Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3- Absence

There was no one who could prove the results of the ninth match of the Sixways Exhibition.

The battle between Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation and Lucnoca the Winter occurred without any audience present, and with the citizens of Aureatia ignorant to what happened, they were simply told the result that Psianop had won.

In part because the match ending in victory for Psianop was itself hard to believe, there were many complaints from the citizens of Aureatia, and from those involved with gambling and commerce in particular.

They questioned that maybe Aureatia, fearful that Lucnoca would progress onward to win out as the hero, might have made her withdraw by brokering some sort of deal. Or maybe Lucnoca abandoned the match of her own free will, seeing as it was against a lowly ooze.

Whatever the case, it was valid to believe there was no way that Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had managed to kill Lucnoca the Winter, and the ninth match never actually happened.

However, even these voices of doubt were beginning to die down as the days passed. It was said that a small group of citizens, chosen to serve as representatives, had actually been shown Lucnoca the Winter’s corpse.

Instead, another rumor began to circulate—during the ninth match, it was actually the Aureatia military led by Haade the Flashpoint who killed Lucnoca the Winter, and that his military faction possessed the might capable of rivaling the hero candidate judged to be strongest of the strong.

Did Rosclay’s faction even have the strength to stop such a force? Would the Sixways Exhibition actually continue? Would Aureatia’s political administration be maintained in its current state? Anxieties and speculation around the political situation begun to be whispered together with the suspicions concerning the ninth match.

Regardless, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was not bestowed the honor of victory.

Despite achieving the truly grand feat of slaying Lucnoca the Winter, there were still none who entirely believed it.

Having fought, won, and survived all for the sake of pride, he was ultimately left without a win.

Rain continued to fall.

This was now Psianop’s fifth visit to the Romog Joint Military Hospital.

There was still no trace of Qwell the Wax Flower after she had slipped out from her hospital room the day before the ninth match.

Though he tried to gather information from staff and witnesses, it was difficult given he was beastfolk.

…Where did you go?

A horrible premonition was boiling inside him.

Why had there been any need to slip out the day before the match? Even supposing she did so herself, what sort of fate had she met afterward?

If this had happened to anyone but Qwell, Psianop likely would have made the correct assumption.

Even he was aware that his daily, idle investigation was done in an effort to disprove his fears.

Qwell’s survival was hopeless.

“Are you searching for Qwell the Wax Flower? Oh, no need to get ready to fight.”

Psianop had merely turned his attentio toward the voice, and the speaker, a plump man with a camera hanging from his neck, was already raising both hands in surrender. He wore a plain wooden box on his back.

“Umm, I’m not hostile or anything, okay?”

“I wasn’t even on guard to begin with. Yukiharu the Twilight Diver, then?”

“I’m surprised you know me. Suppose we can skip the belabored introductions. I’m a visitor journalist. In other words, I’m in the business of selling information.”

“……”

Psianop didn’t feel like pushing back to point out the man only sold information that would stand to benefit Okafu’s camp.

They were in an alley that normally didn’t have much foot traffic, but the scene around them was especially quiet. Perhaps it was simply that time of day, or nothing more than coincidence. It vaguely seemed like Yukiharu had carefully waited for a chance to appear when no other eyes would witness the exchange.

“In this story I’m pursuing, see, this National Defense Research Institute name keeps popping up. Idle gossip makes it out to be a research facility that uses self-proclaimed demon kings to make constructs and weapons in secret, but are you familiar?”

“……Rings some bells.”

The unorthodox living organism that Psianop had no knowledge of, Acromdo the Variety. Sindikar the Ark, manipulating enigmatic flying machines. It had been a complete mystery where exactly Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam had found such combat assets. However, if such an organization did exist, that would explain it.

“Don’t tell me you came asking me to confirm it for you?”

“That’s part of it. Why don’t we both confirm what the other knows? Assuming something resembling this National Defense Research Institute was mobilized…where would you have seen them, Psianop?”

“The Mali Wastes.”

“Just came right out and admitted it, huh?”

“There’s nothing to hide.”

Psianop’s victory merely stemmed from the interference of Tuturi’s force. He recognized that it was reasonable not to be treated as the winner.

He wasn’t meant to conceal the facts of the ninth match, for Lucnoca the Winter’s own honor more than anyone else’s.

“There were several mysterious weapons deployed in the ninth match—a monstrous race that originated from plants, a flying machine, something resembling a dragon revenant. Supposing this National Defense Research Institute or what have you does exist, then it has to be connected to Haade the Flashpoint or Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam.”

“The so-called military faction, then. That lines up with the results of my own investigation.” Yukiharu was recording something on a bundle of scrap paper. “In the middle of the ninth match, all entry and exit from the Mali Wastes was sealed off. The security really was quite tight, so I couldn’t view the actual state of the match myself. I was only able to slip in late at night.”

“…You’re saying you waited the whole time? There had to be soldiers stationed at night, too.”

“Oh, yes, there were. But it was definitely worth my while.”

Yukiharu took out a photograph. On the ground of the Mali Wastes, the night illuminated by a standing fire, there were crushed metallic fragments scattered over the ground. Metal fittings to keep a cloak shut tight.

“…Any idea what this might be?”

“……”

Psianop immediately knew they belonged to Qwell.

It meant that something occurred there that was enough to smash metal.

“There’s one more thing. I’ve identified a facility that I believe to be the National Defense Research Institute’s base of operations. Only just recently, they took great pains to bring in this corpse, you see, and—”

“Enough,” Psianop whispered quietly. “…Why?”

The words weren’t meant for Yukiharu.

He felt neither anger nor sadness, only frustrated regret.

Why hadn’t she listened to his instructions? Why had she slipped out of the hospital on her own? Why had she come all the way to the arena?

He wasn’t confused by what Qwell had felt—he understood all too well.

Though they were of a different race, and though their connection had been temporary, only existing during the Sixways Exhibition…Qwell the Wax Flower had been the lone and sole disciple who had shared his sense of values.

“Why…”

When it came to Qwell’s heart, he understood it all.

“…Why was she killed? If she only got in the way of their trap during the ninth match, there shouldn’t have been any reason to kill her.”

“Aureatia’s side, at the very least, must have done so for the medicine.”

Yukiharu tossed a small vial over to Psianop.

A long, thin vial, the size of a minia’s fingertip. A transparent drug was inside.

“That’s an antiserum. The invisible army—the vampires lurking behind the scenes of the Sixways Exhibition—wasn’t just an expedient white lie to explain Alus the Star Runner’s rampage. The Aureatia Assembly is actually busy preventing infection. Right now, in particular, the price for the silver bullet antiserum has climbed extremely high.”

“So this… That’s what this is.”

Psianop held the vial up to the light.

The drug inside glittered in the light from the gas lamps.

Qwell.

He had to use his strength of will to curb this thing that threatened to explode within him.

Psianop could take it all out on Yukiharu, but ultimately the man was unrelated to this issue.

He had to remain levelheaded. He was supposed to have spent twenty-one years training to do just that.

“My original world had a medicine like this, too. Here in this world, though, I don’t think you can make stuff like this without the Kingdom’s technological prowess. Qwell the Wax Flower was a dhampir, wasn’t she?”

Qwell the Wax Flower was a vampire without the ability to infect others. They were called dhampir.

From birth, she had possessed a vampire’s body, which had surpassed other minia. It was a fact that had tormented her.

“One of the results from their history of fighting against vampires must be that they established a process to refine an antiserum from dhampir bones and the vampire virus antibodies they hold. The reason they always had a limit to how many they could produce was because the materials for them were so rare.”

Even now, hearing the explanation, Psianop wondered why.

Was it to kick him back down now that he had advanced, for lacking a sponsor?

To use the produced antiserum to bargain with the government?

Is any of that…

Somewhere far in the distance, there was the sound of a bird flock taking off.

…a reason to kill her?

Having fought, won, and survived all for the sake of pride, he had nothing but loss.

There was no prison that could contain Tu the Magic.

During Alus the Star Runner’s invasion, not only had she headed out to fight, ignoring her sponsor’s political coordinating and defeating her warden Krafnir in the process—she had also decided to go into battle against Alus and rescue the victims. Her actions, from Aureatia’s perspective, could only be seen as chaotic and rebellious.

Tu the Magic had already sprung free from her sponsor’s control.

However, she was voluntarily staying in Flinsuda’s manor. Most likely, it was out of guilt toward Flinsuda and her acting guardian, Krafnir.

Now, Tu wasn’t even under surveillance by Krafnir. The course of events that accompanied Alus the Star Runner’s assault had merely proved that even a Word Arts caster of Krafnir the Hatch of Truth’s caliber was unable to restrain Tu.

Tu herself wasn’t moping around as much as she had after the fifth match, but instead, she had begun to lose herself in thought and move about as if she couldn’t settle down.

Much like a child that knows someone is going to scold them, that day, Tu might have been waiting for Flinsuda to call out to her.

“Tu, darling. Come over here.”

When Flinsuda summoned her, Tu timidly approached. She was awkwardly hugging a sphere that resembled a ball of mud. She walked around without ever letting go of Rotting Soil Sun, left behind by Alus the Star Runner.

“Flinsuda…” Tu’s green pupils looked anxiously at her.

Flinsuda the Portent’s hair was unkempt.

There were less accessories decorating her corpulent body, and her nails weren’t polished.

In her current situation, she was forced to put aside the elegance that she usually put so much care and effort into.

Flinsuda was the head of the medical division. In addition to treating the heavily wounded victims of Alus the Star Runner’s assault, along with her work identifying and coping with the considerable number of confirmed infected corpses, now her assistant in the field, Qwell the Wax Flower, was missing.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to keep you company much lately.”

“…Nah. That’s okay.” Tu feebly shook her head. “Um, Flinsuda… Sorry. About when I fought Alus and stuff…”

“Right, right. Why don’t we start there, shall we? Tu, dear, you couldn’t wait until I finished arranging things with the Aureatia Assembly?”

Tu shut her eyes tight with a terribly remorseful look on her face.

She was always honest in how she expressed her emotions. She was more minia-like than the actual minian races were. She behaved in an extremely impressionable way.

“Krafnir, too… I hope I didn’t cause him too much trouble… But, but listen! Krafnir did his job like he was supposed to!”

“Tu, dear. I reduced Krafnir’s compensation.”

“B-but…! That was all my fault!”

“That’s not true. Krafnir made a contract with me, and it included reining you in. While he may have given his all to stop you, Krafnir needs to bear responsibility for his failures.”

“Responsibility…”

“That’s right… Responsibility. In this world…everyone is carrying out their responsibilities, regardless of how strong they are, or how they may feel. This serves to protect people’s confidence in each other, and ultimately ensuring Krafnir bears the responsibility proportionate to his work is for his own sake, too.”

Flinsuda was thoroughly and wholly devoted to wealth.

Using the power of medical treatment to convert lives into money, she acted under contracts bounded by money, regardless of right or wrong.

If she could benefit someone, then it was fine to collect an equal benefit for herself.

Flinsuda raised herself up to her position on the Twenty-Nine Officials through this simple bargaining principle.

However, she shouldn’t have applied such a simple principle to Tu the Magic. No matter how much kindness she showed Tu, Flinsuda understood that she couldn’t genuinely bind this young girl’s will.

“Tu, dear. Aureatia now regards you as a hero candidate who is impossible to control.”

Flinsuda squeezed her rotund form into a chair and let out a long sigh.

“We’ve been instructed that, should we have a chance, hero candidates seen this way are to be disposed of by their sponsors.”

“Urk…!”

Tu drew back in fear.

Flinsuda knew that Tu wasn’t fearful of actually being killed. It was the fear of being resented and condemned by someone she trusted. In every aspect, save for her complete invincibility, she was a child.

“Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! Now of course, this is something that I’m not supposed to tell the hero candidates. But I have to wonder, if there’s no possible way to hurt you, how exactly then am I supposed to kill you?”

If that was possible, then Tu wouldn’t have ever been chosen as a hero candidate to begin with.

Nevertheless, one of the sponsors’ duties was to prepare, to the best of their ability, a means to control or expunge their hero candidate in case it ever became necessary.

Even Nophtok the Crepuscle Bell and Hidow the Clamp must have done everything they could to try and eradicate their own hero candidates who were far too much for them to handle. Perhaps Flinsuda was supposed to have done the same.

“…Flinsuda.” As if she had made up her mind, Tu began to speak. “Why do you want money so much? Back then, if you didn’t want money so much… if you had chosen instead to help everyone… I would’ve happily gone to help. You must have wanted to save everyone’s lives, right, Flinsuda?”

“That’s true. I do love money.”

As she gazed out the window, Flinsuda leaned her weight deep on the chairback. It felt like her organs were being squeezed by her fat flesh.

Unable to see the stars up in the night sky, instead orange gas lamp bulbs flickered on the glass instead.

“Tu, dear. Take the sort of elderly people who can afford to live in this central city section—they will offer up an incredible amount of money just to live a single year longer. After all, no matter how much it may cost, there’s nothing more precious than one’s own life, is there?”

Flinsuda was also the very person who introduced technical medical treatments to Aureatia.

This was in part to make doctors learn surgical techniques and also to heal patients who couldn’t be treated solely through Life Arts—however, the true goal was to increase the income of doctors by presenting patients who had reached an impasse with Life Arts treatment with expensive, state-of-the-art treatments instead.

“You see… I believe that doctors need to earn more money than any other profession. They bear a heavy responsibility and need to master difficult techniques and theory…yet, they aren’t allowed to behave haughty and arrogant like aristocracy, either. They have to think of their patient above themselves. They need to be rich, or else no one would want to try to become one, don’t you think?”

“Erm, Flinsuda… It’s just, well… I thought about it…and there are people without any money, and people who doctors won’t help, too…”

“You want to help everyone, don’t you dear?”

Flinsuda was already coldhearted. With Tu’s wish to help anyone and everyone, Flinsuda must have looked even more apathetic in her eyes.

She was also aware that Tu had frequented one of the Order’s almshouses. As well as the fact that Tu wanted to prevent even one more person from falling through the cracks in society, this was what spurred her to enter the fray on the day of Alus’s attack.

“The thing about saving the poor and destitute, dear? It’s much, much simpler than trying to prolong the life of some rich person about to die from old age. Make sure they’re well-nourished, use Life Arts on them, prescribe them medicine…and if there is some part of them that still can’t be healed no matter what, you can simply excise it and sew them back up… But, see, even all of that treatment still costs money.”

The most common cause of death among the poor was merely a common cold or encephalitis.

Back when technical medicine still wasn’t widespread enough, patients’ only option was Life Arts treatment from a family doctor who knew them very well. It was an era where contracts weren’t necessary, and treatment was established only through sympathy and obligation.

The lonely died alone. While doctors prioritized the needs of the nobility, the poor were left to fend for themselves and often died in obscurity.

“That’s why I want to make it possible to rake in a lot of money, the kind used to give an extra year of life to the rich. Once I have that money, I can then buy forty years of life for twenty poorer citizens.”

“……”

“The life of the weak is worth just a single gold coin, both for the people trying to save them and those who abandon them.”

In which case, if she could possess countless numbers of gold coins, then she would be able to save countless numbers of lives.

Even if it meant deceiving someone whose time was coming to an end, even if meant giving up on the lives of several people in front of her, she could exchange one life for many more. That was Flinsuda’s money-obsessed medical treatment.

“So it’s true that, back then, I gave up on the people affected by the fire. I thought that by using the money I earned in that time, I would be able to save even more lives. Do you understand that?”

Tu’s gaze wandered before looking down to the right.

She opened up her lips to try to say something, but then closed them.

She was holding Rotting Soil Sun tight against her chest.

“…Yeah.”

Finally, she obediently nodded.

“I’m glad… That you were thinking about everybody like that. It was really hard for me…when I thought that maybe you weren’t actually a good person at all…”

If Flinsuda had actually managed to convince Tu, and she followed the course Flinsuda indicated to her, then there wouldn’t be any need to get rid of her. Flinsuda also understood that likely wouldn’t happen, either.

“But, that day… I saved someone.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“They were buried under the rubble… A man was calling out for help…and I saved him.”

There were lives that Flinsuda had forsaken in order to negotiate the amount she would be compensated.

Flinsuda knew that it wasn’t merely this one example Tu saved. There had been many more lives she saved just by heading straight to the scene and stopping Alus the Star Runner’s advance.

“To that person, it was everything. He might’ve lost everything in the world… That’s why, I don’t… I don’t want to think that what I did was wrong…”

“Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! You’re absolutely right, dear. You did…”

Flinsuda’s conviction was a false kind of justice, framed all around renumeration and contracts.

A true doctor was supposed to save all lives, without any compensation or contract.

It was already too late for Flinsuda to become such a doctor.

“…a magnificent job. You really gave it your all, Tu.”

Tu looked on the verge of tears.

The Demon King’s Bastard, true identity unknown. To Flinsuda the Portent, Tu was nothing but a lab rat to make her money by taking advantage of the Sixways Exhibition opportunity.

Even as she imposed cruel experiments on Tu, it didn’t pain Flinsuda at all. Since, from the very start, Tu wasn’t one of the minian races that doctors were meant to save, and wouldn’t be harmed by anything done to her.

While she was openly lenient and soft on Tu, Flinsuda had been irritated many times at her for completely ruining a contract she had worked hard to secure, or for not acting exactly as Flinsuda wanted.

Nevertheless, after interacting with her for so long, had Krafnir’s sickness been passed on to Flinsuda as well?

Despite being different in every regard, Flinsuda understood the way Tu thought.

Since her thoughts couldn’t have been anything else but artless innate goodness, the sort that everyone naturally hopes for, Tu the Magic wasn’t any kind of mysterious unknown organism at all.

“Get going now, Tu. If you remain here, you’re going to cause me more trouble. After all, even if I wanted to kill you, it’s not like I ever could, right? Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!”

Tu the Magic was surely a singular gold coin.

A special gold coin that, regardless of its amount or value, could save the lives of many others simply from being left to run free.

Right now, the wealthy Flinsuda needed to let this coin go.

“Flinsuda. I’ll think about it. I promised Rique.”

Putting a leg up on the window, with the night air blowing in, Tu spoke with a serious look in her eye.

“What can I do…to save everyone? What’s the best way to go about it?”

Flinsuda replied with a small nod.

She was letting a monster roam free.

However, this monster could figure something out, within this world cloaked in the shadow of terror.

The next time the wind blew in, the monster in the shape of a young girl was nowhere to be seen.

The fluttering white curtain looked like the remnants of a magic spell.