Tatsuya had promised Miyuki he was done searching for Minami for today, but he had only ended his search through the information dimension. He didn’t intend to stop searching for her physically.
In the afternoon, after Miyuki, worried about his health, finally stopped holding him, Tatsuya headed for the Sea of Trees at the western foot of Mount Fuji, He arrived at the place where the pursuing squad from the Juumonji family had lost track of Minoru the day before.
Tatsuya was wearing his Freed Suit today, but he wasn’t flying with it. He was riding on the ground on Wingless, his black electric motorcycle. He didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention by flying.
At the end of the battle that took place in the information dimension this morning, Minoru’s Parade hiding Minami’s location was destroyed.
Tatsuya’s attacks had been unsuccessful. Had Minoru turned Parade off himself? Or was he unable to use magic?
In any case, he had narrowed Minami’s location to an area with a radius of 100 meters.
“The last obstacle is Ghost Walker?”
This wasn’t encouraging. Tatsuya could only bypass Ghost Walker by shooting marks in the information dimension. Whether the radius was 100 meters or 1 meter, if he didn’t know the coordinates of his target, he couldn’t hit the target with a psion projectile in the information dimension.
“I guess I can’t do anything except a thorough search of the area…”
The Ghost Walker barrier was a magical maze distorting his sense of direction using high quality amulets. In addition, the area was covered with an illusion that couldn’t be seen by reconnaissance satellites.
“It’s a semi-permanent il usion? That’s the problem here.”
The illusion was most likely supported using Relic class amulets. They could be considered an improved version of the method used to store sequences of magic in the Stellar Furnace, so Tatsuya was very interested in the principle on which they functioned…
“In any case, I won’t be able to recreate these things.”
The shelter here had almost certainly been built by Zhou Gongjin. The technology used here was probably the same as the technology in Generators and Magic Amplifiers. Since these technologies use people as material, they were unacceptable for ethical reasons, and Tatsuya’s personal feelings prevented him from using them.
Regardless of the ethics on whether he could use them, though, Tatsuya was still curious…
The effect of the magic was powerful, and it couldn’t be bypassed – even by using electromagnetic waves or sound waves. As a result, Tatsuya had nothing left to do but get close enough to feel the traces of the barrier.
Tatsuya rode Wingless through the wall of illusory trees.
Minoru was awoken by an alarm of sorts that went off as Tatsuya approached the barrier.
“Minoru-sama! Are you awake? Do you recognize me?”
“Minami-san? What are you…”
“Oh, thank god!”
Minami smiled with tears in her eyes and god up from her chair, which was leaning against the bed due to the way she was sitting on it.
“I will prepare some tea now. Please wait a bit.”
“Minami-san?”
Minoru tried to stop Minami, but she had already run out of the bedroom by the time he could say anything.
“…bedroom?”
Minoru finally noticed the inconsistency with his memories.
“Shouldn’t I have been… in the yard?
Right… Parade nearly broke down under Tatsuya’s attacked.
I barely managed to withstand Tatsuya-san’s attacks…
…I remember now. I lost consciousness there.”
Minoru quickly looked at the clock, ready to panic.
Antique-looking wall clocks in this house had been installed in every corridor and every room, but despite their age, they always showed the correct time. This was achieved using the help of magic.
The current time was 1:58 PM. He didn’t know when he had lost consciousness, but more than three hours had already passed since then.
“How about the barrier ?”
Minoru jumped out of bed before suddenly grabbing his head with one hand. The blood had rushed out of his head and he was incredibly dizzy. He vision was dark and it was all he could do to stand up.
Minoru grabbed onto the bedside table to keep himself from falling, but it didn’t support him and he fell anyway.
Fortunately, there wasn’t anything on the table, but it made a rather loud sound as it hit the wooden floor.
“Minoru-sama, what happened? Are you okay?”
Minami had heard the table fall from behind the closed door, and Minoru heard Minami’s yells through it as well.
“All is well! I only dropped the table!”
Minoru tried not to cause and undue anxiety, but his response had the opposite effect and only served to increase Minami’s concern.
“Excuse me, I’m entering!”
She open the door and entered with a panicked expression on her face. Despite this, she hadn’t made any excessive noise, and she held a tray with a cup with one hand without spilling a single drop. She hadn’t forgotten her skills as a professional maid in her panic.
Minami calmed herself and looked at Minoru’s erratic appearance. She put they tray on the desk and then went to Minoru.
“Are you really okay, or do you feel bad again…?”
“I’m fine. Just wait a bit,” Minoru responded.
Minoru stopped Minami’s hand with which she tried to help him up. He quickly got up on his own, and they sat back to back on the bed.
Then, Minoru closed his eyes and concentrated on the barrier protecting the house.
Several magicians walked back and forth next to the barrier. Minoru finally noticed the army searching in the Sea of Trees.
Still, he wasn’t very concerned with them. He had expected this, as before they had disappeared into the hiding barrier, they were being pursued by the Juumonji family.
They had tracked him down to the path leading to his hideout, so it was obvious that the Sea of Trees would become the main point of the search. He had chosen this place as a shelter because he didn’t think it would be detected, even during a large scale search.
He was far more worried about something else.
“Ahh. Thank goodness. Ghost Walker is still functioning.”
His main worry had been whether Ghost Walker had been broken or not. He had been scared that Tatsuya had already neutralized the barrier.
He was certain that Tatsuya would come near to search. The battle between them in the information dimension had ended in his temporary victory, but that was just barely, and he only “won” because Tatsuya had failed to achieve his objective.
Looking at it from another view, one could say Minoru had lost since he held every advantage and had only barely managed to win.
Minoru knew that Tatsuya wouldn’t back down from his temporary loss. He would definitely come search with the information he found during the battle.
Minoru had been suppressing the desire to “look” at Tatsuya from the moment he had woken up. Using his Elemental Sight to find Tatsuya was risky. If Tatsuya detected the look, he would be able to find the way back along the look and find the location of the house.
Minoru had set up a barrier that would alarm him the moment one of the sixteen layers of the concealment spell had been destroyed.
Minoru was certain that the only magician who could pass through the barrier was Tatsuya. Objectively speaking, this was a limited outlook, but regardless, Minoru believed that since someone broke the barrier, Tatsuya was close.
So far, only the outermost layer of the spell had been broken, and this layer was already quickly healing itself.
“So far so good.”
Minoru finally had some free time to calm Minami.
While Minoru felt like he was making some progress with his free time, Tatsuya felt like he had run into a dead end.
The network of Ghost Walker stretching across the land ended up far exceeding his expectations.
He believed that when he approached the place Minami was hiding, he would be able to feel the signs that the phenomena had been modified with magic. However, he had already crossed the circular area with a 100-meter radius he had detected this morning several times, and he could barely sense the illusions’ presence. He didn’t have anywhere near enough clues to disperse the magic.
He realized that he hadn’t prepared enough, admitting that he had underestimated continental East Asian magic.
While ancient magic followed the same principles as modern magic, they used completely different technological systems and had very different purposes and styles.
Beyond that, ancient Japanese magic and ancient continental East Asian magic worked completely different despite both being classified as ancient magic.
“I could have spent my time deepening my understanding of this topic, but instead, I come here without any preparation, thinking that I could cancel a high-level hiding spel of a system completely unknown to me.
No matter how you look at it, I was excessively self-confident.”
Tatsuya smiled bitterly at his thoughts.
“I should have studied Zhou Gongjin’s and Gu Jie’s magic.”
Despite this thought, Tatsuya didn’t ever have time for that. All his free time had been dedicated to the ESCAPES project.
Tatsuya should have realized that he didn’t ever have any opportunity to do this, but it didn’t matter.
He didn’t have the opportunity to regret it, either.
As a result of his lack of preparation, Tatsuya was not able to find the shelter in which Minami was hidden in the circle with a 100 meter radius.
The Sword Corps spent the whole day searching a wide area with far more people than Tatsuya, but also failed to find any clues about Minoru’s hideouts.
Following their search, they mistakenly concluded that “Kudou Minoru is not hiding in the Sea of Trees.”
17 hours had already passed since the search party sent by the self-defense forces left the Sea of Trees. Minoru still hadn’t dared search for Tatsuya in the information dimension and didn’t know anything about his movements, but he had at least stopped interfering with the barrier after the 15th hour.
Minoru sighed with relief once he was certain that had avoided detection for the second day.
He was currently in a room Zhou Gongjin had prepared for personal use. It was a combined bedroom and study, including both work equipment and communication devices Zhou Gongjin used while he was alive, so they still worked.
The media didn’t ever report Zhou Gongjin’s death. He wasn’t a celebrity, and he had been hiding for so long anyway in order to hide his ageless body’s secret. They might have found him if the store he managed in Yokohama had stopped functioning, but there was a system in place for it to function even without an owner.
In addition, conventional authorities had concealed Zhou Gongjin’s death in order to reveal routes for illegal entry into the country. Zhou Gongjin had mediated the entry of illegal migrants from the Great Asian Alliance, so they could catch some migrants who sought Zhou out not knowing he was dead.
Because of the circumstances around his death, the people Zhou Gongjin worked with and conducted transactions with never found out about his death.
Therefore, even now, requests addressed to Zhou Gongjin came to his email, and the room Minoru was now in allowed him to receive and decrypt these emails.
A message came to Zhou Gongjin’s terminal while Minoru was sitting at the table, resting from the busy day. He read the decrypted letter without much enthusiasm, but his lack of zeal was fairly natural. He read the letter out of boredom and curiosity rather than any desire to take on Zhou’s work.
However, after reading the message, Minoru turned serious. This wasn’t from any desire to make a profit – the letter wasn’t a simple request for illegal migration.
The letter was a request from the Great Asian Alliance for assistance for a secret agent in entering the country.
“This agent wants help with penetrating the country …? It looks like this signature belongs to the Chen Xiangshan, and the agent who is supposed to penetrate the country is the Man-Eating Tiger, Lu Ganghu …?”
Minoru was interested in this message since it revealed a secret plan that could cause serious damage to Japan. From the view of national interests, Minoru thought that he couldn’t ignore this.
However, he quickly changed his thinking. He had ceased to be human and had become an enemy of the motherland. He couldn’t let his love for his motherland put his own situation at risk. Instead, he decided to use this secret plan to gain a little time for himself.
Before he became a Parasite, he may have chosen to go with his original thinking –
defending his enemy because it was his motherland. But now, he was a Parasite, and his thinking had become more practical.
His personality hadn’t changed much, and Minoru hadn’t even realized he’d changed –
after all, does anyone realize they’ve changed?
However, his personality changes were definitely there, and now Minoru put more emphasis on benefitting himself.
The letter was from Chen Xiangshan – the commander of the Great Asian Alliance’s special forces. He was requesting assistance in penetrating Komatsu base. Someone without details might know that Liu Li Lei – currently the Great Asian Alliance’s only state-recognized strategic class magician – had escaped to Japan, and assume that the current operation was related to that. While Japan hadn’t officially acknowledged it, that fact had already spread around the world as sensational news. This specific information on this operation all but confirmed that thought – Liu Li Lei was currently under the protection of the army at Komatsu base.
The goal of this operation was either to retrieve or to kill Liu Li Lei.
Minoru thought that the probability of it being the second option was high, but whatever Chen Xiangshan’s plans were, Minoru was confident that the self-defense forces would try to stop it, resulting in a battle that would attract people’s attention.
In the past, Tatsuya had interacted with Chen Xiangshan and Lu Ganghu. He wouldn’t ignore their hostile activity, so if all they did was distract Tatsuya’s attention from Minoru, he might get a chance to move to a new shelter.
Minoru had already concluded that it would be difficult to continue hiding in this place. Minoru was worried that neither Parade nor Ghost Walker would stop Tatsuya for long.
Minoru sent Chen Xiangshan a reply with consent, putting on the signature of Zhou Gongjin.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login