"So you've finally shown yourself."
A vicious stench. The sensation of every inch of his skin being pricked with needles.
A slight frame, chestnut hair cut short, silver-rimmed glasses. Ran knew on instinct that the woman who had blocked his sword was a Sage.
"Ran!"
"I know!"
Moor had recognized from the shape of her mana that this was the Sage they had been hunting.
Ran pulled his sword back at once and swung again, wide and hard.
"No mercy in you at all."
Without so much as a gesture, the Sage detonated her mana right in front of Ran.
The blast pushed Ran back a step, and in that gap the Sage hauled the masked figure over one shoulder and made a short teleport.
"This child happens to be a favorite of mine."
The Sage set the masked figure down on the ground. And from behind them, monsters began crawling out.
One of them, shaped like a mantis, lifted the masked figure onto its back.
"So there was a puppeteer after all."
Moor leveled Jaka at the Sage as he spoke.
"Puppeteer? How disappointing. Everyone sings your praises, so I had expectations."
The Sage frowned as she answered him.
"You know me?"
"I hear about you often from a friend I work with. Moor, Sage of the Black Fog — right? Counter-Demon Order these days. So you've come to hunt me this time?"
At the Sage's answer, it was Moor's turn to frown.
"In any case, I'm no mere puppeteer. I'm a biological alchemist."
The Sage shrugged as she said it.
Even while this exchange went on, the monsters kept growing in number.
"Alchemists make monsters these days?"
"No~ it's less making them whole than making, or replacing, part of the brain, so they'll obey my commands faithfully."
The Sage answered Moor's question while stroking the head of the monster beside her.
"Ah — though this one, yes, I did make."
She said it looking at the unconscious masked figure.
"There's an easier way. You do like to make life hard for yourself."
"An easier way? You mean mind control? That's finished the moment it breaks. This carries exactly zero of that worry."
The Sage seemed to be enjoying herself. And all the while, the monsters multiplied.
"Mind you, I only got my confirmation recently. It fought and killed exactly as much as it was ordered to. A most satisfying experiment."
She spoke it beaming.
"Experiment? Then our company—?!"
Howard, listening from behind Moor, shouted. His eyes were full of rage.
"Company? I don't know the Imperial Army's units, but I've killed everyone those Full Moon Faith bastards pointed me at. There's no keeper out here in these woods, after all. I get paid, I run all sorts of experiments while getting paid, I pay off the price of the curse from the remains, and then I run more experiments on the corpses that come out of it. How many birds is that with one stone, I wonder?"
The Sage said it as though it genuinely delighted her.
"Aaaargh!"
Howard flew into a rage at her words. He raised his sword and made to charge her on the spot. Moor caught him by the scruff of the neck.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"What do I think? Saving a man's life. Stay put."
Moor, who had used polite forms up to now, had turned hard and commanding, and it startled Howard considerably.
Clap!
"Right, that's enough talk. Stalling worked out nicely."
The Sage clapped her hands as she spoke. Around them by now swarmed monsters of every shape at her command.
They set themselves to fall on the party at any moment.
"One last question before that. Two years ago, near the Arlelia Domain — did you run an experiment like this one?"
Moor spoke with his gun still trained on her. The Sage put a hand to her brow and thought hard.
"Let me see...... Two years ago I was in the Arlelia Domain, certainly. It's all rather hazy."
"Right. That's enough."
In that instant, an enormous volume of mana poured out of Moor's body.
"You two. We're inside a Great Wild, so I can't drop you at the exact target point. The moment you arrive, you run. Get ready."
"What?"
"What does that mean?"
Ariel and Howard had no idea what Moor was talking about. But Moor didn't wait for them; he cast the long-range teleport at once.
And with that, the two of them vanished, leaving Moor and Ran behind.
"Wow... impressive, as advertised. You teleported them out of here?"
"You weren't the one stalling. I was."
For Moor, the sorcery would ordinarily have been instantaneous — but here in a Great Wild it needed considerable preparation time.
"Ran. Sorry for the wait."
"Okay."
The moment Moor finished, Ran let his silver energy loose in a rush. The heads of the monsters nearest him froze over like ice, then burst apart.
"If a Sage worked on them in any way, that's all the better for me. I'll wipe out every last seed of them."
Ran drove his sword into the ground. He flung off his coat, then pulled the blade free again.
"Oh! What an interesting power you have."
The Sage sounded genuinely intrigued by his silver energy.
"Now! Shall we see what gave you the nerve to come at me?"
The moment she finished, every monster charged Moor and Ran.
Among the chargers, the weaker monsters had their heads burst before they ever reached Ran.
Marcel-Style Glacier Cleave.
Ran packed his blade with silver energy to its limit, then swung hard.
The silver energy spread out keen-edged, and every monster it struck crystallized as though frozen through.
"Ran, the glasses!"
"Got it!"
Moor shouted it at Ran as he charged the Sage. Ran caught the hidden meaning: the Sage's remains were the glasses.
Ran closed the distance and jumped. Then he brought the blade, brimming with silver energy, down on the Sage like an axe.
CRASH—!
Before Ran's sword could reach her, countless monsters threw themselves at him to shield the Sage.
"Out of my way!"
Silver energy — deploy.
His swing blocked, monsters piling in from every side, Ran let the silver energy loose again.
Every monster around him burst apart and was gone.
The Sage climbed onto the back of a nearby monster to open distance from Ran.
And she tried to fire an attack sorcery directly at him.
"Now what... why?"
But this was a Great Wild. And with Ran's silver energy on top of it, the sorcery refused to activate at all.
In the heartbeat the Sage faltered, Ran's slash landed on the monster she was riding.
"Aaagh!"
She let out a shriek.
"Fine, then — it can't be helped!"
The Sage abandoned high-order sorcery and went for a simple bombardment.
She stretched a hand toward Ran and gathered every scrap of mana she could work.
"You think that's going to hit me?"
"Are you sure?"
Ran read the obvious path the bombardment would take and moved to clear it. Monsters charging him from every side blocked him.
"Die!"
Shk.
"Oh?"
In the instant the Sage's bombardment was about to leave her hand at Ran — held briefly by the monsters — an enormous greatsword of sorcery fell from the sky and severed her arm.
"I told you. I'm the one who was stalling."
Moor had appeared behind the Sage at some point, cigarette between his lips.
"Goddamn it—!"
CRASH—!
The Sage's shout as she spun toward Moor was the last thing she did before Ran's sword cut her down.
"Phew. That was close. Good work, Ran."
Moor stretched, sounding exhausted.
Ran came over without a word and raised his sword over the fallen Sage.
"Ah! Wait!"
Moor called out to him — and pulled the glasses off the Sage's face.
"Now do as you like."
The moment Moor finished, Ran began bringing his sword down on the Sage, over and over, without mercy.
Moor smoked beside him and waited in silence.
A few seconds passed before Ran stopped cutting.
"Shall we go?"
"It isn't this one."
"Hm?"
The answer had nothing to do with the question, and Moor asked back, lost.
"This one is the one who controlled the monsters where I was two years ago. But this isn't the one who cursed me."
"Ah..."
Moor grasped what Ran meant.
"We'll find that one soon, the way we found this one. Let's head for base camp. I'm low on mana, so we'll have to walk a while — that all right?"
Ran nodded to say it was. And the two of them started back toward their departure point.
***
The original departure area. Moor's familiars kept them from losing the way. Now and then they met monsters that had lost their master, but dealt with them without trouble. When Ran and Moor arrived, they felt a mood far darker than when they had left.
"Oh! You're back."
An imperial officer, seeming to recognize the two of them, greeted them warmly.
"From how glad you are to see us, I take it Howard made it back safely."
Moor put the question lightly to the officer welcoming them.
"Ah... about that..."
The officer hesitated a long moment, then began to speak, his face grave.
Howard had arrived, but had been attacked by monsters on the way and was already gravely wounded.
They had treated him without pause, and in the end he had died.
Even so, he had delivered every piece of information he was carrying before he went.
Howard was a tragedy, the officer said — but thanks to the intelligence he added, the rest of the company had been saved.
"And the red-haired young lady, Ariel?"
"Ah...... I'm told she died on the way, protecting Howard."
"I see."
The sigh came out of Moor before he could stop it.
Afterward, Moor and Ran went through the formal procedures, received their compensation, and left.
"Hey, Moor. If we hadn't sent those two away — if they'd stayed with us — would they be alive?"
"No. They'd have died faster at the monsters' hands, and the people we saved this time would have died too."
Moor answered honestly rather than kindly.
"Yeah. I really don't think there's anyone but you I can travel with."
"Oh, same here."