Chapter 27
"I'll give you a rough explanation. I'll tell you what I saw."
Breck said that and slowly began his story.
***
After finishing his call with Abel, Breck lamented and looked up at the sky.
"Ha. Yeah, things in this world never go according to plan."
Especially with large-scale operations like this, Breck often experienced things going awry because of unexpected interference.
After roughly raking a hand through his hair, Breck looked at the maid standing behind him.
The maid Abel had briefly sent him.
'Her name was definitely Mist, right?'
"Mr. Breck, may I offer my opinion?"
"Hm? What is it?"
At Breck's question, Mist calmly gave her opinion.
"I've heard about the current situation and understand it as well."
As she said that, she tapped the communicator in her ear and continued.
"The Saint's side is dealing with heretics, while Abel is also moving according to his own judgment, correct?"
"That's right."
Breck nodded lightly and turned his gaze toward the building belonging to the corpse dealer he had chosen.
A roughly four-story building built with blood money.
And the men keeping an extremely vigilant watch around it stood out.
Judging by their uniformly rough mana, they seemed to be newly awakened ability users.
Those guys who had only just awakened such unrefined mana?
It was obvious that they were ability users forcibly awakened by the drug [Mirage].
"Do you have a way to break through there?"
"Yes."
Mist lightly nodded at Breck's look.
"Ha... Fine. Maid, since you're so confident, I'll follow your lead."
"..."
"But there's a condition. If your plan involves sacrificing members of our Family, I'll refuse outright. Understood?"
"Yes."
At Mist's firm answer, Breck moved to summon the members who were secretly surrounding the building.
'Hm? Wait.'
Just as he was reaching for his communicator, Breck's eyes began to waver.
'Why didn't I notice that maid when she came nearby?'
The distance between him and Mist had definitely been considerable.
Had she closed the distance in the brief moment when he thought of her?
No, before that. Why had he been casually conversing with the maid?
Even though he had been told she was Abel's acquaintance, he had continued the conversation naturally without noticing her approach or sensing her presence.
And he hadn't even felt anything strange throughout the process.
'What...?'
"Has something happened?"
Breck stiffened without realizing it.
Mist's voice reached his ear once more.
When he turned his head, she was standing calmly one step behind him, looking at him.
She was maintaining a distance from which she could kill him at any time if she were an assassin.
"Haa... Right. I see why that guy Abel entrusted you with a request."
Abel was a monster, and the woman that monster had gone so far as to commission to assess her abilities was no ordinary person either.
Breck sighed and called together the members surrounding the area.
Soon, Mist began explaining the outline of the operation to the members gathered beside her.
As she continued, the members' gazes began changing moment by moment.
Distrust, confusion, questions. And looks asking Breck whether he really intended to do this.
"...Well, let's try it."
"Mr. Breck!?"
.
.
.
Mist's plan was extremely simple, a plan that could be summed up in a single line.
"Enemy attack! We're under attack!!!"
While the Nostra Family drew attention at the front entrance, Mist infiltrated through the back door.
"Get up, quickly! Work if you want to receive Mirage, you idiots!"
"Use your abilities!"
"Kgh! Are you insane?! It's a sniper rifle! The attacker used a sniper rifle!!!"
And the plan got off to a highly successful start.
Slash!
"You're keeping up well."
"..."
Breck stared at Mist, who spoke calmly to him after killing the guards at the back door with a single stroke.
If she had dealt with them at a speed his eyes couldn't follow, he would have understood.
Superhumanly strong people had always existed, and he wasn't naive enough to be this flustered by something of this level.
Glance.
Breck examined the two guards who had been protecting the back door.
Corpses with peaceful expressions, as though they were unaware they had died.
Too fast? No.
A special ability? Not that either.
Mist had simply approached the two guards calmly and killed them with the minimum movement.
Even after witnessing the entire process himself, Breck couldn't understand it at all.
'Why? Why didn't these guys feel anything strange as the maid approached them?'
He had seen many abilities over the course of his life.
Since he worked with information, he even took pride in his own two eyes.
Yet his mind couldn't process any of the sequence he had just witnessed.
Creak.
Whether aware of Breck's confusion or not, Mist opened the back door normally and entered the building, her footsteps making a sound.
[Report]
[33 ability users, 12 combatants, and 10 criminals present there]
[Time taken to annihilate all 65 people: 2 minutes 13 seconds]
[Special Notes]
[All corpses killed by Abel's maid Mist had extremely peaceful expressions, as though none had realized their own deaths]
***
"That is everything I saw that maid do."
Breck said that, frowning as though he still couldn't understand what he had seen.
"Here, I wrote the rough report down, so read it if you're bored."
"Ah, right."
The report Breck handed me was quite thick.
Skimming it, I saw that it was densely filled with records of what Mist had done inside the building, written in bad handwriting as though it had been hastily scribbled down.
Most of them had discovered Mist, but died without feeling anything strange.
"Hmm... Mist."
"Yes."
"Would it be all right if I asked about your ability?"
I said this while shaking the report Breck had handed me.
Mist, who had heard the entire conversation between Breck and me, nodded with the same expressionless face as always.
"Yes. I don't mind."
With her affirmative answer, I decided to bring this conversation to a close for now.
"So what happened to the others?"
The last situation I had grasped was that Ariel had entered the hotel occupied by necromancy, and the [White Shadow] side had entered a noble family's salon.
At my question, Breck slowly explained the current situation.
Ariel's side had almost everything wrapped up.
Thanks to the holy knights and Ariel, everyone held captive inside the hotel had survived.
"Hm? Captive people?"
"Yes. According to what the Saint relayed, she guessed they had been taken hostage to keep them confined there."
And the noble family's salon that [White Shadow] had entered was even more absurd.
"Automatons?"
"Haa... Yes."
The place wasn't a hideout for criminals, but simply a space filled with automatons for the nobles' secret amusements.
That was the identity of the mana detected in the salon.
"..."
What the hell...
Wasn't that something that should be called by an entirely different word, rather than a salon?
A word came to mind in an instant, and I found myself silently staring at Breck.
Breck, receiving my gaze, also let out a fairly deep sigh.
"Haa... Anyway, the Saint's side has nearly everything settled and is handling the aftermath."
"So everything's over?"
Ariel's side seemed delayed because the injured people needed treatment,
while [White Shadow]'s side had turned out not to be connected to this incident at all from the start.
"Yeah. Tell me what time would be convenient for you to return. I'll reserve an airship then."
When Breck nodded, the Mirage drug incident came to a complete end.
.
.
.
Once everything was over and I returned to the house where I'd been staying temporarily, I took out some suitable snacks and the alcohol I'd bought on the way home and placed them on the table.
"So..."
Originally, I hadn't been very interested in Mist's ability.
I didn't consider her an enemy, and although she occasionally cast eerie looks my way, she wasn't hostile toward me in general.
I had accepted her contract and planned to leave the ducal house after only a year anyway, so why bother wracking my brain over her ability?
"Shall we talk?"
But the situation had changed.
Now there was an unidentified organization hostile toward me.
'No matter how I think about it, they seem like the mastermind...'
An unidentified organization with suspiciously vast wealth and suspiciously excellent information-gathering abilities?
Whether it was a mastermind from the romance-fantasy side or the academy side, it was clearly connected to one of them.
'That guy I fought...'
A mage and alchemist. That alone made him troublesome, but I'd learned something else during the fight.
That mage was named Heros, right?
Anyway, he had been an irregular who was both a mage and an awakened ability user.
'No matter how I look at it, he's a mid-boss...'
His setup was far too excessive.
They gave an ordinary villain magic, alchemy, and an ability too?
It was proof that he wasn't merely a disposable villain who dropped out early.
'And I've already gotten involved.'
By stopping the drug crisis, I had become entangled with Ariel, and I had also become connected to some unknown mastermind.
I had long since thrown thoughts like "Come on, surely they won't target me?" into the trash can, rather than acting like the protagonist in some frustrating novel.
Now that I was involved, it would cling to me like a leech no matter how desperately I tried to avoid it.
It wasn't some contrived force from the original story or fate.
'They won't just let me be after I interfered with the organization's plans.'
My experience from my previous life made it half predictable.
This was an organization that sheltered a madman like that, produced drugs, and even dabbled in necromancy.
Having ruined such an organization's plans, they would surely try to kill me.
If so, I had to move first.
Waiting around to get attacked wasn't my style.
"Mist."
The first step in making such a move was learning the abilities of the people around me in advance.
"..."
At my words, Mist accepted the glass I held out and silently looked at me.
"You've changed a little."
"Hm?"
As she said that, she carefully poured the alcohol I'd bought on the way home into a glass and held it out to me, continuing.
"Given the personality of Abel I had judged, I thought you would simply let it go after receiving the report."
"..."
"Rather than asking about it directly like this."
At Mist's words, I gave a bitter smile and leaned back in my chair.
I was aware that this wasn't like me.
As she said, curiosity had been a major reason I'd commissioned Breck too.
If the circumstances hadn't been like this, there was a very high chance I would have simply ended things after hearing Breck's report.
"The situation changed a little, that's all..."
Yes, the situation had changed. And in a rather troublesome direction, too.
"...I see."
Mist listened quietly and then slowly nodded.
Without asking what I meant or doubting me. Simply accepting it.
"Understood."
"That's unexpected. I thought we'd be trading questions or riddles."
From her perspective, it was an obvious question to have.
So I had intended to tell her about the unidentified organization I learned of from my conversation with Heros.
But I hadn't expected her to simply accept it without asking anything.
"It would be a lie to say I have no questions."
But.
"Isn't obeying my master simply the natural thing to do?"
"..."
She had said it occasionally.
That she considered me her master.
She'd said something similar at the end of the day I'd ordered her to help the Nostra Family.
Every time, I had consistently ignored it, thinking accepting it would lead to something quite troublesome.
It was obvious Mist held an important position in the Nebula ducal family.
'Haa...'
"Right..."
I felt a sigh coming, but with this damn world refusing to leave me alone, what else could I do?
"!!"
Perhaps she hadn't expected me to affirm her calling me master; Mist's eyes widened in surprise for an instant.
"Then, as your master, I'll ask you once more. What is your ability?"
And at that moment, Mist's form, seated before me, vanished in an instant.
"My ability is."
Soon, her voice came from behind my back while I remained seated.
"It's very simple. It isn't even an ability."
Her voice was very different from her usually emotionless voice, damp somehow, as though soaked.
"I possess the power to control my presence."
I felt a damp breath mingled with air.
"My power is to reduce my presence all the way to zero, or amplify it and raise it to one hundred."
Her voice held such intense emotion that I found myself wondering what expression she was wearing.
"This isn't an ability. It's my own talent, something I was born with."
After saying that, Mist returned to her place.
Seated there, she looked at me with the same expressionless face as always.
"Ha... You startled me."
Saying that, I brushed back the nape of my neck, still damp from her breath.
To think she'd leave my back exposed in an instant.
I had experienced firsthand how extraordinary her ability to control her presence was.
"Do you like my ability?"
Like it?
"Ah, I really like it."
I meant this sincerely.
I really did like her ability.
"Because it's the ability I need to become the head of the household."