Interlude:
Mercenary, Assassin, Vampire II
The Past
A short time after Sigma had begun his life as a magecraft-using mercenary, he had been betrayed by a mercenary fighting alongside him.
And by one raised with him in the same “facility,” at that.
In the “facility,” he had been called Lambda and his skill in magecraft had been several levels better than Sigma’s.
When they had gone together to suppress a magecraft-using criminal syndicate, Lambda had led Sigma into an ambush and then fired a gandr curse at him from behind.
A series of twists and turns had follow, but in the end, it had been Sigma who survived.
Lambda had been more skilled in magecraft, but he had relied too heavily on it as a result. Sigma had taken advantage of that to defeat him with tactics using modern weapons.
“. . . Why me? Why . . . am I dying?”
After being forced to lose control of a deadly curse, the magecraft user was dying of autotoxemia.
He could no longer move a muscle and his heart was on the verge of stopping, but resentment continued to flow from his mouth.
“Because you sold me out.”
He had been about to be killed, so he had killed. That was all.
The feebly gasping magecraft user shook his head to deny Sigma’s simple answer.
“No, that’s not what I mean. It doesn’t make sense. No sense. The strong get to survive. That’s natural law for us. Bloodlust becomes a curse branded into the world and rebounds if the target deflects it. That’s natural. But that’s not what I mean . . . That’s not what . . . I’m trying to say . . .”
The man vomited black blood mixed with bile as he continued to scream out his resentment.
“I . . . I have a reason to live! I found people I have to protect! There are so many things I want! That ‘facility’ may be gone, but our homeland hasn’t changed! I have to change it! So that there are no more guys like us! To do that, I couldn’t let that syndicate be stamped out now . . .! So, I gave everything I had! I tried to sacrifice my time, my life, even you, my best friend raised in the same facility, to the cause!”
He shouted with a glare that threatened to leap to his feet and strangle Sigma at any moment, but the flame of his life was relentlessly fading.
And yet, Lambda still spit curses at Sigma, who continued to listen expressionlessly.
“So! So, why?! Why, Sigma?! You don’t have a cause, or a will, or anything! You don’t even want to! So, why did you kill me?! How . . . How did you surpass me?! What belief drew out your strength?! What do you live for?! What’s worth killing me?! Why . . . are you alive . . .?
As the man’s lungs finally fell still, Sigma paused briefly to think over those cursed words . . . and shot back a simple answer.
“Do I . . . need a reason?”
“Wha . . . t . . .?”
“. . . I just don’t want to die. I don’t like pain, either. So, I retaliated and killed you. That’s all.”
“You just . . . don’t . . . want . . .?”
The color was rapidly draining from the man’s face.
He must have realized that his cries of resentment, the curse he was trying to sear into his opponent, were utterly failing to reach him, because a different sort of anger and despair overtook him.
Even confronted with that expression, however, Sigma remained expressionless as he continued.
“Even if you’d explained your cause and then asked me to die for you, I think I’d probably still have said ‘no.’ So, a surprise attack was the right idea. You should be proud of your betrayal . . . I think.”
Sigma remained expressionless and his words lacked confidence. The magecraft user tried to muster the last of his life to shout something back.
“Don’t . . . Not . . .”
But he could not manage it.
Blood vessels burst in his cranium and blood began to flow from his eye sockets . . . signaling the end of his life.
Sigma stared coldly down at the dead man and thought.
I tried to sacrifice even you, my best friend, to the cause!
Those final words replayed in his brain. Sigma looked up at the sky in silence.
“So . . . you thought of me as your best friend . . .”
At the same time he realized how much pain it had cost the man called Lambda to set him up, he realized that he had not thought of Lambda as a friend, or anything else.
“. . . That’s a bad joke.”
Once it was all over, Sigma received his payment from his employer and then played a rented DVD of a comedy program over and over again.
To others, he might not look like he was enjoying himself.
But he was just inexpressive; he did enjoy comedy . . . except for one stray thought that intruded on his pleasure.
He recalled the magecraft user who had died with an expression of mingled rage and despair, his face like a cursed statue, and thought, Enemy or not, it must be awful to die looking like that.
Maybe he would have passed a little more peacefully if Sigma been able to throw out a clever joke at the end.
But he still had no idea what he should have said—all he could do was to watch the red-clad comedians on the screen and murmur his real feelings from the bottom of his heart.
“. . . Comedians are incredible . . . I can’t believe they can even make the Inquisition funny.”
X X
The Present, Snowfield, Behind the Hospital
Sigma wondered.
Wondered why, in this situation, he remembered the face of his ex-compatriot.
The scene before his eyes bore no resemblance.
The girl Assassin transformed the dense mist that shrouded her body into numerous shapes—massive beasts, great serpents, beautiful women, giants—and somehow attacked the man who seemed to be a hematophage—no, a monster called a Dead Apostle—with physical force.
She attacked the man-shaped monster who delightedly danced across the battlefield, sometimes dodging, sometimes having a limb torn off and immediately regrowing it.
“Ha ha ha! Are those jinnīya? I’m amazed your control extends to them! Really, there’s never a dull moment with you! I’ll let you command even more powerful jinnīya if you accept me. Don’t you want to be like the great Sulayman?”
“. . . I do not control them. You insult my great forebears and their teachings . . .!” Assassin whispered with hatred, then leapt into the fray herself and lunged at her enemy alongside the great beasts and giants formed from her mist.
Seeing the fiend take even that assault and regenerate with a laugh, however, Assassin could not help narrowing her eyes.
“Monster . . .”
“Monster! Monster, is it? In one aspect, you aren’t mistaken, but don’t refer to me by such a broad category. I might get jealous of other monsters and wipe them all out before I know what I’m doing! It’s impossible, but for your sake, I’ll make the impossible possible! But my darling, won’t you call me by my name? My name is Jester, Jester Karture! I’ll tell you as many times as it takes! Yes, I will!”
Jester continued to laugh ecstatically. From his shouts, you would never know that he was in the midst of battle.
Sigma brushed it off with the thought, Well, mages and monsters are both mostly weirdos like that.
On the other hand, he could not take his eyes off Assassin, who continued to fight the monster whose death he could not imagine.
Her face was suffused with rage.
Stamped with hatred for her enemy and for her own powerlessness.
Oh, I see.
Sigma realized why he had thought of his compatriot’s face.
It was because they were the same.
That monster was trying to defile his opponent’s way of life, just as he had once done.
Just as he, who, lacking a reason to live, had defiled his compatriot’s determination, that monster was trying to defile the Heroic Spirit who was risking all she had to survive.
Assassin and his compatriot were nothing alike.
Even in terms of good and evil, it was probably fair to call them opposites.
But . . . good or evil, their faces, suffused with rage and despair, were the same.
His compatriot had betrayed him, but like Assassin, he had been trying to protect something he could not give up.
What was he—Lambda—trying to protect?
He had never tried to know Lambda. He had not even remembered him until that moment.
But one thing was certain—Lambda’s curse had failed to reach Sigma’s soul . . . but it lingered in a corner of his memory.
Not to give pain. As more of a suggestion than a curse.
In other words . . .
It was a slight mental compulsion to help Assassin in this situation.
Not even Sigma’s compatriot, who had meant to convey only resentment, had intended the suggestion . . . but with irony worthy of a comedy, it moved Sigma.
As a result, Sigma drew his gun and immediately fired a bullet into Jester.
It was a considerable distance, but Sigma’s reinforced senses and body were tuned into a single emplacement and his shot hit its mark in the center of Jester’s forehead.
It would naturally take more than that to kill him, but the bullet, treated with magecraft, inflicted damage that no ordinary weapon could.
“You just had to butt in,” Jester tutted. “You, a mere human.”
Jester instantly regenerated his injury and shot a glare at Sigma.
Sigma used that brief opportunity . . . only to ask a telepathic question.
To ask the shadows of his Servant, “Watcher,” for everything they were currently able to learn about the monster in front of him.
Then . . . he spoke the answer aloud.
“. . . How many of the ‘bullets’ inside you are left?”
He aimed to rattle his opponent by saying something that would confuse him.
He did not know his Servant “Watcher’s” identity, but its unique ability to perceive everything that occurred in the city while it was summoned made it like a fantastical surveillance system.
According to the information he had been able to gain through its ability . . . the vampire known as Jester possessed a number of cores that he called “bullets” and was able to rearrange his entire body, including his soul, by switching between them.
His Spirit Origin as a mage seemed to have been destroyed by Assassin, but Sigma did not know the details because Watcher had not been summoned at the time.
“. . . What?”
The effect of Sigma’s provocative suggestion that he knew Jester’s secrets was simple, but immediate.
Jester wiped the expression from his face and confronted the already-expressionless Sigma with masklike face.
“. . .?”
Assassin looked at Sigma while remaining wary of Jester, who had suddenly stopped moving.
Jester returned her attention favorably while staring at Sigma, and asked:
“Are you a Master?”
“. . . I don’t need to answer that.”
“How did you learn about me? Through your Servant?”
“I have no intention of revealing my source. All I can tell you is that you took the form of a child to escape the executor and that you then infiltrated the hospital, where you attempted to do something under a girl’s bed.”
Sigma spoke matter-of-factly. Jester, who had thought he had acted in complete secrecy, scowled and raised his voice in irritation.
“What a creep . . . I’m still going to beat you to death, but I think I’ll stop that smart mouth of yours first.”
Then, just as he was about to shift the focus of his attacks to Sigma . . .
Gargantuan serpents danced in the sky over Snowfield.
“!”
Even Jester was wary of that torrent of magical energy and turned his attention toward it while distancing himself from Assassin and Sigma.
“This is . . . An archer with this much power must be . . . I see, I see. A Grail War with groundwork this thorough is almost like the Age of Go—”
His delighted mutterings were interrupted by the onslaught of another torrent.
“— __ — _ — _ — ____ — __ —”
A roar like a scream cursing the whole world rang out from Main Street.
At that shriek, like the earth itself was crying, Jester’s eyes widened, while Sigma and Assassin imagined that their souls had been shattered. For just an instant, time went on without them.
“What . . .? Can the Grail really summon something of this magnitude . . .?”
Jester muttered to himself in alarm, having sensed the Spirit Origin at the source of that roar.
“Good grief. At this rate, this won’t turn out as a comedy or a tragedy to my taste. They’re going to burn up the audience, the stage, and everything else.”
No sooner had Jester made an exaggerated show of regret than he plastered a wicked grin across his face and glance at Assassin.
“Oh well. In that case, let’s move to a new stage.”
“. . .? What . . . do you mean . . .?”
The moment she ran magical energy to transform the mist surrounding her into even more gigantic beasts, her animosity undiminished . . . a “thing” like black smoke poured out of the hospital.
“?!”
“This is . . .”
Before the shocked Assassin and Sigma, Jester spread his arms wide and welcomed the black mist.
“Come, it’s the start of the second act! Worry not; your stage won’t be a brutal place like this. It will be peace itself—a gentle paradise!”
He allowed his body to dissolve into the black mist . . . but his voice continued to fill the air.
“I can’t wait . . . to see you utterly defile its beautiful scenery with your own hands.”
One moment, the voice seemed to come from all directions, like it was licking them from head to toe. The next, the swarm of “blackness” rushed forward like a high wave to envelope Assassin and Sigma . . .
And the stage lights dimmed.
Originally Posted by Lelo
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