Chapter 250: Pursuit (1)

Fifth floor of the Sentinel Knight Order’s new wing,「Maximilian’s Agent Office」.

“…….”

Yan Novak looked around the interior in a daze.

It was spacious and clean. Every agent was assigned a desk of his own, and beyond the window the lake park and the green trees came into view at a single glance.

“This is your seat.”

His direct superior, Yaken Yukia, pointed at one of the desks.

She was the Knight Order’s Chief Administrator, presiding over every Yaken agent. Having risen to what was effectively the highest post a Yaken could reach, she was half a legend.

“Yes, ma’am.”

When Yan sat down, Yukia set a single sheet of paper on the desk.

“Write down the equipment, consumables, and operational funds you want. They’ll be issued in due course.”

It was completely open-ended. When he asked what the limit was, the answer came back, “Only as much as you think your life is worth.”

Just as Yan was turning it over in his mind and about to write a number.

“One thing.”

Yukia’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t expect to be coddled just because you’re Yaken.”

In Sentinel, the Yaken were regarded as the knights’ colleagues in the field.

It was because their outstanding physical ability, their exceptional talent for mana, and above all the five senses with which they tracked and hunted down targets were held in high esteem.

That was no license to swagger or grow arrogant.

“If anything, you must never forget that the honor of the clan rests on your shoulders.”

“Yes, ma’am. I have it well in mind.”

Yukia studied Novak steadily for a moment, then asked.

“The scent. Can you pick it up?”

As she spoke, she tipped something out onto the desk with a soft thud. Pebbles scattered across the surface. Thirteen or so, perhaps.

Without so much as leaning in, Yan picked several of them out. Only the ones steeped in a raw, fishy smell.

“Three. These.”

“……Show me your other talents.”

Yan opened an empty hand. Mana seemed to gather in his palm, and then, whoosh! A pebble at the far end of the desk leapt across the open air and was caught in his grip.

It was a talent related to space.

“So there’s a reason you passed.”

Yukia nodded, satisfied. She had already been given a rough briefing by Maximilian.

A Yaken who met the conditions to become a loyal retainer.

“From now on you answer directly to me.”

She spread something out on the desk.

A complete map of the Empire. Across it, packed dense and marked by hand, red and black dots.

“……A map, ma’am?”

“That’s right.”

Yukia set a fingertip on one of the dots.

“We are going to draw a map.”

The hideouts and burial grounds the bastards called Ezenheim had passed through. The places where their altars lay coiled.

It was work carried out from within the shadows, marking every one of their points onto the map.

“We’ll find where the revolution has coiled its nest.”

Yukia had once belonged to the Revolutionary forces and had been betrayed by them, and her voice came out dark as ashes.

“And we’ll find out what Ezenheim is after.”

“After…… meaning what?”

At Yan’s question, Yukia looked at him for a moment, as though sizing him up.

“We don’t know the details ourselves yet. What we do know is that their purpose has to do with the ‘ground’. The Silent Rite. The Niko Weber incident, are you familiar with it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I am.”

The incident in which the Ezenheim and Revolutionary members, who had built a sham company and bled the Empire dry, were brought to justice by that righteous man of the Empire, Niko Weber.

“Sewers. Abandoned mines. Cellars. Wells. They’re obsessed with what’s underground. There’s no question they’re doing something beneath the earth, and it’s tied to their religion and to the horribly warped values they serve.”

The Silent Communion, in which they crushed the skulls of their own kind with stones. A demonic rite in which they offered up even their own lives.

That faith descended not toward the heavens but beneath the feet.

“We’re going to connect their chapels. Once we’ve gathered enough points, we’ll know exactly ‘where’ under this land they’re crawling toward.”

Yukia lifted her hand from the map and looked Yan straight in the face.

“Never forget it. They are the enemy of the Yaken, and the enemy of the Empire.”

* * *

I received certain ‘pieces of evidence’ from Georgen.

I had never asked for their cooperation. Someone inside their organization had leaked the information to one of our agents.

Too unsettling to be free, too valuable to be bait.

“……Quite a few.”

A list of those connected to the Blue Rose Society. A Registry.

Distinguished professors of Zestfall, secretaries, editorial writers, literati, scholars. The numbers were large. The reasons and the evidence were solid too. Names that could be tied into it as tightly as anyone cared to tie them.

Thanks to it, I was finally beginning to see what they were after.

Why they had disguised themselves as the Blue Rose Society to denounce Joshua. Why they had prepared a list like this so painstakingly.

A Kill List filled with nothing but the names that could be called the intellect of Zestfall.

It was an event that had never happened before my Regression.

Probably one more instance of the ‘Synergy Effect’ I had been worried about.

The stronger I grew, the more tenacious their moves became.

Filthier than ever, and more sickening with it.

I made my way to the Genen Branch Office.

This was a large game. With this many names on the list, I would need to mobilize just as many people of my own.

“Welcome, sir.”

Office Chief Schatz, and beside her Zendo and the rest of the agents, stood lined up.

The Genen affair had somehow become a matter of years past, and over those years they had made themselves into elites, veterans.

I called every one of them together.

“Commit these to memory.”

No long speech was needed. Copies of the registry were scattered out among the agents of the Genen Branch Office.

“The names and the faces of the people on this registry.”

Each of them took a sheet and ran their eyes down the names. Blade-sharp gazes and quick, deft hands.

“And then, every last one of them.”

A brief silence, in which even the sound of turning paper stopped.

“We track them down.”

* * *

A registry had been delivered to Georgen. It was a list of the Blue Rose.

Or rather, the names of those who had cooperated with them ‘even a little’.

The problem lay in how that ‘even a little’ was interpreted.

The man who printed the flyers. The man who supplied paper to that print shop. The man who exchanged letters with the Roses.

The employer of a place where one of the Roses had worked. Even the teachers who had once taught a Rose something, anything.

The mesh of the net could be drawn as fine as anyone liked, and the Empire fully intended to do exactly that.

Because the Blue Rose had insulted the most dangerous man in this Empire.

“This leaked from the inside.”

Zestfall, the drawing room of a certain mansion.

A young man with an ordinary face and ordinary clothes had come one evening without a sound and delivered that news to ‘Alfred’, the aged professor of Zestfall University’s Mana Studies Department.

“Your name, Professor, is on Georgen’s registry as we speak.”

A distinguished scholar of the Empire. His crime was to have taught a student named Joshua from the lectern for years, to have been fond of him, to have shared meals with him, to have talked with him at length.

Alfred asked back in a grave voice.

“Even if I had no involvement whatsoever with the Blue Rose?”

“The Empire never cared about such facts to begin with. You know what Maximilian is.”

Even if one did not agree with the ideas of the Blue Rose, the Empire wanted nothing more than a pretext, a justification, something to bring down Zestfall’s educated class……

That was the young man’s logic.

“……You have to run. The Headmaster is already being held.”

“He is not being held. He is choosing to remain.”

For the sake of that son of his, Joshua. Or for the sake of his house.

“It comes to the same thing.”

The man answered curtly and pulled his flat cap down low over his eyes.

“At any rate, I’ve told you. There are still a great many people I have to call on.”

Other teachers of Zestfall, scholars, mages. To the names recorded in that registry.

“…….”

Professor Alfred gazed at that sense of duty, at a young man risking his own life to go from house to house warning others that theirs were in danger. He let out a deep sigh and sank into thought for a moment.

“Please. I hope you’ll make the choice that serves you best, Professor.”

“Wait.”

As the man turned hurriedly to go, the old professor held something out to him.

Bread and water.

“……I can’t send a guest off empty-handed.”

The young man took them and smiled for the first time.

“Thank you.”

Watching him walk away, the old professor prayed for his safety even more than for his own.

…….

Zestfall University, the office of ‘Theodor Brandt’, professor of the Mana Wave Studies Department.

“Professor.”

He stared blankly at the man seated across from him.

“These are flyers that insulted Sentinel. It’s a graver matter than the「Imperial Citizenship Law」. No, if anything, the 「Imperial Citizenship Law」 is exactly what will make it worse.”

Zestfall had already fallen thoroughly out of favor over the Citizenship Law. With this affair as a pretext, the intellectuals of this city would be made to bear an even greater calamity.

“And on top of that, the man on the other side is Maximilian.”

Even within Sentinel, which prided itself on being the sword of the Empire, he was the sharpest, the most merciless, the monster filled with the most deranged conviction.

“Do you know how many soldiers he had shot at the eastern border?”

Hundreds.

The number he lined up and gunned down, regular soldiers, without hearing a single word in their defense, had never been precisely reckoned even now.

“And what of the people who were broken by his orders at Jeronika?”

「Zernica」. Riding on that artwork hanging in Prozen, the truth of that day was only now seeping slowly into the world.

“The Titan. You must know of it, of course.”

A name that remained both a sorrow and a fairy tale to the people of the Empire.

The love between a young Aran commoner and the daughter of a distinguished noble house, both of whom survived that day’s catastrophe as if by miracle.

The two held a magnificent wedding, and the couple and their houses were even invited by Maximilian to the Empire’s pavilion in Prozen.

“But what lies behind it, that you won’t know.”

The man’s voice sank into stillness.

“There were minority races who boarded the Titan trying to get out of the Empire. People who tried to flee in violation of the Empire’s laws.”

The back page of the fairy tale.

“They survived the catastrophe as well, but they were not chosen by Maximilian, and as a result.”

Those who were invited stood in the Hall of Light, but.

“Those people are no longer in this world. Not a single one.”

The rest had vanished into the hereafter.

“Above all.”

With a heavy expression, he drew back the office curtain a little.

“Do you see it?”

A dark alleyway.

At the edge of the streetlamp’s glow, a shadow shimmering faintly.

“Professor. They’re already here. They’re watching you.”

“…….”

Professor Theodor bit his lip as he listened. He buried his face in both hands.

…….

Zestfall University, the Mana Stone Critical Resonance Studies research building. The chain resonance of mana stones— in a field that only a tiny handful even within academia so much as touched, a scholar of renown, reckoned the finest on the continent.

Professor Erich Salzmann.

He had finished preparing for his journey.

Fortunately it was the Expo season. With travelers bound for Prozen overflowing at present, the eyes at the border would be loose as well.

For him the decision had not been difficult. His name had gone up on the ‘Blue Rose list’ Georgen had obtained. And besides, he was a man alone.

Though not, strictly speaking, ‘alone’…….

“……Don’t you worry.”

His mother. His aged mother, who had entered her eighties, was the first to smile.

“What could they possibly do to this old body of mine? I’ll live out my natural span and go.”

Professor Salzmann could not manage a single word in reply. Holding back his tears, he bent down and buried his face against her chest.

“Mother……”

Suddenly, those days flashed through his mind. They unfurled wide, like a life passing before his eyes.

‘Her dream was me. Her hope was me. Ever since the day the father I cannot even remember walked out, always.’

‘The joy of the day I entered Imperial Central University. The bright look on her face the day I was appointed professor. Her delight when my paper ran in the Continental Academic Journal, and every day I was decorated by the Empire.’

All of it had lived within her narrow embrace.

“If you should ever need a bribe.”

She slipped the ring from her thick-knuckled finger and pressed it into her son’s hand.

“Use this.”

The only thing he could take with him was his own body. Too much luggage would give him away.

So this one ring was the whole of her fortune, everything she could send along with her son.

“……Yes.”

Salzmann wiped his eyes and took it.

In her arms, even at this age, he seemed to turn back into a child.

“Don’t ever, come back.”

At his mother’s farewell, the son could not bring himself to add a single word. He crossed the threshold leaving behind nothing but the feeling that he loved her.

Outside stood the young man who had come to guide him.

Salzmann nodded.

“Let’s go.”

“It was the only decision you could have made, Professor.”

“……Thanks to you.”

“Yes. Just trust me.”

The way there was like a dream.

Each time he closed his eyes and opened them again, he had advanced another stage.

Home.

The street.

A car.

The platform.

The train.

A seat.

Clatter── clatter──

When he came back to himself, fields were already flowing past outside the window.

The scenery of the Empire was drawing away from him.

“Our first destination is Prozen, to begin with. Luckily it’s the Expo season, so if we blend in with the tourists the inspections should go easily enough.”

At the words of the young man across from him, his shoulders gave a slight jolt.

It felt as though he had returned to reality once more.

“Let’s do that.”

Salzmann nodded. The young man asked in a worried tone.

“……Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

It was a face that was not fine in the least. Pale, steeped in sorrow.

The young man added carefully.

“……You’ll be all right. The knowledge you carry will be honored in any country. Your mother would want that too.”

You know it yourself. The Empire was never a country with the breadth to hold intellectuals—

Just then something buzzed low inside the young man’s coat. It was a small device. A wireless set that spoke only in Morse code.

He checked it, and his expression stiffened in a subtle way.

“……One moment. Please rest here.”

“I will.”

The man left his seat, and Professor Salzmann closed his eyes for a while.

Clatter── clatter──

The rattling rocked his body like a lullaby.

Beyond the professor’s closed eyes, fields went by, a river went by, and the lights of nameless stations brushed past the window one by one.

Clatter── clatter──

The border was drawing nearer.

──Rustle.

And then, all at once.

The sound of someone sitting down across from him.

“You’re late……?”

When Professor Salzmann opened his eyes again.

“……!”

His heart lurched violently out of step for an instant.

No, it felt as though his whole body had already exploded.

Clatter── clatter──

Sunlight spilling through the gap in the window soaked a certain man’s golden hair.

It was a face that might have been cut out of a painting, and it wore a faint smile.

Clatter── clatter──

A man who ought to have been at the Empire’s exhibition hall, without the slightest warning.

Was sitting within arm’s reach, looking into him.

Clatter── clatter──

……Maximilian.

A catastrophe in a beautiful form.

“A pleasure to meet you.”

The voice was startlingly gentle.

“Professor Erich Salzmann of Zestfall University, Mana Stone Critical Resonance Studies. That is you, is it not?”

He was in no hurry. He simply went on speaking calmly, as though inquiring after the health of a longtime acquaintance.

“「Chain Resonance of Mana Stones」. 「On the Critical Conditions of Mana」. Papers you published ten years ago and five years ago, respectively.”

A cold sweat dampened the professor’s spine.

“I read them with deep admiration. Down to the last footnote.”

He let out a light sigh and looked around them.

The professor’s gaze followed his……

No one.

Inside this train, not a single person remained.

“To meet a man such as yourself in a place like this. What a coincidence.”

A coincidence.

For a coincidence, there was a faint smear of blood on the soles of the man’s shoes.

Dotted along, all the way from the corridor.

He had walked over here through blood.

“…….”

Salzmann’s hand closed around the ring in his pocket before he knew it.

Silence flowed.

“…….”

The man did not press him. He merely watched, and waited.

What was he waiting for?

What did he want?

The professor had pursued nothing but scholarship his whole life and did not understand people, and so, the moment that waiting crossed some critical point.

All at once the man’s expression sank.

What remained where the gentleness had lifted was neither anger nor menace, but simply— nothing.

“You ought to answer.”

The instant a sentence that did not even amount to a question was carried on that voice, it became an interrogation far too heavy to bear.

That silence had never been an option to begin with, the professor understood with a scholar’s intuition.

“……Indeed. Quite a coincidence, for a first meeting.”

“It isn’t a first meeting, in fact. I saw you once. At the time of the「Imperial Citizenship Law」, you came to Sentinel to lodge a protest.”

“Did I, now?”

“Yes. Though I wasn’t the knight assigned to you.”

That first gentle smile returned to Maximilian’s face.

“So then, where are you off to in such a hurry?”

He had walked in on feet that had erased every person aboard, and asked where a man was headed in an ordinary human voice.

The figure of a man more fearsome than anyone else on the continent.

The monster of the Empire.

That the epithet had been an exceedingly precise classification─ only now did the professor concede it.

~~~

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