Not every noble owned an estate in the capital. Only some nobles overflowing with krona, or some nobles without territory who lived on stipends from the royal house, owned estates.
Nemila Poteil too was one of the ordinary nobles who had attached herself to the Duke of Octo.
All she possessed was a single small vineyard belonging to her family.
Naturally, because she was one of the servants Crang had identified, the Duke of Octo had taken her into his house.
The excuse had been good too. Was it not openly said that the duke sold half the wine of Naurillia?
It had been a perfectly suitable reason for accepting Nemila Poteil's stay when she came. Looking back now, her target must have been the Duke of Octo himself.
The servant's painstaking work thus turned to nothing overnight.
Naturally so. The dead could do nothing.
There had also been the matter of the four maids she had gotten close to suddenly coming down with fever and taking to bed, but that could not even begin to count as important right now.
'What in the world happened here?'
Andrew examined the corpse. The traces of demonic energy staining it were unmistakable. Nemila was a servant of demons.
Because he had known this servant existed, he had been lying low inside the Duke of Octo's household.
Naturally, he had been following the orders of Crang and Duke Marcus.
'In one stroke?'
No, not even one stroke. One stab. That was the right way to put it.
It had not even been a beheading. She had been stabbed to death. He did not know what this servant had been capable of, or what abilities she had possessed, but—
'Does that even make sense?'
It threw him. Andrew's thoughts tangled. But he was in no position to show any of it outwardly, so he merely kept a blank face and studied the corpse closely.
"Captain."
Andrew turned his head at his subordinate's voice. Even if he kept looking at the body, he would learn nothing more. The only trace was a single knife blow, and all he had seen was the back of someone in a pitch-black hood and a cloak of the same color that hid even the shape of the body.
Could anyone identify a culprit from that? Not a chance. Still, he could not exactly wear a troubled expression either, given his current position and circumstances.
"Didn't I say not to let anyone in?"
At Andrew's deliberately stern words, the subordinate made an awkward face and replied,
"His Grace the duke has arrived."
He had told them to clear people away, but that had not meant clear away the master of the estate too.
The Duke of Octo was the owner of the place they were standing in now, and a duke of Naurillia.
Escorted by the subordinate, the Duke of Octo soon entered the room.
"What happened here?"
Naturally, he too knew what the dead person in front of him was, and who.
"It was an assassination."
Andrew answered while standing straight. It was hard to describe last night any other way.
"An assassination?"
Who would kill a servant of demons, and why?
That question filled the duke's eyes. Looking back into them, Andrew had nothing to say.
Part of him even felt as though someone had stolen the job he himself was supposed to do.
'Who.'
His Highness? Duke Marcus?
Then loud footsteps sounded outside the room where the body had been laid out, and his lieutenant entered and said,
"Captain, more has happened."
"What happened?"
The Duke of Octo asked in Andrew's place.
"Several people died during the night."
After several major incidents, public order in the capital, Naurill, had grown fairly stable.
There were still vagrants, and there were still cases now and then of people brawling at night and drawing knives on each other, but wealthy merchants and nobles rarely died.
Since order had stabilized, it had become very rare for a decent commoner to get stabbed to death at night, or to suffer kidnapping or robbery.
And yet, last night alone, five people had died. Nobles and well-known figures at that.
Andrew ran himself ragged trying to contain the situation, but he could not stop grim rumors from spreading through the capital.
Words without feet crossed walls with ease, walls had ears, and doors had eyes.
Even if you tried to hide it, word spread in an instant.
"Noble Killer."
"They say he kills at random for no reason."
"Hmph, what nonsense. He won't get through my guard."
"What bastard dares!"
"Is this the Empire's doing?"
Rumors spread everywhere in the capital. All kinds of talk sprang up. Andrew gave up on trying to control it halfway through.
'This is out of my hands.'
Then what was left to do?
"This goddamn bastard wants to do this, does he?"
Andrew immediately devoted himself to tracking down the culprit. He scattered public order soldiers all over the place and hunted through the city for anyone suspicious.
That confusion must have been what made it possible.
The servants of demons did not exist only in high positions. Some were hidden here and there, gathering information.
One of them, an old man disguised as a peddler, did not think this was aimed at the servants' faction at all.
'What kind of bastard is this?'
Could another servant have done it?
He did not know. There was nothing he could know.
***
"There are five remaining lords of the Demon lands we call demons, but things between those five don't look especially good, do they?"
Kraiss said this from where he sat on the edge of the bed. It was plain enough from everything that had happened so far and from the way things were moving. With Kraiss's insight, of course he would notice it.
"Do you think the ones who sent servants are staying in contact with each other? Maybe holding meetings every few months? I don't think so."
What was the core of what he meant?
Their relations were bad. They had no reason to exchange information. Which meant they became a curtain hiding one another. And to see beyond that curtain, it would take time to stick out a head and a hand, brush aside what was blocking the view, and look through.
"If the rumor of a Noble Killer spreads, they'll get confused. Then they'll hesitate for a moment, right? We'll finish the work while they're hesitating."
Seen one way, it was bold. Seen another, it was close to a gamble. But by Kraiss's calculations, it was more than worth trying.
Did he not have two knights and one mage?
'And not just any knights.'
It was Enkrid and Rem. Even Kraiss still had many unknowns about the extent of the witch Esther's ability, but judging from what she had shown on the previous battlefield—
'They're fully prepared to fight even demons. Servants get sliced up.'
Between several thoughts, calculations, what he possessed and what he knew, what the enemy knew, the attitude the enemy would take, predictions and guesses, estimates and certainty, Kraiss opened a path.
"Well then, good luck again tonight."
And so, dressed in his nightclothes, he cheered on the three as they left. They would stay up half the night again tonight and still be perfectly fine, but he would not. He needed enough rest for his head to work properly. He had to sleep deeply so he would make no mistakes when responding to unexpected developments.
All of this was a pattern of action born from thoroughly rational and efficient thinking.
"...That bastard is irritating in a vicious way. Let's slit his throat too."
Rem voiced a fair opinion.
"I could temporarily remove something important to a man, not just his eyeballs."
Esther demonstrated the variety of things she could do as a witch.
Kraiss's pupils shook. Then he stared at Enkrid. Surely the captain wouldn't agree with that too?
Toward those eyes full of suspicion, doubt, and anxiety, Enkrid said,
"Later."
"...What? Later?"
Kraiss shot back, startled. Do what later?
Enkrid finished the answer.
"Better not do anything that would make Nurat sad."
Trading a few words with an appropriate mix of jokes and threats, the three climbed down from the window again. It was the second night.
"Esther?"
The moment they came out, Enkrid called out to the witch. The question was built into the name, and the witch understood immediately too.
"If you're asking whether I'm tired, I could do this all year long without issue."
Enkrid knew the process well, because he had actually repeated the same day for an entire year before. That was why the words did not sound like bragging. Esther could surely do it. As for fatigue and stamina, there was no need to worry about Rem or himself either.
That big-eyed bastard giving them a "good luck" in his sleepwear was irritating, but in truth none of this was a big deal.
"This isn't dangerous, right?"
When Kraiss had asked that yesterday, gripped by unease just before everything began, Rem had snorted.
"Even if one of those lords came in person, that'd be fine."
The root of that confidence was probably the sorcery he had newly awakened to, and the achievement of erasing the source of Silence.
People drew confidence from experience. That was true whether they were geniuses or dullards. Enkrid was the same.
He had gained confidence by repeating this same day several times and overcoming brutal circumstances to arrive where he was now.
"Tonight we split up."
That was why he said it. Yesterday they had moved together, but thinking back on it, it had not been hard to judge the level of the servants.
Then splitting up and making the situation more tangled would not be a bad move either.
The key was to do something sudden and absurd while pushing forward an opaque intent.
While the other side was still trying to figure out what in the world this was, they would finish everything.
"At the very least, we can't let them do what they want and attack the Empire's envoys inside Naurill."
Just as Kraiss had said. Enkrid too ran toward the same goal.
It was the second night. There were twice as many patrolling soldiers as the day before, but that posed no problem.
'Assimilation.'
Enkrid walked down a dark alley. He passed right beside a homeless man who stank with an odor foul enough to make Dunbakel's sour smell seem mild by comparison. The homeless man did not sense even the stirring of the wind.
And so he met another servant of demons.
This servant was one of those called a noble of the night. Somehow the bastard had managed to slip into the capital.
He was the master of a guild whose name had been spreading by word of mouth through the capital lately. To put it simply, it was a crime guild, though the people who used it called it an information guild.
The guildmaster was moving a quill across the desk, then looked up. Writing in the dark without even a single candleholder? No ordinary person could manage that.
Two bright-red eyes stared into empty air from the darkness.
"What are you?"
He asked.
This was a third-floor study in a luxurious mansion he had entered by way of an alley. Enkrid had picked the front door's lock, gone in calmly, climbed the stairs, and waited until a servant opened the study door before entering.
He had not expected the other side to sense his presence in the middle of all that.
'Assimilation was seen through.'
That was the simple conclusion drawn from the enemy's response.
Had he been caught because he could not do it like Jaxon? No. Those bright-red eyes were staring right at him. Those were not human eyes.
The quill in the darkness, the eyes, the attitude, the smell, even the response—every part of the situation declared that the opponent was not human.
"A vampire?"
Enkrid asked. He stood straight with one hand resting on his sword grip. Rem had left his axe behind because it stood out too much, but Enkrid had not. He had carried Today with him.
His engraved weapon gave a low hum, a vibration only he could feel. It was responding to his words.
The sword had spoken first, before he even heard the other side's reply.
"Where did you hire an assassin like this?"
The bastard spoke and flicked a finger. A blood-red liquid rose into the air, transformed into arrows, and shot at him.
It happened almost at the same moment as the finger flick.
It was that fast.
Of course, Enkrid was faster. His sword split the bright-red arrow. The vampire had not been careless.
The spell he had prepared was an arrow that would not stop until it hit. In other words, even if that blood arrow had its form crushed, it would immediately turn back into an arrow and strike its target.
It had been a hidden trump card he had kept in reserve against any sudden attack, but that trump card broke. The arrow caught on the blade scattered onto the floor as it was.
"Spell cutting?"
The startled vampire shot to his feet.
In step with Today, Enkrid cut at the throat of the rising man. He stepped forward with his right foot and swung the blade from left to right, level with the ground.
He had entered a world without sound, but every motion was the same as when he first learned swordsmanship.
No, it had gone several steps beyond that. Back then he had understood neither the mechanics of force nor the movement, and had only thrown himself into training. That was no longer the case.
'Shift the center of gravity.'
The force loaded into his rear foot rose through calf and thigh, passed through the waist, ran along the arm, and settled into the blade.
Along with that, he matched the angle and trajectory of the blade's entry. He swung so the flat of the blade stayed level with the ground, fixing it so it would not tremble even a little.
'Hold the sword grip gently, like gripping an egg.'
The instant the resistance of what he meant to cut touched him, he caught that moment and added force to his little finger.
The leather wound around the grip met his palm and felt like clasped hands.
It was the process of retracing, one by one, everything he had learned so far.
"Even I've only managed cuts with that much unity a few times."
A remark from one of the instructors suddenly flashed through his mind and passed by. Enkrid swung his sword in a world clearer than before.
A cut like this would be hard even for Rem or the other members to stop with a laugh.
The same would have been true for Cypress, or Bartolo who had come before, or Anu, King of the East.
So how was some mere vampire supposed to stop it?
In the middle of it, the bastard started chanting a spell and at the same time gripped a dagger and half-drew it. That alone was worth acknowledging as skill.
Though that meant nothing now that he was dead.
Slice.
For the sound of cutting neck bone, flesh, and muscle, it was unbelievably quiet. The blade had passed through, yet the neck did not fall off.
"How dare you, in a place like this."
The vampire even stayed alive long enough to speak after that, drew the dagger, and continued chanting.
As he recited several more words, blood streamed from his neck. In the darkness it looked black.
Neither the spell nor the dagger fulfilled its role. Their owner was already dead.
After swinging the sword, Enkrid stared blankly at the blade in his hand.
'Are you teaching me swordsmanship too?'
It was a strange experience. It felt as though his engraved weapon had conveyed the sensation of making him recall some moment he had forgotten until now.
"Huh? What is this? Why is this happening? Gghhk—"
The vampire grabbed at his slipping neck. Naturally, it meant nothing. The head dropped with a thump onto the thick rug, and the body, which had dropped to its knees first, collapsed too. The bastard's body turned to gray ash and dirtied the rug.
Enkrid strolled out of the mansion.
'Clouds.'
Tonight was darker than yesterday. He was walking down the alley, following the terrain he had roughly memorized and thinking of the next target.
He had not even taken a few steps before a black mass flew down at him from overhead.
His sharpened five senses detected it coming, and he avoided it. As he threw himself aside, he caught a protruding stone in the alley wall and pulled himself up onto the top of the wall. It was skill enough to shame an acrobat.
The thing that had flown at him grazed past the ground through the alley, then rose again, circled, and buzzed over his head.
Enkrid's gaze shifted to the side.
The rooftop.
A figure in a pure white robe stood there in the dead of night, holding a single staff and staring straight at him. The hood was pulled low, so the face could not be seen.
'Mage.'
He did not even need to measure it. He could feel it plainly enough.
Then the black mass circling in the air came hurtling at him again.