Chapter 48
When Mist guided me into the room where the boss of [Dark Shadow] was, I saw a woman sitting in the center.
I looked at the woman before me with a slightly flustered expression.
How should I describe the woman standing before me right now?
Well, it wasn't as though I was completely oblivious, so I had realized long ago that the unfamiliar woman in this room was Velias, the boss of [Dark Shadow].
That the beauty hidden beneath her robe rivaled Saint Ariel and Mist?
Even the ailing Duke, despite his old man's body, had the appearance of a handsomely aged man.
His character was the problem; his outward appearance was impressive.
As the Duke's granddaughter, it was only natural that she would be beautiful.
There was absolutely no reason for me to be flustered up to this point.
If there was a problem, it was this.
'Why is she wearing a veil?'
Several layers of an unidentified mana veil completely covered her entire body.
Although her face was exposed, the veil covering her body made it impossible to see what kind of clothes she was wearing.
Flinch.
Feeling my gaze, Velias flinched slightly, and her urgent voice began to echo inside my head.
[Hello! Um... The weather is... nice today, isn't it?]
For the record, the weather today was rather gloomy, with the sky covered in clouds.
[Ah, um, why don't you try this? It's the most famous chocolate dessert in the Factory Territory...]
She moved her hands and offered me a dish containing dessert.
As a result, the veil slipped slightly, faintly revealing the color of the dress she was wearing.
'Ash gray?'
The dress was a strangely dull color, but it wasn't incomprehensible when considering how well it matched her hair.
'But why is she so embarrassed?'
She maintained a blank expression, but the voice I heard in her mind was filled with trembling.
Perhaps the side effect of telepathy magic was causing her emotions to come across more clearly.
Or was she so flustered that she couldn't even think about something like this?
'Hmm...'
Why was she desperately covering her body with mana?
With that thought in mind, I began silently watching her.
Stare—
Flinch.
Stare—
Flinch.
"Pfft..."
As the silent standoff continued and she kept flinching whenever I looked at her, laughter escaped me on its own.
The boss of the Nebula ducal family's elite assassination unit, [Dark Shadow], was still holding a chocolate dessert and flinching at my gaze?
It was a sight that would make anyone burst out laughing.
Her effort was admirable, and if I kept teasing her, I felt I would only arouse some strange resentment, so I decided to stop.
I picked up the chocolate dessert she had offered and put it in my mouth, where the chocolate's characteristically rich sweetness spread across my tongue.
Eating sweets wasn't exactly my hobby, but still.
"Mm, yes... It's tasty."
It wasn't as though I couldn't eat it.
Perhaps it was because I had simply let the matter pass without saying anything in particular.
Her face relaxed for a moment, and a slightly more excited voice began to echo in my head.
[Ah... um, try this one, too.]
"Hm...?"
[It's from a dessert shop Nella recommended. I'm not particularly fond of sweets, so...]
So she was dumping all the desserts on me?
I wasn't particularly fond of sweets, either.
Clack.
Before I knew it, Velias had used mana to set every plate of dessert around her down in front of me, then began looking at me with an expressionless face and slightly sparkling eyes.
It was an expressionlessness with a somewhat different quality from Mist's.
If Mist was a woman with the air of a beautiful woman who completely restrained her emotions...
[Here, try this one, too.]
How should I put it when it came to Velias?
She was a peculiar sort of woman whose face remained expressionless while telepathy revealed all her emotions.
‘But why are we talking through telepathy?’
I paused for a moment at the most fundamental question.
[Uh, um... Do you dislike them?]
Reacting to my hesitation once again, her voice echoed in my mind, having unconsciously grown slightly subdued.
"No, it's not that."
I reached out, picked up what looked like an almond cookie from among the desserts she had recommended, and ate it as I spoke.
"I just had something to think about for a moment."
Right, well. If I had to choose between disliking sweet desserts and building a relationship with her...
The latter was more important, so it wasn't something I couldn't endure.
"Ah, but don't give me too much. I'm not particularly fond of sweets, either."
Still, I should say what needed to be said.
I wasn't the type of person who would forcibly endure something he disliked like the male protagonist of some anime.
At my words, Velias nodded as though she understood.
.
.
.
After that, we exchanged several fairly normal conversations.
It was a very ordinary conversation about my daily routine and what sort of work she usually did.
[Ah, and I'll tell you about Karon's punishment, too.]
Perhaps we had grown a little closer after breaking the ice, because her voice sounded considerably more relaxed.
More importantly, punishment?
"Hm? I already forgave him, so why punish him?"
If Karon had openly displayed hostility or rebellious behavior toward me, either in public or where the ducal family's servants could see, I would have punished him severely.
Regardless of whether he was competent or not.
But Karon had kept that line almost perfectly, endured my stress with his own body, and offered a sincere apology.
There was nothing more I needed to say about the matter.
I knew I had made a lenient decision.
But he had cut off his own ring finger and pinky, the fingers most important to an assassin wielding a dagger, to convey his apology, so accepting it had been the natural thing to do.
In the first place, he was a subordinate I was supposed to make use of, so punishing him severely would only hurt me.
But perhaps she saw things a little differently.
At my question, Velias immediately shook her head and conveyed her thoughts to me.
[No. Even if Lord Abel forgave him, I judged that he still had to be punished. As an example to the others.]
"Well, I can't say I don't understand."
I had also punished people as an example several times in my previous life.
From the perspective of running an organization, I understood the need to make an example of someone to deter others, even if I disliked it.
When I nodded in understanding, Velias told me the punishment she had imposed on Karon.
[So, for now, I have given Karon a 50% cut to his annual salary, along with restrictions on his operating funds. That's all the punishment I've imposed.]
…What? A salary cut?
"Pffhaha!"
The sudden appearance of such a realistic punishment made me burst out laughing without meaning to.
Wait, this was the punishment for an assassin who killed Master-class opponents?
It felt like I had been struck by an attack I had never seen coming.
[?]
The person who had imposed the punishment merely gave me a puzzled look, which doubled my amusement.
‘Right, if you make a mistake at work, they should deduct it from your salary. Of course, that's how it should be.’
After laughing once, I calmed down a little and spoke with amusement in my voice.
"Well, all right. I'll leave Karon's punishment to [Dark Shadow]."
[Ah, um...]
"Hm?"
[...No. I have something else to say, so I'll let that go for now.]
I learned later that this punishment imposed on Karon would remain in effect until I forgave him.
In other words, it was a punishment that would continue unless I personally withdrew it.
Of course, I only learned that quite some time later.
[Lord Abel, there is one matter in which I need your cooperation.]
"Hmm? Cooperation?"
With a serious look in her eyes, she slowly began transmitting her thoughts to me almost directly.
It felt like transferring a file to another computer.
"This..."
A vast amount of information entered my mind.
The Duke's sudden poisoning.
The fact that the culprit behind it was an unidentified organization whose name even the Nebula ducal family still did not know.
They had learned this when they had barely managed to catch a lead during the previous drug [Mirage] incident.
The person that organization had been taking an interest in was...
Me.
"..."
Should I call it a strange coincidence?
"Huh..."
Why was I trying to inherit the Nebula ducal family?
Because the unidentified organization she had just told me about was already connected to me, and I had predicted that I would become involved with it no matter how hard I tried to avoid it.
My opponent was an organization, while I was an individual, so I planned to inherit the Duke's position to increase my weight in the balance.
And yet that organization was now one of the main reasons the current Duke's condition had deteriorated so badly.
And [Dark Shadow] had been secretly investigating that organization all this time?
Knowing that, I let out the words like a sigh without meaning to.
"Good grief..."
[...]
Velias looked at me with a slightly tense expression.
I gave her a faint, bitter smile and spoke.
"If it's this matter, I should be the one asking you."
I had intended to investigate that organization first anyway, so if this was how I became involved with it, it was actually better for me.
At first, I considered shaking hands, but I did not.
It was a small gesture of consideration on my part; she flinched whenever I merely moved closer to eat dessert, so I judged that a handshake would be too much.
"I look forward to working with you."
[Likewise. I look forward to working with you.]
A cooperative relationship built on words alone.
Wouldn't it feel a little empty if that were all there was?
"Ah, and shall we exchange information, too?"
[An exchange of information?]
I affected a very casual tone.
"Yeah, an exchange of information. We have a sort of cooperative relationship against the same enemy, right? So we should exchange information with each other."
[Ah, yes. That's fine.]
Watching her nod as though she understood, I raised my guard internally and slowly opened my mouth.
"I'll go first. My ability is called Smoke Manipulation. I control the smoke I exhale. Its shape, size, and hardness change according to how much mana I put into it."
It was a rough explanation of my ability, the same one I had first given Mist.
By giving the other party information that benefited me, I had fulfilled the condition for the restriction that granted me a boost.
If so, a message window saying that I had been enhanced by the restriction should have appeared.
...
It wasn't appearing?
There was no message window anywhere in my field of vision.
Among the conditions of the restriction I had confirmed, one was that it activated when the other party and I were hostile toward each other.
I had clearly classified her as an enemy in my mind.
I had even been prepared to launch a preemptive attack immediately if necessary.
But the fact that the restriction had not activated was proof that she was not hostile toward me.
'Whew, what a relief.'
We were supposed to be cooperating, so things could have become troublesome if she had been hostile toward me.
Suppressing the wariness I had raised inside myself, I continued.
"There's one reason I told you first. Velias, it's because there's a technique of yours I want to learn about."
[My technique?]
I nodded at her words and tapped my head with my fingers.
"Yes. This telepathy magic. How are you able to activate it so calmly on other people?"
Even if I put it this way, she would probably understand what I meant.
[...]
"I was curious about that."
At my words, she quietly closed both eyes and slowly began injecting some information into me.
Information that began to be engraved into my brain.
After checking that information, I let out a cry of shock and stared at Velias before me with a look of disbelief.
"...So, basically."
The act of infiltrating one's mana into another person's body was extremely difficult.
So, naturally, I had anticipated that the technique she was teaching me would be incredibly difficult.
In the first place, freely handing over information one knew to another person like this was itself almost impossible.
If such a thing had been possible, the state would have prevented information about telepathy magic from spreading among the public.
Because it could be abused in countless ways.
But still.
I hadn't thought it would be this insanely difficult.
"You maintain your mana in the shape of a medical syringe needle, conceal that needle-shaped mana to the extreme, then shoot it at the other person to create a sort of passage?"
Mana could be shaped according to the user's will.
But she wanted me to shape that mana like a medical syringe needle?
That alone was an insane level of difficulty, but she also wanted me to conceal that mana so the other person wouldn't notice it?
"Is that even humanly possible...?"
[Uh... It just worked when I tried it?]
Tap.
At Velias's nonchalant answer, I unconsciously smacked my forehead and sighed.
I had wanted to learn the technique's know-how, but I hadn't expected the difficulty to be this insane.
As though she couldn't understand my near-horrified reaction, Velias tilted her head.