Chapter 38
The Sealed Vault
The Arken Empire, the underground prison beneath the Imperial Palace.
Soldiers dressed in guard uniforms shouted to one another.
“Hey, it’s time to change shifts!”
“Ah, damn it… What took you so long?”
“What are you talking about? I got here before the on-the-hour trumpet even sounded.”
“You little bastard. I’m going to do exactly the same thing to you next time.”
The guard clicked his tongue in irritation as he began the handover.
“More importantly, it’s been a while since this prison had this many inmates.”
“Come to think of it, you went out on that operation, didn’t you? Are these people really demon worshipers?”
The man asked about something that had bothered him throughout his shift.
No matter how he looked at them, they seemed less like demon worshipers and more like starving slum dwellers.
“I don’t know about the ones we brought in, but they were staying with demon worshipers.”
“Whoa, actual demon worshipers? Wasn’t that just an accusation they used whenever they wanted to crack down on agitators?”
“Apparently, these ones are the real deal. We caught them in a raid.”
“Real demon worshipers showing up… Maybe the country really is headed for ruin.”
The guard relieving him immediately glared.
“Don’t go around saying things like that. If I report you, they’ll arrest you as a demon worshiper on the spot.”
“Oh, how terrifying. Enough of that. Let’s finish the handover already. I’m meeting Ashley today.”
“I’ll never understand why you’re so obsessed with that tavern wench…”
The replacement guard was checking the prisoner roster when he abruptly stopped clicking his tongue.
“Hey, you idiot. You’ve gotten so careless that you can’t even count properly?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The report said we captured twelve prisoners.”
The replacement guard pointed at the total.
“Then why does it say thirteen here?”
“What do you mean? There were thirteen when they were brought in.”
“What the hell are you saying? We personally reported that we bound twelve of them and brought them inside. You think we counted wrong?”
“Are you saying I’m the one who got it wrong? I counted them one by one as I put them in! Come and see for yourself!”
“Oh? Want to bet one golden?”
“I’ll bet ten goldens, you bastard!”
“Fine! Ten goldens. You’d better have the money ready.”
Both men, utterly certain of themselves, headed toward the cell where the heretics had been confined.
They pointed at the exhausted prisoners sprawled across the floor and counted them one by one.
“One, two, three, four…”
They counted from the far right to the far left, and the wager was settled.
“There are twelve, you moron!”
The replacement guard smacked the other man on the back of the head.
“What? That can’t be right.”
Unable to believe it, the guard counted them again himself.
“Huh?”
Just as the other man had said, there were only twelve.
“You idiot. You nearly caused a full-scale incident. Were you drinking during your shift?”
“I-I only had a little, damn it.”
“A little, my ass! You belong in the stockade! If you don’t want to be locked up for drinking on duty and neglecting your post, you’d better have those ten goldens ready. Got it?”
“Damn it…”
The guard tilted his head and looked through the bars.
The powerless slum dwellers merely waited for the day they would die.
“…That’s strange.”
***
Meanwhile, inside the Imperial Palace—
“This really isn’t easy.”
Brown hair, a square jaw, and sharply defined features.
Rather than being called handsome, he had the sort of face that made people assume he had made more than a few women cry.
Zed Swallow.
Avoiding everyone’s eyes, he slipped into a restroom and studied himself in the mirror.
“Who said I only needed two eyes? Of course I need them.”
He was in an extremely foul mood.
Getting into prison and then escaping from it required skills that only someone experienced with both processes could possess.
‘And this isn’t just any place. It’s the Imperial Palace.’
The moment anyone realized someone had escaped, the entire palace would be placed on alert.
And once that happened?
The greatest knights and mages on the continent would swarm in to capture Zed, and then he really would be caught with nowhere to run.
That meant he had to appear and disappear as naturally as flowing water.
It was by no means an easy process.
So Zed drew upon his own experience to devise a method.
‘Like abandoning your partner at a party…’
The key was to slip away while the other person was intoxicated by the atmosphere.
That made them doubt whether what they had seen had been real, and they would only realize the truth after everything was already over.
The process itself had been easier than expected.
No, it had actually been easier than abandoning a partner at a party.
At the very least, no one here would scream Zed Swallow’s alias while rampaging around with a weapon.
‘Maybe I have a natural talent for this.’
After escaping, Zed sneaked into the servants’ changing room, exactly as he had planned beforehand.
At first, he had worried that there might not be anything in his size, but there had been no need.
The room contained uniforms designed to accommodate every possible body type.
‘Looks like more than a few people die working here.’
Lives worth no more than flies.
Dozens died as a matter of course, and the moment one died, another immediately took their place.
Such a system was only possible because servants were treated as little more than expendable supplies.
Zed did not like it.
After all, it was not someone else’s problem.
‘Ferda Valdrova.’
He thought deeply about his superior.
‘What am I to that man?’
Ferda was so blunt that he often came across as outright rude.
Yet even that rudeness did not seem malicious.
Others might not notice it, but Zed could clearly sense it in the nuances of Ferda’s speech.
‘He feels like someone interacting with people for the first time.’
Someone who had never learned how to communicate properly and had only ever engaged in one-sided conversations.
Ferda displayed all the typical traits of such a person attempting genuine communication.
Zed had realized it most clearly before the tea party, when Ferda had asked him for advice.
—How does one talk to women?
Zed had never imagined Ferda would ask a question so fitting for someone his age.
Delighted, Zed had offered him advice based on his own deeds and experiences.
After finishing the tea party using that advice, Ferda had given him this response.
—You are fortunate to have that face.
Zed still could not tell whether it had been an insult or a compliment.
In any case, Ferda had claimed that documents connected to Zed’s younger sister were involved in this operation.
If that was not a lie, Zed would finally learn what their relationship truly was.
“Whew. Good. Shall I get to work?”
After checking himself in the mirror a couple more times, Zed began moving according to plan.
The moment he took his first step into the Imperial Palace—
“You there.”
A voice calling out to someone echoed through the corridor.
Zed was the only person in it.
“Who are you?”
Zed muttered under his breath.
Who the hell said two eyes were enough?
***
Ferda placed his hand upon the Orb of Truth, and the Orb questioned him.
—Do you swear that you do not worship demons or follow their will?
Upon hearing the question, Ferda thought,
‘Orb of Truth, my ass.’
He scoffed inwardly.
Records explaining how the Sealed Vault had been constructed were stored within the vault itself.
The so-called Orb of Truth embedded here was not a tool capable of seeing through people and distinguishing truth from falsehood.
‘What truly matters is the voice reciting the oath.’
The voice carried magical power.
The moment a person became fixated on the Orb of Truth, that voice briefly disturbed their consciousness.
That was the entire mechanism.
The orb merely determined whether the person’s mind had wavered upon hearing the contents of the question.
‘All I need to do is twist the interpretation.’
For Ferda, who had spent his life finding reasons to hate everything, it was a simple task.
—Do you swear that you do not worship demons or follow their will?
The voice asked again.
“Regent? Are you all right?”
Even Yuren seemed to find the delay strange and questioned him.
Ferda had to answer now.
He needed the ancient demonic tome.
However, his heart belonged not to the demons, but to Valdrova.
“I swear.”
The second question came.
—Do you swear that your visit to this vault is not motivated by personal desire?
Everything he was doing was for Valdrova.
There was nothing to consider.
“I swear.”
—Do you swear that you are loyal to the Empire?
‘The Empire…’
Had to fall.
“I swear.”
A moment later, the Orb of Truth, which had been glowing blue, began its judgment, and its color changed.
—Verified.
The light turned green.
Ferda removed his hand from the orb.
‘To think this is the procedure for entering the Sealed Vault.’
It seemed crude, but unless one knew how it worked, it was an unexpectedly effective trap.
Even now, Ferda found it so absurd that he could not help but scoff.
“Quite an amusing artifact, is it not?”
When Ferda continued staring down at it, Yuren casually interjected.
“Yes. An amusing artifact indeed.”
Leaving the amusing artifact behind, Ferda and the magical investigator entered.
They descended the stairs for a long while.
After following the seemingly endless spiral staircase, they finally stepped into the first Sealed Vault.
Rows of storage cabinets filled the chamber, each packed with sealed copper tubes.
It was the Archive Repository.
The records stored here concerned the Empire’s darkest disgraces and catastrophic events that might once have destroyed the continent.
Ferda had used the records in this place to lure Zed into the operation.
‘I thought he would have arrived by now. Is he still not here?’
There was no way to contact him, so Ferda had no idea how the situation was unfolding.
He could only trust that Zed would handle things on his own.
‘Perhaps this operation could have succeeded without him.’
Though Ferda had been the one to think it, the notion was not even amusing as a joke.
Zed was absolutely essential to this plan.
“There is nothing particularly interesting to see here. Most of it consists of things no one needs to know.”
Though Yuren spoke as if the records were insignificant, his words carried a warning not to touch anything carelessly.
Ferda had no intention of doing so.
To lighten the atmosphere, he asked,
“Do you never feel tempted to look when you enter a place like this?”
Yuren nodded.
“Of course I occasionally feel the urge. Despite appearances, I do possess something of a scholarly temperament.”
“And have you ever done so?”
“Not even once. There is no reason for me to learn things I do not need to know and invite trouble upon myself.”
He was a man with professional principles rarely seen in the rotten Empire.
Perhaps that was precisely why he had been able to become a magical investigator.
After only briefly looking around, they immediately moved on.
What mattered was the second Sealed Vault farther below.
Ferda descended with Yuren.
As they continued downward, Ferda sensed it.
‘A familiar smell.’
The groans of condensed malice and curses, along with seductive whispers.
They circled Ferda like eels gathering around a corpse at the bottom of a lake.
Yuren, conscious of how much deeper they had gone, asked Ferda,
“Are you all right?”
The correct answer here was not, “Of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing at all. Ha ha.”
Yuren set aside his suspicion and continued walking.
Ferda could not reveal that he sensed anything.
His priority was to deceive Yuren by displaying the dull insensitivity of someone who felt nothing at all.
The darkness grew thicker.
Candles struggled to illuminate the surroundings, but they seemed incapable of driving all of it away.
It was such a peculiar aura that ordinary people would instinctively sense danger and recoil in visceral disgust.
Yet Yuren continued forward.
Ferda followed him.
The moment they passed through what felt like an enormous curtain, Ferda’s vision suddenly opened.
“…Hah.”
A sound of admiration escaped him naturally.
Rather than a sealed imperial vault, it resembled a demon worshipers’ secret treasury.
Among everything inside, one object immediately seized Ferda’s attention.
It rested among the books displayed on the central pedestal, a world apart from the miscellaneous objects surrounding it.
A tome bound in silver chains, its black cover seeming deeper than the thick darkness itself.
‘Barbatos’s Shadow Arts.’
Barbatos was known as the Demon of Secrecy, but he was still one of the Great Demons, and the book had been sealed accordingly.
“What do you think of this place?”
Ferda instinctively answered Yuren’s question.
“As befits a place filled with demonic objects, it certainly reeks of something vile.”
“Ha ha, there is no need to force yourself to maintain appearances. This place inspires far more wonder than disgust.”
Wonder.
Yes, it could inspire nothing else.
The dense mana pouring from the cursed grimoires and books of sorcery enveloped one’s entire body.
Anyone would become intoxicated by it.
It whispered that if one surrendered even slightly, overwhelming power would begin coursing through their body.
That sensation promised relief like rain in a drought, more intense than the release that followed reaching the limits of humiliation and suffering.
“No. I find it merely disgusting.”
Ferda answered firmly.
Even when he had lived consumed by hatred, he had never once regarded mana like this as desirable.
When hatred had dominated him, Ferda had simply destroyed anything he could not possess.
And this mana was not his.
Nor could it ever become his.
“I… see.”
Yuren tilted his head.
“That is somewhat strange. A mage of your caliber should be at least slightly enthralled by it…”
He turned and stared at Ferda.
His gaze was entirely different from before.
It was not because of the strange current permeating the Sealed Vault.
He was revealing the true nature he had concealed until now.
“Well, it does not matter. What matters is that only the two of us are here.”
Yuren set Gamigin’s Necromancy on the floor and turned his head.
His face was filled with the revolting murderous intent he had kept hidden.
It suited this chamber perfectly.
“On the way here, I devised a little scenario.”
“Let us hear it.”
“At the regent’s request, I accompanied him into the Sealed Vault. Once inside, he succumbed to the temptation of the objects stored here, and I had no choice but to eliminate him… What do you think? Does it not sound remarkably plausible?”
Ferda listened with one hand on his chin.
Rather than fear, the first thing he felt upon hearing that Yuren intended to kill him was curiosity.
“Do you kill people without hesitation if they succumb to dark magic here?”
“There are no exceptions when it comes to dark magic. Beneath the light of the Almighty, there is no mercy.”
A cold smile spread across Yuren’s lips.
“Even if the offender happens to be the Dread Queen ’s regent.”
What an unnecessarily rigid nation.
“If I die, you will not leave this place alive either.”
“There is no need to worry about me. Unlike you, I have quite a few escape routes.”
Escape routes that would allow him to kill the Dread Queen ’s regent and get away with it.
Ferda was not interested in how Yuren intended to escape.
What mattered was that the man intended to kill him.
And what advantage he expected to gain from it.
‘He seems fully aware of what my death would cause…’
Ferda was no longer merely a prospective fiancé.
He was now officially betrothed.
By taking the name Valdrova, he had become as good as family to the Red Dragon.
Killing a member of that family would inevitably provoke revenge.
And that revenge would be directed at the Empire.
This was on an entirely different scale from the Purge Corps pretending to act in the name of justice while merely nibbling away at property.
‘Does he actually want that?’
Someone inside the Imperial Palace was willing to carry out an act that could throw not merely the Empire, but the entire continent into chaos.
Ferda suddenly recalled the Orb of Truth he had passed through.
Yuren had been verified after answering every oath.
There was only one reason that could have been possible.
‘He must know the secret of the Sealed Vault.’
From the moment they entered, he had been lying from beginning to end.
‘As expected, there is not a single decent person in the Empire.’
Cornered as he was, a smile appeared on Ferda’s lips.
“Why are you smiling?”
“It is nothing. I simply never imagined that the childish scenario I wrote would actually come true.”
“The scenario you wrote?”
Yuren, who had been smiling, tilted his head.
“I imagined a scenario in which I stopped an investigator who went berserk after luring the regent into a trap. Unlike yours, mine is actually happening.”
Ferda needed Barbatos’s Shadow Grimoire.
To obtain it, he had to kill the magical investigator.
Whether Yuren had truly been incorruptible or not had never mattered to Ferda.
“Thanks to you, I no longer have to worry about feeling guilty. I can simply think of this as taking out the trash.”
The smile vanished completely from Yuren’s face.
“Do you truly believe someone like you can kill me?”
By conventional standards among mages, Ferda’s words were an insult beyond imagination.
Yuren was a Fifth-Circle Master Mage.
He was renowned throughout the continent and held a position of considerable authority within the Empire.
Ferda, by contrast, was merely a Third-Circle Magic Walker.
“If you do not believe me…”
Mana gathered in Ferda’s right hand.
“…then see for yourself.”
Magic shot from Ferda’s hand in an instant.
A sphere moving faster than any mage could have anticipated hurtled toward Yuren.