Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5- Yatmaees Garrion's Indoor Training Grounds

There were five days left until the start of the tenth match.

On this day, there was a single indoor training ground that wasn’t scheduled to be utilized by any other squad or unit.

It wasn’t unusual. A simply accidental coincidence. However, two people were in the facility taking advantage of such a coincidence. Aureatia’s Third Minister, Jelky the Swift Ink—along with Aureatia’s Second General, Rosclay the Absolute.

“I had just been hoping to borrow someone else’s eyes.”

Rosclay was lightly dressed in base colors of white and yellow.

He had summoned Jelky merely to confirm a smaller matter as they readied to carry out their operation, but Rosclay had also called him in part to look at his training form.

“I may be trying to move as fluidly as possible, if something looks a bit strange to others, then I can’t say I’ve perfected it yet.”

Jelky was sitting in a chair on the edge of the training ground. He slightly furrowed his eyebrows.

“…If you’re aiming to be in perfect fighting form, then you should’ve spent more time on your treatment. Didn’t the doctors tell you that?”

“They did.”

They had needed to exhaust every method at their disposal to reconstruct both of Rosclay’s legs, which had been broken during the fourth match. Rapidly regenerating extremities ended up consuming a considerable amount of one’s cellular lifespan. There were also side effects brought on in exchange for the reduced treatment time. It was necessary to surgically remove the sections that regenerated crooked and warped. The wounds from the surgery were then treated with Life Arts once more.

The Life Arts specialists weren’t the ones to recommend such a treatment method. Rosclay himself had asked for it.

“Still, I’m going to be the best I can be. There can’t be even the slightest chance that Rosclay the Absolute is unable to fight on the day of the match.”

“…And it’s my job to ensure there isn’t the slightest chance that match even occurs.”

Hearing Jelky’s reply, Rosclay smiled slightly.

“Either way, Aureatia is going to make big moves. I can’t rely on my compatriots for everything and should prepare for any and all possibilities. Please watch.”

Rosclay reached a hand out in front of him and released a tiny piece of cloth from his fingers.

It felt straight down.

He held his longsword straight up, right next to his face.

The transition from casual, everyday motions into his fighting stance happened naturally and in the blink of an eye.

“Hup.”

He stepped forward with a short exhale and slashed downward at an angle.

Though called a strong attack, it was one of the fundamental longsword techniques.

The piece of cloth, only as big as his fingertip and without the surface area to flutter through the air, split into two before it could reach the ground.

“How did that look to you?”

Rosclay picked up the cloth from the ground. The square scrap of cloth had been separated perfectly through the center.

“I do not have the combat experience of military officers such as yourself,” Jelky commented with as stern an expression as always. “…Nevertheless, I thought it was fantastic. No different from how you’ve been up until now.”

“Your lack of combat experience is exactly why I asked… With this, everything is perfect.”

Mere strength wasn’t enough for Rosclay’s swordsmanship. It needed to be beautiful even in the eyes of a total amateur.

For instance, Soujirou the Willow-Sword’s techniques would likely be seen as almighty by any person who was a fairly strong fighter in their own right. However, to the common eye they were uncanny and nothing more—liable to be come off as base and ugly.

“I’ll say this again, Rosclay. You should not be facing this with the intention to fight. The tenth match will not happen. The plan is to announce that Soujirou the Willow-Sword has requested to withdraw and disqualify him. Once he is alienated by his sponsor, Haade, a visitor like him should have no means to protest.”

“…I know.”

It had been planned that way from the start. Anticipating that he would force his hero candidate to drop out the moment that they were matched up against Rosclay, Haade had chosen the freshly arrived visitor as his candidate.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword had no others to rely on in this world. Additionally, having lost one leg during his match against Ozonezma, he wouldn’t become a threat later on, even if he were left alive.

“However, even if Soujirou himself can no longer fight in the Sixways Exhibition, there is the possibility one of the other powers are planning to use him themselves. What are the chances that others in the Twenty-Nine, the Gray-Haired Child…or potentially the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists, have contacted him?”

“Sabfom the White Weave is keeping watch over him at Romog Joint Military Hospital. Our information control measures work at that hospital. If anyone makes contact with Soujirou, we are certain to learn of it. If you have any worries on how we’re handling things, then tell me.”

“…Fair enough. Forgive me, while I was only asking to make doubly sure, I may have come off as a bit rude.”

He flashed the same perfect smile as moments prior—however, this one was mostly self-deprecating.

It’s not absolute.

Rosclay the Absolute proceeded forward with thorough discretion that occasionally bordered on cowardice.

That was how it seemed.

However, Rosclay was aware of it himself—this only extended to matters that concerned his own self-defense.

If it was truly in his nature to carefully think through everything, Iriolde’s large-scale plan to slay Lucnoca the Winter and incite a rebellion would have never had the chance to go into action.

Rosclay’s true thoroughness had always been reserved for schemes that kept fear at a distance: Psychologically attacking Gilnes the Ruined Castle, scattering water over the ground to block Kia’s Word Arts, and manipulating the tournament structure for the Sixways Exhibition to make sure he fought against safe opponents.

He didn’t expose his true self, even to his compatriots who knew the truth behind his candidacy and shared his goal.

Something is missing. I’m still scared.

On the day of the tenth match, Iriolde was going to enact his rebellion. Haade had made sure it would happen.

The massive coup d’état, including an attack on the palace, would become an event that left its mark on history. More than enough to paint over the grand entertainment and excitement of Rosclay the Absolute’s match. More than that, his faction, manipulating the Sixways Exhibition as its administrators, wouldn’t start the match. Per the rules, with Soujirou having lost his backer, he wouldn’t participate in any more rounds. The tenth match would end with a default win for Rosclay.

“If there was anyone to be wary of, it would be the Free City of Okafu, but…” Jelky used his free hand to adjust his glasses. “There is no chance that they have been in contact with Iriolde’s camp. We know this is certain not only from the information Haade sent to us, but also from the reports of our undercover agents. However, Iriolde’s camp is also a power that’s been taking in anti-Aureatian elements from the very start. It is possible that after seeing Iriolde make his big move, Okafu will independently decide to ally with them.”

“That’s true. The one factor that still has me worried is the Gray-Haired Child.”

Should Okafu, led by Hiroto the Paradox, align themselves with Iriolde, subjugating would be slightly more involved than anticipated. Nevertheless, a majority of Okafu’s mercenaries had been sent home to the Free City of Okafu following the string of deaths in the early stages of the Sixways Exhibition, which Obsidian Eyes was thought to have a hand in. No matter how skillfully Hiroto used his personal goblin army, they weren’t enough to alter the big picture of something like a war.

If anything, for Rosclay, he was hoping that they would join with Iriolde’s camp. If they pointed their blades at the monarchy, then he would be able to legitimately and lawfully put down the rest of Iriolde’s group.

Which is why Hiroto the Paradox shouldn’t make any moves… He has no reason to do so.

In which case, was there another enemy that could prove a threat?

The Old Kingdoms’ loyalists were already without any real fighting force. The details surrounding Obsidian Eyes were mostly unknown, but Rosclay’s group still had insurance from their exhaustive corpse testing and additional production of antiserum. He assumed Obsidian Eyes couldn’t make any immediate moves.

“…I was thinking about the day of the tenth match.”

He thought that it might be meaningless to think about it, anyway.

“Should any unexpected situations crop up on the day of, you likely won’t be able to take any immediate action. Even if you subtract all the preliminary preparations, canceling the match is bound to bring you a huge amount of official work to handle. The situation on the day itself…our golden opportunity…was likely the only reason we were able to lure Iriolde out to begin with.”

“I intend to give all my efforts to cope with any and all incidents, while keeping pace with my clerical work. When compared against the success of the Sixways Exhibition and the safety of the Queen, no matter how much work it may result in, it won’t be more than a day’s labor down the line.”

The countermeasures against Iriolde’s aims to overthrow Aureatia had a direct impact on the Queen’s personal safety.

There was no doubt Jelky would give the mission everything he had.

“Thank you. I trusted you’d say something like that.”

After replying, Rosclay returned to his sword training once more.

Footwork. Hand manipulation. Breathing.

Rosclay skillfully managed it all during his duels while simultaneously keeping his thoughts in motion.

In this Sixways Exhibition, where I should be suspicious of everything, Jelky is one of the select few companions I can trust.

Trust was very much the most powerful strength of all. Rosclay managed to come this far entirely because of Jelky’s cooperation, and that was likely to hold true for what happened moving forward as well.

…Which is why I’ve preserved my trump card. The ability to send that man into action.

The period Soujirou the Willow-Sword spent admitted to Romog Joint Military Hospital might have actually been longer than the time he had spent in Aureatia beforehand. Mathematically speaking, the number of days couldn’t have been very long. At least, that was what Soujirou’s internal clock told him.

His duel to the death with Ozonezma the Capricious had been a wholly new experience for him. In exchange for that, he had lost his right leg and was forced to endure a new flavor of boredom now that he couldn’t move as freely.

While Soujirou didn’t regret it, he did feel like he hadn’t had enough.

“Fwah-hah-hah-hah! Every day, staring out the window! What are you looking at, Soujirou the Willow-Sword?!” A man’s shout echoed from the sickbed next to him.

This was a patient by the name of Sabfom the White Weave, Aureatia’s Twelfth General. The smooth steel plate covered his face after having the skin over it sliced off, nose and all.

“Longing for the Aureatia city streets, are you?! I’m glad to hear it!”

“Yer way too damn loud all the time. You can totally get discharged at this point…”

Sabfom was supposed to be here to recover from his wounds, just like Soujirou, but perhaps due to all his wounds being on his face, he was brimming full of vigor, almost more than the average healthy person.

Allegedly, when Alus the Star Runner attacked, Sabfom had taken the lead to rescue the citizens, charging into the configuration himself—clearly not something anyone injured or infirmed should’ve been doing.

“Well, then. Isn’t it the same scene out there, no matter how many times you look?”

“Nah…a shop’s sending up advertising balloons. Just thought that they have a lotta different patterns to ’em. You guys in this world can’t read or anything, right?”

“Oh, right, you visitors often make use of written characters, don’t you!” Sabfom shouted, as if surprised.

Though, whether he was surprised or not, this man’s voice was so loud it always sounded overexaggerated.

“The particularly big shops will put out ads and signboards with a unique color selection. The benefit to using them is that they can be discerned from farther away, and by putting them on balloons, they’re visible from all directions! If I remember right, they have to apply to the Assembly to use a unique color combination. That said, save for the color combination, anyone’s free to put whatever pattern they want on balloons. A lot of patterns are distinctive and elaborate.”

“Words’d make it easy to tell a glance, but instead ya got this pain-in-the-ass setup.”

“There are colors that all shops can use, too. For example, the color red by itself symbolizes that thirty percent of more of a shop’s goods are on sale for twenty percent off and up! Useful info, isn’t it?! Fwah-hah-hah-hah!”

“Oh, yah… Thanks. Might end up doing some shopping when I get discharged, who knows.”

Sabfom was a stouthearted man who liked looking out for others, but one flaw of his was that his behavior was always so sweltering and overbearing.

For Soujirou, it wasn’t more than he could take, but if any of the other hospital patients were sharing a room with them, the anxiety would have rapidly made their condition deteriorate. As a matter of fact, Harghent the Still, who once fought together with the man, had looked very exhausted mentally just from learning that Sabfom was staying in the same hospital ward as him.

…Actually, what even happened to Old Man Harghent anyway?

Ever since that day, Harghent hadn’t returned to Romog Joint Military Hospital.

He challenged his old enemy Alus the Star Runner to combat, defeated him, and earned renown and glory.

The end result should’ve been everything Harghent had wanted.

However, what had happened after that?

Sitting in here ain’t for me.

Soujirou felt like something was narrowing his own circumstances, slowly and torturously strangling him—something he couldn’t defeat in a fight.

It wasn’t the fear he was going to be assassinated. If anything, it was the opposite. According to what Yuno told him before, a doctor with the knowledge and ability to use Life Arts on a patient could easily cause fatal wounds by directly using them, but he hadn’t felt the slightest hints of any such attack.

He was so bored, he had actually hoped such an assault would come for him, but even if it had, it probably wouldn’t have been any challenge at all. The distance required for those Word Arts to reach him was also well within the range of Soujirou’s blade.

Nevertheless, while he had an extremely strong intuition against attacks, it didn’t have any effect against not being attacked at all.

Even as the situation outside the hospital was moving furiously on, the harm never reached them.

A majority of the rumors around incidents occurring in Aureatia didn’t even touch this place, perhaps to avoid fanning the patients’ anxieties.

“Hey, Sabfom. When’s the next match? When do I get to fight?”

“There should be an announcement as the day approaches. After all, Rosclay is heavily wounded himself! Waiting until you’re both fully healed to fight is fair for you, too, isn’t it?!”

“…Nah. It’s in five days.”

“Well now, surprised to hear you know that!”

“It’s that Rosclay or whatever’s match, right? All sorts of guys gossiping about it.”

There was an invisible power trying to remove Soujirou the Willow-Sword from the Sixways Exhibition.

However, even if he vaguely understood this, he couldn’t challenge it to a fight, either.

In the second round, not a single match was conducted in a normal manner.

The tenth match wasn’t going to commence.

There were five days remaining before the day of the tenth match.

Aureatia was once the royal capital of the Central Kingdom, which transformed with the merging of the three kingdoms.

In some areas of the city, with its long history, it wasn’t unusual to see structures from an age too old to be recorded in the annals of the Aureatia Assembly, and in fact, the city’s urban development resulted in several instances where such underground structures and remnants of ancient buildings were rediscovered.

There was one organization who excelled the most in using these old structures from the age of the Central Kingdom, more than Iriolde or Hiroto’s camp or even Obsidian Eyes—the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

Aureatia’s former Fourth Minister, Kaete the Round Table, had his hero candidate, Mestelexil, wrested from him in the fourth match As he was escaping from Obsidian Eyes’ pursuit, together with Kiyazuna the Axle, he was taken, practically browbeaten, into the custody of the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

Currently, he was in the ruins of an underground waterway together with an Old Kingdoms’ loyalists’ force.

He didn’t know what age the ruins dated back to. They had been out of use for a long time, but the wall surface was paved in processed stone, and the space could support the lives of a large host of soldiers.

Of course, for Kaete though, this environment was far from meeting his standards for “living.”

“What the hell’s with this bread…?! It’s practically a lump of wood! The dough’s totally dense and hasn’t risen at all!”

“No bellyachin’ about the food, you dumbass pupil.”

Cussing out and glancing sidelong at Kaete beside her, Kiyazuna devoured the piece of bread.

The bread was hard enough to chip a tooth or two with the way she was eating it, yet this old woman, easily over eighty years old, still had all of her teeth perfectly intact.

“You’ve always been way too picky! Living the life of a spoiled rotten brat.”

“You’re just way too uncivilized, Grams! You’re a Craft Arts expert, why the hell’re are you even used to living like this?!”

“’Cause I’ve been a demon king for a helluva long time!”

The terrible situation the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists found themselves in wasn’t limited to the conditions of their base and their food supply.

Formerly, the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists had a powerful leader in Gilnes the Ruined Castle standing at their helm, and had powerful supports behind them like Iriolde the Atypical Tome and Hiroto the Paradox.

However, Hiroto used the Toghie City uprising by the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists as a means to secure participation in the Sixways Exhibition, and Iriolde had accepted the outcome as well, cutting off his support and essentially abandoning the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists after they were radically weakened as an organization. Not stopping there, Iriolde had been assimilating many of those who were actively working against Aureatia into his own group, too.

In short, at this stage, those who remained behind in this armed force were thoughtless rebels clinging to a fight they had no hopes of winning, purely out of pride and conviction.

“Dammit… You think we can win, Grams?”

Kaete looked out over the grubby group, sitting along the underground waterway and taking their meal just like they were.

“Win what?”

“Anything. Whatever the plan is, doesn’t feel like we’ll be able to pull it off. Say we invade Aureatia with the golems you’ve made—what do we need to capture to win? These guys may claim otherwise, but I doubt they’ll be able to change the tides in Aureatia since Rosclay’s got such a tight control over the whole place.”

Looking at it another way, the fact that the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists had been weakened as much as they had was itself an indication of how fierce Rosclay the Absolute was.

They had been given the name “Old Kingdoms’ loyalists” by Aureatia as part of a strategy to manipulate the public image of them, but their original identity was exactly as they claimed: the Royal Army. The very same Royal Army who, during the era of the Central Army, purported to be the mightiest in the land.

When the three kingdoms merged, they crowned their queen Sephite from the United Western Kingdom. This decision caused a backlash, and the hardliners of the new military division, splitting the Royal Army in two, became the prototype of the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

From the era of the True Demon King, they had tried several times to undermine Aureatia in order to regain the original state of the Kingdom. However, every time they did, the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists were the ones who were actually undermined.

Their assertions that, when considering the process in which Aureatia was first established, should have held a certain amount of legitimacy, also failed to shake Aureatia. During the age of terror, the people leaned not on legitimacy, but on a champion—Rosclay the Absolute.

While Kaete may have held no qualms about crushing anything to do with humanity and morality underfoot, he could still comprehend how significant this fact was. Even if these Old Kingdoms’ loyalists took on Rosclay the Absolute, their chances of victory were close to zero.

In other words, the reason Kaete and Kiyazuna were sheltering with the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists wasn’t so they could overthrow Aureatia.

“It’s ’cause they’re so hopeless that we gotta buddy up with ’em like this.”

Kiyazuna bit down on the dried provisions she had been supplied.

“Eat the same stuff they do, and wear the same clothes. That’s enough for ’em to start believing we’re on their side, see. Everyone else just treats ’em like losers and all. A way to build up a bunch of underlings from nothing. So you gotta suck it up, too.”

Kaete had never once heard of Kiyazuna the Axle leading minian followers before.

“Buddying up to them like that’ll just mean that losers are gonna think you’re another loser like them… What’re you going to do if one of them starts to talk down to you, Grams?”

“Kill ’em!”

“…Right, right.”

Kaete actually had a gentle look in his eyes as he stared at Kiyazuna.

Kiyazuna the Axle was someone with an intrinsic hostility toward the minian races.

“’Cept if my baby’s life is involved, then things’re different.”

She had already finished eating her dried provisions. Kiyazuna had always been a fast eater, but Kaete thought he caught glimpses of another emotion in her mannerisms ever since they joined up with the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists. Impatience.

“Gonna use these chumps…and get Mestelexil back. They ain’t gonna be useful come wartime anyway. Gotta get some practical use outta ’em. Right?”

Neither Kaete nor Kiyazuna had any interest at all in restoring the Central Kingdom.

Without any hopes of victory, any plot to overthrow Aureatia and regain Kaete’s power and authority was similarly unrealistic.

Nevertheless, when it came to the single goal of reclaiming Mestelexil, there was still a way to twist the situation to their benefit.

If the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists could manage that, then it could serve as a breakthrough to solve not only many of Kiyazuna’s problems, but Kaete’s as well.

“I know, Grams. We’ll throw these guys at Obsidian Eyes, use the fray of battle to destroy the homunculus core of Mestelexil, and regain control from the vampire…”

When he voiced their plan one more time, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking.

“…Is it all really gonna go that smoothly?”

“Heh, we got any other options? If the two of us try to pin down Mestelexil just by ourselves, we’ll definitely end up dead! Also, those Obsidian Eyes bastards gotta have other corpses wandering around beyond those guys chasing us.”

Mestelexil is absolutely necessary… I still haven’t given up on reforming Aureatia with science and technology.

Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge was not a hero candidate who was simply all-powerful and strong. He was a strategic weapon that could easily bring ruin to a whole continent. Under Obsidian Eyes’ control, without the proper knowledge surrounding the weapons of the Beyond, Kaete and Kiyazuna likely weren’t able to utilize even twenty percent of Mestelexil’s full power—still, that small degree of additional fighting strength might have been enough to make it to the end of the Sixways Exhibition.

If Kaete and Kiyazuna were once again able to regain control of Mestelexil, this time there would be no need to proceed with caution or hide his true value. Kaete was confident that even a single one of the trump cards Mestelexil contained would be able to draw out major concessions from Aureatia.

“The real problem’s about what’s actually happening in Aureatia right now… We lack info! Even if there was that assault from the self-proclaimed demon king Alus the other day, should we accept that Alus the Star Runner is actually back in action? Rosclay might just be announcing combat damages sustained against other factions, like Haade’s, as if Alus did them all. Even if we’re going to steer the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists, without a fairly precise information source, then—”

At that moment, Kaete stopped speaking.

There was someone heading over to them. Though, this person still wouldn’t have been close enough to hear what they were talking about.

“Caneeya the Fruit Trimming.”

“I know.”

Caneeya was the de facto commander leading the current Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

Her muscular built and tall frame, burlier and stouter than any man around, stood out even from afar.

“Kaete the Round Table. Are our preserved foods not to your liking?” Caneeya smiled, looking at the piece of bread in Kaete’s hands, barely halfway finished.

Of course, this woman always looked as if she was smiling. Her heart and expressions weren’t in conjunction with each other.

“Yeah, not at all,” Kaete replied, almost entirely on reflex. “We’re lending your half-dead group a hand, out of the goodness of our hearts, and this is how you think to treat us? This dried food here makes better ant food than people food.”

“You’ve been supplied with the exact same thing as everybody else. Unlike Aureatia, we hold equality as one of our guiding principles.”

“Ohh, is that so? Then you won’t have any problem with us doing the same exact work as any other soldier, then. Obviously, we can easily match whatever one of the ants in your loyalist army has to offer. “

“Well, I am sorry. If our aid has offended you, then you wouldn’t mind if we sent you out of our ant nest to somewhere up on the sunny surface then, would you?”

“I haven’t liked you Old Kingdoms’ loyalists from the start. After I hack you up here, I’ll—”

“Give that stupid mouth of yours a rest already, Kaete.” Kiyazuna bluntly smacked Kaete’s head. “Can’t you maintain some damn self-control for once?”

“Ow! Why my head?!”

“Keh. That head o’ yours can’t get any stupider.”

Kaete couldn’t curry favor with someone he didn’t like. While they may not have actually shared any blood, this aspect was something that Kaete had strongly inherited from Kiyazuna’s own temperament.

Kaete and Kiyazuna were still considered wanted fugitives in Aureatia. If they hadn’t had the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists’ familiarity with the city on their side, they likely would have been captured by Rosclay’s camp and disposed of by this point. Either that, or Obsidian Eyes would have gotten to them first and silenced them, or even turned them into corpses.

“Screw it… Just get to your point, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming. If you’re showing me that offensive mug of yours for no good reason, I really will cut your head off.”

“I wanted to let you know which day we’re making our move.”

“Hmph… Except you must’ve been planning to do it on the day of the tenth match from the very start. A totally unsophisticated operation.”

“Yes, very insightful of you.”

“Do you even need insight to figure that out?” Kaete murmured with his cane propping up one of his cheeks.

Although few in number, it was hard to believe that so many Old Kingdoms’ loyalists were hiding underground in preparation without any plans to make their move. The situation should have made the conclusion clear that they were enacting some sort of operation in the near future. The fact they were conveying this to Kaete and Kiyazuna now, with the tenth match starting in four days, must have been because they were worried about outsiders like them leaking information.

“During Rosclay’s match, a huge number of citizens are going to move as a group to a set location at a set time. Not only will it be easy for you to take advantage of this course of events to send troops in, but if you target the arena, you can involve a great number of civilians in the attack… Artless twits. There’s no way Aureatia hasn’t assumed something like that would happen.”

“Saying we’ll attack civilians is quite a hurtful way of putting it. We are merely acting to free the citizenry from the control of the Aureatia Assembly.”

“Oh? How admirable.”

Needless to say, Kaete’s backhanded compliment was dripping with spite.

This wasn’t only true of the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists, as it was the same for most of the other Twenty-Nine Officials, but they spoke as if they were taking violent action in the name of justice, or for someone else’s sake.

What a pointless deception.

Kaete didn’t have an issue with lying itself. He hated lies that were easily exposed.

There wasn’t a single iota of him that wanted to serve justice or desired the welfare of the people, but he had always acted up-front about it. Even his plan of overthrowing Aureatia was for nothing more than to build what he himself thought was a more logical land.

These people’s way of doing things, continuing to dance around a meaningless lie, could go on for a thousand years and still not change anything about the world.

“In any case, even I thought that attacking the castle garden theater mid-match was reckless. There were many among my men who voiced their desire to claim vengeance on Rosclay for killing General Gilnes, but… For once it seems you and I are on the same page.”

“Certainly not happy about it.”

“The end result being that the plan to attack the castle garden theater was rejected, since the match isn’t going to happen.”

“…What?”

Kaete agreed that, when thinking about the nature of the Sixways Exhibition, there was always the possibility that a match would be canceled for unforeseen circumstances.

Especially in the case of Rosclay, with his heavy wounds from the fourth match. The extent of his injury hadn’t been officially announced, and even when Kaete was still part of the Twenty-Nine Officials, he hadn’t been able to properly get all the details.

Therefore, it was bizarre for a mere Old Kingdoms’ loyalist like Caneeya to assert that the match was canceled, unbeknownst to Kaete.

“If the tenth match is going to be canceled, why wouldn’t I or Kiyazuna know about it? That sort of thing would be pointless unless average citizens are notified, too.”

“It means they expect something to happen,” Kiyazuna spat out next to him.

“Or they’ll cause something to happen.”

“You’re absolutely right. The tenth match is scheduled to be canceled for an emergency. A massive coup d’état against the Aureatia Assembly is being planned, led by Haade the Flashpoint. The day of the tenth match is the day it is supposed to happen.”

“…Haade is?” Kaete placed his hand on his chin in thought.

The tenth match was scheduled to be canceled due to Haade’s intentions to overthrow the government being leaked to Rosclay.

Everything couldn’t have been that simple. If that was the case, they could have announced the match cancellation beforehand. It would mean that Rosclay’s camp knew about this plan, and were feigning to hold the tenth match in order to lure Haade out. Rosclay was intending to counterattack and kill the rebelling army.

Moreover, where exactly was Caneeya the Fruit Trimming able to get this inside knowledge from?

“This information… Who told you, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming?”

“I figured that I would fill you in about this at some point.”

Caneeya sat down next to Kaete. Even when sitting, she was a whole head taller than him.

Just one of her brawny arms, thick as logs, would have been enough to strangle Kaete.

“I and several others in our leadership have a relationship with the Gray-Haired Child. The fact we were able to rescue you both from Obsidian Eyes’ pursuit was due to information shared with us by Yukiharu the Twilight Diver.”

“…Do you realize what you’re doing here?”

“Yes. The Gray-Haired Child used us and our business together in Toghie City to get himself into the Sixways Exhibition. He is an indirect cause of many of our comrades’ deaths…including General Gilnes. He is an object of vengeance.”

“Hmph. So you’re saying, despite that, your organization can’t survive without his help.”

“The Gray-Haired Child…is a terrifying opponent. He wants to, one day, call everyone in the world his ally.

Caneeya’s voice sounded as if it was trembling slightly.

Surviving by accepting support from someone who should be a hated and bitter enemy.

In the past, Kaete might have felt that this was a pathetic story.

However, Kaete and Kiyazuna were in the exact same position, unable to survive without accepting begrudged support.

“My men haven’t been informed of this connection. The goods and information the Gray-Haired Child gives us are always precise and accurate. He acquired information that the one actually behind the massive coup scheduled to commence with the start of the tenth match wasn’t Haade, but Minister Iriolde. In addition, Haade has been conspiring with Rosclay in secret, and is planning to cut Iriolde down on the day the plan goes into action.

“Wait, wait, hold on. There was way too much to parse out there! Iriolde?! Haade and Rosclay…?!”

From Kaete’s perspective, none of it was anything he could have ever imagined.

“What does that mean, then? Haade’s coup that kicks off with the start of the tenth match is a rigged affair of a united military force, and once it’s finished, the political contest in Aureatia will end with Rosclay’s reformation faction as the sole winners…”

How had the Gray-Haired Child come across this extremely important information?

Even if Kaete tossed this question at Caneeya, it would be altogether meaningless.

However, Kaete knew just how precise the Gray-Haired Child’s intel was from the fact that he dispatched Old Kingdoms’ loyalists to rescue Kaete and Kiyazuna, as though he had perfectly predicted how the sixth match would end up.

Kiyazuna spoke with a yawn. “I don’t know a thing about this politics crap. So what’s this all got to do with us, then?”

“Are you daft, Grams?! This changes our presuppositions… On the day of the tenth match, it’s very true that Aureatia’s ability to manage things will be stretched near its limit. The sole opportunity for these Old Kingdoms’ loyalists to make any meaningful action. But, it’s not the tenth match of the Sixways Exhibition that’s going to keep them busy. The Aureatia army will lure out Iriolde’s army and move to annihilate them. We need to outsmart this movement of theirs.”

“Exactly. I knew I was correct to consult with Aureatia’s former Fifth Minister. Based on your esteemed tactical genius and experience, what would then be the most effective move to make?”

“…Damn ragtag louts,” Kaete bitterly muttered.

Needing to hammer out a decisive strategy in order to best utilize a presented opportunity, instead of having a decisive operation ready and waiting for the perfect chance to enact it, was, for an army, putting the cart before the horse.

While Kaete didn’t want to believe Caneeya was too stupid to understand that, he didn’t particularly expect much from her.

But this is fortunate. As long as we continue to survive, these golden opportunities are bound to eventually come around.

Kaete looked up at the underground waterway’s low ceiling. He was piecing the logic together in his head.

The information the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists had obtained, at the moment, must have been greatly biased in one direction.

He just needed to use that bias for himself.

“Okay, then. Given that the Aureatia army will be out in town suppressing Iriolde’s forces, we can say it’s basically impossible to attack Aureatia’s key facilities. Whether it’s the castle garden theater, the palace, or some random provision storage, the most we could hope for is to get driven off along with Iriolde’s army.”

As he spoke, Kaete soaked the tip of a stick that had been laying on the ground in a puddle on the edge of the canal.

He used the water to draw a simplified city map of Aureatia.

“Conversely, the protection around the secret facilities will be weaker… This is where you should target.”

The forested section of Aureatia’s Outer Ward.

It was a sparsely populated district that wasn’t particularly worth any attention, but Kaete and Kiyazuna knew the importance of this area. Obsidian Eyes’ base of operations had to be somewhere within this forest.

The signal that the plundered Mestelexil emitted through technology from the Beyond continued to transmit its location to Kiyazuna’s receiver.

“They said that the vampire disease is what drove Alus the Star Runner mad, but…can you actually believe the nonsense explanation that a vampire, supposedly eradicated a generation ago, reappeared and was able to transmit the virus through their blood to someone powerful enough to be a hero candidate? Go ahead and imagine the reason why the Aureatia Assembly used the Sixways Exhibition to gather all these powerful fighters in one place. I see it as them moving forward with a scheme to artificially turn them all into corpses and render them powerless.”

It was nothing but a made-up story he strung together on the spot using some of the information he had at his disposal.

Nevertheless, the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists sought the sort of gambit they could pull off to turn the tables.

There were many who wanted to believe in this conspiracy Kaete laid out.

“Do you have some proof?”

“Proof. Proof, huh. Was there any of that in the information the Gray-Haired Child gave you? I had already estimated where their base might be. See, there were suspicious stories that reached my industrial ministry, too. Mestelexil and Alus seem to have failed, but…there was definitely a successful example.”

“…You don’t mean what I think you do, do you?”

“There is no possible way that Lucnoca the Winter was defeated through reasonable means. There’s almost guaranteed to be some vampire that’s been weaponized. With your manpower, we should be able to search for it—while Iriolde’s army is drawing Aureatia’s attention in the city.”

“Kweh-heh. Not too bad, Kaete.” Kiyazuna twisted her mouth into a smile.

He couldn’t stand it. This deceptive eloquence wasn’t how Kaete did things.

“Caneeya the Fruit Trimming. You… You understand your army has no hope of winning?”

Even then, something on this scale was possible.

He could see through the collective’s lies and truths, since, to Kaete, all the people were ignorant sheep.

“Once an army that’s degenerated into a reckless resistance finds a target, it’s impossible to stop themselves from charging straight ahead. Don’t you think it’s better to go with the option with less of a chance you’ll die a hero’s death?”

“Even if we fail, there won’t be many wounded… That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it? Should we succeed then, we would gain unwavering evidence of the Aureatia Assembly’s foul play.”

If there was ever a time when Kaete truly smiled from the heart, it was when he was ridiculing fools like this.

“I’ll upset the outcome to it all. Even you lot must be thinking the same.”