······Once, in the northwest of the Empire, there was a small village. It was a hollow, humble hamlet deep in the mountains, where a hundred or so households lived huddled together. Gerek was a country youth, born and raised in that village.
Day after day there was an ordinary, desireless life. They wanted a night’s daily bread more than gold, silver, and treasures, and preferred a mug of wheat beer with friends after finishing the farmwork to success or noble titles.
······Gerek remembered the magical tidal wave that had taken all of it away. The tragedy of the entire village being submerged was still vivid in his mind.
The screams of death that rang madly through the dark night, never to be forgotten for all eternity. The cold groans of those floundering in the waves. The flashing lightning and the thunder that pounded against his heart.
The skin of those who had once been human, turning deathly blue.
One day, his village was swept away by a raging torrent, and his family, neighbors, cousins, friends, and lover were all drowned.
It was a tragedy wrought by the Yukline family in the name of “demon hunting.”
Everyone died, but Gerek survived. He was the sole survivor who had grasped at a straw.
After that hellish night had passed, the village was no longer a village but a lake, yet Gerek was not lonely.
As he looked into the deep bottom of that lake, he instead felt a presence filling up within his own body.
His younger sister, father, mother, friends, cousins, neighbors who had died that day. The personalities of eleven family members whom he had thought would be with him for life had been embraced within his flesh.
The dam Yukline broke that day had submerged the village, but their souls would still live on inside Gerek’s body······.
······And yet.
“Well, was the agony of drowning bearable?”
Deculein’s voice revived the pain of that day. It burned away Gerek’s reason.
He heard a dark cry surging from his heart.
It was the water-choked shrieks of those who had been dying.
*
“······Madman.”
Al Roth hid in the darkness and watched the scene. Trapped within the barrier, Deculein aimed the muzzle at his own temple and smiled as he glared at Gerek. It was a noble’s distinctive smile, one that scorned and trampled upon another.
“Second shot.”
Click─!
Deculein pulled the trigger. There was no discharge, but threatening mana rose from Gerek’s body.
“Open your eyes, Gerek.”
Deculein was provoking Gerek without end. It was an absurd act of a hostage taking his own life hostage, but it was certainly a method that would work on Gerek.
Gerek “absolutely” wanted to be the one to kill Deculein.
If it was not by his own hand, he would not allow anyone else to kill Deculein.
The same went for Deculein “killing himself.”
“······Deculein.”
Gerek called his name. His gaze and tone were full of malice and poison, but Deculein merely faced him as though looking at a cute puppy and twisted the corner of his mouth.
“Yes. The head of the family that submerged your village is right here.”
Just what was that professor thinking? Was he resolved to die rather than hand over the runic language to the bastards of the Altar?
At this point, there was nothing Al Roth could do either.
“······Gerek. Don’t be deceived. That revolver is a fake.”
Jukaken murmured calmly. He was analyzing Deculein inside the barrier with his thorough Magic Eye.
“Whether it is fake, or whether it is real—until it is fired, no one knows.”
Without the slightest agitation, Deculein hooked his finger on the trigger.
And then.
“I trust my luck.”
He fired.
──!
A gunshot that made a mockery of that confidence.
The revolver fired a bullet, and Deculein collapsed, scattering a spray of red blood. The massive rupture repeated like an echo.
······.
It was silent. Not even the sound of breathing seeped in. Jukaken, and even Al Roth, were flustered.
“······What the.”
Was he dead? Because of that barrier, it was impossible to grasp the details, but at least there had been no interference from magic or mana.
But Deculein was not a knight, he was a mage. There was no way a mere mage could withstand the killing force of a bullet······.
No.
To begin with, whether he was alive or dead was not the issue now.
Such things did not matter to the eyes of Gerek, who had already gone completely mad.
“Well, I suppose I never thought it would be easy.”
The moment Jukaken muttered so mournfully—
────!
Gerek went berserk. Black mana clung to his entire body like armor, and he transformed into a pitch-black monstrosity (怪異), no longer human, and bombarded the area.
All kinds of mana burst from his mouth, hands, and feet, destroying space itself. Jukaken’s subordinates, the Altar’s mages and executives who had been watching the situation unfold, all of Al Roth’s dolls······ the ferocious beast tore them all apart.
His kicks trampled the roadbed, and his claws half-destroyed the ceiling. From his maw, he spewed a mana cannon resembling a breath attack. That atrocious frenzy collapsed this underground space into an even deeper underground.
In that hellscape, the only thing intact was Deculein’s barrier.
*
Her true body, freed from the doll, “Al Roth,” silently looked around the underground space.
Crackle, crackle—embers flared on the crushed roadbed, Deculein had become a corpse that had committed suicide inside the barrier, and Gerek lay exhausted in the middle of it all.
“There are······ no biosignals.”
Al Roth looked at Deculein inside the barrier. His pulse had stopped, and his heart, of course, was not moving.
Haa······.
A faint sigh. Soon, Al Roth growled and approached Gerek.
“You stupid bastard. Seriously, you high-maintenance idiot.”
Because this damned lunatic had smashed every one of her dolls, she had no choice but to come in her true body.
Al Roth carried Gerek on her back. Since he was a lanky beanpole, he was not that heavy.
──At that very moment.
“······!”
For an instant, Al Roth sensed someone’s presence behind her.
A grotesque chill dyed her back.
It was a shudder close to a tremor.
Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at a man slowly raising himself.
“······My head is a little dizzy.”
That voice seized Al Roth’s consciousness. She turned back as though snapping her neck around.
“Huh······?”
Deculein.
His gaze glowed blue like will-o’-the-wisps.
Those cold eyes were looking at her.
“Al Roth.”
He called her name. Al Roth unconsciously stepped backward. It was instinctive wariness.
“Hand over Gerek.”
“······What are you planning to do?”
To that question, Deculein answered calmly.
As though asking why she would question something so obvious.
“It would be convenient to kill him.”
But Al Roth shook her head.
“I won’t hand him over.”
Camaraderie. It was not some stylish romance like that. It was merely because Gerek’s existence was material that would one day ultimately complete her puppetry.
Deculein twisted the corner of his mouth and shrugged.
“It can’t be helped.”
Al Roth’s mana took form. Blue blades illuminating the underground aimed at Deculein.
She had prepared for battle, but Deculein said something strange.
“I have no choice but to let you go.”
“······?”
Al Roth furrowed her brow.
From Deculein’s perspective, the logic was simple. He could not defeat Al Roth by force, so if they fought, he would lose, and his head was dizzy besides······.
“Let me go?”
“Since you’re going back, I’ll go with you.”
Deculein nonchalantly dismantled the barrier. Then he brushed past Al Roth’s shoulder as she carried Gerek on her back.
Gooooooo───!
The underground had collapsed and was blocked off, but Deculein opened a passage with 「Psychokinesis」. Al Roth followed behind him, though suspiciously.
“······How did you survive? You didn’t use magic. Your pulse had stopped, too.”
“Controlling my body is easy.”
That was all Deculein answered.
Soon, after coming up to the surface, he saw Al Roth’s car. In modern terms, it was a luxury car on par with a Mercedes-Benz.
“You drive. Put Gerek in the trunk.”
“······.”
Al Roth obeyed him for the time being. Deculein naturally took the seat of honor, and Al Roth grasped the steering wheel.
“Hmm······.”
She looked at him through the rearview mirror.
His posture, expression, and clothing were all elegant and leisurely. For someone who had just caused a suicide commotion, he was astonishingly refined.
“Depart.”
As if she were his secretary.
Al Roth clicked her tongue and drove the car.
Thus, when the car, running smoothly, entered the paved road from the darkness of the Empire’s borderlands—
Al Roth asked,
“······Deculein. Was that something a human being should say? Asking about the pain of drowning.”
“······.”
Deculein smiled silently.
The ill-fated connection between Gerek and Yukline was a setting he knew clearly, so he had used it. That was all. However, it would not be an entirely bad thing.
After all, Kim Woojin also knew how to clear the quest of saving Gerek from terrible chaos.
“More importantly, did you leave the ring you bought at my auction at home?”
“······.”
Al Roth chuckled and nodded. Since her true body had been exposed, there was nothing to hide.
“It must suit you well. On you.”
And yet, Deculein’s every word kept digging into her nerves. It felt as though some hidden meaning lay behind them.
A way of speaking that made people ponder, and made them shrink. The trait 「Intimidation and Dignity」 was working that way.
It was then.
─Please stop for a moment!
Some knights were controlling the road up ahead. When Al Roth stopped the car, one man approached.
─Please open the window and show your identification······?
As he peered at Al Roth in the driver’s seat, he discovered Deculein in the back seat and widened his eyes.
─Professor Deculein?!
When Deculein nodded, the man made a fuss.
─He’s here! The professor is here, the professor is here!
At the moment of that shout.
Al Roth saw it. Beyond the windshield, the presence of a certain giant slowly rising.
─What? Professor Deculein?
The head of Freyden, Zeit.
Zeit von Brugang Freyden.
At the appearance of that monster, Al Roth’s hair stood on end. He was the only knight who had inflicted trauma on Al Roth four years ago.
─Where.
Step. Step. Step.
A massive stride that overtook three steps of others with one of his own. Zeit approached, his snow-white hair swaying, like a ghost or a grim reaper······.
“Oh my, Professor Deculein!”
Having arrived before she knew it, he rolled down the front window with his hand. Then he thrust his face in and looked back and forth between Deculein and Al Roth.
“Who might this mysterious lady be? I came running as soon as I heard the report that you had been kidnapped, but could it be an affair?”
The moment Zeit raised his brow, Al Roth sensed her own end.
If Deculein said a single word here—
Her head would be crushed like a watermelon by Zeit’s fist.
‘That snake-like bastard couldn’t have planned this far······.’
All she could do was glare at Deculein in the rearview mirror and reproach herself for rashly following his will.
“An affair, you say.”
Deculein opened his mouth.
Al Roth wondered whether she was a doll or her true body. Never before had she so desperately hoped she was a doll as she did at that moment.
······But.
“It is unbecoming of one’s dignity.”
Today, Deculein said something strange for the second time.
“She is merely a passerby I happened to meet on the way.”
Her ears heard the sentence, but it took a little time to understand.
Zeit asked back,
“A passerby?”
“Yes. A car happened to be passing, so I asked to accompany her.”
Al Roth could not understand Deculein’s true intention. But before she could say anything, he got out of the car and spoke to Zeit.
“Now that I have met Lord Zeit, this person may leave.”
“Ohoho. But truly, she is quite a beautiful woman. So beautiful it would be a shame to let her go. It seems a few of our knights have already fallen for her.”
At Zeit’s sly words, Al Roth merely gave a bitter smile.
That crazy two-meter-ten monster bastard.
“Hey! Open the way!”
Soon, the knights cleared the road, and as Al Roth drove slowly, she looked at Deculein reflected in the side mirror.
Deculein, too, was looking at her as she grew distant.
······Five minutes later.
Al Roth, who had pulled over briefly onto the shoulder, steadied her breathing and glanced at the seat where Deculein had been sitting.
A letter and a crystal orb had each been placed there.
She first looked at the letter.
[ Al Roth. Did you know? That although chaos is something whose form cannot be known, it is not an existence that is purely evil. ]
[ Gerek is surely part of that chaos as well, so I’ll leave him to you. Devise a better method than killing him yourself. ]
[ Think of this crystal orb as the link between you and me. Somehow, I think we could become rather decent partners. ]
As he read the handwriting, Al Ross narrowed his eyes.
“……What is he scheming?”
The tension that had wound his entire body tight snapped loose.
Psychologically, this was the first person since Zeit to drive him this far. The very space, the very moment he had shared with Deculein, had been a burden.
“He’s impossible to understand……”
An oppressive presence, as though dragging one down into the abyss. Amid noble grace so abundant it seemed to overflow, there waited a monster of immeasurable size, jaws agape.
“……?”
Suddenly, Al Ross spotted a hawk perched on a tree branch, staring at him. It was a well-crafted familiar.
“They said there was a kidnapping report. Was that thing the one who reported it?”
The creature met his gaze, then soon flapped its wings and flew away. Al Ross stepped on the accelerator as well.
* * *
……My plan had been simple.
Reconstruct the barrier as sturdily as possible, provoke Gerek, and while the bastard went berserk and bombarded the surroundings, I would leisurely make my escape.
To do that, I needed faith in “Iron Man” and a technique to reduce the power of the bullet even slightly.
Of course, I trusted “Iron Man’s” performance completely, but that was the first time I learned just how powerful the revolver was. If I hadn’t woven an extremely faint layer of mana like a net over the muzzle, I might have died.
It wasn’t as though I had ever been shot before.
At any rate, after that, I used “Iron Man” to artificially lower the speed of my blood flow, brought my heart close to a complete stop, and fell into a state of apparent death.
After all, even a man-eating bear gone mad with rage—Gerek—would not bother with an already dead corpse when there were plenty of living people nearby.
“Professor. Do you feel dazed, or have any headaches—”
Eight in the morning.
The incident I had briefly been swept up in had been resolved, and it was a peaceful morning with birds chirping.
“No.”
I pushed away the doctor who was trying to examine my head. I did not want him discovering the body of “Iron Man” under any circumstances.
“Even so, I believe it would be better for you to receive a proper diagnosis.”
It was Lilia Primien, watching from beside me, who said that.
The place I was in now was the main office of the Public Security Bureau, “Equilium.” Deputy Director Primien had brought me here under the pretext of protection and investigation.
“I’ll be fine in a day.”
“Her Majesty is said to be worried as well. Her retainers have also arrived.”
Primien shrugged and stepped aside. From behind her, an imperial retainer appeared and handed me a sealed letter.
Primien muttered.
“You’re very much adored, aren’t you? I’m envious.”
“……Adored?”
I glared at Primien. Primien cleared her throat and averted her gaze.
The retainer said,
“Her Majesty wishes for you to read it immediately.”
“……Very well.”
I broke the seal. The contents were only two lines.
[ How can one who dares to claim himself as Our teacher suffer something like a kidnapping? Should such a thing happen once more, be prepared to be dismissed. ]
I placed the letter inside my coat. Then the retainer continued.
“Additionally, by Her Majesty’s will, a bodyguard knight will protect Duke Yukline.”
“A bodyguard knight?”
“Yes. Her Majesty’s esteemed judgment is that, for the next three months, Duke Yukline is to be classified as an important personage requiring state protection.”
Primien added to the retainer’s words.
“She is correct. Runic is magic of that much importance, so there are many wicked people who would covet it. In truth, this incident was to some extent foreseeable.”
“If you foresaw it, you should have prevented it.”
“……Will you be leaving now, sir retainer?”
“Yes. Then I shall take my leave.”
The retainer bowed and departed. I murmured as though sighing. A sudden headache came over me.
“If I say I don’t need it, it would be an insult to the imperial family, I suppose.”
“That is correct.”
I glared at Primien as she answered. Strangely, every word she said grated on me.
“I’ll be going now.”
“It may be a little troublesome if you leave now.”
“What trouble?”
Ignoring her words, I rose from my seat. My head was a little dizzy, but it would recover soon enough anyway.
I got into the elevator in the corridor. Primien followed, saying she would guide me, and pressed the button for the first floor. Ding—!
When the doors opened and we reached the lobby.
I understood what Primien had meant by saying it would be troublesome if I left now.
“Ah! Professor! Are you all right?”
“What a relief! We were so terribly worried……”
“What fearless bastard dared do such a thing!”
In the lobby, there were numerous cabinet ministers, merchants, and entrepreneurs gathered. They asked me this and that and pretended to worry, but the information they wanted most seemed to be the contents of the “letter” sent by Emperor Sophien.
“Thank you for your concern. Everyone, return to your duties.”
I answered perfunctorily and went outside. In the parking lot, the butler Roy was waiting with a new vehicle.
“Master. Are you all right?”
“Yes. There is no problem.”
“I am glad.”
I got into the back seat of the car.
I sat down like that, but something felt strange.
For some reason, the seat beside me was not empty.
I looked at the person occupying the space next to me. To describe her, she was a knight clad in light armor.
“……What are you doing here?”
Had I gotten into the wrong car? As I tilted my head, the knight, sitting upright, spoke.
“I am on duty.”
“……What duty?”
Only then did the knight turn to look at me. I was reflected in her white eyes.
“I am Professor Deculein’s bodyguard knight.”
Yuli. Those words of hers sealed my mouth, and suddenly, the emperor’s face came to mind. The emperor in my imagination was laughing, kekehehehe—
I let out a sigh.
Bang—
At that moment, the passenger-side door opened.
“I’m here. Tell me properly what happ……?”
This time, it was Yeriel. The moment she sat down, her eyes widened and she glared at Yuli.
“What are you?”
“Yeriel. ‘What are you’?”
“……”
Yeriel silently furrowed her brows. Yuli answered.
“Starting today, I am Professor Deculein’s bodyguard knight.”
“Bodyguard?”
“Yes. It is the duty Her Majesty has assigned me.”
“No, seriously, what are you talking about?!”
Yeriel’s entire face twisted.
* * *
……I had thought about asking what had happened. I had also thought about asking if he had been hurt anywhere.
But, as expected, that was ridiculous.
Judging by his appearance, it seemed like nothing much had happened anyway, and it would be laughable to start acting like brother and sister now.
Yes, let’s make this clear. The promise to hand over the position of family head does not mean our relationship has been restored.
In truth, at this point, I think I more or less understand why he’s giving me the position of family head.
Yuli.
It must be because of that woman.
Yeriel glared at Yuli through the rearview mirror. The knight looked as though she were guarding the four directions like a stone statue. How needlessly earnest and solemn.
“Tch……”
At times, she was curious. How had that dull, stiff, and rigid woman captured the sensitive and sharp-edged Deculein? And why had Deculein come to like that woman?
“……By the way, if you’re a bodyguard knight. Are you going to stay at the mansion too?”
“Yes.”
“What?!”
Yeriel jumped in shock.
On the other hand, Yuli, in “official duty mode,” was rigid.
“This is the first order Her Majesty has given to a private knight order since her enthronement. The term is three months, so I intend to stay nearby only until then.”
“If it’s nearby, doesn’t that mean it doesn’t necessarily have to be the mansion?”
“It is Her Majesty’s order. I would be grateful if you would provide me with just the smallest room. The distance is too far to commute from my private residence, and I would be unable to carry out my duty properly.”
“I can’t believe this. Back then, even when you were told to live together, you stubbornly refused, so what is this……”
Deculein spoke to the muttering Yeriel.
“Yeriel, be quiet.”
“……Wow, I don’t even know who’s family here. I’m seriously so hurt and dumbfounded.”
Yeriel grumbled in a low voice and looked out the window. A hawk was flying in the sky. It kept following behind in the direction our car was moving.
“Is that thing following us or what……”
Today, Yeriel disliked every little thing.