Chapter 78 - The Pirate King of Laxas (5)

The sixth island was the last of the Seven Fleet Isles, the territory of the Sea Wolf pirates and the only island Radan had yet to conquer. In the enormous wooden fortress at its center...

"... So you think they were attacked?"

A man was scowling.

34

He had a long vertical scar across his face and a jewel-studded prosthesis fitted to his right arm. This was Tertogan, leader of the Sea Wolf pirates, known as the Destroyer for laying waste to one of Laxas's territories.

"Yes, well—we haven't been able to contact them at all, so we can only assume—"

The sailor standing before him watched him nervously. Tertogan immediately scowled and spoke.

"Then who attacked them?"

"... It seems to have been that bastard Radan."

"Tch."

After a stretch of silence following the sailor's report, Tertogan spoke.

"Hey."

"Yes...?"

"Come here."

"What do you mean, come here...?"

"I said come closer."

Tertogan beckoned with a finger of his prosthetic hand. The sailor looked uneasy, but slowly approached as though he had no choice.

The next instant—

CRUNCH!

The head that had worn such an anxious expression only moments before burst apart.

Blood instantly splattered the office, leaving it a mess. The sailor's headless body hit the floor with a thud, but Tertogan roared,

"Fucking hell!"

BANG! CRUNCH! CRACK!

Apparently unsatisfied, Tertogan hauled the already headless corpse up by its collar and began punching it again and again. What remained of the head, apart from the lower jaw, was pulverized. A hole opened where the heart had been. The right arm broke off like a toy's.

BANG!

Even that apparently wasn't enough. He slammed the motionless corpse into the floor and trampled it. After huffing angrily several times, he returned to his seat, leaving the body embedded in the floor, its waist bent grotesquely backward.

Then the tightly shut office door opened, and a man entered.

"Boss."

"Take this corpse to them."

The man nodded briefly at Tertogan's words, then turned and jerked his head. Sailors began dragging the grotesquely mangled corpse out.

"... How many more do we need?"

"According to that man, we'll need at least another fifteen hundred people's worth."

"Tch. We've already offered up more than twenty thousand bodies. And we still need that many?"

"Yes."

"No, that'll take too long. That bastard Radan will be coming for us any day now...!"

As Tertogan muttered with a scowl, the man who had entered—his deputy, Zelinka—hesitated before speaking.

"Boss, won't we be fine anyway? We've got those things. If we fight at sea, can't we win?"

At Zelinka's words, Tertogan rose and went to the window outside the office. The wooden fortress lay spread out before him. The corpse of the man he had just killed to vent his anger was—

CRUNCH! MUNCH! CRACK!

—being devoured by misshapen monsters.

Seen from a distance, their overall shape was not so different from a human's. But their skin was covered in green scales, and their faces resembled sea fish. Above all, their pupils held nothing, as though they had simply been painted pitch-black. Those eyes seemed to suggest that these creatures differed from humans not merely in appearance, but in their very essence.

"..."

Hundreds of fishfolk clung to a single corpse like ravenous hungry ghosts, dark red blood smeared around their mouths. Watching them, Tertogan thought,

'They certainly are strong.'

He knew full well how powerful the fishfolk were. On land, he couldn't be sure, but if the battle remained at sea, he was confident the fishfolk alone could hold off Radan's enormous army without much difficulty.

But Radan himself was the problem. The great pirate who had united six of the isles, and the master of the White Moon.

'That bastard is a monster.'

Tertogan scowled involuntarily as he recalled that time, back when Radan had occupied only a single island. The pirates of the other six had banded together to kill him and divide the first island among themselves, and gone to war.

He remembered the carnage—Radan moving freely beneath the sea, tearing blessed captains apart with his bare hands and single-handedly sinking dozens of ships.

'It still isn't enough.'

That was why Tertogan instinctively knew the fishfolk alone would not suffice even in this battle. At the same time, a voice flashed through his mind.

It belonged to the man who had suddenly appeared when Tertogan was merely waiting for the day Radan would kill him. The man had offered him a way to kill Radan—

["Do you not desire power?"]

—and power that would take him beyond Radan, making him ruler of the world.

["Offer human flesh to the fishfolk. Offer it again and again, gathering souls and earning favor, and you shall become a god."]

Tertogan picked up the object the man had given him along with those words. Teeth jutted from it in every direction, and it emitted a faint turquoise glow. As he watched, the fishfolk finished devouring the corpse, and a green soul flowed straight into the object.

"..."

After remaining silent for a while, he spoke to Zelinka.

"What did you say the minimum was?"

"At least fifteen hundred," Zelinka answered.

At that answer, Tertogan once again recalled the words of the man in the black holy shroud.

["Do you not desire power?"]

"... There may be a way."

With that murmur, he gazed silently at the fortress for a while.

"A way..."

A thin thread of madness had crept into Tertogan's eyes as he looked outside.

A green madness.

####

If not for his artifacts, Alon would have had little desire to meet Alexion the Identifier. First, Alexion had such a shitty personality that he made Alon want to kill him. Second, he bankrolled underworld groups in Laxas's slums, which made him extremely difficult to reach.

In short, he was hard to meet and a source of nothing but stress once you did. Alon had come here prepared for that.

He had, but...

CLANG!

The object rolled away.

"S-s-s-sorry...!!!"

Alon had handed over Heinkel's ring and the small sword for identification. Watching Alexion hastily retrieve the Blindfolded One's Contract Token after dropping it with his trembling hands, Alon wore an odd expression. The man's appearance was exactly like his illustration in the game, but his behavior was utterly different.

Of course, Alon knew perfectly well why.

'... What did he do to him?'

Alon glanced at Radan. With an innocent smile on his lips, Radan calmly watched Alexion trembling as he struggled into his seat and began appraising the artifacts Alon had handed him.

'He did say he'd done nothing and brought him here politely.'

Alexion's reaction certainly suggested otherwise, leaving Alon wearing that odd expression for some time.

"I-it's all done...!"

"... Already?"

Alon was surprised that Alexion had finished appraising the artifacts in less than ten minutes. As far as he knew, it normally took at least two hours.

"Y-yes...!"

Alexion bowed his head repeatedly and handed the two artifacts back.

'... He really did?'

On receiving them, Alon realized their appraisal was indeed complete, just as Alexion had said. The artifacts had been dark gray when he handed them over, but now their colors were unmistakably vivid. Heinkel's ring had changed from gray to red, and the item from Coloni's treasury now displayed a clear, deep ink-black hue. Alon spoke.

"That was fast."

"You didn't cut corners, did you?"

"N-no! Absolutely not!"

Alexion answered Radan in terror. Seeing that even his hands were still trembling, Alon took pity on him and spoke.

"... The appraisal is definitely complete."

"Is that so, Big Brother?"

"Yes. Let him go back."

At Alon's brief instruction, Radan nodded and gave an equally brief order.

"Hey, take him out."

The pirates entered as though they had been waiting for that very moment and began escorting Alexion out.

"Thank you! Thank you so much! Thank you for sparing my life!!!"

Perhaps overjoyed that he could finally leave, Alexion repeated his thanks with an intensely moved expression, even tearing up. His reaction was as fervent as that of a man returning alive from hell.

"Big Brother, you're sure everything's finished?"

"... Yes. Thanks to you, I no longer need to go all the way to Laxas."

"That's good, Big Brother."

Radan laughed and sat opposite him. Alon asked,

"But are you sure you brought him here politely?"

"Of course. I was perfectly polite. He's probably just scared because of my reputation."

'He certainly does have a terrible reputation, so maybe that's all it... is...? '

Alon considered Radan's words briefly, then decided simply to accept them. He moved on to his next question.

"But how did you find Alexion in just one day? He must have been hiding pretty thoroughly. Unless you took out all those underworld bastards, he'd have been hard to find."

"Oh—those guys?"

"Yes. Sounds like you met them."

"Well, I did meet them. But I didn't talk to them..."

"...? How did you find him without talking to them?"

"..."

"... You really did bring him here politely, right?"

"I brought Alexion here politely, Big Brother."

Radan paused at Alon's question, then answered with a broad grin. Instinctively realizing how Radan had brought Alexion here, Alon thought,

'... He really hasn't become one of the Five Great Sins yet... right?'

He resolved to give Radan, at least, some extra personal attention.

####

Around the time Alon was looking at Radan on the island and thinking those thoughts, there stood a mansion in southern Maon, a territory belonging to the small duchy of Drua, which bordered Callivan to the south.

It was the headquarters of Pigule, an organization that had colluded with the small duchy, using Drua as its base to expand its power through prostitution and drugs made from human flesh.

Or it had been, until just moments ago.

"S-spare—please spare me...!"

Darte, Pigule's boss, had ground thousands of humans into drugs without shedding a single tear. Now his eyes brimmed with terror and tears.

"I—I only did what I was told—please spare—!!"

He struggled desperately to survive.

But—

CRUNCH!

The next instant, violet threads twisted his entire body into a grotesque shape. Blood poured from him as he died.

The figure silently watching the corpse on the floor then turned toward the window overlooking the mansion. Bodies lay everywhere.

Bodies severed at the waist. Bodies driven into the mansion's walls. Bodies whose fear-filled eyes had never closed in death.

Corpses, corpses, corpses.

And still more corpses.

Yet the violet-eyed man watching the scene without any particular stir of emotion—no, Deus—spoke into the otherwise empty room.

"Did you find out?"

A man appeared behind him.

"Hidan."

At Deus's murmur, Hidan bowed his head slightly.

"As I initially reported, this doesn't appear to be where the orders originated."

"And those higher up?"

"Yuna is gathering information, but perhaps they intended to avoid detection from the outset. Their chain of command is extremely complicated, so uncovering it is taking time."

"... I see."

"Still, we were able to identify the nobles who instigated this."

"Who are they?"

"Nobles of Arteria."

Deus fell silent for a while at those words.

"Hidan, thanks to you, obtaining information is always so convenient."

"Not at all. If it is for the Great Moon... Yuna will feel the same way. All of us in Blue Moon do."

"I see."

Deus continued,

"What are the nobles' names?"

"Count Bartez and Count Briel, and apparently about two others."

"..."

"What do you intend to do? ... In my opinion, killing just those first two ringleaders would set an example and ensure they never attempt anything like this again."

"I'll kill them all."

Without the slightest hesitation, his violet eyes gleaming, he continued,

"I'm not gentle enough to spare anyone who tried to harm the Great Moon."

With chilling eyes, he murmured in a low voice,

"So I will kill them all. Every last one of them. All of them."

"All for the Great Moon."

With those words spoken in unison, the two men who had pronounced Pigule's doom disappeared.

Another organization was buried in history.