Chapter 469

"The transfer destination, based on the specified coordinates, is probably a room within this facility. And if you were to use this to transfer, your bones throughout your body, your limbs, your eyes, nose, tongue, and so on would end up attached in utterly messed-up places, but you'd be sent in a state just barely short of death. It's the worst kind of technology, made possible by subtly shifting the transfer positions for each body part."

"Yikes. What the heck. I was totally about to use it like normal..."

"Me too... I can't believe I wasn't more cautious- wait, could it be..."

"Yes, that's right, Brother. This space has powerful thought-induction magical tools embedded in the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room."

"So that's why... I was careless."

Under normal circumstances, Tatsuro would have been a bit more suspicious even if the person was an acquaintance of Leela's, just for being in a place like this.

The fact that the conversation had proceeded from start to finish without a single doubt made his spine freeze.

"Indeed, going forward, I do feel the need to think up some countermeasures for places like this. Though I doubt there are many opponents who could set something up this cleverly."

"Cleverly? Wasn't it just that thought-induction magical tools were placed here?"

"If I explain in detail, it'll get long, so I'll keep it brief, but first, the positions of the magical tools installed in this room are perfect, allowing powerful magical waves, like synthesized waves overlapping multiple times, to bathe the body no matter where you stand.Assembling and installing magical tools this flawlessly would be impossible without someone with special skills like me, or the knowledge accumulated over tens of thousands of years by that super top-tier genius over there. Furthermore, the content of this thought induction isn't something that forces anything too unreasonable, which is another key point."

The more the content is something the person would naturally reject, the more unconsciously people resist this kind of magic.

But if it's content that makes the person think it's fine to go along with, then it becomes effective even against people with high magic resistance like Tatsuro and the others.

The proof is that the moment even a slight doubt arose that something was suspicious, Tatsuro and the others easily broke free of the induction.

"Moreover, we had been told in advance by Leela what kind of person this man was. At that time, the idea that Setepuenberkelp was a good person must have been imprinted in your minds, Brother and everyone. And then, seeing such a person covered in marks like he'd been beaten, chained and restrained. Combined with the thought induction, you wouldn't think to doubt him. Normally. Especially Leela, who has the highest resistance to magic, seems to have some attachment to him."

"Yes... that's right. Indeed, he was someone I had more attachment to than my other kin."

Leela still didn't want to believe it, so she averted her eyes from Berkelp.

"They also created a situation where we had to hurry, shaving away time to think and making the induction toward the magic circle even stronger. That's probably why they made up this fictional person named Guillaume. The characteristics were realistic for something improvised, so maybe it was based on a real person. Anyway."

At that point, Leah paused her words and directed a cold gaze at Berkelp.

"How about it? Are you still going to claim your innocence? After going to all this trouble to try to trap us, you can't just say you had nothing to do with it, right?"

"Why..."

"Yes?"

She had been geared up to refute him however she needed, but then came the word "why."

Leah was caught off guard and tilted her head with a blank expression.

But the one who wanted to tilt his head the most was none other than Berkelp himself.

"Why weren't you caught in the thought induction? You must have heard about me from Setepuenritisherera too, right? Once you knew about that core, she would definitely have told you about me. Even with those special eyes of yours, you shouldn't have even thought to investigate in the first place."

"Ah, you mean that."

From Berkelp's perspective, among this group, Leah had relatively low magic resistance, so he couldn't fathom how she had so perfectly seen through his scheme.

But for Leah, it was only natural. She stated the reason with an air like it was no big deal.

"What should I call it? Engineer's intuition... or something like that. It's not that there was anything wrong or unusual with the structure, but when I first examined that core, it didn't seem like the creator had been forced to make it against their will. If anything, it felt like they were doing it gleefully, even with a touch of madness. That's probably why. No matter who you were, I would have judged that anyone who made that core wasn't worth trusting."

"Intuition...? You're saying my lifelong wish is about to be shattered by something as unreliable as that...?"

Berkelp had assumed she must have done something special that surpassed him, but when the lid was lifted, it was just a baseless hunch from sensing madness in a creation that shouldn't hold emotions.

He didn't want to believe that a plan he had built up bit by bit over tens of thousands of years could be ruined by something like that.

With anger making his clenched fists tremble, Leela questioned Berkelp.

"Berkelp. You weren't the kind of person who would hurt people so easily, right? Why did you do something like this?"

"Why? As if someone who's still a child of god like you could understand!!"

He himself was a Dispel Magic user. He wasn't suited for combat, and on this side, there were multiple forces including Leela who could overwhelm Berkelp.

That margin created just a tiny opening.

Berkelp's collar and bracelets exploded with no motion, and then, without any sign of magical activation, his form vanished from in front of the wall he was chained to.

"What did- Where did he go!"

"Dad! Over there!"

Looking where Athena pointed, they could see Berkelp's back entering a passage that led even deeper from this room.

It seemed he had used some kind of transfer magical tool, but to activate it without any detectable movement, that distance must have been the limit.

"Tatsuro, hurry and chase him!"

"Yeah, I know! But first, Leah."

"What is it, Brother?"

Ishtar, who was closest to the passage, took the lead and started running, and Tatsuro followed after saying a few words to Leah.

"Don't come! Stop right there! Do you not care if the people in the city above die!!"

The room they entered had a massive magic circle covering the entire floor, and in the center was a large egg-shaped capsule.

Inside that capsule lay a beautiful woman in her late twenties of the human race, with a swollen belly, probably pregnant.

And Berkelp stood beside that capsule, and as soon as Tatsuro and the others entered the room, he held something shaped like a matchbox in his hand-a switch-and shouted.

"The people in the city above- what do you mean?"

"Just what it sounds like. If I press this switch, I can destroy the foundation along with this facility, causing the city above to collapse. With this one switch, hundreds of thousands of people will die."

{Hostage situation, huh. What do we do? Tatsuro. Can we punch him out before he presses the switch?}

{For now, better not. We don't even have proof that what he's holding is the real thing.}

{Yeah, that's true. So what should we do?}

{I've already taken measures for that. We'll stall for time.}

{Ooh, as expected.}

Whether aware of Tatsuro and Ai's telepathic exchange or not, Leela stepped forward and spoke to Berkelp.

"You said earlier... 'as if someone who's still a child of god like you'... Does that woman there have something to do with it?"

"Yes. I will resurrect her in this world. For that, I'll do anything!"

"...You can't possibly think that's really possible? The dead don't come back to life. And people die eventually, and for the human race, from our perspective, it's soon? Didn't you unite with her knowing that?"

Unless it's a couple like Clear Elves with each other, most species will end up separated by death from humans.

So if a Clear Elf wants to unite with a short-lived race like humans, it's natural for them to accept that from the start.

Leela pointed that out hoping to cool his head, but it only added fuel to the fire.

"I would have accepted it if she had just died of old age! I would have forced myself to accept it even if it was an incurable disease or just an accident! But she was killed by the humans I protected for so long- by the people of this country!"

"Killed by the people of this country...? This country means the Adorarim Country above, right? You've been abducting people over many years."

"Yes, that's right. The her sleeping here now looks in such a beautiful state, doesn't she? But when I arrived at the scene where she was killed, it was a dire situation. Beaten, cut, battered, tortured until I couldn't even recognize who it was at first! Our first child together was crushed along with her pregnant belly!! Is this what humans do!! Is this forgivable!! Is this something I can accept!! Even you, who have never loved a person, should understand that much emotion!!"

"That's awful..."

"Yeah..."

Ai imagined if the same thing happened when she was pregnant with Tatsuro's child, her face turned pale as she clutched her belly.

Tatsuro thought if Ai and his child were subjected to that, he'd lose himself to rage.

Perhaps sensing empathy from Tatsuro and Ai, Berkelp turned his gaze toward them.

"You two seem to love each other quite a bit, don't you? People like you should understand my feelings a little, right? If there's a chance to get her back, you'd want to save her even if it means killing however many people from the country that killed my wife, right?"

Tatsuro could affirm that if he were in this man's position, he'd definitely do the same.

For Tatsuro, Ai was number one, and for her sake, he wouldn't mind dirtying his hands as much as needed.

And Ai, too, no matter how atrocious the act, if it could bring back a dead Tatsuro, she would dirty her hands the same way.

"Honestly, there's a lot in your opinion I can sympathize with. What you're doing is probably outside human ethics, but if that's true, I can't help but feel sympathy. Hey, you mentioned torture earlier, but what exactly happened? If you were just living peacefully together, you wouldn't have met such a fate, right? Your sins can't be erased, but if it's within a range that doesn't inconvenience us, I might even think about helping with just reviving that woman. So won't you tell us everything? How the person who was even called the father of Clear Elves came to do something like this."

Tatsuro and Berkelp's gazes met.

And drawing on his experience of observing people for many years, plus checking Tatsuro's heart rate and such with Dispel Magic, he judged that those words weren't a lie.

"Understood. I'll tell you everything. To you, who knows true love from the heart, even if not the sorrow of loss."

Having regained some calm from his earlier state that could be seen as self-abandonment, Berkelp stroked the capsule containing the woman sleeping in a state as beautiful as if alive with his left hand.

After a few seconds of silence passed like that, he began to murmur bit by bit about his life since becoming just an elf from a Clear Elf.