TL/ED – Miso

What had to be done to avoid pointless killing.

That, was a kidnapping.

[Sir Lordran! A fierce battle is breaking out at the lake right now!]

[The Princess has already made her move…]

[…Is this the end.]

This country had to have a king too, after all.

The one called Lordran was cunning enough to hide not in the royal palace, but in an ordinary house among the surrounding civilians.

He hid quite well. Even a halfway decent assassin wouldn’t have been able to spot him.

Unless the opponent was me.

[…Ku, kuheok?!]

[Sir Ranne? Why… kuk!]

-Thud!

As the knights inside the house collapsed one by one, I placed my hand on the door.

“…”

-Creeak… When I opened the door with its rusted hinges, I saw Lordran quietly close his eyes.

Had he resigned himself to everything? As I strode in, someone stretched out a hand and grabbed at my leg.

Tried to, at least. The trembling hand was crushed flat just before it could touch my ankle.

“N, not my lord…”

I was sure I’d pressed on his throat hard enough to knock him out.

Just as I was about to lightly crush those eyes filled with desperate resolve, the one who had been sitting quietly at the round table rose and spoke in a weighty voice.

“Cease the unnecessary killing. I’m the only one you’re after, surely.”

“No. All of it is necessary. To calm the Princess’s fury, dyeing this lake red wouldn’t even be enough.”

“…”

“Pretty stupid decision for the leader of a nation.”

When I stepped closer and bore down on him, he looked down at me with an expression of curiosity.

“Who… are you? I’ve never seen anyone like you under Sharmia’s command.”

“Your arrogance in thinking you knew everything is what destroyed this country. Do you even realize that?”

When I squeezed Lordran’s arm with Water Pressure, his eyes went round for a moment, and then he let out a hollow laugh.

“This really is too much.”

“…Are you in your right mind?”

“I am. I calculated every factor, prepared for every worst-case scenario… but in none of those scenarios did I ever assume that some unknown dagger of the Princess would shatter all my plans in less than a day. How could anyone have predicted that…”

His tone was less of genuine grievance than of lamenting the world itself.

“The Assassin we hired by pouring in half the national budget has been miserably crushed by you, and this location, which I told no one about, was found out in five minutes even though no one betrayed us. The heavens have forsaken us.”

“…”

The plan to kidnap Lumia seemed to have been in the works for longer than I’d thought.

There was no time to ask for details. I immediately began to tighten my grip on his throat.

“Ugh…”

“Shut up. Terminate that Assassin’s contract right now, and pull your soldiers back.”

“And what, then, changes?”

“You get to not die miserably right this second.”

“The terms, kuk, are wrong.”

Clutching his throat as he choked, Lordran argued back with eyes that hadn’t dimmed.

“You should just kill me first. As a sovereign, do you think I would want to remain alive while watching every one of my nation’s people die miserably?”

“No, are you out of your mind? You created this situation.”

“A mouse bites a cat not when it’s been cornered, but when it’s been made into a toy.”

“…?”

“The Empire can no longer protect us. The brief ice age the Crimson Circle brought about turned our lives into hell.”

Forcing his eyes aside, Lordran looked at the dust-covered net hanging on the wall of the house.

“Except for a tiny sliver of ocean, every fish has been wiped out. How many centuries do you think it will take before life blooms in this lake again?”

“You pulled all this crap just over some fish?”

“They are the lifeblood of the nation. We can hardly bring live fish across from seas that distant. But… that isn’t what really matters.”

He glared into my eyes and gritted his teeth.

“This isn’t the end. Those bastards will do the exact same thing again. And your side? What can you do? Stop it after the fact, again, after everything’s already happened? If that day comes, only a longer and more agonizing end will follow.”

In other words-

The Extreme Ice ice age had already driven this country to the brink of ruin.

But even if they bit down and endured here, the Crimson Circle wasn’t dead.

Disaster would strike again.

The Empire could do nothing. In the end, it would only respond after the fact…

As a result, the tributary states, deciding they could endure no more, had banded together and plotted a rebellion.

“What a worthless reason.”

“…What did you say?”

“What your lot is really trying to do is just side with whichever side is stronger.”

Only now did it hit me why they’d specifically kidnapped Lumia.

“You needed a way to negotiate with the Crimson Circle, as a counter to the Empire.”

“…Yes.”

In the end, holding the Princess meant they wouldn’t be attacked by the Empire.

If Sharmia pulled anything, Lumia’s life would be in danger.

And in reverse, negotiations with the Crimson Circle would also become possible through Lumia. She was, after all, a princess of the Empire.

“You don’t even have proper intel on those lunatics, and here you are stirring up this goddamn mess.”

I couldn’t help letting rough language slip out.

All of this had been set off by the delusion that the Crimson Circle was a normal entity capable of dialogue or negotiation.

Whether they brought a Princess or the Emperor himself, negotiation with the Crimson Circle was impossible. If it seemed to be proceeding normally, it meant they were being deceived. That was simply what fanatics were.

“I’ll say it one more time. Withdraw your soldiers along with the Assassin. Luckily for you, Her Highness the Princess whom you kidnapped has granted you one last bit of mercy.”

“…What?”

“She, who hasn’t committed any crime or played any part in administration, said she understood the feelings of you people who kidnapped her, and hoped the matter could be resolved peacefully. You don’t believe it?”

“I, I can’t believe…”

“Then I’ll give you a reason to believe.”

-Crunch… I dragged Lordran out of the house and made him look at what was around him.

At the same moment, that shabby roof was torn away.

[Wh, what the? Fuck?!]

[The ceiling… what the hell…??]

That wasn’t all.

Within a radius of several hundred meters, the roof of every single house was ripped off and shot up into the sky.

Amid the startled shouts of ordinary citizens, Lordran’s mouth gradually began to fall open. I forcibly twisted his head to make him face me.

“Do you see even a single star in my eyes?”

“…A Fallen! H, how-”

“Whether you trust the Empire or not, our preparations against the Crimson Circle are already complete. Taking the first strike ends here. From now on, those bastards won’t be able to stay in one place for even a day. And…”

-Crunch.

As the ceilings began to rise even higher, Lordran gritted his teeth.

“If I want to, I can deliver a disaster to this place that will be felt far faster than any ice age.”

Simply dropping every one of these ceilings as they were would cause countless casualties. Not that I actually had any intention of doing so.

Lordran clenched his teeth and shook his head.

“Stop this! I’m the only one you’re after, am I not?!”

“Then it’s about time you got it. You have only two choices.”

I spread my fingers and pressed the point.

“Watch your people die very, very quickly with your own two eyes, or believe what sounds unbelievable and pull the Assassin back.”

“…I’ll pull the soldiers back.”

When I made it look like I was about to drop the ceilings at any second, Lordran hastily nodded.

“But Rakshasa’s Assassin isn’t going to listen to my orders well. So…”

“Fine. For now, pull the damn soldiers back. And rescind the order to attack us.”

Just that much would be enough to avoid the unnecessary killing Lumia hadn’t wanted.

The moment I saw him nod, I released him from the Water Pressure and restored the ceilings to where they had been.

“If those orders aren’t carried out, you’ll watch your people get pulped into bloody meat right in front of your eyes.”

“U, understood.”

Driving in a final warning just in case, I took off running again.

Part of me wanted to drag him along with me, but time was short. As long as I knew where he was, I could catch him whenever I wanted.

One thing was more important.

‘Linmel!’

Current Sense caught Linmel.

She seemed to be fighting quite well, but in the end, she wasn’t used to life-or-death combat with her own life on the line.

An opening was bound to appear. I had to arrive before it did, but…

…An uneasy feeling was never wrong.

“Damn it!”

In the end, Linmel had collapsed.

The abnormal way she looked let me infer that she’d been poisoned.

Current Sense showed me the scene, but it couldn’t produce anything capable of stopping Aksha’s charge as he rushed in at tremendous speed.

What way of using Water Pressure could block that? In an incredibly brief moment, countless possibilities flashed through my mind, but none of them looked like they’d be of any meaningful help.

What Current Sense showed me was Linmel’s death, or a fatal wound close to it.

My heart ached.

Coldly.

“…?”

It was only a very short moment, but… I felt as if the world was tinted blue.

Without realizing it, as if entranced, I looked at the lake where Linmel had placed her hand and grasped something.

The next moment, Linmel pulled up a spear of ice.

-Crack!

“Hm.”

As Linmel stared dumbfounded at the spear she had pulled from the lake, the cold in my chest subsided again.

I stood still for a moment, rubbing my chest, then muttered to myself and started running again.

“…No wonder I couldn’t figure it out.”

Now, at last, I felt I was starting to get what Decay’s world was.

***

My body didn’t get out of breath, yet by the time I’d run as hard as I possibly could and reached the lake…

Linmel was in a standoff with the soldiers.

“Ah, Jern…”

Linmel turned toward me, submerged up to her ankles in the lake, swaying unsteadily.

Setting aside the question of how she was floating on the lake, she seemed almost drunk and out of her wits, so I hurriedly pulled a nearby boat over with Water Pressure, got on, and headed toward her.

“Snap out of it. Are you okay? How many is this?”

“…Five?”

She seemed to still have her wits about her.

Fortunately, the soldiers must have received their orders, because they weren’t attacking Linmel in her state.

The problem was that they weren’t retreating either. With faces full of shock, they were staring at something.

I could see why right away.

“Ku, hah.”

Aksha, his head pierced through, was still alive and glaring in our direction.

He was not sane. Below his neck, thin lines had been drawn across his entire body, as if he was a single breath away from coming apart, and from those lines blood poured without pause, fouling the lake.

“…How the hell is he even alive?”

At a sight bizarre enough to stagger even me, who’d seen all sorts of things, Aksha looked down at his own hand in wonder.

“I, I don’t know. Probably… it seems those ones didn’t just lend me their help.”

…Those ones?

At any rate, even he seemed to recognize that this situation was strange.

“U, useful.”

Not that he looked like he had any intention of backing down.

With his dagger raised and looking ready to lunge at any second, he was threatening enough even in his near-corpse state.

“I…”

“Rest.”

I pushed Linmel back down into the boat as she tried to rise, then stepped off and planted my feet on the surface of the lake.

I couldn’t pull off anything like water-walking, but I could generate enough current to walk across the lake.

“If you have any last words, say them.”

“Heh, if I’d known the job was this kind of thing, I would’ve turned it down.”

The next moment…

He charged at me with the same insane speed he’d used on Linmel.

Watching him almost absently, I rubbed at my chest one more time.

‘What kind of world is this.’

Who would have guessed it only appeared when triggered by specific emotions?

Thinking of Linmel moments from being stabbed to death, I glared at the bastard charging in.

“Pitiful last words.”

“?!”

-…Splash!

The arm holding the dagger sank into the lake before it could reach me.

Having turned into a cold lump of ice.

As he stared blankly at the arm, the other arm froze and fell off too.

One, two, three.

His body, gradually separating and beginning to crumble, sank beneath the surface entirely, all the way up to his bitterly smiling head.

“…”

“…”

I glared at the soldiers who were staring blankly at the sight and threatened them.

“Her Highness the Princess is unharmed, I trust?”

“…Y, yes!”

I took Lumia from the panicked soldiers as they handed her over, and let out a sigh.

Thankfully, the immediate matter seemed to have been resolved as closely as possible to the way Lumia had wanted.

Which left one thing.

“Now, then. Drop all your weapons.”

“…?”

“If you want your king to live, drop every last one of your weapons.”

It was time to deal with these rebels the Empire’s way.