14

“As far as the results go, I would say they were passable, but considering the outcome you had envisioned, would this be considered a failure? Dinarts-san.”

Dinarts slightly twisted his scarred face.

“That’s true. There shouldn’t have been anyone in Elias capable of repelling that thing.”

“By ‘that thing,’ do you mean the giant magical beast you people call the Sea Guardian?”

Darius held a glass wet with condensation and took a sip of lemonade.

“…That’s right. Under normal circumstances, Elias should have fallen completely because of this. Every last ship in the harbor would have been sunk into the sea, and the confused fishmen and other magical beasts would have landed in the city and ravaged it.”

“And then the distribution of goods throughout the kingdom, centered on Elias, would have been paralyzed and stagnated, correct?”

At Rubelmel’s words, Dinarts let out a deep sigh and raised both hands as if surrendering.

Dinarts had also heard from his subordinates about what had happened when the kraken was defeated.

That man had supposedly jumped into the sea alone, walked freely across the surface of the water, and dragged the kraken up from the seabed with pillars of ice. In the end, with a single spell-like thing no one had ever seen before, he had easily punched a hole through that massive body.

“Looks like he came barging in here around the same time as you lot. Haah, how the hell was I supposed to account for someone like that?”

Dinarts slowly lowered his arms, then jerked his chin at a subordinate, ordering him to bring alcohol.

“We did not see that scene ourselves, so could you tell us a little more about it? There is a chance we may end up opposing him in the future.”

If there was someone capable of easily slaughtering a kraken, a threat powerful enough to destroy a city, then that person could become a threat to the Next-Era Luminaries as well.

Rubelmel peered at Dinarts’s face, wanting to at least confirm that person’s characteristics.

When a subordinate brought a bottle of grape wine to the table, Dinarts asked him, “What kind of magic was it?”

“I don’t even know if it was magic. That guy was missing one leg and one arm.”

“He didn’t have an arm or a leg!? How did someone like that—”

Dinarts was shocked by the report.

“He was flying around over the surface of the sea with some crude artificial leg fitted on, and before I knew it, the right arm that shouldn’t have been there had grown out… Then, the moment he touched the kraken with that right arm, he opened a huge hole in it instantly. I couldn’t help shouting when I saw it.”

“What the hell is with that absurd bastard…?”

Dinarts sighed as he poured wine into his own glass. He gulped down the filled glass in one go. He seemed to be in the mood where he could not bear it without drinking.

Darius and Rubelmel quietly watched the exchange between Dinarts and his subordinate.

The two of them had an idea who that man was.

That was Ains…

That was Lord Ains.

For a moment, the two of them widened their eyes in surprise and their expressions changed, but they soon returned to normal. Darius’s group, the Next-Era Luminaries, and Dinarts’s group were currently in a cooperative relationship, and although that relationship might continue in the future, they were not yet close enough to share all information.

Darius and Rubelmel each took a sip of their drinks without even looking at one another.

Dinarts’s attention had also been on his subordinate, so he did not notice the momentary change in their expressions.

“Damn it. This will be a bit more direct, but I’ll need to put another plan into motion…”

Dinarts placed his glass down on the table with enough force that it seemed it might shatter, and Darius spoke to him.

“May I ask one thing? I know there is no point asking after it has already been defeated, but how did you make that kraken go berserk? It is usually docile, is it not?”

“Ah, that? …Well, I suppose there’s no problem telling you anymore.”

Dinarts received a leather pouch from another subordinate, then scattered its contents across the table.

There were stones of various sizes. Every one of them was faintly colored, like unpolished gemstones.

“What is this?”

Darius picked up one of them.

“They are mana crystals, Lord Darius.”

“These are mana crystals?”

“What’s this, Darius? You’ve never seen a mana crystal before?”

“That is not the case.”

Darius had seen mana crystals before.

The kingdom’s current cultural development had magical tools in the background.

Some magical tools were used with the user’s mana, while others used mana crystals as fuel.

However, in the case of magical tools that used mana crystals, the stones came in all sizes and irregular shapes, so they had to be processed in order to be fitted into the tool.

That was the type of mana crystal Darius had seen before. They were mana crystals beautifully processed and shaped to be set into magical tools.

“So, what do these mana crystals have to do with it?”

“Mana crystals are lumps of mana. All magical beasts have mana crystals inside their bodies. Magical beasts become powerful because they absorb mana. Magical beasts kill each other in order to devour each other’s mana crystals. They attack humans in order to absorb the mana humans possess.”

Dinarts continued while toying with a mana crystal in his hand.

“Do you know what happens to a magical beast that absorbs a large amount of mana all at once? They get drunk on mana, just like we get drunk on alcohol.”

What would happen if even a normally docile magical beast suddenly suffered severe mana intoxication? The rampage of the kraken, which the people in Elias had experienced firsthand, was the answer.

“But how did you make it eat the mana crystals? If it wanted to devour mana, it would just eat whatever magical beast was nearby whenever it felt like it, wouldn’t it? I doubt that would cause mana intoxication.”

Darius’s question was reasonable.

Just as humans consumed alcohol in moderation, magical beasts also absorbed mana in moderation. Unless something extremely rare happened, mana intoxication should never occur. Moreover, no one would plan an incident based on the assumption that such an extremely rare event would happen.

“You prepared a sacrifice, did you not?”

The one who answered was Rubelmel.

Dinarts quietly nodded.

“You give a human a large number of mana crystals, lightly cut their body, and make them bleed. Then you throw that person into the sea near the kraken.”

The kraken sensed mana from the blood flowing into the sea.

It apparently judged that food had entered its territory and consumed the human carrying the mana crystals.

“So it swallowed all the mana crystals along with that person’s flesh, causing mana intoxication. Is that how it happened?”

Rubelmel reached that conclusion from Dinarts’s words.

Darius, seated beside Rubelmel, looked at Dinarts’s face, and Dinarts nodded in confirmation.

“Well, even so, there is now a human in Elias who easily slaughtered the kraken after it had turned ferocious.”

Dinarts laughed self-deprecatingly.

The first glass of grape wine had been gulped down in one go, but perhaps his thoughts had settled, because the wine poured again afterward was slowly poured down his throat as if he were savoring it.