The sixth match ended in defeat for Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.
Kaete the Round Table, considered to be the third faction involved in the Aureatia political conflict, had fallen from power, cited as the perpetrator behind the castle garden theater bombing. Mestelexil's whereabouts were unknown directly following the match, and with a warrant out for Kaete's arrest, Kaete the Round Table was believed to be on the run within Aureatia, together with Kiyazuna the Axle.
However, there was one more unknown collaborator within Kaete's camp. Aureatia's Fifteenth General, Haizesta the Gathering Spot.
Losing the faction he had stealthily been a part of, Haizesta made an appearance at the Aureatia Central Assembly Hall for the first time in a long while.
As he walked through the corridor on the way to his destination, he spotted a familiar face. Since they tried to pass by without a word, he smacked them on the back.
"Hiya."
"Ow! Wh-what in the world is your problem, Haizesta?! I'd ask you to keep the meaningless violence to a minimum!"
Nineteenth Minister, Hyakka the Heat Haze. A petite and seemingly high- strung civil officer, the complete opposite of the boorish and large-built Haizesta.
"Got a real annoyed look, don't we?" "It's got nothing to do with you."
"C'mon, you won your match, didn't you? You could stand to be happy about it."
"What do you know about how I feel?! Anyway, why are you here in the Central Assembly Hall and not the Military Ministry?! I've told you over and over again that there are several important matters piling up while you've neglected to visit your office in the Military Ministry!"
"Sorry, but I've got some other minor business to handle today… This sermon sounds like it'll be a long one. Give the Sixways Exhibition stuff all you got, Hyakka."
"Ow!"
Haizesta smacked Hyakka on the back two more times and went to take his leave.
"…General Haizesta! Um!" Hyakka called out to the departing man. He appeared to have blurted it out without thinking. "I…I'm taking my work seriously. Not just the Sixways Exhibition—always. But… well…I always bemoan that…there must have been some other way to do things…"
"Hmm."
Hyakka the Heat Haze was a man unable to honestly revel in good fortune.
The fact that he had confronted the Sixways Exhibition with all his effort and might, only to claim victory in spite of his own personal blunder, had further exacerbated his sense of inferiority.
"Nyeh-heh-heh… Being able to do things seriously is quite a feat already, isn't it? I don't have the talent for that whatsoever… Downright jealous, really."
"B-but that alone… It's meaningless if you're not strong, isn't it?" "I wonder. Being strong ain't always a good thing, see."
At the very least, the strong weren't always guaranteed to survive.
Kaete the Round Table, Kiyazuna the Axle, and Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge were all powerful beyond imagination. Losing shouldn't have ever been a possibility for them, and they still ended up defeated.
In the Sixways Exhibition, Hyakka had won, and Haizesta had lost. That said everything.
"Way I see it… Those guys who can win while they're weak are a helluva lot more advantaged than the ones who've gotta be strong to have any hope of winning…"
"…That doesn't sound like a compliment at all."
"Well, that's 'cause I wasn't complimenting you… Nyeh-heh-heh…" With that simple response, Haizesta began to walk off once more.
It was something that didn't concern him at all. He thought it had been out of character for him.
If I had been able to take things seriously, heck, maybe Kaete would've won out, too…
Most likely, that wasn't the case. Kaete's group must have exhausted every
possibility the best they could.
Even if Haizesta had made his own moves, the enemy may have just gone one or two moves above him.
However, he did want to try carrying through his duty to the other three in his own frivolous way. Nothing more than a flight of whimsy.
He arrived at the documents room at the end of the hallway. He put his hand on the door, but it was locked.
"I'm coming in."
He grabbed the steel doorknob. He twisted it.
There was a dull, groaning sensation. Haizesta the Gathering Spot didn't actually possess any lockpicking skills.
"…I don't remember giving you permission to enter."
There was only one person lingering in the records room—Aureatia's Thirteenth Minister, Enu the Distant Mirror.
In the backlight peeking in from the window behind him, it was only his two eyes, wide like an owl, that stood out.
"Really? Well, I mean, I'm already in here and all… Say something first next time," Haizesta said.
Haizesta remained in his spot in front of the door and fixed his eyes on Enu.
An eccentric man who didn't belong to any faction despite how extremely capable he was and who sponsored, in the Sixways Exhibition, a survivor from the same Obsidian Eyes he himself destroyed.
Haizesta's responsibility within Kaete's camp was to investigate the personal background of the man in front of him.
Even after Mestelexil's defeat in turn made Kaete's entire camp vanish, Haizesta continued to investigate Enu with his uncouth intuition and tenacity… and he had arrived at a single conclusion.
"You weren't a corpse to begin with, huh." "Hmph."
"The person leading an antivampire mission's obviously gonna be forced to undergo a thorough quarantine, but…even if someone hasn't been turned into a corpse, that doesn't necessarily mean they can't be manipulated… Nyeh-heh- heheh. Like someone's been taken hostage to make you fall in line, for example, or there's something set up to kill you at a moment's notice…"
"…The Obsidian Eyes matter, is it? I am indeed cooperating with them during the Sixways Exhibition. I'll admit that. Now then, Haizesta, do you plan on indicting me?"
"Well, I don't know, see… Just bringing this information over to Rosclay or Haade doesn't guarantee they'll believe me, for one… It's lonely not having a faction for your own."
"Whether you're being honest or not, with the first round over, it's too late anyway. Zeljirga's already returned to Obsidian Eyes' main force. Supposing you did kill me right here, it likely wouldn't put a stop to their activities," Enu matter-of-factly replied. He had eyes that seldom blinked. It was said that one could tell if a person had been turned into a corpse or not by their pupils' reactions, but he clearly seemed to still be minian.
"Basically, your plan from the very beginning was to capture Mestelexil in the first round—but it doesn't seem that way to me, really… Nyeh-heh-heheh."
In the cramped records room, Haizesta's low laughter reverberated with an eerie clarity.
Conspiring with Obsidian Eyes to seize Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge—if that was Enu the Distant Mirror's goal as well, his own actions didn't line up.
Enu was put in charge of vampire subjugation from before the Sixways Exhibition was ever decided on. It would have been impossible for him to be cognizant of Mestelexil's existence prior to the Particle Storm interception campaign.
"Enu. You've interacted with that National Defense Research Institute a number of times now, haven't you? Despite that national defense name, the organization hasn't been officially sanctioned by the Aureatia government, has it…? What did you do?"
"..."
"Before the Sixways Exhibition…you had your own plan you were pushing forward. Isn't that right?"
Enu closed the document he was holding in his hand.
A long silence passed between them, but his eyes remained fixed straight on Haizesta's own.
There was nowhere to run in the tiny records room. Should Enu try to fly out from the window behind him, Haizesta could likely grab hold of him far before he could pull it off.
"Haizesta. What do you think about Taren the Punished?"
"She was a real fine woman… I mean, I bet that's not what you're asking, but that's how I saw her."
"In this age…there remain numerous powerful figures that could potentially
destroy the world. I believe Taren was trying to control these figures and bring about ruin through an absolute fear in place of the True Demon King. Ultimately, it merely shaped a war that forced even more death and destruction on the people."
"Nhehehheh… That cruel streak of hers really drove me wild, too."
"On the point of forcing sacrifices to maintain control, the Sixways Exhibition underway right now is the same as Taren's war. There needs to be some way beyond fear to control the people. Kaete was trying to accomplish that through the technology of the Beyond… My way of doing things is different. A means to unify their minds and not under their control."
Enu's objective was unknown. What was he trying to do?
Nevertheless, as he made progress through his string of investigations, there was one thing Haizesta came to understand.
The man sponsoring Obsidian Eyes was not just being used by a vampire. It was that he was trying to use a vampire for himself.
"…Hmph. If you're done saying your piece, then I may as well ask… Any plans on giving Mestelexil back?" asked Haizesta.
"Impossible. Now that he has been handed over to Obsidian Eyes, I'm unable to intervene."
"What about lifting the manhunt for the bombing culprit?"
"If you're able to fabricate a more likely suspect and the evidence to back him, that can be done. Of course, it's a matter of whether you can manage that or not."
"Sheesh. Not much fun threatening you, huh?" "..."
For a brief moment, a silence fell between the two men. For one moment.
"Sheeh!"
It was not a laugh that slipped from Haizesta's lips. It was a sharp exhale, bestial and almost abrasive.
A crack rent the floorboards where he stepped, while at the same time, he grabbed Enu's throat with his right arm.
"Whatever your…pet theory or goals are…doesn't make a damn difference to me. Enu the Distant Mirror."
"...Ngh! Glngh..."
Haizesta was using as little strength as possible. The power of his grip, enough to twist the lock off a door, could've crushed a person's neck down to
the bone.
Haizesta the Gathering Spot was himself one of the monsters born from the era of the Demon King. A powerful individual, equipped with aberrant brute force, as if birthed as a reversion from minia to beast.
"If you don't understand something, then you just gotta kill it instead.
Y'know…that faction matched my character to a T. Nyeh-heh-heheh…"
The only way in and out of the room lay at Haizesta's back. However, if he jumped down from the window, he could exit out from the building through a blind spot. He would twist off the iron fence surrounding the grounds and make off with Enu.
A savage plan with no regard to the consequences. If Kaete was still around, he would've never allowed him to act so arbitrarily.
"You're coming with me. Enu the Distant Mirror." "General Haizesta!"
A completely different voice interrupted the scene.
It was a familiar face. Opening the door, Hyakka the Heat Haze entered the records room.
Haizesta hadn't seen anyone besides Enu and himself have any business with the records room, and of all people, Hyakka was the most problematic person to deal with.
"Wh-what in the…? What're are you doing?!" There was a thump.
"Whoa now, Hyakka. Sorry, but now's not the—" Haizesta's words were cut off.
His breathing itself was interrupted with a sudden intense pain. "..."
Hyakka was in a bizarre stance, the palm of his right hand held upward and stretched out in front of him.
By flipping his right wrist down, he threw the second and third pebble. Two thumps.
They stabbed into Haizesta's chest in succession. His fingertips went numb, no longer able to keep his grip on Enu, and Haizesta's massive body collapsed to the ground.
"…Don't cause us any unneeded trouble. Enu the Distant Mirror."
Hyakka the Heat Haze spoke in a cold voice, as if an entirely different person.
Had Hyakka's voice even from a moment prior actually been the man's
voice?
"Your death could be brushed off with a laugh, but we need to dispose of every person who gets information out of you."
"…Koff, gahak… I'm aware. If he hadn't tried to, you wouldn't be saving me at all."
Haizesta, collapsed on the ground, could only see the shadow Hyakka cast from the hallway. That alone was already unlike the man. Its height, and even its sex, was entirely different.
The thing that transformed into what appeared to be an elf woman's form had both eyes covered with bandages.
"Don't think we'll be saving you like this the next time. Especially in my case…as I can only move these eyes of mine unprotected for a limited amount of time."
A mimic…
Constructs created by altering the cells of undifferentiated races. A species that could mutate into any form at will, with an extremely low confirmed population.
—Not only that, but she was simultaneously a corpse of Obsidian Eyes. First-formation vanguard, Lena the Obscured.
"…Middle of the damn day in the Central Assembly Hall and you're telling me…someone this abhorrent…slipped right on in…"
The strong weren't guaranteed to survive. That was absolutely right. Haizesta knew that.
With a tiny pebble. Just a few drops of poison. Within a single second of his attention going astray. "Nyeh-heh-heheh…"
Haizesta the Gathering Spot's consciousness ended right at that moment.