Chapter 273 : Chapter 273
Chapter 273: Recruitment (2)
A tunnel client had arrived.
But it was a voice Anton knew.
Meaning: Liberation Tower.
Then the goal was not the Boundary or Otherworld beyond, but the tunnel itself.
The reason Harad had returned to the Inner Fortress.
No need to meet them yet. Time adrift without purpose bred anxiety.
No worry about incidents.
The other side was the Liberation Tower. Even the violent Rebellion Faction wasn't more violent than the North or the Church. They knew better than anyone that they had to tread carefully on the continent.
'All the more since Serzila already caught them once. Causing trouble again would be insane.'
The tunnel was right there.
For the Liberation Tower, making contact with its administrator was the priority.
Harad and Ellen went to Kubel's Annex first upon returning, to see Shura. The aftermath of the kidnapping.
Jis and Duke were there too.
Jis was friend and protector to both Shura and Duke.
"Harad."
"Harad hyung!"
Kubel and Duke called at the same time.
Jis took Shura's hand and climbed to the second floor. Apparently a prearranged arrangement.
Harad calmly met Kubel's and Duke's gazes.
Their eyes were fierce beyond fierce.
What they wanted to say was obvious.
"You want to grow stronger?"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
Both nodded at once.
"Without Predation."
"......"
Both fell silent at once.
"If there's nothing else, we're done."
"But......"
"I understand how you feel. Duke, you too. But what can't be, can't be."
It might feel unjust, but there was no other way.
Harad simply could not bear to watch Shura's father and a young boy predate.
"You do it, hyung."
At times like this, youth was an advantage.
While Kubel was choosing his words, Duke cut straight.
Duke seemed cold as a glacier, then hot.
No wonder he'd left for the Otherworld seeking revenge in the past life.
"I did. But if I were you, I wouldn't have."
Harad spoke firmly.
And meant it. Had he been Duke, he wouldn't have eaten. He'd have watched someone else predate as another's business.
"Duke, if I have to borrow even your hands, Serzila deserves to fall. But we're not there yet. We got her back, and I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."
"......"
"Then you'd say: shouldn't Kubel be allowed, at least."
Duke and Kubel flinched.
Mages to the last, they'd prepared their arguments in advance.
"Kubel can't either. You should die of old age. Not madness."
"But......"
"Could you say the same in front of Shura? Minus the nonsense about doing it for Shura's sake."
Shura sealed Kubel's mouth.
Though Kubel's gaze dripped with lingering desire. Perhaps worry.
"I'm the exception. High chance I won't go mad. If that's not fair, be reborn with a greater Origin."
"......"
"Then, Kubel, you'd say: Duke has a great Origin, so he should be fine."
Duke and Kubel flinched.
Both were in Harad's palm.
"If you want my permission, get Jis's first."
"......"
Both hung their heads.
As expected.
'No way Jis gave permission.'
Jis had taken Shura upstairs so that Kubel and Duke would be soundly refused by Harad.
"Shura's permission works too. But you'll have to be completely honest."
The soundly refused Kubel and Duke's shoulders sagged. Their drooping gazes turned to Ellen.
"If Harad says no, I say no."
Ellen cut them off mercilessly.
Serzila-like line-drawing. She had no intention of interfering with Harad's decisions.
"If it's too hard, the Grand Duke's permission works too."
"......"
Harad delivered the finishing blow and left Kubel's Annex.
"What now?"
Ellen followed and asked.
"Sleep."
"Pardon?"
Ellen suddenly blushed.
"Is that all right? This is the Inner Fortress."
"......"
"Shall we go somewhere?"
The air turned abruptly heavy.
Leaving now felt like death.
***
The Elaine of the past life had been a complicated person.
Captive to the image of a perfect Grand Heir yet lazy. Good at work but didn't train. Obsessed with real combat but had few chances for it.
Looking back, she'd been remarkably diligent about her transgressions.
There was nowhere she hadn't gone as Ellen.
-Do you know why one trains?
-Because you only have one life?
-Wrong. Because you're weak.
-Isn't that the same thing?
-No. A strong person doesn't care about having one life. Getting real combat instead of training is more helpful.
-So that's why you don't train?
-You're clever as always.
Meaning that last night, Ellen had dreamt a pointless dream.
To Harad, of course, it was a memory.
But dreams remained foreign and uncomfortable.
The Elaine within them, however, was not.
On the contrary, the more he dreamt, the more vivid she became.
Natural, if one thought about it.
Elaine was alive. If she didn't grow more vivid, that would be the insane thing.
'Shura, the kidnapping, Akuldag, Laash, Harein, Eiga Akker.'
Harad listed the recent stimuli.
Those had piled up to become last night's dream.
'Unrelated to stimulus, then.'
You are like a butterfly.
Elaine's voice echoed in his mind.
The dream he'd had alone -- Harad called it the Butterfly.
'The Butterfly was me alone. The Butterfly is unrelated to stimulus. Last night's dream is the proof.'
If the Butterfly had required stimulus, last night's dream shouldn't exist.
The stimuli that had built up were spent last night.
'Not a Butterfly moment.'
The dream Harad had on the street was unrelated to the Stone of Regression.
'But that can't be.'
Because it was the past life.
'I feel bewitched.'
Days had passed, but Harad still felt caught in the dream. He wanted to be a Butterfly again. If so, how?
'Has the effect advanced to its next stage? Like how I started dreaming?'
Harad shook his head.
If so, this dream should have changed too. The Butterfly was a clear anomaly.
'What was different from usual?'
Not stimulus but some other difference must have caused the Butterfly.
If he could find that singularity, he could become a Butterfly again.
He could observe the other world and Elaine once more......
His mind revolved around the Butterfly while his body did its work. Today he had to make contact with the Liberation Tower.
If Elaine saw this scene, she might call him heartless.
That thought came after Ellen and Eiga had already arrived.
"Reassuring. With Lady Ellen here too!"
Eiga said.
He no longer called Ellen "Queen."
Ellen didn't seem to mind, but Harad did.
Calling her Queen was tantamount to advertising a King's existence.
And since the speaker was a fire, the King could only be the Sun.
A Sun that was, moreover, not quite right in the head.
Eiga was fire and simultaneously a Dreamer.
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes! It's flattery, but not merely flattery!"
Eiga was theatrical yet honest.
"Because you're a Superhuman!"
"You mean an evolved insect?"
"Isn't that what the Otherworld calls them?"
The Otherworld, not Paradise.
But Eiga didn't call the Otherworld "Paradise."
Come to think of it, the first Otherworld mage to do so since Cassion.
'Theatrical or honest.'
Hard to tell.
Eiga Akker was capable precisely because of that.
"Sadly, I'm not a Sword Master."
"Pardon? Surely not?"
Eiga's eyes rounded at Ellen's words.
Apparently the experienced Volcano had even encountered Sword Masters.
"Truly."
"Then all the more impressive! Not yet one, yet already this strong."
Ellen's shoulders rose slightly.
As Harad once had, Eiga had turned what Ellen was self-conscious about into a virtue.
"I'm rarely mistaken. Truly! I was certain Lady Ellen was a genuine Superhuman......"
"Enough, that'll do."
"Yes!"
Eiga, unlike Harad, tried to pile it on and got caught.
Perhaps on purpose.
Seeming knowable yet unknowable.
Perhaps what they thought they'd figured out was what Eiga had deliberately let slip.
"No fiery friends around? Truly fire-like ones."
Fire yet truly fire-like -- he'd never seen one.
"There aren't. Because the Sun wasn't here."
Eiga said this with a smile.
Not a fire-like smile at all.
Harad's Annex basement housed the tunnel to the Village of Embers.
That basement had two underground paths. One leading to Anton's house basement, another to the Boundary tunnel entrance.
'Village tunnel. Boundary tunnel.'
That was how the rumor went.
Harad was a broker who owned two tunnels.
Harad walked along the smooth walls. The work of Rick the Tunnel-Digger. The Boundary tunnel entrance was the meeting place.
Ellen took the lead. Shh. She turned and raised a finger to her lips. From beyond her back, voices came.
"They must have found a new Tunnel-Digger."
A woman's voice.
"So it seems."
A man's voice followed.
Listening, the woman was Liberation Tower.
'Don't know the man.'
He didn't seem to be a mage originally connected to the tunnel.
The Tunnel-Digger was still Rick. The technique had improved somewhat, but his artistry was intact.
Ellen held up three fingers.
Harad and Eiga nodded at once. Their readings matched. Three opponents.
Harad draped his arm over Ellen's shoulder and resumed walking. That was the concept. A woman and two men stood at the tunnel entrance, inspecting the underground walls.
"Harad."
The woman whose eyes met his murmured it like a cry.
Her voice was somewhat sharp. The young man aimed both hands at Harad, while the middle-aged man ignored them and examined the walls.
"That's right, Harad."
Harad smiled and extended a hand to the woman.
A courtesy. They were hardly on handshaking terms.
"The tunnel's owner."
"Might as well be a robber."
The woman scoffed.
"Let's sit."
Harad indicated the table and chairs he'd roughly prepared the night before. A comfortable size for negotiations.
"Asylum is a race against time."
Instead of sitting, the woman muttered like a spectator.
Everything must grate. The tunnel had been the Liberation Tower's.
"Going to seek asylum? You sure don't look it."
The woman carried no luggage.
Plainly not dressed to depart for the Boundary.
"Albi of the Liberation Tower."
The woman, Albi, kept her introduction short.
In Otherworld terms, utterly discourteous. Neither Origin nor Rank.
But not a stickler.
Albi shifted her gaze. As brief as her own introduction, she didn't demand more from Harad.
"I see. I'd wondered how the tunnel was reclaimed."
Albi seemed to have recognized Ellen Serzila at a glance.
And the inside story of how two tunnels had been recovered.
"You seduced her."
Albi sneered, looking at Harad's arm draped on Ellen's shoulder.
Seeing Ellen's reddened face, she sneered more.
"Nothing's greater than love, they say."
Harad kneaded Ellen's forearm.
Firm yet soft. The harder he squeezed, the redder Ellen's face grew. Excellent acting as always.
"I'll keep it short."
Albi didn't introduce the other two.
Harad didn't either. Neither side introduced the other's party, and neither pointed it out. That was where they stood. The probing was flagrant.
"Just sit down, my legs hurt."
Harad feigned feebleness.
The kind of complaint a mage might typically make. Continental mages were frequently weak of body.
'Thin.'
Like Albi before him.
She was a woman whose bones stood out more than her flesh.
"...... Please, sit."
Harad's eyes glinted.
He, Ellen, and Eiga sat. Instead of sitting, Albi pulled out a chair for the middle-aged man. Meaning: he outranked her.
"Make them stand."
Instead of sitting, the middle-aged man knit his brow.
Toward Harad's party. He acted as though he outranked everyone, not just Albi.
"He must be quite the mage."
Eiga asked with feigned innocence.
Albi twitched.
The middle-aged man even more so.
"How dare, do you know who I...... Eiga Akker?"
The man's bulging eyes turned guileless.
"Please sit, Basele. We didn't come to fight, did we?"
"......"
"Did we? Then great."
The middle-aged man sat meekly.
"Do introduce yourself. Harad here is my tunnel co-proprietor."
"4th Rank of the Deep Sea, Basele Tuas."
Basele answered meekly.
Albi's eyes went very wide.
"Origin."
"You know it, Akker."
"Origin."
"...... Downpour."
The Tower of the Deep Sea, sworn enemy of the Red Tower, had cowed.
'And before a thief, at that.'
Eiga, as ever.
Suspicious he might be, but his usefulness was immense.
Harad leaned on the Otherworld's famous troublemaker and grinned.
"Keep it brief. No long speeches."
Albi's face had set like stone.
Anyone could see she'd come prepared to kill and rob if things went south.