Chapter 24
#Chapter 24 Newbie Adventurer Bern (22) - Clue
Looking at the man who had collapsed unconscious with his face buried in the floor, Bern let out a dry laugh.
Noticing his reaction, Lucidra asked.
[Why? What's so funny?]
‘I just don’t get it. They hadn’t even finished securing the area, and he still tried to make a move on Blanca in the middle of it. Isn’t that absurd?’
[Men are all the same. Even while swinging swords, if they see a woman’s skin, they lose their heads. What do you expect? My outfit is practical, too.]
‘Oh?’
[…Wait, what did that 'oh' mean just now?]
‘No, I just thought that was your personal taste.’
Half-listening to the self-proclaimed great demon's shrieking, Bern secured the black bead the man had been holding.
Its texture was hard and cold, exactly like an ordinary glass marble, but the mana sealed inside it was so murky and dark it felt like a lump of oil sludge gathered together in one place.
“Bern!”
Blanca, who arrived a beat late, let out a breath of relief when she saw the culprit collapsed on the floor and Bern standing there without a scratch.
“Sorry. I tried to catch him right away, but I lost him.”
“No, it’s fine. If you hadn’t played bait, Ms. Blanca, we wouldn’t have been able to hook him at all. If anything, I’d say I was the one piggybacking on your effort.”
Even if it was to put the culprit off guard, deliberately letting himself be caught by the other side’s spell without resisting could hardly have felt pleasant.
And yet, Bern felt a certain respect for Blanca, who had willingly taken that risk.
At Bern’s unstinting praise, Blanca’s cheeks turned slightly red as she changed the subject.
“I-It was nothing. More importantly, what is that bead?”
“It was something this bastard had on him. I have a rough idea what it is, but I’ll explain the details once we’re back.”
Bern lifted the foot he had hooked under the culprit’s lower body, sending the man’s body up into the air, then grabbed him as though he were luggage.
There was still plenty to do before dawn.
***
“Ugh....”
“Are you awake now?”
Mansion living room.
The man, having regained consciousness, narrowed his eyes and looked around before soon letting out a hollow breath.
A body firmly bound to a chair.
All the tools he had were gone, and three adventurers surrounded him, their sharp gazes fixed on him. It was a dead end with no way out.
“So you spread a fake rumor from the start just to fish me out?”
“No. If you hadn’t shown up, we were going to proceed with the reverse trace anyway. Honestly, either way would have been fine.”
The man’s eyes trembled.
If the red-haired adventurer in front of him was telling the truth, then that sky-blue-haired mage’s skill was a monster no less than the redhead’s.
He suspected it might be bluffing, but the redhead’s attitude made it seem like he was simply stating an obvious fact.
“Then I’ll ask you a few questions from here on out.”
“Do you think I’ll talk that easily?”
“Where are the women you abducted? Are they still alive?”
The redhead acted as if he hadn’t heard a word he said, and the man frowned for a moment before answering with a relaxed air.
“Well. At the very least, it’s clear that the moment anything happens to me, those women’s safety is gone too.”
-So if you care about the hostages’ safety, don’t lay a hand on me.
Speaking with a hint of threat, the man tried to wrest back the initiative, but the response was unexpected.
“I see.”
Bern merely nodded placidly.
“Ms. Blanca. It looks like the victims will be hard to save.”
“Yes. Then let’s just say this man killed them all.”
Scratch, scratch.
Watching Blanca calmly move her pen and keep writing, the man felt his mind go white for a moment.
“Then, what was the motive for this incident?”
Whether he understood the man’s feelings or not, Bern calmly asked the next question.
But the man couldn’t so lightly move on to the next subject.
“Listen, you seem to be misunderstanding me, so I’ll explain properly. If I don’t send a signal by a certain time, my comrades at the hideout will kill all the women. So untie these ropes right now—”
“Hmm, I think you may be misunderstanding something.”
Bern cut the man off and then said flatly,
“We’re adventurers. And the request we received was to ‘catch the culprit behind the disappearance case,’ not to ‘rescue the kidnapped victims.’”
“…….”
“Do you understand? Whether the women you dragged off are dead or alive doesn’t really matter to us. Of course, if we can rescue them safely, we’ll be able to negotiate extra pay with the lord who commissioned the job, so if possible, rescue is better. But looking at the state of this territory, I doubt the lord would offer much of a reward even if we succeeded.”
At Bern’s words, the man almost nodded along without thinking.
Even to him as an outsider, the lord of Frensia didn’t seem like the sort of man who would readily shell out money for his subjects.
“Wasting time and effort on a pointless contest of wills and wits with you is a burden too. So let’s just say the victims were all killed by you. Then we can ignore all that pointless, bothersome searching and rescuing, and cleanly finish the request.”
It doesn’t make money. It’s a hassle. So let’s just say they’re dead.
Bern’s tone as he said each of those words was far too indifferent for a discussion of human life.
The man felt as though something cold were slowly crawling up his back.
A sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time, ever since meeting his master and gaining power.
Its name was fear.
“Anyway, if the victims are all dead because of you, let’s move on. Then next is motive and the mastermind. Anything to say? Something like whether you were acting on orders from some neighboring lord, or whether someone paid you to ruin Frensia.”
“I, I...”
“Hmm, looks like there isn’t one. Then I’ll write ‘no particular motive.’”
“Big brother. Wouldn’t it be better to at least give him a chance to talk?”
“Do we really need to? Honestly, even the time we’re spending on this back-and-forth feels wasted.”
“If the other side is cooperative, there might be an easy way to raise the reward.”
“Hmm. Ms. Blanca. What do you think?”
“Well, unless it’s an unusually big catch, I doubt it’ll have much effect on the reward. And there’s no guarantee what he says is true. If we waste time chasing fake information, that’s as much of a loss as any other request we could have taken in that time.”
“So she says, Renya. Let’s just go with the original plan.”
“Tch, can’t be helped. Understood, big brother.”
Money, gain, profit.
There was nothing else in the words those adventurers spoke in front of him.
Humanity, morality, honor, pride.
As if they had thrown away concepts like that long ago.
The man’s eyes settled on the report Blanca was scratching out.
That report.
What would happen once that report was completed?
The red-haired adventurer, Bern, seemed to have little interest in his answer.
Ask first, and if they got an interesting answer, great; if not, they’d simply write down whatever answer they wanted.
So they didn’t bother browbeating him, and they didn’t do anything like torture either.
But was that really a good thing?
If they didn’t even care about the lives of kidnapped victims, would they really bother to protect his life?
More than that, if the man said the wrong thing, wouldn’t everything in that ‘report’ become a lie?
Once his thoughts got that far, the man’s face turned pale.
This wasn’t the time for bargaining or anything of the sort.
The moment those questions from the redhead, however many were left, ended, he was certain he would die too.
His mouth opened in a hurry.
“W-Wait just a moment!! I’ll tell you everything! Everything! I’m sure there’ll be information interesting to both you and the guild!! If necessary, I can even testify in front of others—no, I can!!”
***
‘Huh, I never expected such a small bit of acting to work this well. He’s weaker-minded than I thought.’
[No, even someone who isn’t weak-minded would probably loosen up after that.]
It didn’t take long for the arrogant man’s attitude to flip on a dime.
The look of someone who had tried to subtly seize control despite being captured disappeared like snow melting away, replaced by a man who babbled eagerly about everything they asked—and even things they didn’t ask.
According to the man, he had originally been nothing more than one of the freelance mages with middling skill.
But then a being called a ‘master’ appeared before him, granted him power, and in exchange demanded a continuous supply of living sacrifices.
At this point, Blanca frowned and asked,
“Living sacrifices? Then does that mean all the women already abducted are dead?”
“T-That probably won’t be the case. For the ritual my master is preparing, what matters is sacrificing many lives all at once.”
That meant they’d be killed all at once during the ritual, so at the very least they’d be kept alive until then.
Bern asked.
“Are you the only one collecting sacrifices?”
“No. Aside from me, I believe the master’s disciples are spread throughout the Kingdom of Virka as well. Their methods differ, but they’re probably offering sacrifices to the master too.”
Even just the number of young women who had disappeared in Frensia alone already exceeded fifty.
If that were happening across the kingdom, the total number of victims would grow beyond anyone’s ability to contain.
That made it all the more puzzling.
What kind of person was this so-called master, and what ritual was he preparing that demanded so many living sacrifices?
“That—”
It was the very moment the man tried to speak about it.
Woooooom!
The black bead Bern had taken back suddenly began to tremble violently, then burst through the leather pouch holding it and shot up into the air.
As if it had instantly released the power contained inside it, it poured out terrifying mana before becoming a black sword that pierced the man’s neck.
No, it tried to pierce him.
“That’s too obvious. Do you think I’m a fool?”
Had Bern not drawn his sword and blocked the attack, that would surely have been the outcome.
Clang! Kaaang! Kaka-kang!
The black sword flew through the air in every direction, trying to pierce the man, but Bern didn’t even blink at its erratic trajectory and perfectly deflected every strike.
Wooooooooom!
Perhaps realizing it could not surpass Bern this way, the trembling sword soon became a massive beast and charged at the man.
Even if Bern cut the beast down with his blade, its huge body and overwhelming momentum would remain unchanged, crushing both the man and Bern as they were.
Paaaak!
But Bern shattered that prediction with ease once again.
The instant he realized the beast intended to keep pushing forward even if it was cut, he simply gripped the sword sideways and sent the monster flying as if swinging a baseball bat.
Even as it flew, the monster tried to change shape into something new and continue its attack, but Bern gave it no further chance.
Bern’s sword drew dozens of arcs.
Sword qi of such overwhelming density that it was no longer merely a web of blades but a curtain of swords did more than slice the monster apart—it crushed it flat as if pressing it down.
While everyone was left speechless at that transcendent display of martial prowess, Bern alone clicked his tongue.
‘My arm’s going numb.’
No matter how specialized its functions had been in one direction, there was a limit to reproducing the crown prince’s techniques exactly with a clone body.
Even though he used sword qi instead of sword aura and lowered the overall output of the attack, it was still enough to send recoil through his body.
But unlike the foes he had fought until now, that shadow beast from just then would have been difficult to handle casually even for Bern.
There was no chance he would lose, not even by one in ten thousand, but the problem was that an important source of information might lose his head.
‘The trope where the villain who’s about to spill an important secret gets taken out by the mastermind is common enough, but I’d rather not experience it myself.’
After finishing off the shadow beast completely, Bern turned his gaze to the man.
“Go on. Keep talking.”
The man’s lips trembled.
Bern’s indifferent gaze made his knees go weak, but the fear that hesitating now might anger Bern drove him onward.
“My master’s name is... Mortius. Mortius Varmor. He is a lich seeking to ascend to a new realm through a ritual of a thousand sacrifices.”
Blanca’s eyes flew wide open.