84.
A moment later, a single scream rang out, stealing my attention.
The cavern was almost fully under control now, and perhaps that was why the scream sounded so clear.
The atmosphere in the place I looked toward without thinking was anything but ordinary.
The knights of the ducal house and the paladins were facing off as if they might clash at any moment.
And at their feet, someone lay collapsed.
He looked like a civilian to me.
“Is it all right to just leave that alone?”
“We are here because we were assigned to protect you.”
I did not even have the energy to protest that irritating reply.
“Then I suppose I can go.”
“What?”
Adjusting the clothing draped over my shoulders, I began walking carefully.
As I drew closer, I could hear their voices.
“He attacked us. Why shouldn’t we kill him?”
“As long as there remains a possibility that he is not a believer, we have a duty to protect a citizen.”
“He isn’t on the abduction list. He is clearly a rat who tried to slip away while pretending to be a victim. By what authority are you stopping us?”
The ones saying they would kill him were the paladins, and the ones who had intervened were the duke’s knights.
I looked closely at the man lying at their feet, babbling nonsense.
Whenever they loosened their hold even slightly, he kept trying to lunge, so a paladin was pressing his foot down hard on the man’s chest.
The man flailed his arms.
“He was abducted.”
Perhaps they had noticed me approaching, because there was no surprise in the gazes that turned toward me.
I continued speaking.
“I was held with him. I remember seeing him then. And I saw him on the altar too, running wild after being put under suggestion.”
A knight of the ducal house gave a cold smile, as if to say, See?
“So she says.”
But the paladin replied without so much as twitching an eyebrow.
“This is not something like suggestion. It’s brainwashing incense.”
His gaze slowly lowered and came to rest on the man at his feet.
“This man inhaled far too much brainwashing incense. The most generous assumption is that he was one of the first people brought here.”
“…….”
“We also cannot rule out the possibility that he was converted through brainwashing. And it is our duty to deal severely with such people so they are not released back into society.”
“Now that it’s certain he is a victim, we cannot allow a summary execution.”
“Do you not understand that this is the path to saving more lives?”
“And for that reason, how many innocent lives have you seized and killed until now?”
For the first time, the paladin’s eyebrow twitched.
“I know. This man has a fairly high status in the imperial capital, does he not? Are you afraid of returning and earning your superior’s displeasure, knight?”
“…….”
“Then again, I should not have expected a secular knight to understand the true meaning of a noble oath.”
Their hands, which had merely rested on their sword hilts in threat until then, tightened around the grips in that instant.
As if they would draw their weapons at any moment.
Had they come here to catch heretics only to start fighting among themselves?
I thought for a moment, then began checking the corpses of the dead cultists nearby one by one.
Even though they wore the same black hoods, the people outside the cavern who had been transporting the abductees were dressed slightly differently.
At last, after finding one of them, I turned the body over and searched inside his clothes.
One or two gazes fell on me, but most of them were wholly focused on the nerve-racking confrontation.
‘If that was brainwashing incense, then it makes no sense that the cultists were fine when it filled the cavern.’
Aside from the people who seemed to have been out of their minds from the very beginning, of course.
If they carried around incense that brainwashed people at all times, then they must also have a way to undo it…….
‘Found it.’
I had been sure they would have it on them.
I opened the lid and cautiously smelled the scent rising from it.
It was exactly the scent I had faintly detected from their masks.
‘I don’t know if it will work on someone already so thoroughly steeped in brainwashing, but…….’
It was better than watching his life end without trying anything at all.
I returned to where they were still locked in their struggle of wills and bent down on one knee by the man’s feet.
“What are you doing right now…….”
Only then did one of them belatedly notice and try to stop me.
I poured the bottle over the man’s face with the lid open.
“Ack!”
The clear liquid ran down into the man’s nose and mouth.
And then…….
The man went quiet.
His unfocused eyes did not return to normal, but he slowly fell asleep.
I closed the lid on the half-empty bottle and handed it over to one of the duke’s knights.
“If you search, there should be more. And…….”
I trailed off mid-sentence.
The knights’ gazes were fixed behind my back.
I looked back.
An arm emerged from beneath the pile of stones, braced against the ground nearby, and then an upper body abruptly rose up.
The duke, who had returned as if nothing had happened, reached his arm back into the gap.
What came out in his hand was…….
A black-masked man, so battered he looked as if he had been soaked in blood, hanging limp and unconscious.
While the duke tossed him roughly beside the pile of stones, the aide was the last to climb out, grumbling.
Our eyes met.
The duke seized the masked man by the collar and dragged him toward us.
His attitude was unfamiliar and alien, difficult to regard as the way one treated another person.
The blood drenching the masked man’s body drew a thick trail across the floor.
I saw one of the knights furtively rub his own arm at the eerie sight.
Even with the same action, when the duke did it, there was, how should I put it, a strange pressure to it.
Thud.
The masked man who had toyed with me collapsed face-first in front of me, unconscious.
After rotating his wrist for a moment, the duke asked me.
“Is this the thing that hurt you?”
“It is, but.”
The duke’s gaze slid back to the masked man.
Chilling black eyes.
I could not explain it, but I felt an energy from him as though he could slaughter a person with his gaze alone.
Even I ended up rubbing my arms and shuddering from the chill.
Sensing that, the duke lifted his gaze and spoke slowly, as if searching for an excuse.
“Still, I brought him back alive.”
Does he not see that the man is sprawled there like a lump of bloody pulp? Maybe not right this second, but…… he looks like he’ll pass on soon?
I glanced at the aide, who had somehow come up beside me.
‘Really?’
‘……Really.’
Just as I, having finished exchanging glances, barely found something to say.
“You have things to find out from this man, don’t you?”
He spoke first.
“That is why I kept him alive. When the situation turned against him, he tried to kill himself.”
Only then did I understand what the duke meant.
The duke jerked his chin slightly toward the back.
“It seems someone escaped first through that passage.”
“He probably did.”
“Then he must have been the master.”
The duke gave a slight nod.
Then he noticed that his knights and the paladins had been left in a standoff.
“What are you doing?”
He raised an eyebrow.
The paladin, who had taken one step back, stared straight at me.
‘What is it?’
“If Sir Izanar had been here, he would surely have made the same judgment as we did.”
“…….”
At any rate, the situation was quickly brought under control.
* * *
At last, I made it out of the cavern.
Perhaps I had felt more stifled than I realized, because I stepped outside with a quiet expectation of seeing a blue, wide-open sky…….
But what greeted me was the black sky of the dead of night.
‘Right. It was night, wasn’t it.’
Temporary tents had been set up around us, and patients in urgent condition were being treated.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
I caught the duke by the arm as he tried to go on ahead.
He turned back to me with an awkward motion.
I quietly let go of the hand I had used to hold him.
“I’m fine.”
“Still.”
“It’s not my blood.”
“Still.”
In the end, I dragged him into the tent.
He entered and took a seat with a face that said he had absolutely no intention of being treated.
The person who had just finished staunching the wound of an injured knight turned around, spotted his next patient, and broke into a cold sweat.
In front of that physician, the duke stubbornly insisted.
“You should be the one getting treated.”
‘I must look perfectly fine on the outside.’
It was not as if I had been stabbed anywhere or was bleeding.
And yet, from earlier, he seemed convinced that I was injured.
“I’m not in urgent need of treatment.”
“There must be internal injuries. Examine her thoroughly.”
The duke gave the physician that order and rose from his seat.
After I’d gone through the trouble of bringing him here.
“Where are you going?”
Avoiding the physician’s hands as he began examining me, I craned my neck forward.
The duke was already lifting the tent flap and stepping outside.
He paused, then looked back at me.
“……To wash.”
“…….”
The duke left the tent just like that.
They said we were near the imperial capital, but this area was practically an empty plain.
‘Where does he plan to wash?’
But it wasn’t as though I could drag him back and make him sit down again.
I decided to obediently receive treatment.
And after hesitating for a moment, I spoke to the physician.
“Um, by any chance, could you check whether there’s anything wrong with my left eye too?”
“Your eye, you mean?”
I nodded.
I had expected as much to some extent, but no particular abnormality was found.
“There is nothing wrong with it……. Are you experiencing pain?”
“No. It’s fine now.”
“Ah, compared to your right eye, your vision seems to be very slightly weaker. Has it always been like this?”
I blinked.
……How was it originally?
But I could not continue that thought.
The tent entrance was lifted, and the person who strode inside seized my attention.
With his long silver hair in disarray, he stood there frozen, unable even to sheathe his sword, and looked around.
‘……It got tangled again.’