Chapter 17
“TEN, NINE, EIGHT, SEVEN…!”
Just as the chief detective finished what he was saying, a voice counting down had suddenly cut through the air, coming from the street. It sounded as if they were counting down to the new year, and Mira wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
The chief detective, however, immediately knew what the countdown was. “Huh…? Ah—it must be that time already.”
He checked the time. It was just a few seconds before eight o’clock. The voice in the street was indeed counting down the seconds to the time on Fuzzy Dice’s calling card.
Finally, the word “zero” rang out. The din that followed made it really sound like there was a festival outside.
“Sounds like they’re getting pretty fired up.”
Although they were inside a café, the fans’ cheers reached them easily. Nina stood and poked her head a bit out the window to get a look at the situation. A wry grin broke across her face.
According to what the chief detective had said, these fans were supposedly veterans. Perhaps that was why they were all cheering in unison. It might’ve seemed like they were just going wild, but the cheers followed a coordinated call-and-response pattern.
“I guess we’ll have to go all out, huh?”
“They’re pretty hyped up, huh? Even more than I anticipated.”
Nina and her sisters’ job was to go wild while posing as fans, so they’d have to match the rabid enthusiasm sweeping through the fans on the street below.
Mina and Nana both looked out the window too. When they saw the fans’ zealousness with their own eyes, their faces tensed as they considered whether they were up to the task ahead.
Even as the three debated that, and just after they’d begun to observe the fans’ cheering, a bell-like sound rang out. It was the communication tool the chief detective was carrying.
Meanwhile, in front of the mansion, in a large garden centered around a tall stone statue, Fuzzy Dice had arrived. He’d appeared right on time and was engaged in fierce battle with a band of mercenaries called Les Fantômes.
“Well, I’ll be. That was quite a sneak attack. Color me surprised.” Fuzzy Dice, his face concealed by a distinctive mask, smirked slightly as he easily dodged a blow from a man who’d snuck up in the shadows.
“You’d need eyes in the back of your head to see through an attack like that…!” Les Fantômes’ leader objected.
His face twisted in rage as he glared at Fuzzy Dice. He should’ve been able to score a direct hit but hadn’t even grazed the thief.
Les Fantômes were primarily scouts and, in a bid to utilize that class’s skills fully, they fought from the shadows. They employed various traps and were well-versed in a remarkable variety of poisons. They applied that deadly combination of knowledge and stealth techniques through strategies like slowly weakening an enemy before finishing them off. That pretty much guaranteed their victory over fiends.
“You aren’t half bad yourself. You’re the only one I couldn’t knock out.” Fuzzy Dice carefully spread his arms and deftly leapt atop the statue.
The garden they stood in was already full of the sleeping gas Fuzzy Dice had dispersed, but the mercenaries’ leader had resisted that gas and even launched a surprise attack on the thief.
“I get that a lot. You must’ve used a slow-acting anesthetic.”
Les Fantômes were renowned for their skill in handling poisonous substances. Since they were all poison masters, their ability to neutralize poisons was nothing to scoff at. They could look at a symptom and tell whether it was caused by a natural or magic poison, then instantly identify a way to counteract it.
They could do that precisely because they knew so much about poison, and that was one reason they’d been hired for this. The only concern was that if Fuzzy Dice knocked them all out at once, they wouldn’t be able to do anything.
“What do you mean?” Fuzzy Dice asked bluntly.
Les Fantômes’ other members had already passed out and now all lay on the ground. Only their leader was left standing, since he’d neutralized the poison before it took effect. Of course, that was clearly only possible because Fuzzy Dice had reduced the poison’s potency.
“But why’d you let me…?” the leader asked with a wary look in his eyes, wondering why Fuzzy Dice had left him conscious. Even if he wanted to apply some sort of antidote to his friends, there wasn’t much he could do with Fuzzy Dice staring right at him.
“Well, I wanted your help cleaning up after, that’s all,” Fuzzy Dice answered amiably. His voice wasn’t even slightly malicious. The only thing one could detect in it was that he honestly wanted some help.
“I beg your pardon?” the leader responded, not quite understanding what the phantom thief meant.
“You’ll figure it out once you wake up.”
With that pithy reply, Fuzzy Dice slowly opened his right hand. As he did, the leader of Les Fantômes dropped to his knees, falling face-first on the ground before beginning to snore.
It was truly a perfect victory.
“Impossible. You already defeated them…?”
Having realized that something unusual was going on outside, the Knights of the Serpentine Chalice mercenary company rushed out to the garden. There, they stared in shock at the scene before them.
This group was mostly made up of knights and swordsmen, equipped with skills quite different from those of fiend hunters. The Knights of the Serpentine Chalice were Les Fantômes’ polar opposite—and, for that reason, they readily acknowledged Les Fantômes’ prowess.
Yet only one minute had passed since eight o’clock, and Les Fantômes had been wiped out. The knights were getting visibly anxious.
“Since you’re all still standing, I’m guessing you must be those snake-and-cup guys, yeah?” Fuzzy Dice called from atop the stone statue. Despite standing within the anesthetic gas still hanging over the garden, the knights didn’t fall asleep. Instead, they turned cautiously toward Fuzzy Dice.
“Well, we had an idea of what sleeping gas you might be using, so we made sure to come prepared.”
In complete contrast with Les Fantômes, the Knights of the Serpentine Chalice were all healing and medicine experts. Preparing different remedies beforehand to protect against poisons was precisely what they excelled at.
Like Les Fantômes, they could also identify a poison by observing a victim’s symptoms. They’d then make a special dose of medicine that temporarily boosted the patient’s immunity. It would awaken someone who’d been knocked out and immunize them against that poison for exactly twenty-four hours.
The knights’ plan had been to take the poison they suspected Fuzzy Dice of using beforehand. They envisioned simply using the poison on themselves that afternoon, treating themselves, and subsequently making themselves immune to poison created using the corresponding Demonic Art. The most crucial step would be determining exactly which Demonic Art Fuzzy Dice was using.
While this seemed like a perfect approach, there were quite a few drawbacks. After all, it was no small feat to prepare the poison needed to dose and then immunize them all.
The battle would come down to Fuzzy Dice knocking them all out or the knights withstanding all his techniques.
“Well, how about we try this?” Fuzzy Dice opened his left hand.
The knights instantly tilted forward, then all simultaneously fell flat onto the ground. The phantom thief had dispersed another anesthetic gas to which they weren’t immune.
At the very next moment, several round objects suddenly came flying toward Fuzzy Dice from the mansion. He quickly leapt back, but the objects weren’t actually aimed at him. They hit the ground and broke into pieces, and green smoke poured out.
The knights soon rose, one after the other, from within the clouds. That smoke was evidently another antidote the knights had developed. It seemed that whoever was in charge of administering the antidotes was holed up in the mansion.
“Now it’s time for round two,” the knights’ captain declared.
He was old enough to retire, yet as soon as he was back on his feet, he quickly closed the distance between himself and Fuzzy Dice and let his sword fly. His attack was so fierce and wildly fast that the other adventurers’ eyes couldn’t even follow it. However, he halted abruptly as he reached Fuzzy Dice.
“Ngh…! What the…?!”
Looking at his sword, the captain discovered that it was wrapped in countless spider-silk strands. He couldn’t even push his blade forward or pull it back.
He was apparently familiar with the technique, however. He immediately unleashed several fighting skills to get rid of the strands. Paying no heed to how many layers of silk his sword was wrapped in, he simply cut right through them.
“Wow, you are strong.”
Fuzzy Dice managed to evade the captain’s relentless attacks by artfully manipulating the silk threads—occasionally to give himself a foothold, and occasionally to slow his opponent down by weaving the strands around his legs.
Meanwhile, the knights had completely encircled the area.
“All right. It’s over now.” Despite having passed out several times, the captain was continuously administered antidotes and thus kept getting back on his feet. Without ever letting his guard down, he gradually closed the distance between himself and Fuzzy Dice.
Fuzzy Dice, meanwhile, had again resumed his position atop the statue and was looking at the knights who’d surrounded him.
“Very true. Everything looks perfect.” Flashing a smile, Fuzzy Dice raised his hand high overhead.
Perturbed by his mystifying words and action, the knights kept a steady eye on the phantom thief’s hand.
Then there was a flash of light; it shone for an instant and then disappeared. While it didn’t seem like much, it had a devastating effect. The knights surrounding Fuzzy Dice fell straight to sleep.
An antidote immediately came flying in. This time, however, nobody got back up.
Fuzzy Dice hadn’t used sleeping gas this time. He’d used a form of light-based hypnosis. The knights needed a restorative, not an antidote.
“There are still a few more individuals and one more group, huh?” Fuzzy Dice muttered to himself before making a mad dash toward the mansion. As he approached the entrance, he heard two screams, which were quickly stifled.
Meanwhile, two men holed up in the mansion’s storeroom—both fiend hunters from the Unsavory Gourmand Brigade—were chatting.
“It’s gotten pretty quiet outside. Which of them are we not hearing anymore?”
“If our guys won, we’d probably hear them cheering. They must’ve lost.”
The Unsavory Gourmand Brigade’s members were professionals who specialized in capturing undead fiends, which were especially pesky. Those enemies used curses and hexes and could induce a huge arsenal of status effects.
On top of that, the Unsavory Gourmand Brigade’s special training allowed them to wrap themselves in holy energy to exorcise hexes and curses. Brigade members also trained their minds to withstand corruption by such attacks. Additionally, they hardened their bodies by consuming small amounts of poison often enough that they had considerable resistance to it. In short, they truly pushed the limits of what was humanly possible.
They could also cast support magic and sought to flawlessly achieve objectives through the skillful use of combination strategies. Now they stood as the mansion’s last line of defense, directly in front of the room in which the president had locked himself.
“He’s here…”
Out of nowhere, the large room they were waiting inside to ambush Fuzzy Dice suddenly began to fill with white mist. It must’ve been the sleeping mist they’d heard about. Unperturbed, they took battle stances, looking ready for just about anything.
Once the entire space was full of the mist, the Unsavory Gourmand Brigade’s members all dropped straight to the floor. Yet none were sleeping; in fact, they were all immune to the sedative. This was all part of their plan. Due to the mist, though, they couldn’t see anything other than their comrades’ hazy outlines.
“Execute Plan Four. Be careful.” The brigade leader relayed that order to his team without uttering a sound via a magical device.
Having prepared a plan beforehand to prevent friendly fire while operating in an area of low visibility, the group marked themselves and began paying close attention to their surroundings.
Then they saw a single shadow.
“Target confirmed, two o’clock, facing east. Aiming at target… Direct hit!”
The black shadow standing in the white mist wasn’t marked as a brigade member. Rather, it now bore the mark a brigade member had just fired.
“You were careless, Fuzzy Dice! None of us are sleeping!” the captain exclaimed. He jumped to his feet and slashed at the shadow.
But was it really Fuzzy Dice? It seemed to fly as it darted away from the attack, slipping back to hide in the billowing white clouds.
“Your reflexes are impressive. But what now?”
The captain slowly made his way toward where the shadow had disappeared. Just then, he felt a sudden gust. Before he even had a chance to react, a churning vortex of black mist assailed him.
“So you really can use more than one type of sedative.”
From the drug’s faint scent, the captain immediately determined its composition. An unconcerned look passed over his face. He was sure that none of the sedatives Fuzzy Dice used would have any impact. That was how effective the Unsavory Gourmand Brigade’s anti-status-ailment capabilities were.
“So what now? We can resist whatever you have to throw at us.”
The white and black mists melted together, shrouding everything nearby in a gray cloud. Still, the captain hadn’t lost sight of where the black shadow went. As he got closer to the shadow, it jumped from wall to wall as if trying to put distance between them.
Believing the shadow’s attempts to escape utterly futile, the Unsavory Gourmand Brigade continued advancing on it, then unleashed several attacks. The shadow leapt from the walls to the ceiling, always dodging their attacks at the last second, as the brigade slowly closed in around it. At last, they drove it into the very corner of the room.
“It’s all over!”
“Victory is ours!”
They launched several more attacks at the shadow in quick succession, and the force of their blows shook the room. The air filled with the sound of destruction. They were facing off against the famed phantom thief, so they held nothing back.
“What the…?” The captain trailed off as he moved forward to peer at their supposed target.
The rest of the brigade rushed forward to get a look at what he’d seen and found a doll wrapped in spider silk. The figure they’d chased into the corner, which they’d thought was Fuzzy Dice, was nothing more than a doll.
In that case, the real Fuzzy Dice was somewhere else. The captain made a mad dash to the door leading into the back room. Glimpsing the scene before him, he looked up toward the ceiling.
“He got us… Mission failed.”
The brigade members who were supposed to guard the back door were sleeping soundly, stark naked and wrapped in spider silk. Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, the president of the Dorres Company was similarly wrapped up.
While the brigade chased the black shadow, Fuzzy Dice had successfully completed his heist.
“Damn it, when did he…?” the captain murmured.
He suddenly realized when Fuzzy Dice had made his move. The phantom thief must’ve taken advantage of the moment of chaos that’d broken out right after he’d whipped up that black-mist vortex that had swallowed them up; he’d knocked out the door guards and slipped inside. In the midst of that swirling vortex, the brigade members hadn’t felt the small draft that would’ve slipped out when the thief opened the door.
On top of that, as soon as the gray mist began to clear, the captain realized that the entire room was covered in spider silk. On it, he could see the marks where their attacks had landed. Fuzzy Dice had probably covered the room in that silk so that, if one of their attacks missed, it wouldn’t put a hole in the wall and let all the mist leak out.
“Well, that’s certainly one way to win,” the captain said, smiling.
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