by Ryota Hori
Rolfe’s eyesight gradually recovered, and the first thing he saw was the door, glowing in crimson. The surrounding air wavered with heat daze, as if a portion of hell itself had manifested there. The door, however, remained intact. No, if anything, with the door burning hot now, it was impossible to approach it. Things were even worse.
This is why I tried to stop her. What is Lady Celia going to do now...
However, before Rolfe could make his will known to Celia, the door crumbled away with a loud noise.
“Come, let us enter.” Celia’s voice echoed.
The soldiers crossed the door, which had been cooled to the point where touching it would bond one’s skin to it, filtering into the room.
“I see... So you used the difference in thermal expansion to shatter the door. Most impressive.”
Celia nodded lightly at Rolfe’s words of praise. She had first used fire thaumaturgy, which made Rolfe believe she was trying to melt the door. He had tried to warn her of the problems that would cause, and then tried to stop her. But Celia understood the issue perfectly well. If she were to use flames strong enough to melt the door, the surrounding area would be reduced into a burning inferno. Celia and Rolfe would probably get away unscathed, but the more simple soldiers likely wouldn’t.
Additionally, they wouldn’t be able to enter the room until the air cooled down. So Celia doused the door with massive heat, and then used frost thaumaturgy to chill down the seething door. The heat caused the metal door to expand, and by chilling it rapidly, the door shattered.
“Come, Sir Rolfe. Let us hurry inside.”
Rolfe nodded silently at Celia’s words.
“Move. What are you standing in front of the door for? Go in already.”
“What’s the matter? Is Grandfather safe?!”
Cutting past the soldiers who stood in front of the door, their breath visible in white puffs, the two of them witnessed the site of a tragedy. The rusty aroma unique to spilt blood filled their nostrils; a scent Rolfe was all too used to.
“Lady Celia... What... What is this...?”
“This is horrible...”
The sight rendered them speechless. They may have predicted this somewhere in their hearts, but even with the reality of it thrust before their eyes, it was still hard to believe.
“Wh-What about Grandfather?”
Looking around, Celia caught sight of the white robe lying on the floor, a unique robe her grandfather especially favored. There could be no mistaking it.
“Nooo... Grandfather!” Celia fell to her knees, collapsing onto the floor.
Rolfe hurriedly supported her, but Celia tore away from his arms violently and ran over to Gaius, who was sprawled on the floor face first. She picked his body up in a panic. Her hands were smeared with blood.
“This is... too gruesome.” Rolfe grimaced, looking at Gaius’s body lying in Celia’s arms.
Even he, who had run through countless battlefields, could only recall seeing a corpse so savagely beaten a handful of times. From the injury on the back of Gaius’s head, Rolfe surmised he was either attacked from behind or beaten while crouching. If it was the former, it stood as testament to the assailant’s skill; if it was the latter, it stood as proof of their cruelty.
In either case, this would be a formidable foe indeed... Hmm, this is...
Somehow convincing Celia to let go of Gaius’s body, they laid it back down on the floor, and upon closer inspection, Rolfe grimaced.
A single blow to the throat. That was probably the fatal wound. In which case...
The assailant had blocked Gaius’s windpipe, and then delivered a finishing blow to the back of his head.
“Who would do something so horrible...” That small whisper escaped Rolfe’s lips.
Those words were heavy with wrath and sorrow. Rolfe had been on countless battlefields, and the sight of a corpse wouldn’t normally make his heart waver. He would only think of such a sight as the weak having met their demise. But seeing the corpse of Gaius Valkland was different. Gaius fought for many years on Rolfe’s side as a companion, and had helped build up O’ltormea into the great country that it was now.
It was impossible to keep one’s cool in the face of a friend’s death, but Rolfe did all he could to restrain the urge to scream out.
“Is that not obvious?!” A scream of hatred erupted from Celia’s lips. “It was the otherworlder he summoned!”
Her eyes burned with dark flames of wrath at the murder of her grandfather. And the moment Rolfe saw that fire in her gaze, he restrained his own wavering heart.
I cannot say I blame her... They were closer than most fathers and daughters would be...
Celia’s parents passed away when she was only an infant. They died in battle against a neighboring country that once existed near the empire, and it was Gaius who took her in and raised her. He was her teacher at thaumaturgy, and at the same time, her only remaining blood relative. So it was natural for Celia to lose her composure having learned of his death. However...
“Listen, Lady Celia.” He had doubts about her assertion. “Otherworlders could indeed become quite powerful if raised, but we are talking of a weakling who was only just summoned. That world is free of war, unlike ours, and from what I hear, they aren’t usually allowed to carry weapons.”
Judging from past cases, someone who could be that much of a threat had never been summoned before. The most anyone had ever carried on them was a small knife or a metal rod, and the vast majority of the otherworlders who were summoned weren’t even apt at using those weapons. From the perspective of a warrior, newly summoned otherworlders seemed to be even weaker than the commoners of this world.
“But...!” Celia shook her head wildly at Rolfe’s doubtful words.
No other explanation came to mind. Such was what Celia was frantically trying to say.
No. As Lady Celia says, there is a strong chance of this being the otherworlder’s handiwork. But we mustn’t jump to conclusions.
Rolfe himself agreed with Celia that the otherworlder was the most likely suspect, but there wasn’t enough proof at the moment to be completely certain.
“I do concur with you that the summoned otherworlder is the biggest suspect, but we lack sufficient proof.” Rolfe tried to reasonably soothe her protests. “There’s a chance something else might have happened.”
The only option he had right now was to quell her emotions, lest they blind her and allow the culprit to escape.
“First, we must take stock of the situation and understand what happened here.”
Rolfe’s admonishment made her expression tense up. She was a genius of such caliber that she had been given the station of assistant court thaumaturgist, even at her young age. Rolfe’s words reminded her of her role and responsibilities.
“My apologies. You are right, Sir Rolfe.”
“So long as you understand. I will take command, then.”
Stopping Celia from lowering her head any longer, Rolfe immediately began to order his soldiers.
“Confirm whether any of the soldiers are alive! And make sure that oddly dressed man there is truly dead. Everyone else, search the room and check if there’s no hole the culprit could have left through. Besides that... Did you find anything, Lady Celia?”
Celia shook her head at Rolfe’s question.
That outfit does look like something an otherworlder would wear, but why is he dead? Wasn’t the otherworlder alone?
She may have regained her composure, but the death of her only blood relative still weighed down on her heart heavily, and her intellect wasn’t as sharp as it usually was.
“Sir Rolfe! Lady Celia!”
“He’s alive. This one’s still alive!”
After a short while, the men sent to confirm the survival of the soldiers called out to Rolfe and Celia.
“What?!”
“Really?”
Rolfe and Celia hurried over to where one of the soldiers was lying in a pool of blood.
> “S-Sir Rolfe...” The voice mouthing Rolfe’s name did indeed come from this soldier, whom they had presumed was dead.
“Are you alright?”
“What happened? Can you tell us anything?”
As he was the only living witness, Rolfe and Celia went straight to the point with their questions.
“Sir Rolfe... A monster...”
Hearing his words, the two went pale. This man was the only one who knew what had happened in this room.
“What?! A monster...?” Rolfe felt the color drain from his face upon hearing this unfamiliar word from the soldier’s lips.
Celia panicked as well, wondering if her grandfather possibly failed the summoning rite and accidentally summoned some unexpected otherworldly creature.
“What happened?! Come to your senses!”
“Ga-Gai... he...” The two listened to his words carefully, but failed to gather any kind of meaning from the fragmented sentences leaving his lips.
They did gather that some monster had appeared, but the situation remained as unclear as it was before.
“Answer me! What happened to Grandfather?! What monster are you talking about?”
Grabbing the soldier, who was lying on the floor, tightly by the shoulders, Celia shook him violently. Celia would normally never let herself be seen in such a disturbed state, but right now she didn’t care in the slightest about who saw her in this state.
A monster? What sort of monster? No, more importantly, where is this monster right now?
If a creature powerful enough to kill the court thaumaturgist was running around the palace, then things were quite dangerous. This was, quite literally, the heart of the empire of O’ltormea.
But the more Celia panicked, the more dire the situation would become. The soldier, who already wasn’t speaking coherently, broke into labored gasps. His body went completely limp, and he wasn’t reacting to any of their soldiers.
“Th-This isn’t good. Someone take this man to a doctor! Right now!”
Stopping Celia from pressing the soldier for more questions, Rolfe quickly ordered the soldiers to put the soldier on a stretcher, which they had carried with them into the room, and take him to the infirmary.
“Why?! Why did you stop me?!” Celia raged at him angrily with a demonic expression.
Rolfe remonstrated her. He likely realized that if he didn’t say it now, he would lose all control over this girl, already close to mad with grief. This was probably her lack of experience at play here. Talented as she was, Celia still wasn’t adept at controlling her emotions. She’d finally calmed down, but the soldier mentioning a ‘monster’ made her lose her composure again.
Of course, perhaps that was to be expected, given the implication that her honored grandfather had failed the summoning rite and died. But on top of that, this place was home to royalty and nobles. If any harm came to human life, even the family of court thaumaturgists who gathered as many achievements as Gaius would lose its honor and go into decline. At worst, if he were to be held responsible for the incident, his entire clan would be punished.
Both her feelings for witnessing her grandfather’s death and her desire to defend her family brought Celia’s heart into a state of panic. Rolfe understood this, and yet...
“If you were to continue questioning him like that, that man could very well have died.” Rolfe told the hysterical Celia, trying to speak as calmly as possible without betraying his emotions.
His words didn’t allow for any argument. Questioning that bloodied soldier right now would have surely lead to his death, given his condition.
“True as that might be, look at this situation. Isn’t understanding what happened in this room more important than that man’s life?” But his words didn’t seem to reach Celia.
She was still confident that getting information about her grandfather took precedence over the life of a single soldier, and so she argued against Rolfe’s reasoning. She realized Rolfe was right, but her heart got in the way of her common sense. Still, Rolfe explained the situation in detail, hoping to calm her down.
“That’s certainly important, but the only one who knows what happened is that man. I find it hard to believe you’d get any useful information if you were to question him, wounded as he was. At worst, he’d die before telling us what we need, and it all truly would have been for naught. Patiently waiting for him to recover is safer, is it not? For now, let us focus on confirming the situation here.”
Celia wasn’t able to argue any longer against Rolfe after that. His words rang true, but her emotions as a person bereaved of her family, and her dignity as a noble, prevented her from being able to wholly accept that.
“Haah... I understand. Your judgment is sound, Sir Rolfe. Pardon me for losing my temper.”
With a heavy sigh, Celia regained her composure. Her snapping at Rolfe was likely the result of the strain on her heart. A genius she may have been, but the lack of experience stemming from her young age was plain to see.
“But I do wonder what monster he was talking about... I cannot imagine Grandfather failing like this. And where did that monster disappear to?” Those doubts escaped Celia’s lips in a whisper.
She was talking to herself, but hearing those words, Rolfe felt something nudge at him. A sense of unease that stemmed from his years of experience on the battlefield. But he brushed that doubt away, not putting it into words.
“True. If a monster truly was summoned from another world, this is a crisis... No, for now, let us inspect the remaining corpses. We may discover something.”
Rolfe himself was rather flustered by this situation, and that caused him to commit a blunder he would otherwise never make— the blunder of ignoring his own intuition. And it was Rolfe’s judgment which would end up cutting short what faint possibility they still had of resolving this situation.
“B-Big trouble! Sir Rolfe, the infirmary! The infirmary is...!”
A soldier burst into the summoning room. The panic in his voice made it clear he was reporting a true emergency.
“Calm down! What’s the matter?!” Rolfe’s angry bark echoed through the room.
The soldier he’d shouted at recoiled at Rolfe’s menacing glare, and made his report through labored breaths.
“Sir! A fire of unknown cause has started in the infirmary... It is spreading rapidly, and has reached the medicine storeroom as well.”
Rolfe was rendered speechless halfway through the soldier’s report. The timing was simply all too awful.
“What?! How can all this be happening in succession? What of the fire? Has anyone come to extinguish it?!”
The medicine storeroom had a variety of combustible substances, and they’d only just sent an injured soldier to the infirmary— their only live witness. Rolfe knew he was only taking out his anger on an unrelated party, but he glared viciously at the soldier.
“Y-Yes.” The soldier said with a desperate expression, overwhelmed by Rolfe’s gaze. “We’ve promptly informed the palace thaumaturgists, and had them deployed to handle the fire.”
The soldier’s continued report calmed Rolfe down slightly. If nothing else, the fire didn’t seem to have spread to the palace, and that alone was a relief.
“What are your thoughts, Lady Celia?”
Rolfe turned his gaze to Celia, who stood beside him deep in thought, with her finger pressed against her well-formed chin. Doubt surged up in his heart again.
“Something feels very wrong...” She answered Rolfe’s question without hesitation.
It seemed she had clued into that as well.
“So... you think so too, milady?”
“Yes... Too many things are happening at once.”
Gaius Valkland was dead. A hitherto unprecedented failure in the summoning rite had occurred. An unknown monster could possibly have been summoned. And now, the fire. Rolfe pondered over it all, and the answer surfaced in his mind.
Ridiculous. Could all this truly happen?
Like Celia sa
id, too many things were happening at once, and there was only one plausible explanation. But it was one that didn’t align with Rolfe’s common sense.
“I have one hypothesis that might explain this situation. However...”
“You think it to be impossible?”
Celia correctly guessed at Rolfe’s idea, and knew his reason for not saying it.
“I don’t know... At least, not right now.”
Rolfe turned his neck again, gazing at the soldiers busily inspecting the room. Ultimately, speculation was only speculation, and Rolfe wanted the cold, hard truth, not conjecture.
“We have a report!”
Their conversation was interrupted by the soldiers who had returned from their inspection.
“Yes, go ahead!”
“I’ve confirmed the rest of the soldiers are dead.”
“And? What was the cause of their death?”
The soldiers exchanged looks at Celia’s question. It seemed to be something hard to report.
“What’s wrong? Speak clearly! What was their cause of death?”
Pressed by Celia for an answer, one of the soldiers spoke as a representative.
“I-It seems they were murdered with a man’s bare hands...”
“What? Bare hands?! How can you be certain of that?” Rolfe asked back angrily.
Bare hands? So an unarmed man managed to kill those fully armed soldiers and Sir Gaius? Inconceivable.
Rolfe could only imagine how difficult of a feat that was.
“One of the corpses seems to have had their throat crushed, but there are finger marks on the neck...”
“Finger marks...” Rolfe growled.
Rolfe ordered the soldiers take him to the corpse in question, and the two of them soon stood before the dead body. Its throat was indeed caved in.
“I see, those do look like finger marks...”
Rolfe didn’t object to Celia’s assertion.
“What about the other corpses?” He asked the soldiers.
“From what I’ve confirmed, this one had his neck bones broken from from a blow to the neck. The armor and helmet are intact, though, which leads me to believe no weapons were used. This one was likely killed by the assailant’s bare hands as well.”