The Past

It no longer mattered what was inside Dr. O’Neill’s head. It was, literally, ‘someone else’s business.’

“You said he was looking for a soul. One whose life or death isn’t even clear.”

But as for the soul the Lord of the Flies demanded cooperation for in exchange, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t someone else’s business.

“It seems to be… the soul of that bastard child the patriarch of House Bale is said to have had with a prostitute.”

“……”

The moment he heard it, he understood. From start to finish, whose story it was.

[House Bale, Shadow Binders]

[Bastard child]

[Born in the red-light district]

All three of them were Solomon’s story, with not a single thing to doubt. His story. Even the background he’d put in with his own hands.

“……”

Frozen silence settled. The female mage who looked like the superior asked back in a cold voice after the silence.

“Who else heard that fact?”

“O-only me.”

“Did you report it to Father?”

“Not to His Grace, the Duke of Haunting, yet…”

“I see.”

The Duke of Haunting. One of the Five Great Houses, the leader who commanded the Spirit Binders. The woman who called him Father whispered in a low voice.

“Happy.”

“Huh?”

In the instant the man failed to understand the meaning and was about to tilt his head.

With a low growl, it appeared. Right under the feet of the male mage who had been reporting carefully.

Kkwajik!

As if the shadow beneath his feet suddenly surged up, something revealed itself, a being of a clearly different nature from the ‘shadows’ Solomon wielded. It was the Black Hound Wraith.

“Kkeuaaaak!”

As the hound that burst out from the bottom of the mansion suddenly tore the mage apart, Solomon swallowed his breath in shock. A scream that tore at the ears echoed out. Even then, the fairy Oberon sitting on Solomon’s shoulder whispered calmly.

“What a blessed name that son-of-a-bitch dog was given.”

“…What?”

Happy. Was that what she’d just called that hound? Solomon was appalled. Still, seeing Oberon wasn’t saying much, it seemed Solomon’s scent wasn’t reaching Happy’s blessed nose here.

‘Ignorance is bliss.’

It wasn’t hard to guess how the man in front of him had ended up as dog food. Information that became dangerous the moment you knew it. So she’d silenced him, of course.

In the end, only silence remained there.

— Why… whyyyyy!!

No.

A sound rang out. A voice thick with ghostly energy, chillingly eerie and cold enough to raise goosebumps.

— Lady Elise, whyyyyy!! I-I too have the blood of the loyal Haunting House flowing…!!

The man’s mouth hadn’t been shut. He didn’t mean the mouth of the corpse torn to pieces and strewn about.

Above the corpse, a human-shaped figure floated there. The stereotypical kind people imagine, slightly transparent and glowing bluish. A spirit.

“I have no obligation to answer every question from a branch line.”

Even then, the robed woman, Elise, answered without blinking once.

“For the record, that just now was also the answer.”

She, who called the great house’s head Father, said it. The answer was obvious. A branch line like that couldn’t handle it.

— Aaaah…! It’s unfair, truly unfair!!

Huuwoong!

Even so, as if the spirit couldn’t accept that fact obediently, it began to exert influence with a pained cry. In a gale whipping like a vortex, Elise’s hood was blown off.

— Lady Elise, Laaady Eleeese…!

Beneath the hood was a beauty with corpse-pale, lifeless skin. Even as her ash-gray hair fluttered in disarray before the spirit’s wailing, she didn’t blink once. As if there was nothing to fear.

“Yap yap, yap. So noisy.”

Rather than afraid, she only waved a hand as if annoyed.

Kkwajik!

Right after, a Black Hound appeared again, bursting up through the floor. It didn’t stop at tearing apart flesh, it began to bite and rip at the spirit howling about unfairness.

Solomon held his breath in silence and watched the scene. Even while it felt like his head would burst thanks to the information he’d obtained there, he didn’t lose his cool.

Whatever it was, he came here for the job. What he had to do didn’t change.

‘That woman is the Haunting House’s direct line.’

Elise, who had silenced the spirit, pulled her hood down deep again. Solomon also began to follow behind her carefully as she headed somewhere right away.

Judging from the circumstances, there was a high chance her destination overlapped with Solomon’s.

A place believed to contain Dr. O’Neill’s soul or brain tissue.

Compared to searching this labyrinth-like mansion room by room, which was more efficient was obvious. Assuming he didn’t get caught, that is.

“Don’t stick too close. Those things are lined up in a single file under that young lady’s feet.”

“……”

Oberon’s warning as he followed proved the danger. The hounds of this mansion could pass through walls and floors alike. Even now, it meant countless ‘Black Hound Wraiths’ were hiding beneath the mansion floor she walked on.

In fact, when she crossed the corridor at the front of the mansion and began to climb a spiral staircase, countless packs of hounds began to rise up one by one from underfoot.

Solomon followed behind carefully. Without sound. Without form.

Fortunately, the invisibility potion made everything within a certain range centered on Solomon invisible, including his gear, clothes, tools. Even the hippie fairy perched on his shoulder.

At the top of the mansion twisted in a spiral, the Haunting House’s direct line finally headed to a room at the far end of the mansion, where it looked winding like a maze.

‘Goddamn it.’

The moment he saw it, Solomon spat a curse in silence. There was a man guarding the door. And he was a robed mage with the Haunting House crest embroidered on him.

‘Doesn’t look like he’ll step aside nicely.’

Keeping a suitable distance, Solomon thought. Before long, she opened the door and came out. And as expected, even after she disappeared, the mage guarding the place had no intention of leaving his post.

There was no other way. Solomon steeled himself and additionally coated the Ghost Whale bone blade with Doom Poison.

His opponent wasn’t some random nobody. He belonged to the Five Great Houses, and he was a mage granted the honor of bearing their family crest (家紋) on his clothing. Solomon was sick to death of even recalling how much he’d suffered fighting one of their great-house mages.

Even so, the situation was clearly different from back then.

Above all, the fact that the opponent hadn’t realized Solomon existed.

And Solomon had a top-grade invisibility potion that allowed two ambushes, and poison whose power he couldn’t even dare to gauge. Solomon hardened his resolve.

‘<Black Sword> activate.’

The level 3 spell, Black Sword. Shadow magic layered itself over the Ghost Whale bone blade already coated in Doom Poison. The blade wasn’t visible in the first place due to the invisibility magic, but still.

In that state, he carefully closed the distance. From the gear he wore to his weapon, even to the hippie fairy on his shoulder, everything was covered within the range of the invisibility effect.

The opponent still hadn’t noticed this way.

‘Blade in the Darkness, activate.’

Aiming for his back, left exposed without defense— the assassin’s dagger drove down. A sudden strike the opponent didn’t realize in time.

Chwaaak!

Blood spurted from the blade tip swung without even leaving time to scream. Yet even then, Solomon’s form wasn’t revealed.

Only the blood bursting and spraying briefly sketched a silhouette in empty air.

Even ‘destructive’ wasn’t enough to describe it. A fatal blow that didn’t even give room to scream in pain or respond.

And it was literally only a single blow.

A top-grade invisibility potion. True to its name, Solomon’s invisibility right now didn’t break even when he landed an ambush.

“Kuhk, kuhk, you…!”

Right after the ambush, the invisible blade drove down once again. Only after the two ambushes were over did the top-grade invisibility potion finally lose its effect.

The blood-soaked Solomon was driving a blade where ink-black and violet hues intermingled deep into the mage’s vital point.

During the two ambushes, the man couldn’t even scream.

Violet radiance clogged his features shut, his veins swelled as if they would burst like worms, and his whole body twisted into purple. Poisoning.

‘<Shadow Mimic>.’

Even so, Solomon’s actions weren’t finished yet. Lastly, a shadow that mimicked his strike surged up and drove in a third ambush.

The third, last shadow blade swung. Resistance was already impossible. The man’s body was torn to shreds and sprayed blood in all directions, like an explosion. The mansion corridor became drenched in blood.

Top-grade invisibility and poison with comparable killing power. It was practically like pulling forward the future of the power build he pictured in his head.

“Damn, you pierced through nice and fiery.”

“Hoo.”

“Man, from now on I gotta watch my back around you, bro. You’re basically a separate ‘knife-hole-punching mage.’ Wait, thinking about it, you’re a mage, aren’t you?”

“……”

Leaving the fairy’s nonsense behind, Solomon steadied his ragged breathing. His heart pounded like it would burst. And then—

[Oh, don’t you hear a sound from somewhere?]

“!”

When he heard the narrator’s voice that followed, his heart nearly stopped.

[Among Uptown’s Five Great Houses, the sound of already becoming irreversible with two houses, I mean.]

‘Fuck, he’s scaring people.’

Solomon thought as he swallowed down a curse. With blood fountains spraying this extravagantly everywhere, if someone saw this, there was no way to do anything about it.

Even if ‘assassination’ meant having no witnesses, from here on, ‘assassination’ wasn’t a very good method for Solomon. It would never end that way.

‘I can’t drag this out.’

In the end, there was only one thing to do. Without hesitation, Solomon left the corpse behind and opened the door.

Not forgetting to drink one more invisibility potion in advance.

Centered on Solomon, even the bloodstains coating him once again lost their form and blended into empty air.

‘That makes three bottles left.’

In that state, he opened the door behind the corpse. To the place believed, with high probability, to contain Solomon’s retrieval target.

Kkiiiik.

With the creaking sound of wood, the door opened. And what awaited beyond was… rather than an old-fashioned mansion interior, it was a damp, dark scene like an underground prison of an ancient castle.

A prison of iron bars lined up between stone walls filled with dampness, not wood. And it extended fairly deep.

A man was imprisoned there.

A stereotypical spirit floating bluish, like the mage who had died as dog food earlier.

It wasn’t the appearance of the corpse collector Solomon knew. It was the appearance of a person who looked fairly intact. The reason wasn’t hard to guess. No matter how much the past him had human torsos or limbs stuck all over him, you couldn’t call that the appearance of a soul he’d had from birth.

Even so, on that face, clearly, traces of the corpse collector Solomon remembered remained. Surprisingly scholarly.

— Hheooooo!!

Then Dr. O’Neill’s soul screamed. Could he see this way? Solomon’s heart dropped.

— I-it hurts, it itches, it itches, my body itcheees…! Fly eggs, fly eggs are…!

No. Dr. O’Neill wasn’t reacting to Solomon, he was trembling like a madman terrified of hallucinations. Maybe he was suffering trauma from when he fell into Hell.

As you could tell from Ghost Town and from the word Hell, in this world, death wasn’t the end. The death of the body was only the beginning.

‘How the hell am I supposed to retrieve that guy?’

He’d been told to retrieve the soul, but how was he supposed to ‘retrieve’ it? No matter how he looked at it, the guy didn’t seem like he’d follow obediently. And it wasn’t like Solomon could beat him up and drag him by force, either.

‘If soul retrieval is unavoidable, they said to bring the brain tissue that handles memory storage.’

In that state, Solomon looked around. But no matter where he looked, O’Neill’s corpse, or anything you could call a brain, wasn’t visible. Other than the soul trembling in fear right in front of him.

“What, why are you dawdling like that? You’re making a fairy suffocate with impatience.”

Then Oberon, perched on Solomon’s shoulder, spoke. Before Solomon could react in surprise, the fairy flapped his two wings and flew up.

Straight ahead.

“Hey, you there. Sin-heavy bro.”

— Hiiik!

“No…!”

As Solomon was about to spit a string of curses, the fairy spoke first.

“We’ll take responsibility for getting you out of here. So you can shut your mouth and follow, right?”

— Hiik! W-who are you!

“Just say we’re someone who fucking hates the Haunting House. What, you don’t wanna get out of here? If you don’t, then fine.”

— Y-you’ll get me out of here?!

“Yeah. You gotta get out of here so we can screw them over.”

At Oberon’s words, Dr. O’Neill nodded more obediently than expected.

— P-please! I’m begging you like this, so please get me out of here!! I-I really don’t know! I don’t know anything! What the City Council bastards did to her on Raspberry Street…!

“Good, we’ll ask one thing too. Shut your mouth and just follow.”

He’s more compliant than expected. Solomon swallowed his words, dumbfounded. Then he realized.

‘Right. Because of the invisibility spell, he can’t see my face.’

Thinking it over, it seemed better for Solomon to just stay quiet. There was nothing good about revealing he was the one who’d punched his ticket to Hell.

So without a word, Solomon carefully moved his steps forward. He couldn’t hide Dr. O’Neill’s soul right now. And it was also impossible to hide the catastrophe that had already happened out front.

In the end, whether he liked it or not, it was fate that the fact someone had infiltrated would be exposed.

Only one thing remained.

To leave this mansion without looking back.