I'm Interested

The labyrinths are the passages that link the demon realm to the world above, and with the knowledge humanity has at present there is no way to close them completely. All that ever happened was that the demons, having lost the Demon War, sealed the passages from their own side; not one has opened in several hundred years, so for all practical purposes they are treated as shut.

“Bullshit.”

Hamel knew it for what it was: the leaders’ bullshit. A few centuries without a passage opening guaranteed nothing. What was there to stop a labyrinth from going active tomorrow, no, three seconds from now? The leaders had simply given up inspecting them, because inspection cost enormous money and manpower.

“Well, thank you kindly, speaking for myself.”

A boy grinned, the uncanny violet bob of his hair swishing. By the most generous reckoning he did not look a day over fourteen. When the little flames circling him like fireflies went out, the boy, that is to say Hamel, snapped his thumb against his forefinger.

— Snap!

At that single sharp report the small flames that had vanished lit up again with a soft glow. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction, and a moment later he stopped walking. Behind him he caught the faintest trace of someone there.

“…What a nuisance.”

He thought about it a moment, then set a hand to his hip and turned around. Grave robbers at the very outside, he supposed.

That a labyrinth gives off a sinister air is not a feeling but a scientific fact. Why should that be, when they are no longer connected to the demon realm?

Correct answer. Because the demonic energy the demons left behind back then still lingers. The one mercy is that the concentration is thin.

Even so, nobody but grave robbers ever takes on a labyrinth, and the reason is the assortment of traps those vicious demons set as they retreated. Exploring a labyrinth therefore means staking your life, but an artifact with the whole of the demons’ craft gathered into it fetched, quite literally, whatever price you cared to name.

Which is why challengers keep cropping up all on their own even in the present age, the reason being… — Clang!

“Damn it, that gave me a fright.”

Pai gave the helmet that had been rolling about, skull and all, a light nudge with her foot.

A labyrinth is much like a precisely designed cave. There are something like a hundred forks in the path, and stalactites hang here and there like icicles. If one insisted on finding a difference, it would be that most of the routes lead an intruder to death?

Of course, none of that was any trouble for a serving Sword Master. She had stormed the Great Labyrinth as though walking in and out of her own house, all to bring down the Archdemon Simon.

— Crrrunch.

“Oop.”

Just then Pai stepped on a stone that sank abruptly away beneath her.

— Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!

Arrows came showering in from one o’clock. All she had in her hand was a single dagger, but she swung an arm as though shooing off a swarm of flies and twisted her body, and the arrows went grazing past exactly as though they were the ones avoiding her.

“Ah, this is really annoying.”

Would it have been different if they had entertained her enough to set her blood boiling? Traps of the sort that put your life on the line and make your innards clench, she meant. As it was, she felt like a cow swatting at the bugs stuck to its rump.

“If he came through a few days ago, he can’t have gotten very deep.”

Hamel was a powerful mage, but labyrinths were not his element. On top of that he would be advancing while he investigated this and that, so a little speed on her part ought to close the gap in no time.

— Snap!

Sure enough, the sound of snapping fingers reached Pai’s sharp hearing. She pricked up her ears and quickened her step. Before long small balls of fire flickered in the distance. And the boy standing at the center of the ring those little lights made.

“The old man’s still living like that, I see.”

The set of Pai’s mouth softened. She knew that face, and she had been looking for it. Gladness welled up in her.

The last she remembered of Hamel was… ghastly. Simon had torn away everything above his neck. Bright scarlet blood spouting up like a fountain…

“…”

But here he stood now, arms folded and face sullen, glaring at her. The manner was unchanged, exactly as it had been in the previous life, and that steadied her somehow. So she waved at him with the friendliness one shows a friend met after a long time apart.

Hamel’s thin eyebrows shot up at a slant.

“What.”

His voice, too, could hardly have been more delinquent.

Mm. Just the same!

She stuck the hand she had been waving into her trouser pocket.

“Hello, mage.”

“…”

Hamel’s gaze sharpened. The deep blue eyes were cold as metal, a chill that had no business on a beautiful boy with a swaying pale-violet bob.

Pai sauntered forward and spoke.

“How about you and I make a deal?”

“…”

Uh-oh.

Magic power, blue and razor-edged, began to gather at Hamel’s fingertips. The air inside the labyrinth had been chilly to begin with, and now it seemed to have dropped several degrees in an instant.

So his temper was this bad even when he was young.

Pai dropped the dagger she wore at her waist onto the floor.

— Clang…

She raised both arms to shoulder height as though surrendering, and still the cluster of light at his fingertips did not go out. She pressed on undaunted.

“That was a bit hasty of me. Let’s start with introductions—”

“Grave robbers. Long tongues on the lot of them, always.”

“I’m not a grave robber. More of a… guide, you might say?”

“You’re in my way.”

Hamel spat it out with force, like driving a tack home. At the same instant the light gathered at his fingertips burst and a flash went up.

— Flash!

The labyrinth shuddered and rumbled as though an earthquake had struck, and the stalactites hanging from the ceiling dropped one after another like tears and shattered.

— Crack!

— Crack! Craaack! Cra-cra-crack!

The murky dust rose like a storm and took the better part of a minute to settle slowly again.

Eyes struck by a light strong enough to be called violent adjusted once more to the dark. Hamel’s narrowed.

“…!!!”

At the sight of a figure, dim as a shadow, growing steadily clearer, Hamel’s mouth fell open like an idiot’s.

“Cough, cough!”

“Youuu…”

He shut his mouth and studied Pai with a wary eye.

“You’re no ordinary grave robber.”

“That’s right. I’m—”

“An extraordinary grave robber, then.”

“…”

Let a person finish a sentence… Pai was slowly beginning to lose her temper.

I’m the good-natured one here. Let it go.

Having died once and come back, was there any reason she couldn’t humor an old man’s temper? She had a purpose she had to accomplish, whatever it took.

“Who sent you. The temple?”

A man who dug illegally into labyrinths and studied demonology had every reason to be wary of Inquisitors.

“I came of my own accord. Out of personal interest.”

“Oho. In the labyrinth?”

“No. In you.”

“…”

“I’m interested in you.”

Pai’s aquamarine eyes shone clear.

Unable to bear the fervent gaze, the boy turned his head slightly aside and cleared his throat.

“…I’m a hundred years old, and I like older women.”

Not that kind of interest.

A world in which Keith refused the regency. A world in which no suitable person could even be seated in his place, so that Luigi Husslix seized the regent’s chair and ruined everything through greed.

For Ardine Paragon, who had lost both her parents at a mere seven years old, it was a truly pitiless world. She was neglected, and she grew up lonely.

From some point on Luigi forbade Keith to visit the White Castle, so Keith for his part had no way of knowing how his niece was being treated. Out of sight, out of mind, and it could hardly be otherwise.

As a result, Ardine became aware of her prodigious talent as a mage only at the moment her death was upon her. The blood of the first head of House Paragon, the Archmage Aki Paragon, had been running thick in her body all along.

So this time around, I’m going to make that heaven-given talent bloom early.

It could be done, provided she found a master who could recognize the girl’s power and raise it systematically. Someone exactly like Hamel, that is.

“What was that?”

When Hamel asked again as though he had not heard properly, Pai repeated herself.

“I said, become the Duke’s retained mage.”