Side Story 15: A Question and Its Answer (2)

After Nero took him in, Munar's life truly changed.

The meals were made from surplus food, but not scraps, and he was given a room of his own, small though it was. The contemptuous looks did not change, but no one threw stones at him anymore.

True to his word, Sakri spent several years using Munar, still a child, merely as an errand boy.

Nero was the opposite. Whenever Munar was summoned, a man arranged by Nero taught him assassination techniques.

The instructor was the sort who believed in learning through one's body, and Munar nearly died several times. On one occasion, he was made to drink poison and vomited in the corner of his room until morning.

By this time, Munar was beginning to get a vague sense of the relationship between Nero and Sakri. Sakri seemed to admire Nero, though the feeling was entirely one-sided. Whenever Munar was summoned for training, Sakri sent him off with a faintly envious look in his otherwise impassive face.

"Even if Nero is his brother, I can't understand why anyone would admire a man like that," Munar muttered to himself as he was summoned yet again.

As far as Munar could tell, Sakri seemed to be quite capable. It was only an intuitive impression, since Munar understood less than half of what he did.

Even so, it was strange to see Sakri quietly carrying out his work while eating the same cold meals as Munar.

The training grounds he reached while thinking about this had an unfamiliar priest there as well as the instructor—a rare sight.

The priest frowned at Munar and pointed at him. "Is this him?" "Yes," the instructor replied. "Then do as ordered. If he fails, tell him to die before he is captured." With that, the priest left.

"You heard him. I'm giving you your first assignment."

The instructor's words meant one thing: this would be Munar's first assassination.

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"Kah..."

Seeing the man reduced to a silent corpse, Munar took the dead man's hand and wrapped it around the dagger he'd just thrust into his throat.

How many had there been now? They had all apparently been political enemies of Nero or the True Guidance Church. Well, it did not matter.

Munar never felt particularly moved, no matter whom he killed. They were people from Lifrea, after all—the same people who had thrown stones at me. To Munar, Nero and the man who had just died were no different from the insects crawling around nearby.

Upon reaching his growth spurt, Munar shot up in height and quickly gained enough strength to overpower an ordinary soldier with one hand.

However, Munar would never join the Holy Knight Order. He remained Nero's personal subordinate, just as before.

By this time, Sakri had also begun drilling Munar in various matters. The lessons mainly concerned conduct in diplomatic settings and negotiation tactics for cornering the other party.

Sakri's negotiation tactics involved exploiting people's weaknesses, cutting off every avenue of escape and forcing them to accept his demands, or steering them toward an escape route that was their only option and then manipulating them as he pleased.

Munar was no less emotionally impassive than Sakri or Nero, and his personality made it impossible for him to humble himself before others. Thus, Sakri's approach suited him better than ordinary negotiation techniques.

But why was he teaching me things like that?

Even as he wondered about this, about a year passed, and he began to understand what he wanted to do.

At some point, Sakri began regularly disguising himself as a traveler and going to Golbel. Munar, assigned to keep watch, accompanied him.

Sakri talked his way into the confidence of one of Golbel's generals, then used that general's connections to spend time securing an audience with the king of Golbel.

From there, he quickly gained the king's trust, eventually getting the king himself to say, "Serve me."

"I will infiltrate Golbel and become a strategist. Ask my elder brother what is to be done with Munar."

Sakri made that declaration. Munar did as he was told and asked Nero for instructions. The answer was a single command: "Go with him."

It seemed that almost no influential figures willing to oppose the True Guidance Church remained. Munar therefore concluded that Nero no longer had any need to use him.

Thus, Munar ended up infiltrating Golbel alongside Sakri.

This was Munar's first experience living in a foreign country. It was an astonishing experience. When he had been coming and going as a traveler, he had not really felt it, but in Golbel, almost no one looked down on him because of his hair or eye color.

If anything, more people asked him with keen interest whether he was from the southern continent.

Munar was honestly bewildered, but it was not unpleasant. Here, there was no work Nero ordered him to do that left a room reeking of blood. The time he spent in Golbel may have been the most peaceful period of his life.

Naturally, he still had to report to Nero regularly, and he also began in earnest to work as a diplomatic envoy under Sakri's orders.

While being dispatched on these missions, Munar became convinced that Sakri and the others were trying to destroy Rudek.

Through Sakri's skill, Rudek was surrounded and driven into a corner without realizing what was happening. Even to Munar, Rudek looked like a bird trapped in a cage with no way to escape.

"It's almost time to make our move."

It had been several years since they came to Golbel when Sakri said this.

"From where?"

By this time, partly because he had been working as a diplomatic envoy, Munar had acquired a somewhat deferential manner of speaking. When Munar—his boyish appearance entirely gone—asked, Sakri tapped a certain spot on the map with his finger.

It was the northwestern edge of Rudek's territory.

"The abandoned mine here. This will be the signal fire for Rudek's destruction."

As he said this, Sakri let a deeply sinister smile slip across his face.