"Is it really all right for us to be out here like this?"
A bustling afternoon. Ran and Moor sat side by side on a bench, eating ice cream on sticks. Behind them stood a great fountain, with a crowd gathered around it. A few of them were throwing stones toward it.
"Our work there was finished. And the next job came in right away."
Having dealt with the keeper-turned-Sage who was the root of the incident in Paerm, Ran and Moor had left the remaining devil-kin to their colleagues and moved on.
"Ahh~ but it's so hot! How long do we have to sit here?"
The fountain had nothing remarkable about it beyond its size. And yet hardly anyone passed it by.
"Be patient. That's exactly why I bought you the ice cream."
The Laican Domain in the empire's northeast, and Baskia, a city in its southwest. Being set in a basin, the place was unusually hot.
Moor soothed him with a cigarette in one hand and ice cream in the other.
"So who are we waiting for? A Sage?"
It struck Ran suddenly that he had no idea what he was waiting for.
At those words, Moor turned to look at him, visibly shocked. Ran had read the Order's envelope before they came here, and had asked no questions since, so Moor had assumed he knew all of it.
Cigarette between his lips, he pulled the Order's letter from his coat.
"As if. No Sage is going to walk up to us of his own accord."
"Then?"
Moor opened the letter and held it out to Ran. Ran made a point of pretending not to see it.
"Someone highly placed put in a request with the paladins. It came down to the Order."
Moor realized Ran had had no intention of reading the letter then, and had none now.
He put it straight back into his coat.
"A request? And why is it ours?"
"Because the client named us specifically as the specialists in Sage matters."
"Ah!"
Ran's scowl, sour at first, slowly eased.
Moor smiled at how simple he was.
They waited some ten minutes more over their ice cream.
Then a woman came walking toward Ran and Moor: pale skin, long hair in two mingled colors, as though red had been dyed blond. Her steps carried no sense of weight at all — she seemed less to tread the ground than to glide over it, an impression her beige hem only strengthened.
'She might as well be from another dimension.'
Moor felt on instinct that the woman approaching him was no ordinary person.
"Hello! You'd be the two from the Order, yes?"
She addressed Ran and Moor in a clear, carrying voice. It was high and rang as though echoing, and yet its content landed precisely in both their ears.
'She carries mana in her voice as well.'
Moor smiled, entertained, and rose from the bench. He flicked what was left of his cigarette into the trash bin beside him. Then he extended a hand toward her.
"Yes, that's right. I'm Moor of the Counter-Demon Order. This is my partner, Ran. You'd be the one who commissioned this job?"
When Moor extended his hand and introduced himself, she put out her own for a brief handshake.
"Yes, that's right. My name is Rea. A pleasure — Moor, and Ran."
She smiled broadly, looking from Moor to Ran and back.
"Shall we move somewhere else first? Or would you rather talk here?"
"Shall we walk a while? We've been sitting for a long time."
Moor proposed neither, and suggested walking together. Rea nodded lightly and accepted. Her hair swayed, and a faint fragrance reached both Moor's and Ran's noses.
"Hm?"
The three of them set off around the fountain. A short way in, several people greeted Rea, and each time she returned the greeting.
"I remember now. Rea of the Golden Trace. Am I right? I'd never seen you in person, so I wasn't certain."
"Yes. I was called that, once. You know of me?"
Rea answered Moor's words with a smile.
"How could I not? Our Order has received a commission from a truly remarkable person. It's an honor."
"Golden Trace?"
Ran cut into their conversation with a puzzled look, plainly lost. Moor was flustered by it, and Rea only smiled more broadly, entertained.
"Ran. Weren't you an adventurer before you joined the Order? Then you'll have seen the rankings, or the grade tables."
"Wasn't interested."
Ran used the words 'wasn't interested' with the person in question standing right there. Moor was somewhat thrown by it.
Embarrassed, he stole a glance at Rea's reaction.
"I'm terribly...... sorry about that."
"Not at all. There's nothing to apologize for."
Moor apologized to Rea at once. Rea laughed brightly, as if it didn't trouble her in the least.
"Ran, this woman came up as an adventurer, and five years ago she was the hero who struck down a Demon King."
"Five years...... has it really been that long."
Rea of the Golden Trace.
In combat, both the mana and the energy she uses are golden — and because her mana leaves a fragrance behind, the name stuck.
Five years ago, as a disciple of an Immortal before she was an adventurer, she acted on her teacher's will to destroy devil-worshippers and struck down one of the Demon Kings who had descended into this Fifth-Layer World. A hero.
"It's my first time actually meeting a disciple of an Immortal. An honor."
"Hardly an honor. You're embarrassing me."
Rea waved a hand in denial, apparently flustered by how highly Moor was praising her.
"There's a saying: if a historical figure left some great achievement behind, you ought to suspect at least once that they were a disciple of an Immortal. Of course, that same saying is why frauds claiming to be one are everywhere."
Moor finished and looked over at Ran.
He confirmed that Ran still wore the expression of a man unable to follow the conversation.
Disciple of an Immortal.
Of the ten layers that make up the world, the Ninth-Layer World holds those who have attained enlightenment. Among them, those qualified to ascend to the Tenth-Layer World — paradise — are called Immortals.
Some of them, unusually, teach the necessary arts to beings dwelling on the lower layers and give them instructions, in order to see their own will carried through.
One who receives an Immortal's teaching in this way is called a disciple of an Immortal.
The Radiant Saintess, founder of the Church of Radiant Light, was also one of the Immortals' disciples — this is the orthodox view among most historians and thinkers. But the Church of Radiant Light holds to a strict monotheism and regards such talk as blasphemy.
They believe the Radiant Saintess was not an Immortal's disciple but God's own disciple and child. Because of that, the hardliners within the Church of Radiant Light refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Immortals' disciples at all.
Knowing all this, Moor found the situation deeply strange. Why on earth had the Order accepted her commission?
"In any case — what would a disciple of an Immortal, a hero no less, want to ask of us?"
By the time Moor asked, the three of them had already circled the fountain once. So they changed course and headed for a wooded walking path in the park.
"I said as much in the commission interview, but I'd like to ask you to deal with two Sages."
Ran, who had shown little interest in the conversation until now, perked up sharply at the word 'Sages.'
Rea smiled, amused by his sudden change in bearing.
"How strange. Killing Sages, who advance the world and do good for people."
"Please don't play innocent. I've been told you're the specialists in this."
Moor had thought to feign ignorance and draw out information. Rea didn't allow it.
'No ordinary person, as expected.'
"I see. Even so, killing them purely for being Sages would be difficult even for us. There could be good Sages......"
"Bullshit. There's no such thing!"
Ran muttered it before Moor could finish. Moor's head filled with the thought that this was ruined.
"A Sage is someone who uses power by leaning on other people's lives. They're all garbage."
"All right, all right. Calm down."
Thanks to Ran's outburst, Moor's plan to press Rea for details vanished entirely.
Rea watched the two badly matched partners with obvious enjoyment.
"The Sages in this city appear to be conducting some very dangerous research. Everywhere we believe they've experimented, miasma and sorcerous contamination persist. Mostly in the underground waterways. And lately murders have been increasing in the middle of the streets. We suspect it's for paying the price."
"Dangerous research? What kind?"
"That much I don't know. That's part of what I'd like you to confirm."
Rea deflected Moor's question with a vague answer. Moor found it somewhat unsatisfying, but concluded there was nothing to be done about it.
"People are actually dying in the middle of the city, and someone is conducting dangerous research...... Put like that, this doesn't sound like our sort of job at all?"
"What are you talking about, Moor? She said it's Sage business. Why isn't it our job?"
"Oh, would you — hold on!"
At Ran cutting in again out of nowhere, it was Moor's turn to be irritated.
"Moor is right. In the end it's a matter of this city's public order. I asked the Imperial Army first. But......"
"I see. It was turned down, I take it."
Moor nodded at Rea as if he understood the situation.
"There's hardly anyone who thinks of Sages as bad, after all."
"And so you came looking for us."
Instead of answering, Rea nodded. They kept walking as the questions and answers went on. While they talked the sun sank, and sunset light spread thin and filled the park.
"This question comes rather late, I admit. But how are you certain your targets are Sages?"
Partway through the long conversation, Moor asked a question that had just occurred to him. She was not Ran. Which meant she had no means of determining whether someone was a Sage carrying remains. And more than anything, what frustrated Moor was having no way to establish how much — and how far — she actually knew.
"Ah, for that, first: that tower over there."
Rea pointed toward the setting sun. At the end of her finger stood a great tower.
"That mage's tower is where Paul, a Sage formally registered with the empire, keeps himself. It's also a place where the sorcerous contamination is very severe of late."
"And the other one?"
"I don't really know the other's identity. But when I first came across them, they held mana enough that it was difficult to think they were anything but a Sage."
And so the questions and answers continued.
On the surface, throughout, Rea answered every one of Moor's questions faithfully. But her explanations were slippery and vague enough that Moor began to have doubts.
Time passed; the sun vanished from the sky entirely, and the park's pre-installed streetlamps took its place.
"Understood, for now. Let's leave the talk here — how should I contact you next?"
"Here is the telephone number and address of where I'm staying. Get in touch whenever it suits you."
Rea drew a paper from her clothes and handed it to Moor.
"Then you'll accept the commission?"
"Of course. In truth, from our side it's an order from above — it was already settled."
Moor smiled and took the paper Rea offered. They walked a little further, as far as the park's main gate.
There Rea gave her thanks and set off toward her lodgings.
"Are we starting right away?"
Once Rea was gone, Ran asked at once, restless.
"No. Investigation first. There's more than one or two things strange here."
"Strange things?"
Ran tilted his head at Moor, uncomprehending. Moor's eyes were still on Rea's retreating back.
"Do you think what our client just gave us amounts to grounds for identifying a Sage?"
The unease refused to leave Moor.
Ran looked at him as if he couldn't understand the man at all.
"I'll tell you once I've investigated and I'm certain. For now, let's rest. I need to scatter some familiars through the city."
"Yeah, all right."
The two of them walked off toward the hotel the Order had arranged.