Arrowhead

Cheolkeok, chiiik!
The pipes coiled around the four steam horses spat out steam and came to a stop. The driver, made of the same kind of machinery, carefully opened the door for him. Chairman Vlad Țepeș didn’t get out. Only Solomon got out.

“Then, Bonne nuit, dors bien—.”
“Speak in a language I can understand.”
“Oh, I’m wishing you a good night.”
“Well, I’m moved to bloody tears.”

Leaving Chairman Țepeș’s tongue-twisting words behind, Solomon stepped out of the carriage. At last, past Downtown’s streets, the nobles’ territory came into view, the domain of House Arrowhead, one of the Five Great Houses that stood at the very top even among those nobles.

‘So this is Uptown, and among it, the territory of the Five Great Houses.’

It really was. At least, within Uptown’s scenery, he couldn’t find any trace of this city he knew, Guild City.
Roads laid not with asphalt, but with finely spread crushed stone. Not even a streetlamp in sight. Only lemon-colored magical lamps floating in midair with no post at all.
There was no sign of the ash-gray fog that symbolized Guild City, and there was neither the noise of machines nor the cumbersome hiss of steam. Even looking around, all he could see were Gothic spires and mansions rising as if to pierce the sky, standing amid endless silence. The destination spread out before Solomon was no exception.

───
Target Elimination Commission

Issuer: House Arrowhead
Target: The Undying
Location: Within House Arrowhead territory, underground of the 3rd Optical Spectral Processing Facility
───

Strictly speaking, that mansion in front of him was within their domain. Putting aside how wide an area in this city could even be called a ‘domain,’ it was, in any case, only an attached facility within that domain.
And what stood before him was less a scientific facility and more something filled with medieval gloom and eeriness that looked like a ghost could pop out at any moment, or, put kindly, an old-fashioned air.

So Solomon moved in silence. Leaving the carriage receding behind him, he headed to where the commission he had to carry out awaited.
Knock knock.
Solomon stood before the mansion door and knocked without a word. A brief silence. At the end of the silence, the door opened.

“……!”

The door opened, and Solomon narrowed his eyes at the light leaking out through that brief gap. In the late night, it was dazzling and bright like dawn’s first light.
Soon, blocking the pouring light, a robed silhouette appeared. It was a young woman’s voice. And it was a strangely familiar voice.

“I was waiting for you.”

Even that distinctive way of speaking.

‘Rosetta Arrowhead……?’

He never expected Duke Arrowhead to come out in person. Flustered, Solomon looked at the silhouette against the backlight, and soon realized. This wasn’t the child from the first time he saw her. Even in the backlight, it was the figure of a mature woman in robes shining platinum.

“Hehe, a lady is bound to have many faces.”

Even so, her skin was smooth ceramic, not glazed, and the drive mechanisms along her limbs, moving with springs and gears, were exposed as they were.
Not oil and steam pipes like Downtown’s magitech, but an old-fashioned, refined form like a handmade watch or a music box.
Not a factory-made product produced for efficient mass production, but something closer to an artwork a watchmaker crafts with all their care. Each time she moved, the clicking sound that rang out was not grating, and carried a clear, regular rhythm like a music box.

“Like projecting a single light onto a prism.”
“……I see.”

Solomon didn’t show anything more. He knew. The name Spear-Sorcerer Prism Mage wasn’t limited to attack magic. Spectral splitting, dividing light into many colors by wavelength. A high-level mage of House Arrowhead could ‘split’ their own existence.

“And before the elegance of light, the human body is crude beyond measure.”

Kkirik, tik.
When she tilted her head lightly, gears inside her nape meshed and adjusted the angle slightly.

“Simply standing, sitting, even slightly bending your neck accumulates a burden in human bones that can’t be ignored, and that tiny error eventually begins at the spine, reaches the skeleton, and brings structural ruin to the body.”
“Hm, hearing that, I guess I should walk around with my back a bit straighter too.”
“All the more so for the waist, which is especially fatal. Especially for a man who must actively operate for the ‘act of bearing descendants.’”
“……”

At that, Solomon fell silent, a little awkward.

“Hehe, excuse me. It’s a rather embarrassing topic to discuss in front of an actual man.”
“……Must be nice not having to worry about throwing out your back.”

[That’s right. The founder of the ancient House Arrowhead operated his waist a bit too excessively in a mass state slightly above the standard, and in the end, he had to pay the price.
With that dreadful-to-hear tteuduk sound.]

Hearing it, the inside story was ridiculous in more ways than one.
In truth, every one of her movements excluded all bending and twisting that human muscles and spine would have to support, revealing mathematical, geometric precision only a machine could imitate.

House Arrowhead, Spear-Sorcerer Prism Mage.
What symbolized them wasn’t only light. In truth, even light was only a subset that made up their house.
The symbol of House Arrowhead was the mathematical rigor required to handle light, and precision itself like an arrowhead.
And that precision let their house represent Uptown’s old nobles while possessing engineering attainments like a watchmaker’s.

“Compared to that, light is different. Elegant and beautiful.”

By the time he followed behind Rosetta and crossed into the mansion, it was filled with strangeness that was a 180-degree contrast to the gloom outside.
What filled the interior was all mirrors. Like an amusement attraction’s ‘mirror maze,’ the whole room was plastered with mirrors, and chandeliers hanging above scattered light in all directions, bouncing it everywhere.
A literal corridor of light.

‘My sense of direction is hazy.’

It wasn’t just decoration. It functioned as a fortress that made an intruder, or someone who entered without the house’s invitation, lose their position and wander.

“A human’s heart beating as it pleases, organs contracting and expanding, a skeleton that slips out of alignment and collapses as it pleases…… with that, you can’t be a vessel to hold the ‘ballet of light.’”
“So you threw away your body and chose a mechanical one.”
“Hehe, you could say that.”

Light is honest. It forms incidence and reflection, refraction, honestly and mathematically, and has the nature of both particle and wave.

“So metal is stronger than flesh.”
“More precisely, it’s more ‘mathematical’ than flesh.”

There was room to think about whether a human organism should really be seen as less mathematical than metal, but Solomon didn’t bother prying further. He honestly didn’t care.

“Oh my, excuse me. I’ve gone on too long.”

Rosetta smiled, covering her mouth with a smooth ceramic hand.

“No matter how much you praise the elegance of light, it’s not enough, and no matter how much you despise the crudity of the body, it’s not enough.”
“Stopping your activity just because you got a hole punched in you is pretty flimsy, honestly.”

No matter how much you despise the crudity of the body, it’s not enough. In part, Solomon agreed too.

“In that sense, 「The Undying」 was a headache for our house in many ways.”

Just then, as she moved her legs, the upper body above her waist rotated 180 degrees. A range of motion no human skeleton could bear, but not Rosetta’s body that pursued ‘mathematical superiority.’

“Denying his existence was truly like our house’s fate.”

Only then could Solomon understand why they wanted the Undying’s death. His very existence denied the philosophy of House Arrowhead she had just been laboring to stress.

“That’s why we have waited for a very long time for a human assassin to appear.”
“……”

[Insight Success!]

Hearing that, he realized. They didn’t stop at merely waiting.

‘Marie Molesworth…… no, Angra Maria didn’t just fall from the sky.’

For a big shot like that to be born, the Five Great Houses wouldn’t have just sat on their hands. And hearing her story up to now, House Arrowhead wasn’t even at the level of sitting on their hands.

[The Black Museum, the hotel, Downtown, Uptown, nobles and bourgeois…… all the factions in this city appear to oppose one another like water and oil.
But depending on how you look at it, they’re also a relationship that fits together neatly, like water and oil.]

Who was the enemy, and who was an ally. At this point, even the conflict between nobles and the bourgeoisie made him wonder if they were truly opposed at all.

‘Who I should trust, and who I shouldn’t.’

Solomon’s mind grew complicated. And at the same time, it wasn’t something he could know no matter how much he thought about it right now.
Before long, past the corridor of light, a passage leading down underground finally revealed itself. As if the elegance from before had been a lie, it was a place filled with dark stone walls and dampness.

“It’s down here.”

Rosetta stopped at the entrance to the underground passage. In the darkness where light didn’t reach, as if everything beyond this point was Solomon’s alone.

Solomon nodded silently and moved forward.

‘<Darkvision>.’

Once he went down, the passage continued even deeper. There wasn’t even a torch, let alone lighting. Pitch-black darkness. Without borrowing the power of magic, even Solomon would struggle to properly make out his surroundings.

Wrapped in magic, his two eyes shining like obsidian in the dark soon lit up the scenery to the left and right of the corridor stretching straight ahead.

Countless portraits lined the wall.

A bearded man.
A clean-shaven man.
A blood-soaked man.
A man hanged in the square.
A man waiting beneath the gallows for the blade to fall.
Their faces varied, their ages varied, but there was only one thing they shared.

Their eyes.

Eyes dark and unfocused, looking tired.
And beneath each portrait, numbers like 996, 1054, 1271…… were listed like a code. Before long, Solomon realized they indicated dates. Not week or month, not even year. Countless portraits of men lined up by century, and the farther down the corridor he went, the more he could see the era’s development as the wheel of history rolled on.
Soon the portraits ended. The final portrait at the very end was painted entirely black.

A black canvas. Within it, two faintly glowing dots were marked, faintly.
When he raised his head, an iron door was blocking him. The door was firmly shut, and yet it wasn’t locked.

“……”

Solomon opened the door. A wide, empty room. At its center.

On a lone chair set there, a man sat and stared this way. Blankly.
He wasn’t bound, and he wasn’t confined. The door wasn’t locked.

“The Undying.”
“……”

The man was simply sitting there.