Twelve pillars of light stood in a circle.
Not a single seat was empty. Translucent figures filled the round table, each with their own density. It seemed as though the rank of each seat divided even the quality of its light.
Only the head seat rose a beat late.
Murmuring filled the gap first.
“Did they say spirit beast-class?”
“I heard a report came in saying it was draconic.”
“Judging by the scale of the energy waves observed on-site, it’s certainly no ordinary Irregular.”
“All Irregulars so far have been humanoid. Without exception.”
“That is precisely my point. If a non-humanoid type has been confirmed, doesn’t that mean we must rebuild the classification system from the ground up?”
“Shouldn’t we provisionally register it as a sage-class unclassified entity and begin an investigation first?”
“On the basis of reports from mercenaries and fixers?”
There was laughter in the words. A silence followed, with more seeming to agree than not.
“It isn’t testimony. It’s residual energy waves. You must have seen the field observation figures.”
“Wasn’t the observation equipment also the mercenaries’? Whether its precision even meets Council standards is questionable.”
Words cut across words. There was formality, but no order.
The light of the head seat completed itself.
It was an old man. His eyes were more noticeable than his wrinkles. Deep, settled eyes that seemed never to have hurried once.
“Silence.”
One word. Low.
The round table fell quiet. One by one, in order, they closed their mouths. That process itself was the order of this place.
The chairman’s gaze lowered to one side of the round table. A seat one tier below the twelve formal pillars. The man standing there had red eyes.
“Chief Executor Ezekiel Vermilion.”
It was less a calling of his name than a summons.
Ezekiel did not answer. He only inclined his head by the slightest degree. The collar of his robe was fastened unusually tight around the nape of his neck.
The chairman continued.
“We will begin with the core transport incident.”
The air around the round table sank by another layer.
“During transport under the Council’s direct jurisdiction, the core was seized in a surprise attack by traitor forces. The area in question was under the jurisdiction of House Vermilion, and responsibility for the field response lay with the Chief Executor.”
Ezekiel’s jaw clenched once.
“Afterward, in the same area, a knight-class Irregular engagement, large-scale abnormal behavior among contaminated entities, and the appearance of a sage-class unclassified entity were confirmed in succession.”
The chairman cut himself off.
“None of these were included in the Chief Executor’s report.”
Silence settled. There was not even a murmur.
Ezekiel’s red eyes narrowed by a fraction.
“I merely did not submit matters that had yet to be dealt with.”
“Dealt with.”
The chairman repeated the words as if placing them on a scale.
“The battlefield was erased by a high-altitude warhead, and most of those involved either fled or died. The whereabouts of the core remain unknown. Is this what the Chief Executor calls being in the process of dealing with it?”
The moment Ezekiel was about to open his mouth, the chairman’s gaze dropped.
He did not press further.
On the opposite side of the round table, in a seat even lower than the formal pillars, there was silver hair. Short and light. On the coat, mixed with metallic ornaments, the crest of House Loen was set small upon the left shoulder. A family proxy. Originally, someone of that rank had no place standing here.
Rin Casiel Loen.
In that brief interval when the chairman withdrew his questioning, Rin’s gaze moved from the chairman to Ezekiel, then back to the chairman once.
As if changing the mood, the chairman spoke.
“Before we proceed to the main issue. Rin Casiel of House Loen, congratulations on becoming the youngest ever to be promoted to the Second Rank. You are a talent who will shoulder the next generation of the magical world.”
It was a congratulation offered immediately after he had pressed Ezekiel.
Rin bowed her head.
“You honor me beyond my worth.”
It was brief.
“Already?”
A murmur drifted from somewhere. Rin did not react.
For the first time, Ezekiel’s gaze turned toward Rin. It did not linger long. Nor was it light.
The chairman shifted his gaze.
“We will hear the opinion of our external contracted forces.”
One channel at the outer edge of the round table brightened. A figure with its resolution deliberately lowered. A corporate emblem on a suit showed through faintly.
“Compiling the reports from our hired fixers and mercenary personnel, it is difficult to regard this as the appearance of an ancient spirit beast. We believe it is more likely a variant of an Irregular, or an undisclosed experimental specimen belonging to another force.”
The round table listened quietly.
“However, in that area, activity by non-contracted fixers was also detected, aside from our contracted personnel. Upon checking, Mudang Corporation seemed to be in quite a state of disorder.”
The corner of the mouth moved by the smallest degree.
“Rumors are circulating that the heir’s fiancée may have been killed near the area in question. Whether this is related to the present incident remains unconfirmed, but we judged it a movement worth your attention.”
The density of several pillars of light wavered faintly. No one reacted directly. It was merely that gazes had moved in each of their own spaces.
The chairman nodded.
“We will take it under advisement.”
The megacorp channel dimmed by one level.
Silence flowed.
Rin raised her head.
“May I ask one thing?”
The chairman granted permission with his gaze.
Rin’s voice was low. Only its tempo was quick. The rhythm of someone selecting only what was necessary and setting it down.
“The area in question overlaps with the last confirmed location of the core our family had been tracking under Council commission.”
“In the same time frame, a knight-class engagement, abnormal behavior among contaminated entities, and the appearance of an unclassified entity all occurred simultaneously.”
“I believe we cannot rule out the possibility that the core’s whereabouts are connected to that entity.”
Three lines. She stopped there.
She had merely placed three facts side by side. She did not draw a conclusion. Yet the arrangement itself pointed in one direction.
The round table stirred.
“It’s connected to the core?”
“If the time and place overlap…”
“Isn’t that a leap?”
Rin said nothing more. With her mouth closed, she watched the round table begin to turn on its own.
The chairman spoke as if bringing matters to order.
“We will form an investigation team.”
Then he looked at Ezekiel. This time, the gaze itself was a statement.
“It was lost in the Chief Executor’s jurisdiction. It would be proper for the Chief Executor to handle the recovery personally.”
Lost. Recovery.
Something flickered once deep inside Ezekiel’s red eyes. But none of it leaked outward.
“Understood.”
Low and brief. He could not refuse. If the one who had omitted the report also refused the investigation, he would hand the chairman an even greater pretext. More than anything, if he did not control the scene personally, traces of Reje might surface there.
At that moment, one pillar of light moved.
A formal seat at the round table. The pillar opposite Ezekiel. The voice was gentle. And as sharp as it was gentle.
“Chairman. May I offer a proposal?”
“Speak.”
“The tracking of the core was originally a Council-commissioned matter jointly carried out by House Loen and House Vermilion. Would it not be procedurally natural for personnel from the Loen side to join the investigation team?”
“Above all, as this incident occurred in a jointly administered zone between allied houses, I believe having both sides’ eyes present would also accord with the trust of the Council as a whole.”
Between allied houses.
That single phrase was a blade. Inside the word allied, it had inserted the question, “Are they truly allies?” It was a sentence driving a wedge between Loen and Vermilion.
Ezekiel’s gaze turned toward the speaker. The face beyond the pillar of light was not clear, but everyone knew which house it belonged to.
The chairman paused briefly, then nodded.
“A reasonable proposal. Rin Casiel of House Loen, join the investigation team and serve concurrently as liaison for the Council side.”
Liaison. That was the pretext.
Ezekiel’s jaw clenched and then loosened. For the second time.
Rin bowed her head with proper courtesy. Her expression did not change.
A watcher from an allied house. A role added on without being requested. No one at the round table knew whether Rin had wanted this. Not even Ezekiel.
The pillars of light began to go out one by one.
The meeting was over.
When only darkness remained in the place where the round table had vanished, Rin’s figure was the last to disappear.
The light went out.
As the afterimage of the round table vanished from view, a narrow private communications room was revealed. The crest of House Loen was set into one of the metal walls.
Rin turned her head. Against one wall, beside a simple healing device, she saw someone standing, leaning there. A pale face, a body for which standing itself was too much. Even so, she was forcing herself to stand. Because she had been told to.
Without looking that way, Rin spoke.
“You heard?”
It was not confirmation. It was a premise. Karin did not answer right away. Rin did not wait either.
“The core. Resonance.”
She tossed out the two words and reached toward the communications device. Her attitude said it made no difference whether Karin was there or not. The hand touching the machine came before any gaze directed at Karin.
Karin’s jaw moved. Her face looked as though she had swallowed something.
“It got weaker.”
Rin’s hand stopped.
“Suddenly. The feeling changed. It’s not gone, but it feels like something got wedged in between. Before, it had just moved farther away, but now it feels blurred because something else is in the way.”
She poured it all out at once. It was the rhythm of speaking only the parts she was certain of.
For the first time, Rin looked toward Karin. From above to below. It was a gaze sweeping over the body she had forcibly dragged back up after it had been impaled on rebar and left dying.
“Believe me or not.”
Karin cut off her gaze first.
Rin looked a little longer. Then she withdrew her gaze.
“That’s troublesome.”
It was a mutter to herself. The inference she had set down in the meeting room was drawing closer to fact.
Rin leaned her body toward the wall. There was nothing to see beyond the communications room wall. It was a sealed space wedged among the structures of the Loen main house, inside The City.
“Do you know what the core is?”
Karin did not answer.
“Of course you don’t. Even if you were of the direct line, all you heard was the outer shell.”
She spoke without looking back. In a tone that said there was no value in doing so.
“Don’t tell me you thought you could fix yourself with that. A half-baked thing like you, rolling around outside pretending to be a fixer, and by sheer luck the core just drops right in front of you.”
“You were lucky. It just happened to catch because of your constitution. Well, in the end, that luck ended with you being carried back half-dead, didn’t it?”
Rin turned her head slightly. Karin’s fingertips were trembling. Seeing that, Rin twisted the corner of her mouth. There was not the slightest hint of tenderness.
“But one thing did remain. Resonance. The only thing that functions in that body of yours where magic doesn’t respond.”
She walked over. Toward Karin. The sound of her heels struck the communications room floor.
“You said you wanted to cure your illness, didn’t you? That’s only possible while you’re useful. You know that, don’t you?”
She stopped in front of Karin. Looked down at her. Both of them knew that it was Rin who had dragged her up from the state of dying, impaled on rebar.
“If we lose it, it’s over.”
Her voice was low. It was not comfort.
“Your illness, and your reason to be standing here.”
Karin’s teeth clenched. Her fist tightened. Her eyes wavered once, then settled. It was not that she had nothing to say in rebuttal. Her face showed she knew that even if she did, this woman would simply seize her by the scruff of the neck and smash her into the floor.
She did not answer. She pulled her shoulder away from the wall.
Rin was already turning away. There was no need to look. She had confirmed that the tool functioned, and she had received the answer that it did.
“Get ready.”
She threw the words over her back.
Karin did not answer. The shoulder she had pulled away trembled by the smallest degree, but that was all.
-----
The darkness was thick.
Inside the metal corridor, not far from where several structures had collapsed.
I stood before two corpses.