Chapter 211: Auction House (1)
The first person they encountered upon heading to Count Amiel’s lodging was Allen.
“Hup! Hngh!”
Allen had been training as usual in the small garden attached to the lodging, gripping a wooden sword.
He swung the wooden blade while sweating, no different from his usual routine.
And yet, from that familiar sight, Lian was able to spot a subtle disturbance without much difficulty.
“Allen.”
At the sound of Lian calling his name, Allen immediately lowered his wooden sword.
“……Lian.”
Opening his mouth as if pleased to see him, Allen swept his gaze over the people standing beside Lian, one by one.
“Miss Cecilia. And even the Headmaster……? For what reason have you come all the way here?”
With a puzzled expression, he looked back and forth between the three of them.
“You’re working hard.”
Lian greeted him lightly while casually scanning the surroundings.
As lodging prepared for distinguished guests, the facilities and upkeep were not lacking, but no matter how one looked at it, this was still a building attached to the Academy.
There were bound to be shortcomings in various aspects.
“You’ve got a wide place available, so why are you doing this here?”
Even as he spoke, Lian did not stop surveying the area.
It was because the building was so quiet, as though it were completely empty.
At Lian’s question, Allen shrugged and replied.
“I’m the only one here right now.”
Allen nodded as he lightly caught his breath.
“I couldn’t really leave the place, so I was just loosening up my body here.”
“You’re alone? What about the others?”
For some reason, at Lian’s question, Allen’s expression darkened slightly.
“My older brother has…… already left.”
Left.
Lian fell silent for a moment.
“……Do you know where he went, by any chance?”
“I only heard that he was going away briefly for recuperation. Father also said he suddenly had personal matters to attend to and left early at dawn.”
Allen stopped mid-sigh and looked at Lian with a questioning gaze.
“But why are you asking……? Did something happen?”
“…….”
A faint but unmistakable worry seeped into his voice.
At the same time, there was a calm, resolute tone unique to someone who seemed to already know something.
After hesitating briefly, Lian opened his mouth.
“Allen, I’m sorry, but could you show me your chest for a moment?”
“……?”
Though he wore a puzzled expression, Allen loosened his collar without protest.
His chest was clean.
There were no wounds of any kind, and of course, there was no trace of an iron needle.
Seeing that, Lian, who had been bracing himself for the worst, nodded slightly in relief.
“……The truth is.”
And then he calmly began to explain everything that had happened so far.
The masked man they had encountered.
The iron needle capable of moving and controlling corpses.
And the strong possibility that the man in bizarre attire they had met here before was the very same masked individual.
“…….”
As the explanation went on, Allen’s expression grew colder and colder.
After hearing everything, he stared into empty space for a long while without saying a word.
Watching him, Lian muttered.
“……You’d already guessed it.”
“Yes.”
Allen nodded at Lian’s words.
“Even during my brief conversation with my older brother, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was…… off. He wasn’t like his usual self. It felt as though I was talking to a completely different person…….”
After taking a small breath, he asked,
“……Then what exactly happened to my older brother?”
At his question, Yeriel replied with a regretful expression.
“Unfortunately…… from what we’ve confirmed, that iron needle seems to only work on those whose lives have already ended. In other words, it’s an object that makes the dead move like puppets.”
“…….”
Allen silently closed his eyes and lowered his head.
His shoulders trembled faintly.
After a short while, Allen slowly lifted his head.
Crack!
Without warning, he swung the wooden sword in his hand to the side, and the large garden stone nearby shattered instantly, breaking into countless pieces.
“……If I rush in recklessly, I might only end up making things worse.”
After some time, as though he had barely regained his composure, he spoke again.
“When the two of them return…… I will make sure to confirm everything then.”
No—no, that wasn’t right.
Shaking his head immediately after speaking, he corrected himself.
“……I can’t just sit around and wait. I’ll retrace Father’s and my older brother’s movements right away.”
“Will you be all right?”
Yeriel asked with concern.
“If I say I suddenly had urgent business, no one will suspect a thing, especially since it’s me. And…… this is something I must do myself.”
As Allen spoke, his appearance was so vicious that there was no trace left of his usual self.
“…….”
Lian quietly patted his own shoulder.
At that, his collar twitched slightly.
—Kiiik!
Immediately afterward, as if it understood without needing an explanation, the spider that had been hiding in Lian’s embrace leapt out and clung to Allen.
Seeing that, Lian nodded slightly.
“……Then I’ll leave it to you.”
“…….”
Without responding, Allen went straight into the lodging.
From his hurried retreating figure, an overwhelmingly chilling aura poured out nonstop, as though he had no intention of hiding it at all.
“……A frightening fellow.”
Saying that, Yeriel gestured for the two of them to leave, suggesting it would be best to give him space.
Even so, he nodded with a troubled expression.
“This matter is becoming more and more complicated.”
“It didn’t seem like something we could lightly dismiss, the fact that they just happened to be absent at this exact timing.”
“Hmm.”
Lian and Yeriel exchanged opinions in low voices.
“However…….”
At that moment, Cecilia, who had remained quietly silent until then, cautiously opened her mouth.
“Is it really right for us to go meet Cardinal Bruyant right now?”
She murmured softly.
“If we go to confirm it, we’ll have to check his chest like we just did earlier, but that won’t be easy. In the first place, there’s no way someone who’s a cardinal of the Holy Sun Church would agree to meet us so readily.”
More than anything else.
She deliberately paused.
“Even if there’s no iron needle, it’s a problem, and if there is one, it’s still a problem. Either way, he’s a cardinal of the Holy Sun Church. Harming a cardinal means turning the entire Holy Sun Church into our enemy. There’s not enough time to explain the circumstances to them, and there’s no guarantee they’d believe us anyway.”
It was a reasonable argument.
But Lian replied as if there were nothing to worry about.
“I have an idea.”
As he said that, he briefly explained to Cecilia and Yeriel the conversation he had shared with Cardinal Bruyant some time ago.
How the cardinal had tried to entice him by saying he would show him a miracle.
And the strange behaviors he had shown in the process.
“For now, I plan to tell him that I’ve become interested in what we talked about back then, and that I’d like to see that so-called miracle with my own eyes, and try to set up an appointment.”
“And what if that man has absolutely nothing to do with it?”
At Cecilia’s question, Lian nodded.
“Then that’s a good thing.”
“Right now, if there’s even the slightest suspicious point, we need to act immediately without hesitation.”
“Lian’s right.”
Yeriel spoke.
“We’re in no position to be picky right now.”
And so, the three of them headed straight for the Cathedral where Cardinal Bruyant was supposed to be.
However, once again, the cardinal was also absent.
When they asked where he had gone, all they received was a reply that due to an important schedule, it would be difficult to meet him for the time being.
‘……Absent again.’
In the end, Lian had no choice but to find the priest who had guided him to Cardinal Bruyant before, leave a message asking him to be sure to convey that Lian wished to hear in detail about the conversation they had shared recently, and then turn back.
“Haah…….”
As he exited the Cathedral, Lian let out a sigh.
It was due to an unexplainable sense of suffocation.
A situation where it wasn’t even clear who was an enemy and who was an ally.
On top of that, the festival period was making an already complicated situation even more tangled.
Most of all, what weighed most heavily on Lian’s heart was the fact that all of these events were completely new incidents he had never experienced in his previous life.
That realization filled him with deep unease.
‘……Did things like this happen even in my previous life?’
If so, then what on earth had he missed?
Lost in complicated thoughts, Lian asked Yeriel,
“What should we do now?”
“For now…… there’s nothing we can do but wait until the Grandmaster finds a way to detect that object, while doing everything we can in the meantime.”
Yeriel answered in a heavy voice.
“And we need to increase the number of reliable allies. With just us, it’s not enough.”
Reliable allies.
At those words, one face surfaced in Lian’s mind.
Jeil Envarso.
The sole survivor of the Wolpen Knights, and a Hero who had once saved the continent in the past.
If they could gain his help, it would surely become a tremendous force in overcoming this predicament.
“Could you please wait for a moment?”
“Why?”
“There’s someone I need to meet alone.”
Saying that to Yeriel and Cecilia, Lian moved on by himself.
For some reason, he felt certain that if they went together as a group, that person wouldn’t meet him.
It was while he was walking toward the park where Jeil Envarso often stayed.
Suddenly, someone blocked his path.
“Long time no see.”
Lian tilted his head slightly.
A familiar voice, a familiar face.
And yet, for some reason, the man’s name did not come to mind.
“You are…….”
One of Princess Velita’s confidants.
The very man who had previously brought him information.
Lian tried to call out his name, but even now, he couldn’t recall it.
This was the first time something like this had happened.
Seeing Lian like that, the man let out a soft chuckle.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten my name?”
Even so, he spoke with a familiar, sly demeanor.
“Well…… I guess it can’t be helped, since my presence is pretty faint. I think I gave the name Lot before…… then this time, should I just go with something like Dian? Anyway, call me whatever’s comfortable.”
“……Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
After Lian offered a brief apology, the man continued.
“So, what’s up?”
“I brought what you asked Her Highness for. She really pressed me about it.”
As he said that, he pulled out something shaped like a peculiar sculpture from his chest and handed it to Lian.
It was a strangely formed piece of metal, shaped like a distorted star.
“It’s an entry tag.”
He said.
“An entry tag that lets you enter the auction house. The auction you wanted to attend.”
“Ah.”
“Come to think of it, they say it’s opening the day after tomorrow? Luckily, it’s not too far from here, so you shouldn’t have any trouble attending.”
Lian silently accepted the entry tag and tucked it into his clothes.
Watching him, Lot asked with an interested look.
“But I didn’t know you were interested in auctions like that. What are you planning to buy? It won’t be something you can afford with just a few coins.”
Lian didn’t answer.
Even so, Lot, as if it didn’t bother him at all, continued speaking with the same sly smile.
“I hear this auction will have all sorts of rare items showing up? There are even rumors that Demons will be participating secretly. Because of that, they say things like relics of great Demons who were famous during the Great War, or forbidden magic tomes that were lost back then, will be up for sale too.”
While muttering like that, Lot suddenly nodded as if something had occurred to him.
“Ah, right…… now that I think about it.”
He murmured quietly.
“There’s also talk that the corpse of Valen Zeisho will appear. You know, the one who was a member of the Wolpen Knights? That High Elf who was called the Fairy King.”