Chapter 132
The story continues off the page
The Dare in the Back Room
Two academy girls, one lethal measure, and your slate paying for it
I, who had come to a magic item shop in the commercial district, headed straight for the warehouse in the back.
The shop owner hurriedly grabbed hold of me.
“Hey, you! What are you doing barging in here causing trouble all of a sudden?!”
“Please don't move carelessly. If you move, you might get hurt. If you get hurt, I won't take responsibility. As for me,”
I am still a slave, you know.
If something goes wrong, it's the master's fault for not managing me properly.
It'll be Aurora who takes the blame, not me, so I'm basically invincible.
“Hup.”
When I opened the warehouse door, I saw countless boxes piled up inside.
Inside them were all kinds of masks.
“Mm-hm, just as I thought.”
I took out one of the masks. After checking the shop owner's expression once, I put it on my face.
At once, a notification popped up.
[A status ailment has been detected.]
[Status ailment resistance has activated.]
Hmm, just as I thought.
This was a cursed mask.
A magic tool that amplifies the wearer's emotions, causing people to run wild on the day of the festival and spiral into a riot.
If I raise Elodie's mana resistance, I should be able to defend against it.
“H-heeek?! Y-you put on the mask?”
I turned to look at the shop owner.
He already seemed to know what the mask did, and was trembling as he looked at me.
He probably had some sort of image in his head, so I'd better live up to his expectations.
“Kuhh, all of a sudden, this rage is surging up and up and up...!”
Pretending to be swept up in emotion, I started kicking him.
-Thwack! Thwack!
“Aaagh! Ugh! Ghk!”
“I mean, I work so hard, but every one of you jerks is dying to boss me around. Huh?”
“W-why are you taking it out on me...!”
“Do you think slaves are easy targets? Well, yeah, they are. If you don't boss around a slave, then who do you boss around?”
“Th-then why are you taking it out on me...!”
“Still no good!”
“Grrk!”
I kept on kicking the shop owner over and over.
Of course, I never hit innocent civilians.
This guy, like Belkman, was a bad guy trying to throw the capital into chaos.
He deserved to get hit a few times.
After thoroughly satisfying myself like that, I finally took off the mask.
“So magic tools really are magic tools. They do help blow off some stress.”
“It's not a stress-relieving magic tool, it's an amplifying—”
“No, no, I'm telling you it really blows off stress. Don't believe me? Okay, I'll show you again.”
“N-no! Your words are correct, honored elder!”
“Good. Let's do well, shall we?”
Isn't it great when people understand things in one shot?
I tossed the mask casually back into the box.
“It's an illegal magic tool. Seize every single one of them, and take the shop owner too.”
“Understood!”
A few soldiers took the shop owner away with them.
One more down.
Next.
I headed to the fountain in the central plaza.
The place where the largest crowds gather on Founding Festival day.
Just like other games that let you interact with fountains, [Lady Maker] is the same.
Throw a coin and make a wish, and either a good event happens, or you just lose the coin, or maybe some meaningless short line of dialogue passes by.
But that only applies when you interact with the fountain in a normal way.
At a specific time.
In a specific state.
If you approach the fountain while holding a specific item, a completely different event opens up.
“Let's see...”
I rolled up my sleeve and put my arm into the fountain.
“What are you doing?”
“Just a moment. I can feel something moving in here.”
I gave Rosanna a perfunctory answer and groped around in the water. Soon, a squishy sensation caught in my hand.
The sensation made goosebumps crawl all over me, but I gritted my teeth and lifted it out.
It was a dark green egg.
Green veins rippled along the egg.
“What is this?”
“It's a magic beast egg.”
The plaza rampage event.
After putting on the cursed mask I got from the shop earlier and amplifying my emotions, all I had to do was speak to this fountain.
Then the magic beast eggs hidden beneath the fountain awaken, feeding on those emotions.
And from that moment on, everything goes to hell.
“Ugh, gross.”
As much as I'd like to just burn them, these are all evidence.
I pulled them all out and stuffed them into a pouch.
“Here, take these too.”
The soldiers took the pouch containing the eggs.
Rosanna, who had been watching from the side, said in exasperation,
“I can't believe there were magic beast eggs under the fountain. How did you know this? Usually you can't even sense magic beast eggs.”
“My intuition's unusually sharp.”
I wasn't talking about intuition; I was talking about my five senses.
If I concentrate, I can feel everything.
Although, to begin with, I already knew it even without concentrating.
“Then shall we move on to the next one?”
***
On the outskirts of the capital.
Not a single light remained in the slums under the draped night.
Only the occasional shout of a drunkard and the snoring of a homeless man drifted through the alleys.
Above them, a black shadow moved.
The man crossed from rooftop to rooftop soundlessly. The hem of his robe blended into the darkness, and his feet lifted again the moment they touched down.
After passing through several alleys and vaulting over a collapsed chimney,
the man descended in front of a shabby house at the very edge of the slums.
Too run-down for a person to live in, and far too suitable for someone to hide in.
The man scanned the alley once before knocking on the door.
-Knock, knock-knock, knock, knock.
A moment later, with the sound of the lock disengaging, the door opened.
The man, who habitually checked his surroundings once more, confirmed there was no one around and stepped inside.
Passing through the shadows in the house that seemed to be there yet not there, he naturally went down to the basement.
The basement, lit by candlelight.
There, a woman was seated.
Caldra Kingdom Intelligence Bureau special operations commander, Ernst Veil.
She was the field commander for this operation to disrupt the Founding Festival, dispatched by the neighboring Kingdom of Caldra.
The man knelt before her.
“I report.”
“Speak.”
“The magic item shop in the commercial district has been raided. All of the cursed masks have been confiscated, and Gregor has been taken by the Imperial Knights.”
Gregor.
He was one of the people sent from the Kingdom of Caldra.
He had entered the capital disguised as the owner of a magic item shop, and for several years had posed as a merchant to establish himself there.
His role was to bring in the cursed masks and release them on Founding Festival day to throw the streets into chaos.
And to be caught now, with the Founding Festival so close at hand.
“Was information leaked?”
“I don't know. The knights suddenly stormed in, so there was no chance to get away.”
“Who led the raid?”
“It was Rosanna of the Second Knights, along with a knight order led by a man I'd never seen before.”
Ernst's eyes narrowed.
“A man I'd never seen before?”
“Yes. His appearance was highly unusual. He was wearing around his neck a restraint that looked like something a slave would wear.”
“A slave?”
“Yes.”
Ernst frowned at the incongruous report.
The Imperial Knights, the empire's most powerful military force.
Among them, the First Knights, regarded as the strongest fighting force, were currently away on an expedition to subjugate the Three Great Magic Beasts.
Of course, that didn't mean the imperial capital's defenses had become lax.
The other knight orders were also elite troops counted among the empire's best. They could hold their own against even a kingdom's knight order without being outmatched.
Still, it was true that the sharpest sword had left the imperial capital.
That was why the Kingdom of Caldra had targeted the Founding Festival.
The imperial family's attention would be divided, and the capital's security would be thrown into disarray by the festival.
They would exploit that gap to drive a crack into the empire's heart.
That was the core of this operation.
And yet.
“Even if their strength has been weakened, would the Imperial Knights really bring in a slave?”
Maybe as a porter or an errand boy.
Maybe as bait or a disposable pawn.
The Imperial Knights would carry out an operation with a slave at the forefront?
And at a time this sensitive?
“......No, there's no time to worry about a slave.”
He was already on edge, his nerves taut for the sake of the grand cause.
Worrying about a mere slave was a waste of thought.
“Anything else?”
“The area around the central plaza was hit too.”
“The fountain?”
“Yes. The magic beast eggs hidden under the fountain were all recovered by the knights. However...”
The operative hesitated.
“However?”
“That, too, was recovered by the slave I mentioned.”
“What?”
“He shoved his arm into the fountain and fished out the eggs.”
“…….”
Ernst was seized by a considerable sense of unease.
They were not magic beast larvae, but magic beast eggs. They emitted no mana and showed no signs of life.
On the surface, they were little more than mildly disgusting stones. They could hardly even be called living things.
No matter how sharp one's senses were, finding eggs that hadn't even been born yet was all but impossible.
And yet the magic beast eggs had been found by that slave, of all people.
-Tap.
Ernst tapped his chin with his index finger.
The sound rang particularly loud in the basement's silence.
“Hard to call that a coincidence.”
Could internal information have leaked?
Ernst entertained the suspicion, but it didn't take long to rule it out.
Each participant's soul was bound by a contract.
The moment they spoke the information aloud, their soul would be torn to shreds and they would die.
“Anything else?”
“The madness incense hidden along Temple Street has also been recovered.”
“...Again.”
“The carriages to be used for the parade were confiscated. Explosive devices were hidden inside the wheel axles.”
“There's nothing else, is there?”
“The secret passage in the arena leading to the nobles' viewing seats...”
The subordinate's report continued after that.
They had even blocked every trivial thing, down to details that would make Commander Ernst himself think, "Was there really something like that?"
And the one who handled all of it.
“That slave?”
“Yes...”
Ernst's mind went blank.
It was a plot he had planted over the course of many years.
Needles he had planted in the capital little by little, without anyone noticing.
On Founding Festival day, countless needles were meant to stab at the empire's heart.
And yet they had all been stopped.
By a mere slave.
“Are you trying to play word games with me right now?”
“I swear I'm not. I'm reporting exactly what I saw.”
“...”
Ernst said nothing for a while.
Only one torch flickered in the silence, as if dancing.
“The mana-stone lamps.”
“Pardon?”
“What happened to the mana-stone lamps?”
Those were by far the devices he had poured the most effort into for this mission.
The cursed masks, the madness incense, and the magic beast eggs were all nothing more than kindling to fan the flames of chaos.
But the mana-stone lamps were different.
They covered the entire capital.
The light that adorns the Founding Festival. The moment that light comes on, the festival turns into a funeral in an instant.
“That...”
“Don't tell me even that got caught?”
“Rosanna and that slave visited Belkman's workshop once. And then they left immediately.”
“Without doing anything?”
“Considering they went not only through the workshop itself but the entire workshop district, it seems they were probably out on pre-festival patrol.”
Ernst fell into thought for a moment.
“Could they have been up to something?”
“Unlikely. Belkman is still holed up in his workshop, making the mana-stone lamps.”
“So really nothing happened?”
“We can't rule it out, of course, but if they had, we would have sealed off the production site. There were no such movements.”
That wasn't wrong.
The mana-stone lamps were the core of this operation.
If they had been discovered, the Imperial Knights would not have stayed quiet.
They would have captured Belkman, turned the production site upside down, and recovered every last finished lamp.
But the production site is still running normally.
Then they still hadn't reached it.
No matter how strangely that slave moved, he hadn't seen through the core of the mana-stone lamps.
Right, those mana-stone lamps had been crafted with painstaking care.
The kingdom's court magi had spent long nights making them.
There was no way a mere slave could figure out something like that.
“Then we'll proceed with the mana-stone lamps as planned.”
“Yes.”
They had lost the masks and the magic beast eggs as well.
It would be a lie to say it didn't hurt.
But in the end, those were just side branches. As long as the core remained, that was enough.
“Keep a close eye on that slave, just in case.”
Whether the one in question is a slave or a knight, it doesn't matter.
They'd make them pay dearly for daring to interfere with their grand cause.