Chapter 315 - Inheritance (4)

“Come on, everyone, have a drink! It’s on me, so don’t even think about refusing! Hahahaha!”

Time passed, and after the Labyrinth closed, Amelia and I attended the after-party. It was held at that same tavern run by the Reinweils sisters’ adoptive father.

“Hah! Iron Mask! Remember what that bastard said while his guts were spilling out? P-please spare meee! Uh... You don’t find that funny...?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“I-is that so...?”

After giving Dumbo a stony look as he excitedly tried to act buddy-buddy with me, I rose from my seat and headed over to Felik Barker.

“Hey, Iron Mask!”

“Barker.”

“Haha! I told you, just call me Fel!”

“No thanks. I prefer this.”

“Care for a drink?”

“Sure.”

I sat beside him and started drinking, and he talked to me nonstop. Mostly, he sang my praises.

The fake-barbarian strategy had worked just as expected. No, perhaps I should say it had exceeded expectations. From what I heard, the ‘warriors’ I’d trained and sent off to each team had a higher success rate than I did.

Well, that couldn’t be helped. True to my nickname, Iron Mask, I always kept my face hidden behind a helmet. Naturally, someone who showed their face would seem less suspicious.

“This is revolutionary! Somehow, they fall for it far more readily than when we use children as beaters!”

“Then you won’t need beaters anymore, will you?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. It’s probably too early for that. There’s no telling how long this method will keep working.”

I’d casually floated the suggestion just in case, but the clan leader had no intention of letting the sisters go. For all his faults, he did have an eye for talent.

“Besides, I don’t know about the other one, but the Reinweils sisters are quite talented. Work them for a few more years, and they’ll be valuable assets.”

Right. So you’re not going to let them go willingly.

‘Ugh. It’s not like I can just kill the bastard here.’

I merely smacked my lips in silence.

In truth, Felik Barker was the biggest obstacle to our plan. Well, more precisely, one of his Essences was the problem. The rank-4 Rare variety, Sea Merchant.

It was a rare ‘neutral’ monster you had an extremely slim chance of encountering while sailing the sixth floor’s Great Ocean. It almost never attacked first, and if you dumped a certain amount of magic crystals into the sea where it swam, it would toss you a top-grade equipment material called bluestone as payment.

Of course, it was still a monster, so you could hunt it. And if you beat the abysmal odds and got an Essence drop, you could acquire an unusual active skill called [Unsound Contract]...

‘She said only her older sister is bound by the contract right now.’

That [Unsound Contract] was precisely the problem. Because of the vicious contract he’d imposed on her, we absolutely had to break it to save Laura.

‘Damn it. How did such a precious Essence end up in this bastard’s hands...?’

Feeling irritated, I asked Felik Barker a question.

“By the way, how did you get the Sea Merchant Essence? I hear it’s incredibly rare.”

“Oh, that? Why the sudden question?”

“I’ve always wondered. We weren’t close before, so I couldn’t ask.”

“Hahaha! So you’re saying we’re a little closer now?”

I shrugged instead of answering. Taking that however he pleased, he guffawed and began his story.

“It was back when I was still working with a clan on the surface. I was so young then...”

Stripped of all the unnecessary details, his story boiled down to this: a Sea Merchant had dropped an Essence during a clan expedition, and, blinded by greed, he’d stolen the vial containing it.

“I planned to wait until things died down, then put it up for auction and make a fortune. With any luck, I’d never have to worry about money again!”

Unfortunately, Felik Barker’s crime was discovered before long, putting an end to his wishful thinking. So he fled to Noark. In the process, he’d been unable to sell the Essence and had absorbed it himself...

“Bjorn.”

That was as far as the conversation had gotten when Amelia came over to my side.

“Oh, Emily...”

“I’m thinking of heading back.”

“Are you? I’ll be leaving, then.”

As I rose and excused myself, Felik Barker gave me a lecherous grin.

“Heh heh. Have a good time!”

Looking at that grin, I wished the day when I could smash his skull would hurry up and come.

* * *

THUMP.

Allua Raven closed the book she’d been reading all night. She stretched and stood up, and her eyes fell on the objects gathered in a corner of the laboratory. Bjorn Jandel’s belongings.

“It’s time... I dealt with these too...”

Raven let out a long sigh. Time was truly cruel.

At first, she’d searched through all manner of books, convinced there must be some great secret. But she’d found nothing, and with each passing day, she’d gradually come to face reality. Perhaps that was simply her nature.

Emotions were fleeting. No matter how angry or grief-stricken she became, in the end, time passed and she found herself thinking rationally again.

Bjorn Jandel was dead. That meant these possessions had to be sold, and the money divided among those left behind according to his will. Not more late nights spent poring over books. That was what she needed to do.

Yet the more she thought that way, the more she felt an inexplicable sense of self-loathing. That was why she’d been reading until just now.

Bjorn Jandel’s death had changed Misha’s and Erwin’s worlds. Neither of them would ever live in the same world they’d known before. But what about her?

“Haah...”

Recently, she’d started eating every meal again. She was worried she’d ruin her health otherwise.

She no longer searched through books for secrets as desperately as before. She’d begun to feel that it wouldn’t change anything anyway.

And that wasn’t all. She drank black tea, and when senior members of her school spoke to her, she even forced a smile and chatted with them.

Raven knew that if this continued, she would eventually return to her ordinary life. She was like a match: capable of burning hot, but never for long.

‘It’s not as though... I didn’t care about him...’

She’d liked Bjorn too. Not romantically, but as a person, she’d liked him more than anyone. She’d learned so much from him, and enjoyed being with him.

No one had affected her this deeply since ‘that woman.’ Yet just as she had then, she was recovering. And she felt guilty for it.

“... I’ll just sort them out for now. I can sell them later...”

Muttering as though trying to convince herself, Raven set about sorting Bjorn Jandel’s belongings in earnest. First, she appraised his equipment and attached labels with their market prices. Then she sorted through the items that had been stored in his subspace.

One of them caught her eye.

“Oh? This is...”

The Golden Mask. An item obtainable in the first-floor Rupture, the Blood-Tinted Castle, but whose exact acquisition method had been erased by weathering from her copy of Complete Analysis of Ruptures II.

“How did Mr. Jandel get this...?”

Once, after seeing Jandel use Goddess’ Tears to defeat the Vampire, she’d suspected that he possessed Complete Analysis of Ruptures II. But he’d sworn a warrior’s oath that it had truly been a coincidence, and she’d put her suspicions to rest.

Then what was this?

“... Was he lying?”

Perhaps he owned Complete Analysis of Ruptures II, or had read it before. Just as that thought occurred to her, she remembered that her master had once suspected him of being an evil spirit.

‘Oh, stop. What a ridiculous thought...’

Raven chuckled and continued sorting through the backpack.

Then she found something else.

“What’s this?”

It was a magical device whose purpose she couldn’t identify. Judging by the spell formula, it seemed capable of both transmitting and recording voices...

CLICK.

Raven pressed the recess at the bottom, and voices began playing.

[“Why are you agonizing over it? They’re just NPCs.”]

[“But still, they’re the companions I’ve been with all this—”]

[“Don’t make me laugh. Think they’d feel the same way if they knew what you really were?”]

Neither voice belonged to Bjorn Jandel. Then who were these two people talking? The answer came soon enough.

[“The person your companions considered their friend was the real Hans. And as you know, the real Hans is no longer in this world.”]

[“But... I consider them my real companions.”]

It was a conversation between Hans Krissen and the dwarf from Noark whom they’d met in Doppelgänger Forest. So this was the leverage they’d been talking about back then. She’d never imagined he would still have it.

In any case, she ought to reset it if she was going to sell it later.

WHOOSH.

Raven fed mana into the device to examine its circuitry. It was a simple task for someone who specialized in magical engineering.

‘So you press twice in succession, then press and hold once.’

She’d found the reset method she wanted, but instead of withdrawing her mana, she continued studying the circuitry. Its unusual structure made her want to take a closer look. As she probed deeper, she began reading even the residual mana.

‘There’s a limit to how many times a recording can be played? Did they use a cheap core?’

Raven’s hand twitched.

“Huh?”

The device could play any given recording a maximum of one hundred times, after which it would automatically reset. But...

‘Only two plays left?’

The recorded playback count was more than a little strange. Too unsettled to dismiss it as a simple error, she fed in more mana and examined it thoroughly. Then she checked the playback history.

“What...?”

All but two of the playbacks had occurred after they left Doppelgänger Forest. In other words, Bjorn Jandel had played it the other ninety-six times.

“Why would Mr. Jandel listen to a conversation like this so many times...?”

She had no idea. But instinctively, Raven sensed that something was wrong. Just then...

KNOCK, KNOCK.

Someone knocked on the laboratory door. Raven stopped what she was doing and opened it. Someone she hadn’t expected at all was standing outside.

“Misha...?”

“Yeah... Can I come in, nyah...?”

“Oh, yes! Of course. Come in! Just a moment, I need to tidy up...”

“You don’t need to go to all that trouble, nyah.”

“All right... But what brings you here all of a sudden...?”

Flustered by the unexpected visit, Raven trailed off as she asked.

“There’s something I really need to tell you, nyah...”

She had an ominous feeling.

* * *

“Drinking again?”

“Oh, there’s not much else to do...”

Back at our lodgings, Amelia glanced at me as she hung up her coat. Sheesh, no need to judge. She had no idea how boring it was being here alone.

“Did you get our share of the proceeds?”

Amelia chuckled at my question.

“Worried I can’t even do the sums properly?”

“That’s not it, but you never know. They might have fiddled with the numbers behind our backs...”

“Don’t worry. I made sure we got our share. Not that it means much.”

“True...”

Money wasn’t our goal. It wasn’t entirely meaningless, but it would only matter once we’d saved Laura and found a way back to our own time.

“So what now? After talking to him, I don’t think we’ll be able to get the contract terminated and get her out before the incident...”

“Nothing changes for now. We keep trying. At least until we come up with something better.”

“Right...”

About two weeks had already passed since our return to Noark. We’d spent that time constantly talking things over. How could we save Laura? Even after days of discussion, we hadn’t found a satisfactory answer.

‘Damn. I feel like I could come up with something if I just...’

The more frustrated I became, the more I looked forward to midnight on the fifteenth. I hoped that meeting Auriel Gabis again and getting information from the other members might give me a good idea.

“It’s today, right?”

“In two hours, to be precise.”

Amelia nodded at my answer and went to wash up. After she came out, we passed the time chatting out of boredom. Before long, the moment arrived.

[23 : 59]

Ten seconds remained until midnight. I closed my eyes and focused on the ticking clock.

TICK, TICK, TICK...

Soon, I heard the tenth tick. And...

“... What?”

I immediately opened my eyes.

TICK, TICK, TICK...

The clock kept ticking in the silence.

“... Don’t tell me you’re back already?”