"Isn't this going a bit too far?"
"Lady Siel ?"
"That's nonsense. Our watchers already have the young lady under—!"
A few of the shadows scoffed, but the atmosphere around several others shifted.
"…The connection was cut off?"
Some of the shadows checked the markings on their wrists and froze.
'Looks like they activated communication magic in advance… but something went wrong.'
Of course it did.
Even if she only had a temporary tracking mark on her, the head of Aylasis—
the Empire's greatest battle mage—would never leave assassins' communication magic untouched.
"Damn it, something's wrong!"
"If Lady Siel really is here…!"
"Retreat for now!"
Realizing the situation had gone terribly wrong, several of the shadows tried to pull back.
"That won't do. You can't just leave whenever you want."
But only for a moment.
THUD—!
"Guaaah?!"
Along with the voice from behind me, one of the shadows collapsed.
"H-Hey, what happened?!"
"Aaagh…! GAAAAAH…!"
The other assassins shouted in panic at the sight of their comrade suddenly crumpling.
"My body…! It's… heavy…!"
The assassin trembled with all four limbs pressed against the ground.
As if his own body had become too heavy for him to bear.
"There's a mountain of things I want to ask you."
Siel walked forward slowly, wearing a refreshing smile.
Not in the banquet dress nobles wore, but in the hat and robes of a mage.
"Answer my questions. Otherwise…"
Trailing off, Siel glanced around at the other shadows and waved her hand.
At that moment—
"W-Wait…!"
"What the—why is my body moving on its own?!"
Several assassins suddenly floated up into the air.
No circles. No spell formations.
Just a casual gesture.
And the magic she used was gravity manipulation magic—
said to be the most complex of all magic.
"What the hell is this?!"
"I can't move…!"
With nowhere to plant their feet, the assassins were completely immobilized in midair.
'It'd be nice if she stopped there.'
But the instant that thought crossed my mind, the floating assassins' bodies began to compress inward.
"U-Ugh…!"
It looked as though invisible walls were crushing them from every direction.
I'd seen this magic once before, back in the territory.
Crunch! Craaack…!
The horrifying sounds of rupturing flesh filled the dark street.
Bones breaking.
Meat being crushed.
"Uuuugh?!"
"S-Save… save me…!"
Even if they finally realized what was happening, it was already too late.
Their screams begging for mercy were drowned beneath the noise of their bodies being compressed.
The assassins gradually lost all semblance of human form.
"A-Aah…! AAAAAH…!"
A crushed death scream that could no longer even be called human.
SPLAT—!
In the end, all that remained were perfectly square cubes of flesh spraying blood.
"…!"
"T-This insane…!"
The assassins of Falling Leaves trembled violently at the horrific sight before them.
"Next."
At Siel 's voice, twice as many assassins as before rose helplessly into the air.
"U-Uuuugh…!"
"Now then, shall we begin the questions?"
Walking slowly toward them, Siel approached the man still collapsed on the ground and met his eyes.
"Elfran. Where is he?"
The voice that followed was plain and emotionless.
As though speaking to insects, disgust dripped from Siel 's tone.
"You think I'd tell you that?"
As though realizing failure was inevitable, the assassin's eyes filled with grim resolve.
"Falling Leaves' contracts are absolute secrets. Even if you kill us all, you'll never get a shred of information."
For people who lived by intelligence and counterintelligence, secrecy was life itself.
Even if you used truth serums or mind-control magic, they'd simply kill themselves first.
"Then kill them."
Before he could say anything more to Siel , I cut into the conversation.
"What?"
The assassin turned toward me as if wondering what nonsense I was saying.
"Kill them all, Siel ."
As I spoke, I drew demonic energy from my heart.
"We can just ask their corpses instead."
"The center of the northeastern forest region… an abandoned magic tower, huh…"
A smile spread across my face as the dead assassin's soul spilled its information.
'So Count Elfran and the Archimond Cult are working together?'
A smile of joy at finally finding the target.
A laugh at the absurdity of an Imperial Duke conspiring with a cult.
And also a bitter laugh at getting dragged into a family conflict I never asked for.
"Klein!"
Meanwhile, Siel approached me without forgetting to express her gratitude.
"Thank you so much. Thanks to you…"
"Thanks to me, we learned something unbelievable."
I let out a sigh as I continued:
"That a former Imperial Duke and an underground cult are conducting secret research inside an abandoned magic tower."
Ian had mentioned it before.
That something smelled rotten in Felician.
'Not just rotten. It smelled like rotting corpses.'
It was ridiculous.
The Archimond Cult.
Those bastards deserved to be chewed to pieces, yet now they'd taken over an entire magic tower.
"And the one who concealed all of this from the Empire was…"
"Galond Ran, the Lord of the Sky Magic Tower."
Finishing Siel 's sentence, I looked at Cheleg sprawled on the ground.
"So that means this brat's father was behind it."
After witnessing the horrifying scene before him, Cheleg had already rolled his eyes back and fainted.
"In exchange for concealing the existence of Elfran and the Archimond Cult, he received knowledge."
Cheleg Ran, son of Magic Tower Lord Galond Ran.
He was the greatest beneficiary of the knowledge Galond had acquired.
It had elevated him beyond his mediocre talent into the ranks of the greatest among his peers.
"Then this is simple."
Sinister mana surged from Siel 's body as she spoke.
"Shall we kill Galond and head to the abandoned magic tower to slaughter everyone there?"
"If we touch the Magic Tower Lord, it becomes a diplomatic issue."
With that smiling face of hers, the words felt twice as terrifying.
Thinking that, I stopped her.
"Then what are you planning to do, Klein?"
At Siel 's question, I shrugged.
"What else? We handle it according to the law."
With that, I walked over to Cheleg.
Maybe it was because of what he'd just witnessed from Siel .
He was still unconscious, eyes rolled back.
SLAP—!
The moment I smacked him across the face, Cheleg jolted awake in terror.
"U-Uaaaah?!"
"You awake now?"
Before he could properly gather himself, I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upright.
"K-Klein! If you do this to me, the Sky Magic Tower won't just sit back and—!"
"Shut up."
Unbelievable.
Mages from the tower being arrogant wasn't anything new.
But to think he still had the nerve to talk about the Magic Tower after everything that had happened.
"You realize you almost died just now, right?"
At my question, Cheleg thought for a moment before his face turned pale.
He'd finally realized who that poisoned dagger had really been aimed at.
"Good. Looks like you understand the situation."
The existence of Elfran and the Archimond Cult was clearly top secret.
And Cheleg had effectively leaked it.
It wouldn't be strange if they killed him immediately.
"So, what'll it be?"
"W-What are you talking about…?"
"Hm?"
I grabbed the end of his sentence and lightly tapped the sword hilt.
"N-No! W-What do you mean…?"
"Yeah. That's more like it."
Now we were finally understanding each other.
Nodding in satisfaction, I spoke to Cheleg.
"You have two choices. Cooperate… or die with them."
"…?"
Judging by his face, he still didn't fully understand.
I leaned closer and spoke clearly, word by word.
"You can go back to the Felician homeland and confess all of your father's crimes."
"…!"
"Or become a traitor who aided Archimond's resurrection and turn into a public enemy of the continent."
He looked like he wanted to argue against the first option,
but at the second, he fell silent.
Two hundred years.
Even after all that time, the fear tied to the name Archimond still lingered across the continent.
'Well, I can't really talk.'
He might be Archimond reincarnated.
That alone was enough for the continent to throw a duke family's secret heir into a correctional facility over nothing more than uncertain rumors.
— In your case, though, you really did accomplish something.
'Shut up.'
Still, those cult bastards really did have sharp instincts.
"Don't like either option?"
While my thoughts continued,
I looked at Cheleg's face, now growing visibly paler by the second, and nodded in satisfaction.
"Then there's one way to pardon your crimes."
With the sinister smile necromancers were known for, I leaned toward Cheleg's ear and whispered softly:
"Guide me to the Magic Tower. I need to make a deal with your father."
***
CRACK—!
A kick punched a hole through the rotten wooden boards.
An old abandoned cabin with no sign of life.
But while searching through it, Ian focused every nerve on the soles of his feet touching the ground.
"About five of them."
Drawing mana through his mana circuit, Ian swung his sword without hesitation.
A plain wooden wall.
Ian's mana-infused blade exploded into it.
KWA-BOOOOM—!
The wall burst apart with a thunderous roar.
Where the wall had stood, the mouth of a massive cave now gaped open.
"You may fool the eyes, but you can't fool the wind."
A faint breeze flowed from the cave entrance.
Such a subtle irregularity that no one but a blind man like him could have detected it.
— Grrrrr…
Of course, wind wasn't the only thing he sensed.
"The smell of corpses is spreading through the whole damn area, you bastards."
As he bared his teeth in a grin, all kinds of twisted creatures slowly emerged from the cave.
— KIIIEEEEK!
SKREEEE—!
A five-headed deer.
Zombies.
And a massive lump of flesh packed with writhing meat.
A disgusting hobby commonly practiced by unaffiliated necromancers.
"Disgusting bastards."
Of course, the ones who created these undead were no ordinary necromancers.
The Archimond Cult.
The necromancer organization that invaded the Great Northern Wall with undead.
A cancerous plague upon the continent that slaughtered people to mass-produce undead.
"W-Who are you?!"
"How did you find this hideout? The camouflage was perfect…!"
Not long after the twisted undead emerged, figures in black robes stepped out as well.
"Yeah, that camouflage sure was~ something."
They truly believed no one would ever find them.
The panic on their faces made that obvious.
"You have no idea how hard it was finding this place, you vermin."
Hostility dripped from every word.
The moment they heard him, screams erupted among the black-robed figures.
"I-Ian Leinrant?!"
"It's the Empire's Knight Slayer! What's he doing here—?!"
Knight Slayer.
At those words, Ian forced strength into eyes that could no longer truly open.
Clear fury.
But Ian's anger wasn't directed at their evil deeds.
"Why am I here?"
The true target of his rage was the people standing behind them.
The ones intentionally supporting and encouraging these monsters, using them for their own goals.
"I came to drag out the Empire's lapdogs and beat them to death."
The moment he said that, the necromancers hurriedly gave orders to the undead.
"Stop him! Buy us time—!"
Not "Kill him."
They didn't bother uttering such absurd nonsense.
Even abandoned, he was still a Leinrant.
Though old and blind, the killing intent within his blade was enough to rival the current Duke of Leinrant.
KIIIIING—!
A blinding burst of mana exploded from Ian's hand.
One of Leinrant's secret arts:
Heinkel's Meteor Sword.
KWA-KWA-KWAAANG—!
Like shooting starlight, the mana blast tore through every twisted undead standing in a straight line.
"Tch. They ran."
But the Meteor Sword had only destroyed dozens of undead.
The necromancers who created them were nowhere to be seen.
Rumble…!
A few chunks of stone fell from the ceiling and struck him, making Ian scratch the back of his head.
"Damn it. Can't use that twice."
Still, the path deeper into the cave had been completely cleared.
Just as he was about to step into the corpse-strewn tunnel—
"Hoooot?"
What the… did a bird get in here somehow?
Ian turned toward the sound behind him.
"Hoooot—!"
A pitch-black Aul.
Around its leg was an anklet marking it as a messenger bird of House Leinrant.
"What's this now?"
No way Heinkel sent it…
Thinking that, Ian unfolded the letter.
As his fingers traced the braille, the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward.
"That brat really is arrogant."
Ordering people around before even saying hello.
Once he saw that rude nephew of his again, he'd have to beat some manners into him.