Chapter 37: Memories (5)

Unfortunately, my blade failed to reach Armel.

He leaned back to dodge it, so hastily that he lost his balance. Half falling, he rolled sideways, then scrambled up and stared at me with wide eyes.

“Y-you... You’re not Frondier, are you?”

He seemed more horrified by his ability’s failure than by the blade that had come at him.

I stood silently, but I was breaking out in a cold sweat too.

‘That was close.’

I was pretending to be calm, but just as Armel had said, I had been mistaken. I’d assumed that keeping my distance would put me beyond the reach of Lethe’s Divine Power.

And, as he’d also said, I’d half believed that even if it reached me, it wouldn’t work on me.

I’d already had those two safeguards in mind.

And yet...

‘I lost consciousness for a moment.’

The fact that Lethe’s Divine Power had worked on me, even a little, sent a chill down my spine.

Had I started thinking of Frondier and myself as the same person without realizing it?

For now, I smiled as though I’d expected everything. I wasn’t sure how convincing it was.

“Y-yes! I thought something was wrong! There’s no way that ‘Human Sloth’ could have grown this much! I heard he was an incompetent fool with no talent who never even tried!”

“Ha ha ha.”

I laughed and took a step closer, short sword in hand.

“Who would believe that, Mr. Armel?”

“...!”

Armel deliberately hardened his expression and reached inside his clothes. He drew out several daggers. No, since they had no hilts, perhaps I should simply call them blades.

I remembered seeing blades like those.

‘They look just like the blades Quinier fires from her fan.’

Quinier stored hers in a fan, but her father fought with them in his hands? Although they had no hilts, the sections he gripped were narrower than the blades. They had been shaped so he could hold them easily without hurting himself.

“It doesn’t matter if my Divine Power doesn’t work. I just have to kill you here.”

Armel loosened his neck with a crack.

But he wasn’t merely loosening his muscles. Every part of his body that cracked grew noticeably larger. Starting at his neck, it spread to his shoulders, arms, waist, legs, and ankles. There was only the sound of cracking bones, yet each part grew as he stretched it out.

He was expanding his skeleton—no.

“You’ve been keeping your skeleton compressed. Is this your real body?”

“Yes. A slight build makes disguises easier. Nothing works better for concealing your age.”

It didn’t seem like magic. Was this a technique of his own? Or something he’d learned from Indus?

By the time Armel had finished stretching, he was taller than me. In sheer build, at least, he resembled Ampere.

CLATTER!

With a single flick of his hand, the several blades Armel held joined into one. Oh, an interesting weapon.

WHOOSH!

Armel swung his right hand and threw a blade at me. It wasn’t particularly fast, so I knocked it aside with my short sword.

In the meantime, Armel closed in. There was still a blade in his right hand, though he had definitely just thrown one with it.

CLANG!

Our blades collided.

‘I see. He can combine the blades or split them apart and fire them at will.’

It was like holding a deck of playing cards and shooting them from his hand.

He was combining throwing techniques with swordsmanship.

CLANG! CLANG!

Armel and I exchanged several blows. He really had been the head of a family. Aura was already rippling over his blades. Mine, of course, was no different.

“You bastard! Who are you? How long have you been impersonating Frondier?!”

“Keep it down! I’m telling you, I am Frondier!”

That wasn’t a lie. I was Frondier. Everyone in this world would say so.

But it was also true that I was impersonating Frondier. Those two seemingly incompatible statements somehow held true at the same time.

CLANG!

I used the swords in both my hands to knock aside Armel’s thrusting attack in a single stroke. Sensing danger, he quickly retreated.

Having tried dual-wielding to some extent, I knew that using two swords clumsily was more dangerous than holding just one in a single hand. The right-hand sword could get in the left-hand sword’s way, for instance.

... But even so.

“Mr. Armel.”

“What?”

“You really are weaker than Quinier.”

Now I was certain.

Armel had no talent for combat. Combining thrown blades with swordplay was a fresh idea, but he couldn’t put it into practice well enough to match the concept.

Above all, I knew because I was weak myself. Resorting to unconventional methods like that was a sign of weakness. Just as I’d scraped together every means available to face my opponents so far.

“You won’t die an easy death.”

Armel growled.

Well, naturally, hearing that would make him angry.

‘Now, what should I do?’

If I’d wanted to kill him, I could have done it long ago, without even meeting him like this. I doubted Armel could stop Fireworks, for one thing.

But this was Constel. Besides, Armel’s guilt hadn’t even been proven yet. Even if he was guilty, killing him with my own hands left me deeply uneasy.

If I could at least restrain him so he couldn’t try anything, I felt I could work things out somehow.

‘... That’s it.’

Since Armel had his own unusual way of fighting, perhaps I should try an unusual move of my own.

TAP!

Armel lunged at me again. Our blades met once more with a loud metallic clash.

In truth, there wasn’t much difference between our swordsmanship. With his larger build, Armel was probably stronger than me physically.

But I had faced opponents far stronger than him all too often. Not just enemies, either. Above all, training with Atzier had sent me rolling across the ground more times than I could count.

And most importantly, Armel’s swordsmanship was rusty. So much so that I could tell he hadn’t fought in a long time.

SWISH!

Armel’s blades came at me from both sides. This was what I’d been waiting for: the moment he attacked with both hands at once.

I extended my sword. The point where Armel’s blades would cross... About here?

As I’d thought, Armel had never experienced this technique. He should have received a report about it, though.

SWISH.

My short sword and Armel’s two blades came together silently. A moment later, a dry crackling like burning firewood rang out, and his weapons flew from his hands. The stacked blades scattered in midair.

It was Falling Tension.

“Gah!”

Only then did Armel seem to realize what had happened, and he retreated. Still, he recovered quickly compared to most people who had been hit by Falling Tension.

I followed his retreating steps and swung my short sword at his chest.

It cut through empty air without reaching him. Over our few exchanges, Armel had gauged the length of my sword. He’d backed away far enough, so naturally the blade couldn’t reach him.

That was right. The blade couldn’t reach.

Blood trickled down.

“Huh...?”

Armel stopped, apparently realizing it only then.

He was bleeding. Blood spread from a long cut across his chest, soaking his uniform and running down.

It wasn’t life-threatening, but it wasn’t a shallow wound either.

“Ah, ngh!”

Armel dropped to one knee with a thud. He’d suddenly lost a considerable amount of blood. Dizziness and fatigue would be setting in.

“What? I definitely dodged it. How...?”

Yes. Armel had dodged the blade.

But he hadn’t dodged my Aura.

My Neil Jacques’s Short Sword extended its reach the moment I imbued it with Aura. The blade itself didn’t lengthen; the Aura stretched out beyond it.

And my Aura was colorless. Judging its reach in the middle of a frantic fight like this was no easy task.

I deactivated Menosorpo.

“Let’s stop here. You’re seriously injured.”

“...”

Armel swept his empty hand over the ground. Even while watching me, he kept glancing around.

Having lost every blade in his hands, he was trying to pick up anything that might have fallen nearby. But even his outstretched hand was trembling with effort. Moving in that condition would only worsen the bleeding.

That was when someone stepped out through the building’s rear exit with a creak of the door.

As expected, it was Quinier. Her timing was perfect.

“... Armel Colt.”

Quinier spoke his name coldly. Not de Biet, but the name he used at Constel. That must have been what she’d decided to call him.

“So you’re the one responsible for the incident thirteen years ago.”

Quinier opened her fan. Aura was already surging and gathering around it.

“... Heh heh. That’s right.”

Armel looked at Quinier with a chuckle.

She narrowed her eyes, deepening unease showing in them.

“... I really don’t remember. Not a thing. Even with the man who’s supposedly my father right in front of me.”

“Of course not. My ability is perfect. Once I erase a memory, it can never be restored.”

Armel spoke as though he was truly proud of that. He was even smiling.

I couldn’t tell what he was feeling as he said it.

... But Selena had told me something.

[“When you smile, your eyes need to smile too. It looks more convincing that way.”]

At the very least, Armel’s smile now wasn’t convincing at all.

“I’d like to kill you on the spot, but you’ll have to pay for your crimes. It’s time the truth about Indus came to light.”

“No matter how much you torture me, you won’t get any information about Indus.”

“Hmph. Are you that loyal?”

“No. Because I don’t know a damn thing.”

With that, Armel let out a mocking sigh through his teeth.

“Even Indus’s own members don’t know who’s really at the top. Perhaps the leader’s closest confidants know, but I certainly don’t. I don’t even know whether they’re truly a commoner, as Indus claims, a fallen noble, someone from a distinguished family, or even royalty. And there’s no way to measure its size, either.

“There are people out there running around calling themselves Indus when they aren’t actually members. Anyone can hang up a sign claiming to fight the discrimination and oppression commoners face and protect them from it.”

As Armel said, Indus appeared to be a thoroughly respectable organization, so countless people freely claimed its name.

And since Indus itself did nothing to stop them, estimating its size was all the more difficult.

“Arrest me, kill me, do whatever you want. I’m worthless to Indus now anyway. Cutting off loose ends is what Indus does best. You’ll see every connection to me vanish as if it never existed.”

Armel gave a low chuckle, though I couldn’t tell whether it was genuine laughter.

Quinier and I exchanged a look and nodded. What we had to do hadn’t changed.

I slowly approached Armel. Since I was the only one immune to his ability, I was the only one who could restrain him.

His ability could work at range, but Quinier would easily block it now that she was on guard.

It definitely came from his fingertips, so all she had to do was watch his hands.

Just as I moved behind Armel—

“Oh! Quinier! I’m heeere!!”

... I heard the absolute last voice I wanted to hear right now.

Strangely enough, all three of us—Quinier, Armel, and I—snapped our heads toward it.

Kora was walking toward us, having passed through Constel’s entrance.

His timing couldn’t have been worse.

Armel’s words echoed in my ears again.

[“The drug to induce his rampage and the drug to stop it are both on me.”]

TAP!

Armel and I moved almost simultaneously. As he reached inside his clothes, I pressed down on his shoulder, putting my strength into it to pin him flat.

But suddenly, I lost purchase and stumbled. The hand that had been pressing his shoulder hit the ground.

Armel rolled out of my grasp, his body now smaller than mine.

‘Skeletal compression!’

Armel had shrunk even smaller than his previous slight frame. He drew a blade from inside his clothes. Something was attached to the end of its grip—a little pouch containing something.

WHOOSH!

His body trembling, barely able to keep his balance, Armel hurled the blade at Kora with all his strength.

“Dodge, Kora!!” Quinier’s shout rang out.

Hearing her, Kora reflexively jerked his head back and dodged the blade, but—

POP.

The pouch burst in midair.

Right in front of Kora’s eyes.