Chapter 190

Translator: Willia

Traveling through a region unfriendly to outsiders was no easy thing. It was dangerous and inconvenient.

But that, too, would soon be over. After camping for the night and climbing the mountain from early morning, Ricardt and his companions arrived at a ruined village. A bleak, desolate wind blew through it.

Ricardt was an outsider here, but ruins were familiar to him. He had seen ruins of every kind, and had even made some himself.

Whether Roy and Bellin had grown close or were still awkward with each other was hard to tell, but the two stayed together as they wandered around the ruins. There was not much in the way of warm conversation between them.

Ricardt looked around the ruins on his own. The scorch marks were understandable enough, but there were also signs that the place had been dismantled in a much more systematic fashion.

There was only one explanation for that. Someone had taken construction materials from the ruins. The mortar could not be reused, but well-made bricks could still be used in new buildings even after being through a fire.

There were no bleached bones or other traces of people having died here, either. Had someone buried them? It was certainly a ruin, yet traces of human hands could be felt all over the place.

Had it once been a modest, peaceful village? There was no way to know, but as Ricardt wandered through the ruins, he suddenly raised his head and looked off in one direction.

Far in the distance, he could see the morning sunlight strike a mountain peak and splinter into tiny fragments.

The stranger had been right. It was where the sunlight shattered. That was no metaphor. It truly did. And that must be the quartz mine they had begun excavating and then abandoned.

It was a rare and beautiful sight, yet it had also brought death. Like a rose, the beautiful things of this world were never beautiful and nothing more.

“This is a little different from what I expected.”

The stranger's voice reached him. The moment Ricardt heard it, rather than answer, he called out to someone first.

“Roy!”

A moment later, Roy and Bellin appeared from around a corner. Fortunately, Roy had not been taken hostage or anything of the sort.

Roy walked toward Ricardt, but Bellin headed for the stranger. Before going to him, she looked back at Roy and seemed to hesitate for the briefest moment, though not enough to slow her steps.

As Roy approached Ricardt, he watched Bellin moving farther away. His expression remained impassive, but his gaze continued to follow the girl, as though some lingering feeling remained.

It was not quite a sense of betrayal. More a feeling that he should have expected this. In any case, Ricardt waited until Roy reached his side before speaking to the strange man.

“Now keep your promise.”

At Ricardt's words, the man first lowered the cloth covering his nose and mouth. His face was fairly ordinary, but he had a gloomy, haggard air about him.

Then people began emerging from all around the ruins. They, too, finally lowered the cloths that had concealed half their faces.

They were men and women ranging from their twenties to their forties. There was something about their faces that resembled the ruins around them.

Bellin stood beside the strange man. They looked enough alike that anyone could tell at a glance they were father and daughter, or at the very least relatives.

The man spoke.

“I'm Kala. As you've probably guessed, we're the Benzinen Brotherhood. Every one of us came from Benzinen village, and we all swore revenge. Dunkel and Sally were members too. But Dunkel... how should I put it? He wanted a more dramatic, more fundamental kind of revenge.”

It sounded as though this would be a long story, so Ricardt listened in silence.

“We wanted revenge focused on the ringleaders. Dunkel wanted death for everyone living in Esck. That's why he followed Hellauman. A court count had the power to make something like that happen. But all it got him was being used for all he was worth, only to end up like a dog that had lost its master. Even if Hellauman were still alive, I don't think he would've granted Dunkel's wish. Dunkel was devoted to him all the same. I never understood it before. Now I do.”

Dunkel had been the guild master of the Beringen Adventurers' Guild, but in truth he had been one of Hellauman's agents. This was a brief explanation of how he had ended up that way.

With weary eyes, the man named Kala gazed toward the distant peak where the sunlight shattered.

“On the surface, he says he wants complete revenge. But that's not it. It's a void. An endless longing for what he lost. A void that can never be filled. Revenge is only an excuse he uses to deceive himself. What he needs is a father. No matter how cruel. No matter how badly that man uses him. Even if it's all a lie. He needs someone who can be a father to him.”

The man looked away from the peak where the sunlight shattered and turned back to Ricardt.

“There wasn't some grand reason he killed Sally. She simply washed her hands of all this and married a man from Esck, and to Dunkel that must have felt like an enormous betrayal. Sally followed Dunkel around mostly because she pitied him in the first place. Anyway, Dunkel is serving Papa the vampire now. His role is to supply him with pretty young boys and provide whatever else he needs. Even we can't understand why he'd go that far just to fill that void anymore. So I don't expect you to understand it either. I only ask that you take care of Bellin's request now.”

Bellin's request was nothing other than to kill Papa the vampire. In the end, everything was connected. It had started with an old woman, then led to Sally, Dunkel, and finally Papa.

“Suppose I kill Papa. What about Dunkel?”

“We'll kill him.”

They could not handle a vampire themselves, so Ricardt would deal with Papa, while they killed Dunkel.

They themselves would kill the man who had once been their childhood friend, their comrade who had sworn revenge beside them, and their family. Ricardt supposed killing Sally had crossed a line that should never have been crossed.

Ricardt thought it over. More specifically, he wondered how far back they had begun planning to draw him into this. The old woman coming to him had probably not been part of the plan. Had it started when he first set foot in Esck?

“By the way, using a kid to rope me into this seems pretty pathetic.”

“You looked like you were floundering. Nothing in Esck is free. Whether it's money or something else, you have to pay a price.”

“I don't particularly care. A promise is a promise. But how do you feel about killing Dunkel? Is it revenge? Or pity?”

“Pity. It's time someone put an end to that miserable life.”

“Not bad for a place that runs on revenge piled upon revenge. Lead the way. Papa or whatever he's called, I'll kill him.”

Ricardt said it lightly. Yet nothing could have sounded more reassuring, because the words did not come from arrogance. He really was absurdly strong.

Against something inhuman, only something equally inhuman, a being that had transcended humanity, could stand a chance. At minimum, it would take a sword master or one of the very best vampire hunters trained in specialized techniques.

The sword masters widely known to the world were more or less limited to the White Sword, the Black Sword, Ricardt, and the former Emperor's Champion. The rest existed only as unverified rumors, which meant hiring a sword master was all but impossible.

Hiring a vampire hunter was at least a more accessible option, but finding one who was truly exceptional was even harder than hiring a sword master.

“We don't know where Papa is either. He's extremely cautious, meticulous, and cowardly. But we do know one of his agents. Raphael. The man who recently became the boss of Diabol Esca.”

Ricardt knew who Raphael was. He was the man who had killed the previous boss and his household in the mountain village Ricardt had recently passed through. He had found Raphael irritating, so he could not help feeling that this worked out rather nicely.

“I know where he is. I know who he is too.”

“If we handle this badly, Papa will go into hiding. We have to move quickly and carefully.”

“You handle the cleanup. I'll get the information. By the way, what's this Vampire Elixir? The stuff Bellin had.”

“I don't know the details, but one thing is certain. It turns whoever drinks it into Papa's slave. They say drinking the liquid links your soul to Papa's.”

“Then it isn't Ilya's Holy Oil.”

“I didn't take you for someone who believed in legends. There's no such thing.”

“Who knows.”

With that, Ricardt set off at once. He knew where to go, so there was no reason to delay.

Roy followed him. Bellin, who had been hanging back and watching for a chance to speak while the adults talked, hurried after Roy and spoke to him.

“I didn't lie to you.”

“Who said you did?”

“Are you angry?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“......I'll give the shoes back.”

“Keep them. I was going to throw them away anyway.”

“......If I apologize, will you stop being angry?”

“I told you, I'm not angry. I have to go.”

Ricardt, already quite a distance away, had stopped and was looking back at them. Roy quickened his steps and caught up with his master and the king he served.

Ricardt stared blankly at Roy before asking,

“What are you doing?”

“We just talked for a minute. Sorry.”

“No, not that. Why are you acting all prickly toward her for no reason?”

“......I don't know.”

“What did you expect from people you meet in a shitty place like this? Even the kids around here probably have five snakes coiled up in their bellies.”

“I guess so.”

“Not ‘I guess so.’ I'm telling you to keep that in mind and accept it. Don't start feeling hurt now. Or don't get attached in the first place. Whether her soles blister or not. Didn't look like she'd only been walking around barefoot for a day or two anyway.”

“So is that why you turned Her Majesty down twice, Master?”

“......Where did you hear that?”

“From Bori.”

Ricardt, who had maintained his composure through all these tragic entanglements, finally grimaced.

At night, the cries of insects sound especially loud. Except in winter, they cry all year round. Do they reflect my heart, or have they always sounded so mournful?

It was an ordinary mountain village if one chose to call it ordinary, and a special one if one chose to call it special. As the night insects cried, the brilliant moon bestowed its blessing upon the mad.

Several pitch-black shadows climbed the mountainside. The fact that they deliberately chose rough ground instead of the road made it obvious they meant to avoid being seen.

Their destination was the manor at the highest point of Klorens village, the headquarters of Diabol Esca.

One shadow, however, climbed the mountainside with extraordinary speed, like a cockroach skittering up a wall. It looked like a wolf or fox racing through the night.

But the shadow was no beast. It was Ricardt.

Ricardt pulled his cloak tight so it would not flap and make noise. He climbed the steep slope on two legs, sometimes dropping a hand to the ground and going on three.

He shot straight upward in an instant and reached a section of wall that was noticeably lower than the rest. Two sentries were stationed there, and neither dreamed Ricardt was coming up the slope.

As the two chatted, what seemed like moonlight suddenly flashed into their eyes. They squeezed their eyes shut and died where they stood, because it had not been moonlight at all, but the gleam of a sword reflecting it. They never even realized someone had intruded.

The two corpses collapsed without so much as a scream. By the time the Benzinen Brotherhood arrived, they had completely lost sight of Ricardt and found only the two bodies lying silently on the ground.

He was so fast that it was hard not to think of him as something other than human. It also made them feel they had hired exactly the right man.

Ricardt charged straight toward the manor without hesitation. It was the Benzinen Brotherhood's job to secure an escape route and quietly eliminate anyone who came near.

Falling behind, Roy gritted his teeth and chased after his master, but it was hopeless. Ricardt had merely been accommodating him until now. When he truly moved, almost no one aside from Bori or Ice could keep up.

As the Benzinen Brotherhood entered the manor courtyard, the night insects abruptly fell silent. The insects had sensed the unnatural air of killing intent before anyone else.

Ricardt made no particular effort to hide or infiltrate the place in secret. From the signs of human presence alone, he could pinpoint exactly where his enemies were.

That meant he already knew, from several meters away, who needed to die and who could be spared before he ever reached them. Perhaps because it was night, from a distance he looked almost as though he were gliding smoothly over ice. In his wake came only the occasional sound of a body hitting the ground.

Sound, scent, and the faint sense of wrongness beyond them, something that could only be called a sixth sense, pinpointed Raphael's exact location.

Ricardt followed that sense up the stairs. When he reached a dark corridor, he heard a sound loud enough that even an ordinary person would have noticed it. Slap. Slap.

Light leaked through the crack around the bedroom door where Raphael was. Ricardt walked straight over without the slightest hesitation and opened it. There, he encountered the strangest, most deranged sight he had ever seen in his life.

Raphael was wearing some sort of bizarre leather outfit. It covered even his head and blocked his eyes while he lay facedown.

The man whipping him was dressed in clothes one would normally expect only a woman to wear. He was also a man with thick hair covering his chest, arms, and legs.

“Ungh! Ungh! Damn it! This feels so good! Damn it! More! More!”

“Shut up! You filthy insect! You don't get to make demands!”

“S-sorry! Ungh!”

Ricardt was accustomed to seeing heads and limbs severed and blood sprayed everywhere, but this was apparently a first even for him. He froze where he stood. Was this sin, or penance?

The two men were so absorbed in what they were doing that neither noticed Ricardt enter.

While Ricardt stood there at a complete loss for what to do with himself, the Benzinen Brotherhood came pouring into the room. Only then did the two men, who had been completely caught up in the act, startle and whip around.

They rushed the man holding the whip and slit his throat with a dagger in an instant. Several others piled onto Raphael, shoved him against the wall, and pinned him so tightly that he could not move an inch.

Kala pressed the edge of a sharp dagger close against his throat.

“Urgh! Ghk! W-what?!”

“Shut your mouth, or I'll slice your throat open.”

“W-w-wait, w-who? Who are you? Is this some new game?”

“I told you to shut up. You don't need to know who we are. Tell us where Papa is.”

“......”

Raphael still had the leather covering over his head and looked even more disoriented because of it, but the moment he heard the name Papa, his entire body went rigid.

“......What are you talking about?”

“You think we'd have come here if we didn't already know? Playing dumb won't make this pleasant for you.”

A brief silence followed. Just as Kala was wondering whether he would have to press him harder, Raphael spoke.

“I don't know who you are, any of you, and I don't want to know. But do you even understand what you're doing right now? Just kill me instead.”

“No. You'll be begging us to kill you.”

“We'll see.”

As he said it, Raphael bit down hard on a molar. There was a sharp crunch. Startled, Kala jammed his dagger into Raphael's mouth and pried it open by force, but the poison had already gone down his throat.

Raphael's neck went rigid and his whole body shuddered, then he quickly died. Starting at his neck, his entire face turned blue within moments. It seemed to be an extraordinarily lethal poison.

“......Damn it.”

A heavy silence settled over the bedroom. There were plenty of people present, but none of them could bring themselves to speak about the failure of the operation.

Ricardt stared for a while at Raphael's corpse, still dressed in that bizarre leather outfit, before speaking.

“Can't be helped. I'll have to ask someone I know.”

“Someone you know?”

So few people were connected to Papa, and so little was known about him, that Kala could not imagine who an outsider like Ricardt could possibly ask.

“I know a vampire. His name's Reman. He's a bit strange, but he's still a high-ranking vampire. Maybe he'll know something.”

“Reman?”

“Banstein. Reman von Banstein.”

At the name Banstein, another kind of silence settled over the bedroom. This one was tinged with disbelief.

There were a handful of vampires known to the world simply because they had lived for so long, no matter how much they tried to remain hidden. No one dared touch them, and most were high-ranking vampires connected to the progenitors.

The first vampire had been Cain; Armand was second generation, and Reman third. They existed on an entirely different level from the riffraff that made up most vampires, beings who had gained even limited abilities to peer into the past or glimpse the future.

So when Ricardt casually said he knew one of them, disbelief was inevitable. Simply put, Reman and Papa were not even in the same league. Compared to Reman, someone like Papa was little more than small fry.

Of course, there was no telling whether Ricardt could even reach Reman if he tried to contact him, much less whether Reman would willingly help, but in their current situation there was nothing else they could do. The dead did not speak.

Still, it was easy enough to tell what Raphael had been doing before he died. Ricardt, Kala, and the members of the Benzinen Brotherhood left the murder scene exactly as it was and departed.

The night insects began to cry again.

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