Chapter 38

Translator: Willia

They were inside the tower section of the building Valery's group had just purchased.

The ceiling separating them from the floor above was wooden, while the curved walls of the cylindrical tower were made of brick.

They had yet to properly furnish the place, so a round table was all there was. Household supplies and food had simply been piled up against one wall.

Since the building had originally been designed for defense, anywhere but the upper floors suffered from poor natural light. On the other hand, it seemed perfect for discussing things in secret.

Valery, Knut, and the three members of the Black Hand sat around the round table.

Reilly spoke first.

"This is something only the kids from the Monastery know. It's a story about the Abbot that's been passed down from our predecessors all the way to us."

After beginning, he looked at Roy and Ella, his companions, childhood friends, and family. They were so close that they could communicate with nothing but their eyes, but right now, all he could read in them was unease.

Reilly composed himself and continued.

"You know as well as anyone, Salt Prince, that Grinnen is the sort of place where criminals of every kind end up after they've sunk as low as they can go. The Abbot was one of them. From what I heard, he used to be a Slave Merchant, but when he was young, a Mage captured him and castrated him while using him for experiments. Except that castration was supposedly a kind of price he paid to a Demon. We don't know what ability he received in return. But those of us who grew up in the Monastery fear that more than anything. 'The Abbot sees and hears everything. Any child who fails to keep a secret will be visited by the Demon and subjected to the cruelest punishment.' That's what we were told......"

What the hell was he talking about? Valery found it absurd that Reilly was telling such a bizarre story with a completely straight face.

"Enough about his background. What's his schedule? Where does he go and where does he stay at different times of day?"

Knut asked the question. Reilly and the others seemed terrified of all this talk about Demons, but like Valery, Knut didn't appear particularly interested.

Valery remained silent for the moment and watched.

"There isn't much of a route to speak of. He only moves between the Monastery and the vegetable garden nearby, always according to a fixed schedule. He wakes up in the morning, mourns the Dead Gods, copies famous Oracles, records the reports he's received, tends the garden, mourns again, teaches the children, and goes to sleep. The problem is that the Abbot always has five guards around him. There are ten guards in total. They rotate shifts, and two of them guard him at night."

"Anything he always eats? Any habits? Does he scratch his nose a lot or something?"

"He only ever eats food he's grown himself. I don't think he has any particular habits."

"Then poisoning him will be difficult. We'll have to kill him directly. Looks like our best chance is when the largest number of guards are asleep. Kill all eight sleeping guards in one go, then storm the Abbot's room together. Wid, what do you think?"

Knut hadn't managed to assassinate Ketilmund for nothing. He arrived at a solution immediately.

The only thing Knut had overlooked back then was that he hadn't expected Valery to be as skilled as he was. Everything else had been flawless.

He had assigned an attendant to keep watch and maintain contact, used that to learn Valery's movements and sleeping hours, and then tried to finish him off in one strike.

From Knut's perspective, Valery had simply looked startled and fled. How could he possibly have expected him to turn around and attack?

Normally, when faced with the threat of death, people ran without looking back.

It was impressive enough to keep one's wits and counterattack, but for Valery to exploit the opening perfectly, alone, had been almost impossible to imagine.

In other words, barring an unpredictable variable of that magnitude, Knut was quite capable when it came to planning and carrying out operations.

It was only when his father or brothers were involved that he became powerless. With everyone else, he was cold and merciless.

Valery had felt somewhat sorry for him because of all the abuse he'd suffered from his father, but it was also true that the abuse had twisted his personality.

Taking all that together, Valery somehow felt that Knut resembled the person he himself had once been.

"What kind of person was your mother, by any chance?"

"She was one of the Valkyries. Why?"

The Valkyries were the King's daughters, in other words, princesses.

One might wonder how it was possible to behead a princess, but there were nearly as many princesses as princes, and once a princess married out of the royal family, the privileges of royalty no longer extended to her.

Of course, if her father the King were still alive, others would at least have been wary of offending him. Unfortunately, Knut's mother was not the daughter of the current King, Helgi. She was the daughter of the previous King, Founder-King Sigmund, and so had no one to protect her.

A man who had become King by killing all his brothers and nephews could hardly have felt any affection for a half sister he'd never even met.

Knut's mother was far from the only one. Many of the Valkyries met tragic fates after the deaths of their royal fathers.

Come to think of it, that made Valery and Knut cousins.

"......"

"Being one of the Valkyries is just a pretty shell. Don't start treating me differently because of it."

"......I'm not. It's just something new I learned, that's all. Anyway, tonight, we're going to be the Demons. And we're going to demand a price from the Abbot. Death. Tell me about the terrain around the Monastery and its internal layout."

Before regression, when Valery killed the master of the Black Hand, he'd simply marched in with an army and slaughtered everyone indiscriminately. Because of that, he knew little about the exact terrain or the building's internal layout.

But now they had only a handful of people and needed to carry out a precise assassination operation, so he required as much detailed information as possible.

Valery questioned the trio further about every detail he could think of: how many people stood night watch at each hour, where they were stationed, the entrances, the layout of the corridors, whether there was a basement, and so on.

Once he'd heard everything, he worked out the operation in detail. They decided who would eliminate the sentries, who would enter first once they were inside, what formation they would use, who would take the front, middle, and rear, and what hand signals they would use.

The trio listened in silence before tilting their heads and exchanging looks. Then Ella spoke.

"Isn't this what we do?"

Who did they think Valery had first learned this sort of knowledge and technique from? Of course it was similar.

"Similar is good. Makes it easier for us to work together. We won't scout the area beforehand. He's cautious enough that even the slightest sign of something being wrong could make him hide. And the three of you will stay here with us until the operation begins. It's just to establish a minimum level of trust, so understand."

If they split up and agreed to meet again later, an unexpected variable could arise in the meantime. And if any of the three had second thoughts, the consequences could be fatal.

The trio all nodded as though they understood.

"In a way, I suppose this is the first commission since the organization's founding. Payment will be your loyalty. Do we need some kind of written contract?"

"No. We'd merely be escaping the Demon's chains to bind ourselves with the chains of a contract. We've only chosen the better set of chains."

"Good, then. Think of it however you like."

Valery spoke indifferently. If one listened closely, there really were quite a few ways in which he resembled Knut. Perhaps being detached and cold ran in the family.

As did treating the few people they opened their hearts to rather well.

Night deepened. The air was chilly enough to feel cold, but the temperature was perfect for moving around.

Far off in the reed beds, an enormous chorus of frogs croaked, accompanied by the ha, ho calls of some bird Valery couldn't identify. Those sounds filled the darkness in place of light.

Valery and Knut dressed and equipped themselves appropriately for the assassination. They wore close-fitting black clothes, masks that exposed only their eyes, short swords, and several daggers.

An assassin was better off short and quick. Perhaps because of that, the outfit suited Knut better than the taller Valery.

In any case, Valery signaled that no one was to speak from this point on. Reilly nodded and took the lead.

Night operations were difficult unless one's night vision was exceptionally good. Old stories were full of night raids, but in reality, such things were far from easy.

Fortunately, both Valery and Knut could see well at night.

The group walked west along the outskirts of Grinnen. From time to time they saw crimes being committed in the distance, but they ignored them and kept moving. That was simply what nights were like.

Since they walked single file, they had little reason to look at one another. At one point, however, Ella glanced at Valery and thought, Huh? For a moment, it looked as though his eyes were glowing.

But after they passed near a campfire and she looked again, there was no glow at all. She figured she must have imagined it.

In any case, the group of five finally reached the Monastery. They already knew where the guards stood and how many there were, so they smoothly made their way toward its weakest point.

Two men were stationed at the entrance. One was asleep, while the other sat there bored, carving something with a knife.

As they had agreed beforehand, Valery signaled that he and Reilly would take one each and kill them simultaneously. They needed to strike at the same time so the other man couldn't cry out.

The two approached quickly without making a sound, clamped hands over the guards' mouths from behind, and slit their throats with daggers. They held the men's heads tightly against their bodies to keep them from making any noise until they died.

"Ghk! Ghhk!"

Blood welled up from their throats and spilled between Valery's and Reilly's fingers, staining their clothes. Once they were certain the guards were dead, they gently lowered them to the ground and moved the bodies somewhere out of the light.

Then they quickly picked the lock and entered the Monastery. The corridor was pitch-black, with nothing visible at all, so they moved in the proper direction by holding on to the person ahead of them.

Their first destination was the rooms where the guards slept. Of the ten in total, two were still guarding the Abbot's room at this hour, while the remaining eight slept four to a room.

They entered one room first, each took position beside a bed, and drew their daggers. Knut remained outside to keep watch in case anything unexpected happened.

Valery counted three, two, one with his fingers. At the signal, they all clamped hands firmly over the sleeping guards' mouths and drove their daggers into their throats.

Anyone stabbed in the throat while asleep would instinctively jerk awake, but their bodies stiffened, so they were surprisingly unable to thrash around much.

They kept the guards' mouths covered until all four were completely dead, then exchanged glances and removed their hands once they were certain.

When they stepped outside, however, Knut had just finished killing someone and was lowering the body to the floor.

Since they couldn't speak, they weren't able to ask what had happened and could only guess. Most likely, the man had gotten up briefly to relieve himself.

Two of them dragged the corpse into the room and hid it, then moved on to the next room. There, they killed all four men at once in the same manner.

Their hands and daggers became so coated with blood that they had to keep wiping them on their clothes. The grease would dull the blades. In particular, they kept their right hands, the ones they used to grip their swords, as clean as possible.

Only the Abbot's room remained.

Valery checked the group, then took the lead this time. Instead of a dagger, he drew his short sword, a fresh blade that hadn't been used once during the operation.

There should have been two men guarding the room, but only one was visible outside. Had the man Knut killed been the other guard? Or had he gone somewhere else?

Light was leaking through the gap around the Abbot's door. Valery couldn't tell whether the man was simply still awake or whether he'd noticed something.

It didn't matter. They had to move quickly. Hesitation during an operation was a sin.

Valery crouched so low that he was nearly touching the ground, then shot forward with the speed of a snake.

Once he was within range, he sprang upward like a released spring and slashed the guard's throat, then immediately flung open the door and burst inside.

"Ghk! Khk!"

The guard with the slashed throat made a sound.

A fire in the hearth and a lantern illuminated the room. Someone who appeared to be the Abbot had been doing something on the bed and spun around in shock.

Valery lunged at him like lightning and swung his sword down from above. Naked, the Abbot raised an arm to block, but the sharp blade sliced through it and split his skull halfway open.

Thud!

Clang!

It killed him instantly, but everything had happened so fast that Valery had brought the sword down with all his strength, snapping the blade. His brain damaged, the Abbot's body gave one violent convulsion before going still.

But there was another person in the bed. A woman. She immediately attacked Valery with a dagger.

Valery released his broken sword and tried to evade, but he didn't need to. Knut had entered almost at the same instant, severed the woman's arm, dropped his sword, drew a dagger, and stabbed her in the throat.

In a real fight, unless an opponent stood still, the throat wasn't an easy target. Yet even in that dim room, Knut struck her throat precisely.

"Kyaagh!"

A moment later, the woman who had been with the Abbot died as well. With that, the operation was over. Wasn't he supposed to have been castrated? What the hell had he been doing with a woman?

Valery looked back and saw Reilly, Roy, and Ella standing there stupidly, staring at him.

They simply couldn't believe that the man who had controlled them mentally their entire lives was dead. He died that easily? Then where was the Demon?

Now that the operation was over, Valery spoke.

"Stop standing there like idiots. Let's empty the safe and get out."

Valery and Knut immediately searched the room. Stacks and bundles of documents filled the shelves. Valery skimmed through a few, but his expression quickly twisted.

They contained records of all sorts of bizarre and revolting acts, things so vile they were difficult even to put into words.

There was far more than simply making children pick pockets, cutting off their fingers, and selling them off. Many of the things described there were beyond anything Valery had imagined.

"A Demon after all."

Knut, reading beside him, spoke indifferently.

Valery gathered the documents and threw them all into the fire to burn.

Then they searched the room again and found a key. Knut felt along the walls and discovered a hidden compartment. The two of them handled it all so deftly that they looked like born thieves.

When Knut twisted something resembling a sculpture hanging on the wall, several bricks rotated. There was a small space behind them, and inside sat a small safe.

Valery brought over the lantern, held it up for light, inserted the key, and turned it. To his surprise, there wasn't a single coin inside. There was only a sheathed dagger.

"What's this? Is it expensive?"

Valery spoke as he reached toward it, but Knut hurriedly grabbed his hand and pulled it back.

"Don't."

"Why?"

"I think that might be Riðill."

"Riðill?"

"Yeah. Regin the dwarf's dagger. The one from when he and Sigurd killed the dragon. It might be cursed. You shouldn't touch it carelessly."

Knut collected daggers along with toys and various other odds and ends, so he had seen an illustration of Riðill in a reference book. He couldn't be certain, of course, but there was no harm in being cautious.

Valery had seen several mythical artifacts before regression, Gramr among them, but he had never seen Riðill.

"Hold on."

Knut looked around for something like a pair of tongs. Naturally, there was nothing of the sort, so he used two swords to pinch the dagger between them and lift it out.

Then he tore a bedsheet into a makeshift bundle, dropped the dagger he believed to be Riðill onto it, and wrapped it up tightly to make sure no one accidentally touched it.

"What, is there a Demon sealed inside?"

"Maybe."

"Hey, what are you doing? Let's go."

Valery turned toward the trio as he spoke.

"Huh? Huh? Yes?"

They had performed perfectly throughout the operation, but apparently seeing the Abbot dead had shocked them that badly.

"Come find me once you've pulled yourselves together. Let's go."

Valery left them behind and simply walked away with Knut.

For a long while, the trio stared at the dead Abbot lying on the bed. His arm had been severed, a broken sword was lodged in his skull, and blood had soaked the blankets and mattress. Wasn't he supposed to have been castrated by a Mage? What about the Demon?

Nothing grand was required to dominate someone mentally. Constant indoctrination beginning in childhood could become a chain that a person remained unable to break for the rest of their life.

The stories about being castrated and making a bargain with a Demon had all been nothing but childish tales.

The Abbot the trio now saw before them was no different from the countless people they had assassinated in the past. He was merely one more human being among the many ruled by their own desires.

Only now did Reilly, Roy, and Ella realize something. The absolute rule of secrecy had never existed to protect the organization. It had been a shackle meant to stop them from escaping.

In any case, there was no longer any need for them to remain bound. Yet the feeling of liberation was closer to emptiness than joy or satisfaction.

Chapter 10 – Escape and Liberation. End.