Chapter 13
After deciphering the Nostra Family's code, I immediately asked the owner of the shop where I'd just bought the cocktail ingredients for this address.
Though they called it coordinates, more accurately, it was an address.
The 44-3 I arrived at was located quite far from the bustling district.
A so-called dead shopping district, lined with shops bearing signs that were all but collapsing.
One shop in the center of that district was the address mentioned in the code.
"Is this 44-3 according to the coordinates?"
[Noah's Bakery]
A fairly unremarkable neighborhood bakery, the sort found anywhere in the city.
The only unusual thing was that while every shop around it was dead, this one alone was still alive.
"Where is it?"
Swish.
As the code instructed, I lifted the sheet near the shop's entrance and found a small wooden box.
Without hesitation, I picked up the box and opened it.
"This is..."
***
Bang.
"Have you arrived, Lord Abel?"
Upon entering my room in the duke's residence, Mist politely greeted me as always.
After receiving her greeting, I immediately approached the cathode-ray television in the corner of my room.
"Lord Abel?"
With her puzzled voice in the background,
I stood before the cathode-ray television, pulled a cigar from inside my coat, cut the tip, lit it with my lighter, and began smoking.
Using the smoke that had begun to spread, I slowly started dismantling the cathode-ray television.
Creak. Creak.
I called it a cathode-ray television for convenience, but its actual name was a magilight panel.
Normally, it was a product of magitech assembled so precisely that it could never be opened without professional equipment.
Click.
Yet that product of magitech was useless against my smoke.
No matter how tightly it was sealed, if it did not completely shut out the air itself, my smoke could enter anywhere.
Once I disassembled the magilight panel, countless mechanical devices dazzled my eyes.
Numerous gears, with several magic circles wedged between them here and there.
But there was only one thing I needed to worry about right now.
The brightly glowing sphere at the center of this chaotic apparatus.
Creak.
I carefully separated the sphere with my smoke, then took the wooden box I had obtained by deciphering the Nostra Family's code from inside my coat.
Click.
"A mana core?"
That was Mist's murmur upon seeing the sphere revealed when I opened the wooden box.
I immediately joined it to the glowing sphere I had just removed.
Mana core.
Simply put, using a term from my previous life, it was similar to the semiconductor in advanced equipment.
The most important component in various machines.
"..."
Cigar smoke enveloped the mana core and slowly began combining it with the inside of the magilight panel.
Bzzzt.
"Phew, perfect."
Once the mana core was connected, the magilight panel began producing static with an unpleasant noise.
"Now, it should take about five minutes."
"...So what is this about, Lord Abel?"
When I looked at Mist, she was expressionlessly looking back and forth between me and the magilight panel, which was producing static.
I gave her a rough explanation of the situation.
I told her that I had gone into town, deciphered the Nostra Family's code, and obtained the mana core.
I also explained that activating the mana core required a piece of magitech like this magilight panel, and that I had used the one in my room.
"I see..."
After hearing my explanation, she nodded as though everything made sense.
"I know how contacts in the underworld are made, but this method was a first for me, so I was momentarily flustered. So this kind of method exists too."
"What? Haha. No way."
I lightly waved my hand to deny her admiring words.
This kind of contact method?
Well, I did often use codes, but using a mana core to request a commission?
"People don't normally do this. It isn't cost-effective."
Besides, this was no ordinary mana core. It was extremely special.
The moment it was connected to a machine, it hacked that machine and generated a single frequency.
In other words, that sphere could hack a machine in addition to performing the functions of a mana core.
Consume something like that merely to make contact for a commission?
If the other party refused to accept the commission and ran off with the mana core, that would be a loss as well. It was quite a risky method of making contact.
"At first, I was going to refuse, but they're trying to ask me to take the commission using even this, right? So I brought it."
"I see... But is it all right for me to stay here?"
"What?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm not your person, am I? Then is it all right for me to hear you exchange this deal?"
Not my person.
Put simply, she meant that although we had a one-year loyalty contract, that was all there was to it, didn't she?
Hearing that, I gave a light laugh as though it were nothing important.
"What, you make it sound like it's a big deal. It's fine. Even if it's only for a year, I don't want to distrust someone I've made a contract with."
More accurately, the real reason was that I had done similar things countless times in my previous life and was sick to death of them.
Even if the contract was for a limited term, whenever I gave someone my trust, I trusted them completely. That was my rule.
"So just listen..."
As I said that and looked at Mist, she was watching me once again with an expression that was difficult to describe.
What was I supposed to call that? Her gaze was slightly unfocused as she looked at me, and I felt an instinctive sense of danger.
"..."
"..."
Crackle.
While Mist and I were talking, the static gradually cleared, and a figure began to appear.
A middle-aged man with a scar running across one eye and a gunshot wound scar near his left temple.
Once the image came through clearly, I ended my staring contest with Mist and greeted the man on the screen.
"Long time no see."
The head of the Nostra Family's capital branch.
Breck.
[Ah, long time no see, Abel.]
"Yeah. It really has been a while, Breck. But..."
I tapped the area near my left eye and continued speaking.
"Looks like the wound I gave you has healed by now?"
It was nothing special.
They were people who bought and sold information. They had sold my information, which led to me being attacked—a perfectly ordinary story from daily life.
I wasn't particularly angry about the attack itself.
It wasn't a situation I couldn't handle. The problem was that, while preparing for the ambush, they had burned every cigar I had lovingly collected at home.
They had anticipated my ability to some degree and prevented me from smoking the cigars that were its source.
It was a perfectly natural line of thought, and I agreed with it.
The problem was that among the cigars they burned, there had been some expensive ones I had carefully saved for the perfect occasion.
Even after wiping out every one of the people who had attacked me, my anger did not subside, so I immediately stormed into the Nostra Family, the root cause of the whole mess, and fought Breck.
The long scar around his eye was from that fight.
[Ha, funny. This area still hurts, you know.]
At my words, Breck unconsciously stroked the scar running across one eye.
But he soon regained his composure.
[I have a commission for you, Abel.]
"Hmm? A commission..."
He probably knew perfectly well that I was staying at the Nebla ducal house.
Otherwise, that coded method of contact would make no sense.
Despite knowing my situation, he was offering me a commission?
[The request is simple. Help us crack down on the drugs currently circulating in the underworld.]
"What? That's completely ordinary."
After House Nebla had controlled the underworld for so long, a rule had emerged.
Namely, not to deal in drugs with more addictive properties than necessary.
It was a rule formed by families that did not want to cultivate such drugs, get targeted by House Nebla, and watch their cities be reduced to wastelands.
Of course, there would always be people who slipped through even such rules.
That was why drug crackdowns to wipe out such people were surprisingly ordinary and frequent commissions.
Yet he had contacted me through such a troublesome method for an ordinary drug crackdown?
I spoke as though I did not quite understand, then began smoking my cigar.
I had lit it to open the magilight panel, and not smoking it now would be a waste.
[It's not an ordinary drug, which is why I commissioned you.]
"Hmm?"
On the screen, Breck slightly furrowed his brow and spoke in a lowered voice.
[Commonly known as [Mirage]. It is a drug with extremely powerful addictive properties. But if that were all, it wouldn't be a particular problem.]
[However, addictiveness is merely a secondary effect. Its true effect lies elsewhere.]
"Get to the point. Why are you taking so long to lead into it?"
How frustrating.
At my gaze, which conveyed that thought, Breck raised one corner of his mouth into his characteristic nasty grin.
[Its true effect is that it awakens ordinary people as ability users.]
"What...?"
A drug that awakens ordinary people as ability users?
[Understand it exactly as you just heard.]
Seeing my reaction, Breck readily nodded and said that.
Ability users.
It was a general term for people who naturally manifested abilities as they awakened mana, like me, an ability user who could manipulate smoke.
They were beings whose abilities activated simply by stirring mana, without the headache-inducing calculations and adjustments required of a mage.
Naturally, their numbers were extremely small.
Among the countless criminals in the underworld, ability users were so rare that they were difficult to find outside the highest-ranking executives of each family.
A drug that could artificially create such ability users?
Glance.
I looked at Mist beside me.
Even for her, it was startling information, but she stood motionless without so much as a twitch.
'So she knew.'
Seeing her, I concluded that House Nebla already knew about the drug called [Mirage].
[Abel?]
"Ah, sorry. So I've heard the explanation about the drug. But why should I accept this commission?"
Leaning deeply back in my chair, I spoke casually while savoring the cigar smoke.
"If it's money, there's not much in it for me."
[...]
Breck was silent for a moment, then looked straight at me and spoke.
[The bar you frequent—the name was [Glen Luna], right?]
Freeze.
Those words stopped me in the middle of casually smoking my cigar.
[That bar, [Glen Luna], was half-destroyed. By someone who became artificially awakened after being addicted to [Mirage].]
"..."
[Fortunately, the master of the bar was not seriously injured, but the establishment itself is completely half-destroyed. That seems like reason enough for you to accept this commission, doesn't it?]
***
'The air... is heavy.'
Behind Abel, Mist had been quietly listening to his conversation with the man named Breck, and she suddenly felt the weight of the air against her skin.
It was an oppressive sensation, like entering the deep sea with nothing but one's bare body.
'He's angry.'
Mist reached that conclusion and cautiously observed Abel.
"Yeah... Phew... I'll accept. What is the compensation?"
[Compensation: approximately ten million dinars. And one free use of our Nostra Family's information. How does that sound?]
Having served House Nebla, she had certainly heard of the Nostra Family.
An information organization that straddled the worlds of darkness and light.
It was an organization so unrivaled in information that even the Imperial Palace's intelligence division and House Nebla commissioned it, and he was being offered one free use of its services.
The ten million dinars mentioned earlier were merely a sort of deposit. The true compensation was probably the information offered afterward.
"Hmm... Let's adjust it a little. I won't take the money. Instead, three uses of the information. How about it?"
Abel offered those terms because he knew that well.
But Breck simply rejected Abel's condition.
[Impossible. Here's a compromise. In exchange for those three uses, I'll accept if they're limited to information I can personally obtain, rather than information held by the Nostra Family as a whole.]
The head of the Nostra Family's capital branch.
Information that one of the Nostra Family's highest-ranking executives could obtain?
In other words, unless something was truly impossible, it meant he could learn nearly any information he wanted.
"I accept."
Knowing that, Abel simply accepted the commission.
[Good. Then smash the box you opened to accept the commission. I have a gift prepared. The starting point for the commission is the capital. Come to our side within two days. Then.]
Bzzzt.
As soon as Breck finished speaking, the screen once again became filled with static.
At Breck's words, I immediately split the box in my hand in two.
"This is..."
There was a sheet of paper inside the bottom of the box. After examining it, I raised one corner of my mouth.
"An airship ticket? Haha. Nostra, you people spent quite a lot on this."
Picking up the ticket with my fingers, I waved it lightly and looked at Mist.
"Oh, and I'm going up to the capital. Are you going to stop me?"
My voice was very calm.
"Because if you do, I'll have no choice but to wipe them all out and go."
But the content of my words was quite bloodthirsty by contrast.
"...No. I'll tell Lord Sebastian. The sort of thing you're worried about probably won't happen."
"Really?"
Reassured by Mist's firm answer, I gave a small smile and began packing my things.
Glance.
Watching me, she sent a signal to the people from the ducal house who had gathered here after the enormous amount of mana emitted moments ago, telling them everything was fine.
***
The day after I accepted Breck's commission.
Mist and I packed some essential luggage into a suitcase and arrived at the airport to board the airship.
A machine made up of countless mechanical components intricately fitted together—in other words, the most high-tech object in the world as it currently existed.
Humans can never fly.
It was a machine created in direct defiance of that absolute truth.
Science and magic had merged into one, and then even a steam engine had joined them: the culmination of human technology.
Hissssss.
That was an airship.