Chapter 556

“Why…”

The moment of stunned silence passed quickly. Mecklenburg moved his lips in confusion before turning toward the window.

“This is Mecklenburg of the 98th Unit. An explosion was heard at the twelve o’clock position from the banquet hall of the Kroll Opera House. Please investigate where it came from.”

As he tapped the side of his head to contact the Headquarters, I quickly spread the map of Berlin across the table, pressing it down with both hands. One place had already exploded. I had to figure it out. Where would the next one be?

If Terminus Eukairia intended to strike immediately, without regard for the consequences, then the most likely target was this very banquet hall. The hall was currently being used for the reception, and it connected directly to a restaurant inside. Beyond that, if you turned down the corridor from here, you would reach the opera house itself. The damage could be enormous. I opened my mouth almost reflexively.

“Narke. We need to interrogate Lafayette and the upper-year students, and isolate Gramont. We don’t know what Gramont might do in here. We probably can’t interrogate the upper-year students right away, given the circumstances, but at the very least, we need to…”

“I know. I’ll go talk to them, so you stay here until I get back, Lukas. I’ll come get you when the time is right.”

Narke spoke firmly as he placed a hand on my shoulder. When he said he would decide when I could leave, it meant he had already noticed the danger I was in because of the blood dirt. Although it hadn’t been explicitly said that the dirt was blood, there was no reason not to trust his trained intuition. I nodded at his determined expression and looked back at the map.

First, the most likely candidate among the mages who had come from France to be targeted for assassination was Gramont. France had chosen me to break the shield protecting Germany from outside attacks—a shield that was barely holding up as it was. If they could turn me into a Pleroma member or frame me as a criminal who appeared to have ties to them, they could make the German Imperial Family, which had recruited me, look incapable of controlling Pleroma.

Gramont, the only French mage with any connection to me, was supposed to call me away before the banquet ended. The reason was…

To create a gap in my timeline. A period for which I would have no alibi. I would need more clues to be certain, but if I were to sketch out the basic plan, they likely intended to make it look as though Lukas Askanien had done something to Antonie Gramont, causing Gramont to die some time later.

Then how had they planned to involve the Social Democratic Party’s newspaper in a crime for which I would be the main culprit? I had two theories at the moment. One, it was simply a backup plan in case they failed to frame me as the mastermind. Or two, the plan relied on additional information I didn’t know about. There weren’t enough clues. Unless I could get more information from the newspaper company itself, there was little else I could do.

The next most likely person slated to die was the French with the worst track record and lowest evaluation. They would have chosen someone whose death wouldn’t be much of a loss as a backup sacrifice. Laurent Viguier from the research division of Académie Puissance. Mecklenburg had said that, overall, his performance and evaluation were the lowest, and I agreed.

“…Hmm.”

And as for the least influential person among the British…

Harriet Lygon and Hugo Lister came to mind, but if Terminus Eukairia was confident in its chances, it would go after the most accomplished or best-known British person. That would be the surest way to drive relations between Britain and Germany to the breaking point.

What if they weren’t confident in their chances?

Then it would probably target one of those two British people, taking the risks into account. The problem was if they weren’t confident in their chances but still went ahead with the plan anyway. In that case, everything would become a variable from my perspective, too. I would have to keep an eye on people who weren’t German or French as well.

The scope was getting far too broad… I slowly ran my tongue along the inside of my lip and closed my eyes. If I kept widening the scope, there would be no end to it. For example, I would have to consider French people other than Laurent Viguier, too.

Going over every possibility like this might have been a waste of time.

But it was the right thing to do. With no more explosions ringing out, this was my last chance to think things through. Or to prepare. The first place I needed to prepare for… was probably wherever Laurent Viguier was supposed to go.

I ran through the list of French people in my head, then furrowed my brow and tapped my fingertips against the table. I hadn’t formed any significant connections with any of the new French arrivals, and there were no French with poor records on the team I was escorting, either. If they made someone else the victim instead of Gramont, it would be difficult to frame me, someone with no connection to that person, as the culprit.

Since they hadn’t announced in advance who would be escorting the visitors, Terminus Eukairia probably couldn’t have assigned Laurent Viguier to my team. From that, I could reasonably infer that France had intended to frame the socialists as the culprits as a fallback plan.

So I needed to find out where the buildings associated with socialism were. The problem was that I would have to start making new deductions from there. After all, if the goal was to politically isolate the socialists, blowing up one of their buildings wouldn’t be the usual approach, given the risk of a backlash. Instead, I needed to think of information that could have been used to stage the crime, such as the usual routes taken by people who worked at those establishments and their commuting times.

But…

Before that, though, I needed to know where the French could find a socialist-owned building to use. Damn it, I muttered, glancing at Mecklenburg, who was focused on his communication. With so little time to narrow down the possibilities, his knowledge might not be enough.

I needed someone who was born and raised in Berlin. Or at least someone who had lived there for a long time. But with an explosion suspected to have occurred somewhere because of the blood powder, it would be difficult for me to contact a government agency directly. I’d already made myself look suspicious by bringing up the dirt first and calling in the Magical Crime Response Team. I needed to stay out of the decision-making as much as possible.

Neither Narke nor I would be much help. I knew the names of a few buildings, but I had no idea whether their owners were socialists. Who on earth would know all that, and how? Seriously…

I stared intently at the map, unable to find an answer. The only place I could mark was a small square I’d seen mentioned in a newspaper article.

Wait, what about Ulrike? He wasn’t born in Berlin, but he’d lived here since his time at the Imperial Third Academy. Would he know which buildings and halls in Berlin were associated with socialism? But he stood on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and until now, he hadn’t paid much attention to that fact. In other words, he’d grown up living the life of a noble high school student, so I couldn’t be sure he knew as much as the commoners who had lived here all their lives. Just then, someone came to mind.

“…Hmm.”

I pulled a notebook from my pocket and hastily scribbled something down.

Across from me, Mecklenburg frowned, pressing one hand to an ear while listening with the other.

“Are there any casualties? …Oh, dear. What caused it?”

He asked a few more questions before tapping his artifact once. Then he looked at me.

“They say they’ll have to investigate the cause. They don’t know yet. The fire hasn’t spread much, and apparently, it was an explosion at a smelting plant. They say it’s not particularly unusual, but they’ve dispatched firefighters to put it out. We can’t be sure it was caused by the dirt you mentioned, so for now… I’ll have to go.”

“Wait a moment.”

“Yes?”

“That dirt.”

“Get to the point. You know we’re running out of time, don’t you?”

Mecklenburg leaned forward impatiently, urging me to hurry. I swallowed once, then spoke quietly.

“Don’t tell anyone about it just yet.”

“…….”

Mecklenburg’s tightly pressed lips began to part. His confusion was plain to see. He tilted his head slightly, trying to get a better look at my expression, but I cleared my throat and gestured toward his clutch.

“Give me a spare communication artifact.”

“Seriously? What about me?”

“Stop by the Headquarters and pick one up before you head to the scene. You must do that.”

Mecklenburg gave me a look that said I was piling one task after another onto him. He stretched his mouth to one side and narrowed his eyes, but his hands were already rummaging through his clutch. The moment he handed me the artifact, he strode out of the room.

Just then, Narke arrived. He cracked the door open and waved me over. While he kept watch, I slipped out of the room and asked him quietly, “Did anything happen?”

“I got him there safely. I made up an excuse about something else and had him confined to an upper floor. Fortunately, he went along without a fuss. I’ve told the Chief of Staff not to move him somewhere else on a whim, so don’t worry too much. Focus on preparing for what comes next. I’ll keep an eye on Lord Laurent Viguier and the foreigners heading to the next location here… and check whether there’s any of that dirt on this floor, too.”

Since Narke himself had said so, I could set aside the question of whether he was competent enough to earn the Chief of Staff’s trust. The problem was that he hadn’t answered my question. I hadn’t been asking him what had happened. Narke, who could usually tell what I was thinking, was giving me a different answer instead.

“You…”

We didn’t know what kind of device had been planted on Gramont or how he was supposed to die. I couldn’t tell whether Narke had simply passed the message on to the government officials or personally confined Gramont himself. Either way, I didn’t know how things had played out. Judging by the fact that Narke had returned, he seemed to be safe, but still…

Narke stopped and looked at me in the quiet silence. He gave me a faint smile before answering.

“Of course I’m fine.”

With that, Narke headed outside. We needed to find out whether the red dust had been scattered here, too. He had probably gone to deal with that.

I crossed the short corridor, went down the stairs, and reached the first-floor hall. There, I approached Ulrike, who was picking at the leftover food with the mages who hadn’t gone to the dining room.

“Luise.”

I have a favor to ask. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far… Countless words ran through my mind, but Ulrike, unaware of what I was thinking, turned toward me and picked up a bowl of jelly.

“Hm? Since you’re here, try some of this.”

He scooped up some jelly with a spoon and held it out to my mouth. I stared at it with wide eyes. It seemed the banquet hall was so much noisier than the room that the sound of the explosion hadn’t stood out much. People still had no idea what was going on. I squeezed my eyes shut, then cautiously accepted the jelly. After swallowing it, I tugged Ulrike a little closer by the shoulder. Seeming puzzled by my behavior, he asked, “Why? Is something wrong?”

“Did you hear that loud noise earlier?”

“Loud noise?”

Even though I hadn’t said much, Ulrike’s expression quickly turned grim. Sensing that something was off, he set his spoon down on the empty tray and turned to look at me.

“I did hear something, but it didn’t sound that loud. Is something wrong?”

“There was an explosion at a smelting plant. Of course, for now, everyone thinks it was just an explosion in a furnace, so this is only speculation, but… I need to find out what really caused it.”

I cast a soundproofing spell and kept talking as I carefully slipped the note I’d torn from my notebook and Mecklenburg’s spare communication artifact into his jacket pocket. Then I immediately stepped away. Under normal circumstances, Ulrike would have widened his eyes in surprise or laughed, but he remained composed the entire time, having figured out what I was doing. His ability to think on his feet had always given me confidence. I leaned closer to him and asked, “I briefly summarized what I’ve figured out on that note. If you ask how I know all this… I can explain everything, but there’s no time right now. I’ll tell you after we deal with the next explosion. Read the note, then destroy it by burning it or eating it.”

“What?!”

Ulrike, who had been listening with a serious expression, let out a disbelieving laugh. I wasn’t joking. As expected, he quickly nodded. As members of the Imperial Mage Association, we hadn’t received much training in special operations, but even so, Ulrike was certainly not the type to toss the note into some trash can or leave it in his jacket and walk away with it. Given his abilities, there was no need to waste time worrying about that, either. I didn’t say anything more about it and changed the subject.

“And there’s one more thing… Luise, there must be buildings in Berlin associated with socialism. Do you know where any of them are?”

“Hmm. The Social Democratic Party Headquarters isn’t here. It’s in Brandenburg.”

He was right. Only the newspaper offices were here. He knew his stuff. Accepting that reality, I asked—Mecklenburg, an adult who had lived in Berlin for seven years longer than Ulrike, probably wouldn’t have known much more than that, either—

“Right. Thanks, Luise. Then do you know the Victoria Lyceum? Where it is?”

“I know it, but I don’t know its exact warp coordinates.”

He always understood what I was getting at, even when I kept my questions brief. I gestured toward the note and said, “I can’t move around freely right now. If I leave without being summoned, they might suspect me of being involved with Pleroma again because of the alibi issue. Could you go there for a bit? Deliver this to someone named Sophia Nussbaum.”

“The situation is way worse than I thought.”

Ulrike reached behind him and grabbed a canapé, popping one into his mouth before putting another into mine. He was clearly trying to act as though nothing was wrong in front of everyone else. He chewed on the pastry and fruit as he considered the situation, his gaze sharp, then spoke.

“Victoria Lyceum is mostly attended by Old Humans. Maybe only Old Humans are allowed to attend. Can I get in as a New Human? No, more importantly, as an outsider? Besides, it’s around dinnertime for them, so finding someone will be even harder.”

“Give the note and the artifact to anyone going in or out. Just ask them to deliver it to the student council president. Everyone will know who that is. If anything seems like it might go wrong, contact me immediately, Luise.”

“Of course. But if you’re worried about me, you don’t need to be. I’m worried about you.”

“You’re right. That’s a fair point, but I’m worried about you all—”

“See you in ten minutes.”

Ulrike held out his large hand to me and waited. I was briefly taken aback, but quickly realized what he wanted. When had he picked it up? He was doing the same thing Zähringen did. At this rate, would the habit spread to our entire team? Smiling, I slapped his leather-gloved hand with a sharp smack.

Ulrike’s lips curled up in satisfaction, and he started toward the warp point. Then he suddenly stopped. Tilting his head slightly back, he added one last thing.

“Actually, five minutes would be even better.”

I answered with a smile.

That left Narke, who had either gone upstairs to the second floor or headed to the dining hall to check the floor, and the group of foreign visitors who seemed blissfully unaware of anything going on.

Beep—

It was too soon for Ulrike to have delivered the artifact to Sophia, but an alert sounded anyway. The alert immediately changed into a human voice.

— [Lord Lukas Askanien. This is the Command Headquarters.]

Oh, damn it. I hadn’t heard anything yet, but instinct made my lips move.

— [You are being deployed. Proceed to the coordinates I am about to give you.]

Just then, my center of gravity lurched backward. I opened my mouth, pulled my left foot back to steady myself, and grabbed the hand on my shoulder. Narke had arrived at some point, his face deathly pale. He held one hand to his ear while pulling at my shoulder with the other. Swallowing hard, he pushed me toward the warp point.

He pressed the artifact to turn it off, then said, “Stay right beside me. Can you promise me you won’t leave my side for even a second?”

His voice, coming from just behind my head, trembled ever so slightly. I furrowed my brows and answered, “Of course.”

“Have you memorized the entire map of Berlin?”

“Yes.”

“And the potions? Give them all to me.”

Narke quickly opened my clutch and took all the vials, each about as thick as a finger.

“We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

The one-sided reports continued to pour through the artifact I was wearing. Then, one of them caught my attention.

— […The fire still hasn’t been contained. The firefighters who arrived at the scene are collapsing, so we called in the 97th Unit, but they are unable to do anything about it either.]

Why had they called in the 97th Unit in the first place? The fire must have been too difficult to put out with water and soda-acid extinguishers, so they’d tried suppressing it with mana instead. But if the 97th Unit was struggling, why call in the 101st? I couldn’t understand the logic behind that decision. Something else, however, stuck in my mind even more.

The fire still hadn’t been brought under control. It seemed the flames had spread considerably because they couldn’t contain the fires sparked by the explosion. Just how bad was it?

Narke took my hand and stepped onto the warp point.

Still, my thoughts continued to race. Time replayed itself in reverse, throwing image after image at me. A fire that wouldn’t go out. That reminded me of something strange. When they’d collected the dust scattered across the floor and put it into a cylinder, had the oil really clumped together enough to be visible to the naked eye?

Had the researcher who told me the dust was suspected to be blood left out the fact that the particles were coated in oil because he hadn’t considered it particularly important? Well, if it were me, I’d have been far more excited to discover that the red iron oxide powder scattered across the floor wasn’t actually iron oxide, but blood…

“It’s dirt meant to be used in the fire. They coated it with oil. Though I don’t know if such a small amount of oil would actually help the fire…”

But why oil? Coating it with sulfur would have been far more effective. As if to stop me from thinking about it for the moment, Narke gave my hand a slight tug and caught my wrist. Then he lowered his gaze and said, “We need to stop this before Berlin turns into a sea of fire.”

I wondered whether that little oil could really turn Berlin into a sea of fire, but I kept the thought to myself. Before my vision could even adjust, a gust of hot air swept over me. The scorching heat invaded my face and nostrils. Embers that looked like fragments of the sun drifted around us. The primal threat of the flames squeezed my heart tight. I was standing perfectly well, yet my knees were trembling.

So this was what I was looking at—a five-story residential building engulfed in flames, burning so fiercely that sparks flew out and even the roadside trees around it glowed red.

Above all, my eyes were drawn to the mages along the street—the firefighters and the members of the 97th Unit. Some lay sprawled on the ground like corpses, while others could barely stand, leaning against the walls with their teeth clenched as they pointed their wands at the fire. There were no signs of an attack on their bodies, on the ground, or even in the air. No one had attacked them, yet they were completely drained of strength.

But I was different.

The jelly and canapés had given me enough fuel to keep going. Unlike them, I wasn’t so exhausted that I was sweating and rolling around on the ground, nor had I turned pale. I slowly turned my head to look at Narke. A barrier of divine power surrounded the two of us.

Narke’s face was twisted in a grimace. The corners of his mouth kept twitching upward before pulling back down again. His eyes, which looked entirely red in the glow of the fire, burned with a desperate determination I couldn’t understand, but his eyebrows were furrowed so deeply that they creased his eyelids.

I realized then that he wasn’t afraid of the fire.

He was the one who needed to drink the potion.