Chapter 25
“ALL RIGHT, MIRA, we’re going to hurry ahead and regroup with everyone else.”
Their meeting had been short and simple, and they’d decided Christina would assume a commando role. Once the Valkyrie showed the soldiers a glimpse of her skills to give them an idea of what she was capable of, they’d rapidly changed their tune.
After all, despite her demeanor and looks, she’d demonstrated truly world-class fencing techniques. The soldiers had realized firsthand that she was more than a pretty face. Desmond, for some reason, had told them boastfully to get a good look, and that he’d expected no less of the Spirit Queen.
Now convinced that their fighting strength was no longer an issue, the soldiers moved quickly. They’d run ahead immediately to catch up to those in front and explain the plan, Desmond announced.
“Hrmm. Okay. I’ll leave it to you.”
Whatever Fuzzy Dice was after in the waterway, it had to be connected to some villainy. Watching the soldiers disappear as they ran farther into the passage, Mira instructed Christina to update her with regular status reports.
“Sure thing! Right now, we’re following his footprints!” Christina replied, updating her immediately.
Mira told the Valkyrie that she only needed to update her whenever the situation changed.
A few moments afterward, Anrutine’s head popped up out of the water, and the water spirit declared that she’d found someone resembling Fuzzy Dice.
“It’s a man in a gray cloak,” she recounted. “Is that who you saw?”
Anrutine’s special ability was using water to “see” any areas connected to that particular water source. For certainty’s sake, she’d used that ability to scour the entire waterway and managed to locate a man matching the phantom thief’s description. Apparently, he was still disguised. He probably planned to blend in with the rest of the crowd as some anonymous adventurer once he escaped.
“Hrmm. That’s got to be him,” Mira replied. “So which way was he heading?” There would likely be an exit to the waterway in whichever direction he went.
Hearing Mira’s question, Anrutine briefly closed her eyes as if deep in thought, then answered that he was heading toward the nearest outlet.
“An outlet, huh…? I see. Then he must be preparing to escape the city, right?”
When Mira thought about it, that honestly seemed like the least risky option. If he botched escaping through an exit directly into the city, he could distract the public or security personnel from the waterway he’d worked so hard to focus everyone’s attention on.
It was in the phantom thief’s best interests to leave Haxthausen without being seen, so everyone’s attention remained on the waterway. According to Anrutine, the outlet was in the middle of a large river to the southeast.
That sounded a bit complicated, so Mira asked Anrutine to guide her to the outlet’s exact location once she was near it. “All right. Please keep an eye on him, Lady Anrutine. I’ll take to the sky.”
First and foremost, Mira had to make sure she could beat Fuzzy Dice to the outlet. With that in mind, she dashed toward the steps.
“Sounds good,” Anrutine answered, once again sinking into the water. She quickly informed Mira that, if the phantom thief continued on the shortest course to his destination at his current speed, he’d reach the outlet in about ten minutes.
“I need to hurry…”
Just going down the stairs had taken a considerable amount of time; going up them would naturally be harder. Worst of all, running upstairs would expend a considerable amount of Mira’s strength.
But since she’d upped her summoning skills, Mira was now capable of new things. She decided to try a new technique—Arms Evocation: Dark-Knight Frame.
When she initiated the technique, a magic circle appeared at her feet and rose upward. From it emerged a dark knight. In the very next second, its armor covered Mira’s entire body, transforming into brand-new equipment for her arsenal. Soon, the magic circle dissolved into black flames and merged into a single point, rendering the evocation’s power fully material.
“This is the first time I’ve tried this out for real. Everything seems good, though.”
Mira looked almost like a jet-black Valkyrie. She moved around a bit to test how the technique felt, then dashed up the stairs in one go. Through her new technique, she’d uncovered a new power. This was a brand-new direction in summoning that let her use an armor spirit as her own equipment.
There was still quite a bit she didn’t know about the technique, but having researched it whenever she had a free moment, she’d confirmed that it provided something a bit like power armor. She could supplement her own physical abilities with an armor spirit’s power, as well as boost her defensive power using the armor itself. If she could finish testing the evocation and popularize its use, it could help address summoners’ Achilles heel: their physical weakness. That would definitely be a turning point in the summoning world.
“Hrmm… Marvelous. It’s like I sprouted wings!”
With the Dark-Knight Frame’s help, Mira made easy work of the stairs. Waiting ahead was the phantom thief Fuzzy Dice. Having seen his true power firsthand, Mira figured he was the perfect opponent to test the frame’s capabilities against.
Plotting to both squeeze information about the orphanage from Fuzzy Dice and use him as a guinea pig, she found herself back in the underground room before she knew it.
“Huh…? What’s going on?”
Looking around the underground room, Mira tilted her head in confusion. She’d taken the same route back, yet for some reason, she couldn’t find the way out. In short, the underground room connected to the waterway was now truly a secret chamber.
“It should be right around here…”
Mira carefully examined the wall where she remembered the exit being located. Above her stretched nothing but a simple stone wall. She couldn’t find a hidden door or anything resembling a secret switch.
“This must mean that…”
The wall in front of her had sealed off the underground room entirely. It would be impossible for a normal person to make their way out of that room now that thick stone walls surrounded it.
And behind Mira lay a complex, difficult-to-navigate underground waterway. She, of course, could simply ask Anrutine for help and escape with no problems. But what about the soldiers or mercenaries? If they weren’t careful, they might end up wandering around down there forever.
Glaring at the wall, Mira realized that might very well have been the mansion owner’s intention. He surely planned to seal everyone down in the waterway to sweep everything under the rug.
“He’s taking pretty extreme measures, huh?”
It was a very shortsighted plan. Plenty of people outside had witnessed the soldiers and mercenaries entering the mansion. Even if those people weren’t aware of the underground waterway, they’d certainly become suspicious that something was going on in the mansion if no one returned.
“Well, it’s not like it’ll do him any good.”
[Evocation: Gnomide]
Standing in front of the stone wall, Mira dispelled Gnomide—who was standing by in Haxthausen—and resummoned her to her side.
The small spirit emerged from its magic circle. Gnomide was an earth spirit; resembling a young girl, she stood about a foot tall, yet effortlessly carried a stone hammer about the same size as herself.
“All right, help me out, Gnomide. Can you put a hole in that wall?”
Upon receiving that direction, Gnomide nodded heartily and hefted the hammer onto her shoulder. She quickly made her way to the wall and held the hammer aloft, then swung it all the way down. Sure enough, part of the stout stone wall suddenly turned to gravel and collapsed.
That wasn’t all. The mountain of gravel Gnomide’s blow had produced started moving like a living being, getting out of the way so as to not block the path.
“Hrmm… Well done. Very impressive.”
Commending Gnomide’s efforts, Mira picked up the earth spirit—who’d been jumping up and down at her feet—and gently patted her head. That must’ve delighted Gnomide, since she started swinging her hammer around.
“Oh ho! Look who’s in a good mood!”
The hammer was made of heavy stone; whenever Gnomide swung it, its weight made Mira sway from side to side. Although the spirit was a perfectly huggable size, the hammer-wielding Gnomide was actually quite heavy. Had Mira not been equipped with the Dark-Knight Frame, she probably couldn’t have stayed upright.
“Thanks for your hard work,” Mira told Gnomide before dismissing her.
Satisfied with the strength boost the Dark-Knight Frame gave her, she again began running, passing straight through the gaping hole in the wall.
“They cleaned up quick, huh?”
Whatever she had to say about the mansion’s owner, its servants really were top-notch. The first time Mira had seen the hallway, it’d been littered with broken bottles and all kinds of other stuff. Now, there was no trace of any of that. This time, she only saw servants collapsed on the floor, utterly exhausted.
The moment the servants saw Mira, their expressions transformed from fatigued to shocked. They started to ask her to wait, but their voices never reached her as she dashed effortlessly down the hallway.
Finding herself back at the mansion’s entryway, she considered what she’d do next. Once outside, she decided, she’d summon Pegasus and make a beeline for the waterway’s outlet.
Then the sound of two people arguing came from the other side of the entrance.
“They did come, but they aren’t here any longer. They left a long time ago.”
“Don’t play games. I asked around, and they were seen entering this mansion, but not a single person saw them leave.”
That voice… Is it the mansion’s owner? I wonder who he’s talking to. On top of that, what were they arguing about? Curious, Mira stopped in front of the door and listened in stealthily.
As the argument continued, Mira began to understand what it was about. From what she could tell, the mansion’s owner was arguing with someone named Commander Geez, who was essentially Desmond’s boss. They seemed to be having a disagreement about what had happened earlier.
When Geez heard that Desmond’s unit had entered the mansion to investigate, he’d come to provide backup. The owner, however, maintained that—while Desmond’s troops had come—they’d found nothing out of the ordinary and already left.
Geez wasn’t buying it. He asserted that they must still be inside. His claim was primarily backed up by the testimony of the Fuzzy Dice fans surrounding the mansion. They’d all seen Desmond’s unit go into the mansion, but none had seen them reemerge.
Yet the mansion’s owner brazenly declared, “They’re no longer in the residence.” He went on to insist that he’d even subject himself to a trial by sword to prove it.
Mira grinned wryly yet incredulously at those words. He’s certainly got a lot of nerve to suggest that.
The great nation of Grimdart venerated the God of Justice, one of the gods belonging to the Trinity. Within that nation existed a sacred sword. It was imbued with the gods’ power and was exceedingly strong. In addition, the light it gave off reputedly exposed any falsehood.
The “trial by sword” the mansion’s owner brought up was a ritual in which a statement’s truth was tested using the sword’s power. Any verdict it rendered was considered conclusive. Thus, it needed to be used with careful discretion. That was why Mira felt such contempt for the way the man had so casually thrown out the words “They’re no longer in the residence.”
That was true. Desmond and the others weren’t in the mansion anymore. Since they were in the underground waterway beneath it, they were indeed gone.
With neither man budging, the mansion’s owner put forward a suggestion in an apparent bid to compromise. “All right, fine. If you still insist, you can go ahead and look around as much as you like. If you find somebody, you can do whatever you like with me. But if you don’t…I hope you’ll be ready for the consequences.”
Desmond and his men really weren’t in the mansion, so—while the owner proposed this idea as if he’d been coerced into it—his words were deeply duplicitous. It sounded as if he was luring Geez into a trap.
The truth was, however much Geez searched for the men, he’d never find them. But he didn’t yet know that. He also had no idea that Mira heard them speaking, or that she was even there.
“All right, then… If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to look around,” Geez replied.
After thinking it over, he must’ve decided to go with his gut, as well as the fans’ testimonies. A moment later, he opened the door and stepped into the entryway.
“What?! You’re…”
That voice came from the mansion’s owner. Seeing Mira on the other side of the door, his expression—which, only moments earlier, had been one of smug satisfaction at having laid his trap—did a complete one-eighty.
But who could blame him? Judging from the conversation Mira had just overheard, she was the exact last person he wanted to bump into. The owner had seemed pretty confident that he’d managed to seal away the room, and that Geez would never figure out that there was another chamber underground.
He did do it on purpose, huh?
Mira was supposed to have entered that very place, but she now stood in front of him. As if to contradict the mansion owner’s expression, she brandished a defiant smile.
“He’s actually not lying,” she said. “But he’s also not quite telling you the whole story.” She glared at the clearly flustered owner, letting him know that the jig was up, before turning her gaze to the other man.
“Is that so? And just who might you be, miss?” This man looked late middle-aged. Judging from his grizzled demeanor, he had to be Geez. He turned toward Mira immediately.
She briefly introduced herself, saying that her name was Mira and that she was a summoner. She made sure to emphasize the latter part.
“That would make you the Spirit Queen I just heard about, wouldn’t it?”
“They do call me that these days.”
The Fuzzy Dice fans had apparently told Geez that the Spirit Queen was also there. He seemed to know everything, including that she’d entered the mansion with Desmond and the others.
In a bid to move things along, Mira gave a bare-bones explanation of everything that’d happened thus far: how the servants had worked to destroy the trail Fuzzy Dice had left behind; how, by following the trail, they’d come to the entrance of an underground waterway; and finally, what’d happened when she tried to go back.
“I see… So that’s why he phrased it like that.”
From Mira’s explanation, Geez likewise realized what the mansion’s owner had been scheming. He turned around to glare once more at the owner, who was so visibly shaken that he pled with his butler to help him. The butler, seemingly just about at his wit’s end, simply responded by shaking his head.
“I’ll hurry up and get to that underground waterway, or whatever you called it, so I can lend Desmond and his troops a hand,” Geez said, moving forward.
Mira, meanwhile, moved in the other direction, toward the front door. “He left a fairly obvious trail. If you just follow it, you should find them.”
As she passed by Geez, the commander suddenly asked, “Aren’t you going to show me how to get there?” He apparently thought Mira had come back to get reinforcements at Desmond’s behest.
“No. I just left so I could waylay Fuzzy Dice from outside the waterway. Desmond never asked me to get reinforcements or anything.”
When Geez heard Mira’s response, an exasperated look crossed his face. “Really? Again…?” he muttered.
According to him, the captains considered Desmond a bit of a black sheep for his inclination to always operate based solely on his instincts, not consulting the other captains. That said, his instincts apparently never led him astray.
“Well, thanks for the intel,” Geez told Mira, recomposing himself after airing his grievances.
Grabbing hold of a servant to have them lead the way, he quickly headed deeper into the mansion.
“Don’t try any other funny stuff, all right?” Glaring at the mansion’s owner, Mira summoned a dark knight to drive the message home.
The owner nodded vigorously.
“Well, I’ve got to hurry up too,” Mira remarked.
While all this was going on, Fuzzy Dice had been nearing the waterway’s exit. According to Anrutine’s reports, Mira had less than three minutes left. She burst out of the mansion, immediately summoned Pegasus, and nimbly took off into the sky.
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