Chapter 14
Chapter 14 - No way I'd stay with a guy going on about love hotels
"Actually, wait a second! Aren't town guards supposed to protect public order!?"
"Yes, and?"
The troop leader answered Tomochika with the same confidence as before .
Blonde hair, blue eyes and sharp facial features; certainly not Japanese, but fluent in the language nonetheless .
"So you saw what happened! We were about to get kidnapped, why didn't you interfere!?"
"That would be what you call a small sacrifice before a great cause . It seems you don't have an eye for the bigger picture of things! We were investigating a crime syndicate to get the nobles connected to it . "
"So you wanted to track where we would be sold off to?"
Yogiri made sure to speak in a polite tone . There was no reason to needlessly resist, after all .
"Exactly! Even if we had captured them here, they wouldn't have disclosed who they're dealing with . We'd know, because we've repeated that mistake over and over already!"
"Takatoo-kun . . . This world really does lack decent people . . . "
He could only agree, although he was thinking the woman was more of a blockhead than a bad person . Randomly disclosing investigation results, bragging about them even, couldn't be normal .
"Well, then it's a shame they all started mysteriously dying . May we leave now?"
Yogiri played innocent .
It would have been easy to kill them all, but the guards held governmental authority . If they could just talk themselves through this situation then that would be for the best .
"That's precisely it! Based on what it looked like they all began dying on the spot, indeed . Most mysterious . And that's why asking you two, the ones that saw it all from close up, would be the quickest route to the root of things . "
"Aren't you worried it might have been our doing? Getting too close in that case would be dangerous, wouldn't it?"
Yogiri wasn't a fan of unnecessarily digging too deep into things, but he thought it strange and asked her about it .
"Of course, the possibility that you two are responsible for this is certainly there . You are the ones that were about to be abducted, after all . However! We possess the celestial protection of saints! The gifts of Japanese, those bestowed to them by the sages, do not work on us! How do you like that! I can tell by your look you didn't know that, did you? Hmmm? Has your anxiety finally caught up with youuu?"
She smirked, convinced that she successfully drove the two sage candidates into a corner .
Since the source of the candidates' gifts were the sages it would only make sense for them to also have a way to suppress the gifts bestowed by them . There was most likely quite a number of Japanese with the sages' gifts, which would indeed raise a need for the protectors of public order to have immunity against them .
――Meaning, opposing the sages with powers given by them would be difficult, huh .
Yogiri started to feel like he could understand the general gist of things .
Sages summon sage candidates and give them the task of producing a new sage from among them . Those new sages then summon new candidates themselves, and the cycle repeats . There most likely existed a hierarchy where those of lower rank could impossibly defy those of higher rank .
"Er, no . No anxiety here . Not like we have gifts in the first place . "
"What!? Oi, George! Analyze them!"
"Understood . ―― Indeed, they do not possess gifts . I don't see any traces of magic around here either, so the possibility of them having done anything is low, I would say . "
The man right behind the female knight answered . He, too, spoke natural Japanese .
"How can this be!?"
She flared up at Yogiri, who wasn't particularly distraught .
"No point in asking me, I have no clue either . "
"Then why did you lie! Doesn't that just make you suspicious!?"
"I only wanted to avoid being questioned for an explanation on the situation . Sorry, but we don't know what happened here ourselves . Even if we had told you the people around us started collapsing and dying out of nowhere, wouldn't that have been difficult to believe?"
"Damn it! Fine, whatever! Everyone, get to work! We have to examine their bodies!"
Peevish like a child the guardswoman took her subordinates along to the back of the blind alley .
"Sorry about that, you two . A surprise interrogation like that must have been unpleasant . But trust me, the commander's not a bad person . She just has a, well, really bad case of tunnel vision . "
The man called George remained next to Yogiri and apologized to them .
"No problem, now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up . This is a question purely out of curiosity, but you were planning on letting us be kidnapped, right?"
"It pains me to address it so bluntly, but yes, we concluded that you wouldn't be killed immediately, and with that in mind we were going to carry out our investigation . "
So he answered, looking even more apologetic than before .
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login