"Yul, you agreed not to cause trouble......!"
"That's why I asked first."
"You asked in English! You could have asked in Gauri, and you deliberately asked in English!"
"It slipped my mind."
"You mean a slipped-my-mind act!"
Flag spat out words close to a scream in a rapid burst without ever raising his voice, but Odysseus only gave him a beaming smile. So what can you do about it? It was a smile packed generously with that meaning.
"Flag, give it up. Causing trouble is a child's ordinary business."
"Daaamn it......!"
"Yul, you too... next time, at least give a minimum of warning before you go ahead. To begin with, surely even you do not think Captain Songha sent you off believing you truly would not cause any trouble."
"That's true."
Perhaps it came of having the seasoning of raising children; Migo was quicker on the uptake. Odysseus nodded in a sign of agreement and spat out a hollow promise.
"From next time I'll at least say something."
It was a promise he would keep, though one with no particular meaning.
"Have you finished your talk?"
The moment the squabble ended and a slight silence settled, Lucen tactfully struck up conversation.
Despite the discussion having been in Gauri, a faint smile had risen on Lucen's face. It felt as though he knew what words must have passed between them.
'Well, it is a timing anyone who is not an idiot son of a bitch cannot help noticing.'
What else could it mean when a talk in an unknown language passed between them immediately after the young magician abruptly declared his wish to participate? Failing to grasp that would put the bastard's intelligence at or below a goldfish's.
"Yeees."
"Your companions seem to worry a great deal."
"...Yul is still young. And he does not have much combat record."
"Above all, this kid likes our captain far too much. The trouble is that he tries to bite anyone who touches the captain, whoever they are, just like this time."
"Shall I bite you too, Bro?"
"There, you see."
He gave the man a bit of grief and this is how he pays it back? Odysseus knocked away Flag's hand as it went to tap his head and, down below, kicked him in the shin. Flag bent at the waist along with a soundless scream.
"Then shall we finish the briefing. Planning office."
"...There are no major points of caution. They are thug sons of bitches living in District 33."
"So they have no affiliation?"
"Close to thirty of them have gathered and formed a pack, but there is nothing you could call organization. It is a level too embarrassing to call mafia or a gang. They are the sort where neighborhood friends simply got together and formed a crew."
"Hmm. If they can go in and out of Redwing, doesn't that mean they have some standing?"
"Not that either. Buff states that all four of the bastards were men he saw for the first time yesterday. And what they came hoping to buy was cheap pistols... and even that was too expensive for them to take away, if you can believe it."
The Ray-Ban sunglasses let out a flippant laugh unsuited to the occasion. Of course, if what he said was the truth, then it was naturally a matter that deserved one.
"In any case, they are not bastards it would be a problem to kill. Those around them have neither the temperament nor the ability for revenge. Executing the four of them as an example should be enough."
"Good. Then let us go straight to work. How many should be dispatched?"
"Personally I think one or two from the security office would be enough, but... if Magician Yul is stepping out, I will increase the number a little. There is no telling how the Ironstick bastards will react."
"Fine. Let us do that. We depart after lunch, so draw up the roster and prepare before then."
"Are you going in person?"
"When Expedition Team: Freedom is cooperating this kindly, I can hardly sit still."
More to the point, he is putting more work into the coaxing than I imagined.
Odysseus deliberated briefly over whether he ought to stick a narcotics detector into his lunch. Unless the bastard was mad he would not try to slip in drugs this early, but then again, there was no telling.
Had the world turned on common sense, the present age would not have come to this sorry state.
Along with a little worry, lunchtime came.
***
"But kid. Why did you really step forward this time? Ones like these could have been left to them."
Fortunately there had been no narcotics in the food. And afterward, when they moved out to hunt, a car was assigned to them separately so the three of them could ride alone—though a driver was attached.
"Ah... it's nothing much."
Odysseus returned a roundabout answer to Flag's roundabout question.
"There's something I want to test."
"Test?"
"The alchemical formula I received yesterday. It turned out to overlap with something I'd been researching. Thanks to that, should I say I found something new, or that I discovered a basic piece of common knowledge? Either way, I got hold of one thing."
"Oh, did you?"
He had not even touched the research on the special magic bullets yet, but the bomb's alchemical formula Pluto had sent over was different. The moment he laid out four cases side by side, the magic formula he had purchased, Horn's research journal, and the equation of the standard magic bullet, Odysseus had been able to discover 'a certain something.'
"The problem is that I can't gauge whether it actually works properly or how much power it has... I also want to know how much power it shows against a person, and Freedom almost never has occasion to fight people. And I can hardly use it on the Ironstick head I've been promised."
One slip and the test subject's life would be gone in an instant; how could he use something like that on that bastard? Odysseus swore by the god of pain that he would never kill that bastard neatly. That bastard would be an offering to gladden Oizys, god of pain.
"Riiight. Yes. I'm convinced. Though it would have been better if you'd explained before going ahead and doing it."
"I said I'd tell you next time."
In any case, while Odysseus spoke, his fingers moved to bring a message up on his device. It was an angle hard to catch not only for the driver in front but even for whatever cameras might be present.
「牢家 難嫩 音 綠吸 蒼」
An outwardly disordered string of Han characters with no connection whatsoever. But for a person who had memorized the specific readings and meanings of Han characters, the story was a little different.
At the sentence that said, in a thoroughly roundabout way, 'They'll record the conversation we've had and listen to it, won't they?', Flag tapped the boy's shoulder. It was a code sign meaning yes.
「藩苛」
He then returned an answer by lightly operating his own device. Using the Gauri reading, it was an answer read as 'beon-ga.' And if one interpreted the meaning packed into it regardless of the Han characters, it could be taken as roughly 'because translation is possible.' Abbreviations of that sort were a method much enjoyed in Gauri.
'True, we are not the only ones of Aragayan descent.'
Talent that had memorized Han characters above a certain level was hard to find even on the Eastern Continent, but people who could speak Gauri itself were relatively easy to come by.
Which meant they had to converse with the expectation that the meaning would leak to some degree.
"But what exactly is it you discovered?"
Now that you know, be careful. You be the careful one; you remember the role, don't you? While the conversation using the notepad and Han characters passed between them, Flag chattered away diligently with his mouth as well. It was a trick to keep the driver from finding the silence strange.
"Yes, I am curious about that part too."
Migo, seated in the back, joined in as well. Able to speak Gauri but not Han characters, she assisted them by shielding the device screen with her whole body so it would not be caught by any camera. Befitting, indeed, the optimal personnel Captain Songha had chosen.
"It's nothing grand... just, a combustion-explosion formula, roughly?"
"...What?"
"It really is nothing much. It's only an equation for burning and detonating magic power more efficiently."
"Th-that's nothing much?"
"...It feels tremendously like something much."
"Not particularly?"
Raising a flame, or causing a detonation with it. In that such things could be reproduced well enough with primitive magic, it was truly not a grand matter.
There was merely a difference of degree, in that if primitive magic was lighting a fire with flint, using an equation was setting a blaze with a flamethrower.
And judging by how easily he had drawn out the essence, the odds were high that it was a fairly common... in other words, a low-grade equation. Just as electronic devices of the same kind differ in energy efficiency by grade.
"It's only primitive magic polished into something more refined and efficient. For me as I am now, with nothing to my name, that point alone makes it attractive enough."
Either way it was magic he could not deploy in combat yet. Both because he had not grasped its power and because he had not properly established the formulas for coordinates or range.
"...But kid. If what you're going to practice is combustion-explosion, that means the ones we catch this time will be blown up al—"
"Car 1 has spotted the targets. I will slow to a stop."
Before Flag's words could finish, the driver, who had been silent, spoke. Indeed, Car 1 reflected in the windshield was just then coming to a stop at the roadside some 50m ahead.
Clunk.
Odysseus circulated the magic power within his body as he opened the door and stepped out. Lucen, the Ray-Ban sunglasses, and the other humans who had ridden in Car 1 were already up on the pavement.
With the targets in the middle, the personnel of Car 1 and Car 2 stood in a line.
—How was the ride, Magician? You did not get carsick, did you?
"I don't get carsick."
—That is good to hear.
While the Ray-Ban sunglasses stuck a cigarette in his mouth, Lucen spoke through the earset. It was the operational earset they had been handed out before departure.
—As arranged beforehand, we will do the driving. Please surround any bastards who flee.
"Yes."
Immediately after those words, Lucen's crew, some distance off, began to stir. The boss Lucen and the Ray-Ban sunglasses in charge of the control tower stayed put while the rest stepped out to drive the targets.
—Targets have registered us.
—Well now. They have some sense after all. I thought they wouldn't notice.
He would not draw his gun. Using a gun on mere things like those would be too much of a waste.
—Driver, block them from fleeing across.
Likewise he would not draw his knife from its sheath. Since he did not know what power the combustion-explosion formula would produce, the bastards had to be taken alive as far as possible.
"I'll catch them. Please don't step in."
"Sure."
SCREECH!
When Car 1 and Car 2 charged forward and blocked off the road side, the four lumps startled and pressed themselves to the building. It was then that Odysseus put strength into his feet. Since it was a movement he had announced in advance, neither Flag nor Migo showed a flustered reaction.
Sliding in among the four men in an instant, the boy's body hooked the first bastard's leg and toppled him. Since he lifted his body with his hands and hooked the leg as though spinning a windmill, his opponent could not even resist.
"What's this little shit now—!"
Physical conditions could be caught up with easily enough through magic-power enhancement. So Odysseus, having easily toppled a bulk likely three times his own weight, turned a somersault and set his body upright.
Pang.
The moment both feet touched the ground his body shot out as though fired, bursting the air, and struck the next bastard's solar plexus with a fist. Along with the sensation of sloshing belly fat, the bastard vomited spit.
"How filthy."
He had thought he was controlling his strength, but apparently his opponent was weaker than expected.
Odysseus glanced at the man flying away and twisted his body toward the third. Befitting street thugs, the bastards had not managed a proper reaction even at this moment, with half of them already down.
Then they could simply take it. One of Odysseus' legs shattered the pavement block and kicked the other leg up. A clean side kick landed on the enemy's abdomen and drove him into the building's outer wall.
"Wh-what the."
Last of all, pushing his slightly slipped glasses up with the back of one hand, with the other he caught the hand thrusting a knife at him. CRASH! The man, caught by a small boy's arm, floated up into the air and was thrown down where he was.
"...Wow."
With that, all four subdued successfully.
Rather than express delight at the predetermined outcome, Odysseus stepped on the head of the first bastard as he tried to rise. Since he put no strength into it, the bastard's head was not smashed or anything. His nose only broke a little.
"This is a bit unexpected."
When the flunkies they had brought could do nothing, the Ray-Ban sunglasses wore a sour face. It was an expression that contrasted with Lucen, who could not have brightened more if he tried.
"Astonishing. The Magician's skill is—"
"Say, Lucen. You said you were going to kill them, right?"
"Oh, yes. That is so."
"Then would it be all right if I ran a little test before killing them?"
"A test, you say......?"
"The bomb alchemical formula you gave me. I made a few improvements to it."
"Improvements, is it... haha, of course. Do as much as you like."
Odysseus broke the shinbones of every bastard trying somehow to collect himself and stand, then gestured casually.
"The blast range might be large, so please step back a little further. Ah, and take the other three away too. I want to test them one at a time."
"Yes, let us do that. You there, hurry and drag them over, all but that one. If they resist, keep them pinned suitably."
"Yul, are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
While only the fattest bastard remained near him, Odysseus brought up the research journal he had recorded on his device. In the very last paragraph was an equation with most of the important parts omitted, only the barest framework standing.
"Fill in the numbers roughly. No need to designate coordinate values just yet. Range at 1.1 for now......."
To use magic, one needed the calculation work of 'boardwork' to designate coordinates, range, and power, and the 'drafting of a magic array' to guide the flow of magic power. But since he had no informational values needed for the boardwork now, Odysseus filled in numbers roughly and drafted a magic array to match.
Lines of magic power were drawn across the pavement blocks and glowed. Perhaps concussed, the test subject only groaned and showed no movement.
"It would be nice if just an arm went, lightly."
Odysseus laid the test subject's arm over the drafted magic array, then withdrew to a distance like everyone else.
"I'm starting."
Immediately after, he slammed magic power into the last point of the unconnected magic array.
CRASH!
At the same time a roar rang out, an enormous flame burst out of the test subject's arm. Such was its power that even his head and torso, which had not been within the radius, were covered in burns and scooped-out wounds. The former were traces left by the flame, the latter scars from the detonated arm and fragments of pavement block.
"H-haaaargh."
"...Astonishing."
"Ye gods."
But the only one who found the sight horrific was the test subject in waiting.
"Ah, it seems I put the numbers in too boldly."
Odysseus shrugged over the burst corpse.
Still, now that he had one point of reference, the next time would be a little less.