Chapter 15
The [Red Dawn Society]'s airship hijacking ended rather anticlimactically.
That was only natural, considering the insurmountable gap in strength between them and me.
When we arrived safely at the capital, the sight before my eyes was a spectacle of reporters occupying the airport.
"...If we get off through the front, it looks like we'll waste quite a bit of time, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Even by the shortest estimate, it should take more than two hours."
I racked my brain at Mist's firm answer.
If I got off through the front now, it was obvious that things would become troublesome no matter what happened.
The person who had successfully stopped an airship terrorist attack?
I had a feeling that earning that title would bring me a lot of trouble.
"If you're troubled, what about my suggestion?"
As I was thinking about how to resolve this troublesome situation, I heard Mist's voice.
I turned to look at her, and without saying anything, she pointed at the captain, who had arrived at the airport and was letting out a sigh of relief.
"If you use that person, I think you can get away from here quite easily."
Use the captain?
At my reaction, she slowly began explaining how she intended to use the captain.
"Recruitment."
After listening quietly, I agreed to the highly plausible plan and approached the captain.
.
.
.
Hissssss
Accompanied by the distinctive sound of steam being expelled, the airship's door slowly began to open.
Once the airship's door opened and the magic circle installed in it activated, a sort of makeshift staircase was completed.
The captain swallowed hard, descended the stairs, and walked toward the reporters gathered around the airship.
'Why did I agree to this?'
Seeing the reporters rush toward him with bloodshot eyes as soon as he came down, the captain let out a sigh of regret and began answering their questions.
"I'm a reporter from the Dale Newspaper! How is the situation proceeding, and how did you arrive safely...?"
"Move aside! How many casualties are there? We've received information that there were casualties among the crew!"
"Oh, come on, let me ask some questions too!!"
It was pandemonium. They were people who had lost their heads at the sight of the scoop dangling before them.
The captain floundered as he tried to calm them down, but they were hardly the sort to obey a mere airship captain, as opposed to a high-ranking noble.
And so, just as the reporters created a sea of people.
Swish.
"Hm?"
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"No, senior. It looks like two people are moving hurriedly behind them."
The reporter who saw the figures emerge from a sort of employee-only entrance used by the crew, rather than the front of the airship, muttered that.
At the junior reporter's words, the senior spoke as though it were nothing unusual.
"Of course it's because of the terrorist attack. Something must have happened that required them to call people in a hurry."
"Doctors or priests, you know."
"Ah..."
At the senior's words, the junior reporter nodded as though he understood.
'But they were too fast to be mere crew members.'
***
The outline of the plan was very simple.
The captain drew all the reporters' attention at the front.
And Mist and I quickly slipped out through the employee-only exit wearing the crew uniforms provided. Those were the only two steps.
As planned, while the captain drew the attention of every reporter, Mist and I slipped out, moved to a sparsely populated area, and stopped there.
Everything about the plan was perfect.
Yes, it 'was.'
The only problem was that there had been a men's crew uniform in a size similar to mine, but no stewardess uniform suited to her figure.
"Are you all right?"
I said that as I looked over her in the stewardess uniform.
It had looked precarious even when she changed into it, but after moving in a hurry, its condition was even more disastrous.
Her chest looked ready to burst.
Whenever she exhaled, her cleavage peeked between the buttons, creating a highly provocative sight.
When I lowered my gaze, her lower half was in an even more dangerous state.
There was no skirt suited to her particularly sturdy lower body, and the skirt she wore looked ready to split at any moment.
"...No."
As she said that in response to my question, Mist instinctively pressed down on the skirt that looked ready to tear.
Rrrrip.
At that movement, her clothes let out a sound like a scream.
The instant she heard it, she froze in place as if she had turned to ice.
No matter how extraordinary she was in so many ways, even she could do nothing in a situation where her clothes looked ready to rip apart.
I pointed to the bag she was holding, filled with the clothes we had originally been wearing, and spoke.
"Shall we change first?"
"...Yes..."
Swish.
I turned my back and shielded her with my body.
My smoke was transparent to ordinary people, so using it to cover her was out of the question. I had no choice but to make do with my body.
Rustle, rustle.
I forcibly ignored the sound of fabric rubbing against skin, which stimulated the imagination, and looked around to turn my thoughts elsewhere.
'Is that a priest?'
I felt a strange sense of incongruity at the sight of several figures in pure white priestly robes rushing fiercely toward the direction where the airship had landed.
This was the capital, so it was only natural for there to be priests.
Priests in this world often served as doctors as well, so it was perfectly natural for them to move during a terrorist attack like this.
'But aren't there too many?'
However, there were far more of them than I had expected.
At least a hundred priests were on the move.
Had there really been that many priests in the capital?
No, there could be that many, but were there truly enough of them to abandon their patients and temples and move during an emergency like this?
"Hmm..."
"Lord Abel?"
As I quietly watched the priests moving, I heard Mist's voice behind me.
When I turned to look at her, she had changed back into her usual maid outfit.
“Hmm?”
“…Why do you ask?”
Was it strange that I was silently examining her maid outfit?
She tilted her head slightly and asked me.
I answered her question with a deliberately mischievous, slightly annoying smile.
"No, I was just a little disappointed."
"Yes...?"
"I rather liked the stewardess outfit."
It was a small act of revenge against her, who always looked at me with a peculiar gaze.
At my playful remark, she looked momentarily confused, as if she were unsure what she had just heard.
Finding that amusing, I loosened the tightly knotted tie characteristic of the crew uniform and moved forward.
"Let's go. That fellow Breck will be waiting for us."
"Yes... Before we go, I have one question."
Perhaps it was only my imagination, but there seemed to be a strange warmth in her emotionless voice.
"Hm?"
"Was that outfit Lord Abel's preference?"
I turned my head at the sound of her voice.
There was a strange heat in Mist's gaze.
The sight of her asking while lightly holding the front of her chest and lifting the hem of the long skirt characteristic of a maid's uniform was seductive enough to make even me flinch.
"..."
"It was a joke."
When I found myself staring blankly at her in the sudden situation, she returned to her usual expressionless face and continued speaking.
"It was merely a maid's little prank, so please be generous."
"Ha!"
She was still claiming to be an ordinary maid.
After hearing that, I gave a light snort and left the airport.
***
The [Dale Newspaper] was a thoroughly ordinary newspaper, one of the mid-to-upper-tier papers found everywhere in the capital.
But its true identity was a family operating as an information broker in the underworld.
It was the Nostra Family's capital branch.
"So, how does it feel to become a hero praised by everyone in an instant?"
Breck asked with a smirk, raising one corner of his mouth as he taunted me.
Anyone could see that he was trying to make fun of me.
Spread out in front of Breck was a freshly printed newspaper filled with breaking news.
[Breaking News! Terrorists Who Hijacked an Airship, Many Crew Members Dead?!]
[The Noble Who Captured the Terrorists Who Hijacked an Airship Is None Other Than the Heir to House Nebla, King of the Underworld?]
[House Nebla Resumes Activity After Breaking Its Silence. Was the Rumor That It Had No Heir Merely a Rumor?]
It was a feast of sensational headlines that were troublesome from my perspective.
I had already gotten involved in something troublesome on the way here and was in a foul mood, too.
"I feel like plucking out the eye of the one-eyed man smiling in front of me right now."
It was a provocation I normally would not have taken, but I responded to it.
As if to show that I was serious, I released the smoke stored inside my body and threatened him.
The atmosphere sank.
With my smoke poised to go for his throat at any moment, Breck calmly drank the coffee he had brewed himself.
"Haha. It was a joke, a joke."
He certainly was one of the Nostra Family's highest-ranking executives.
He remained composed even in an atmosphere where his head could be severed at any moment.
"Haa..."
At the sight of Breck, I sighed and withdrew my smoke.
In the first place, this level of verbal sparring was nothing more than an everyday conversation for people of the underworld.
"Give me some coffee too."
"Oh, sure."
As the atmosphere settled for the moment, I drank the coffee Breck had brewed, and he handed me a bundle of papers.
"Here. I've condensed the information on this incident."
"Yeah..."
I leaned back against the sofa and examined the information Breck had handed me.
The dangers and characteristics of the drug [Mirage].
Where [Mirage] had first appeared, the slum where the addicts gathered, and how much one had to take to awaken an ability.
It was a report containing information like that.
Rustle.
"Hm?"
After some time had passed, I reached the final section of the report and unconsciously furrowed my brow at its last sentence.
[We have detected signs that the Light Church of the Holy Kingdom is also moving in response to the drug [Mirage].]
"The Light Church is moving?"
"Hm? Oh, yes. That information only came in today."
"That's unexpected..."
The Church had often extended its hand into drug incidents like this.
But it had never moved so quickly before.
"Well, I have to admit, that part is a mystery to me too."
Breck nodded as if he agreed with my mutter.
It was while I was thinking about the Church that I remembered the many priests running toward the airship before I came here.
I asked Breck about it.
"Ah, that's because priests from the Holy Kingdom came here as a group to do volunteer work today."
"Volunteer work?"
At this hour, on this day, priests had gathered in the Empire as a group for volunteer work?
On the very day the airship hijacking had occurred?
Wasn't that far too coincidental?
"...Who suggested this volunteer work?"
It was suspicious. Extremely suspicious.
They had moved as if they already knew about the terrorist attack on the airship.
Of course, this thought of mine might be nothing more than a leap in logic.
"Hm? Why do you ask?"
But Breck's calm attitude poured gasoline on my suspicion.
Even the fact that Breck showed no hint of suspicion at all was suspicious.
If he was the Breck I knew, he should have noticed long ago that something about this situation was strange.
"I was just curious."
But for now, this was merely circumstantial evidence.
So I would start by gathering information.
No matter how suspicious something seemed, it would be wrong to suspect someone based on a hunch alone.
"The person who suggested this volunteer work was Ariel, the Pure Saintess of the Light Church."
'Again?'
The Church that had moved so quickly in response to this drug incident was also the Light Church.
And the Light Church had also brought priests into the Empire under the name of volunteer work—something I found suspicious?
"Hmm..."
Even so, the direction of their actions was strange, despite their suspiciousness.
Even if the Light Church had moved quickly, the root of the matter was drugs—specifically, the suppression of a drug that turned ordinary people into ability users.
The airship terrorist attack would also have caused a major loss of life if I had not been there.
Could it really be considered wrong to prepare doctors or priests before such a terrorist attack occurred?
"Ariel, Ariel..."
So I decided to remember only the saintess's name.
'Wait, saintess?'
As I muttered Saintess Ariel's name, a sense of déjà vu began to rise in my mind.
It was my first time hearing the name Ariel, so this sense of déjà vu probably had not come from the name Ariel itself.
Then some other word must have been the cause.
'Saintess, saintess... Saintess?'
While I was rummaging through my mind for something that seemed about to come back to me but wouldn't,
I felt the neurons in my head connect, and the thoughts scattered irregularly in my mind began to fall back into place.
At [Crocus Academy], I had learned that this world was a blend of a romance fantasy and an academy setting.
Then what was the title of that romance fantasy?
[Though I Am a Saintess, @@@ and @@@ Are Obsessed with Me.]
I could not remember it exactly, but it had been something like that.
I only needed to discard all the useless words at the back and remember the phrase at the front.
Saintess.
"No way..."
Since this was a romance fantasy, I had naturally assumed there would be a protagonist.
The Light Church's strange movements.
The central figure behind those movements was Saintess Ariel. Was she the protagonist of the romance fantasy?
***
The Holy Kingdom.
A single nation formed by countless churches coming together.
The people of the various churches decided that giving such a country a name would be blasphemous, so they simply called it the Holy Kingdom.
"Tell me that again. What did you say?"
The grand temple of the Light Church.
At the holy knight's report, Saintess Ariel asked again, unable to believe what she had heard.