Kidnapping
The regular session of the Grand Council had come to an end.
Just as they had gathered, the people began to disperse once more. As befitting the movements of dukes and higher, vast armies had concentrated in the central region. In that state, they also conducted a military parade of sorts, flaunting their national power and taking stock of one another.
In that regard, Escoleia stood far removed from such splendor. They were a city of knowledge, free from diplomatic conflict. Preferring practical, efficient movement, they traveled in mana-driven carriages powered by a mage's mana.
"Couldn't we switch to a horse-drawn carriage instead?"
Chancellor Bernard grumbled to the mage serving as their driver.
"That again, sir?"
"I think it every time I come to the Grand Council. As the chancellor of an entire city, hmm? A man needs a little face."
"Oh, please don't use words like 'face.' You're not some mercenary who's rolled around on rough ground. A middle-aged man with a belly using language like that just looks cheap."
"Besides, where would we keep horses in a chicken-coop of a city? Raising even one would take space enough to house a hundred more scholars—and you know the complaints would come flying the moment we tried."
"Still, I am the chancellor. Someone ought to keep up my dignity…"
"And then you want an audit notice landing on your desk and chaos erupting? I know luxury matters in the world of nobles, but the ones who understand that don't become scholars."
"I just want to ride a proper carriage for once, sigh…"
"If you keep whining like that, shall I quit? Clock out early and go home?"
"Sigh… Fine, I was wrong. Let's go. Yes, go."
As if he needed a master on top of everything else. For the chancellor to be completely at the mercy of a mage's threats…
If we're going to care about efficiency, it would be nice if we could charge mana without needing a mage at all…
Bernard muttered to himself.
Yes—if we could just pour mana in and make it run, how wonderful would that be?
A few gears and levers, a simple set of controls… Nothing more would be needed.
Bernard sketched the idea into his notebook.
The carriage, which had been moving without a tremor, suddenly stopped.
"What is it?"
"Someone appears to be blocking the road, sir. Judging by their appearance, they look like bandits."
Bandit gangs who blocked roads and collected tolls existed everywhere.
"Shall I handle them? Not as if I have anything better to do."
The mage drew a finger across his throat and grinned.
"Let's avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Just give them a little money."
"Why give them money?"
"They're just trying to make a living, aren't they? Pay them something reasonable and send them on their way."
"That's why people always look down on you…"
"What was that?"
"Nothing, sir. I'll be right back."
The mage took a few fistfuls of silver coins and climbed down from the carriage. Chancellor Bernard watched with a sour expression.
Holding the coins, the mage kept his distance, tossed the silver onto the ground, and gestured that they should take it and let them pass.
Then a sharp flash of light burst from the mage's torso.
"Huh?"
Along a single diagonal line of light, the mage's upper body slid free. In the place where his torso had been stood a beggar smiling thinly—and a sword.
"Wh-what, what is this!?"
The chancellor cried out in horror.
The mage in the driver's seat did not react with undignified panic; instead, he began preparing a spell. It was time to show why he was paid fifty gold coins a day for escort work.
But something flew at him with a speed that made that effort meaningless.
Crash!
A dagger punched through the glass and through his throat.
"I—kuh, kuhh…!"
The mage's chant failed. The magic circle he had drawn scattered into the air and vanished.
In an instant, two Fourth Circle mages had been dealt with.
The chancellor sat frozen, watching the beggar approach. He had sensed it instinctively—running would only get him killed faster.
The man who had dispatched two Fourth Circle mages in a heartbeat opened the door and sat down across from him. He smiled thinly.
"A pleasure, Chancellor of Escoleia."
"Wh-who are you?"
"You don't need to know who I am. Let's talk about you."
The man pressed on with the conversation unilaterally. Frozen, the chancellor could only nod.
"You were the one who proposed at this Grand Council that signs of the Black Dragon Godwin's return had appeared, correct?"
"That is so…?"
"What were you thinking when you did that?"
"I did it for the safety of the continent…"
"Even knowing it might put you in danger?"
"I may have been wrong. But I felt I had to say it regardless…"
"Ah!"
The mysterious man cut Bernard off and set a blade against his throat.
"Let's not waste time on useless talk. Dragging this out will only hurt you."
Blood from the two mages dripped steadily from the dagger. The chancellor swallowed hard and fought to suppress his trembling.
"So you were going to announce a device that predicts the appearance of demonkin, weren't you?"
"H-how do you know that…?"
"I have ears. Everywhere."
The man grinned.
The only ones who knew that fact were a few trusted scholars, his secretary—and Ferda Valdrova.
"Ferda Valdrova!"
The chancellor suddenly shouted as if the realization had struck him.
"You… are you someone the Regent Ferda sent?"
"Who knows? Do I seem like someone he sent?"
"Damn it! I should have known the moment a boy that young had eyes like that…!"
Chancellor Bernard raged. The man only snickered in reply.
"Our chancellor is cuter than I expected. Not bad at all."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"What else?"
He produced a syringe.
"This."
The enormous needle was a weapon in its own right. What terrified the chancellor, however, was the tar-like, sticky black liquid inside it.
"What in the world is that inside?"
"A vaccine."
"A vaccine?"
"Yes, a vaccine. A medicine that will wipe out every cluster of bacteria holding this world in thrall."
The man set his thumb on the plunger and prepared the injection. Then he drove the needle in—not into Chancellor Bernard, but into himself.
"Urgh…!"
The man groaned in agony. But he was not dying. This was mutation—no, evolution.
Something like the tar he had injected rose like grease and coated his skin. When the transformation was complete, his form had quite literally blackened. He looked less like a human than a mannequin of soft material, a new cocoon. From within it, a red eye tore free and shone. When his mouth opened, sharp bestial fangs bared themselves in threat.
"C-could it be…"
Putting the elements together, a single word flashed through the chancellor's mind.
"Demonkin…!"
The man had become a demonkin.
"Hahaha! At last… His grace flows through this body as well!"
The man caressed his own face, lost in ecstasy. Like a man who had achieved a lifelong wish, he turned his gaze back upon the chancellor with pure pleasure.
Bernard instinctively felt death approaching. Desperate to live somehow, he threw out a question.
"Why would a man of your skill… remain a demonkin follower?"
Demonkin followers were those with nothing left to lose—far more vicious even than devil worshippers.
"I was once a knight who knew honor."
The man giggled with mad laughter.
"But no matter how carefully you guard your honor, if you serve a king who falls for the silver tongue of petty scoundrels, everything can collapse in a single moment."
He was a fallen knight.
"So, with nothing left to lose, I decided to smash it all."
"If you become a demonkin… you will no longer be able to live normally in the human world, nor on this Serdes Continent… You will become a lost soul that can go neither to heaven nor to hell. Knowing that, why…?"
"That's your opinion."
The man raised his dagger and sliced across Chancellor Bernard's arm. The wound was not deep, but blood streamed freely. He pressed his hand over the injury. Just as Bernard thought he was wounding him only to treat him, something astonishing occurred.
"Mother Maroon…"
His pitch-black body began to take on the color of living flesh. It was not merely a change of hue to look human—parts of his body stretched, others shrank, until at last he had transformed into a form intimately familiar to Chancellor Bernard.
Bernard himself.
"How do I look, Chancellor? Do I resemble you?"
The man wearing Bernard's face smiled—a smile of pure malice that the real Bernard had never once worn in his life.
"What do you intend to do with my research?"
"As expected of a chancellor—your mind works quickly."
The man tapped his own temple with the dagger.
"You already know, don't you? You're building a device to predict monster appearances. There's only one thing demonkin would do about that."
Ruin the research. Make the prediction device as if it had never existed.
"D-do you think I'll just stand by and allow that!?"
At the thought of losing the research he had poured his life into, Chancellor Bernard mustered belated courage. But the other Bernard across from him moved with fluid speed and seized his throat, squeezing slowly, powerfully.
"Ghk, ghhhk!"
"Rest well. I, too, shall follow you into the world of the void."
Just as he was about to kill the original Chancellor Bernard—
"Ambush!"
A shout from a man standing guard outside pierced the carriage.
The disguised Bernard turned his head. Outside, a battle was underway. Demonkin followers posing as beggars clashed with unknown assailants. Two people alone were overwhelming more than twenty men.
Brown hair and blond hair.
Caught by the unexpected ambush, the man released the throat he had been crushing and demanded,
"You—when did you hire bodyguards?"
"Ghk, ghk, w-what bodyguards??"
Chancellor Bernard asked back with a face that understood nothing. There was no time to hear the answer. The demonkin followers were cleaned up almost immediately. The ones disguised as bandits had been nothing but rabble; the two were skilled knights.
"This is inconvenient."
The man was genuinely concerned. Two mages he could kill in an instant with a surprise attack before they finished chanting—but facing two knights at once was difficult.
He decided to use his wits. A diversion.
"You there! Be careful!"
He kicked open the carriage door and ran desperately.
"In there! There's someone inside who looks exactly like me! He's trying to kill me!"
He fled like a man terrified. At the same time, he kept a reverse-gripped dagger firmly hidden against his forearm, ready to strike the moment they entered range.
"Quickly, deal with the one in there—gah…!"
He did not get far before he collapsed. A dagger was buried in his ankle—identical to the one that had been in the brown-haired man's hand.
"Aaaagh!! What is the meaning of this!?"
There was no reply. Instead, the brown-haired man sprinted forward and kicked Bernard's head with all his strength.
Thud—!
A sickening sound, as if bone had cracked. Chancellor Bernard's body went limp.
The blond-haired man widened his eyes and shouted,
"Sir Jed! What are you doing to the Chancellor?!"
The man called Jed jerked his chin toward the fallen chancellor.
"That's not the Chancellor."
"What are you talking about!? It's not even a magical disguise! If you kick him that hard, he's certainly dea—wait?"
His fussing stopped the moment he spotted another Bernard climbing belatedly out of the carriage.
"Why are there two Chancellors…?"
"Ha, you innocent country boy. You need to work on your powers of observation. For now, bind that man tightly. I'll bring the real one over."
"Uh… understood."
Arwen bound the fake while Jed helped the real one out of the carriage and supported him.
"Are you unharmed?"
"Y-yes… I'm fine. You two are the Regent of Baldrova's…?"
"My introductions are late. I am Jed Swallow, a knight sworn to the Grand Duchy of Baldrova. This innocent friend here is Sir Arwen. On the Regent's orders, we have been secretly watching over and escorting you, Chancellor."
"Subordinates of the Regent… Why would the man who stabbed me in the back now be helping me?"
"Pardon? I'm not sure what misunderstanding there may be, but for now we will take you to where our Regent is."
He had been on the verge of blacking out; his head was spinning. But Bernard had no choice. The mages who should have driven the carriage were dead, so it could not move. The road ahead was long, and walking it alone was far too dangerous.
Chancellor Bernard resigned himself.
"Very well. I will go with you."
"Then I'll see to your wound first."
Jed lightly treated Bernard's injury while Arwen secured the other Bernard and loaded him onto a horse. Leaving the site of the incident as it was, they set off.
Even as they rode, a question circled in Arwen's mind.
"Sir Jed."
"What?"
"How did you tell them apart?"
He had attacked without a moment's hesitation, which was how he had caught the man off guard. But Arwen could not understand the reason for that lack of hesitation.
Jed smirked and answered,
"No shine."
"…Pardon? Shine?"
"That fake over there—seems he couldn't quite manage the Chancellor's nice, glossy head."
"…"
Arwen's eyes flicked past Jed's back. Chancellor Bernard's head gleamed softly in the moonlight.
"Ah."
It was so absurd he could not find a single word to say.
After riding through the night, they arrived at a place where a single carriage waited. The Regent of Baldrova's carriage and tent were there. A young silver-haired maidservant greeted them.
"This way."
She lifted the tent flap, and Bernard stepped inside. Warmth touched his skin—so different from the cold, harsh ground of the wild. The interior was several times larger than the exterior suggested, so cozy and well-appointed that it was impossible to believe he was still inside a tent.
A spatial tent… Isn't that an extraordinary treasure?
Even a spatial pocket that required fairy dust as a medium was a treasure in its own right. A tent of that kind was on an entirely different level. Only an emperor-class king—or a dragon—could possess such a thing.
Once again, he was made keenly aware that this man was the consort of a dragon.
"Welcome."
A young man with gray hair and blue eyes greeted him.
Ferda.