at Luden. The man claimed to be carrying on his research under a debt of a million rub, and yet every material and catalyst in that laboratory had been nothing but cheap, low-grade junk.
Luden knew next to nothing about magic, but that didn't mean he was ignorant of what magical materials fetched on the market. If anything, he'd often sold the byproducts of magic beasts and mana stones he'd obtained as a mercenary with his own two hands, so he knew their prices better than the mages did.
Which was why he could be certain: no matter how you added them up, the materials sitting in Basel's laboratory could never have amounted to a debt of a million rub.
Perhaps if Basel had a habit of squandering money—but judging by everything he'd seen, that was clearly not the case.
“Now I'm getting a rough picture.”
In the future he'd left behind, Basel had been unable to bear his debt and had his life's work—the sub-space transmission artifact—stripped from him. And the ones who announced it to the world were the Lunvel Magic Tower.
Even with just this much, the answer was plain.
“Your goal is to engineer a situation where he can't pay the money back. Am I right?”
“Ngh. Y-yeah, that's right. I've told you everything, so this knife—”
If his guess was right, then behind Charles stood the Lunvel Magic Tower. And if so, simply cleaning up Charles would not put an end to the problem.
'I need a more solid link.'
He needed hard evidence that the Lunvel Magic Tower was involved.
Luden spoke to the man, who was looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“Let's go.”
“Wh-what?”
“I said let's go. To wherever that Charles bastard is.”
“GYAAAAAAAH!!”
“E-enemy attack!”
“Run......”
A wind of blood swept through Charles's hideout. Men who, mere minutes before, had been lounging about or drinking at their leisure became sacrifices to senseless violence without ever learning why.
“Haha! There's a whole pile of them, yep!”
The intruder who came crashing in was, astonishingly, a small young girl. But the sight of burly men flying helplessly through the air with every sweep of that tiny girl's arm was something out of a fever dream.
“You little bitch!!”
Several of them grabbed whatever tools lay at hand and rushed her. Charles's gang was used to brutal work, and the sight of a frail-looking woman hardly gave them pause. Unfortunately for them, they had picked the wrong opponent.
BAM!
“Luden told me to control my strength, yep!”
“Gahk!”
In the blink of an eye the girl vanished from sight, then drove her fist deep into one of the gang members. She vanished again, and someone else crumpled to the floor.
“GYAAAAAAAH...!!”
Screams rang out again and again through Charles's hideout.
“Damn it! Damn it!”
Face contorted, Charles hurried on his way. The moment the hideout came under attack, he had snatched up only his most important possessions and fled. There was an emergency escape route in the basement, prepared for exactly this kind of situation. In a business where betrayal could come at any moment, a man always made sure to have at least one way out. He'd just never imagined the day he'd actually need it would come.
'Damn it all. I can't give this place up. I have to contact the Lunvel Magic Tower right away—'
He was still turning it over in his head when someone stepped into Charles's path.
“Off somewhere in a hurry?”
“Y-you're—?”
Luden greeted the startled Charles warmly.
“You're Charles, right? First time we've come face to face.”
“...Who the hell are you?”
“That's a little hurtful. You even had your boys tailing me, after all.”
“?!”
At those words, it clicked at once. The only people he'd recently ordered to keep watch were the outsiders who'd made contact with old man Basel. Which meant this whole uproar was that man's doing?
Anger clouded Charles's face.
“You, you little bastard! You think you'll get away with this?!”
This was the royal capital. Here, Charles had spent the better part of ten years building his foundations. He didn't know where the man had crawled in from, but if he thought he could raise hell in Charles's own territory and walk away unscathed, he was gravely mistaken.
'You bastard! The moment I'm out of here, I'll pay you back for this—every last bit.'
Charles had greased palms all over the city over the years, and he even had a line into the knight orders. The instant he was out of here, he vowed, he would mobilize every connection he had and give that man a merciless, agonizing revenge.
But then—
“Hmm. You've certainly been busy. Illegal loan-sharking I can understand, but forged deeds and double contracts on top of that? Just how many people have you stabbed in the back?”
“Wh-what?”
Charles blinked. He stared at the ledger held up in Luden's hand as if he couldn't believe his eyes. If his eyes weren't deceiving him, that was a ledger compiling every transaction he'd ever made—a record of every illegal act Charles had ever committed.
'Wh-why does he have that ledger?'
He'd locked it away safely in his secret vault, hadn't he?
“Well, you've got a decent head on your shoulders. I'm sure you can work out the situation?”
“Ghk.”
And indeed. If that ledger ever came to light, Charles's life was finished. Ordinary citizens weren't the only ones entangled in it—nobles were too, and the moment they found out, they would without question move to dispose of him.
Watching the blood drain from Charles's face, Luden smiled with satisfaction.
'That's how your kind always operates.'
Luden had rolled through all manner of dirty, dangerous work in his past life as well. What men like Charles would do was obvious.
“Gh. What is it you want?”
“I do like how quickly you get to the point. Then I'll keep to the point as well. The Lunvel Magic Tower—just how deep are you in their pockets?”
“......”
Charles couldn't bring himself to answer easily. He had grasped, instinctively, that Luden was cut from the same cloth as himself. The familiar look in his eyes, the tone that said he already knew everything. Young as he looked, there was no doubt he knew exactly how this world worked. Stalling would be pointless.
Charles spoke as though resigning himself.
“The Lunvel Magic Tower has been doing business with us—with me—for a long time. Or maybe I should say I'm their trained dog. I've handled every filthy job they needed done on their behalf.”
“So the rumors that follow Lunvel around were true?”
When Luden asked, drawing on what he'd heard from Hugo, Charles let out a sneer.
“Kukuku. If anything, the rumors are the polite version.”
“Tsk. So this time, the plan was to deal with old man Basel and steal his research?”
“They told me to use the debt as a lever and take everything connected to the old man's research. Do just that, they said, and they'd forge me a solid line to the high nobility.”
“And you believed that?”
“...The million rub came from them too. They took the promissory note and the contract with them, though, so you can give up on finding any evidence.”
Quite cooperative. Maybe he'd simply resigned himself to his fate, but the sharp-eyed man had made the one choice that could keep him alive in this situation: proving his usefulness.
'Even using this man, I won't be able to hook Lunvel.'
He wasn't counting on that. But disposing of Charles here and now would gain him nothing—it would only end up provoking Lunvel.
“Fine. I'll give you one chance.”
“A chance?”
“A million rub.”
“......?”
“One month from now. Donate a million rub to the Vivre Magic Tower. You can manage that much, can't you?”
“Th-that's insane! Do you have any idea how much a million rub is?!”
“Well. Isn't it a cheap price, at least as the price of your life and your men's?”
Slipping the ledger into his inventory pocket, Luden turned away.
“If you're thinking of trying anything stupid, I'd give up on that. This time, I'll be the one watching you.”
Charles stared at Luden as he melted into the darkness, eyes wide with fear.
“Now then—next is materials.”
He'd asked Sarah to keep watch over Charles's side for the time being. He had applied more than enough pressure, but men like Charles would pounce at revenge the moment an opportunity presented itself.
'But he knows exactly how much his own life is worth.'
As long as he understood that his neck could be severed at any moment, he wouldn't dare try anything foolish.
With Charles's gang settled, Luden turned his thoughts to the next problem.
“I suppose I have no choice but to use this.”
Luden looked down at the old key clutched in his hand.
◈ The key to the laboratory where Creep carried out countless studies in his lifetime.
◈ Effect: Using the key transports you directly to Creep's laboratory. (Single use)
An item that would let him enter the lich's laboratory exactly once. He had no idea what lay inside, but it was the workshop of a mage who had been brilliant in life, so there was every reason to hope.
“Please, let there be something worth using in there.”
With all the hope he could muster, Luden slid the key into the door of his room. After a brief wait, he opened it onto a completely different space.
Not the inn corridor that had been there a moment ago, but a dark, secretive chamber. It resembled Basel's cramped semi-basement, though the room spread out before him was somewhat larger.
“Is this magic too?”
Marveled, Luden stepped into the laboratory. Despite having no windows and not a breath of ventilation, the air was far fresher than in Basel's research room.
“It must have sat abandoned for quite some time, but it's in remarkable shape for that.”
The room was packed with experimental equipment and unidentifiable materials of every kind. On the long desk, memos and notebooks dense with complicated equations were stacked in heaps, and even a passing glance told him he couldn't begin to decipher them.
— Reinforced Death Knight Creation Formula
— Soul Transfer
— Black Star Refinement Art
“Just what you'd expect from a lich's laboratory.”
Luden let out a sigh. Just as he'd hoped, the laboratory was stuffed full of promising-looking things. The problem was which of all these many things to take that would actually be of use to Basel.
After a moment's deliberation, Luden made his decision.
“Let's take it all. Grab everything, and something in the pile is bound to be worth keeping.”
There was no need to hesitate. After all, he had his trusty inventory pocket, didn't he?