Ishura - Volume 5 - Chapter 18.3

Chapter 18: The Eighth Match (continued...)

Uhak the Silent was massive.

Just what did he have to eat to grow so huge?

There was little Zigita Zogi the Thousandth could speculate.

One could rephrase the ability of tactical strategy as the ability to create options.

Cut down the enemy from the front? Scheme behind the scenes and cut off an enemy’s path to victory?

None of the methods were superior or inferior to one another. Here in the Sixways Exhibition, all the candidates had prepared their own strategies for victory as well.

However, there were those who only held a single option to advance through the tournament, and those who confronted the tournament with countless different options prepared ahead of time. Zigita Zogi the Thousandth was the latter.

He had utilized a great number of troops to probe into the state of affairs in Aureatia; he was at a stage where he could manipulate the citizens through forecasting the weather with an impromptu meteorologic station far off in Imag City or through his complete command of the flow of goods.

If victory was all he was after, then there were other methods to make it possible.

There were many reasons he had planned to use chemical weapons in his match.

Phosgene was a weapon that incapacitated the opponent and induced a number of side effects; however, as long as the victim was immediately given medical treatment, the chances of death were low.

If the attack came with any serious aftereffects, then it would serve as a reason to have Ozonezma treat him long-term. He would usurp Uhak the Silent’s physical fighting abilities while simultaneously increasing the chances for them to interact. It would become easier to control him. It was not his physical ogre strength but his unique power that Zigita Zogi saw as necessary.

There was an additional point as well.

Phosgene’s relative density was heavier than air and, once used, would linger behind in an area.

…In short, he could use it against anyone who immediately approached them following the end of the match as well.

That way, it would create a chance to investigate said individuals’ bodies under the pretext of treating their exposure to the gas.

The target of his tactics was not only Uhak the Silent.

It was a trap to capture the corpse intruders, using Zigita Zogi in the arena as bait.

Underneath the garden theater. Dant the Heath Furrow was walking down the corridor, accompanied by several soldiers and a doctor.

Uhak the Silent’s sponsor, whom Zigita Zogi was supposed to have disposed of—Sixteenth General Nofelt the Somber Wind—had suspiciously made his return to the city. Dant needed to ascertain the truth of the situation.

“There’s something I’d like to ask. Had Nofelt been inoculated with the vampire antiserum?”

“No. Since cases of vampire infection themselves have died down, even among the Twenty-Nine Officials, less than half have purchased the antiserum,” the doctor replied. Using the word purchase was the characteristic turn of phrase for all of Flinsuda’s subordinates.

“I figured. I haven’t, either.”

Select personnel from Flinsuda’s medical team had arrived ahead of them.

The emergency vehicle, flying white and blue flags to signal they were with the medical division, would also be arriving eventually.

Must be a way to make the enemy mistime our arrival. Always calculating, isn’t he?

The soldiers accompanying Dant were elite troops, picked out to prepare against an ambush by the invisible army. Three minia, one goblin. The goblin was under Zigita Zogi’s command. With them were the three doctors from the medical team they’d met up with. In the event they encountered a corpse or vampire, there were many circumstances that only doctors could handle.

…Should I bring one more with me?

Dant called out to a senior soldier on patrol.

“… I’m Twenty-Fourth General Dant. You there, a moment.”

“Yessir…! What may I help you with, General Dant?”

“Ashamed to say it, but it seems all my men were solely focused on the perimeter. No one seems to know the layout of the garden theater. Can you be our guide?”

“Ha-ha, that is indeed a problem! After all, it’s been rebuild after rebuild, so the underground’s gotten quite complex. Where, then, are you heading?”

“Uhak the Silent’s waiting room.”

“Of course, right away!”

As though proud to be relied on by one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, the elderly soldier seemed a bit giddy, standing out in front of them all as he walked. Unfortunately, Dant didn’t consider this man to be part of his fighting force.

His aim was to have the man act as their forward shield through the corridors leading to Nofelt’s waiting room. If their enemy truly was Obsidian Eyes, then it was impossible to be too well-prepared against an ambush.

“However, sir, if you’re heading there, I assume you have some business with General Nofelt?”

“Yeah, I do. Since Uhak the Silent’s showed up, he’s here, too, right?”

“Indeed. However, General Nofelt just walked down this corridor and left a few moments ago…”

“…What?”

“You didn’t pass each other?”

Dant had no recollection of such a thing. Before he found the old soldier, he had passed by several other lightly armored soldiers, but he should’ve been able to immediately pick out an abnormally tall man like Nofelt.

Up until just a few moments ago Nofelt was here. Or at least someone who looked like Nofelt.

What sort of method had they used? Even assuming Obsidian Eyes possessed some degree of unknown infiltration techniques, were there any methods of disguise capable of reproducing the man’s physique, too?

That can’t be…

The soldiers who were supposed to be on guard outside Nofelt’s room weren’t there.

“……”

—They had been set up after all.

The eighth Match had been unusual right from the start.

“……! This is a compulsory investigation! We’re entering this waiting room!”

Everyone except the elderly soldier shared a glance and came together in a battle formation.

Dant swung open the door.

If there were some other people besides Nofelt inside the room, then—

“Who’s there?!”

Together with Dant’s shout, a shadow lurking inside the room moved.

The shadow bared their teeth, a bestial sneer—

An explosive boom. The stone floor cracked.

It was the sound of an opening rush.

“General Dant— Gnh!”

One of the elite soldiers stepped in the way and protected Dant.

His throat was gouged with the single attack, slicing all the way down to the cervical vertebrae deeper within.

—All done with a single, bare finger.

Dant only knew of one person who was capable of such a deed.

“Haizesta the Gathering Spot…!”

“…Nyeh-heh-heheh.”

The Fifteenth General, unmistakably minian yet using his unbelievable and downright monstrous physical strength as his weapon.

Why is he here? One blow will do it.

Dant drew his sword. He thrust it forward, going through the armpit of the soldier in front of him.

Haizesta dodged, advanced, and rotated.

Abnormal agility.

Using the momentum of his turn, he drilled his fingers into the goblin soldier’s skull.

The goblin’s drawn pistol hadn’t even been allowed to fire.

“Hrnk…”

He slowly extracted his spear hand. The goblin’s brains stretched from his fingers.

Haizesta was on the right. Dant was unable to swing his sword, the soldier with his throat gouged out still standing in front of him.

Can I do it from this position?

He forcibly pushed the dying soldier forward with his left shoulder. The soldier’s body collapsed, spinning to the right—blocking Haizesta’s line of sight.

Dant sharply exhaled.

He would cleave through the armored soldier and take Haizesta behind him with it.

“Too slow.”

Haizesta pinched down on the blade with two fingers and brought it to a stop. Inconceivably fast reaction speeds.

Dant murmured:

“Sorry.”

He had already taken his hand off the sword in Haizesta’s grip.

It was being pushed downward, still under the momentum of his vertical slash.

I’m going to have to lethally injure him in one attack.

Dant had pushed the soldier in front of him in a way that made the soldier spin to the right in order to turn the piece of equipment, strapped to his right hip, toward Dant. He grabbed the sheath. He immediately counterattacked. A diagonal slash, upward to the shoulder.

Cutting through several ribs, he knew he had severed the man’s lungs.

“……!”

Spurting blood gushed forth.

Still with a bestial smile on his face, Haizesta the Gathering Spot’s life came to an end.

“What…?”

Dant gnashed his teeth. One of his elite subordinates and a goblin, both slain in an instant.

Haizesta lay in the pool of blood as well. Aureatia’s Fifteenth General.

“…What is going on?!”

Someone who looked like Nofelt the Somber Wind.

Haizesta the Gathering Spot waiting in ambush for Dant’s arrival.

A preposterously abnormal set of circumstances had come about.

Dant shot a look to the elderly soldier quivering in the back of the formation.

“You! Did you see that?!”

“I mean, honestly…it was so fast, the details of it all were a blur… That and…th-the man just now was General Haizesta, wasn’t it?!”

“That’s plenty. You’re our witness! The Fifteenth General suddenly went berserk and fatally wounded my soldiers, which left me no choice but to counterattack myself! There are suspicions of a corpse infection, so I, Dant the Heath Furrow, under my authority, will have this medical team perform an autopsy!”

“Eep, y-yes…sir!”

The insurance Dant had prepared was a success. He had thought that should the enemy be plotting to set up an attack between two internal Aureatia forces somehow, he needed to bring along a third party who wasn’t a part of anyone’s private forces to serve as a witness.

With a killing blow from a single attack, it served as definite proof that Haizesta had attacked them first.

Haizesta had lain in wait alone. A terrifying enemy. The plan enacted by the invisible army, architects of this situation…clearly didn’t just include Dant the Heath Furrow’s demise.

It was to lay the crime of the Fifteenth General’s death on him.

“Dammit… I don’t like it…! What happened?! Who is this, and what are they doing?!”

He didn’t have any time to spare. If he brought this truth to light, would he make it in time before the match was decided?

“Let them know immediately! Right now, the eighth match is being held without Sixteenth General Nofelt’s presence!”

What if the ogre who had never shown the slightest hint of ego…from the very start, hadn’t paid any care to whether his own sponsor was there or not?

“Uhak the Silent is participating illegally!”

At the same moment. In an alley that adjoined the castle garden theater’s main avenue, a single carriage was rolled over.

Appearing to have toppled at full speed, the sturdy iron-carriage body was warped, and the driver was dead, pierced through by wood splinters.

The horse had died as well. Both of its forelegs had been ripped off and scattered from the knees down.

This was no traffic accident. Someone had attacked the carriage as it was traveling along.

“Enough.”

The man who stepped out from the passenger car raised both of his hands up into the air and demonstrated no intent to resist.

“I surrender. Seriously, I’m sick and tired of this sorta stuff.”

A man with a stubbly beard, dressed in black and with a slightly ominous air about him.

“This isn’t an assassination, Kuze the Passing Disaster. It’s a parley.”

The voice came from above the shop. Sitting in a low stance and looking down at Kuze was a bipedal wolf.

Obsidian Eyes’ ninth-formation vanguard, Harutoru the Light Grip.

“You’re heading for the castle garden theater under the orders of Zigita Zogi the Thousandth, then?”

“Ah, well… Yeah, pretty much. Don’t really plan on hiding it at this point. You ambushed me because you already know everything anyway, right? Feels like everyone I meet’s real dangerous, I tell you…”

Kuze the Passing Disaster was one of the hero candidates, as well as an assassin cooperating with Hiroto’s camp.

It was absolutely necessary to stop him if he was going to make an appearance at the eighth match.

“What’s your reason for working with them? We’re prepared to offer suitable conditions as well.”

“Well…I can’t answer that. Since it’s a wish that you guys aren’t gonna be able to make come true.”

“…”

“Bweh-ha-ha. You’re not attacking me, are you…? So even if you don’t know my reason, you at least know that much.”

Harutoru had the high ground over Kuze. The great shield Kuze used to fight was still left behind inside the carriage, and the lycan was in a position to make a one-sided surprise attack on the defenseless man.

“So then you weren’t the one who attacked the carriage, were you?” said Kuze out of nowhere. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to head on to the garden theater. You should go check to see if your buddy’s all right. Making the carriage roll over means that you were trying to kill me in the accident…and anyone who tries that sort of stuff will die. No matter how far away they may be, no matter how well they try to hide. Guaranteed.”

“…Guaranteed?”

In that moment, a colossal mass descended down and crushed the iron carriage to pieces.

Navy-blue armor. A singular, purple eye.

There had been two lurking in the alley. Harutoru the Light Grip, and…

As his Gatling gun begun to spin, Mestelexil laughed hysterically.

“Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Whoa, whoa now…! You gotta be kidding me!”

What did one need to do to finish off a man with the supernatural ability to bring instant death to anyone who tried to kill him?

“Let me tell you something, Kuze the Passing Disaster.”

—Throw someone who kept going even when dead at him.

As the loud guffaw echoed across the alley, Harutoru similarly bared his fangs with a smile.

“The side holding the most information’s the only one with the right to use a word like guaranteed.”

Linaris the Obsidian had spent almost all her childhood years confined to the bed in her home.

From birth, her body was so weak that she couldn’t adequately stand up and walk by herself, and Rehart the Obsidian had to throw all his personal funds into ensuring his daughter would live on.

That had been her way of life for close to half of her seventeen years.

Though vampires may have looked no different at all, the mere fact that she was one made her the enemy of all minian races, and to ensure no one would try to take her life, she hadn’t been able to freely leave the house even after she had become able to walk.

She had no one she could call a friend.

In the end, there were only a handful of those remaining she could even call comrades.

Frey the Waking. Harutoru the Light Grip. Lena the Obscured. Wieze the Variation. Hyakrai the Tower. Lendelt the Immaculate. Finally, Zeljirga the Abyss Web. Each one was indomitable with unrivaled strength, but once the existence of Obsidian Eyes became clear, there were no longer the numbers to ensure everyone survived.

There were also some who had left the organization. Kuuro the Clairvoyant. Hyne the Swaying Indigolite. Zizma the Miasma. Lana the Moon Tempest. Rook the Shredding Trineedle—all of them possessed the superb skills that allowed them to survive in the outside world, yet despite this, all of them, without exception, chose livelihoods embracing conflict.

This was because the entirety of Obsidian Eyes had, in the end, become totally separate creatures from the people of the outside world. It wasn’t just because they were corpses. They were creatures who had adapted themselves to the spiral of endless conflict, staining their hands with blood simply by living their lives.

She needed to keep them all alive.

Creating a warring chaos that would preserve Obsidian Eyes’ existence was the method to ensure they did.

If creating war was the extent of it, she could make an armed force of corpses under her control fight with a force that was not.

Linaris the Obsidian was able to bring annihilation to Aureatia.

The Queen and certain members of the Twenty-Nine Officials had been inoculated with antiserum, but most of the citizens in the country didn’t have any resistance to the vampire virus. Even without setting her sights directly on the central figures, if she controlled every single one of the high-ranking bureaucrats tasked with the day-to-day business, she could easily bring about the collapse of Aureatia’s societal structure.

However, that wasn’t a victory for Obsidian Eyes. That was Linaris’s thinking.

Even if she successfully guided the world toward war, should Obsidian Eyes’ secret activities and Linaris’s existence as the source of a vampire-infection epidemic be brought to the light of day, they would end up fighting on with the whole world as their enemy.

Even if they destroyed Aureatia, the sort of shura who appeared in the Sixways Exhibition would kill them off. Lucnoca the Winter, able to lay waste to a nation with a single breath. Or perhaps Shalk the Sound Slicer, who was physically impossible to infect. There were countless threats still remaining in the world that couldn’t be bested either through exhausting individual strength or through manipulating an entire army.

The Sixways Exhibition, meant to control said threats all at once, was necessary for Obsidian Eyes as well.

They would push through this battle until the end and purge all the exceptionally powerful players that could threaten their existence.

In the process, they had forcefully stolen the ultimate strategic weapon in Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge, using the exhibition arena where his combat abilities were limited as much as possible.

What Linaris was trying to create was the spark to ignite war following the conclusion of the Sixways Exhibition.

The conflict needed to be born from the intent of those involved, without any getting wise to the secret maneuvering behind the scenes.

The key to it all lay with Hiroto the Paradox’s camp.

With the combined power of the Free City of Okafu and the nation on the new continent Hiroto had behind him, they would become a force able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Aureatia both in scale and national strength. They could create a long entrenched period of war.

Obsidian Eyes had repeatedly used their control over Okafu mercenaries to provoke Aureatia and the hero candidates, trying to sow discord between Okafu and Aureatia. Ambushing hero candidates. The sniper attack on Haade’s envoy. A large number of suspicious deaths.

However, there was someone who had seen through all their sabotage both material and immaterial and immediately taken actions to block their objectives—Zigita Zogi the Thousandth.

A goblin genius. The tactician who avoided any and all conflict with strategies that surpassed Linaris’s own thoughts.

He had defined her organization as the invisible army and dealt with Linaris’s schemes with terrifying speed. If he secured one of Linaris’s corpses as evidence, Obsidian Eyes would be clearly identified. She needed to dispose of Zigita Zogi for good before they reached such a conclusion.

What was the most suitable situation to try finishing off the most brilliant tactician in the land?

A situation where their enemy was assured to be by himself, when it was impossible to set up any traps ahead of time, and when he was surrounded by people other than his allies. The only choice was in the middle of the eighth match.

During the third match, Linaris had infiltrated the castle garden theater in order to look into Haade the Flashpoint’s movements. On that occasion, she had turned many of the garden theater’s soldiers into corpses under her control.

She had sent Uhak the Silent, originally supposed to be unable to participate, into the arena with the help of Lena the Obscured’s mimicry.

Intervention from Hiroto’s most powerful pawn, Kuze the Passing Disaster, had been blocked off by Mestelexil.

They would bring about Dant the Heath Furrow’s fall from power by making him kill Haizesta the Gathering Spot.

Then Obsidian Eyes’ powerful members would infect Hiroto the Paradox in the spectator seats.

The biggest difference between Hiroto’s camp and Aureatia was the existence of a leader who could influence the camp all by themselves. Though it appeared that he hadn’t contributed one bit to the tactical decisions, Hiroto was truly the cornerstone of the camp, controlling all the political relationships himself. Linaris was cognizant of this fact herself.

By killing Zigita Zogi and controlling Hiroto, they would then be able to manipulate two nations, the Free City of Okafu and the goblin nation, with minimal active participation. She would then use Hiroto to manipulate Okafu and the goblins into choosing war with Aureatia of their own volition.

The seeds of war had been scattered in untold numbers.

After the conclusion of the Sixways Exhibition, a war would begin between Aureatia and the Free City of Okafu.

With both sides now lacking any shura of their own, the conflict…was sure to become a long and drawn-out war, completely different in nature from the Lithia War and the suppression of the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

The eighth match, the keystone to all of Hiroto’s camp’s plans.

To Linaris the Obsidian as well, it held even more importance to her than the outcome of the sixth.

She would kill Zigita Zogi in a way that no one would suspect Obsidian Eyes of being involved at all.

Linaris didn’t need to gain anything else. She didn’t need to kill anyone else.

With it, Obsidian Eyes’ battle would end in victory.

Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge was no longer a hero candidate in the Sixways Exhibition.

He was a weapon within Obsidian Eyes’ arsenal.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Laughter. Destruction. A line of fire ran through the alley.

The largest sweep of the Gatling gun from the Beyond, even in a narrow alleyway preventing it from being wielded perfectly, was capable of biting down into the terrain itself and destroying it.

Kuze the Passing Calamity tried to hide behind the carriage debris, but even if he had his shield in his hands, the gun had enough firepower to pierce right through it and the cover in front of him.

“Stop! If you do that, then—”

“Ha…ha.”

The raking gunfire that had mowed down everything in front of him stopped right before it could reach Kuze.

The light in the single eye faded, and Mestelexil fell to his knees.

Kuze flashed a pained smile.

“See. You’ll just…die immediately.”

The white angel whom only Kuze could perceive was floating in the air above Mestelexil’s head.

Nastique, right next to Kuze a mere moment ago, had moved instantaneously. She’d killed—faster than any attack could reach Kuze, as if forestalling his fated death.

“That supernatural power’s just as the rumors say, Kuze the Passing Disaster,” Harutoru the Light Grip stated, observing the fight from a rooftop.

The massive lycan didn’t make a single creak on the wooden rooftop, as if he weighed absolutely nothing at all.

“No special technique can do this. No signs of poison, electric currents, or heat. So you can do it in a way that’s completely divorced from your own strength and abilities. Go on, show me more of just exactly how you fight.”

…Dammit. This guy…doesn’t intend on killing me at all, does he?

Nastique’s absolute and instant death was an unmatched power.

However, it certainly couldn’t stop the person she killed from reviving.

“Weresm otampea nete haires tesnainmestorte rwem gwis kelber quomexos—” (Permeating sheet laminate handwriting excite the soul torchlight, separate, flow, wrap celestial sphere in notochordal phase, create planet—)

Kuze only knew the information Hiroto the Paradox had given him from Toroa and Mestelexil’s clash: that he could infinitely produce weapons from the Beyond that far eclipsed all knowledge this world had to offer, that he possessed an immortality that allowed him to revive no matter how many times he died, and that he could even create golem replicas of himself.

However, Hiroto’s camp hadn’t acquired the knowledge behind the absolute mechanism that formed this core of his.

When the golem’s life was taken, the homunculus core would reconstruct the golem.

When the homunculus died, the golem body would reproduce the homunculus.

This was what comprised Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

“Ah, ahhhhh… Ah. R-re—stored.”

Nastique’s previous attack had stopped Mestelexil right before his bullets could rip through Kuze.

However, if their enemy continued to attack without death even stopping them, then the chance of survival was extremely low.

Not only that, but as for the enemy’s objective.

These two…are trying to keep me here. Keep me right here until the eighth match is finished!

“Exil io mestel. Ueetes jodo. Lin hey tede. Wa notketm—sinkart.” (From Exil to Mestel. Congealed raindrops. Swaying red. Revolving marrow—join together.)

A box-shaped weapon formed from Mestelexil’s back. Faster than Kuze could breathe.

“LRAD 2000X.”

“……!”

The directional acoustic weapon activated.

Faster than the electrical current flowing through it, Nastique’s blade had taken the golem’s life.

This guy’s way too dangerous. Seriously.

Just now, Nastique had prevented some sort of attack from Mestelexil. It meant that this box the golem created was a weapon that went beyond the realm of Kuze’s comprehension.

How aware, exactly, was the angel of a threat against Kuze’s life, and how big was the scope of her automatic counterattacks? Once the counterattack’s interpretation had repeatedly expanded into a range of understanding that was unfathomable by his own standards, was it possible Nastique would then no longer be something Kuze could individually control?

“I-if I attack, I d-die.”

Yet that didn’t apply to Mestelexil, completing his revival once again.

“…Then I just shouldn’t.”

An invincible weapon that learned according to any and all methods of attack it faced, then responded accordingly.

I’ll forcibly break through. Before this thing can pull out his next trick—

“Mestelexil, block him off,” Harutoru coldly muttered from the rooftop.

“Exil io kouto. Diel ab. Meosi yuwet. Pierzi fortea 6. Chardketia.” (From Exil to Kouto soil. True indigo jaw. Sequence of buds. Axle is horizon six. Spread.)

Mestelexil immediately finished his Craft Arts incantation. The terrain itself transformed and rearranged on its own, producing a large iron wall that blocked off the route to the main avenue. Breaking through had now become physically impossible.

“Hey now… Whoa, whoa, whoa, c’mon! This is crazy!”

“Topographical transformation. As long as the attack’s not directed at you yourself, you can’t use that instant-death ability of yours. My hypothesis was right on the mark.”

Kuze turned around behind him. The surrounding terrain had been completely transformed, with even its mineral properties transfigured, but there was an escape path behind him. However, that was likely to be sealed off with Mestelexil’s next move.

Then on top of it all…

“Exil io kouto. Zavortes. Ottportel. Shyake bibot. Chorte.” (From Exil to Kouto soil. Cord of light. Sextuple star. Thousand rotation stone. Arise.)

…at Mestelexil’s side, a machine formed that resembled a gun battery sprouting up from an emplacement.

Sweat ran down his brow. Even Kuze could understand what the machine meant without any knowledge of the weaponry from the Beyond.

As long as I survive.

An unmanned turret. Mestelexil sought to kill Kuze with neither a piece of equipment nor a golem but instead a simple, automatic machine.

Angels couldn’t kill machines that never possessed a Word Arts life force. Unlike the terror of the True Demon King, she couldn’t find fault with the intentions behind the one who set it up, either.

Could he stop Mestelexil’s next attack? What about the one after that? Did this golem enemy before him ever tire?

His opening was…

“Make him stop! Please!”

Kuze shouted to Harutoru up above him.

One of the invisible army, meant to keep their identities hidden, had purposely revealed himself before Kuze, even knowing he personally couldn’t participate in the fight at all. Most likely, it was required by his mission, whatever that was.

Kuze theorized: They were trying to make Kuze do something, using the threat of Mestelexil as a deterrent.

“You said it at the start, right?! You came here to parley, didn’t you?!”

The gun barrel Mestelexil had set up moved.

He could tell that its sights were aimed directly at Kuze’s undefended gut and head.

Amid the powder keg situation, Kuze gulped.

“…Fine. I’ll continue with our parley, then. Enough, Mestelexil. If he makes any suspicious moves, kill him.”

“O-oh…okay. I will do, as you say!”

“W-well now, he’s…a real obedient fella, isn’t he? Mind if I ask how exactly you tamed him?”

“We only have one demand.”

Harutoru completely ignored Kuze’s question.

“You don’t need to promise us anything or switch sides to some other faction. Once you’ve accepted my demand, you can even continue on to the garden theater if you want, and we definitely won’t cause you any harm. That goes for you…and those orphans who Okafu is protecting, too.”

“………………”

Kuze went silent. Even though he smiled, it felt like his torso’s temperature was gradually going cold.

Harutoru took out a cloth-wrapped vial and tossed it to the ground.

“Drink that.”

“Bweh-ha-ha. Excuse me?”

“It’s mostly water. Not poison. If I planned on killing you with chemicals, I could have let Mestelexil finish you off just now.”

“……Y’know… Zigita Zogi? He mentioned something. That the invisible army could possibly have a vampire in their ranks.”

Vampires made additional corpses by transfusing blood through an open wound—or by contact through the mucuous membrane.

To look at it another way, it required intimate contact, and even ingesting a drop or two of blood wouldn’t immediately turn someone into a corpse.

Normally, the pathogen shouldn’t be able to infect someone through a single small vial like this.

“It’s mostly water, huh? Bweh-ha-ha. So basically, inside this thing is the smallest amount of your parents’ blood in here…and if I drink this thing, I’ll end up as one of your myrmidons, is that it?”

“No. It’s my blood in there.”

Harutoru snarled with a smile.

“That way, if that automatic counterattack of yours considers the infection as an attack against you, too…I’ll be the only one who ends up dead.”

“Bweh-ha-ha… That so, eh…”

Kuze bent down where he stood and picked up the vial.

Still in that position, he opened it up and brought it up to his mouth.

“Hey, listen. All right if I ask you…one more thing?”

The iron wall, blocking out the surroundings, cast thick shadows down around him.

“When you said you wouldn’t harm the kids, is that true? See, I…I want to protect them. Whatever happens to me doesn’t matter, as long as I can help all of them…”

“Yeah. I promise.”

“Say.”

With a whirl—

—blank eyes looked up at Harutoru.

The moment he felt the cold shiver run down his spine, Harutoru used his sheer force of will to stop the instinct engrained in him telling him to counterattack.

“Try all you want…to make me attack; it’s me—”

A red line ran across Harutoru’s throat.

A brief holy pause.

Harutoru hadn’t harmed Kuze in the slightest. He was confident he had shut out any intent to kill Kuze from his mind.

His massive frame slipped down from the roof, spasming, and landed right at Kuze’s feet.

“…So in other words, I can’t protect those kids unless I kill every last one of you, right?”

The man stared, looking down like a death god over Harutoru, who was no longer able to move.

The vial was in Kuze’s hands. He hadn’t drunk from it.

“Gahak¸ hgnk!”

Nastique’s power over instant death would kill all those who tried to kill Kuze.

However—there was another condition that could induce it, one that even Obsidian Eyes didn’t know about.

Kuze himself wishing to kill someone who was in his line of sight.

“Mestel…”

“Ha-ha-ha, what’s wrong?”

Gazing at Mestelexil, standing by exactly as Harutoru ordered, Kuze muttered:

“…I haven’t made any suspicious movements. Right? You’re an honest fella. Like a kid.”

“Hrngh, glrnk, augh.”

Harutoru’s tenacious body, even with his death fated, continued to wriggle in agony.

His claws scrapped the ground as he tried to breathe.

“Don’t get in my way.”

Kuze’s dense pupils, like a mire, looked down into Harutoru’s own.

“Don’t interfere with what I’m doing. I’m not going to extend salvation to you all, too.”

There was no longer any voice to answer him.

“…Bweh-ha-ha. Hey, Mestelexil.”

“…?”

“See, I’m thinking about running away, actually…”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, really now—”

Mestelexil visibly reacted to Kuze’s words. Movement with intent to kill.

At the same time, the unmanned turret on the perimeter moved.

“To the right.”

One second before Mestelexil and the turret could, Kuze sent Nastique into action of his own will.

Just as Kuze had told her, Mestelexil died instantly, collapsing to the right. The precision rapid fire from the unmanned turret was blocked by Mestelexil’s massive frame and armor, which were now collapsed on the ground.

After the dust had settled, Kuze had disappeared from the alley.

…Dammit!

It had taken up too much time. The road was blocked off.

He wouldn’t make it in time for the eighth match anymore.

If Mestelexil was going to faithfully stand by just as ordered, then killing the person giving him orders in the moment, Harutoru, had been the surest method of survival.

There was also still room for his enemy to interpret Harutoru’s cause of death as the virus itself being perceived as a hostile attack against him. That was why he’d opened up the vial and brought it up to his mouth without showing Harutoru or Mestelexil.

It was a situation that required his trump card. He was certain.

…That’s just an excuse.

When Sun’s Conifer attacked the almshouse, Kuze had to be able to get through without killing anyone.

However, if Uhak hadn’t been there that day, what would he have done?

When the lycan brought up the kids, he couldn’t avoid thinking it.

I wanted to kill him. The truth is, I…

He clenched the vial in his hands.

Why was the angel who killed everything haunting him and him alone?

Was it perhaps that her existence itself revealed Kuze the Passing Disaster’s true character?

The white angel made sure to fly right at Kuze’s side while he walked, and she smiled at him.

…I’m so full of loathing, I want to kill absolutely everything in the world.

He had a hunch. The day would come when he could no longer keep Nastique under control.

“To all gathered! Uhak the Silent has been shackled with the burden of deafness from birth! We in the assembly guarantee the blame for this lies not with Uhak himself and that he is not a minian-eating ogre! As such, Uhak has a special right to know the true duel accords through the written word!” Meeka the Whispered declared before establishing the rules of the match.

This declaration was likely how Uhak’s sponsor, Nofelt, had explained it—that it wasn’t that he didn’t comprehend Word Arts, but that he was simply a mute ogre with a hearing impairment.

He inherently perceived the sounds that people’s voices made without any difficulty. He was merely missing the blessing of Word Arts to interpret and comprehend them.

A creature who shared the same nature as Words Arts–ignorant beasts.

“A combatant is knocked down and doesn’t get up. A combatant willingly admits their defeat with their own words. These two things shall decide the match, and on these grounds, any and all weapons, and any and all techniques, are permitted. Any outcome that does not adhere to these two conditions shall be relegated to my, Meeka the Whispered’s, adjudication. Do we have an agreement?!”

Meeka informed the two combatants about the rules behind the true duel.

Uhak was handed a piece of paper with the Order’s script written on it, and he gave his assent with a nod.

…Meeka the Whispered. I truly respect you for putting yourself on the line here.

The heavy responsibility and danger she purposely shouldered as the adjudicator for the Sixways Exhibition, enshrouded in schemes, were extraordinary. She was definitely involved in unfair play, however—she was trying to ensure victory for Rosclay the Absolute.

Nevertheless, there was certainly a plethora of different powers that were targeting her and the huge authority she had over each victory. It was possible for her to earn the resentment and ire of defeated hero candidates as well.

Meeka the Whispered was putting herself right on the front lines of danger, far more than any other of the Twenty-Nine Officials.

However, I know very well why you have gone so far to expose yourself to danger.

She wasn’t able to entrust it to anyone else.

If it was someone else standing in her place, the slightest slip of their tongue could cause Aureatia to lose public prestige. If they were swayed by the honeyed words of one of the other factions, they might betray everyone’s belief in them. It was precisely because she held such confidence in her ability to make truly correct judgments that she couldn’t stand to have someone else here in her stead.

Zigita Zogi understood that. It was a risk, and a heavy responsibility, she carried because of her excellence.

He was the hero burdened with the future of the goblin race.

Their race had grown shockingly more intelligent in the past ten years. Even then, they couldn’t compare with the cunning of the minia. That was all the more reason why, right now, no one else could be sent out into this arena.

To ensure that on this continent, they didn’t play a subordinate role to the minian races once again.

Zigita Zogi knew that the Sixways Exhibition was a scheme to eliminate the hero candidates.

The one who, despite this, stood forward as a hero was someone who wouldn’t be daunted by whatever bargaining was at play, nor make any mistakes in their judgment—in other words, it had to be him himself.

“Uhak the Silent has given his consent! Zigita Zogi the Thousandth! Do you agree to the accords of this true duel?!”

“Yes. I’ll fight under those conditions.”

“The match will begin with the sound of the band’s starting gun! Prepare yourselves!”

Meeka’s large frame disappeared into the underground corridor.

Zigita Zogi gripped a metal stopper inside his right fist.

He utilized military strategy, but he couldn’t employ any breaches in the rules during the match. It could potentially become an exploitable chance for another hostile force.

However, this was a true duel battle. An ultimate fight where any and all methods of attack were permitted. After the signal to start the match, even chemical weapons would be beyond any scorn.

The band’s cannon fire echoed. He could see Uhak begin to advance.

Yet it would only take a blink of an eye for him to twist the stopper and release the gas valve—

“……”

He couldn’t move.

Me, of all people—I can’t believe it.

Zigita Zogi’s muscles had completely stiffened up. He couldn’t even move a single fingertip.

There hadn’t been any interference from someone else.

Zigita Zogi had been turned into a corpse.

The gray ogre raised his club up in the air.

Zigita Zogi knew exactly how fatal this single instant was.

Using the increased mental agility that came moments before one’s death and using brain cells more outstanding than any others’, he thought:

Food. Lesions. Or a bug, perhaps. None of those seem to fit, really. Ahhh… I see. The blood smell. In which case, my initial premise was wrong. If only there had been a bit more material to predict this development… A mutation to airborne transmission. Unbelievable. So this is our enemy’s true form. Finally… With this, there’s a chance of victory…

He was the thousandth, genius, most eminent of all.

Up until the end of his life, he thought through tactics and plans, and finally…

Ah, but still. I’m glad it was Hiroto…and not me who was given the antiserum.

The boorish wooden club was closing in before his eyes.

Uhak didn’t erase any supernatural abilities—because he could win without having to do so.

Zigita Zogi wasn’t allowed a single movement.

While he had arrived at the correct solution, far closer than any other, how was he to pass it along?

I’ve reached an impasse.

The barbaric mass crushed the thick metal helmet along with the cranium underneath.

The dream that Hiroto the Paradox had awaited.

A true genius, the likes of which would never appear among the goblins again.

His brains were turned into a light-pink mass of blood and flesh and scattered across the graveled earth.

A café terrace in front of castle garden theater—it was the same seat where she had once shared a meal with Yuno.

Listening to the clamor from within its walls, Linaris stared silently in the direction of the garden theater.

She almost came across as the innocent child of a respectable, well-to-do family, taking an early afternoon breather.

“…Farewell, Master Zigita Zogi,” the young lady murmured, not with a smile at the loss of her greatest enemy, but instead with a tinge of sorrow.

One could rephrase the ability of tactical strategy as the ability to create options.

Obsidian Eyes had a massive amount of information they’d accumulated from their investigations.

What sort of shape did the duties of the castle garden soldiers take? If there was someone among the other sponsors who would try to use Zigita Zogi’s camp for themselves, who would it be? Was there an opportunity to assassinate Zigita Zogi with certainty and without any suspicions being sent their way?

If they were going to make a move on a strategist of Zigita Zogi’s caliber, he was sure to outwit their attack, then trace it back to the source. If he did, he would likely arrive at the true form of Obsidian Eyes, which she needed to keep secret… In which case, they weren’t the ones who were supposed to deal with him.

There was only one person who could assassinate him with certainty and without casting any suspicions toward Obsidian Eyes’ possible involvement.

His opponent in the eighth match. Uhak the Silent was the only one who could do it.

All the preparations had finished in the middle of the third match.

Secretly switching out the keys, the corpse-transformed soldiers inside the garden theater were able to come and go freely.

Identifying the soldiers who belonged to the garden theater using the information gleaned from her infiltration, she had turned those involved with the eighth match into corpses.

Therefore, Linaris didn’t even need to enter the garden theater at all during the eighth match.

The surveying of the garden theater that Enu had pushed forward had, from the very beginning, laid the groundwork to determine whether the range of her vampire pheromones could reach the arena from the outside or not.

The means didn’t need to be complicated.

If anything, it needed to be something so simple that Zigita Zogi couldn’t outsmart it.

At that same moment.

Inside the garden theater, a soldier threw something into a furnace.

Hidden inside the bandages that covered his wounds…was a handkerchief soaked in fresh blood that was not his own.

Linaris the Obsidian was a vampire who could spread the vampiric infection through the air. Even just a single part of her body, a smattering of blood, was no exception.

Evading all his precautions, she’d infected Zigita Zogi just by having him stand in the same space as her blood.

The simplest method, and impossible to avoid.

Our biggest obstacle has disappeared. With this, at last…I can finish my mission.

Zigita Zogi was sure to have stationed his goblin forces within the garden theater to be ready against their powerful enemy, the invisible army. Dant the Heath Furrow and Hiroto the Paradox were also there as well.

It was possible she had led them to summon their previous collaborator, Ozonezma the Capricious. Even then, it would be no problem for Linaris.

She had made part of the Obsidian Eyes forces slip into the castle garden spectator seats. Lena the Obscured. Frey the Waking.

Once the results of the eighth match were confirmed, these two would immediately begin to act. With their level of skill, it was possible to infect Hiroto the Paradox without even making him aware of the fact. Furthermore, by using blood for an airborne infection, his bodyguard—the terrifying chimera Ozonezma—wouldn’t have any hopes of resisting them, either.

Airborne infection, requiring Linaris’s blood and unable to be spread from corpses, was a final resort. The potency of this tactic came at the cost of a greater chance of its truth being exposed. Now, with Zigita Zogi dead, they could put said method into action without any apprehension.

Now there was no one who possessed the brains to arrive at Obsidian Eyes’ existence in the shadows.

“My lady.”

There was a voice at her feet from underneath the tablecloth. A bizarre minia who walked on all fours.

Wieze the Variation. A sniper who snuffed out his enemies with chakrams.

Promptly noticing the new presences that came into his firing range, he cautioned her.

“Six carriages. They bear the Seventh Minister’s flag.”

“…Thank you very much. Continue to stay on guard for me.”

Linaris was able to discern the same a fair bit of time after the sniper’s eyes had picked them up.

The carriage designs were garnished extravagantly with silver. The white and blue flag signaled the presence of physicians. It was a cohort under the command of Flinsuda the Portent, leader of the medical division. They were, in essence, the bane of any vampire; however, that itself wasn’t any reason to fear them.

Nevertheless.

An anxious shadow passed through Linaris’s mind.

There’s far too many here just to treat injuries or confirm the death of the losing candidate… Even assuming there were injured inside the garden theater…

The medical-division carriages came to a stop as she watched from her position.

Looking at the people who alighted from the carriage, her anxieties changed to conviction.

A woman wielding a massive war ax. Thick bangs that almost seem to block out her whole line of sight.

She was the Tenth General, Qwell the Wax Flower.

“A dhampir…! Why is the Tenth General with the Medical Division…?!”

A bodyguard who was resistant to the vampire’s virus. There was only one thing that could possibly point to…

It was a team that’d been sent, convinced of a vampire’s involvement, to specifically deal with it.

The Seventh Minister doesn’t belong to any specific faction and is swayed by coin. Master Hiroto, the Gray-Haired Child, must have a large amount of Aureatian currency through his musket dealings. If he already had Miss Flinsuda working on his behalf before the start of the match…then we’ve already…

It meant they had been identified.

They knew that the “invisible army” was a vampire group, or perhaps even the fact that it was Obsidian Eyes itself.

Linaris had planned to erase Zigita Zogi with the fastest method possible, but the enemy’s thinking had been far faster and meticulous enough to arrange for a medical team.

In that case…will infecting Master Hiroto while he’s in the castle garden right now…actually be possible? If he had a chance to make a bargain with Aureatia in this short period of time, it isn’t completely impossible that he’s obtained the antiserum. If Master Ozonezma has been inoculated with the antiserum, then everyone will end up killed by the target… There’s a chance they’ve gone one step further…and positioned some ally we are unaware of…and seen through this ambush.

“My lady. Shall I wipe out the medical team here?” Wieze said, below Linaris as she worked through her endlessly labyrinthine thoughts. “Even I alone could kill them all without leaving any survivors. Kill this dhampir here, and they’re little different from any other minia.”

“…No… The fact that this medical team has come here…means that Master Zigita Zogi has already seen through our plans to mobilize a large number of corpses during the eighth match. They’ve already come to realize the ‘invisible army’ is a vampire…that Obsidian Eyes is in the shadows of the Sixways Exhibition…”

Obsidian Eyes had made a large number of moves related to the match.

The preliminary subterfuge using castle garden soldiers made into corpses. Airborne infection using Linaris’s blood. Impersonating a sponsor with the mimic, Lena the Obscured. Suppressing Kuze the Passing Disaster’s movements with Mestelexil.

To ensure they put an end to Zigita Zogi that day, they had no choice but to play many of their cards. Had the ultimate tactician managed to anticipate that a vampire parent unit would make a move during this match as well?

Nevertheless. I need to take control of Master Hiroto here, or we shall lose our golden opportunity to do so. All these misgivings are based on my own assumptions, and I haven’t seen any definitive evidence, either.

This operation needed to continue. Even if Obsidian Eyes’ covert plans had already been exposed, now that they had given their enemy so much information, backing down was the worst possible move they could make. She simply needed to control Hiroto the Paradox and take command of his country. That was what Linaris’s brain told her to do.

Her father had done so. Sparing no thought to the sacrifices. Calmly and coldly choosing the optimal path forward.

I will create an era of war. That’s all I need… If I can just finish Father’s wishes, then I can be free…

The castle-garden-theater spectator seats—

Lena the Obscured continued her surveillance as the venue erupted with the conclusion to the eighth match.

A mimic—a construct race capable of changing their form at will. After fulfilling her mission to disguise herself as Nofelt the Somber Wind, she had moved to the spectator seats to complete her next mission.

She had pinned down where Hiroto the Paradox was sitting. As well as confirming that Ozonezma the Capricious was right beside him.

Zigita Zogi had Ozonezma come to act as Hiroto’s bodyguard after all. Exactly as anticipated.

Lena carried a small vial with her as well.

However, it wasn’t a corpse’s blood dissolved in the vial’s water, but Linaris’s blood, capable of airborne infection.

Regardless of the fighting capabilities Ozonezma the Capricious might possess, if she opened it up as she passed by at point-blank range and made them breathe it in, she could put them under her mistress’s control. It didn’t even require her to act suspiciously, let alone attack them.

If there’s one problem…

Lena looked down at the arena. The garden-theater seating was constructed in a basin shape to ensure the arena was visible from any seat. In the spot slightly removed from the center of the basin was a red blood splotch.

What resembled a squashed bug was, in fact, the miserable end of Zigita Zogi.

…That helm.

She lifted up the bandage covering her eyes.

The light in her eyeballs, to an unstable construct like Lena, put a heavy strain on her and was a major limitation whenever she changed into someone else. Even then, she needed to visually confirm Zigita Zogi’s death once more.

She verified that his corpse was still wearing his helm.

The metallic helm had been cracked open, together with the rest of the cranium, like shelling a tree nut, and stuck into his flesh, likely making it impossible to tear off.

The appearance of all the sixteen challengers in the Sixways Exhibition had been verified beforehand by several of the Twenty-Nine Officials, then registered accordingly. If there was any equipment that completely covered one’s face, then naturally, the organizers would verify the face of the person beneath it before and after the match.

Therefore, any impersonation of one of the candidates by another could never happen—the situation was completely different from the fourth match, where the hero candidate had been swapped out with another. At the very least, it had been verified that Zigita Zogi himself was beneath the helm.

For this match, they were no longer able to do the postmatch verification. The head they were meant to double-check had been completely smashed.

If, in the unlikely scenario…that getting his head caved by Uhak had been incorporated into his plan, then it’s possible the goblin appearing in this arena had been expendable from the start. Can we pick out Zigita Zogi from other goblins without the head still intact…?

If she approached even closer, Lena might have been able to determine for herself. However, the castle garden theater was vast, and her only option was to judge from a distance. With all eyes fixed on the arena, sneaking in was impossible.

…I have to be cautious.

Caution. Nothing more. Lena’s mission hadn’t changed.

She would approach Hiroto and Ozonezma and infect them. Then she would depart from the scene.

As long as her mistress had ordered her to do so, she would carry out her duty, even if it cost her life. Simple as that.

However, Lena’s feet stopped soon after she started walking toward Hiroto’s seat. Her gaze drifted—on the exact opposite side of the spectator seats, there was another hero candidate, beside Ozonezma.

Shalk the Sound Slicer.

He was far away. A seat too far away to be guarding Hiroto.

Nevertheless, he was positioned with a good look at the area around the politician’s seat.

Lena took out her radzio, fully aware of the danger of making any contact. It connected to Linaris, outside the garden theater, in case of emergency.

“My lady. It’s Lena. Uhak the Silent has won without issue. However, there are a few points that bother me.”

<…What would those be?>

“Shalk the Sound Slicer is spectating the match. Southwest side, twenty-fifth row, second from the right. Hiroto the Paradox’s seat is on the eastern side, fourth row and tenth seat from the right.”

<……>

“They are separate from each other, but if he seriously did go into action, no distance would be too far for him.”

Shalk the Sound Slicer was one other of Obsidian Eyes’ feared enemies, on par with Kuuro the Careful. His body, composed of white bone, wouldn’t be infected by any blood-borne virus.

Furthermore, once his spear fixed on a target, no amount of sleight of hand would make it possible to escape.

<That…is not anything unusual. Master Shalk has spectated almost all the matches up until now.>

“I believe the same thing. However, there is a chance that he has made contact with Yukiharu the Twilight Diver. Right?”

<…Yes.>

It was impossible for anyone in Obsidian Eyes, no matter their agility, to surveil Shalk himself.

However, Obsidian Eyes was still the largest spy guild in the land. If someone was impossible to trail, they just needed to collect secondhand information instead—even by Lena’s recollection, she clearly remembered hearing a witness account of Yukiharu the Twilight Diver conversing with Shalk the Sound Slicer.

“Also.”

Lena looked at the arena. At the body lying on the gravel.

“Zigita Zogi the Thousandth wore a helm. Uhak’s attack defeated him by crushing his entire head with the helm. I ask for your judgment regarding this situation, my lady.”

<…………>

The café terrace, outside the castle garden theater—

That isn’t a problem.

Linaris closed her golden eyes, as if in prayer.

Even if the helm was to feign his death, Master Zigita Zogi wouldn’t use any strategy that involved in the Sixways Exhibition…since his goal is to make Aureatia accept his people. He wouldn’t do anything that would entail abandoning his original goal simply to deal with us.

Linaris was endowed with that power. The gift to penetrate a person’s heart and deeply consider their emotions.

Sparing no thought to the sacrifices. Calmly and coldly taking the optimal action—if there was a possibility she would stray from the correct path, it would stem from Linaris herself and the weakness in her heart.

Master Zigita Zogi made sure to appear with an iron helmet on. Clearly a move to confound his enemies should he lose, making it impossible to confirm his death. Master Shalk’s seat positioning isn’t a coincidence, either. It wasn’t Master Shalk himself but Master Hiroto who chose his seat to curb any movements from those who were aware of the details behind Master Shalk and Master Yukiharu’s contact—in other words, to curb us.

Lena’s voice came through to her from the radzio.

<If I am to act on this information, I wish for your orders. Now that a medical team is here, there’s no time to delay. What should I do?>

“Carr—”

She attempted to tell her to “carry out her mission.”

Linaris forcefully pressed down on her chest. Was this really the best move?

<My lady. It’s Lendelt.>

A voice cut into the radzio call.

It belonged to Lendelt the Immaculate, charged with guerilla-style attacks. However, the line he utilized should have been in Harutoru’s hands…

<Harutoru was killed.>

“……Ngh!”

She tried to hold her lamenting cry back but failed.

Harutoru the Light Grip had died.

“That can’t be…”

<Mestelexil was recovered safely, but Kuze the Passing Disaster appears to have fled. The particulars of Harutoru’s time of death are unknown. I will follow up with Mestelexil.>

“No…it can’t be…”

Even with Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge with him, Harutoru had fallen in battle.

She could imagine the reason why. Harutoru may have tried to make some attack on his own. Perhaps an unexpected amount of reinforcements came to Kuze’s aid.

If they were able to win today, everything was supposed to be over. It was why they had laid out multiple layers of intrigue and deceit.

Even then, the power of subterfuge was unreliable. Linaris knew that.

“Miss Lena. Quickly—”

She could no longer believe in it.

Linaris handed down her orders to Lena inside the garden theater.

“—please leave the garden theater immediately and bring everyone along with you. You are free to abandon your infection mission. Please move quickly and ensure no one else takes notice.”

If Linaris commanded her to execute her orders, Lena would have gone forward without hesitation.

<Operation suspended. Understood, my lady.>

“…Koff, koff.”

Right as she ended the transmission, Linaris coughed harshly.

“Koff, hrk…ngh!”

The stress of traveling outside the manor a number of times in a short period, and the extreme psychological tension, gnawed at her thin, frail body.

Suspension had been the only option. If, by any chance, Linaris had misread the situation, then she would lose everything.

She had needed to bestow on Obsidian Eyes a path for their future survival, without sacrificing a single one of them in the process.

Despite that, Hyakrai the Tower had been heavily wounded by a slight, accidental deviation.

Now she had let Harutoru the Light Grip die.

“Koff, augh… Why…? Why…?”

She covered her face with both hands and dropped her head down flat on the table.

Despite knowing such unladylike behavior was sure to earn her a terrible reprimanding.

She was supposed to be here in her father’s stead.

I wasn’t able to claim victory. I threw all our plans into this, and even then… Master Zigita Zogi was a true genius. If Father was here… If it had been Father here right now, I’m sure then that…

Linaris had thought if she could fulfill every part of the mission entrusted to her, she could begin her own life.

If she could do that, then surely there wouldn’t be any further need to keep abandoning her friends.

At her feet, Wieze spoke up.

“…My lady. I will stay behind here. Please escape with Lena or Frey once you’ve confirmed they’ve made it out. I will keep watch on the medical team.”

“Yes… Very well. I will leave it in your hands.”

Linaris returned Wieze’s smile as he departed. She was crying.

She smiled and let the tears simply fall down her cheeks, as her etiquette had trained her.

I’m sorry.

Zigita Zogi the Thousandth may have truly been dead.

The iron helm he had worn might have been a way to implant a nonexistent shadow of doubt in his enemies’ minds.

Similarly, Shalk the Sound Slicer sitting in a position where he could guard Hiroto the Paradox may have simply been because Hiroto had chosen that seat to instill such a thought in his enemy’s mind, and nothing more.

The fear might have all been in Linaris’s mind, and if she fought now, she might be able to win.

Even then, I can’t do it. I just can’t… Sacrificing everyone else is the one thing I cannot do.

Being born and raised within Obsidian Eyes, she had no means to live a life outside it.

Among the comrades she had spent her life with, only a few remained. If she lost them, then there wouldn’t be a single thing left in Linaris’s life.

More than all that…

“I…I can’t possibly put everything on the line like that… I mean…I-I’m merely borrowing it…from Father, after all.”

Neither Obsidian Eyes nor any of the agents in its ranks belonged to Linaris.

She wasn’t Obsidian. She hadn’t been able to inherit that from her father.

—She remembered that day.

Her beloved father stained with blood, with Linaris looking on at him in shock.

Who had killed him?

No. He hadn’t been killed at all.

Thus, Rehart the Obsidian wasn’t dead.

If he wasn’t dead, then she should have still been able to accomplish his goal.

That was why she still needed to keep thinking. Calmly and coldly, just like her father, regardless of any potential sacrifices, just like her father. Even the slightest chance of defeat was unforgivable. She didn’t wish to blemish her father’s name with her own failure.

She wished to be a daughter who wasn’t ashamed to act in Rehart the Obsidian’s stead.

“…Please forgive me…”

She begged for forgiveness.

There was no one else out there who could keep Linaris in check.

Even after the fierce battle in the underground waiting room was over, Dant stayed behind and worked to preserve the scene.

Dant alone wasn’t able to read to what extent the enemy had infiltrated inside the castle garden. He also feared that evidence, including Haizesta’s corpse, would end up being destroyed.

One minia soldier, and one goblin soldier. Along with Haizesta. There had been three casualties right as the match was going on.

This would be enough of a reason to suspend the match and lobby for Uhak’s disqualification, but—

“…General Dant!”

Several soldiers appeared, faces pale.

There was definitely some emergency situation, but first, Dant was wary of the soldiers. There was a chance a corpse was mixed in among them.

“You have to flee this place immediately! We’ll secure the scene,” said a soldier.

“Can’t do that. This is a serious example of unlawful behavior. The match should immediately be suspended, and the scoundrels who sullied the Sixways Exhibition need to be identified. Besides, I need to provide my own testimony for the investigation.”

“U-um, well…th-that’s not it, General. This isn’t about this incident.”

“What else could it possibly be about, then?”

Dant was suspicious.

Was there any other matter that could be more pressing than a member of the Twenty-Nine Officials being manipulated and killed during the royal games?

If there was, it would have to be on a national scale…

“My apologies, General! It most likely happened right around the time you arrived here, sir. The eighth match is over! Zigita Zogi the Thousandth is dead! Without a moment’s delay following the results, an alarm was sounded, which—”

“Wait. An alarm?! What’s going on?!”

“Ministers Jel and Grasse have already departed the garden theater! Furthermore…you’ve been ordered to sortie, General!”

“…It can’t be.”

Dant quickly silenced everyone gathered before him, and he perked his ears up amid the silence.

He could faintly catch the bell ringing up on the surface. Two strikes. Three strikes. Two strikes. Three strikes.

Every single member of the Twenty-Nine Officials was well acquainted with what exactly this signal meant.

“Dammit! Things are in enough of mess already…!”

“We were just now dispatched here as reinforcements. With the suspicion of corpse infiltration, Minister Flinsuda’s medical team is accompanying us. From here, we will restrain the castle garden soldiers, examine them, and identify who is behind this incident. We’ll also ask you to appear for an examination at a later date, General Dant…!”

“Somewhere around here… You—you look like an official medical team. Take a look at my pupils here, then. Examination’s a bit simple, but it’ll be enough, right?”

Showing his pupils to one of the physicians running through the area, Dant proved that he wasn’t a corpse himself.

Vampires. A plague that was thought to already have been largely eradicated. The enemy of Zigita Zogi, who needed to be brought down first and foremost. Naturally, Dant had been informed of it all as well, and it was something he had been on guard against.

However, Haizesta’s appearance moments prior had been something else.

The enemy possessed skills of manipulation on a far deeper level than simply controlling a corpse’s actions through pheromones.

Most likely, that was the truth of Obsidian Eyes. Something capable of multiplying their scouts, without any of the many other organizations taking notice, had already infiltrated Aureatia.

“I’ll head out immediately.”

“Good luck in your campaign, General Dant. Are there any other matters to check on?”

Dant stopped his feet.

“…Right. One thing I’d like to ask.”

While he had clearly heard the truth himself, he couldn’t help but confirm it again.

The cunning tactician, more intelligent than any minia, who had been able to see through every development…

“Zigita Zogi died?”

“Yes. His head was split open in a single strike, and he died instantly.”

“……”

With a small nod, Dant rushed off.

He bitterly mumbled to himself.

“To hell with this…”

The goblin who had suddenly appeared on Dant’s battlefield, stealing all his military achievements out from under him.

Everything about the tactician had rubbed him the wrong way.

Even the feeling of loss the goblin left with his death vexed him.

“Zigita Zogi!”

Zigita Zogi was dead. He didn’t want to believe it.

Dant’s face was twisted with rage.

It was what he was supposed to do.

“Damn you for pushing all this trouble onto me!”

Ozonezma looked down at the scene.

In the center of the garden theater, Zigita Zogi had become a widening blotch of blood, and the spectators, witnessing such a gruesome demise, were left speechless, while others whispered and murmured among one another.

Amid the stir, Hiroto alone simply remained quiet.

“The true duel has been decided! The winner, Uhak the Silent!” the adjudicator, Meeka, shouted.

The woman’s firm voice clearly reached Hiroto, sitting frozen, and Ozonezma at his side.

“…HIROTO…”

“…”

Ozonezma didn’t have the words for how Ozonezma was meant to face the scene of finality before him.

Was he meant to mourn the man’s death—a comrade in arms, albeit for a brief time?

Or perhaps, should he have felt relieved that the True Hero had advanced to the second round?

What had happened to his memories around the end of the Final Party’s journey?

By the time he had finished agonizing and writhing from the surgery to incorporate the True Demon King’s arm and regained his sanity—or at least, what he had believed was his sanity—Setera had vanished.

Only he alone could be rightfully labeled the True Hero.

Ozonezma had thought he needed to search for the ogre, but his fear toward Setera’s true identity prevented him from doing so.

…He had believed him to be dead.

If there was any being in this world who could calmly live on after consuming the corpse of the True Demon King, then they were a true and unequivocal monster.

He hadn’t wanted to think that the last remaining companion from his travels was such a thing.

Thus, he had kept silent on the ogre’s achievement while being simultaneously unable to overlook anyone who falsely claimed they were a hero.

It was something no one else had been able to do…that no one should have done.

The deed was far too great, and frightening.

The True Hero was terrifying.

Nevertheless, Setera had returned.

To the Sixways Exhibition, to tell without any words to speak, that the Hero did truly exist in their world.

“…”

Ozonezma went to say something to Hiroto, but an alarm bell began to ring from afar.

It propagated through the spires in each of the districts quickly, turning into a piercingly loud din.

“…WHAT IS THIS?”

The tall black smoke rising up in the distance could be seen even from the spectator seats.

Ozonezma realized what exactly the implications of it all were.

“Everyone, please calm down and move as commanded!”

A soldier came running up the seats, shouting with all the volume his voice could muster.

“This is a life-threatening disaster! Line up in order and evacuate as instructed! Match pace with children, the elderly, and the injured and don’t disturb the line! We are fully prepared to get everyone out of the arena!”

“Those closest to the east exit, come this way! We are arranging carriages for you outside!”

Ozonezma—and all the hero candidates—knew. This alarm bell didn’t signal any ordinary disaster.

“…HIROTO! YOU NEED TO FLEE IMMEDIATELY, TOO. THIS LOCATION IS ALREADY IN DANGER, JUST AS THEY SAID.”

“…Yes. I suppose so.”

Hiroto was perfectly calm, his hands folded together on his lap as he stared at the arena.

The supernatural politician wasn’t at all rattled by Zigita Zogi’s death.

“I’ll follow after you. Go ahead without me.”

“…I…”

Setera had vanished. Among all the chaos, had he already headed off to do the job he was meant to do?

Ozonezma was scared of him. He overlooked him.

He was unable to forget the ogre. He rued him.

Ozonezma wanted to convey something, even a single word, to the ogre, but he didn’t know what exactly he was supposed to say.

Zigita Zogi’s body hadn’t been devoured but left exposed in the arena.

If there was even one person who believed in the horrible truth behind the Hero, then would this Sixways Exhibition have ever happened in the first place? If Ozonezma hadn’t completed the taisai, would Hiroto have returned from across that sea? Or perhaps, if Zigita Zogi hadn’t isolated Ozonezma outside Aureatia? If the information on Uhak had been made clear to him. If Ozonezma hadn’t ended up losing to Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

Izick the Chromatic. Olukt the Drifting Compass Needle. Setera the External. The True Demon King. Hiroto the Paradox. Zigita Zogi the Thousandth. Soujirou the Willow-Sword. Ozonezma the Capricious.

No one had planned for it to happen at all.

In some place beyond the reach of anybody, all their fates had grown intertwined.

Was what lay ahead in the future of the Sixways Exhibition the answer to this fate?

“…HIROTO. I WAS NOT ABLE TO DO ANYTHING IN THIS BATTLE. CALL FOR ME IF THERE COMES A TIME I AM NEEDED.”

“That’s much appreciated. I’ll do exactly that.”

The colossal beast scaled the castle garden walls with a single jump and then disappeared.

Hiroto continued to stay seated in the now-blank, snow-white spectator seats.

Just as Hiroto the Paradox had been a perfect politician, Zigita Zogi had been a perfect tactician.

Foreseeing even his own future, dying without accomplishing his objective, he had used every method at his disposal to protect the politician’s life.

Even in death, the tactician had beaten the land’s most wicked spy colony.

The politician left behind merely had to achieve the tactician’s goal.

A perfect politician didn’t have any personal feelings. Without a single desire of his own, he moved solely to realize the promises to his constituents. The goblins’ renaissance. That was possible even without Zigita Zogi the individual.

As long as Hiroto could accomplish that, their wishes would come true. There was no problem. As long as someone wished for it, there wasn’t anything that Hiroto the Paradox couldn’t accomplish. It had been so up until now, and it would be true going forward.

He smiled slightly, then pressed his fist up against his brow.

“Ahhh…goddamn it…”

Zigita Zogi had been a goblin the likes of which would never be seen again.

It had been a dream, passed down by Zegegu Zogi, by Ephelina, by Raheek.

From afar, the alarm bells continued to clang.

Thus, there wasn’t anyone to hear his wail.

“Goddamn it aaaaall…!”

Match eight. Winner, Uhak the Silent.