Edmond was a Third Circle knight.
He had an affiliation, too.
The Rail Guard Knight Order, under the Imperial Rail Administration.
The Rail Guard Knight Order operated three divisions.
The Train Escort Squad, the Rail Patrol Squad, and the Station Guard Squad.
Edmond belonged to the Station Guard Squad, where he held the position of Squad Leader of Unit 7 of the Luber Central Station Guard.
"He just, he just came out of the jeweler's."
Marcel, another member of Unit 7, ducked quickly around a corner and reported.
Edmond pulled his coat collar as high as it would go and tugged the brim of his fedora low to hide his face.
"Where'd he go?"
"Toward the north market."
"The market?"
Edmond cocked his head and paused, then suddenly snickered.
"Heh, gone to buy his last supper, has he?"
Marcel grinned broadly and nodded.
"Ha ha, 'last supper.' You've always had a way with words, Squad Leader."
"Take point."
"Yessir!"
Edmond was a man usually unhappy with everything in the world.
But right now, he was in an excellent mood.
'How does a brat come by that kind of money.......'
Ten thousand Dilrun was half a year of Edmond's salary.
To walk around with that much money and no escort.
Wasn't that no different from begging, "Please, take it"?
That was why Edmond felt so good.
The brat wandered the market for a while, completely oblivious to the tail.
"Huh? Why's he buying that?"
Marcel asked.
But it wasn't a question Edmond could answer.
The brat had bought chickens.
And not butchered ones, either, but live chickens.
Five of them.
'What? Why does he need five chickens? Can a brat even eat five by himself... no, how do you eat a live chicken... Is he going to fry them himself?'
The incomprehensible situation pulled him into a spiral of thought.
It was Marcel's quiet exclamation that hauled him back.
"Hm? He's leaving."
The brat had bought the chickens and was striding briskly out of the market.
"Let's follow. Where the hell is Maloney, though...."
"Just got here, hehe."
The one who popped in was a third knight from the Station Guard.
And these three knights were the very same three who had crowded around Kalian at Luber Central Station.
Maloney added an excuse.
"That damn clerk kept jerking me around with paperwork. Damn paper-pushing bastards!"
Marcel stepped forward first.
"We'll lose him. Let's move."
And so Unit 7 of Luber Central Station's Guard Squad pursued their side job.
But then things got strange. More precisely, their side job headed somewhere strange.
"What's down that way?"
"The northern slums."
"The brat's from the slums?"
"You think so? How would someone from the slums buy a train ticket?"
"Right? Then why's the brat crawling into the slums?"
"I-I'm not sure either...."
"Hm...."
Something nagged at the back of Edmond's mind.
A faint sense of unease.
But he couldn't give up such a tempting score.
Edmond quietly continued tailing the brat.
Inside the slums, Kalian did something strange again.
"You bitch, hand it over! The money, where'd you hide the money?"
THWACK, THWACK-THWACK!
"AAAH!"
There was human garbage.
A man who looked every bit the junkie was beating people.
Beating a woman and a child.
No, his own wife and child.
"Scum...."
Marcel muttered under his breath.
Ironic, given they were about to rob and kill a brat themselves.
Of course, if they'd been capable of that level of self-awareness, they wouldn't have been planning to harm a child in the first place.
Then Kalian stared squarely at the piece of garbage.
"The hell you looking at? Want a beating too?"
In response to the scum's snarl, Kalian smirked.
"Need money?"
"Hah, this damn brat doesn't know how to talk to his eld..."
"I said, do you need money?"
The scum's attitude shifted instantly.
Because he'd spotted the wad of bills Kalian casually pulled from his pocket.
"Help me out and I'll give you five hundred Dilrun."
"Heh heh, so there was a reason you were staring. Sure thing."
The scum didn't ask a single question and fell in step behind him.
"Th-that bastard!"
Maloney hissed, barely containing his fury.
The scum had tagged along for the exact same reason they were following.
"One more body to carve up."
"Too many eyes around here. Stick close and wait for an opening."
Marcel and Edmond exchanged rapid words as they continued the pursuit.
"Huh? There's a way through here?"
Edmond nearly jumped.
A small hole at the base of the city wall. A dog hole.
The brat and the scum were squeezing through it.
"Dammit, hurry!"
Edmond's heart raced.
The gap was small.
The kid had a sturdy build for his age, but his frame was still that of someone not yet fully grown.
And the scum had the emaciated body typical of a junkie.
Edmond and Marcel were far too large to fit through that hole.
Their only hope was Maloney, with his wiry frame.
"Maloney, think you can squeeze through?"
"Hehe, when the Squad Leader gives an order, I make it work even if I can't!"
Maloney belted out his most sycophantic line yet and sprinted toward the gap.
"Hah!"
But it wasn't going to be easy.
However slim his build, he was still a full-grown man and a knight.
By any measure, his shoulders would get stuck.
But this was a chance to impress his squad leader.
Maloney hurriedly drew his longsword and drove it deep into the dirt.
DIG-DIG-DIG!
If he scraped away some earth, he could just barely squeeze through.
"We'll go around through the gate. Follow as fast as you can and leave markers!"
"Yes, Squad Leader!"
Maloney shouted back enthusiastically, even as he shoveled dirt with his sword.
"Where'd this fog come from?"
Edmond had run along the wall to exit through the city gate, then circled back to where the gap was.
He followed the markers left by Maloney, who had already gone through the hole, and entered the mountain.
Before he knew it, he was deep inside a thick fog.
Shhring.
Marcel silently drew his longsword and scanned the surroundings.
Edmond did the same.
They had moved roughly another hundred meters when.
"Ugh!"
A sharp, stinging odor hit his nose.
'Blood?'
The sudden change had Edmond on edge. He stopped dead.
Marcel, tense in turn, pressed his back against Edmond's and guarded every direction.
That was when.
CREEEEAK, SNAP.
A bizarre sound burrowed into their ears.
"Squad Leader?"
"No idea. Assume anything that comes at us is hostile."
"Understood."
There was a chance it could be Maloney.
But in a situation like this, even a friendly approaching without warning deserved a preemptive strike.
If you were friendly and didn't announce yourself before closing in, you were asking to be cut down.
CREEEEAK, SNAP!
The eerie sound drew nearer.
Meanwhile, the fog had grown so thick that their vision was nothing but a white wall.
A fog so dense they couldn't see their own hands held before their faces.
And then.
"Graaahhh..."
Another unfamiliar sound joined in.
A strange sound, impossible to tell whether a groan or a roar.
Marcel, wound tight as a spring, pushed his Internal Energy hard into the longsword in his grip.
The bestial shriek erupted at the very same moment.
"GRAAAAHH!"
Mingled with the shriek was a vile, suffocating stench.
Then came a pair of hands.
SQUELCH!
Marcel's longsword reflexively impaled the strange creature before him.
'Got it!'
Marcel's triumph lasted only an instant.
SQUELCH!
A sound that shouldn't have been possible grazed his ears.
"Guh!"
His breath caught.
Something searing forced its way between his ribs, through torn flesh.
Marcel's head dropped.
What he saw was a pair of hands buried in either side of his torso.
Fingers rotted down to bone, piercing his flesh like awls.
And when he raised his head again, what he saw was a familiar face.
'Maloney...'
In that instant, Maloney's gaping jaws clamped down on Marcel's throat.
"GAAAAH!"
The scream had barely rung out when.
SHRRK!
A crisp arc of swordwork sang with a chilling sound.
Two heads rose into the air.
'Dark Magic?'
Edmond, who had severed both Marcel's and Maloney's necks, scowled viciously.
'Undead!'
Maloney, who had gone ahead to track the brat, had been turned Undead and attacked Marcel.
The moment Edmond confirmed it, he'd beheaded both men.
Low-grade Undead could be neutralized simply by severing the head.
***
-Wow, you really are a nasty piece of work, aren't you?
'Huh? This damn skull-head?'
-Ah, no, what I mean is...
'Getting casual again?'
-Huh?
Every chance he got, he slipped right back into informal speech.
'What? Why?'
-Uh... so it's not 'nasty piece of work' that set you off?
'I'm not exactly a good guy, am I?'
-Well, that's true.
'How does a sweet, kind soul become a Sixth Circle dark mage?'
-A hundred percent correct, Master.
The skull was absolutely thrilled to agree.
The sight was something else.
-Indeed, Master is a bad person.
'Shut it, Lich.'
A Seventh Circle who had even become a Lich, calling a Sixth Circle a bad guy and enjoying it.
The world was truly going to hell.
Something in my tone must have given him pause, because Velkarion quickly shifted gears.
-Ah, n-no. I was actually admiring your brilliant scheme, Master. I never imagined you'd handle the cleanup that way.
What Velkarion was referring to was none other than the junkie from the slums.
'A clean aftermath means no trouble down the road.'
It was something I'd been mulling over ever since I used Dark Magic right after the regression.
Dark Magic was the most forbidden of the forbidden.
If anyone found out I'd used Dark Magic, the Magic Towers, the Imperial House, the knight orders, the churches and the rest would all make me a public enemy of the whole continent.
But at the time, I couldn't avoid using it if I wanted to live.
And on top of that, who was this body's older sister?
Chloe Facial, Tower Master of the Northern Tower, the Witch of the Northern Tower.
I hadn't encountered her directly, but she would certainly have stormed that isolated house.
And she'd find the traces of Dark Magic.
Even a Triarch family like House Facial wouldn't tolerate a dark mage.
So there had to be someone, someone other than me, who had used the Dark Magic.
Enter the junkie I'd fished out of the slums.
Subduing one junkie with a knight's body was child's play.
And then.
-I never imagined you'd make that piece of human garbage activate the Dark Magic himself.
'Isn't that one of Dark Magic's perks?'
Having mana was obviously an advantage when casting Dark Magic.
But mana wasn't strictly necessary.
All you needed were offerings and a Magic Circle.
So if you coerced the junkie into drawing the circle?
And had him personally slit the chickens' throats as the offering?
The junkie became the dark mage.
-Heh, making him call out the Incantation himself! Master, you really are a bad guy.
'What was that, punk?'
-Isn't it true? You knew exactly what happens when someone botches an Incantation like that, and you made him do it anyway.
'Obviously.'
What happens when someone who knows nothing about magic clumsily activates Dark Magic?
Rebound.
Through the Dark Magic's backlash, the man became his own offering and activated the Dark Magic.
No one would be able to identify the bones left behind.
Sure, there would be a few loose threads.
But this body was a knight's.
Who would ever imagine a knight using Dark Magic?
From now on, I'd hold back on Dark Magic as much as I could, and if I did use it, I'd be extremely careful.
The Dark Magic I'd triggered had taken care of the one who followed me.
Now it was time to deal with the remaining ones.