Interlude
A Mercenary is a Free Man II
“You there, you there. Listen closely, my little brothers and sisters.
“You must destroy anyone who tries to take something from us.”
When Sigma tried to remember his past, the words of his “foster parents” always came to mind.
Even now that he knew they were totally meaningless, a tool for brainwashing, he could not forget them.
He felt neither hatred nor sadness for them.
Only the simple fact that those words had been repeated to him over and over remained in his memory.
But when Sigma thought that they were his oldest memory, he always wondered: Were those words influencing the way he lived?
Every time he remembered, he asked himself: Did he currently have anything to lose but his life? Anything important enough to make him want to destroy anyone who took it?
Sigma could not find anything. He just continued to passively exist.
He never considered trying to put himself forward. He just continued to crawl on and on behind the curtain of the world’s stage.
Even when he was caught in the middle of a Holy Grail War.
X X
A Closed-off Town, Kuruoka Residence
A short while earlier.
“Jester! Jester! What’s wrong?!”
Tsubaki ran over to the young Jester when she saw him suddenly collapse.
Sigma, who was looking on, inspected Jester’s body.
Is this a mystical attack?
It probably disrupts the target’s Magic Circuits directly by unleashing out-of-control, foreign magical energy inside their body.
He had not noticed any projectile spell like Gandr. What had happened?
“Ngh . . . Ah . . .”
The sight of Jester groaning in pain had Tsubaki looking panicked and on the verge of tears.
. . . Could I finish him off now?
But it would be better to move Tsubaki somewhere else first.
It was less that Sigma did not want to show Tsubaki anything gruesome and more that if she perceived him as a murderer, “Mr. Black”—presumably her Servant—might target him.
“Tsubaki,” Sigma told her, “call your mom and dad.”
“O-OK!” She answered, trembling, and dashed off up the stairs.
“. . .”
Once he had watched her leave, Sigma took a mystic tool from his belt.
It was a syringe of a liquid drug useful only in encounters with hematophages and certain summoned beasts.
The drug’s effects were on par with holy water. It would normally have no effect on a hematophage of Jester’s level.
But in his current state, Sigma decided, it was worth a try.
He looked over the boy Jester as if giving him a medical examination and placed a hand on the nape of his neck.
“. . . Heh . . . Ha ha ha. It won’t work, mister. That stuff will only kill this child’s conceptual core.”
“Maybe, but it’s worth a try.”
“Hang on. New child appearances are a pain to get ahold of. I can’t force it. . . . I need full consent to load them. . . .”
Jester explained his own magecraft through his pain, but Sigma doubted that any mage would show his hand. The information was probably either nonsense or nearly worthless.
Sigma decided that Jester must be playing for time and coolly began to stab the syringe into him, when . . .
“—”
A young child’s scream rang out from the room above.
“?!”
The young Jester took advantage of that brief opening to kick Sigma in the gut as he continued to groan.
“. . .!”
Sigma put distance between himself and Jester, but the scream had not sopped.
He saw that Jester was on his feet, although he appeared to be in pain, and decided that he could not finish him off at present.
Sigma immediately changed course, grabbed the crossbow off the table where he had left it, and leapt straight for the stairs.
If push comes to shove, will I be able to use it?
The crossbow was well-maintained, but he did not know if he could fire it immediately.
Even so, the strange beauty in red had made a point of entrusting it to him, so he thought that it would be useful for some future decision and decided to take it with him.
It could be a trap . . . but the more information, the better.
It was partly a gamble, but most of his jobs from Francesca had included an optional objective to “bring back stuff that looks like it might be fun if you see any,” so he did not feel much reluctance.
It doesn’t look like it contains any spells that curse the holder to death.
. . . Still, I’m packing a lot of Mystic Codes now. . . .
Sigma reached the top of the stairs without stopping.
There was Tsubaki, staring out the window and unable to stand.
“What is it? . . .?!”
He was able to spot the change immediately.
The world he could see outside the window had changed completely since he had last seen it.
The blue sky was covered by dark clouds, and giant, monstrous skeletons were striding through the city.
The vibrant, green lawn and trees had withered, and sinister black steam was rising from the ground in some places.
“What’s going on . . .?”
“Monsters . . . Monsters . . .”
Tsubaki had not been frightened by “Mr. Black,” but the swarm of giant skeletons terrified her.
Is she not involved in all this?
The next instant, “Mr. Black” rose out of the garden and enveloped the girl like it was trying to embrace her.
“Mr. Black . . .?”
Tsubaki sounded relieved. The shadow that seemed to be her Heroic Spirit did not answer; it only swayed as it hid the “scary world” from her eyes.
“. . . I thoughts so.”
“I want to become a Magician.”
He remembered that Tsubaki had said that.
According to Kuruoka Yūkaku, the Servant was something like Tsubaki’s protector.
What if it had responded to Tsubaki’s wish to become a Magician?
He had had a bad feeling ever since Jester had started asking questions that seemed designed to lead her in that direction.
Sigma ground his teeth at the fact that his feeling had been spot-on as he asked Tsubaki:
“Hey, Tsubaki, you’re not feeling under the weather at all, are you?”
“Huh? N-No, I’m scared, but I’m fine.”
“I see. . . .”
It seemed like the situation had nothing to do with her magical energy running dry.
Just then, Tsubaki’s father, Kuruoka Yūkaku, emerged from the garden.
“Oh, Tsubaki. What’s the matter?”
“D-Daddy! There’s lots of monsters outside and . . . Oh, no, I almost forgot! Jester! Jester is . . .!”
Tsubaki ran to her father with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Tsubaki,” her mother, who had arrived later, told her with a calm smile. “All those big, big skeletons are your friends.”
“What . . .?”
Tsubaki stared blankly up at her mother.
“That’s right, Tsubaki,” her father responded to her confusion. “Those nice skeletons are the same as Mr. Black.”
“B-But they’re not like Mr. Black. Mr. Black wouldn’t do anything that scary. . . .”
Tsubaki was looking at the giant skeletons fighting with something as they smashed building. Given that Sigma could see what looked like slashes of light from time to time, there was a good chance that it was a Saber-Class Heroic Spirit.
“Yes, they’re the same as Mr. Black. Mr. Black’s job is to keep you safe, but those skeletons are weapons. It’s normal that you’d be scared of them.”
“Huh? . . . What?”
“Hey . . .”
Sigma saw Tsubaki’s confusion and tried to stop her parents from saying anymore, but his protest died on his lips.
A figure had rocketed down from the sky.
It was Assassin, and she was covered in injuries.
“Assassin!”
“Is the girl safe?!” She shouted, ignoring her wounds. “Is that hematophage here?!”
“Yes, but he suddenly collapsed in pain, and . . .”
“So, those mages’ spell succeeded. . . . Where is he?”
Assassin sounded ready to go to finish him off immediately.
“Are you Miss ‘Assassin’?” Tsubaki called to her, under the impression that “Assassin” was a name, and tried to approach her, looking worried.
“Are you OK? You’re hurt. . . . There’s blood and . . .”
Assassin saw that Tsubaki was on the verge of tears and spoke to Tsubaki in a gentle, reassuring voice as she shifted her clothes to hide her injuries.
“Yes, I’ll be fi—”
She was sent flying by a shadowy grotesquery that appeared from beside her.
“Ngh . . .”
Assassin fought back using the shadows that stretched from the gaps in her clothing, but the monsters appeared one after another and attempted to overwhelm her with numbers.
If her enemies had had a main body or a core of some kind, Assassin would be able to turn the tables on them using the appropriate Noble Phantasm.
But Sigma had already realized that the entire ward-world was fused with their enemy’s main body.
Meaning that its “core” could only be Kuruoka Tsubaki.
“Miss!”
A panicked Tsubaki tried to run to Assassin, but her parents’ arms held her back.
“It’s not safe, Tsubaki.”
“That’s right. You wouldn’t want to be caught up in that.”
Their voices were kind, but their expressions were clearly out of place in the situation around them.
That sense of discomfort drove a wedge deep into Tsubaki, who was after all a child.
Her unease grew, and she looked like she was about to cry as she shouted:
“Why?! Aren’t they Mr. Black’s friends?! Why are those monsters hurting Miss Assassin?!”
“Well . . . that’s because she’s trying to kill you.”
“!”
A boy’s voice came from behind the group.
It was Jester, who had climbed out of the underground workshop.
He was still in the form of a young boy and tormented by Flat’s spell, but he forced himself to smile and speak to Tsubaki.
“That lady says you being alive is a problem.”
“What . . .?”
“Stop,” Sigma quietly ordered.
But Jester continued, even as his whole body shook with pain.
“Yes! That goes for Mister Sigma there too. . . . They’re bad people who want to kill you to help themselves.”
“. . . You’re wrong.”
“Me? . . . What for?”
“You don’t have to care. You’re the queen of this world; just do whatever you feel like. You want to become a Magician and get your parents to praise you, right? Don’t worry; you can do it. I’m on your side.”
Jester was taking every opportunity to emphasize that he was a “friend.”
He was probably trying to avoid being attacked by making Tsubaki see him as an ally.
Assassin was currently not drawing on magical energy from Jester, but from a Master called Ayaka via Saber. Taken another way, that meant that it was hard for “Mr. Black” to identify Jester as Assassin’s Master.
“I’m a queen?”
“Yes, you are. People who are jealous of you are trying to bully you, and Mr. Black is going to protect you from them. Forever and ever.”
Jester tried to stroke the girl’s ego and indulge her childish sense that she could do anything.
But he made one miscalculation.
Maybe if he had not suffered Flat’s attack and the shock of being abandoned by his superior as a Dead Apostle, he might have been able to understand and control Tsubaki’s feelings with a cooler head.
He did not realize.
He assumed that Tsubaki was a typical, simple-minded girl of her age suffering from illness.
In a sense, Tsubaki really was simple-minded.
In this world, Tsubaki was the very picture of a typical girl of her age.
But he failed to realize that Tsubaki’s simple-mindedness was really the product of her struggle through a plethora of suffering.
And because that was what it really was, even though she did not understand why everyone was upset, even though she was afraid, even though she was on the verge of tears, even though she wanted to be happy, she had a revelation.
“Oh . . .”
The experience she had spent her whole life accumulating lead her to a single conclusion.
“I ‘failed’ again. . . .”
Tsubaki sadly hung her head, then slowly raised it again.
Then, desperately fighting back tears, she said to everyone around her:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . . Dad, Mom.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Tsubaki. You should just relax. You don’t need to do anything.”
Nothing to be sorry for.
Even as young as she was, Tsubaki instinctively understood.
That did not mean, “You didn’t fail; nothing is your fault.” It meant, “You failed, but I’m not angry.”
So, it really was her fault that Sigma and Assassin were in trouble. Most importantly, it was her fault that those black skeletons were smashing things.
Tsubaki heard the noise of the city still being destroyed as she practically sobbed:
“B-But . . . if there are people in the buildings, everybody in the city will . . .”
“It doesn’t matter how many people die in the city. They’re just like batteries—consumable.”
“That’s right, Tsubaki. Those nice skeletons will kill all the people who are mad at you.”
“Yes, and it’s your world, Tsubaki, so Mystery will stay concealed no matter how many people die.”
“That’s wonderful. Now we just have to think about how to hide the effects on the outside world.”
. . . What?
What are they talking about?
Assassin could not help frowning as she fended off grotesqueries.
They were supposed to be brainwashed to protect Tsubaki.
There was no sign that they were under Jester’s control.
That would mean that they normally talked to their daughter that way.
After hearing what her parents had to say, Tsubaki looked imploringly at Sigma and Assassin.
But they did not know what to think, and the only answer they could give was silence.
Then, Tsubaki realized that she was not mistaken.
She could not help it.
“It’ll be okay.”
Tsubaki was shaking, but she still smiled at the “grown-ups” around her.
“I’ll do my best.”
Just like that, “Mr. Black’s” smoke clung to her body like it was being sucked into her.
“What?”
Even Jester was confused, unable to read Tsubaki’s intentions.
But first Assassin and then Sigma guessed what she was trying to do and shouted to stop her.
“Stop!”
“Wait, you don’t—”
But their words never reached her. The monstrosities that sprang out of “Mr. Black” blocked their attempt to run to her.
As a result, Tsubaki was able to carry out her whim.
“Please, Mr. Black.”
The girl’s Command Spells glowed faintly.
“Please, put everything back the way it was.”
“Wha—”
Ignoring the young Jester’s look of shock, Tsubaki made her Command Spells shine.
“Please make me all alone forever and ever.”
For just an instant, it looked like “Mr. Black” made a gesture of surprise.
“Think this through!” “Stop!”
Assassin and Jester shouted at the same time.
Sigma could do nothing but watch the scene play out.
Soon, “Mr. Black” shook intensely, like it was screaming.
The next instant, the world turned over again.
X X
Snowfield, the Kuruoka Residence
“Ngh . . .”
When Sigma woke up, he was exactly where he had been before he lost consciousness.
He was in a corner of Kuruoka Yūkaku’s house that connected to the garden.
But the sky was blue, and the lawn was lush and green. The destroyed buildings were also completely restored.
Sigma realized that he was not in the ward-world. He had been returned to reality.
As proof, only Kuruoka Tsubaki had vanished from the house without a trace.
When he looked around, he saw that Assassin appeared to have come to as well. She was clenching her fists and shouting:
“Would that little girl choose that here, in the midst of all this?!”
She staggered to her feet and glared at the Kuruokas, who were also struggling to rise, with unmistakable rage in her eyes.
“What kind of life did that child lead—did you force her to lead—for her to choose that?! What . . . What did you do to that child, to your own daughter?! What have you done?!”
“. . . I don’t know what you’re talking about, but can you afford to waste time on us?” Kuruoka Yūkaku chuckled, holding his head, and looked at what was behind Assassin and Sigma.
“What a spoilsport. . . . I never guessed she was that broken. I was looking forward to Miss Assassin sobbing as she lopped off Tsubaki’s innocent little head while Tsubaki screamed that she wanted to live. . . .”
The irritated-looking boy opened the front of his clothes, revealing a tattoo reminiscent of a revolver’s chamber near his heart.
When he brushed a hand over the design, which appeared to be inked onto the flat surface of his skin, the tattoo spun, and a different design was loaded into the uppermost chamber.
Instantly, the boy Jester’s body swelled into a redhaired werewolf over two meters tall and leapt.
“See you, Assassin! I’ll have fun tormenting you with my love next time!”
The creature, whose speech had become coarser, climbed straight onto the roof of the house and flipped, speeding through the air away from Assassin.
“. . .! You won’t escape me!”
Assassin kicked off the ground and vanished in pursuit of Jester, ignoring her own injuries.
That left only Sigma and the Kuruokas.
“We’ve had a rough time of it. I can’t believe the Command Spells ended up in our daughter instead of us.”
“Yes, but we should see that as proof. The Command Spells chose Tsubaki because, as young as she is, the quality of her Magic Circuits has surpassed ours.”
The couple’s matter-of-fact conversation made Sigma uneasy.
? What’s this feeling?
Were they still being manipulated by Tsubaki’s Servant?
No, Sigma decided, what felt out of place to him was nothing like that.
“Oh, you’re . . . Sigma, right? You’re supposed to work for Faldeus. Can you get in touch with him?”
“Dear, we have to get to the hospital first.”
“. . . You’re right. I guess we’ll pick up something to cut her right hand off with over there.”
“Yes.”
“Cut off . . . her right hand?” Sigma could not help asking.
“Yes, that’s right. It looks like that little brat Tsubaki went and used two Command Spells, but as long as there’s one left, we can reestablish a contract with that Heroic Spirit. With a Heroic Spirit that powerful, we’ll be able to secure a considerable advantage if we cooperate with Faldeus.”
Sigma understood.
This couple remembered everything that had happened while they were being controlled.
In spite of that, the first words out of their mouth were not concern for Tsubaki but plans to cut off her right hand and steal her Command Spells.
Oh, that’s right. This is how mages are.
The Magic Crest must still belong to one of the parents. I doubt they’d be too disappointed even if Tsubaki died. All that they care about is a blood-related individual to make inherit their magecraft.
Blood-related.
“. . . You’re going to cut off Tsubaki’s hand?”
“Yes, it will be fine. She’s unconscious anyway; we don’t have to worry about her screaming. Of course, we wouldn’t want her to lose the ability to bear children one day, so we’ll need to take the utmost care with her heart and nerves. Ask Faldeus and Chief Reeve to handle the hospital staff while we work. I don’t want to ask Francesca, but in a worst-case scenario, her magecraft would make it possible to preserve at least Tsubaki’s reproductive capabilities even with her head removed.”
Yūkaku seemed to be speaking dispassionately, without exaggeration or sarcasm.
Then, Sigma realized.
His strange feeling did not come from without.
It was an “emotion” welling up from deep inside him.
“You there, you there. Listen closely, my little brothers and sisters.”
Inside Sigma, a voice echoed.
“You must destroy anyone who tries to take something from us.”
A voice from the past. Words that no longer meant anything.
But it was that voice that stirred Sigma’s heart.
Oh.
I see. Is that it?
I thought that . . . Kuruoka Tsubaki and I lived in different worlds.
She’s a mage, but she has parents. Blood-related parents.
That had nothing to do with it.
Tsubaki’s smile, the way he and the others had been treated in the past, and the face of the brother he had killed with his own hands flashed through his brain one after another.
What is it? What is this weird feeling?
Suddenly, Sigma realized that he was holding something.
It was the crossbow he had carried out of the basement in the dream.
“Hmm? . . . Why do you have that? It’s difficult to use as a weapon, and now that all the Heroic Spirits are assembled, it can’t be used in this War. Would you return it to us?”
As he listened to Yūkaku speak, Sigma suddenly had an idea.
“. . . I said I’d protect Tsubaki, didn’t I? With my own lips?”
And that mysterious being in red had trusted him immediately.
“He’s mumbling something. . . . Dear, is this mercenary safe?”
“Oh, he can’t do anything inside the house.”
Tsubaki’s father must have had a lot of confidence in the house’s defenses, because he seemed entirely unafraid of Sigma.
But He was not careless or conceited either; Sigma could tell that his fingers were ready to cast a spell that would be the end of Sigma at any time.
Sigma drew in a short breath and resumed the inhuman expression of the magecraft-using mercenary as he said:
“Excuse me. Mr. Kuruoka Yūkaku, I will report the particulars to Mr. Faldeus.”
“Yes, please do. I won’t mind if you tell him about our Heroic Spirit—as much as you were able to understand, anyway.”
“Yes, sir. And one more thing, Mr. Kuruoka. I ought to notify you.”
“Notify me?” Yūkaku looked suspicious.
“This is a Holy Grail War,” Sigma stated dispassionately, “and I am one of the participants.”
“And? I assume that Assassin is your Heroic Spirit?” Yūkaku asked suspiciously, unaware that he was making a fatal error.
He was under the mistaken impression that Sigma was a low-level magecraft-user separated from his Heroic Spirit.
That even if something went wrong, all he had to do was finish Sigma off before he could use a Command Spell to recall Assassin.
“My direct superior is Francesca, not Faldeus . . . and I’ve been given permission to conduct the War as I see fit.”
“Hey . . . Don’t get any funny ideas.”
Before Yūkaku, who sensed a threatening atmosphere, could move his fingers, Sigma finished his last sentence.
Even going out of his way to say it was part of his plan to incite Yūkaku to act.
“This is a declaration of war from me to you.”
“I’m impressed. True, we told where the spells were, but I didn’t expect you’d manage to intercept them all.”
Several minutes later.
One of the “shadows”—the elderly captain—grinned from where he stood beside Sigma.
“I managed it because your information was accurate. Otherwise, it would have been me who went down. . . . Thank you.”
“Don’t be so quick to thank your Servant. It’s give-and-take between us,” the captain chuckled and looked at the two masses lying on the floor.
“Ah . . . Ngh . . . Gah . . .” “How . . .?”
Human-shaped lumps of meat, their eyes rolled back in their heads, that simply continued to groan meaninglessly.
“What’re you going to do with them? If you leave them be, they’ll recover thanks to their Magic Crest.”
“I’ve blocked their means to recover. Given the quality of their Magic Crest, they should remain in this state for half a month.”
They were Mr. and Mrs. Kuruoka, their arms and legs numbed and the majority of their Magic Circuits burned out using a specialized Mystic Code.
Faced with the couple, who were just barely able to breathe but nothing else, Sigma said:
“I’m hesitating. If I had orders to kill them, I wouldn’t hesitate, and if I had orders not to kill them, I wouldn’t,” he continued expressionlessly, without any feeling for the couple lying in front of him. “But I don’t have orders this time. I don’t even have a long-term goal.”
“But you have decided where you should go. Am I wrong?”
“I said that I’d protect Tsubaki,” Sigma answered the “shadow” with artificial wings tonelessly as ever, “but I think she would be sad if she learned that her parents were dead after she woke up. . . . She might even blame herself for it and commit suicide. But if I let them live, the same thing will just happen again.”
“So, you leave them technically alive? Honestly, that technology’s incredible. It paralyzes every Magic Circuit and nerve in the body. It’s definitely more of a magecraft-user’s approach than a mage’s.”
“Francesca made me learn all about this kind of thing.”
Then, he looked at Kuruoka Tsubaki’s mother and told the shadow:
“My mother is gone. Francesca told me that she died in a Holy Grail War in Japan.”
The “words that no longer meant anything” ran over and over through Sigma’s head.
“Your parents were taken by people who came from outside.”
“All of your fathers were killed by invaders filled with outside corruption.”
“Your mother was kidnapped by a terrible demon who came from outside.”
“So, destroy. Destroy anyone who tries to take from us.”
“So, fight. Fight so that one day we can take your mother back.”
When those voices had dwindled, the shadow spoke, as if he had gauged the timing.
“Yes, you were saying that before.”
The boy with serpent staff and half his face petrified looked at Sigma’s face, stepped a little closer to him, and asked:
“. . . Do you have any thoughts about parents?”
“I just thought . . . that I hope my mother wasn’t like them.”
Sigma knew that it no longer meant anything, but he still wished for it.
“So, what are you going to do now?”
Sigma looked up at the sky as he answered the female “shadow” dressed like an aviator.
“I was told that I could act freely. That’s all I’ll do. Faldeus will probably try to kill me, but I think Francesca will be happy.”
“But ‘being happy’ is all she’ll do. I doubt that monster will do anything to help you.”
Sigma answered the captain with a silent nod.
“I know. But if it makes her happy, that should pay her back for taking care of me until now.”
Still holding the crossbow, Sigma made a declaration to himself and to his Servant “Watcher.”
A declaration that he was about to take center stage.
“I’m going . . . to destroy this system, the Holy Grail War.”
Originally Posted by Comun
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