The next morning.
Ran and Moor went from site to site, visiting the places of sorcerous contamination springing up across the city that Rea had told them about.
"This one is especially bad."
Moor approached the contaminated area with cloth over his mouth. Ran, by contrast, walked up to it without a care. As he neared, his silver energy stilled the tainted mana.
"What kind of sorcery does this to a whole area?"
Even though it did him no harm at all, Ran felt the sheer toxicity of the sorcerous contamination.
Moor put Ran in front and moved slowly into the underground waterway. The deeper they went, the stronger the poison grew. Since the light thinned as they descended, Moor cast and summoned a few globes of light.
"Found it!"
Ran, ahead of him, shouted as though he'd spotted something. Moor moved closer to whatever Ran had found.
There sat something shaped like a stone washbasin. Except that what filled it was not water but miasma, turned liquid and bubbling.
That contamination on this scale had been generated in a waterway beneath the middle of a great city was startling enough.
But it was unbelievable that people went about their lives knowing nothing of it — and no less startling that the Imperial Army left it alone.
"That's the third one now?"
"Yeah. Should I do it right away?"
Ran drew the sword at his waist, slowly, as he spoke.
"Please. Only this time, don't break the bowl."
"Got it!"
The moment Moor finished, Ran released his silver energy hard and advanced on the bowl. The lingering sorcerous contamination around them slowly began to cease.
Ran didn't stop there; he focused harder and poured silver energy into his blade. Then he dipped the sword into the stone bowl.
The mana churned at first — and then the whole of it crystallized under the silver energy.
Once it was more or less settled, Moor summoned a black sphere over his left palm. And it drew the stone bowl in and compressed it.
"Finally found you...... Hey! Paladins, that's far enough."
Three figures in robes came out of the dark behind Ran and Moor. All wore ragged robes and gave off an ominous air. Two had the builds of ordinary grown men; the third was large enough to make you wonder whether it was a person at all.
And their voices made it hard to tell man from woman, or even old from young.
"Right...... about time you showed up."
Moor drew the Glock with his right hand, turning as he leveled it.
The sorcerous contamination appearing here was obviously an engineered result.
And at every contaminated site, an artificial device sat there in plain view. Clearly someone had done this deliberately.
And Moor was certain the three in front of him were the cause.
"So it's these paladin bastards going around destroying our devices. For what reason?"
"That's my question. Why install things like this all over the underground of a city this size?"
Moor lifted the black sphere in his left hand slightly as he spoke. And he felt the eyes of the three across from him track that sphere exactly.
"We've no wish to kill paladins unnecessarily. Set down what you're holding and leave, quietly."
The man at the front of the three spoke as he pulled back his hood. Blond hair slicked straight back, and a mask over his face. One of his eyes was brown, the other gold — and those eyes were like a cat's.
"Ah...... devil-worshippers. Planning to summon a Demon King?"
"What? A Demon King? Then this isn't Sage business at all?"
Moor took in their general appearance. The masks especially, and the sigil drawn on them.
He immediately flicked the black sphere in his left hand behind him with a snap of the wrist. It vanished in midair before it reached the ground.
In the middle of all this, Ran's irritation rose at the fact that this wasn't Sage-related work.
"There's no talking to you."
The man who had pulled back his hood knitted his brows. And the huge one, standing a step behind, came forward. He growled like an animal and set himself to attack — which exposed the hand hidden by the robe, a hand that called to mind an enormous poisonous toad.
"Ran. These are devil-worshippers."
"So?"
"They've already sold their souls to devil-kin. It means you may kill them."
The giant tore out of the dark at Moor.
Ran reacted by shifting in front of Moor in an instant and firing a roundhouse kick into the charging giant.
The kick landed at what was presumably his flank, and the giant's body lifted slightly before he went down and struck the wall.
"Rrraaaagh!"
The wall broke a little from the impact. Howling in pain, the giant tried to rise again.
Ran gave him no such opening; he stamped a foot onto the giant's face and finished it with the sword in his hand. And the giant stopped moving.
"You are...... truly a nuisance."
The man at the front drew his mana up and concentrated it in his golden eye. Blood began running from that eye.
'Ah...... a Demon Eye?'
Reading the situation in that instant, Moor let the gun in his hand drop. And rolled his left sleeve up at once.
A powerful shockwave came out of the man's eye, but Moor had already formed a defensive ward and shielded both himself and Ran. A single impact shattered it.
'What kind of force is that......'
While Moor reeled, Ran moved at once, turning toward the man with the Demon Eye. He leaped and threw a fist at his face.
But the Demon Eye triggered again before the fist could land, and Ran took it head-on and was flung backward.
"That's one."
In the gap where his enemy believed Ran finished, Moor drew Jaka and pulled the trigger.
It was stopped by a defensive ward another devil-worshipper had raised.
"A sorcerer with a gun. You people never run out of tricks."
The man triggered the Demon Eye again. Moor formed a defensive ward once more and blocked the shockwave.
But this time the shockwaves came in bursts, hammering Moor's ward. He changed the ward's shape and succeeded in deflecting them rather than meeting them head-on.
The shockwaves struck the waterway wall, and the dust thrown up filled the space and cut off their sight.
"?!"
"?!"
Out of the dust, Ran appeared in front of the devil-worshippers, sword gripped in both hands. And swung it at them in a great arc.
The worshipper who had raised the defensive ward bent backward and thrust out a hand to block Ran's attack. Ran's blade took his arm off before the sorcery could trigger.
"Aagh!"
"Insane—!"
The one whose arm was severed pitched forward, and the other triggered the Demon Eye at Ran once more.
The shockwave fired at Ran from nearly zero range.
But this time Ran took it head-on and held — and cut the man's throat.
"Damn it!"
The one who had gone down with his arm severed tried to flee.
Moor drew the Glock, shot him, and knocked him out.
"More to take with us."
Moor summoned the black sphere again. And compressed and drew in all three of the bodies.
"What are these things?"
Ran spoke while wiping the blood off his blade with a cloth he carried.
"We'll know once we investigate, but as I said — they're devil-worshippers."
Moor made the sphere vanish again. And as he tucked the Glock into his coat he drew out a cigarette.
"Then this really isn't our job."
Catching the irritation in Ran's voice, Moor patted his back to settle him.
"Even so, there's certainly a Sage in this city."
Moor said it with a smile. Ran sheathed his sword and looked at Moor's expression.
"That attitude of yours right now. You...... already knew, didn't you?"
"Knew what, exactly?"
"Don't play dumb! Since when? Since when did you know this had nothing to do with a Sage case?"
At the irritation in Ran's question, Moor's face said there was no helping it.
"Since the first interview, when I met Rea."
The two of them turned back the way they had come to get out. As they went, Moor sent familiars ahead to check whether there were more enemies.
"First, the killing method used to pay the price. As you know perfectly well, a Sage living in a city like this uses mind-control-type sorcery when paying the price. It's the advantageous way to pay for using remains while living among a great many people."
Moor steered the light globes he had made as he spoke. When a sloping upward path came into view, they knew the way out wasn't far.
"But in this city, murders are happening out in the open. Which means there's another reason for the killing. Something other than hiding in a city long-term......"
Moor sank into thought as he smoked. He was explaining it to Ran, yes — but even now he couldn't say precisely what their purpose was.
Then again, the thought came to him that devil-worshippers do strange things at the urging of devil-kin, and there was no need to understand it.
"All right, I follow that. And?"
"And the client's ability. Ran — if you and Rea fought, who do you think would win?"
Ran fell to thinking at Moor's question. Walking on in silent deliberation, the two of them reached the entrance of the underground waterway.
"Me?"
"Never mind......"
Moor shook his head, resigned. Then he flicked the rest of his cigarette into the first trash bin he saw.
"Rea is the hero who sent one of the seven great devils summoned here — a Demon King — back to Hell. The Demon King was surely not at a hundred percent, of course. But the fellows we just met, and most Sages, aren't in that league."
Once they were fully out of the waterway, the light fell over them.
Which showed them what a state they were both in. Moor saw the wounds on Ran's body and immediately treated them with the Benediction Arts.
"You look terrible. How's your body? Can you keep going?"
"My body's fine. I just don't have the motivation."
Moor signaled his agreement. Then he drew the map from his coat and checked the areas Rea had marked.
"Oh, this one's close. Let's go."
Moor took the lead and Ran followed. Some ten minutes' walk later, the entrance to another underground waterway appeared. Ran and Moor followed the built path down toward it.
Not long after, Ran stopped walking.
"Hm?"
At Ran's sudden halt, Moor turned to look at his face.
A smile with fury and elation in it at once.
Moor knew exactly what that meant. And immediately drew up his mana to widen his detection range.
BANG—! BANG—!
"Are you truly a paladin? You don't hesitate at all to pull a trigger on a person."
Moor had fired the Glock into empty air. And in the spot where the rounds went, a person appeared, like an invisible man slowly revealing himself.
He wore a mask of the same form as the devil-worshippers they had just seen.
The mask's shape and the sigil carved on it were the same. But there was plainly something different about it from the ones the others had worn.
"A Sage who's also a devil-worshipper? You people really do it all."
"Moor, that mask!"
"I know. He came and found us himself. Saves us the trouble."
Ran knew on instinct that the mask the man wore was remains. Moor couldn't smell the remains the way Ran claimed to — but the mana pouring off the man alone told him this was a Sage.
And so Moor and Ran readied themselves for battle once again.