Chapter 37: Memories (4)

Seeing Quinier wearing glasses confirmed the man’s suspicions.

She misunderstood his ability. She thought it erased memories wholesale.

He had seen plenty of people make that mistake. Most had adopted defenses much like hers. Time was the only thing they could rely on.

But that would never let them detect his ability. He did not erase entire memories, only his own presence within them.

“Quinier, isn’t Kora coming today?”

After school, the man boldly posed the question to Quinier.

Her expression changed the moment he asked. It was a brazen question, so naturally she suspected him. But suspicion was all she had.

“He is. Later. We’re going home together.”

Quinier answered with a defiant smile, as if to say, Try it if you dare. She probably intended to check the time and report to someone. Frondier, perhaps? He had seen them together recently.

“Right. Thanks.”

Having heard her answer, the man walked past her, lightly brushing her arm with a finger as he went. That was all it took. Quinier would lose her memories of him. And of course, she would be unable to report anything.

‘So Kora’s coming.’

Of course, he could not trust everything Quinier said. If anything, she was more likely to be lying.

But there was that fearless smile she had just shown him, and her misunderstanding of his ability. The man decided to bet on her having told the truth.

Above all, there was no risk in checking.

‘This spot should do.’

The man hid behind a building near Constel’s entrance to wait for Kora.

Of course, he could not beat Kora in a fair fight. Kora apparently spent his days struggling to learn magic that did not suit him, but in a purely physical fight, his abilities were beyond comparison with a human’s.

The man’s objective was not to kill Kora right away. That was precisely why he had waited for Kora to come to Constel.

All he had to do was wait here until Kora arrived and trigger another rampage like the last one.

“Then should I call him Armel de Biet?”

[“No. Judging by what he’s doing, the family hasn’t acknowledged him yet.”]

“So he’s still Armel Colt, our upperclassman.”

... What was this?

An utterly unexpected conversation drifted down from above the building behind which the man was hiding.

He looked up.

Someone was perched on the building’s railing, talking to a crow.

... A crow?

‘Don’t tell me—that crow!’

The man remembered the crow that had been nearby when he was up in the tree.

Had it not been an ordinary crow after all?

And the human speaking to it was Frondier, a man who must surely be working with Quinier.

Since when had Frondier learned taming? And his tamed animal could even talk?

“So, Mr. Armel.”

Frondier broke off his conversation and looked down at the man.

Armel Colt.

Glasses, a slight build, plain features that were hard to remember at a glance, and a faint presence.

Frondier addressed the man who dreamed of one day becoming Armel de Biet again.

“What exactly are you, then? Quinier’s cousin? Her older brother? Is there some secret about your birth?”

TAP!

Armel sprang backward, putting distance between them. Frondier watched him with languid eyes.

Even as cold sweat broke out over him, Armel grinned.

“Oh, it’s you, Frondier! You startled me. What’s going on?”

“Hello.”

Frondier jumped down from the building and landed. At last, they faced one another at eye level.

The fool, willingly giving up the high ground. Armel laughed inwardly. Frondier really was inexperienced.

The reports Indus had received suggested he had quite an impressive record, but clearly half of it was hot air—

“Menosorpo.”

Before Armel could even finish that thought, he felt himself enveloped in a magic circle so vast he could not gauge its size.

‘He can use a magic circle without even drawing it?’

He did not know what sort of magic circle this was, but staying inside it without knowing its effects was unwise.

... But which way could he possibly go to get out of it?

His feet shifted involuntarily in hesitation.

WHOOSH!

CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!

Startled by something suddenly raining down on him, Armel scrambled away. He did not get far.

By the time he realized what was happening, he was trapped by spears embedded in the ground on every side.

‘Impossible. Spears appearing out of thin air! Even pebbles would be unbelievable, let alone spears!’

Armel examined the spears that had come crashing down before him. They looked utterly real, but he could sense mana filling every inch of each one.

Magic. Magic so much like physical matter. Was this the power of that magic circle, then? Did magic take on tangible form, at least within its bounds?

“Wh-why are you doing this, Frondier? I’m really quite bewildered.”

Armel spoke with an awkward smile.

Frondier tilted his head.

“Just to be sure, have we met before?”

“... Of course not. This is our first conversation. I only recognize your face because you’re so famous.”

Frondier smiled at Armel’s answer.

His subdued eyes briefly closed. When they opened again, his smile had become a sneer.

“Quite right. I don’t remember you either.”

This bastard.

Armel’s throat tightened. Frondier was certain he was the culprit.

Then why wasn’t he attacking immediately? Was he unsure of his own abilities? Did he want to gauge Armel’s strength?

Then Frondier spoke.

“But suppose everything goes exactly to plan, Mr. Armel, and by some remote chance you really do join the Biet Family.”

As he spoke, Frondier drew the short sword at his waist. Its length was peculiar.

Armel did not answer. He merely maintained his look of incomprehension.

Watching his face, Frondier continued.

“Would you be allowed to remain in Indus, which claims to champion commoners’ rights?”

Armel froze, his expression still fixed in feigned bewilderment.

‘How much does this bastard know?’

Frondier even knew he was a member of Indus.

Armel took one step back. He was not trying to flee. He had merely drawn one foot back into a guarded stance.

Frondier raised a hand.

“I’m joking. Of course you could stay. Plenty of nobles from distinguished families already belong to Indus.”

Indus had consistently worked for the public good. On the surface, at least.

They helped deal with disasters and accidents in towns and cities, regardless of whether the victims were commoners or nobles, and donated money to the poor in Indus’s name. They cultivated their image and expanded their support.

Nobles who had benefited directly sometimes took Indus’s side quite openly.

Yet no one could estimate the organization’s size. No one knew who led it, either. Most of those who called themselves members of Indus were beyond reproach, but not one claimed to represent the organization.

In public, they persuaded people that commoners needed better welfare. Behind the scenes, they tarnished nobles’ reputations and engineered incidents and accidents.

And the most important person in orchestrating those incidents was none other than...

“Mr. Armel, you handle the cleanup, don’t you?”

“...!”

“It can’t be easy for Indus to secretly engineer incidents that frame nobles or bring about their downfall. So when something goes wrong, or there’s a witness, your job is to erase that person’s memories. Correct?”

Indus relied primarily on two methods to conceal its involvement in incidents.

One was cutting loose its expendable members, as it had with Serf and Gregory. The other was using Armel’s ability.

Thanks to Armel’s efforts, Indus had never been exposed for its activities behind the scenes.

Of course, suspicion had occasionally pointed its way during investigations, but countless other organizations and noble families had faced just as much suspicion.

There was a problem with Armel’s ability, however.

Armel erased his own presence from someone’s memories. Memories of an incident only vanished as a side effect of removing memories of him.

That meant he had to participate in an incident in order to erase someone’s memories of it. Whenever Indus judged the risk of failure to be high, they sent Armel in.

At the time, Armel had never imagined that one of the families Indus would destroy would be his own.

“That’s why I’m asking, Mr. Armel.”

“...”

“Who are you? You must be a ‘former’ noble of the Biet Family, so devoted to Indus that you brought down your own family.”

Until then, Armel had still been smiling.

But then his face twisted, crumpling again and again. Those creases did not smooth away.

His face far too wrinkled to belong to a student, Armel parted his now-coarse lips and spoke.

“I am Armel de Biet. Head of the Biet Family.”

His voice was absurdly high-pitched, scarcely sounding like a man’s at all.

“...”

Frondier frowned.

He had expected this.

Someone targeting Quinier’s family who could take possession of it if she died right now.

Naturally, it would be a blood relative of the Biet Family, the person best positioned to succeed her as its head.

He had expected it, but...

‘He’s completely fucking insane.’

The previous head of the Biet Family would, of course, be Quinier’s father.

Whatever Indus had planted in his head, he had devastated his own family, erased every memory of himself from his daughter, and left?

Frondier asked,

“How do you intend to take over the family when everyone has forgotten you?”

“You said it yourself. I erased my existence from everyone’s memories. I can fill in the circumstances afterward. Say I lived far away for a long time, perhaps. Or I could use the incident thirteen years ago. Say I barely escaped with my life, and have finally returned.”

Kora’s rampage. An enormous number of people had died that day, most of them members of the Biet Family.

Armel continued.

“Once Quinier dies—once the rampaging Kora kills her—I can reclaim my position as family head. If I then execute Kora for killing her, I’ll have all the justification I need.”

“And how exactly do you intend to kill Kora while he’s rampaging?”

Armel grinned.

“I have both the drug that sends him into a rampage and the one that stops it, right here on me. Once the rampage ends, Kora will take his own life. He’s not the sort to ignore that guilt.”

Frondier fell silent for a moment, then smiled.

“You certainly are talkative. Revealing every last detail of your plan to me.”

“Oh, of course.”

Armel smiled and raised both hands.

“Because there’s something you’re mistaken about, too—!”

As he extended both hands, Frondier abruptly went still. His eyes lost focus.

“I realized when I saw the crow. You watched me erase Quinier’s memories. But physical contact isn’t a condition of my ability. All I need to do is touch someone whose name I know with my mana. That’s enough.”

Erasing memories from a distance, especially memories spanning a long period, did require exponentially more mana. That increased the risk of discovery. It also took correspondingly more time.

But once the ability took hold, after that time elapsed, the outcome was certain.

“Heh heh heh. So full of yourself, but even you—”

Armel stopped short.

Something was wrong. Frondier, who had seemed frozen for a moment, regained focus and shook his head sharply from side to side.

Strange. He was still using his ability...

“Ah, that was close. Though it went as expected.”

With those words, Frondier looked straight at Armel.

Those eyes, that expression—he could not possibly have lost his memories.

Why? Lethe’s Divine Power had never failed. A human could not defy Divine Power in the first place.

There was only one possible explanation.

Watching Frondier fill his entire body with energy and imbue the short sword in his hand with Aura, Armel came to a chilling realization.

“Y-you! You’re not Frondier—!”