Ishura - Volume 9 - Chapter 2.3

“It’s fine.”

Kaete watched as the most brutal and savage self-proclaimed demon king in the whole land, Kiyazuna the Axle, smiled from the heart.

“I’m satisfied, ’slong as yer laughing…Mestelexil…”

Kuuro the Cautious’s Clairvoyance perceived everything about the battle occurring in the forest.

For now, at least, Mestelexil’s been neutralized.

When he exited into the hallway from the blood-soaked bedchamber, Kuuro sensed the conclusion of the battle.

On his back, he carried the now unconscious Linaris the Obsidian.

Carrying a person like this was familiar work to Kuuro, yet even when discounting that fact, he thought her body was very light and delicate.

While a few events were outside my speculations, everything happened as I had foreseen. So long as there was a trigger for some randomness… Kiyazuna the Axle and Kaete the Round Table had made all the preparations to upset an absolute victory.

A miraculous victory that involved several compounding layers of normally inconceivable luck to come together.

It was a fact that left no room for dispute. Even if they replayed the same events under the same circumstances thousands upon thousands of times, there was no other possibility for the two of them to win over Mestelexil.

Still, was it all truly luck?

At the very least, he had manipulated the instant that Linaris had impulsively controlled Mestelexil. Kuuro the Cautious understood beforehand at which point him taking action would lead to the best result.

Kuuro’s Clairvoyance was capable of pulling together information that even he was unconscious of and occasionally predicting the future.

They were very thin prospects, the kind I was only barely able to forecast from observing the situation. I, Enu…and the contriver of this whole situation, the Gray-Haired Child, were saved by the strength of those two.

Given he was leading Linaris away from here, any sort of cover movements, like during his initial infiltration, were all but impossible.

If Mestelexil was still guarding the area, he never would have been able get out of the forest.

Now that that possibility had been fully eliminated, Kuuro would need to accept he was going to have a certain number of clashes and encounters from here.

“Put down our Mistress.”

The voice had come practically from the floor.

There was someone lying in wait with silent footsteps behind Kuuro as he exited into the hall.

Linaris’s scream was surely heard throughout the entire manor.

“Fair enough. With the Mistress on my back, both my hands are busy.”

He replied without turning around.

Kuuro didn’t make any movement to initiate an attack.

“Probably hard for me to move very quickly, too. Even then, do you really think you can beat me…Wieze?”

“Get your hands off her.”

“Looks like words aren’t enough to get through to you.”

Kuuro murmured and kicked his heel up behind him.

The chakram aimed at his gut slanted off course and dug halfway into the wall.

Without turning his sights backward, Kuuro could see that Wieze already had numerous others ready to throw. A marksman like Wieze didn’t pay any consideration to his own defense. He was trying to cut Kuuro to pieces with a series of point-blank throws, regardless of whether it would lead to both their deaths. Wieze also had the skills to ensure none of his throws hit Linaris while saddled on Kuuro’s back.

However, Kuuro could see through this level of attack.

“I didn’t plan on killing anyone else besides Frey, but…”

A tiny metallic clanging sound echoed through the corridor.

What appeared to be a thin metal can slowly rolled out from the open bedchamber door.

“!”

There was a flash of light. For Wieze, the impact felt as if he had been directly punched in the brain.

By the time the explosive blast split his ears, he had lost his sense of direction.

An M84 stun grenade.

“Gaaugh…!”

“Beyond weaponry’s really well made. Normal weapons would’ve made it a lot harder to get by you without bloodshed.”

Kuuro calmly murmured as he was showered in the same blast and blinding light.

A stun-grenade attack happened by giving a stimulation that far exceeded what a normal person could handle, and thus against someone wielding Clairvoyance, processing a tremendous degree of sensory information at all times, it had no effect whatsoever.

Now, the corpsified Caneeya the Trimming is the only one left here in the manor. She won’t make a move. Zeljirga is searching for any troops laying in ambush around the forest, but…given her route, she’ll turn her attention to losing control over Mestelexil before she discovers Enu. The last person…won’t pose a problem necessarily, but…

Disordered footsteps turned the corner into the hall and rushed toward him.

The running wasn’t prompted by the previous explosion but had been aimed straight at the bedchamber from the start.

“Linaris…! Linaris!”

“You’re Yuno the Distant Talon, then.”

It was a young girl with her brown hair in a braid. He had already heard her name before.

The conversation she and Zeljirga shared had all been within the perceptible range of his Clairvoyance.

Yuno was frightened, gulping back the saliva in her mouth.

“Wh-what’re you doing?!”

“I don’t intent to kill you or Linaris. Saving Linaris is what you want, isn’t it?”

“…”

Yuno stayed silent for a long pause. She was desperately thinking through something.

“…Th-then…that means you must be…the one that the Gray-Haired Child arranged to take Linaris to a doctor…right?”

She’s quick to catch on.

Kuuro was impressed that the most insignificant girl in this current situation immediately arrived at the truth of the matter. Even after hearing the Gray-Haired Child’s evasive and roundabout answer, she wouldn’t be able to arrive at such a fact without the ability to think through everything from her enemy’s perspective.

“Look at the situation. Linaris will die unless a doctor sees her immediately. The only way you have to accomplish your goal is to do nothing at all.”

“In which case, I’m going with you! Let me come along…!”

“Give it up.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going to be done to Linaris where you’re taking her?! The Gray-Haired Child is trying to get revenge on Linaris! I’m sure—”

“Doesn’t concern me.”

Kuuro started walking.

While it would’ve been better to convince her to back down, his only choice might have been to knock her unconscious first.

In any case, he couldn’t join back up with Enu while a person like Yuno was in tow.

“That time is now… I have to protect her…!’

“Don’t do it.”

Yuno touched the arrowhead inside her sleeve. Kuuro could see it.

While he could have stopped her from making the move at any point, he hadn’t.

Since it was nothing but literal, self-destructing behavior.

“Hrnk…!”

Yuno the Distant Talon simply collapsed where she stood.

With her own arrowhead, she cut deeply into the artery on her wrist and was losing blood.

“What’re you trying to do here? What will killing yourself in front of me accomplish?”

“I-I’m not…killing myself… You’re taking Linaris to see a doctor, right…?”

“…”

The blood was gushing out, creating a line through the dark hallway.

“Even if you stop the bleeding…if I’m not brought to a doctor soon, I-I’ll die… Heh-heh… No one’s ever going to come through a forest like this, after all…”

It was bizarre. She didn’t even possess Clairvoyance to show her with certainty how things would play out, so how could she do such a thing?

“Now I really don’t get what you’re talking about… What reason do I have to save you from offing yourself? Whether you live or die has no bearing on my job here whatsoever.”

“…You’re really fine with this?”

Yuno weakly smiled while lying face down on the ground.

“…One of Linaris’s friends is going to die, you know…”

“—”

Even Clairvoyance, capable of predicting behavior, any and all physical phenomena, was unable to penetrate a person’s mind.

Just as Kuuro had been unable to see into the darkness within Frey’s heart.

This girl’s…

From the moment she had encountered Kuuro, she had picked up on his relationship with Obsidian Eyes.

She had thought up this fatal gambit to make use of that relationship in an instant—

—that Kuuro the Cautious was bound to help out and save Linaris’s friend.

“Linaris was always…telling me about you…”

…No joke.

He felt Linaris’s weak body heat on his back.

The clinic had burned to the ground. Toroa the Awful died, and Kuuro now suffered as he did.

Kuuro’s own softness and naïveté had invited all of it. He had decided that he wouldn’t hesitate to stain his hands with whatever killing was necessary.

If he was going to make Linaris feel the same pain he had felt by losing a friend, this would’ve been a suitable punishment, wouldn’t it?

“…Your name is Kuuro the Cautious. No, the Clairvoyance…”

He had a memory of talking to her about the outside world that she couldn’t see from the window of her bedchambers.

Linaris’s very young, beautiful smile.

The young girl had adored him, the assassin who had dirtied his hands more than any other, like a hero.

What the hell does she take me for?