CHAPTER 5
The Taboo of the Planet
The Omen Institute for Astral Research. A fake building.
The field grasses on the grounds had grown into a forest, and the paint on the walls was peeling from exposure. Perhaps the premises had been abandoned long ago. Or perhaps its dilapidated appearance was the product of deliberate design. Until they entered the lab, they couldn’t be sure.
“…It’s locked, of course.” Jhin kicked the front entrance.
Without any electricity to power the infrared sensors on the doors, the entrance was practically just a heap of steel. They would have a hell of a time forcing the doors open through sheer manpower alone.
“Opening the front doors is the easiest way in, though. Nene, you don’t happen to have a bomb on you, do you? Like one disguised as an earring or something?”
“No, I left it at home.”
“Wait, you seriously have something like that? Nah, never mind. Looks like you’re up, Iska. Can you open them?”
“…I don’t think I can’t cut through them, but…”
Iska eyed the incredibly heavy-looking doors up and down, then placed his hand on the grip of his astral sword. One swing wouldn’t be enough. But if he slashed at them two or three times, he’d probably be able to create a small opening.
“Get back. I’ll do it.”
That had come from behind him. Rin was hunched over and running her fingertips through the dirt on the ground.
“You just need me to smash it to bits, yes? That’s simple.”
The ground swelled. The earth, which had taken on a viscous quality, gathered as though it had a will, shaping itself into a gigantic form as Rin rested on one knee in front of it. A golem emerged.
“Now, golem, smash that.”
“Wait a sec!”
Just as Iska and the others managed to leap away, the golem launched its gigantic fist, blowing away the front doors of the building without a trace.
“You almost caught us in its punch!”
“You were simply too slow to clear the area… Hmph. I can’t say I didn’t expect it, but it seems the interior is in a similar state of disrepair.”
She stared into the whirling dust and scowled.
The hallway was practically pitch-black. The scant illumination that was present came from the sunlight that had managed to stream through the shuttered windows. If they’d come here at night, exploring this place would have been out of the question.
“I’ll go first. You may follow after me.”
“What are you going to do with that golem? We can’t have that giant thing coming with us—it’ll get in the way.”
“It will wait here. And…” In response to Jhin, Rin seemed to have remembered something. She headed back where she had stood, then placed her hand on the ground again. “I’ll have a golem keep watch at the entrance to make sure no one will follow us. Plus one more. I suppose I’ll give it a shield just to be safe.”
The ground writhed. Instead of a golem, this time Rin’s astral powers birthed a doll about as tall as Jhin. Though it was smaller and slenderer than the golem, the thing was all the quicker for it. This was an earth soldier.
“Walk one step behind me.”
After receiving the order, the doll dutifully followed after Rin into the building.
The moment they set foot in the lab, Nene and Commander Mismis scowled. The stench of rust, dirt, and mildew assaulted them.
“…Ahem… Ugh, Nene, are you okay?”
“Ugh. My nose feels like it’ll fall off. It smells terrible in here. I should have brought a mask with me.”
Whenever they took a step forward, the dust billowed around them. It was thick as a carpet. They couldn’t have guessed how many decades it could have taken for such a thick layer of the stuff to have built up.
“Based on the dust, it doesn’t seem like they just made this place look like it was abandoned. The lights are completely out, too.”
Jhin pulled out a communications device. He turned the brightness to its highest setting and used it in place of a flashlight to illuminate the ground.
“Oh, Jhin. I can hold the communications device.”
“Hmm?”
“You wouldn’t be able to use your gun if you’re holding that. I can carry mine with one hand, but you’ve got a sniper rifle.”
“You better not trip and drop it.”
“I wouldn’t! …But it sure is dark here. Even a haunted house in an amusement park wouldn’t be this poorly lit.”
Commander Mismis gripped Jhin’s communications device.
The floor was gray from all the dust. Across the ceiling, several tubes followed the walls and stretched into the back.
“So those astral energy pipes you mentioned earlier, Nene—,” Mismis started to say.
“These are completely different. They look like they’re for ventilation,” Rin replied. She continued straight into the vast building, earth soldier still behind her. “I was too hasty. I should have prepared a dozen or so dolls for such a large edifice. I could have simplified our investigation had I ordered them to walk around.”
Rin clicked her tongue. Earth astral mages had a few shortcomings. Unlike snow, ice, and flame astral powers, which could be created out of thin air, earth astral power could manipulate soil at most. Since there was no earth within the building, she wouldn’t be able to craft more dolls.
“So be it. You all may continue to explore the first floor. I will go back and—”
“Wait, Rin.”
“What is it, Imperial swordsman?”
“The dust cuts off.”
“Wha—?!”
When Iska said that, Rin’s eyes opened wide. She flipped around like a spinning top to glance at their surroundings. Though the filth hadn’t disappeared entirely, the thick layer of dust caking the floor had indeed disappeared.
“Since when?”
“Since we turned that last corner. It petered out gradually, so I didn’t catch it right away.”
They looked farther ahead.
“If the floor is this clean, that’s proof someone’s been walking around here pretty often, right?”
“…Seems that way.”
Rin began to move once again, keeping her footsteps as light as possible as she crept forward this time, as though she were trailing prey.
There was a glow. Rin squinted when she saw the light that streamed in ahead from a four-way corridor.
“It seems they’ve finally given themselves away. Though they’ve crafted this place to look like it’s abandoned, it seems they do have electricity deeper in.”
Those must have been the ceiling lamps. Rin slowly progressed down the dimly lit corridor toward the source of the illumination.
Klack…klack…
They heard footsteps from around the corner.
Who was it?
There was one set of footsteps. Someone was approaching Iska and the others from farther in as they hid in the shadows of the corridor.
“I’m going to capture them.”
Rin reached into her skirt. She slipped out a small knife from the place she was storing who knows how many weapons of assassination.
“If there is only one, I will handle it. Two, and the doll will help. Anything more than three, and I will need to count on you.”
Then she went silent.
Iska and the others did as well. They didn’t so much as give a yes or no, simply nodding so as not to be heard.
Rin leaned forward so she could leap out at any time she needed. Behind her, Unit 907 stood at the ready to provide backup.
The footsteps grew closer.
Klack, klack… The sound echoed as the footfalls steadily grew louder. Whoever it was, they were about to reach the four-way intersection. They saw the tips of someone’s shoes around the corner. That moment, Rin reached out for the person’s ankles, grabbing hold and wrenching them up.
“I caught them!”
“Yeek!” screamed a man hysterically as he fell over. Rin straddled him before he could say anything and held the edge of her naked blade to his neck.
“…Eek?! Wh-what’s going on?! Who the hell are you?!”
“Shush.”
As she pressed the knife to his neck, Rin stared at him coldly.
The man was only in his teens and wearing civilian clothes. Though Rin was probably younger than he was, with her knife at his throat and her threatening tone, she was far more of a veteran than he was.
“Follow my orders. One, contacting your companions is forbidden.”
“C-companions?!”
“Next up, weapons. The people behind me will now confiscate any you have. Do not resist.”
“I haven’t got any!”
“I see. So you won’t be complying, then?”
“N-no! I actually…h-haven’t done anything! Companions? I haven’t got any, and I’m not packing any heat. You can tell by looking!”
“…”
Still straddling the man’s chest, Rin glanced down at his civilian outfit.
He wore a thin shirt and jeans. She wouldn’t even need to make him strip. He couldn’t have hidden guns or blades under that getup.
“It seems you truly are unarmed.”
“L-like I said—”
“Hey.”
Jhin took a knee and leaned over the man, who was still lying faceup. He thrust his military ID at him.
“We’re from the Imperial forces. We’re temporarily putting you under arrest.”
“Th-the forces?! What are you doing here…?!”
“We’re doing a home search.”
“…What did you just say?”
“We’re looking for a woman in this place. She’s a girl in her mid-teens with long strawberry-blond hair. Anybody come to mind?”
“I-I’ve never seen anybody like her!”
He looked at Jhin and Rin fearfully, then at Iska and Commander Mismis. It didn’t look like an act. He really seemed to be a civilian who was bewildered that the Imperial forces were interrogating him.
“Different question.” Rin butted in again. “You do understand this establishment has been closed down, right?”
“What?”
“…Well, if you’re going to feign ignorance…”
“I-I’m not! Wait, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else. I don’t know. I’m just a part-timer!”
A part-timer? When the man said that, Iska and the others went silent and scowled.
…He doesn’t even know this place was abandoned?
…But the front doors were closed.
What was going on?
“W-well, I did know that this place kind of looked like it was deserted. But that’s all I’ve got. All I’ve been hired to do is clean the first floor and transfer the drugs once a week…”
“What drugs?”
“L-like I said, I don’t— Ow?!”
“Be more discriminating with the words you use, Imperial.”
She shaved off a thin layer of his skin, scraping the edge of her knife faintly across his neck. The restrained man screamed.
“Do you understand who is in charge here?”
“…………”
“And your answer?” she pressed.
“I’m sorry…” The part-time worker turned pale and shuddered. “L-like I said, someone hired me. I’m telling you, all I do is change out the empty bottles and flasks in this creepy place!”
“Who hired you?”
“A redheaded lady. I don’t know her name… She was tall for a woman and kind of talked like a guy…but I only speak to her when she pays me.”
“You say you know nothing?”
“…Y-yes.”
“…”
He was clueless.
Rin glared down at the man as he kept on insisting that and ground her molars in irritation. He didn’t know where Sisbell was. This guy was a nobody. Just a local.
“I got it. In that case, show us where you transfer the drugs. After you do that, we’ll be done with you.”
“W-will you let me go then?!”
“Only if you follow orders. Get up.”
Rin had pulled out a steel wire. She bound the man’s wrists with it like handcuffs and pushed her knife to his back.
“Ouch!”
“Start walking forward. If you stop, I stab. If you scream, I stab. You do anything I find suspect, I stab. And if I’m feeling irritated, I might gore you just for the hell of it.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Take us to the woman if you want to live.”
“…R-right away.”
The man started walking quickly.
They proceeded down the lit hallway toward a door that was slightly ajar, which led to a pharmacy.
“So this is where you’re working?”
“…Y-yes. Once a month, a ton of these weird metal cases are delivered, and I store them in here. The air-conditioning only works in this room.”
Metal cases lined the walls of the area.
They were all locked up tight.
…I wonder what’s inside. They aren’t labeled.
…Maybe I could cut through the lid and take a peek? No, that would take too much time.
Iska estimated there were more than two hundred cases here. There was a faster way to do this than checking all of them.
“Rin.”
“I know. We can simply ask the redheaded woman what’s in all these containers. And where Lady Sisbell is. Hey, you.”
“Y-yes?!”
“We know enough about the drug deliveries. Show us where the woman who hired you is.”
“Here! This is where we meet!”
“What? What are you—? Tsk.”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Rin stopped speaking midway and shut her mouth.
It was below her feet. Right where she was standing, Rin could make out lines just the tiniest hair wide in the floor.
“A hidden door!”
It was an underground entrance. The establishment was large. If they hadn’t gotten the man to squeal about the place, there was no way they would have found it.
“Give us the key.”
“I—I don’t have it. I don’t open it. When we’re supposed to transfer the goods, she unfastens it from underground.”
“I see.”
Thump… Rin poked the man in the back with her finger.
She was telling him to scram.
“We’re done with you. You’re free to do as you please.”
“……Huh? Um, my hands are still bound.”
“You can go call for help all you’d like outside the building. There’s a chance you might betray us, so I’m not planning on freeing your hands. Or—”
“I’m sorry!”
The man didn’t even look back as he bolted out the dimly lit corridor.
“Let’s continue our search. Any objections, Commander Mismis?”
“N-no…but I wonder how we’ll open this door.”
“That’s what they’re for.”
The earth doll burst.
The clod of soil in human form smoothly transformed into tiny particles of sand, sneaking into the incredibly thin crevices in the floor.
Kreak—the dull sound of metal being bent out of shape rang from under the floor. Immediately after that, the hidden door that had been fastened tight swung open as though a spring was being let loose.
“Whoa! That’s amazing!” Nene’s eyes glittered. “Miss Rin, how did you do that just now?”
“I had the doll enter the keyhole and destroy it. I would have had to give up if it was a password padlock mechanism, but a simple cylinder lock is easy enough to break.”
“…Astral power sure is useful.”
“I don’t know about that. The only reason this worked is because I have the Earth astral power. Most are flame or wind or snow and are self-summoning types. My powers, on the other hand, are a manipulation type that can only take advantage of preexisting soil. Putting it another way, such detailed—”
She stopped suddenly. Rin came back to her senses when she saw Nene had started writing notes.
“…Forget it. That’s enough about me.”
“Miss Rin, are you one of those people who usually keeps quiet but then can’t stop talking once she gets going?”
“Sh-shut up! We’ve gotta go!”
Leading the earth doll along, Rin pointed at the hidden stairs.
They headed down. After they’d taken about twelve steps, a different variety of light started to filter in. It was a pale azure color. Using the light, which was almost the hue of the clear blue sea, as a waypoint, they made it to the bottom of the passageway. And ahead of them…
“…What is that?”
“Huh?! Wh-what the—?!”
Alarm marked Rin’s and Commander Mismis’s voices.
The light that filled the place was…
…dazzling astral energy.
It hadn’t been shining down from the ceiling.
A giant machine furnace was set up in the large hall they arrived in. The faint bluish-green light poured from the furnace as though it were steam.
“Unbelievable… Is all of this coming from an astral energy reactor?!”
Rin took a step back against the nearly divine, brilliant light before her, almost as if she was overwhelmed.
“I thought there weren’t any astral energy separation pipes. They couldn’t have drawn this up from a vortex without putting it through a conversion process… Iska!” She balled her hands into fists and questioned him. “What is the meaning of this?! I thought you said astral power research was banned in the Empire? Ridiculous… What is this machine? Even the Sovereignty doesn’t yet have the technology to harness energy directly from a vortex!”
“Do you really think I knew about this?”
“Guh.”
“…To be frank, it even took me by surprise.”
It wasn’t as though Iska had been unreactive for no reason. He simply hadn’t been able to say anything. This was just supposed to be a seemingly abandoned building where Sisbell was being held. He hadn’t thought it would have been any more significant than that.
…But what is this place?
…What’s going on with these machines?!
The hall was bathed with fantastical light, astral illumination flowing out from twenty furnaces. Each was of a slightly different hue.
There was flame, water, and wind. How many types of astral power had they collected here?
“Jhin.”
“Don’t ask me.”
For once—a very rare occurrence—the silver-haired young man scowled ruefully.
“They went to the trouble of making this place look like it was abandoned, then hid the basement. This definitely isn’t aboveboard Imperial research…”
“So the military isn’t involved?”
“That I can’t say. Underlings like us wouldn’t know whether it’s a national secret or if it never had to do with the forces in the first place, but…there’s no way somebody got this together on their own just for kicks. Someone big has to be behind it all.”
Prohibited astral power research.
If what Rin had said was true, then this facility was even more advanced than the ones in the Sovereignty.
…The Imperial forces aren’t involved. I want to believe that.
…I mean, no one ever told me about this place when I became a Saint Disciple!
Just who could it be? Who was lurking in this hidden laboratory, and what were they researching?
“Hey, boss. Just to clear things up, did you know anything about this?” Nene asked Mismis.
“M-me?! I had no idea. Nene, do you have any idea what this furnace is?” she replied.
“…I have no idea.” Nene readily shook her head. “I think this is a super-dangerous area. I don’t think regular Imperial soldiers like us should have ever set foot in here.”
“I actually think it makes sense.” A bold smile formed over Rin’s lips. She pushed farther into the hall with long strides, past the groaning furnaces. “I was wondering why they would have brought Lady Sisbell to these ruins, but now it makes sense. This seems like the perfect place for confining a captured astral mage.”
The basement was hot and humid.
It was almost like a sauna. Just like the pitch-black floor aboveground, the hall here also had low visibility, though this time it was from all the vapor in the air.
“Rin, I don’t think I need to tell you this, but be careful. This isn’t any ordinary facility.”
“You’re a pain, Imperial swordsman. You think I would not be vigilant?”
Rin tossed her knife aside.
Then she pulled out a folding dagger from the pleats of her skirt and gripped it. It wasn’t the kind you’d use for questioning. No, it was an assassination weapon that you could wield in battle to maim and kill with ease.
“…Who are you?”
Rin stopped in her tracks. There was a figure beyond the fog. But it wasn’t moving in the slightest. Rin was sure her voice would have carried over to whoever it was.
“…Are they careless? They should be warier of trespassers.” Her voice was cold. She readied the dagger and leaped.
“Wonderful! I don’t know who you are, but I’ll skewer you!” she shouted.
“W-wait, Rin! It’s me!”
“Huh?! Lady Sisbell?!”
Rin quickly came to a halt. Iska, Jhin, Nene, and Commander Mismis did as well. But as they laid eyes on the girl, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They hadn’t expected to see something like this at all.
It was Sisbell, bound to a wheelchair.
Though she was trying to fight back her fear, it was plain to see on her charming face, even amid the fog. Her animated features were slightly flushed from excitement, and most importantly, they could not mistake the beauty of her beguiling strawberry-blond hair. This was Sisbell in the flesh.
“Rin!” the princess wailed. “Hurry, unbind me, please! Kelvina ran farther in!”
“…Kelvina?”
“The woman who’s keeping me captive. She told me she had something she wanted me to see and brought me over. But when you showed up, she ran farther in!”
“Qu-quickly!”
Rin scrambled over. She cut the ropes binding Sisbell to the wheelchair one by one, then finally severed the bonds at Sisbell’s hands.
“Phew. You are uninjured?” Rin seemed to calm as she watched Sisbell rise to her feet. “Good. This place is still shrouded in mystery, but Lady Alice and Her Majesty will both be relieved. You were so very lucky, Lady Sisbell. Especially since I was the one dispatched for you. Please do make sure you are grateful for that.”
“Iska!”
“Yes, be grateful to Iska… Come again?”
She passed Rin by. For some reason, the sweet girl ran as fast as she could to Iska. Tears had begun to well in her eyes.
“Oh, I believed in you! I was not wrong to choose you. You are the perfect guard!”
“Uh…w-wait?!”
Sisbell grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. She wrapped her arms around his back and squeezed, burying her face in his chest. In fact, he felt like she was intentionally pushing her chest into his.
“I was so, so anxious. Oh, how I’ve longed for the company of others. I was so lonesome…!”
“Uh, um, Sisbell?”
“Please never leave me again. Not for the rest of my life!”
“The rest of your life?!”
“Oh, is that Jhin there, too?”
Still latched onto Iska, Sisbell turned to the silver-haired young man.
“I also feel somewhat grateful to you, I suppose. Yes, as a reward for doing this, I shall add you to my personal guard starting today!”
“No thanks,” he replied.
“It’s the greatest honor you could have,” Sisbell insisted.
“That just means nobody wants to do it.”
“Wh-what are you trying to imply? As important as I am, I—”
It seemed she hadn’t realized it. As she enthusiastically invited the two men into her guard, the women were glaring at her and looking incredibly disillusioned.
“…I went through so much.” Nene sighed.
“…I just want to go home now.”
“…Yeah. Maybe I’ll pretend I never found her and just head back.”
They were having second thoughts about rescuing her. And the next target of the women’s gazes was…
“…I think I’m a little disappointed in Iska,” Nene said.
“…He’s let me down,” Mismis agreed.
“…Imperial swordsman, I will be informing Lady Alice about this, so you should be prepared.”
“There’s been a huge misunderstanding!”
Beside him, Jhin artlessly tugged on Sisbell’s hair and said in an exasperated tone, “Hey, keep it in your pants.”
“Ow?! Wh-what do you think you’re doing?! How could you be so rude as to tug on a girl’s hair—?”
“We need to go after the person behind this.”
“Ngh. I—I realize that…but do we really need to? I was so very afraid.”
She turned around. Sisbell peered deeper into the mist as she scowled.
“Rin, over here.”
“Lady Sisbell, do you know where that woman ran?” Rin asked.
“No. All she did was take me here. She told me she wanted to show me something and bound me in the wheelchair…but now that I’m getting a second look, this facility is monstrously big.”
The princess gazed up at the furnaces that were releasing steam and light. Her lovely eyes were grim.
“It’s releasing so much astral energy. There must be quite a large vortex underground here. Or perhaps several interconnected ones.”
“But, Lady Sisbell, this is the Empire.”
“The Empire also has vortices. Hey, Iska, do you remember what happened a year ago?”
“What?”
“I suppose I still haven’t told you, then,” Sisbell said. The princess’s hair fluttered as she slowly turned around. She looked bitter as she spoke. “The reason why I rushed to the Empire from the Sovereignty in the first place when you saved me.”
“…Oh.”
Now that she’d pointed it out, this was the first time he’d realized it.
The witch breakout incident from one year prior. When he freed that imprisoned witch, he’d been convinced she was a prisoner of war from the battlefields.
…But she couldn’t have been.
…Sisbell is a princess, so she wouldn’t have gone to the battlefield in the first place, considering what her astral power is.
She wasn’t like Alice, the Ice Calamity Witch.
Sisbell, who had lacked the ability to fight, wouldn’t have gone to war.
“A year ago, I secretly attempted to sneak into the Empire without telling anyone. But then an Imperial soldier caught me, and I was arrested…”
She started walking again. A gigantic furnace appeared in the corner of her eye, towering over her.
“I wanted to look into the Empire’s vortices. I was searching for furnaces exactly like these.”
“Uh?! Wait, Lady Sisbell, what could you possibly mean by that?!”
“What I mean is—”
Crack.
The tip of her shoe had broken a pane of glass on the floor.
“What is this?”
Sisbell lifted her head. Something materialized out of the white mist in front of her, but it wasn’t a furnace.
“……A water tank?”
The tank was made out of transparent panes of glass. Long and thin, it was large enough to hold a person. It almost looked like a test tube, though it was several hundred times larger than the ones used in scientific experiments.
“Rin, what do you think this is?”
“I am not sure myself. It seems that it shattered quite a while ago.”
It had been broken from the inside, almost as though something had leaped out of it. The glass Sisbell had stepped on must have been a leftover shard.
“Rin, there’s something written on the tank. Can you make it out?”
“…………”
She strained to look where Sisbell was pointing.
“…It seems to say ‘Subject E,’ as far as I can tell.”
“It’s the subject Elletear’s name.”
They heard glass shatter. Someone had stepped across several shards.
“It seems you’ve found something very good, Princess Sisbell. That was exactly the water tank I wanted to show you. It saves me the trouble of explaining.”
A woman staggered in through the fog. Her red hair was a mess, as though it hadn’t been combed in years. She looked thin and weak, almost sickly under the faded white coat that covered her shoulders.
…But what is this?
…I feel something ominous coming from her.
They had no idea who she was. Even Iska had subconsciously moved his hands to his astral swords.
“Kelvina!”
“Oh? It seems you’ve remembered my name, Princess Sisbell. Unfortunately, there’s no value in knowing it. Not compared to the name of the witch who was in that tank.”
The researcher scratched the back of her head and lifted her face. She looked up at the tank, which had been cracked in the center.
“Your sister was in there. First Princess Elletear Lou Nebulis IX.”
“Stop talking!” yelled Third Princess Sisbell, baring her teeth. “…That joke again… What are you trying to say? That my own sister would volunteer to be held captive underground in the Empire? There’s no way!”
“That subject came to the Empire of her own volition to become an experiment. It was two years ago.”
“…Stop!”
“As a result, she was the first purebred the Empire had acquired. However, her astral power was laughably weak. She was the most pitiful witch I’d encountered, worthless for research purposes.”
“I said shut your mouth!”
“Or so I thought at the time.”
The red-haired researcher shrugged in resignation.
She forced a smile to her face.
“That was the greatest error of my life. I misjudged. Who would have known? Who indeed.”
“…Wh-what are you saying?!”
“I’ve been telling you from the start, Princess Sisbell. This is the Birthplace of Witches. And it was here where I investigated the truth of this planet.”
Her long red hair fluttered. The mad scientist Kelvina continued, practically singing her next statement. “She’s on her way to becoming a true witch. A being that no one on this planet will be able to stop.”
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