Lives Like Flies
The magical investigator Yuren’s gaze returned to Ferda.
Suspicion lingered in his eyes.
“Forgive the impertinence, Regent, but may I ask where you obtained this?”
Ferda answered.
“It was discovered in Count Consiler’s territory. An outsider concealed his identity to the end, so the guards took him into custody.”
“And that heretic…?”
“He bit his tongue and died before they could even begin the torture. They burned the body as a precaution—in case some posthumous magic activated.”
That was precisely why they had cremated the unclaimed corpse.
“Well done. Filthy black mages never die cleanly, even after death.”
The investigator clicked his tongue.
The sound carried the regret of being unable to interrogate the demon-worshippers further.
Yet the handling had been flawless; there was nothing to criticize.
“Still… to think someone capable of handling this level of Infernal Tongue exists. It seems the Empire harbors more dangerous specimens than we imagined.”
“Is it that serious?”
Olivia asked, and Yuren nodded.
“Yes. Judging solely by the comprehension of the script, this is unmistakably the work of a black mage who has reached at least the 5th Circle.”
“How strong is a 5th Circle, exactly?”
“I myself am a 5th Circle Master Mage, but a black mage’s 5th Circle is effectively equivalent to a 6th Circle Archmage. They can draw mana from the hells and wield it as their own.”
“A 6th Circle! That puts them on par with the Grand Magisters…!”
Indeed, most of the black mages who had once shaken the continent—and still did—were 5th Circle practitioners.
They paid heavy prices and routinely obtained power that surpassed the 6th Circle.
The same is true of the shadow grimoire I intend to claim.
Fearing his thoughts might show on his face, Ferda swiftly buried the notion.
“If we do not move with lightning speed, the Empire will be thrown into chaos.”
“That can’t be…!”
Olivia bit her lower lip, aghast.
“A black mage of that caliber… it should be nearly impossible for them to enter the Empire in the first place. How can one already be inside?”
“That… I do not know. Security is excellent, but never perfect…”
Even the magical investigator kept tilting his head as though the matter baffled him.
“Even so, a devotee fluent enough in this language should have been caught long ago…”
Imperial surveillance always prioritized intercepting the greatest threats first.
Petty nuisances might slip through, but the moment a 5th Circle black mage crossed the border, emergency alarms would have blared without fail.
He simply could not conceive of any reason for the absence of such an alarm.
Which was only natural.
Because no mage of that level would ever be living in the imperial capital.
Any devotee capable of writing Infernal Tongue this well would wisely disguise himself as a villager far from the capital rather than risk the city itself.
And the true source of the Infernal script on that paper?
None other than Mori.
Inside her mind resided the Library of All Things, and among its contents was a dictionary of the Infernal Tongue.
She had simply translated and written it exactly as Ferda ordered.
Forged evidence, yes…
But the Infernal Tongue was genuine, and so was its content.
Black mages truly did lurk in the sewers.
And it was equally certain that they were preparing a terrorist strike against the Empire.
The underground capital of the Empire is vast.
The first emperor, determined that the city should match the dignity of the name “Great Human,” had devoted special attention to the subterranean waterways.
The underground was even more labyrinthine than the surface above.
Yet construction never proceeds exactly as planned.
Take, for instance, the underground reservoirs meant to guard against floods.
They cost too much, and the climate rarely produced floods severe enough to justify them, so work simply stopped.
In such cases it was common practice to wall off the excavated spaces rather than fill them back in.
The imperial capital’s underbelly was riddled with such forgotten chambers.
And Ferda knew precisely where one of them lay.
Places that slowly faded from official maps.
Places that the rats driven into the shadows discovered when they sought new dens.
A gathering ground for reactionaries plotting to terrorize the capital.
Raids against those who surfaced into the light were frequent, but descending personally into the sewers to strike—as they were doing today—was rare.
There, knights and the magical corps ringed the site and prepared their ambush.
Everything had to be finished in a single decisive stroke.
One misstep and casualties would appear; the moment blood was spilled, the black mages would drag the fight into a bloody quagmire.
The magical corps readied silence spells and concentration-disruption magic, while the knights moved to cut down every disrupted caster.
The engineering team, feeling their way along the wall, suddenly halted and pointed.
“Here. Beyond this wall is a space we can breach.”
“Good. Fall back. Howard.”
“Yes, sir!”
A massive knight bearing a war hammer stepped before the wall.
Even through plate armor and chainmail, the mottled swell of muscle was unmistakable.
He swung the war hammer in a great arc.
“Hup!”
BOOM—!!
The wall collapsed in a single blow.
“Kyaaak!”
“W-what the hell!?”
“What is it? What’s happening?”
Panicked voices erupted inside, sowing chaos.
And chaos demanded more chaos.
“In the name of the Light!”
“In the name of His Imperial Majesty!”
“Long live the Emperor!”
“O Light!”
With the knights’ battle cries they stormed in.
What followed was screaming.
“Gyaaaaah!”
“Kyaaaaah!”
Screams that made no distinction between man and woman.
Boom-boom-boom!
Then the thunder of explosions.
Steel clashed; something tore.
Ferda watched everything from outside and waited.
Only the sounds of violent entanglement reached him, yet he knew who had won without needing to see.
The senior assault captain emerged first and reported to Yuren the magical investigator and the knight-commander.
“Loyalty! Knights unharmed! Forty-five resistors executed, twelve taken prisoner.”
“Escapees?”
“One! Judging by his position on the dais, he appears to be the ringleader.”
“You idiots! Of all the people you could lose, you lose the one who must never escape!? He may have been a 5th Circle mage!”
“My deepest apologies! But he fled without any of his belongings—he won’t get far!”
“Fine. What belongings were there?”
“We left them inside.”
Greedy knights were hardly rare, yet none dared casually handle a black mage’s possessions.
Treasure or not, if a curse clung to it, their own heads would roll.
“Is that so? Then all is well.”
The magical investigator smiled with open relief.
“Excellent.”
Ferda, who had merely observed until now, rose from his seat.
“May I enter as well?”
“Of course. This way, please.”
As both regent and informant, he deserved every courtesy.
Yuren cleared a path, and Ferda stepped inside first.
The knights’ slaughter lay exposed in full.
Ferda took in each body one by one.
There are black mages among them, but most are simply the destitute.
Tents of ragged cloth, pots and spoons losing their original shape.
People who had sided with the black mages because they could not even secure a single proper meal.
At least the mages fed them.
That is a reason, yes—but not the only one.
No soul is more precious than one that has found hope in the pit of despair.
Every last one of them had been destined for sacrifice.
Ferda stepped over the corpses and made for the ringleader’s chamber.
Befitting the leader of this underground reservoir, the room was relatively well appointed and stocked with magical implements.
“Here—seditious literature.”
Yuren indicated the book resting on the desk.
Its cover of human scalp looked as though a face trapped inside the pages were screaming.
The moment Ferda saw it, he knew.
Gamigin’s Necromancy.
Gamigin, demon of undeath and legions.
An artifact of the necromancers who practiced his magic.
In truth the ringleader who possessed this book would one day reach the 5th Circle and launch a full-scale rebellion against the Empire.
But he fails.
Ferda recalled what they had done.
When the uprising began they stacked corpses in the sewers, detonated them, and sowed chaos.
Many died; from those dead they raised legions of the undead and tore through the city from within.
They had been timber meant to kindle turmoil in an Empire that needed to fall—yet Ferda had never thought highly of them.
Above all, they are useless.
Generating corpses through explosions was fine, but their strategy was far too naïve.
First, they had grossly underestimated the knights’ resilience.
Second, they had chosen terror aimed at the populace.
As a result, hatred toward demon-worshippers only deepened; cohesion grew stronger rather than weaker.
In short, the hammer blow meant to shatter solidarity had instead forged it harder still.
Better they never exist at all.
If they could not weaken the Empire, they had no value.
So he would uproot the weed before it sprouted.
“Loyalty! What shall we do with the bound demon-devotees?”
All of them were starving, their spirit broken.
They looked up at Yuren with eyes begging for mercy.
Yuren looked down on them with pure loathing.
“Take the rest into custody. Escort them to the imperial prison as though they were sacred treasures. We must show them clearly the end reserved for those who reject His Majesty’s light and wallow in black magic!”
“Loyalty!”
No mercy whatsoever.
The destitute flinched and began pleading desperately toward Yuren.
“W-we never pledged loyalty to any demon! We were only hungry!”
“Please, give us one chance! In the name of the Light, show mercy…!”
“Silence! How dare a heretic invoke the name of the Light!?”
The speaker received a fist for his trouble.
“At least spare my child! I beg you, my lord.”
A woman clutching an infant pleaded.
Yuren knew full well.
These people were not true devotees of demons.
They had simply made an unavoidable choice under the lash of hunger.
“What are you standing around for!? Drag them out!”
Yet the Empire’s subjects were many, and the reasons to kill them outweighed the reasons to spare them.
Lives like flies.
If discovered they would die by knightly steel; if they remained they would die as sacrifices for the black mages.
Swept along by forces far greater than themselves, there was nothing Ferda could do for them.
The magical investigator grinned as though their fate meant nothing to him.
In his hands rested the necromantic grimoire.
Standard procedure for black grimoires was to wrap them in golden silk before transport.
Yuren did not.
Instead he caressed the human leather, savoring the texture.
Then, suddenly sensing Ferda’s gaze, he coughed awkwardly.
“I must have looked like someone intoxicated by dark arts. Haha…”
“A little, yes.”
“Haha, how embarrassing. I was simply pleased that I could add one more line to my rather thin list of achievements.”
As if realizing his slip, he hastily covered the grimoire completely with silk.
Then he offered Ferda a word of thanks.
“Thanks to the Regent’s report, the people of the Empire will sleep soundly again tonight.”
“Not at all. I merely acted for my own benefit.”
“Acting for the Empire is a fine thing, haha!”
The man was clearly trying to gloss things over.
“So is there nothing you can do for me?”
Ferda laced the question with steel.
“Something I can do for you, you say. Of course!”
Had the other party been anyone else, a bounty or a quiet threat would have sent them packing. But this was the Grand Duchess’s fiancé and the regent of the Far East.
A reward commensurate with that station was required.
Yuren thought for a moment, then brightened as an idea struck him.
“Come to think of it, the Regent is a mage as well, is he not?”
“I am.”
“Then I ought to take you somewhere that is like a playground for mages, wouldn’t you agree?”
The magical investigator made his proposal.
“How would you like to visit the Sealed Vault?”
At last the first step of Ferda’s plan had arrived.
The Empire’s vault lies beneath the imperial palace.
To reach it one must pass countless guards and alarm spells, making it the most heavily secured site on the continent.
Without the accompaniment of the magical investigator Yuren, Ferda would never have set foot inside.
The vault keeper saw Yuren and smiled as he saluted.
“Loyalty! Magical Investigator! Hard work again today.”
“You as well, day after day. We have confiscated goods that must enter the Sealed Vault—record them.”
“Understood. Forgive me, but the gentleman accompanying you…?”
Beside him stood a young man with gray hair and deep blue eyes.
He said nothing, merely stood with his hands clasped behind his back.
Yuren answered for him.
“Come now, this is the fiancé of the Grand Duchess of the Far East. He may be regent, but he is the one responsible for the entire eastern frontier.”
“Ah… I see.”
“So handle it properly. Understood?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll omit him from the ledger.”
Without further notation the man closed the register.
“A youth overflowing with flexibility.”
“Haha, naturally. In this business you don’t survive without it. Besides…”
Yuren flashed a sly grin and added,
“Having flexibility isn’t always a bad thing, either.”
Shortly afterward Ferda and Yuren moved into another chamber.
Before them stood a stone gate with a crystal orb embedded at its center.
“This is called the Orb of Truth. Have you heard of it?”
“The artifact that glows green only when one answers its questions truthfully, is it not?”
“Precisely. A precious relic handed down since antiquity.”
The crystal sensed their presence and began to shine a soft blue.
Yuren walked forward with familiar ease and laid his hand upon it.
The instant his palm touched the surface, a voice filled the chamber.
"Do you swear that you do not follow the demons, nor obey their designs?"
The heavy, majestic voice sounded like a god pronouncing judgment.
Yuren answered.
“I swear.”
"Do you swear that your purpose in entering this vault does not spring from private desire?"
“I swear.”
"Do you swear that you are loyal to the Empire?"
“I swear.”
The three questions ended. Smoke swirled within the crystal.
Moments later the blue light shifted to green and glowed steadily.
Proof complete.
Yuren lifted his hand and looked at Ferda.
“Would you place your hand upon it as well?”
“Must I also?”
He already knew the answer, yet he feigned reluctance.
It made the act more natural.
“Is that not obvious? No one who enters this chamber and fails the Orb’s verification may pass. Unless…”
Yuren narrowed his eyes, the same glint he had shown the demon-worshippers.
“Is there something weighing on your conscience?”
Ferda shook his head.
“I am a rather greedy man. I merely worry I might fail the second question.”
“Haha, no need to fret. So long as you do not stand here thinking, ‘I will definitely take something out with me,’ you will be fine.”
Crude, yet still a reliable method.
I went through this myself in the past.
He had tried three times; each time the orb had flared red and rejected him.
In the end he had simply smashed it and walked in.
That was the kind of man Ferda was.
Full of private desires, and not the least bit loyal to the Empire.
Knowing this perfectly well, he still placed his hand upon the Orb of Truth without hesitation.
"Do you swear that you do not follow the demons, nor obey their designs?"
The majestic voice pressed down upon Ferda as though seeking to crush him.