Chapter 28
‘…An elixir?’
I glanced at the small capsule the man had handed me and asked him,
‘What kind of drug is this?’
‘It is an elixir of our brethren that grants transcendent power.’
The hooded man answered in his usual hoarse voice, as though his throat were clogged with phlegm.
‘But it has a drawback as well. In exchange for granting you more power than you are allowed, the elixir will rob you of your reason for a certain period of time.’
‘My reason?’
‘In simple terms, it means you’ll go mad and run wild.’
The man continued in a low voice.
‘Use it only at a decisive moment. In a life-or-death situation, or when it is absolutely necessary.’
‘….’
I rolled the capsule around in my hand with a dubious expression.
Still, it would be better than nothing. Just as I was about to slip it into my pocket,
-Thud.
The man’s hand suddenly clamped around my arm.
‘Remember this. It is the crystallization of our brethren’s blood and sweat. You must never use it carelessly.’
‘…I get it, damn it. Let go.’
To be honest, I was scared. I deliberately raised my voice and shook off the man’s hand, and he obediently let go.
But for an instant, that strange sensation when his hand seized me—that feeling as though it had not been a human hand—remained so vivid that even now, recalling it sent a chill down my spine.
‘Oh, right.’
The man was about to turn away when he suddenly looked back at me, as though he had just remembered something, and asked,
‘Are you making good use of our brethren’s sword?’
‘Oh, this?’
I answered while lightly tapping the sword at my waist.
‘It’s excellent. Whenever I use it instead of an ordinary mass-produced straight sword, I feel like my skill improves several times over.’
‘It should. That sword is practically a product of our brethren as well.’
Always with the brethren, brethren.
Curious about what exactly he meant by our brethren, I cautiously asked him,
‘I’ve been wondering for a while. What exactly are these brethren….’
‘Do you want to know?’
Before I could finish, the man turned back to me and asked,
His eyes were faintly visible beneath the hood.
Those eyes, gleaming like lightning, stared straight at me.
‘…No. Not really.’
I backed out in the end. It was instinct. For a moment, I felt a bottomless fear, though I couldn’t even identify its cause.
It was a year before I entered Manus Academy.
=
‘Damn it, what a useless old memory.’
I limped through the darkening alleyways of the royal capital, leaning my weight on a crutch.
Since the day had not yet ended, tomorrow was the weekend. On weekends, the academy’s students were permitted to leave the academy and spend the weekend at their family homes or inns in the royal capital.
I had first met that man three years ago. Long before I entered the academy.
Even before I told him anything, he already knew about my father and abruptly offered to help me take revenge.
He said that man had wronged others besides me.
Well, that was just the sort of thing that bastard would do. Since it was hardly strange for there to be victims besides me, I gladly accepted the man’s offer.
Thanks to my mother’s drunken ramblings, I knew my father’s name well enough.
Kalud Lucilante. The younger brother of the current head of House Lucilante, and a man famous as the Iceblade Knight.
In his youth, he was famous as a wastrel who spent every day carousing, with alcohol and women at his side, but one day he suddenly came to his senses as if by some miracle and went on to become famous as a first-rate magic knight.
I heard he had even distinguished himself on the Western Front during the Seven Years’ War. Alongside none other than the White-Flame Knight….
‘Tch.’
The thought of that bastard immediately put me in a bad mood.
Nobles had it easy. No matter what they did, they could use their money and status to get away with anything.
Even if they toyed with a woman as they pleased before discarding her, leaving her to suffer for the rest of her life.
All they had to do was pretend they had reformed and become respectable, then wipe their mouths clean. No one blamed them. No one pointed fingers.
They even got praised as the godfather of heroes and whatnot.
“Damn it!”
-Clang!
I vented my anger by viciously kicking a street trash can with my bandaged leg. Passersby glanced at me, but as soon as they saw my school uniform, they turned their heads away as though they had seen nothing.
My mood instantly sank. I thought that, in the end, I was no different from that man.
‘It’s best to stop harboring groundless hatred toward someone who has nothing to do with it, for no good reason.’
“Damn her, acting like she knows anything…!”
That woman’s voice echoed unpleasantly in my ears. I muttered under my breath and shook my head, trying to erase it.
But in one corner of my heart, I knew. The truth was, that woman had nothing to do with it.
Still, she was his niece, after all. I thought that hurting a blood relative would wound that man’s heart as well.
She was second in the third-year rankings. She was in Class A of the Practical Class. She was strong. I, on the other hand, was only a first-year newcomer who had just entered the academy, and I was in the Intermediate Class. Even if I went berserk, I thought I would never be able to defeat her anyway.
That was why I had destroyed the barrier stone without hesitation and bitten down on the elixir. I could at least break one of her arms or legs. If his niece were injured, then no matter how much of a bastard he was for abandoning Mother and me, it would still wound his heart at least a little.
And since the elixir would be chewed and swallowed anyway, it would leave no evidence behind. I might be suspected of destroying the barrier stone, but there was no physical proof. The barrier stone had broken in the middle of the spar. People might suspect that someone had tampered with it, but neither Ayla nor I would be singled out as the culprit.
‘You were afraid to hurt Miss Ayla while you were in your right mind, weren’t you?’
“Don’t go spouting nonsense when you don’t know a thing.”
That unpleasant voice echoed in my ears again. I deliberately shook my head and snorted.
The only thing I fear is failing to take revenge on that man.
That he might die before I can make a move, or that I might die before he does. Other than that, there is nothing I fear.
‘The fact that you didn’t attack her from behind or lure her into a trap means Miss Kate’s conscience isn’t completely gone yet. You know better than anyone that you have no direct grudge against Miss Ayla, don’t you?’
I ground my teeth. What nonsense about conscience. If I could just take revenge on that bastard, I would do anything….
“Looks like you got beaten up pretty badly.”
At that moment, a familiar voice rang out from deeper within the alley.
That phlegm-rattling voice. I silently turned my head.
Two gleaming eyes watched me impassively.
I silently shook my head. Then I abruptly tossed a small, folded note at the man.
“What’s this….”
The man accepted the note, muttered, and then nodded.
Then he silently motioned for me to follow.
I clicked my tongue and entered deeper into the alley.
The man took a small notebook from inside his clothes, scribbled a long message, and handed it to me.
[I know what kind of magic this is. It’s troublesome magic, but it has a weakness. I’ll lead you to a spot where we can disrupt the signal. Follow me.]
I followed the man as he walked deeper into the alley. He scribbled something else in the notebook and handed it to me again.
[Are you talking about the blue band around your forearm?]
I copied it into the notebook and handed it back to the man.
I almost wrote that it was obvious just by looking, but realized there was no reason to pick a fight even in a written conversation.
[That’s right. And she can even eavesdrop on our voices.]
I rolled the pen between my fingers for a moment, then added,
[She made some sort of butterfly out of mana and sent it flying at me to attach this. What a troublesome woman.]
The man took the notebook, furrowed his brow, and hurriedly scribbled in it with his pen.
[A woman? What’s the instructor’s name?]
Name? I tilted my head and obediently wrote,
[Her name is Haru.]
I handed the notebook to the man. He stopped dead as he accepted it.
The man sighed, vigorously scratched his head, and muttered under his breath.
I took the notebook from his hand and wrote a question.
[What’s wrong?]
The man took the notebook and moved his pen quickly.
[Does she perhaps wear a white, Eastern-style coat and use a katana without a blade?]
I looked at the notebook and nodded instead of answering in writing.
The man silently nodded as well and tucked the notebook into his clothes.
“…?”
The man walked in silence for quite a while, only speaking after entering one of the inner alleys.
“…We’ve arrived at the spot. There’s a mana-disruption barrier here. It may not stop them from tracking your location, but the eavesdropping function won’t work properly.”
“…Really?”
I walked up to the man and cautiously asked in return.
“If my voice isn’t heard for a long time, won’t they get suspicious?”
“That magic has extreme difficulty distinguishing people by their voices. The farther away they are, the worse the sound quality becomes.”
The man shook his head and said,
“Simply transmitting voices from elsewhere is enough to disrupt it, if one is determined. Surely even that woman didn’t anticipate such a high level of interference from you, a mere new student.”
“Mana disruption… Now that you mention it, I do feel a little dizzy.”
“You’d feel that way because you’re a magic knight. Our brethren aren’t mana users, so we’re fine. But if you stay here for more than a few days, your physical condition will deteriorate rapidly as well.”
The man told me,
“But that’s not what matters. It’s about Haru—that woman.”
“You mean Instructor Haru?”
“Yes. I never expected even that woman to have become an instructor.”
The man clicked his tongue, muttered, and then asked me,
“Do you know about the four heroes of the Empire?”
“Of course. The Nameless Ronin of the East, the White-Flame Knight of the West, the Lion Knight of the South, and the Grand Strategist of the North, right?”
“Yes. And the White-Flame Knight of the West is currently serving as an instructor in the Practical Class at Manus Academy….”
After a brief pause, the man said quietly,
“Haru. She is the hero of the East.”
“What?”
At those unbelievable words, I widened my eyes and asked incredulously.
“Instructor Haru is a hero too?”
“Yes.”
The man clicked his tongue.
“There are two heroes at the academy? That’s completely insane.”
“I never noticed any indication of that at all.”
“Didn’t you say you were subdued with a single blow even after drinking the elixir?”
“That’s true, but….”
“There’s no room for doubt.”
The man muttered and shook his head.
“Listen carefully. That woman is a monster. She is the woman who slaughtered our people’s great warrior head-on—the one called the reincarnation of the Martial God. Until we give you a separate signal, do not ever try to oppose her.”
“A separate signal?”
“It means you are no longer to take independent action unless we give permission. Put your revenge on hold.”
“…Hey.”
His nonchalant words made indignation surge inside me. As if things were not already frustrating enough, my anger had reached its limit. I shouted at the man.
“You seem to be under a misconception, but do you take me for your lackey?”
“….”
“Whatever I do is none of your business.”
I turned away and said,
“You keep going on about our brethren and spouting nothing but incomprehensible nonsense… And after all your talk of elixirs and whatnot, you weren’t any help at all!”
“…What?”
“I’m sick of this. From now on, we’re through.”
I said that and tried to walk out of the alley.
-Grab!!
“Mmph?!”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”
The man’s rough hand clamped tightly over my mouth.
But something was strange. Though it was a leather-gloved hand, the inside felt soft, as though it did not belong to a human.
And there was a strange, musty smell. It was like the odor given off by the filthy stray dogs prowling the back alleys….
“You took our brethren’s elixir and sword. I won’t tolerate you deciding to act on your own now.”
“Mmph…!”
“And you even let that bitch Haru discover that the elixir exists?”
I struggled, clawing frantically at the man’s hand as I tried to pull it away. But it was as though he were pressing down with some kind of hydraulic press; I couldn’t wedge even a finger into the slightest gap.
‘A-air….’
My consciousness began to fade. As my vision blurred and my mind drifted away, I heard the man’s growling voice beside my ear.
“Don’t be too afraid. With this, you’ll become one of our brethren now.”