[322] A Fleeting Rift (4)
Ordon's mouth didn't stop moving as they climbed to the top floor. Most of it was petty chatter, but Kangnan matched him without showing annoyance.
"How many of Tormia's people come from the Magic Academy?"
"Around seventy-two percent, as far as I know."
"Oh, similar to Yakma. Good call. Academy grads are reliable. Those from the streets only know one trick. Their adaptability is poor—would you want to use people like that?"
Kangnan bristled at a man with no relation to magic lecturing the Association's affairs.
"But wouldn't street-taught mages be better at improvising in the field?" she asked.
"Haha! Improvisation? That's just shabby."
'Filthy bureaucracy.'
Kangnan's mouth twisted.
She herself hadn't come from the Academy. How could someone whose whole view of people was reduced to numbers on a sheet understand reality?
She opened the reception room door and sighed as she scanned the room. Envoys from other nations had arrived, yet one person staying on the same floor still hadn't shown up.
"Please wait here. I'll bring the chairman."
Kangnan smoothed things over as if following a script, shut the reception room door, and her footsteps quickened.
The dangerous clack of high heels stopped abruptly. She turned on a precise angle and knocked at the Association chairman's door.
"Kangnan. I'm coming in."
No answer. Expecting none anyway, she twisted the knob and walked in.
A blast of heat and the acrid smell of sweat hit her. The man on the sofa assaulted her eyes.
Not only was he in square underwear that left the groin contoured, he sat with his legs embarrassingly spread.
A cigar—the strongest kind, taboo for mages—was clamped between his teeth as he stared at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell like a man who'd just finished exercise.
A chest too broad for a mage and a waist narrow as a tiger's. His thighs were like boulders, calves lean and hard.
But any woman besides Kangnan would have screamed at the sight. As if hundreds of worms crawled over him, every inch of his body was scarred.
"What's the matter, mutt?"
Kangnan's face hardened.
She had met this man when her Nor tribe was wiped out and she wandered alone; he gave her a new life. Now he felt less like a benefactor and more like an enemy.
"What's the matter? I told you an urgent envoy from Yakma was coming. They're waiting in the reception room—what are you doing here?"
The man's head, slumped back on the sofa, slowly came up.
Contrasting with his muscular body, his face was harsh—cheekbones jutting, a vertical scar across his left eye, and scars mapped over the lower jaw hidden by stubble. They hinted at long, brutal penances.
Michea Gaold, chairman of the Tormia Magic Association.
A First-Rank Archmage of the Red Line and one of the founding members of Alpheas School of Magic's Paranormal Spiritual Science Research Society.
"An envoy… came?" he said.
"You don't remember? I told you only an hour ago! Go receive them."
Gaold fell to thought.
He didn't remember. Lately his memory lapses had become more frequent.
Why should that matter?
He drew a deep drag from his cigar and said bluntly, "No."
Kangnan closed her eyes. She would have to endure it.
Thinking of it as saving a pitiful wreck, she opened her eyes and pulled an official dispatch stamped with the royal seal from her pocket.
"This is an order personally issued by His Highness Adolf. He says the matter is serious and commands cooperation in all circumstances. If you refuse, we will take legal action."
Gaold tipped his head back on the sofa as if it meant nothing. Still sucking his cigar, he muttered irritably.
"What a damned nuisance. You don't leave me a single second."
"Receiving an envoy is not something you can delay for even a second. Please stop acting like an ugly duckling."
Kangnan finished and, with a sidelong look, muttered, "Ugly duckling…"
Gaold lifted his face.
"What, you brat?"
"…I said stop acting like one."
"You just said that a moment ago!"
"I'm emphasizing it."
Kangnan adjusted her horn-rim glasses with a prim expression and walked to the wardrobe. She took out the chairman's clothes herself; Gaold, with no choice, begrudgingly hauled himself up.
"Tch! Just hope it's nothing. I'll give them stew."
He wiped sweat off with a towel, changed, tossed the cigar to the floor, and strode toward the reception room.
Ordon greeted him with a pleased smile as the door opened. You couldn't treat the chairman and the chief secretary the same way.
After the pleasantries, Ordon moved to the main matter. As lead envoy, his demeanor shifted once the work began.
An aide brought a portable recording device to the table. Then a small safe arrived, which Ordon unlocked himself. Inside was an Obscura B.
"Strange phenomena are occurring around the world, including Yakma. Let's watch the footage first."
He connected the Obscura B and a video played. The view showed a provincial town where an old-world feel still lingered.
Gaold, watching with his usual indifference, suddenly brightened with interest.
People whose tongues had multiplied into dozens were devouring others.
Screams rang out and the town guard mobilized. But guards bitten by the mutants developed the same mutation, and the situation spiraled out of control.
"This happened in a place called Kuberin. We haven't obtained footage from other nations. Rumor says a similar sickness spread elsewhere—some regions reported ghostly apparitions."
Gaold focused on the footage.
In the end, the royal special forces intervened and suppressed the mutants. Some of the investigators were men Gaold knew by name.
Mages who collected samples cast enormous flames and burned the whole town.
"We dissected the dead right after the incident. Any mutation is based on prior traits. But these victims' mutations didn't match the characteristics of any creature we know here."
Gaold returned to his indifferent posture. He yawned as if bored and said, "So what, you're saying this came from space?"
The footage Ordon had shown was top secret from Yakma. Showing it to foreign mages and sharing key information implied they expected something in return.
Ordon, Yakma's best diplomat, could not have missed the change in Gaold.
But he hadn't come to haggle. This was a transnational issue, and nations around the world watched.
"Something's wrong with Miro's space-time."
For a moment a sharp light flared in Gaold's tired eyes, then his face settled back to calm.
"So? What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to investigate Miro's space-time. As you know, you can only get there through the Tormia kingdom… I don't mean open it to outsiders. The Valkyrie's approval has already been granted."
"It's precisely the Alpheas School of Magic," Gaold said with displeasure.
Even a wreck whose memory faltered at odd hours kept memories he could never forget. Those vivid recollections still tortured Gaold's mind and body like a masochistic whip.
He leaned back and crossed his legs. Manners had long since left him.
Kangnan sighed, but he paid it no mind.
"I'll think about it. For now, go."
Ordon's face went blank at the unexpected reply.
"You'll think about it? Did you think I came here to make a request? This is state cooperation. I understood His Highness Adolf already consented—"
Gaold's facial muscles contorted unnaturally. It was as if two demon faces appeared at once—extreme expressions overlapping.
"You think I'll tuck my tail if you name the king? Adolf? What kind of bastard is he? No one goes anywhere without my permission."
The air heated and objects in the reception room trembled. A psychic wave, born from the clash between the urge to kill Ordon and the effort to suppress it, moved things.
It was a display far beyond human limits. Even Kangnan swallowed hard and could not step in.
Ordon panicked.
The reception room dissolved; only he and Gaold sat facing each other as everything around them was swallowed by hellfire. Sulfur stung the air, and beyond walls of flame the damned screamed.
What life had this man lived? Ordon had met countless cruel men, but never one who filled him with such terror.
'I heard the Tormia Magic Association chairman was a lunatic…'
Kangnan understood why she had battered nobles and yet not been expelled from the Association: the head of the Association himself was an unrivaled madman.
"Get out. Before I kill you."
This was the man who had just called his own king a bastard. Realizing Gaold spoke without lie, Ordon fled the reception room screaming as the vision faded. He wet himself as he ran; urine ran down his pants onto the floor.
What had already happened could not be undone; a heavy silence fell over the room.
When Gaold's killing intent subsided, Kangnan sat in Ordon's chair and said, "Did it have to go that far? You could have simply sent him away politely."
"He was a foul bastard. Didn't you enjoy it just as much?"
"Well… I can't deny that."
Gaold pulled another cigar from his jacket and lit it with a finger-spark that flared into flame.
Inside the Association, where magic-dampening devices were active, Gaold was the only one able to use magic.
"You'll go to Miro's space-time."
Kangnan straightened and put her hands on her knees.
"I obey."
"In the near future something similar will happen here. Investigate everything. Start with places where ancient malice might gather: ruins, colosseums, old castle sites—focus there."
Kangnan jotted Gaold's orders in her notebook, sprang to her feet, and headed for the door. On a solo mission she wouldn't need a carriage; wherever in the kingdom the incident broke out, she wouldn't be late.
"Oh, and while you're out, stop by Alpheas, too."
Kangnan paused with her hand on the door.
"You mean the place with the Magic Academy? Should I deliver a message to Alpheas?"
Gaold tapped the sofa and thought.
It might be early, but if there was a problem with Miro's space-time, there was no time to waste. It was time to put a lifetime's plan into motion.
"Meet the child called Shirone."
(End of Volume 13)