Chapter 265: To Move Forward (5)
[ Rodenbach Casino ─ Underground ]
One was an Ezenheim. The other was a Black Agent from Highland.
The two sat on stone chairs before a hastily assembled stone slab and talked.
“……That should work.”
Caven was the first to nod in understanding.
“Yes. The Highland Ministry of Finance will officially disclose the Bearer Bonds. The record, however, will be dated several years earlier.”
The shell companies that had purchased the bonds would be entered into the record as ‘private victims whose bonds were stolen several years ago’. In effect, the paperwork would retroactively turn those shell companies from ghosts into legitimate entities with names and histories.
“Ilyich will become the culprit who stole them. If you want to make the case even more conclusive, it would be best to leave behind evidence that Ilyich belongs to the Revolutionary forces. Are you in contact with Veil?”
Caven stiffened. He seemed surprised by the mere fact that a Highland Black Agent knew about ‘Veil’.
“……As expected of Highland’s Intelligence Bureau. Do you perhaps have a Spy inside the Revolutionary forces as well?”
“At the very least, we need to understand your ideology.”
Eastern thought and Western ideology were fundamentally different. If anything, the Empire served as a buffer between the two at the center.
Without the Empire, the two sides would probably be fighting each other instead.
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Caven smiled faintly.
“Our only ideology is survival. The one desire everyone shares…….”
──Boom. Boom. Boom.
Suddenly, a low tremor rumbled down from above. Caven and Blake looked up at once.
One of the Comrades came rushing in.
“……Caven! Ilyich has suddenly gone berserk!”
Caven’s expression changed. The two hurriedly rose to their feet.
“Ms. Blake, get out of here for now. Leave this place to us. There’s a passage leading up at the far right.”
“I’ll stay too.”
“No.”
Blake tried to help them, but Caven shook his head.
“This is our cause. A cause only has value if we achieve it with our own hands.”
“…….”
He refused to place the burden on her even at the very end. Rather, he knew that doing so was better for his own people. Accepting outside help would only leave them carrying another debt.
In the Empire’s eyes, he was a criminal, yet in many ways he had the makings of a saint.
Caven smiled faintly and continued.
“A slave doesn’t need his master to liberate him. He has to break his own shackles. If someone else helps him, all he’s done is put on another set of shackles.”
Blake understood. She respected the Ezenheim.
“……Yes. If that is your cause.”
She could not dishonor their pride.
“Ms. Blake! This way! I’ll guide you!”
Blake left with the Comrade guiding her, and Caven slowly turned around.
“Let’s go.”
He headed back through the mine shaft with his Comrades. Gripping the sword at his waist, he primed his Mana.
A battle might break out…….
Whoooooosh.
Before long, Caven stopped.
The other side stopped as well.
The lamps in the mine shaft flickered in a blood-scented draft, and the two shadows faced each other on the walls.
“Mr. Ilyich. What do you think you’re doing? Base Conversion is still underway.”
Caven asked.
“Hmm.”
Tap. Tap. Ilyich muttered as he struck the wall of the mine shaft with his fist.
“You dug pretty deep.”
Tap. Tap.
His punches gradually grew heavier.
Boom!
His strikes began to carry real force, and thread-thin streams of stone dust sifted down from the ceiling.
Boom!
The lamps mounted on the walls trembled. Clouds of dirt and dust puffed into the air.
Caven clenched his teeth.
“That’s enough.”
“—Go fuck yourself.”
He spoke flawless Highland Language.
The reason Ilyich had switched to that language was probably—
“……You planted listening devices.”
Caven’s voice dropped an octave.
“I knew your kind couldn’t be trusted.”
Ilyich strolled leisurely through the interior.
“Ezenheim. A filthy, cunning, treacherous race. All you bastards do is enrich yourselves and stab people in the back.”
He passed the support pillars and the piles of construction materials, testing the ground beneath his feet with every step.
“In the Empire, they call you the Traitor Race.”
“……Mr. Ilyich. You were the one who threw the plan off course in the first place.”
Caven already knew. The bastard was sizing up the battlefield. The positions of the pillars, his allies, his enemies. With the expression of a man out for a casual stroll, he was judging the most favorable ground for a fight.
“Nobody told me from the start that you were going to dig a tunnel like this.”
Mana gathered in Ilyich’s hands. Steam hissed from every joint of his Gauntlets, and the smell of hot iron spread through the air.
“……Then let me ask you. When war breaks out, what do you want?”
“Slaughter.”
Ilyich answered immediately.
“Soon, there’ll be a battlefield where killing anyone is allowed. A time will come when no one is held accountable, no matter who they kill.”
There was something deeply wrong with the smile on his lips.
Lunatics like this really were difficult to handle.
It had been a miscalculation.
“…….”
Caven closed his eyes.
They were one spark away from violence. The tension was so sharp it felt as though the slightest touch could cut.
No one moved, yet the air stretched taut. The subordinates on both sides silently raised their gun barrels halfway…….
And ‘someone’, disguised as one of Ilyich’s many subordinates, pulled the trigger.
Bang!
A single gunshot rang out.
No one knew who had fired.
The shot meant to shut the Ezenheim up became the signal that started the battle.
Booooom─!
Ilyich kicked off the ground. His massive body flew like a bird.
KABOOOOOM──!
His Gauntlet punched through the stone floor. The impact cratered outward, gouging away the entire spot where Caven had been standing.
“Hup!”
Caven was already gone. He drew the weapon at his waist.
A slender Rapier. As Mana condensed along its completely unadorned blade, the edge quivered with a heat-haze shimmer and took on a glow.
It was a blade that withstood force through the sheer density of its Mana.
KRAAAAAASH──!
The oncoming fist met the flat of the blade.
BANG─!
A ring-shaped shockwave burst outward. The lamps all went dark at once, then flared back to life.
Boom─! KABOOOOOM──!
Every time Ilyich’s fist swept through, the entire passage exploded, while Caven’s Rapier sliced through the heart of each blast as easily as paper and bled the force away to either side.
A battle between power and technique.
If one had to compare them, it was an excavator against a sewing needle.
Every clash visibly brought the mine shaft closer to collapse.
Bang─!
A firefight erupted behind them.
Bang─! Ratatat─!
Using pillars and piles of materials as barricades, the Ezenheim exchanged lethal gunfire with Ilyich’s soldiers.
Bang bang──!
Each time muzzle flashes flickered through the darkness, someone toppled over, and someone else dragged a corpse over to use as a shield.
RATATATATAT──!
Countless gunshots echoed. In an instant, the mine shaft filled with the smells of gunpowder, mana, and blood.
“Ugh!”
The ‘someone’ disguised as a subordinate took a bullet to the chest. He used the impact as his cue, rolled with the shot, and went down convincingly.
‘He’ quietly played dead.
Even amid all that— at the heart of the mine shaft, the two monsters kept trying to break each other apart.
Boom! Crash!
Caven and Ilyich had already moved elsewhere. Caven was drawing the bastard away, if only to keep the battle from destroying or collapsing the mine shaft.
KRAAASH─!
Ilyich’s fist grazed a pillar. Fragments burst toward Caven, but one sweep of his Rapier split the shower and sent it past him.
Caven pressed forward, batting each fragment aside with a sword strike. His blade sliced across Ilyich’s flank, shoulder, thigh, and chest in succession.
His cuts were thin and precise.
Rather than felling a giant tree with one stroke, this sword brought it down with a hundred thin slices.
Yet Ilyich laughed even as he bled.
─Boom. Boom.
He willingly took Caven’s cuts in exchange for another half-step forward.
He accepted a hundred wounds while waiting for a single opportunity.
Shnk!
At last, Caven’s Rapier buried itself in Ilyich’s chest muscle.
Grab!
Ilyich’s eyes flew wide. He thrust out an arm so violently that it nearly wrenched his own joints apart. His hand closed around Caven’s neck.
All he had to do was twist. But before he could.
Fweeeeeesh──!
A spear came flying from somewhere and embedded itself in Ilyich’s chest.
“……Ghk!”
Ilyich coughed up blood, and Caven and the few remaining Comrades turned in that direction.
“──My apologies.”
The Highland Black Agent emerged from the darkness, gripping a spear of blue Mana.
“But there’s something I forgot.”
She smiled and cocked an eyebrow.
“I never collected the IOU worth one hundred million Imperial Dollars.”
“…….”
Ilyich released Caven and slowly collapsed.
Caven brushed the dust from his body and looked at Blake. Blake met his gaze.
Heh.
Just as a smile passed between them, Ilyich rose again.
Caven straightened his sword. Blake tightened her grip on her spear as well.
“Persistent bastard……?”
Blake’s words stopped. Ilyich was holding some sort of syringe.
Stab!
He jammed it into his own carotid artery.
“……Khuhuhuhuhu.”
His pupils went unfocused, and his veins darkened as though they were being seared from within. His muscles swelled in an instant. His face had lost all trace of reason.
Drugs, not his heart, now drove the pulse through his body.
Already wearing the grin of a dead man, the bastard moved.
“Caven! Run!”
The Comrades blocked his path.
KRAAAAAASH──!
Ilyich crushed one man’s head. He smashed another man’s body like a doll. He caught Caven’s blade and crushed it.
Boom─ Boom─ Boom─!
His ability to feel pain had completely burned out, and the spear was still lodged in his chest.
Boom─ Boom─ Boom─!
The bastard charged like a tank.
──Fweeeeeesh.
Blake hurriedly thrust out her mana spear.
Shnk!
The spearhead pierced his heart. Even as it sank in, the bastard lunged forward, forcing the shaft deeper into his own body until the spear was buried to its base.
─Crrrk!
Ilyich seized Blake by the throat.
Krrrrrrk!
The pressure crushed the bones in her neck, and her vision flooded red.
Sound vanished. Her consciousness faded as though the whole world were pulling away…….
──.
A wave of Mana from an unknown source swept in without a sound.
KRAAASH─!
A Longsword erupted from Ilyich’s chest. The blade that had pierced his heart from behind flashed white as it emerged. No one had seen when it arrived or where it had come from.
“…….”
The bastard’s hand slowly loosened.
Ilyich still wore a broad smile. He died on his feet.
“─Cough.”
Caven and the Comrades rushed over to Blake as she coughed up blood.
“Are you all right?”
“…….”
Blake silently stared somewhere else.
She stared into the nearby darkness, toward the place from which the Longsword had flown and to which it had returned with a whoosh like the wind.
Caven stared there as well.
──Thud. Thud.
Footsteps could be heard.
──Thud. Thud.
The footsteps came from beyond the reach of the lamps, neither hurried nor concealed.
The Comrades raised their guns as if spellbound.
──Thud. Thud.
Someone stepped out, cutting through the layers of darkness.
“……Who are you?”
The answer came.
“A knight of the Empire.”
That was all he said.
───.
The Longsword in his grip flew into the air once more. The blade swept through the area like a whirlwind.
KRAAAAAASH──!
The flying blade slashed through the Comrades’ necks, and the man who had called himself a knight of the Empire looked at the two survivors.
No. More precisely, his gaze fixed only on the Ezenheim.
It was time to test the hypothesis. To see how the bastard would react when he used the ‘language’.
【Things didn’t go as planned.】
The bastard’s gaze twitched. His hair faintly stood on end before settling again.
The switch had been flipped.
“……Run. I’ll handle this place.”
Unfortunately, that was the only reaction.
“Go!”
There was nothing more to see.
Suppressing a sigh, the knight gathered mana beneath his feet.
Tap──
With a light step, as though treading on moonlight, he sprang forward in a diving charge and slashed through Caven’s neck.
The physiques and Mana capabilities of the Ezenheim were little different from those of humans, unless they underwent Mutation as Jacob had.
So the blade should have passed cleanly through…….
──Crk.
The blade caught?
The blade had caught on the bastard’s neck bone.
It had failed to cut through, as though some ‘foreign object’ had blocked it.
──Tick.
The knight’s gaze shifted. The neck the blade should have passed through had already turned black.
The severed surface was healing.
No, it was being ‘woven’ back together.
Black, threadlike strands stitched the wound closed, while completely different tissue swelled beneath them.
Frrrrrrrk──!
The bastard’s eyes flooded black until the whites disappeared. The muscles and veins throughout his body twisted and mutated.
Crrrrrrk─
Something writhed in countless places beneath his skin, and his joints stretched in directions no joint should have been able to bend. Craaaack. His limbs spread apart grotesquely.
The shell of his human form was being peeled away from within.
──Tick.
The clock ticked forward.
The knight smiled.
It was a sight worth watching a little longer.
It was exquisitely beautiful.
Yes, you bastards are most beautiful when you reveal your true nature.
──Tick.
Unfortunately, there was no time to watch for long. Those that underwent Mutation were undeniably strong. Strong enough that even he could not afford to let his guard down.
──Tick.
More importantly, the purpose behind this Mutation was easy to discern.
It was not for survival, but for killing.
──Tick.
Self-destruction.
──Tick.
The knight gathered mana into his sword. Moonlight pooled along the blade.
───!
He poured refined mana into it.
The cut that followed was flawless and pure.
KRAASH!
The bastard’s head was completely severed. Just as silver-white Mana was about to burn away what remained of the body, the knight looked at Blake.
He could only hope her eyes were open.
“…….”
Fortunately, they were.
The Ezenheim’s form was reflected in her eyes as well.
Even if it was only for an instant, she was unmistakably ‘watching’.
She was seeing what lay within an Ezenheim.
──.
The Ezenheim came apart. In less than a second, the knight unleashed dozens of sword strikes. The Flow of Ebenholtz. The sword minced the bastard so thoroughly that not even a fragment remained capable of self-destruction.
“…….”
Afterward, a heavy silence settled over the mine shaft.
The knight silently approached her.
“Hmm.”
He lowered himself to one knee and picked up the bonds scattered across the floor.
He fluttered them lightly as he spoke to Blake.
“You can leave through the passage.”
The knight added calmly.
“I understand the situation well enough. You have now accomplished your objectives for the sake of your country: eliminating a terrorist and recovering the bonds.”
They sounded like lines written for an official report.
“Take those accomplishments back with you instead of involving yourself in their false cause. From this point on, this is Imperial business. A knight will take control.”
“……False?”
Blake asked before she realized it. The knight nodded as though it were obvious.
“Yes.”
“Because the Ezenheim are the Traitor Race?”
“You saw it yourself.”
“…….”
The knight’s short answer left Blake speechless for a moment.
After all, she had undeniably seen something.
For the first time in her life, she had seen…… a form more horrific than any magical beast.
“What you just saw was not an illusion. It was not a Mana Reversal Phenomenon or Qi Deviation either.”
Maximilian pointed his Longsword toward the remains of the ‘thing’ that had once been Caven.
“Have you ever seen a human being like that?”
The knight’s voice remained as calm as if he were giving a lecture.
“Mana is humanity’s potential. It strengthens the body as it already exists or expands the vessel one was born with. In either case, the process remains within the bounds of the human form.”
With corpses at his feet and the mine shaft thick with the smell of blood, his tone was as casual as if he were discussing the weather.
“Mutation is not our power.”
“…….”
Blake looked at the remnants of Caven, scattered like dust.
It was the body of the man who, only moments before, had held scripture to his chest and asked her to keep his Comrade’s sacrifice a secret.
He had briefly transformed into a grotesque shape before fading away as though it had all been an illusion.
“Therefore, shedding that form means that whatever was pretending to be human has stopped pretending.”
The knight held something out to Blake.
It was a bond.
“That is why I’m letting you live.”
He had originally intended to kill her precisely because she would have been a great asset to Highland.
“You witnessed the same thing I did, even if only for a moment.”
Blake slowly looked up at the man standing directly before her.
“That makes you a very rare person.”
His figure was reflected in her darkened pupils.
His golden eyes were cold and still. Not a crease marred his immaculate appearance. It was a face she had already seen in hundreds of photographs.
The files described him as a knight and a businessman, while rumors called him a monster…….
In person, he seemed to be both.
“Consider yourself fortunate, Black Agent of Highland.”
Maximilian Ebenholtz.
~~~
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