Chapter 71
'Are you really going alone?'
The words Mist spoke while looking at me with some concern before I left for Saria Island.
I knew exactly what she meant.
No matter how strong I was, there was an enemy powerful enough to subdue a member of [White Shadow] without allowing them to mount a proper counterattack.
Going alone to face such an enemy certainly seemed dangerous.
'Yes. I'm going alone.'
At the very least, I was going to avenge someone who had died on my orders.
Honestly, accepting someone else's help in the process would look a little pathetic, wouldn't it?
Perhaps realizing there was no point in trying to persuade me after my firm answer, Mist briefly closed her eyes, lowered her head, and spoke.
'...Understood. May fortune be with you.'
***
Murmur. Murmur.
The only city on Saria Island, bustling with countless people.
It was a city characterized by rooftops and house walls painted in all sorts of brilliant colors.
"Oh?"
I let out a small exclamation of admiration at the city's appearance.
The sight of the island city, where countless colors blended together, was certainly enough to inspire awe.
"Hey. Are you a tourist?"
A man who looked like he had lived on the island approached me cautiously at the sight of me.
I already knew.
Ever since I entered the city, I had felt the gazes of all the surrounding residents watching my every move.
However, those gazes held not the slightest trace of murderous intent or hostility.
They looked at me with the eyes of hungry herbivores stalking prey, and so I hadn't paid them much mind.
And looking at the city's appearance, it was obvious what they were after.
"Yes. I suppose you could call me a tourist."
"Haha, really? Welcome. To Saria Island, I mean."
The corruption of the Maritime Kingdom that ruled Saria Island had burdened its people with excessive taxes, leaving them struggling to make ends meet.
So what could they choose to do, aside from illegal activities?
Tourism.
The city's brightly decorated walls and rooftops. All of it was the island residents' desperate effort to attract tourists.
"Do you perhaps need a guide? I'm a native of this island, you see."
There had always been people willing to act as guides to earn even a little money, and the man before me was one of them.
"A guide..."
"..."
"I don't mind. But I came here partly for sightseeing, and also because there's someone I want to meet."
"Someone you want to meet?"
"Yes."
At the man's question, I readily nodded and began speaking as I gradually widened the range of my senses around myself.
"I'd like to meet the priest of the [Church of Light] stationed in this city."
No sooner had I finished speaking than wariness began to appear in the man's eyes.
"Why do you want to see the priest...?"
The only priest of the Sacred State still remaining on this island.
According to the report, most people in this city were struggling to survive and barely receiving food thanks to aid from the Sacred State, weren't they?
I understood why they were wary of me.
If a suspicious stranger suddenly said he was looking for the one person they considered their only ally, of course their wariness would rise.
Swish.
At the man's gaze, I took an item from inside my coat and held it out to him.
It was the Sacred State insignia Ariel had given me before I left the academy.
"I have something to say to the [Church of Light]."
"What is this...?"
A small brooch bearing the symbol of the [Church of Light].
"Ah, this is an insignia possessed only by people affiliated with the [Church of Light]."
And, for the record, there was no lie in what I had said.
I was friends with Ariel, so calling myself an affiliate was not wrong, and when I told her about the current situation, she had been the one to suggest that I use this insignia.
"Oh, my. I'm sorry."
They might think the man trusted me far too easily, but this was a world where an actual god existed.
Under such circumstances, committing the crime of impersonating a priest?
It was beyond what ordinary people could even imagine.
Moreover, even if I had really been a criminal impersonating a priest, there was no way he could distinguish such a person, so naturally he had no choice but to believe me and follow along.
"No, it's all right. Haha. I know my appearance is a long way from ordinary, after all."
With my unusual appearance, black suit, and, to top it all off, a cigar in my mouth, it would have been stranger if he hadn't found me suspicious.
"Would you happen to know where the priest on this island is?"
"Oh, yes. Of course!"
The man began telling me where the [Church of Light] cathedral near the city's slums was located.
Looking at him, I smiled faintly to myself.
'Hmm...'
I already knew.
The priest's location, that is.
Casually responding to the man's words, I began sensing my surroundings with the smoke I slowly spread.
'Twenty people in total.'
That was the number of people who had been watching me since I entered the city.
But when I just said I had come to find the priest of the [Church of Light], eighteen of them had turned their eyes away.
And since one of those was the man in front of me, that meant everyone but one person had stopped watching me.
The abilities of the enemy inferred by the [White Shadow] of the Nebula Duchy before I entered the island.
1. They primarily use abilities involving blood.
2. They are presumed to possess a mental ability, whether cognitive alteration or minor hypnosis.
Those were the two possibilities.
In other words.
The last person who continued to keep their eyes on me and monitor me.
They were a suspect presumed to have a deep connection to Richard's murderer.
Whether or not that suspect was acting of their own will.
'Bingo...'
At that realization, I quietly exhaled a small plume from the cigar I had not once taken from my mouth since entering the city and smiled faintly.
"Hahaha. Thank you. You've made it much easier for me to find the priest."
"Oh, not at all. Um... May I ask why you're going to see the priest?"
I briefly considered what I would do if I were the culprit.
Checking every intruder—that is, everyone entering my territory—with my own eyes would be too bothersome.
"Oh, it's nothing important."
But what if I possessed a mental ability that could alter cognition or induce hypnosis?
Then all I would have to do was plant a suggestion in the fellow.
[Watch any outsiders who come to this island, and report it if you detect anything suspicious.]
That was what I would do.
Because it was simpler and easier.
"The priest asked me to request more support for this island."
I didn't give him a definite answer.
Strictly speaking, it was true that I was affiliated with Ariel.
It was also true that I had received a report requesting increased support for the island.
But nowhere in that statement did I say that I would review the matter and make a decision.
"Ah, I see..."
Nevertheless, the man before me would probably naturally interpret it this way.
That I was someone who had come to voice an opinion about that support.
It was a perfectly natural, very straightforward train of thought—and one I had deliberately encouraged.
Enough to make him plead with me so earnestly.
"Please, I beg you, ask them to provide more aid."
"Haha. I suppose only God knows the answer to that."
After the man's earnest plea, I slowly began walking around the city.
Ah, for the record, the man and I parted ways after that.
When I said I wanted to examine the place on my own, he went back with a disappointed look on his face.
Clomp.
I began walking around the only city on the island.
Whenever people claiming to be guides approached me, I sent them away with the story I had told earlier, using it to identify the suspects.
I found four suspects that way.
I had attached a small smoke clone to each of them, so I would know immediately if anything suspicious happened.
I had even used the mana-concealment technique Bellias taught me when I sent them out, so they wouldn't be detected without exceptionally keen senses.
"Wow, ice cream!!"
As I stood quietly in the street checking the people I had identified as possible suspects, a little girl came running toward me.
Thud—
A moment later, the girl collided with my leg and fell over.
"Waaah... My ice cream..."
"Oh dear. I'm sorry."
I lowered my head slightly, met the gaze of the tearful girl as she looked at the ice cream lying on the ground, and spoke in the gentlest voice I could manage.
"This uncle's pants ended up eating the little miss's ice cream."
"Sniffle... Uncle?"
"Yes. Uncle's sorry."
"...You're not an uncle, though?"
As the girl's crying gradually subsided, a man who appeared to be her father hurried over from a distance, bowed his head to me, and began apologizing.
"I'm terribly sorry!"
"Oh, no, it's all right."
"Come on, Lena. You should apologize too, right?"
The little girl, who had peeked her head out from behind her father's legs, looked at me cautiously, her voice trembling with tears, and spoke.
"I'm sorry..."
In truth, all of this had been little more than an accident.
Well, it wasn't as though the child was an enemy's subordinate or anything; I simply hadn't been paying proper attention to my surroundings while sharing the visions of four smoke clones.
That was all it was: an accident with an innocent child who held no malice whatsoever.
"Haha. It's all right. Here."
Accepting the child's apology, I thought of the ice cream I had bought a moment earlier, took out twice its price, and pressed the money into her father's hand.
"No, this is too much..."
"It's fine."
At the same time, I gave him a subtle look asking for his understanding, crouched down to meet the girl's eyes, and smiled gently.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No... I'm not."
"That's a relief."
"Um, mister."
The girl looked at me with clear, innocent eyes and slowly opened her mouth.
"Are you still angry?"
"..."
Flinch.
I couldn't help flinching at the child's sharp question.
Children's eyes were sometimes sharper than adults'.
How did I look through those innocent eyes of hers?
"You look really angry..."
So, I looked angry?
She was right.
Rather than anger boiling up and erupting like an active volcano, how should I put it?
Ah, yes. It was like magma—a viscous liquid that never cooled.
"...Haha. I'm sorry. Something happened to make this uncle a little angry."
"Then take this."
As she spoke, the little girl took a candy from inside her clothes and held it out to me.
"Eating something sweet makes you feel all floaty."
Hehe.
I gently patted the head of the girl, who smiled brightly as she said that, then stood up and spoke.
"Yes. Thank you."
A little while later.
Watching the father and daughter walk away while waving at me, I began unwrapping the candy in my hand.
A slightly melted candy wrapped with care.
It looked as though she had kept it in her clothes for a long time because it was too precious to eat, until it melted and stuck to the wrapper.
Before long, I felt the sweet taste spreading through my mouth calm a little of the anger in my chest, and I slowly headed toward what appeared to be an inn.
***
[Report if there is anyone suspicious.]
A suggestion that suddenly burrowed into her mind.
But this woman, one of the island's residents, felt not the slightest doubt about it.
The suggestion had taken root as unquestioned common sense, as natural as an apple thrown into the sky falling back to the ground.
It had told her to report, but even though she did not know where she was supposed to report it, she naturally made her way to the place where she could do so, like a child who had instinctively learned how to walk.
Clomp. Clomp.
The outskirts of Saria Island.
The woman made her way through the deserted streets at dawn, when everyone was asleep, entered a ruin near the slums, and slowly began to speak.
"Today... someone from the [Church of Light] seems to have come here. He appears to be an inspector handling a matter concerning an expansion of aid to Saria Island..."
[Hmm...]
A man's voice echoed through the ruins in response.
[Someone from the Church, huh...]
Honestly, that's troublesome.
As the words were muttered, the woman stared blankly into space with unfocused eyes.
[An inspector, an inspector...]
Honestly, I'd like to simply deal with him, but that position is an obstacle.
No matter how impulsive I am, it would still be difficult to provoke the Sacred State.
[All right. Let's leave him alone for now.]
Having made that decision, the man slowly began using his power to pull the woman, now his minion, down into the underground.
[...]
He was unaware that a small smoke clone hidden among the woman's hair was watching the entire scene.