༺ 𓆩 Chapter 21 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
“……That is everything I know.”
Having finished his confession, Deacon Silvio squeezed his eyes shut.
“Hah. So it was all exactly as the young master predicted.”
Randolph let out a hollow laugh, as though the sheer absurdity of it had left him speechless. When he had first heard Isaac’s suspicions, he had thought them impossible. Yet now every one of those impossible things stood branded with the seal of truth.
A link between the Old Faith and the cultists.
And in the middle of it all, the ones who had been played for fools were Nias, Randolph, and Pyke; the bishop had created villains in order to expand the Old Faith’s influence in Goethe. And to raise those villains, he had used the tithes taken from Goethe.
Naturally, neither the bishop nor those tied to him had forgotten to skim off their own share.
The deacon trembling before them, blood running from his wounds, had fashioned a new doctrine from the theology he had learned within the Old Faith, then stirred up vagrants and beggars and turned them into a cult.
“That was a wretched sort of confession.”
Randolph spoke with a look of disbelief.
“…….”
Silence filled the prison.
And at the end of that silence, all eyes turned to one place.
To Isaac.
“What will you do?” Carlson asked.
“Tomorrow, Schiller will go to the cathedral with the deacon. I’ll settle things there.”
“Then our part in this ends here, for now.”
“Who knows. Sir Randolph, Carlson, do you have a little time tonight?”
“Pardon?”
Randolph and Carlson looked at Isaac in puzzlement; they had only just begun to relax, now that the deacon’s confession had been secured.
“I think we may need to receive some guests.”
It was only natural; the bishop, having had his tail trodden on, would never sit still.
Isaac gazed steadily at the deacon.
“Do not think you have won. This time, a Margrave’s vile scheme has interfered with our holy work, but Goethe will pay for this without fail! His Grace the Bishop will see that the Margrave is severely punished……!”
“Not His Excellency the Margrave. Young Master Isaac.”
In a flat voice, Carlson corrected the deacon’s misunderstanding.
“……?”
“I’m the one who devised this plan. So if anyone comes demanding payment, they’ll have to come to me. Though that won’t happen. Come. Let’s talk for a while.”
Isaac beckoned to Randolph and Carlson, then stepped out of the interrogation room.
The deacon could only stare at the backs of the three of them, wearing a dazed expression.
***⚜***
Late that night.
The clouds crowded the sky, and the moon seldom showed its face.
“Have you heard about the man-eating pig farm in the southwest of the city of Bern?”
“I’ve heard that story more than ten times already.”
“Ah, is that so?”
“I’m going to go piss.”
“Don’t go wandering off. Come straight back.”
One of the guards waved a lazy hand and disappeared into a dim alley.
But even after a long while, the guard who had gone to relieve himself did not return.
“That bastard. Don’t tell me he slipped off by himself to drink in some corner. Oi, Vernon!”
The guard watching the entrance moved in the direction his subordinate had vanished.
But before he had taken even three steps, darkness swallowed his vision.
Above the fallen guard, five shadows appeared soundlessly.
From head to mouth they were wrapped in black cloth, black enough not to catch the eye in the night.
They exchanged glances, then entered the holding facility.
“Ghk—”
A jailer rolling dice in dull solitude took a dagger through the throat.
Crack—!!!
The neck of the jailer guarding the entrance to the second underground level twisted in a direction no neck ought ever to turn.
The five shadows moved with perfect discipline, checking the identities of those behind the iron bars.
At the far end of the second underground floor of the holding facility, the interrogation room stood with its door open.
The deacon sagged in his chair, bound fast. One eye had swollen so badly he could scarcely have seen out of it.
One of the five stepped into the interrogation room and moved to drive a dagger into the deacon’s throat.
Thud—!!!
But before the dagger could reach him, the shadow felt heat bloom in his side.
But there was no pain.
The arming sword that had crushed through bone and muscle was already being pulled free, and in the next instant it sheared his neck clean through.
The remaining four shadows did not panic.
Sensing movement at once, they split into pairs and rushed toward the blind corners on either side of the entrance.
Carlson waited in one shadowed angle. In the other stood Randolph, who had already dealt with one man.
Randolph knocked aside the two rapiers thrust at him, then hacked through one man’s shoulder.
“Khk.”
The groan that escaped was strangely small for such a wound.
Then the injured shadow abruptly fled out of the interrogation room.
“Ralph!”
“I know!”
Ralph answered Carlson’s shout.
Not one of them could be allowed to escape.
That was Isaac’s order.
They could not let word reach the bishop and give him time to think.
This had to be finished swiftly.
Clang—!!!
Aura flared along Randolph’s arming sword, and in the same instant the rapier of the shadow facing him snapped apart.
“Kuhk—”
The arming sword bit into the shadow’s neck.
Randolph kicked the corpse in the belly to wrench his blade free, then set off after the one who had fled.
Carlson faced the remaining two while shifting himself in front of the deacon. He was taking the position first, making sure neither of them could break past him and reach the prisoner. Two rapiers and one arming sword crossed and collided, throwing off sparks.
In swordsmanship Carlson held the advantage, but unlike Randolph, who used aura, he was not so overwhelming that he could simply crush a numerical disadvantage.
The taut deadlock broke because of a single variable.
“Move!”
The deacon, believing they had come to save him, rose with the chair still tied to him and shoved Carlson aside.
“Ghk— w, why……?”
But that was the deacon’s mistake.
The shadow drove a dagger into his chest.
Carlson recovered his footing and moved to cut the man down, but the shadow had already seized the deacon as a shield and pressed the dagger to his throat.
And in the instant Carlson hesitated, the shadow slit the deacon’s neck.
“Kehk, kehk—”
The deacon clutched at his throat with a stunned look, making a wet boiling sound; blood poured ceaselessly through his fingers.
While Carlson checked the deacon’s state, the two remaining shadows were already running out of the interrogation room.
Once he confirmed that the deacon was dead, Carlson gave chase.
Silence descended over the prison on the second underground floor.
Creak—!!!
The iron hinges gave a groan.
The one who had made the sound was Isaac, who had been watching the situation from the cell beside the interrogation room.
“…….”
The deacon had died with his eyes open.
Isaac closed them for him.
He had lost the witness who could have proven the bishop’s crimes.
And yet, from another angle, it was iron proof that every word of the deacon’s testimony had been true.
The material evidence had already been secured in abundance.
It was unfortunate for the deacon, but to Isaac the man had held a certain value whether he lived or died.
‘Even so, this is not exactly welcome.’
One way or another, seeing another man die was never a pleasant thing.
If Isaac had used magic, he might perhaps have saved the deacon.
But if it became known that he could wield mana, there was no telling what sort of upheaval it would cause. In time, it would come to light that he suffered from the same abnormal constitution as Zeke von Goethe, who had burned the royal capital.
Every royal and noble in the kingdom might come to fear Goethe, or turn against it outright.
Regrettably, the deacon’s life was not worth that degree of risk to Isaac.
“Oh, well now. And who might this be?”
It was an unexpected voice that broke Isaac’s thoughts.
“Is that not Isaac?”
“……I did not expect to meet you in a place like this, Bishop Levonius.”
Isaac rose and looked toward the man standing in the doorway of the interrogation room.
The man had drawn a shabby robe up over his head, but even that loose garment could not conceal the swell of his great belly.
The dignity visible in his exposed lower face, the mild smile he wore as though by habit.
This was the bishop who had arranged all of it.
“You see me and yet you are not surprised. Is that how it is with the child of a margrave, to be unusual from the cradle?”
“You are the surprising one. I did not expect you to come in person.”
Even for Isaac, the bishop’s appearance had been unforeseen.
“I am surprised as well. That Goethe’s petty scheming should ruin matters so thoroughly. They say every labor brings profit, but it seems my own labors were insufficient. So I came to labor with my own hands, and indeed, the effort has been worthwhile.”
The bishop smiled faintly.
His expression revealed nothing plainly, yet Isaac understood its meaning.
“You look like a man who has found a gold coin in the street.”
“Does it seem so? I raised Deacon Silvio as though he were my own son from his orphaned days. At present, I am grieving.”
“So you feel at least a little guilt over the deacon’s death?”
“No. It is his corruption that pains my heart. To think he would submit to evil so easily. And yet he knew gratitude, in his way. He has brought you here to me, Isaac.”
“You mean to kill me as well.” Isaac spoke calmly.
“You have eyes without fear. Isaac, do you remember that I baptized you?” The bishop opened with one hand the worn old book tucked beneath his arm.
Isaac recognized it at once.
‘A grimoire.’
Within the Empire’s Old Faith, the persecution of mages was in full fury.
Because of that, the number of magical relics confiscated by the Holy See alone reached into the thousands.
The grimoire in the bishop’s hand was one such relic.
“I do not remember.”
“That is only natural. You were an infant then. I never found your birth pleasing, you know. A child born between faithless Goethe and a gathering of barbarian cultists.”
The bishop shook his head slowly.
“In a way, it was only natural that you were cursed. You were the fruit of a union that ran contrary to His will.”
“…….”
“Isaac, you ought never to have been born. Had you been born normal, like your younger brother, that would be another matter. But as you are now, your very existence is proof enough that the joining of Goethe and the barbarians stands against divine providence.”
“You say such hurtful things with remarkable ease, for a man who is a bishop.”
“I pity you, and so I tell you why you must die. Yours is a soul that cannot be saved.”
“What profit is there in killing me?”
“You will die today at the hands of cultists. By that, the wicked union with the heathens will be severed. And this land will be cleansed.”
“……So that was it.”
A bleakness entered Isaac’s gaze.
Only now did the final piece of the puzzle fall into place.
Why the cultists had been ordered to use Isaac as a sacrifice.
It had not been merely a means to throw the people of the territory into unrest.
Most of the cultists, Nias included, were vagrants.
And most vagrants were remnants of tribes broken apart in the frontier.
Those tribes had been destroyed after opposing the peace forged between Goethe and the Great Tribe.
If they were to butcher Isaac as a sacrifice in some hideous rite, then the peace between Goethe and the tribes, achieved at last in the Margrave’s generation, would shatter.
‘I thought I had volunteered myself as bait. In truth, I had been their target from the beginning.’
Around this same time in his previous life, there had been an attempt on Isaac’s life.
The assassins had killed themselves as soon as they failed, leaving no way to discover who stood behind them.
At the time, he had thought it some mere grievance over the mana explosion.
Now, at last, the outlines became clear.
“You would do well not to expect your knights to return. The five sent here from the beginning were only bait. Thirteen holy knights are waiting. Men for whom it would be inconvenient to show their faces in a place like this.”
From the pouch at his waist, the bishop took out a stake.
“They say the barbarians use such stakes when they perform sacrifice rites. To fasten the offering in place so that many gods may tear at it more conveniently. Truly, there is nothing so savage.”
Whoosh—!!!
In an instant, the stake in the bishop’s hand cut through the air toward Isaac.
It was aimed precisely between his eyes.
Kiiing—!!!
But before it could reach Isaac, the nail struck something unseen and veered off its course.
“So it is a grimoire inscribed with a phase-shift formula.”
The stake buried itself in an entirely different wall.
Isaac kept his face expressionless as he spoke, though inwardly he was slightly startled.
‘So it really was a grimoire.’
It was only a simple phase shift, yet the force behind it was astonishing.
Even a blunt stake, after colliding with a shard of ice, had enough power left to pierce stone.
But Isaac was not the only one surprised.
“Why can you…… use ice magic?”
The bishop’s face drained into shock.
It was not merely that Isaac had used ice magic. He had intercepted a flying projectile with perfect precision.
The situation lay far beyond anything the bishop had imagined.
“Who knows. Perhaps I sold my soul to a devil.”
The blood spilled across the floor from Deacon Silvio was still warm.
Those droplets rose against gravity, lifting into the air and winding together.
Crk—!!!
Then they formed into crystals of ice.
“Because I pity you, Bishop, I will tell you why you must die. It is because it would be inconvenient if word got out, just yet, that I can use magic.”
Whoosh—!!!
The ice crystals wrought from Deacon Silvio’s blood shot violently toward the bishop.
END σϝ CHAPTER