Chapter 439

The cliff at Veste Oberhaus, unfortunately, had been cleared completely, without a single tree in sight, and the sheer face left by the excavator was right up against the building. Why? Maybe they had expanded the building at some point. But what good was thinking about that now…?

Crash—

The sound of something tearing through the air slammed into my eardrums. I was falling, too. The moment I grabbed Mecklenburg by the arm and waist, he seized me by the collar. There was malice in the hand gripping my collar. Right. I had resigned myself to accepting whatever came, so I suppose it had to be this way.

I muttered curses under my breath and squinted against the fierce wind obscuring my vision. It felt like all the blood in my body was draining downward, down and down—no, it felt like my feet were about to burst. My vision spun. It was impossible, but it even felt as though the fluid in my eyes was being drained away.

Amber mana exploded right in front of my face. The mana Mecklenburg was pouring into my back and neck wormed its way between the mana circulating through my body. It was like a blade. Even as the blood rushed through my head and my eyes went unfocused, the finely honed offensive mana kept me awake.

“Enough already…!”

Taking the full force of a mage as powerful as Mecklenburg was no easy thing. At this moment, I almost resented how skilled he was. How nice it would have been if he were at the bottom of his unit—though he was absolutely not the kind of person who would ever stay at that level.

They say that when death is near, the world appears to move in slow motion. For once, that was true. The ground was getting closer, while Mecklenburg’s mana attacked me relentlessly, as if it would never run out. The sheer aggression of his mana made me feel as though my entire body were being torn apart.

Still, if there was one thing I could count on…

The sharp amber mana came rushing at me, squeezing the breath from my lungs—but I couldn’t let go of him. No. I had to do the opposite. I embraced the mana coming at me with enough force to send me plummeting. I put more strength into the arm gripping his back. The amber mana gradually began to burn red.

“Uh, ngh…!”

A startled voice I had heard once before burst out right beside me. The mana that had been stabbing through my entire body vanished in an instant, and the blood that had pooled in my legs flowed back through my body. Now, the one being attacked was him.

Magic wasn’t something only Mecklenburg could use. I could overpower him. Unless he brought hierarchy into the equation, the reverse held true as well. He would never admit it if he heard me say that, though.

A pained voice followed. I quickly lowered my output, adjusting the amount of mana so that it was only enough to cancel out Mecklenburg’s attacks without hurting him. I drove my mana into the left side of his back, where his heart should be, and kicked off into empty air. Boom— accompanied by the sound of stepping on air, our bodies flipped.

I let the two streams of mana continue colliding and bursting apart, tightening my grip around his back. Somehow, I forced my shaking arm to move and tore off my left glove, throwing it away.

Slow. The pitch-black glove falling away seemed to move in slow motion.

The ring on my left hand glinted over Mecklenburg’s shoulder. The moment I took one hand off his back, my body dropped sharply away from him. A chill ran through me. Even so, I had to set up a safeguard. I had no idea how this mind control spell worked.

Thankfully, I had a useless piece of jewelry that could be disguised as an artifact. With that thought, I pushed divine power into the silver of the ring on my left hand.

Grab—

“Wake up!”

“…!”

The moment I shoved Mecklenburg’s forehead with my left hand, the composure vanished from the face that had been staring coldly at me. Finally.

Realizing what was happening, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. His gaze dropped toward his feet. Horror crept into his expression. Then he curled in on himself, burying his face against his shoulders.

“Ah—”

“Wait…”

“AAAAAAAH!”

“Shut up!”

Boom—!

The heel of my boot struck the ground hard. I landed with mana reinforcing my feet. Even though I had been able to control Mecklenburg’s attacks and had spread a barrier to slow our fall, the impact still shook my entire body. How the hell had Narke managed this? I threw the troublesome guy I had been half-carrying over my shoulder onto the ground.

“Ugh!”

“…That was close.”

My vision was hazy. The blood slowly returning to its proper circulation left me dizzy. I rested my head against my staff and muttered, “It’d be nice if mages could fly, too.”

“Hah, huh… How, how did this…?”

“What do you mean how?”

Rubbing around my eyes through my half-darkened vision, I said, “It wasn’t the water supply. It wasn’t the soil, either. We stopped to check once along the way, remember?”

“W-What…?”

“It’s not the air or the river, either. If it were, all of us would have been contaminated. Unless German Pleroma had received the formula and could manufacture it immediately—which I can’t rule out—but contaminating an entire river would be a huge waste. Or perhaps, knowing we were coming, it would be quite an appropriate method. But then why was everyone except you left uncontaminat—”

“Stop. Wait!”

Mecklenburg kicked my leg. Still unable to get up, he looked up at me from my feet with frightened eyes. The moment I saw that look, my head started throbbing, and I had to close my eyes again. Tightening his grip around my shin, Mecklenburg spoke.

“…I wasn’t asking for an explanation. Try not to say too much. More importantly, I… I…”

“You were under a mind manipulation magic.”

I slowly lifted the hand I had resting over my staff and showed him the ring.

“And when I hit you with an artifact, you woke up.”

“…….”

“That’s all you need to know. Lord Farnese gave it to me. It contains divine power for purification and self-defense.”

“…Of course, nowhere… More importantly, you… how did you…”

Mecklenburg answered in a trembling voice, still seemingly too shaken to collect his thoughts. I waited patiently, but his words didn’t immediately follow. I cut him off.

“I warped here.”

Silence. Mecklenburg stared at me with his mouth hanging open, completely caught off guard by the abrupt statement. Even through my blurry vision, I could clearly see his confusion.

“If it were you, Senior, you wouldn’t have answered, ‘I see. Good job.’ You would’ve asked what the hell I expected you to do about it. Or you might’ve gotten on my nerves by saying something like, ‘What gives you the confidence to wander around when you can’t even warp properly?’”

“Wh-what? When have I ever gone that far….”

“Again. This was the biggest problem. You’re not the kind of person who would greet me with a ‘You’re here’ when I showed up. And when I kept bothering you with ‘Senior, Senior,’ you shouldn’t have just stared at me. You should’ve gotten annoyed and told me to stop calling you and get to the point.”

“I remember you making a racket calling me ‘Senior’ this, ‘Senior’ that at noon and again when you stopped by earlier. And I didn’t say a word to you then?!”

“You’d put up with it once or twice. Besides, I got straight to the point every time back then, didn’t I? Just now, I called you ‘Senior’ and either said nothing or brought up something pointless three times. Don’t you see it? Of course you don’t. You’re not someone who would put up with that. You may be kind to other people, so they might not notice, but from my perspective, that just isn’t something you would do.”

As I drew a breath to continue, Mecklenburg raised his voice. His weak fingertips touched my shin again.

“Stop talking. I understand. …So that’s why you followed me here. All the way here…”

His weak fingertips touched my shin again. I understood what he was trying to tell me. I wiped the blood running along my nose and jaw and fell silent. Mecklenburg then spoke.

“It feels like I was dreaming. I clearly remember walking here and talking to you, but I can’t remember exactly what we talked about… I feel like I know, but I don’t.”

“I suppose so.”

“More importantly, what I was trying to ask—”

“Now isn’t the time. What time did the dog come? What color was it?”

“About thirty minutes after you left. Ochre.”

“Haa… Anything unusual about it?”

“It was covered in dust, like any ordinary dog.”

“Anything else.”

“I didn’t really look closely. I’m not particularly fond of stray dogs.”

No doubt because of the dirt they dragged in with them. He wasn’t the kind of person who liked wild animals in general. Someone who went out of his way to keep dust off his shoes was hardly going to welcome one.

“Then is there anyone who might know the dog fairly well?”

“The vice captain said he played with the dog for a little while right after he arrived here. He seemed so happy that he even whistled.”

“Is he fond of dogs?”

“Generally speaking, yes.”

I nodded and slowly reached into my belt pouch. My arm kept jerking uncontrollably as I did so. With the arm refusing to move the way I wanted, I rummaged through the contents somehow until my fingers found one of Wittelsbach’s potions. I needed to reactivate the mana pathways Mecklenburg had torn apart with his mana.

After drinking the second bottle and waiting for a while, I slowly began to feel warmth spreading through my body. Ironically, that was when the sleepiness finally hit me. I slapped my cheek and slowly raised my head.

Mecklenburg was still staring at me with a dazed expression. I held out a hand, signaling for him to grab it and get up. Only then did he get to his feet on his own, extend his wand into a staff, and strike it against the ground.

He was checking whether there were any people or magical objects nearby. After confirming there was nothing, he quickly put my arm over his shoulder and warped to the front of the headquarters. Perhaps because he knew how poor I was at warping, the moment we arrived in Brandenburg, his grip tightened around both my arms.

Feeling strangely unimpressed, I said quietly, “Do you really need to support me? I’m the one who should be supporting you.”

“I suppose even my apology has lost some of its meaning now.”

“…….”

What an unexpected thing to say.

I looked at Mecklenburg. He gestured to the mages guarding the entrance to the headquarters grounds, then quickly walked inside. He passed the residential quarters and the dining hall and headed toward the building in the distance that housed the Chief of Staff’s office.

Silence followed. So he must have taken everything that happened today as if it had all been the result of the mind control magic. I shook my head.

“No.”

“…….”

“I suspected it at first, but I don’t anymore.”

Truth be told, I had already started getting suspicious when he apologized to me around 12:30 PM. Given the circumstances, I couldn’t help wondering if something was wrong with this bastard, and Atropos inevitably crossed my mind. I even checked to see if he had washed his hands just before and somehow been poisoned by the drug.

I had been considering the possibility that Mecklenburg had been bought off by Adrian Askanien, so I intended to keep an eye on him. The problem happened on the very day I came to Passau with that intention—in other words, that was what I thought at the time.

Not everyone under the effects of mental manipulation magic walks around like a zombie with unfocused eyes. Just as I had subtly tampered with the mind of a Bavarian guard in Leo’s Extra Chapter, someone under mind manipulation magic could still appear relatively “normal.” I suspected Mecklenburg might have been affected by such a spell, which was why he had been acting unusually friendly toward me. Since the water might not have been the only problem, I checked his shoes as well. Until I went looking for Mecklenburg at four, I suspected both the water and the dirt, and when I stopped by the checkpoint at four, I used the investigation as an excuse to talk to him.

That was when I finally came to the conclusion that the water, dirt, river, and air might not have been used as the means. Mecklenburg had been strangely kind to me, but none of the other members of our 101st Unit had been affected by magic. Not even me. If the river had been contaminated, I should have been drugged too, considering I was only a twenty-five-minute walk away. And contaminating an entire river was much harder than it sounded. The fact that his kindness had still been within what Zähringen had described as an acceptable range could only lessen my suspicions.

I still wasn’t certain. Mecklenburg was still a little kinder than usual even then. That was why I kept trying to find out when his colleagues had gone to the bathroom and continued paying attention to everything around me. Even the mud on the rabbit’s feet. I spoke quietly.

“By the way, do you remember what you said at the fortress earlier? ‘I chased it away immediately. Apparently, the vice captain…’”

“…I vaguely remember.”

Mecklenburg answered quietly, looking rather troubled.

“I can understand the vice captain coming to see the dog alone around noon. But from what you said, he came back again afterward. Explain that to me.”

“…I remember thinking, ‘Is there something special about today or something?’”

Mecklenburg let out a long sigh before slowly continuing.

“A yellowish-brown dog came running into the hall outside the checkpoint. I wondered how it had gotten all the way here, so I was going to chase it out. But the vice captain came running over from the other side, where he was inspecting a shipment from a ship, picked up the dog, and carried it out.”

“Something impossible has happened, then. At least by your standards. He actually picked up a stray dog and carried it out…”

“I’m glad you still have enough energy to joke.”

“And what happened after that?”

“The vice captain came over and touched my neck before leaving. That’s the answer you wanted, isn’t it?”

He pointed behind his own neck. I narrowed my eyes.

“Exactly. But your neck?”

“He said the collar of my coat was turned up at the back. So I thought maybe I was having a run of bad luck today.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d wear his coat collar turned up. And are you even the sort of person who allows physical contact? Even if it’s just a coat, anyone would need quite a bit of courage to put their hands on your clothes…”

I stopped halfway through and realized that this guy, who normally hated having people even touch his hands, was now willingly supporting me. I was honestly impressed. Whether or not I had reached some profound realization, Mecklenburg no longer seemed to have the energy to react. He merely gave a short, weary sigh.

“Is that a compliment?”

“Yes. Anyway, you must have gone to wash wherever the vice captain’s gloves touched.”

“Someone came in immediately, so I couldn’t. I washed it with soap about ten minutes later.”

“You really are thorough… So, conveniently, you happened to have some free time ten minutes later?”

“No. My neck started prickling because I’d been thinking about it so much, so I asked my teammate to excuse me and went anyway.”

“Hmm. I see.”

Neither of us said anything after that. After a long while, Mecklenburg spoke quietly again.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not something you need to apologize for.”

I answered without looking at him. I could feel him watching me. Then I brought up something that probably sounded rather out of nowhere.

“Atropos can be spread by local residents. For example, they could claim they were tending the pastures while spraying water contaminated with Atropos all the way into German territory.”

“…….”

“But there aren’t many New Humans near the border. So a plan like that would make sense to carry out on a special day like today. I don’t know how much concentrate they put into the drinking water, Acqua Panna, but the holy water seemed to contain an extremely high concentration of Atropos. It only takes dabbing some on or sprinkling a few drops for it to take effect. But what do you suppose is the reason they didn’t contaminate the river and the land today?”

“If you already know, why do you keep asking?”

“I’m conserving my energy to speak.”

“…I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore. Contaminating an entire river isn’t something you can just do on a whim. Think about the volume of the Danube. A businessman has to think about the cost. Pleroma is a business, after all. Their targets are New Humans, so continuously contaminating the entire river would be incredibly inefficient. And the ground—even if you contaminated it, the only way to get poisoned would be by breathing in the air around it, and that doesn’t seem particularly effective either. If you wanted to scatter mercury over the ground and have people get mercury poisoning a few hours later, just what and how would one even have to do that?”

“Hmm.”

That was a good point, but that wasn’t what I was asking.

“The enemy never intended to tamper with everyone’s minds. For one thing, even if they wanted to, doing so in practice is far more difficult than talking makes it sound, and the aftermath is also realistically troublesome. It could be done if they had a sufficient system in place. But then why were you, of all people, targeted today, when the water, air, and ground weren’t contaminated at all?”

Mecklenburg simply stared at me in silence. He looked like he was wondering if I planned to keep playing twenty questions with him.

I kept my eyes ahead as I spoke quietly.

“I should be the one apologizing. You were used because I came looking for you at four.”

“What? What are you…”

“I was the target today. Not you.”

The building’s shadow blocked out the sunset.

Before I knew it, we had arrived at the yellow Neo-Renaissance building housing the Chief of Staff’s office. I was about to leave him behind and head inside when Mecklenburg, still unable to close his mouth, grabbed me with a stunned look on his face. I took a step toward him, and sunlight stabbed into my right eye. Then I slowly explained.

“They knew I would grab hold of you, so they ordered you to jump from that balcony. If that happened, they could send both of us to the ground with concussions.”

If I had been weaker than Mecklenburg in terms of mana, I wouldn’t have been able to cast a barrier and would have crashed into the ground with him. He had been attacking me while gripping me tightly enough that I couldn’t break free. And since Mecklenburg was being controlled by someone else, he obviously wouldn’t have been able to cast a barrier either. Besides, there aren’t many mages who can cast a barrier strong enough to slow their fall. Unless they’ve been trained for it, a mage is still a human being. When falling from a great height, they’ll close their eyes and scream just like anyone else.

I cast a soundproofing spell and quietly asked, “Senior. Do you remember how Sir Nikolaus Ernst made his debut in politics?”

“…Of course. I doubt there’s another politician on this continent who became famous and entered politics through such shameless marketing.”

“I assume you’re referring to how I was graciously invited to a Federal Council meeting. What was the matter being discussed?”

“The contaminated mosquitoes in Meppen.”

“You remember that well.”

I immediately turned and headed upstairs. Mecklenburg hurried after me. I found the office and knocked on the firmly closed door.

“Is anyone there?”

Someone who appeared to be a secretary came out and politely said, “He is currently having dinner with the Minister of Finance.”

“I have something urgent to tell him. He needs to come back immediately.”

“No, he can’t come back right now. After dinner…”

“Then at least tell him! It’s an urgent matter!”

I could feel Mecklenburg looking at me as though I were insane, his face turning pale. Not just ordinary insane, either. He looked at me like I was completely beyond saving. I understood. But if there was anyone more insane here, it was the person who was leisurely eating dinner while blocking off his own sources of information when it hadn’t even been a day since Atropos had actually been discovered.

The secretary reluctantly nodded and murmured something into the artifact by his ear. Before long, I saw a familiar elderly New Human approaching with an unpleasant look on his face.

“Lord Lukas Askanien. I’m curious as to what brings you here.”

As expected, he wasn’t pleased to see me. The truly insane one was standing right here. Did he think I had called him over because I was bored? I pushed Mecklenburg forward by the back and said, “Your Excellency, the representative of the 98th Unit has been exposed to Atropos.”

At my words, the Chief of Staff went deathly pale, his eyes widening as though he had just come face-to-face with a murder.

“What, what?! Right now…”

“He was affected by mind manipulation magic, but I have just neutralized it using a colleague’s divine power.”

The Chief of Staff’s face hardened. He finally realized that this was no time to be sitting around eating dinner. He threw the door open, strode inside, and sat down at his desk. Pointing impatiently at the chair in front of him, he said, “Sit down and explain. What happened? Who, when, and where?”

“Your Excellency, let me tell you this first. Lord Erich Reichenau, the vice captain of the 98th A, has already been affected by mind manipulation magic as well. We need to summon the 98th Unit immediately and administer the antidote.”

The Chief of Staff opened the warp mailbox with a clatter, pulled out a sheet of paper, and hurriedly scribbled something down. I didn’t know whether he completely believed me, but at least he wasn’t dismissing the word of a mage the government had trusted enough to send on a foreign operation just moments prior. I continued.

“I don’t know who the culprit is, but there is an Austrian St. Maria Church right by the border. It is highly likely that someone working there was used as an intermediary. There were repeated attempts to contaminate us from the moment we arrived until five in the afternoon.”

“I understand. Do you know how they brought the drug in?”

He had been bent over the paper for quite some time. Now he pulled the cap off his pen and looked at me with little expectation. If I couldn’t answer, he’d have to start investigating that from scratch. A waste of time. With every second precious, were we really going to start the investigation all over again?

I looked down at him and answered clearly.

“They put insects contaminated with Atropos on a dog and had it cross the border.”

Silence fell.

The Chief of Staff and Mecklenburg stared at me with stunned expressions. Mecklenburg finally understood what I had said earlier. As his face gradually turned pale, I spoke once more in a low voice.

“Your Excellency, we need to report this matter to the Supreme Council. After Meppen, we are going to have to deal with biological warfare once again. It’s not a matter of whether we choose to. It’s already happening.”