The Mage of Ashes (3)
The Seed of Corruption.
The final stage of the research that sought to dissect that original sin was experimentation on living subjects.
Needless to say, this was where Oscar and Lloyd clashed, hard.
"Why on earth are you opposed? Orcs are crawling all over the place out there. Using them for the experiments would give us data far more comparable to humans who've taken the Seed than anything else."
"Are you seriously asking me that? Unsanctioned live experimentation is a violation of imperial law."
"As for that part, there's no need to worry. I'll manage everything rigorously so not a word of it leaks."
"...You were taught what it means to respect the law as a child, weren't you?"
I taught you, clearly!?
This time, Oscar absolutely refused to budge.
Joining his own disciple hand in hand to commit crimes? The mere thought was horrifying.
In the end, thanks to his fierce opposition, the test subjects were replaced with living slime fragments.
Honestly, that much was more than enough to gather the data they needed.
"Hmm."
Oscar nodded after inspecting the slimes housed in each of the dozens of flasks.
"That'll do. Let's wrap up the experiments here."
"What? Already?"
Lloyd frowned.
They had only been running the slime experiments for four days, after all.
"Yes. Continuing any further would yield nothing more of value."
Raising his mana, Oscar reduced the slime stained with magi to dust as he continued.
"And besides, we've collected more than enough data as it is."
When he handed over the report he'd written, Lloyd read its contents with an openly suspicious look in his eyes. But by the time he turned the last page, his expression had smoothed out completely.
"...Clean work. Have you done something like this before?"
"With insects, a few times."
The insects Oscar spoke of, of course, meant the demonkin.
In the past, he had dissected and tortured them for the sake of winning a war, without a shred of mercy.
Lloyd, who could not possibly have known this, offered his praise plainly.
"If word ever got out that you had this ability, the imperial family would without a doubt have valued you highly."
"Thank goodness, then. If they had, I'd have surely been buried in some dreary research lab, doing nothing but studies for the rest of my life."
At that, Lloyd let out a short laugh, then drew a sheet of parchment from his breast and made a blunt demand.
"Sign it."
The parchment was, of course, the Parchment of Covenant.
Its terms bound him never to breathe a word, for the rest of his life, about anything he had seen, heard, or experienced in this place.
And the penalty for breaking it, naturally, was death.
"Don't you think this is a bit much, even for you?"
"No."
"Wow."
How could he say that without so much as a flicker of change in his expression...?
Why had the boy gotten so shameless?
Oscar asked, looking incredulous.
"What happens if I refuse to sign?"
"You die."
"...Give me the pen."
Having quickly finished signing, Oscar muttered a small complaint.
"Did we really have to go this far?"
"I detest complications."
Then Lloyd continued, wearing an enigmatic expression that was impossible to read.
"Let me ask you one thing. If a human who had taken this Seed appeared before your very eyes, what would you do?"
"I'd have to kill them."
"...You're astonishingly level-headed about this part of things, at least."
"It's also the merciful course of action. It would be difficult to consider that subject human any longer."
Oscar said, tapping the report.
"Even just from the data, you can see it — the moment a living creature possesses the energy known as magi, its aggression increases dramatically. And of that, hostility and aggression directed specifically at humans becomes the most pronounced."
"And what do you think the reason is?"
"The inherent nature of magi itself, most likely."
Oscar laid it out in flawless order.
"Even among mages, the characteristics and qualities of one's mana shift subtly depending on which tower they belong to, don't they?"
That was due to the properties each attribute carried.
Water-wielding mages of the Blue Tower tend to be easygoing, while the mages of the Red Tower tend to be hot-blooded.
It wasn't true of everyone, of course, but the influence worked on them all the same, whether they noticed it or not.
"The demonkin are beings born, from the very beginning, as enemies of humankind. There can never be a hand extended to them."
"Hmm."
Lloyd mulled it over for a moment before speaking.
"And if the human who took the Seed were an important figure, someone you couldn't kill? What would you do then?"
"..."
It was at that moment that Oscar sensed something off.
Unlike the earlier questions, which he'd taken for simple curiosity, a strange detail had crept into this one.
His eyes narrowed.
"What exactly are you playing at?"
"I'm merely asking what I'm curious about. Answer."
"...Let me think."
After a pause, Oscar answered.
"I'd have to weigh just how important the subject is. If I judged that the return was less than the risk involved, then killing them would be the cleaner choice, the same as before."
"And if they were a figure so vital to the entire Empire that killing them was simply out of the question?"
The instant he heard the question, Oscar pressed his lips shut.
Then his gaze drifted, of its own accord, toward where instinct — no, his sixth sense — was leading it.
To the firmly sealed door visible just over Lloyd's shoulder.
"...What in the world is behind that door?"
"Hmm."
Lloyd tucked the parchment — the one pledging silence about everything that happened here — from the desk into his breast and rose from his seat.
"Follow me."
"..."
When the massive door, layered over and over with protective magic, swung open, a long corridor stretched out beyond it.
Oscar walked its full length — a passage where not a single ray of light entered — and when he discovered what waited at its end, his brow furrowed.
"..."
It was a human being.
A huge figure, bound tightly by hundreds of flowers, slowly lifted his head at the sense of their presence.
The moment their eyes met—
"…!"
Oscar very nearly unleashed his mana on reflex.
He had read the tangle of emotions within the man's eyes.
A chaos of a gaze, as though gentleness and madness, benevolence and hostility, had been fused together.
From the man's lips came a voice like iron being scraped.
"Today... you've brought a guest with you... Won't you... introduce him to me...?"
"He's the mage I spoke to you about before."
Lloyd used an honorific so immaculately formal it was startling, then delivered the revelation.
"Oscar Crucian. He may be the one who can heal your body, Commander."
* * *
It took him a little while to calm his shaken heart.
When Oscar, back in the laboratory, shot Lloyd a look that demanded an explanation, Lloyd snapped his fingers.
"Sit down first."
Two chairs woven from flowers took shape, and Lloyd seated himself first.
Oscar followed him into his own seat, urging him on with his eyes.
Hurry up and explain this situation.
"...It was an accident during an operation."
Starting in an even voice, Lloyd recounted what had happened.
"It was a month and a half ago. We had begun to sense that the horde of orcs pressing toward the citadel was anything but ordinary, and right at that moment, a scout brought us critical news — intelligence about an orc chieftain approaching from the west."
"Was that orc the master of that monstrous horde?"
"That's what we judged at the time. It was only later that we realized how completely wrong that judgment was."
Once the orc horde, growing by the day, reached full strength, all-out war would become inevitable.
The commander — Theodore Veil — who had no wish to face that oppressive number, devised a single stratagem.
"The outline of the operation was to strike at the orc chieftain approaching from the west. Orcs who lose their leader inevitably scatter, so the thinking was that it would be better to intercept and eliminate him before he could join the horde. A special detachment was assembled for the operation."
The roster of its members was extraordinary.
"A Level 7 knight and a Level 7 mage, along with twenty-one mages and knights of Levels 5 and 6."
The commander, Theodore Veil, also known as the Lord of the Red Citadel, and the Mage of Ashes, Lloyd Schultz.
The detachment they led slipped out of the fortress in secret, set up in the western desert, and lay in wait.
"Powerful as the orc chieftain was, he was, at best, Level 5 or 6. We didn't even entertain the thought of failure."
Such was the overwhelming force they fielded. But the instant they descended upon the orc chieftain—
The ground shook, as if it had been waiting for them.
"The sand of the desert surged up as though to swallow the sky, and the being called the King of the Underworld appeared — a King Sandworm."
Astonishingly, riding atop its head was an orc several times larger than any of the others.
A single entity whose mere appearance radiated a powerful presence that enveloped the entire space.
"The Orc Great Warchief. He had united every orc tribe in the desert and, with the King Sandworm under his command, was preparing for war."
The orc tribes scattered across this vast Zakamunt Desert numbered in the hundreds — perhaps more than a thousand.
An Orc Great Warchief capable of rallying them beneath a single banner appeared only once in several hundred years.
It was only natural that neither the commander nor Lloyd had anticipated such a being.
"Magi that foul, spewing out of a mere monster. It was all but certain he had taken the Seed."
He faced Theodore and Lloyd alone.
But just as their combined assault had driven the Great Warchief to the brink—
"...The one he'd been after from the start was me."
Lloyd lost track of the Great Warchief's movement for the span of an instant and fell into mortal danger.
Unable to stand by and watch, the commander threw himself in front of him—
"And the creature drove his fist through the Commander's chest, punching a great hole clean through it. Then he dropped the Seed inside."
"...He bears no such wound now."
"Whether it's a property of the magi, he's fully healed. His regeneration is almost ludicrous."
In the moment that Lloyd, reeling at the sight of the Commander convulsing, stood frozen, the Orc Great Warchief rode the King Sandworm back into the earth and vanished.
"...In that situation, I had only two choices."
One was to tell the truth to everyone who had taken part in the operation, and grant the Commander a peaceful rest.
Had it been any other day, he would have chosen it without a word.
"..."
But perhaps out of pity — for a man who had come to this end trying to save him.
He chose the second option.
"Theodore Veil is an exceptional commander. He has held the Red Citadel for more than thirty years, he can execute a dozen different battle tactics, and his ability to command is superb. When you think of the war with the orcs, he is a man we cannot afford to lose."
Lloyd spat out the lie that the Commander had been dragged away by the King Sandworm and retreated with the detachment.
Then, in the dead of night, slipping past every watching eye, he moved him down into his own basement.
"The flower binding his entire body is called the Tamnahwa — the All-Devouring Blossom. A flower that consumes all energy, slowly but completely. The reason he can still hold onto his sanity is that he keeps the magi within him suppressed to the barest minimum."
"...So that's why you began the research — to turn him back into a human?"
"That's right. But alone, it was beyond me. So I called for you. Your abilities have proven better than I imagined."
Oscar's brow creased.
Still — hiding the existence of a demon-touched man was on an entirely different level from concealing a few live experiments.
"If this comes to light, you could be beheaded for treason."
"I know. I pray daily it does not come to that."
"...You're more reckless than I gave you credit for."
Clicking his tongue, Oscar recalled something and asked.
"If you told the soldiers the Commander hadn't actually gone missing, wouldn't that put a stop to the factional infighting?"
"That's an excessive joke. The Red Citadel garrisons tens of thousands of soldiers. Do you truly believe all of them are of one heart and one mind?"
A sneer curled at the corner of Lloyd's mouth.
"I do not trust humans, as a rule. So I share secrets like this with no one. Handling it with the smallest possible number of people and making it as though it never happened is simply the more efficient course."
"..."
A distrust of humanity so thorough it bordered on pathological.
But considering the stakes of the matter, Oscar couldn't call it incomprehensible, either.
If they learned that the commander they trusted and followed had become demon-touched, all kinds of reactions would follow.
Some might try to restore him to humanity, as Lloyd was doing.
But there would inevitably be others who coveted his seat themselves, or schemed to bring in some superior of their own.
After a moment's deliberation, Oscar let out a long sigh.
"When this is all over, you and I are settling this with one punch. Just one."
"I will consider it favorably."
Having already signed the Parchment of Covenant, Oscar was now bound to Lloyd in a single shared fate.
Which meant, in a word, that he had no choice but to find a way to return Theodore Veil to his human form.