Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12- Secret Detention Facility

The sporadic gunshots echoing outside the mansion had begun to subside.

The decisive battle to sway the power balance in Aureatia was on its way to its conclusion.

“It’s ending already? Too bad.”

Aureatia’s Twenty-Second General Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade’s current living circumstances weren’t necessarily uncomfortable. It was definitely different from what he was used to when compared to the mansion he lived in, and he was worried about the servants he had left behind. Nevertheless, the food was quite high-class, and he could freely use the bath whenever he wanted.

More than that, though, living his life while some stranger stood guard over him was something he had experienced several times when he was younger.

Mizial had been abducted and was currently under confinement.

The perpetrator’s identity was a complete mystery. At first, they said they were working on behalf of the hospital where Kuuro had been admitted, but they had been brought to this mansion instead after boarding their carriage.

“Here I thought that maybe if this house got attacked, we could slip out in the uproar and escape. You bummed, too, Cuneigh?”

“Yeah…”

“Are you okay?”

“Yup…I’m fine…”

What worried Mizial more than anything was that Cuneigh the Wanderer was growing weaker by the day.

Mizial wasn’t the only one being confined to this mansion. She was a rare homunculus, small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, with both her arms swapped out for wings. She was also Kuuro the Cautious’s partner.

Kuuro the Cautious’s location still remained a mystery, and she even heard that Toroa the Awful died, so it was reasonable for her to be so terribly depressed.

Mizial’s apprehension lay in the possibility that this situation wasn’t the cause of her lack of energy.

Homunculus are said to have pretty short lives, right? I don’t know what happens when they die, but…it could be they just lose their energy like this and slowly peter out.

Assuming that was the case, what did he have to do to save her?

Mizial himself, while a member of the Twenty-Nine Officials, was a sixteen-year-old child. He couldn’t do anything except worry and encourage her. Even if he could find a doctor somewhere that would go out of their way to treat a homunculus, it was more than he could ever hope for while imprisoned.

As such, Mizial had tried to escape several times by now. His thinking never went beyond wondering what would happen if he used force at the perfect moment, and all of his attempts had failed.

I don’t care about the failures themselves at all. The fact my plans failed and I still have all my limbs means that these guys would be put out if I died or got injured, right? Then I’ve got nothing to lose in just escaping…

He had essentially unlimited time to think. Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade was dreadfully reckless, but when discounting this one factor, he still possessed the thinking abilities worthy of the Twenty-Nine Officials.

…I can assume they’re either after money, or to use us as hostages. This has gotta be the third time…no wait, the fourth, I guess. The last time was back when I was ten, so I don’t remember it too well… Since they haven’t sent off my fingers or one of my eyes yet, it means that the kidnappers are threatening someone that that poses a danger to them, should they be offended. A powerful authority…or someone with military might on their side. There isn’t anyone else in the Twenty-Nine Officials that would obediently listen to them over the safety of someone like me.

Mizial jolted up from the bed.

“Hey, Cuneigh. I bet Kuuro’s alive, don’t you?”

“Huh…?”

Cuneigh was laying almost perfectly flat in her birdcage bed.

“I think that since Kuuro’s friendly with us, they figured if they captured us, he’d do what they asked of him. That and, just think about when they first contacted us.”

He rattled on about his theory without waiting for any answer.

“If they had told us back then that Kuuro was dead, they couldn’t have abducted us, right? Not knowing whether he was alive or dead means that they wouldn’t be able to predict when his corpse might get found. So then, for them, the answer to that question was never a mystery to these guys. Yeah. Pretty likely chance that’s what’s going on.”

“Really… If that’s true then…that’s great, huh…”

“…So c’mon, and cheer up!”

He flashed her a cheerful smile.

None of the problems before them had been resolved.

Mizial himself couldn’t do anything but worry and encourage her.

While he was glad that Kuuro the Cautious was alive, if Mizial’s theory was right, then him and Cuneigh were being used as hostages, and it meant that Kuuro was being forced to participate in something against his will.

It may have been the battle going on outside.

If only Toroa was around…

Strangely, when Mizial had been told Toroa the Awful had died, he hadn’t felt an urge to cry. Apparently neither Toroa’s body nor his enchanted swords had been found, but Mizial thought that he was probably truly dead.

He may have understood somewhere inside him that the conversation they shared that night was going to be their last.

There was a theory that Toroa the Awful, by plundering enchanted swords, had prevented several moments of conflict before they could happen.

Mizial hadn’t admired Toroa the Awful because he believed in this theory, and it was dubious to think there was any meaning to his actions beyond pure slaughter.

Still though, if Toroa was here, he probably would’ve stopped this fight, too.

He may not have actually been Toroa the Awful. Still, he had been Mizial’s friend.

Mizial thought so, even if Toroa had vanished somewhere on the edge of their world, and Mizial would never see him again.

“…Yup. We really gotta get outta this place.”

After the two men had entrusted Cuneigh to him, Mizial wouldn’t be able to face either Kuuro or Toroa the way he was now. If taking advantage of an attack on the mansion was going to be difficult, then what if he pretended it already had?

While it may have happened a while back, there had been gunshots on the main street right outside the window. He was going to make it seem like he had been hit with a stray bullet by breaking the window and cutting an artery with one of the glass fragments.

Abducting one of the Twenty-Nine Officials was an ambitious crime, so it was unlikely that the guard stationed to watch them could decide whether to let Mizial die or not. In that case, their only option, with Mizial’s massive blood loss, would be to take him to a hospital, right?

The problem then, is how do I make the glass fragments from the window scatter inside… I could take the glass off the wall clock and try to use that. The gunshot was a while ago, so I can’t immediately shout and call for help. If I pretend that I was severely wounded the moment I got shot, so much that I couldn’t even call out for help…that might really make the rescue team panic. Next question is how long I can live after cutting a vein, I guess. And whether those guys will come by on their patrol within that timeframe…

Mizial knew that the abductors made their patrols on a purposefully irregular schedule. Even if he executed the escape plan, it would still be a gamble, with Mizial’s very life on the line. Nevertheless, Mizial began removing the glass on the wall clock without any hesitation whatsoever.

“Cuneigh, this time it’s gonna succeed for sure! I just had a great idea!”

“Mizial…”

There was a cracking sound.

Mizial hadn’t broken the window glass. The noise came from the first floor, in a different room.

More out of curiosity than caution, Mizial’s hand stopped moving forward with his plan.

“What was that?”

The sound of glass shattering didn’t continue after that. In its place, wham and thwap sounds, like smacking something heavy and wet, rang out in quick succession.

This then made Mizial grow cautious. While strange, he felt these where the kinds of sounds one heard on the battlefield.

“…Cuneigh. Stay quiet.”

Footsteps were approaching in the hallway.

Holding the glass from the wall clock in his hand, Mizial concealed his breathing and waited.

“Are you there, Mizial?” A man’s voice called out, followed by two knocks on the door.

“I’ve come to rescue you. I won’t harm you, so please come out here.”

…This voice.

Mizial relaxed his guard and went out into the hallway on his own.

He had a feeling he knew who the voice belonged to.

“Uh, so tell me… What’re you doing here, Enu?”

“Is it inconvenient for me to be here?”

A man in a bowler hat, both eyes open wide like an owl.

Aureatia’s Thirteenth Minister, Enu the Distant Mirror. He and Mizial weren’t especially close with one another, and his government post wasn’t involved with handling these sorts of abduction incidents. It was baffling to Mizial on many levels.

“…Well, I mean…”

Mizial peered down the hallway. The scene was far beyond what he imagined.

The hallway guards were all dead, their heads smashed open. The ones downstairs all must have been wiped out, too.

“You don’t do this sorta stuff, Enu.”

“Perhaps I can. The facts to allow for such conjecture are there.”

While it looked like there were bullet holes left in the walls, Mizial hadn’t once heard the sound of a gun.

There was no way Enu could have slaughtered this many thugs all by himself. What exactly had happened while Mizial and Cuneigh weren’t looking?

“It’s just as impossible as ever to figure out whatever the heck you’re thinking.”

“I don’t really intend to hide anything, though. In any case—”

With his emotionless, enigmatic eyes still open, Enu titled his head ever so slightly.

“You need to escape from here as soon as possible. That’s why I’m here.”

One thousand, two hundred meters to the south of the mansion where Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade was imprisoned…

There was a tall, soaring clock tower that seemed to look down on the city.

Although there was a tiny silhouette sitting on the summit of the tower, almost none of the people crowding on the surface far below could see him.

The man was wrapped pell-mell in bandages meant solely to hide his burn wounds.

Kuuro the Cautious.

“Four from the building across the street. They sensed something strange happened and are coming to reinforce…”

Kuuro pulled back the bolt on his sniper rifle.

It wasn’t one of this world’s muskets—it was a Haenel RS9.

A sniper rifle from the Beyond supplied by Iriolde’s camp.

The gunshot rang out from atop the clock tower.

“That leaves two.”

It meant that he had finished off two of the targets simultaneously with one bullet.

Kuuro the Cautious’s Clairvoyance possessed a downright absurd sensory range, as well as an omniscient precision, capable of parsing all the phenomena that occurred in this sensory range. This didn’t just stop at foreseeing his enemy’s placement and movements, with his aim and the trajectory of the bullets he shot being no exception.

“One tripped over a body. One, stopped in his tracks, is on guard. The front-facing third floor window. Next to it. He’s going to look at the building diagonally out in front…now.”

He pulled the trigger once more and shot his faraway target dead.

All of the guards in the mansion imprisoning Mizial and Cuneigh had all been shot dead, but Mizial hadn’t heard a single gunshot. The reason was simple—they were from a range too far for the gunshot to reach him.

Kuuro had pierced through a window with his initial shot, killing the first guard, and then afterwards, continued to fire through the initially broken window, disposing of all the guards by making his bullets ricochet through the inside of the building.

At this point…there’s nothing to think twice about. It’s the same.

Now that he was killing, it wasn’t any different from his old job.

He recalled that the fact he hadn’t killed anyone since he regained his Clairvoyance during the Particle Storm battle was much more of an anomaly in Kuuro’s life.

That naïveté had given Aureatia, Iriolde, and Obsidian Eyes an opening to leverage against him.

From now on, he wasn’t going to be naïve. In accord with his murderous ire, he would pull the trigger on the foes that hindered him.

“Obsidian Eyes. The same goes for you.”

Right now, Kuuro the Cautious was fighting united with Enu the Distant Mirror of his own accord.

The purpose was revenge upon Obsidian Eyes. As well as the capture of Linaris the Obsidian.