A bustling city center. In front of a lodging house run by the super-guild Trier stood a red public phone booth, and Moor stood inside it.
"Yeah, I think so too. There's more than one or two things wrong here."
When the fierce red of the sunset came pouring into the booth, Moor turned his back to it, receiver in hand.
"Ah! Don't worry! We got paid."
"Of course. On the surface, we completed every task."
Moor glanced outside the booth. Plenty of people were walking the street.
"Right. There's the 'avoided the fox and met the tiger' line, for one. And above all — the raid on the illegal guild wasn't even finished, and the Imperial Army disbanded. As if they'd lost all interest."
Moor kept watching the street. And several figures who appeared to be watching him came into view.
"Yes, yes — an incident of this scale should have brought a knight order or agents of the Marshal's Office, but from the look of things, the Imperial Army was behind this Sage."
Moor turned to look the other way as he spoke. There, Ran was all but lying across a park bench.
"Well, the angriest party in all this is Trier Guild. I spoke with the guildmaster, and he seems to be thinking along the same lines."
"Understood. I'll be careful. I got the envelope. There's time before the hour written on it, so we'll set out at a comfortable pace."
"I'll call again soon."
With that last line Moor set the receiver down. Then he stepped out of the booth and walked toward Ran.
"Done with your call?"
"Yeah. We've been paid, so shall we go eat first?"
"Now you're talking!"
Ran answered, stretched once, and sprang up like a released spring.
The two of them walked side by side into an alley off the city center. And then, so naturally that no one nearby noticed a thing, Moor teleported with Ran.
"Out of nowhere? I thought you preferred walking or riding, since it burns so much mana."
Ran was mildly startled by the unannounced teleport.
"We had a tail. This is no time to be sparing."
The two of them arrived in front of a restaurant that looked distinctly expensive.
"Are we allowed somewhere this pricey?"
"Trier Guild paid generously."
"Didn't you hand all of it over to the Order?"
"You think I'd hand over all of it?"
Ran snorted at Moor's shamelessness.
The two went into the upscale restaurant and were shown to their seats by a server. They were seated in a booth in the corner.
"Order whatever you like, as much as you like."
"What? That's ominous."
Ran had been deliberating over the menu, and he shot Moor a suspicious look.
"What I'm about to tell you isn't especially good news for you, so work off some stress in advance."
"I knew it. What is it?"
Moor set the question aside for the moment. Ran didn't press, and ordered his food. The server taking the order asked twice whether he really wanted all of it.
Time passed, and dishes came out until the table's legs looked ready to give.
Once he confirmed that everything ordered had arrived, Moor formed a soundproof ward around them.
"So... about our next assignment. It has nothing at all to do with Sages. A request for support came in from a different side of the operation."
"What?!"
Ran's face twisted hard at Moor's words.
"That last job was effectively the end of the Sage-related work that had come in. Until the intelligence team turns up information on another Sage, could we support another division... hey!"
Listening to the explanation, Ran clenched his fist hard enough that the water glass he was holding shattered.
"Breaking things doesn't help."
Moor had expected Ran to be angry, but it still threw him.
"So until when?!"
"Honestly, I don't know either! It could be tomorrow, for all I know!"
Ran shouted at Moor. Not to be outdone, Moor raised his own voice to match.
"Which means it could be years from now, doesn't it?"
"As if it would be! In that case we should fire everyone sitting in that office! And who's to say we won't run into one while we're out doing other work?"
That last line landed, and Ran ground his teeth. But he looked less angry than a moment before.
"Eat, for now. I'll tell you what we have to do while we travel."
Ran sat still a while with a sullen look. Then, apparently done sorting out his thoughts, he began to focus on the food in front of him.
***
The empire has nine domains in all, including the imperial demesne governed directly by the Emperor.
The imperial demesne lies at the very center, and north of it lies the Arlelia Domain. Between them lies a lake vast enough to be called a sea, and at its center sits an island.
On that island is a great hole. A very deep hole.
"...and where that hole leads, no one can possibly..."
Aboard a moving train. The sun had tilted a little, so light was spilling in through the windows, which had a good many passengers pulling their sunshades down.
Ran and Moor sat facing each other, letting the moving train carry them.
"...No, that's not it at all. It's been explained perfectly clearly. It's a hole leading to another 'layer.'"
Moor was explaining the background of this assignment to Ran from the beginning.
"There are established travel packages for it, quietly. Though to choose it as a destination you need privilege, a great deal of money, and the resolve to stake your life."
Moor drew the Order's letter from his coat and ran his eyes over it as he spoke.
"This world has layers from one to ten, and each exists independently. Of those, the lower six worlds are classed as ordinary and the upper four as the worlds of the enlightened. For reference, the world we live in is the Fifth-Layer World."
Ran, apparently uninterested, sat with his head against the window and his arms folded. Outwardly he looked entirely disengaged, as if he weren't listening at all — but Moor knew he was taking in every word, and went on.
"The only known passage is the one I just mentioned, certainly. But for some reason, from the four layers below, the ruling species of other worlds come climbing up without cease. We call them 'crossers' as a group. And the doors they pass through, we call 'windows.'"
Moor finished the Order's letter and put it back in his coat.
"Our Counter-Demon Order exists chiefly to find and deal with the ones climbing up from the lower worlds to invade ours, and to close the windows that lead to other worlds... Wait, weren't you taught this in basic paladin training?"
"Don't know! I wasn't interested in anything but Sage work, so I didn't listen."
"Something to be proud of."
Ran pulled a sulky face at the jab.
Moor spread out on the table between them the snacks he had bought before boarding.
Ran grabbed a biscuit the moment he saw them.
"But ruling species? So the ruling species of our world is humans?"
"No, it was dragons. Extinct now... which is exactly why the things from other worlds come crawling up."
Ran's eyes went wide at the answer he hadn't expected.
Ruling species.
The collective term for the most powerful race existing in each layer of the world.
They rule the human-kind of the layer they belong to, and serve to defend that layer against beings from other layers.
Which means that in the Fifth-Layer World, human-kind drove its own ruling species to extinction.
"Are the things climbing up from other layers as strong as dragons?"
"Hard to answer that. It's true of dragons too, but 'strength' among those things varies enormously."
Moor gripped his own head as he spoke, as if the explanation were beyond him.
"Don't worry too much. The Counter-Demon Order assigns specialists to each field, and they perform their roles well.
"Though most of them have some personal history behind it, like you — which does mean they tend to treat any department but their own as trivial."
Just as Ran had been cursed and lost his home to a Sage, most of the Counter-Demon Order's people had lost something to devil-kin, vampires, and the like.
They are paladins, but they do not protect. They destroy.
Because they differ from ordinary members of the Counter-Demon Order, they are given black paladin uniforms rather than white.
"Anyway, the ruling-species material isn't a matter of basic paladin training — isn't that all covered in an academy's standard curriculum?"
"Hmm... it was a long time ago, I don't really remember."
"Longer ago than me, over ten years past graduation? When all of this business is settled, we're enrolling you in an academy to finish the standard curriculum."
Moor always spoke of a time after all of this had been resolved.
Ran half-listened at best. And then he went back to focusing on the food in front of him.
Moor, for his part, opened the window blind for a while and gazed out in silence.
"Moor?!"
The train corridor had held nothing but the sound of the train running. Cutting through that noisy silence, a blond man waved and called Moor's name. In his other arm he carried a bagful of food.
He too wore the same black paladin uniform as Ran and Moor.
Moor, who had been admiring the view outside, turned his head at the voice calling him.
"Las? Of all things, on the same train."
Moor rose from his seat, his face lighting up. Then he extended a hand toward the approaching man. The man called Las took it and shook.
Moor's sudden movement startled Ran a little; he looked around, taking stock of the situation.
"We had no idea either. Ah — and this would be...?"
"Yes, my current partner, Ran."
"Ah! I see. Pleased to meet you. I'm Las."
Las extended a hand toward Ran with obvious pleasure. Ran meant to ignore it, but felt Moor's eyes on him in that moment and forced his own hand out.
"Leo and I are two cars up. There's room in our compartment and plenty of food, so why not move up with us? Leo was thrilled to hear she'd be working with you, Moor."
The handshake with Ran barely done, Las spoke with real excitement.
Moor smiled slightly and quietly checked Ran's expression.
"Sure. We'll be working together this time anyway, so we may as well get the introductions over with early."
And so Ran and Moor followed Las to another car of the train.
Moving toward the front of the train, the spaces began to open up, and the seats Las had spoken of turned out to be a private compartment.
"What's this? We're in standard and you get first class?"
"As if the Order would do that. We upgraded out of pocket."
Moor said it with a grumble, and Las answered with a laugh.
The three of them stepped into the compartment.
"Moor!"
Inside, a girl with long black wavy hair was reading a grimoire. The moment she saw Moor she sprang up and cried out in delight. She wore the Order's paladin uniform as well.
"Leo. It's been a while. You haven't changed a bit."
Moor greeted Leo warmly in return.
The compartment was laid out for four, so they sat two and two, facing each other.
"Well, some of us are meeting for the first time — shall we do brief introductions?"
Once everyone was settled, Moor opened the conversation.
"Good idea. I'm Las, to start. And this is my partner, Leo."
When Las introduced her, Leo smiled and nodded.
"We handle devil-kin for the Counter-Demon Order. Pleased to meet you, Ran."
With that, Las finished their introduction briefly. Moor wore a quiet smile; Ran maintained a blank face throughout.
"You both know me, so I'll skip that — this is Ran, my current partner. We're on Sages at the moment."
"Sages?"
"Sages?"
Las and Leo answered at the same time, both apparently caught off guard.
"Yes. Sages."
"The... the Sages we're thinking of, yes? Masters of sorcery."
Las asked again to confirm he'd heard right, his face full of disbelief.
"That's right. Those Sages."
"I'd heard such a department existed, but what does being on Sages actually involve? I don't quite follow."
Leo, beside him, spoke with the same look of incomprehension.
"What do you think? Finding Sages, killing them, and recovering the remains, obviously."
Ran said it like a man firing back, as if the whole situation displeased him. Having to explain something this basic didn't sit well with him. At the same time, it struck him as remarkable that Moor never once got irritated with even his most elementary questions.
"Killing Sages? Weren't you a Sage yourself, Moor? And I don't really understand — someone as capable as you doing work as obscure as that... what is the Order thinking?"
"What?"
Ran reacted to Leo's words, but she went on regardless.
"There are countless things in this world that ought to take priority over 'work like that.' In a time when so many people suffer because of devil-kin, for someone as able as you to be doing—"
"'Work like that'?"
Ran's temper flared a little at Leo running down Sage work as lesser than her own.
Moor noticed and looked at him, fully intending to intervene. But Ran didn't so much as move. He only clenched his fist, quietly and hard.
Ran knew. There was every possibility the world would be destroyed by vampires and devil-kin as soon as tomorrow. Set against that, dealing with Sages could indeed look small.
When devil-kin appear, the Imperial Army faces them first. The fighting drags on, and the Imperial Army has no choice but to raise military spending to replace troops and materiel. That gets paid for wholesale in heavy taxes, and the empire's people suffer. Not only that: soil and water are fouled by them, and food runs short. Refugees from the attacked cities and villages surge, and it was plain to see that public order would rot as a result.
Compared to things that threaten the world like that, could anyone claim exterminating Sages should take priority?
Ran was not so dull as that.
Sages gain power through remains, and as the price of that power — as the curse — they kill people. Stopping that is the cause. But before any of that, for Ran, this work was nothing more than an intensely personal revenge.
Moor watched him and smiled, bitterly.