30 Years Have Passed Since the Prologue Chapter 9

Chapter 9: These Orphans Need Their Director (2)

At the center of Prichenkaya’s Central Garden stand monuments and statues whose construction Great King Ivan personally ordered.

They are the [Statue of the Departing Hero], the [Statue of the Goddess of Victory], and the [Statue of the Nameless Hero].

One day, after the Demon King had died and the war had been wrapped up, there was an incident in which one statue vanished from Prichenkaya’s Central Garden.

The [Statue of the Nameless Hero]. In the place where that statue had stood, a small placard was said to have been driven into the ground.

[The mourning of these dead is my right.—Enrique.]

Crown Prince Alexandr raged and stormed about it being an insult to the royal house, but Princess Elizaveta is said to have acknowledged Enrique’s right and abandoned any recovery of the statue.

Of course, the truth is unknowable.

Because there was no need to needlessly antagonize a legendary master thief who had wrenched away and stolen a statue overnight from a garden in the heart of the capital, within a stone’s throw of the royal palace—and a member of the Hero’s Party who killed the Demon King, at that.

Elizaveta had, in effect, made the optimal move. She neither ruffled Enrique’s temper nor damaged the royal house’s dignity.

“Was there an inscription like this?”

Ivan was looking at the [Statue of the Nameless Hero] in one corner of the underground waterway.

It was 3 hours into a search conducted on nothing but the intelligence that Enrique’s “dungeon” lay in the underground waterway of southern Prichenkaya.

[Even when your names are forgotten. Your glory shall be immortal. On behalf of all those not present here. For all those, not present here.—Elizaveta Kirillovna Krasilov.—Enrique Seregeyevika.]

Ivan removed his hat, laid it over his chest, and bowed his head briefly.

When he had only heard talk of this statue being erected, he’d felt awkward and couldn’t even bring himself to approach it.

And on the day he happened to visit the Central Garden, Enrique had already carted the statue away.

Just as his silent bow was ending, a voice laced with laughter rang through the underground waterway.

“Do not mourn those who departed before us.”

“For I too stand in the same rank as they.”

“So you still remember. Good—welcome, ‘little’ Ivan.”

Creeeak. The base of the statue twisted with the sound of grinding metal, and soon the stone wall split open to reveal a passage.

It was a lavishly appointed reception corridor, entirely unlike the reeking, musty underground waterway he’d been standing in a moment before.

Walking down the extravagant corridor whose walls were finished in silk, Ivan slowly steeled himself.

Because like most members of the Hero’s Party, Grand Master Enrique was a lunatic.

Of course, at that same moment Enrique was thinking the same thing as she called Ivan to mind.

Because like most Annihilation Corps agents, “little” Ivan was a lunatic.

***

“It’s been 7 years since we faced each other directly, hasn’t it? So, have you been well, my disciple?” “Well enough.”

Ivan sat in the reception room and sipped his coffee.

The first mouthful very small, rolled slowly around the mouth.

That was a form of etiquette. As with most etiquette, it meant it was part of an anti-assassination protocol.

No poison in it. Ivan nodded lightly and was savoring the coffee when—

“Ah, the chemical poisons they make these days can’t be distinguished by taste.”

“Hm.”

—he spat it back into the cup and set it on the table.

“I’m joking, joking! Shall I have a fresh one brought?”

“No need. I didn’t come to be treated to tea.”

“So stiff, honestly. Such a young thing.”

Enrique smiled with her eyes and sprawled across the ornate sofa.

A snow-white leg slipped briefly into view through the side slit of her silk dress. Of course, that much couldn’t catch Ivan’s gaze. The monster before him was an old freak well past a hundred.

How many elixirs and how much essence blood had she drained, exactly?

Ivan couldn’t help but imagine a pit viper glaring at him and flicking its tongue.

Which was fair enough, as this place was a vampire’s nest.

Elder Vampire, Shadow Blade, Fang of Darkness. And “the Betrayer,” Enrique.

A century ago, she betrayed the Elder Vampire who had bitten her, drained its blood, and brought an end to the “Vampire Rampage” that had been scattered across all of Prichenkaya—a hero.

In the century since, this woman had taken countless lives under the pretext of “assassination commissions.” Had the Demon King not risen up, wouldn’t a Hero have been dispatched to deal with this woman?

Ivan thought this while carefully stroking his axe handle with the hand lowered beneath the table.

“So, you came faster than I expected. If anything that’s more befitting an active-duty man, and I like it? That…… well, ‘befitting an active-duty man’ isn’t a compliment between the likes of us, is it. Right?”

“Where is Priscilla?”

“Aha, straight to the point! You were always like that!”

Enrique laced her fingers together, grinning.

The dress rippled softly, revealing a bewitching figure. (Of course, Ivan is unmoved by someone 70 years his senior. His coverage range is at most within 10 years up or down.)

“So—do you think I bit her? Or didn’t I?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Oh my? How can you be so sure?”

“If you had, you’d have ambushed me rather than invited me.”

Ivan glared at her with cold eyes and continued.

“Wasn’t the most important of the principles you taught me revenge?”

“Mmm? Are you saying that grubby little girl falls within your ‘revenge’ radius?”

“I took her in.”

He remembered the day he took Priscilla in. That child had been an orphan despised even among the refugees crowded before the encampment.

To be without parents at a young age is a terrible thing. Because the only one who can protect you is yourself. A child who realizes that acts all the more spiritedly.

Because it was a world in which far too many people were already sufficiently miserable to help a child who grieved and moped.

To pity someone, you must have some margin yourself. In those days the United Kingdoms had no such margin.

And so Ivan remembers Priscilla and several other children. He had resolved to take those children in, retired, and established the orphanage—so those children are as good as his own.

Naturally, if his child is harmed, revenge must be taken.

“Don’t work up so much venom. It makes you look amateurish.”

Enrique smiled sweetly and set down her teacup.

The black tea, still full, not a mouthful drunk, sloshed faintly atop the table.

“Didn’t I teach you? That venom is the exclusive province of prey. That emphasizing revenge and self-defense while painting yourself in gaudy colors is the last struggle of the weak.”

“Your answer?”

“She’s still alive. I didn’t bite her. She’s fine. I had her washed properly, dressed in pretty clothes, and fed something delicious. Now—you answer me.”

Enrique slowly laid her snow-white fingers on the table and said:

“What are you plotting?”

“……Hm?”

“I’m asking what you’re plotting at that ‘orphanage’ of yours.”

Enrique was in earnest. When she heard he was taking in orphans, she’d laughed it off as him being sentimental on account of being an orphan himself. He had been pitiable. Wasn’t he a dear disciple whom she’d have been quite willing to take in as family if he’d come to her?

2 years passed like that. And then one of these “orphanage-raised orphans” turns out to know how to use an astonishingly perfect Ambush Art?

Honestly, she felt blindsided. As for calling it a leak of techniques—well, it wasn’t anything grand. It wasn’t some single-heir transmission school either, so she could simply have taught it to him.

But what was the meaning of dispatching an agent as if to pick a turf war with one’s own master in the same district?

She felt wronged. She hadn’t even gone to see him after his retirement, when he erased his very identity and lived as though dead. She hadn’t once gone to suggest a drink, despite him being close enough to touch if she stumbled!

And yet—what?

He wants to run a business in our front yard, and sends an agent over to make a demonstration of it?

This is a declaration of war, isn’t it?

Honestly, she’d grabbed that impudent brat and not even killed her, courteously invited her instead, and was even signaling let’s not do this, we have so many memories together, do we need to fight?

And this stone slab of a man goes and says touch her and I’ll kill you!

Truly hurtful.

And what’s with that beard. It’s driving her mad. Why is he doing something that was in fashion a century ago? He can’t be calling that a disguise, surely? She didn’t teach him that.

Even as countless such stray thoughts flitted through her head—

—Enrique was still gazing at Ivan wearing a “breezy smile,” as befitting a legendary vampire who had lived a century and a member of the great Hero’s Party.

What am I plotting, she says—how much do I tell her?

Ivan couldn’t get his bearings.

The reason Elizaveta was using him was that he was undercover. His past had been cleanly laundered, his name was ordinary enough that using him at any time would cause no misunderstanding, and his appearance had changed a great deal (by his own standard).

On top of that, the “Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Petrovich” of the past had already been processed as deceased and even interred in the National Cemetery.

Which meant that by Elizaveta’s intent, his identity and mission were classified.

Was it all right to tell Enrique this?

No, but—didn’t Enrique and Elizaveta have some sort of connection?

Enrique founded the Annihilation Corps in the first place, and Elizaveta was that unit’s commander, wasn’t she?

The 2 of them, suffering headaches from insufficient information yet at the same time never losing the ease and prudence of thoroughly trained agents, smiled at each other.

What in the world is this madman thinking, seriously. What in the world is this madwoman thinking.

That is what they were thinking.

This is betrayal—how could he do this to me? Is this betrayal? Has this woman switched allegiance from Elizaveta to Alexandr?

Master and disciple were, today as well, deepening their bond in perfect unity of heart and mind.

It was a certain night on a winter’s day in mid-January.