Inside the small theater, chairs far more luxurious than the scale of the place warranted had been installed.
The problem was that bloodstains remained here and there on the seats, as if stamped on with paint, but if one took that as a kind of character, it was not entirely unforgivable.
To begin with, neither Ian nor Alisa was so delicate as to shudder over a little blood. And so the two of them sat with one empty seat between them and began to talk.
“You followed Irene’s trail here? Why?”
“I don’t think we’re close enough for me to tell you even that. Let’s just call it a personal grudge.”
Chik.
Ian lit a cigarette.
Naturally, Ian had no intention whatsoever of telling anyone why he was trying to catch Irene.
To explain it properly, he would inevitably have to bring up the grimoire, and there was no need to go on about Outer Gods and the like to someone he barely knew. It was better to gloss over it.
Historically, every single being who possessed a grimoire of an Outer God had been a heinous criminal bastard without exception.
Of course, Ian was an exception, but it was obvious how most people would view an Outer God’s grimoire. They would probably try to cut off his head on the spot and seal the grimoire away.
He had no intention of letting that happen easily, of course. But the best option was still to avoid creating a situation where he might be attacked in the first place. Unless it was someone who already knew the grimoire’s identity or someone with whom he had built a trustworthy relationship, he had no intention at all of revealing the grimoire’s identity to Alisa, whom he was only meeting for the second time.
So Ian exhaled cigarette smoke and quickly changed the subject.
“More importantly, what are you doing here? You even knocked out the Administration Bureau agents.”
“Nothing much. I’m personally tracking Irene too.”
Slice.
Alisa tossed the cigarette she had finished smoking carelessly onto the floor, took out a new one, and cut off the tip.
“She’s the reason I came to Korea in the first place.”
“……Hmm.”
“I don’t plan to tell you the details either, just like you. But it’s not some grand reason I have to hide completely, so I’ll give you a rough summary.”
“……”
“Irene is the mage who killed my adoptive parents. So ever since I became a mage, I’ve been chasing her.”
“Revenge, then.”
“Something like that.”
Hoo.
Alisa exhaled smoke into the air and drew the dagger fixed to her thigh. The silver-shining blade faintly illuminated the dark interior of the theater.
“To be honest, the grudge itself has been diluted almost completely for a long time now. At this point, I’m moving more out of a sense of duty.”
“……”
“But whatever the case, since she killed my adoptive parents, I have to take revenge. That’s why I’m tracking her, and if I meet her, I plan to kill her on the spot. I don’t know if I’ll feel relieved afterward, but at this point, that hardly matters.”
“Adoptive parents…… What about your biological parents?”
“I was an orphan.”
“I’m suddenly feeling a surge of kinship.”
Ian smiled faintly and flicked off his cigarette ash. He rather liked that, since she was also a smoker, he did not have to worry about being considerate.
He glanced down at the cigarette held between his fingers and opened his mouth.
“I understand the situation. But I have no intention of yielding Irene to you either. If I left her to you for no reason and you ended up losing her, things would become troublesome.”
“I’ve never lost a target before.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing coming from someone who’s been chasing Irene for years.”
“……”
Alisa pressed her lips shut. It seemed she could not think of a suitable rebuttal herself.
It did not matter. Ian leaned his upper body slightly forward and brought the cigarette back to his mouth.
“Above all else, I pursue certain safety and security. And I prefer handling things myself and confirming them with my own eyes rather than borrowing someone else’s hands.”
“……”
“So I have absolutely no intention of delegating everything to you and standing back with my arms folded.”
“I’m not planning to give up now either. I told you. It’s a duty. This is something I have to do.”
With a shing, Alisa gripped the dagger in a reverse hold.
The dagger, which even had magical engravings on it, was plainly no ordinary object at a glance. But Ian, while twirling the revolver he had not let go of, summoned the grimoire. The grimoire fell along with a stream of pure white light and settled into his grasp.
“If you’re thinking of making some half-baked threat, you’d be better off considering an all-out fight. Didn’t you say it yourself? That I’m the mage who took down even Eddy and Marian.”
“……”
“You should know better than anyone whether I took those bastards’ necks with a poker, or whether I cut them down myself.”
“……You have an incredibly aggressive personality. I only took out a dagger.”
“When a human sees a tiger in front of them bare its fangs, they pull the trigger without hesitation. There’s no law saying I shouldn’t do the same.”
Click.
Ian rotated the revolver’s cylinder by one chamber. Alisa stared at him for a moment with her ash-gray eyes, then let out a deep sigh and put away the dagger. With a whirr, she elegantly rolled the dagger between her fingers, then threw away the half-finished cigar.
“Haa…… I originally intended to handle this alone, but since things have come to this, I suppose it can’t be helped. Let’s cooperate.”
“……Cooperate?”
“Let’s kill Irene together. In exchange, I’ll take the corpse. You take all the bounty.”
At Alisa’s words, Ian furrowed his brow slightly.
“Don’t talk nonsense. I don’t know roughly how much the bounty is, but there’s no way it’s worth more than Irene’s corpse.”
“Irene’s bounty is one billion. She’s done so many things that she’s practically near the top even among mages.”
“No. I’m not exactly strapped for money right now anyway. If you truly want to cooperate, you’d better change the terms a little.”
Ian took a long drag from the cigarette that had only a little left, exhaled smoke into the air, and moved his lips.
“We split the bounty in half, and I take Irene’s head. Do what you want with the body.”
“You’re not taking the body? A mage’s organs are extremely useful.”
“The magic I use rarely employs a mage’s organs as materials. So I don’t particularly need them. And if I take everything, that would be a problem in its own way, wouldn’t it? You’d have nothing to take.”
“……That’s true.”
Alisa folded her arms. Her chest, as massive as her head, was naturally compressed and spilled slightly out beside her elbows.
Ian stared at that mass for a moment as if possessed, then subtly turned his gaze away. Fortunately, Alisa did not notice his gaze and nodded vigorously.
“Fine. Let’s make a contract on those terms. But since you conceded quite a lot, I’ll concede one thing too. You can take Irene’s heart.”
“I won’t go out of my way to refuse.”
Ian grinned, rose from his seat, and holstered the revolver. Then he extended his empty hand toward her.
“I’ll be counting on you for a while, Alisa.”
“Call me Lisa. Everyone I know calls me that.”
Alisa stood and clasped his hand. In that instant, a cold light dwelled in Ian’s eyes for about one second before disappearing.
‘The alarm hasn’t activated. No need to worry about immediate betrayal, then.’
The crow-shaped brooch attached to the hem of his coat. Reverse Scope.
That tool, which detected and warned him of threats in advance, had remained quiet from the moment he first met Alisa until now.
Even when she had gripped her dagger in a reverse hold, the scope had not reacted.
If it had reacted, Ian would have paved a nice, clean highway through Alisa’s head without hesitation on the spot.
It was the same now. Ian’s left hand held the grimoire, and his right hand lightly touched Alisa’s. All the conditions for using Re-creation magic had been met.
But fortunately, Alisa did not reveal even any hidden hostility. It seemed there was no need to recreate her entire body.
That was a good thing for Ian, and a good thing for Alisa as well.
“Then let’s look around the scene together now. Ah, before that, let’s exchange numbers. We may need to contact each other.”
Without even realizing she had nearly died just now, she took out her phone with a serious expression. Ian gave a small laugh and pointed with his finger at the spider sitting on her shoulder.
“More importantly, is that spider on your shoulder a pet?”
“……Spider?”
Alisa turned her head to look at her own shoulder.
Her next reaction was obvious.
“Kyaaaaaaak?!”
*
After a brief commotion, Ian and Alisa looked around the small theater together.
The audience seats were arranged in six rows. In about half of them, spectators sat upright. All of them were dressed in suits, all kinds of luxury goods embedded directly into their skin, and they stared at the stage with expressions that seemed to be screaming.
Not a single living human remained. As if their joints had been fixed in place with strings, they sat in the same posture without the slightest movement, mouths gaping wide open. There were no tongues inside those open mouths.
“I searched all their IDs. Fortunately, it seems their belongings were transferred with them as they were, because nothing was damaged.”
As Ian stared fixedly at the face of a dead man, Alisa approached and held out the IDs she had collected.
Just as she said, nothing in particular was damaged. The traces of people who had been alive and breathing just a short while ago cooled in Ian’s grasp while still retaining their warmth. Ian carefully examined the names, ages, and other details written on the IDs, then furrowed his brow.
“There’s no commonality at all.”
“They’re victims who got randomly swept up in Irene’s magic. Since no one knows what might happen if they tamper with the corpses carelessly, the Administration Bureau seems to be responding passively too. Normally, it would be standard procedure to collect all the bodies.”
“You talk as if you’ve worked with the Administration Bureau before.”
“For a while in the Philippines. Not in Korea.”
Alisa turned her head toward the stage.
“More importantly, look over there.”
He looked.
A small stage. On top of it, five humans were preserved like actors.
They had no faces. More precisely, the skin of their faces had been torn off, leaving only the muscles plainly exposed.
Their poses were all different: a man holding his own head in his hands; a woman praying with her ribs piercing out of her back like wings; two women with pink trees blooming from their heads, fused into the wall; and a man frozen in the act of swinging the hammer in his hand. Five in total.
The only thing they had in common was that every one of them had been severely mutilated. Everything else was completely jumbled.
“This is awful……”
Ian muttered unconsciously and grimaced. Since it was his first time seeing one of Irene’s works, the reaction was unavoidable. Alisa, who had witnessed Irene’s magic relatively many times, was in somewhat better condition.
“Most bastards who combine magic with art are like this. Every last one of them gets trapped in their own artistic world and repeats all sorts of bizarre nonsense.”
“……”
“Of course, there are some who aren’t like that, but most are the same. So it’s best not to get involved with mages who go on about art.”
After saying that, Alisa took one step back and continued.
“Well, fine. Now let’s do what we have to do.”
“What we have to do?”
“Collect traces. In the end, to find out where Irene herself is, we have to go around the scene, gather various traces, and combine them into one. Only then can we activate tracking magic based on it. Otherwise, we’d need one of Irene’s paintings……”
“I have one at my house. We can use that.”
“……You have a painting? Where did you even get—”
The moment Alisa said that, a blinding light bloomed at the center of the stage. Ian reflexively drew and gripped his revolver, while Alisa narrowed her eyes halfway and pulled out the machete hanging at her hip.
Fortunately, the light soon faded. But the two of them did not lower their guard.
The place where the light had been.
At its center, a man with a camera for a head stood motionless, his brown coat fluttering.
[Hm. So this is the nearest additional scene. It’s much cleaner than the last—]
“Lisa.”
Before the aberration could even finish speaking, Ian cut it off and murmured in a low voice. Instead of answering, Lisa swung the machete clenched tight in her hand in a horizontal arc. Ian pulled the trigger even faster than she moved.
Bang!
The bullet, fired with a tremendous roar, flew toward the aberration’s head.
At that moment, the aberration reacted by twisting its head 180 degrees.
[Hup!]
It contorted its body. The bullet slammed into its shoulder, shattering it and tearing off its arm. But the head Ian had originally aimed for was unharmed.
‘It reacted?’
No matter that there was some distance between them, it was only around five meters. At that range, the time it took for a bullet to reach its target could only be less than a second.
And that aberration had reacted to it.
‘What the hell is this bastard?’
The instant that thought flashed through Ian’s mind, Alisa’s machete reached one of the creature’s legs.
Shrrrk!
Its pants tore, and the skin beneath was shredded apart, sending fresh blood spraying. The machete struck bone and vibrated with a strange sound.
[Oh dear! I’m not fond of striking ladies!]
Left as it was, its entire leg would have been severed and then some. But the aberration spoke as calmly as ever and spun its body in a full turn.
Rotating in the opposite direction from where the machete was lodged, it kicked precisely toward Alisa’s head. Alisa clicked her tongue and retreated, letting go of the machete.
Whoosh!
A vortex generated by the movement of its leg pushed the machete out. The aberration roughly shook off its bleeding leg, regenerated even its shattered arm, and opened its mouth.
[Ladies and gentlemen. I do not know who you are, but I ask that you set aside your hostility for a moment. I did not come here to harm either of you. Please, hear my explanation first.]
It spoke in an exceedingly refined British accent as it removed the fedora from its head.
[My name is Sherlock Holmes. I am a detective residing on Baker Street in England. At present, I have entered Korea in pursuit of James Moriarty.]
“...The fuck are you—”
[Beautiful lady. From the look of it, you too seem to be following Moriarty’s traces. The lingering scent of ether clings to your fingers. There is no need to ask whose it is. The ether composition on your hand matches that of the ‘works’ here.]
Holmes spoke while keeping his gaze fixed on Alisa. Instead of answering, Alisa tilted her head.
Regardless, Holmes continued speaking as he examined the traces on her body.
[The magic circle engraved on your abdomen allowed me to tell at once that you are a mage. The cigar crumbs at the corner of your mouth. You are a smoker. I am one as well. The gloves you are wearing are quite worn, evidence that you have been doing this sort of work for a fairly long time. Judging by the smell of gunpowder coming from your coat, it seems you primarily handle firearms. If that is the case, then you must be keeping them in an inner pocket of your coat so they are not visible from the outside.]
“...Huh.”
[What hangs around your neck is a talisman. I do not know its exact effect, but considering that you engaged in close combat unlike the gentleman over there, I suspect it is related to recovery. Am I correct?]
“...You said you were Sherlock Holmes? You do have the qualifications to use that name. Every bit of it is correct.”
Alisa answered in English. Holmes bowed his head deeply.
[Thank you, my lady. I am truly glad my deductions were to your liking. That being the case, my lady, might I ask one favor of you?]
“Go ahead.”
Click.
Alisa said as she drew a sawed-off shotgun from her pocket. Holmes immediately dropped to his knees.
[Please spare my life.]
At those entirely unexpected words, Alisa’s movements stopped for an instant. Ian understood short bits of English as well, so he roughly grasped what the creature had said. Holmes, quick to read the twisted expressions on their faces, added an explanation.
[I never imagined there would be mages at the place I moved to. I will be of assistance to you, so please just spare me. I will give you England, and even my honor as a detective!]
“......”
“......”
Ian and Alisa looked down at the back of the creature’s head as it lay flat on the floor and let out hollow laughs.