Chapter 744

A thought occurred to me.

I wished that everything tormenting me right now was merely a scene from some movie or novel. Something like that.

Then at least some evidence would pop up somewhere.

Of course, contrary to the hope I had secretly been holding on to, nothing of the sort happened.

Everyone, myself included, searched every inch of Siegfried Bassmann’s hideout, but what popped out wasn’t evidence concerning his death. It was a person.

More precisely, over a hundred Hunters from the Swiss Federal Police, who had followed us and arrived late.

“Everyone, please stop.”

“We’re taking control of the scene under legal procedure. Put down whatever you’re holding immediately and…”

Well, what else could we do?

If they had abruptly pointed swords at us, I would have answered with my spear. But they were carrying out official duties, and instead of swords, they had thrust forward the invincible cheat code known as legal procedure.

Even unorthodox swordsmen who drew their weapons at the slightest provocation hesitated in front of government soldiers.

And as a twenty-first-century modern man with a logical mindset, my answer had been decided from the start.

“Are you going to put us in handcuffs too?”

“…Excuse me?”

“Yeah, that’d be a bit much. So what do we do now?”

With countless media outlets wishing me a long and healthy life while cursing me to hell, causing another incident would’ve been insane.

My companions and I cooperated so obediently that even the Swiss Hunters were surprised. After undergoing a thorough body search and brief questioning, we were released.

The high-ranking official who introduced himself as the lead investigator had just one thing to say.

“Additional investigations related to this case will be conducted, so we ask for your continued cooperation in the future.”

That was all.

We hadn’t given them anything to hold against us, but their matter-of-fact response still surprised me.

According to Team Leader Choi, Michael Silbert’s influence reached the leaders of countries across the world. Switzerland, in particular, was where he sheltered his astronomical wealth from taxes.

I was sure that bastard would use Switzerland to pressure us somehow.

Team Leader Choi had a straightforward answer.

“They deliberately let us go. Since it was clear that neither the evidence nor the circumstances had anything to do with us, they must have judged that pursuing the matter any further would be difficult.”

“That bastard Michael let us go on purpose? Just getting dragged into this case would already hurt us.”

“The public is fickle. Right now, quite a few people are cursing us because they’re being controlled by the media and mob psychology. But that’s because The Prophet and terrorism provide a plausible justification at first glance.”

“And if the reason doesn’t hold up, people won’t buy it?”

“People have acted on what they consider justified for thousands of years. If that justification falls apart, a good number of those condemning us will change sides.”

“Oh.”

Come to think of it, that was a pattern people displayed often—no, quite frequently.

You only had to look at the entertainment news on any online portal. The moment a celebrity got caught up in a scandal, netizens swarmed like bees to the honey the media had put out.

There were the genius prophets who claimed they had known it would happen ever since the celebrity’s debut, and even twenty-first-century physiognomists insisting that face-reading was a science.

And around the time the winner of that world’s greatest malicious-comment contest was crowned by upvotes, a new fact would emerge and turn the situation around, and the swarm would change its tune in an instant.

Why?

Simple.

They had no excuse to keep cursing them.

Siegfried Bassmann’s mysterious death was that kind of case. Michael Silbert understood how people worked, and he knew exactly when to press on and when to stop.

“Michael is, in a word, a madman.”

Magic Johnson broke the silence, his voice subdued.

“But the biggest reason we need to be wary of him is that this mad bastard is more meticulous and stronger than anyone.”

Even the Skeleton King wore an uncharacteristically grave expression.

“I agree. When I first saw that bastard in Paris, I felt something so eerie that it was difficult to believe he was human.”

Most madmen ended up in prison or a psychiatric hospital.

But when a madman like Michael had everything, the world had another name for him.

One of the powerful.

Of the people I’d met in the modern world, Lee Jungryong qualified. So did Go Jun, though he fell short of his Master in plenty of ways.

But that bastard…

He had already gone beyond that category.

You’d have to add those two together, then multiply the result, to get a madman like him.

Michael Silbert was a monster who’d given up being human.

Why? What could he possibly want to go this far?

I looked up. The sky was clear as hell, and the surrounding landscape had kept its northern European beauty. It couldn’t have been more at odds with what was happening.

Fuck.

I muttered a quiet curse inwardly, then pulled a small pouch from inside my clothes and handed it to Magic Johnson.

“Here.”

“This is… a subspace pocket.”

“Don’t open it yet. Take it with you and look through it properly. Team Leader Choi and I are hopeless when it comes to magic. We wouldn’t know what we were looking at.”

“Magic? Jin, what are you suddenly talking about?”

He looked bewildered. Then his eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me…”

“Yeah. I swiped it earlier. I’m sure the deceased would understand.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

All three stood there with their mouths open. Well, two people and one monster. I made a show of sighing.

“Not the reaction I was hoping for. Should I return it?”

Magic Johnson snatched the pocket.

“N-no, that’s not what I meant. But how did you…?”

“The Hunters assigned to me were pretty lax with their body search.”

Team Leader Choi blinked at me. “Lax?”

“Yeah.”

A blatant lie, of course.

A Grand Mage’s magical research materials were an immense treasure in their own right.

The Swiss Hunters had thoroughly searched the subspace pockets we carried, worried that even one of the materials might be smuggled out.

They hadn’t searched my Inventory.

More precisely, they couldn’t have.

As soon as I gave up looking for evidence on the body, I’d started scooping up materials. Anything that looked even remotely promising. Whatever I could lay my hands on.

The result of that theft was now in Magic Johnson’s hands.

“We didn’t notice a thing,” he said. “When did you manage all this?”

“I told you. They weren’t watching closely, so I slipped it out.”

“You secretly slipped it out?”

He opened the pocket and looked inside.

“…Jin. You didn’t steal the entire laboratory, did you?”

“…”

“…Jin?”

Well. I had picked up this and that, so I had brought quite a lot.

Everyone had been distracted, though, and there were mountains of documents left behind. It probably wasn’t that obvious.

Probably.

“Anyway, is it enough to work with?”

“Enough? Are you serious? There’s more than enough.”

“Then please investigate it based on those materials for the time being.”

“But with everything happening, I can’t focus entirely on—no. I’ll do my best. If I find even the smallest clue in here, Michael won’t be able to carry on like this.”

I nodded.

“Please do.”

The distribution of magical power had intensified again, and the damage was mounting. Magic Johnson would be a tremendous help with the aftermath, but we needed to deal with the root of the problem first.

“We’ll gather information from other angles,” Team Leader Choi said. “If we can locate one person, we may be able to prevent the worst.”

Magic Johnson answered with something like a sigh.

“The Prophet.”

“Yes. If either of the two heads is removed, things should improve considerably.”

“If we could eliminate The Prophet, all the better. We have Jin. Find out where the man is, and he’s dead. The problem is…”

“I know. Even the Pentagon hasn’t located him yet. But we have to try.”

Michael Silbert and The Prophet.

The Prophet and Michael Silbert.

The two madmen moved as though they were one, but The Prophet was by far the easier one for me to eliminate.

Kill the master of the world’s greatest Guild, and I’d be a fucking bastard on par with Demon King Asmodeus. Bring back the head of a fanatical terrorist, and the whole world would cheer.

“We’ll find him,” I said, calm despite the anger in my voice. “Even if we have to turn over the entire desert.”

The civilization humanity had built was magnificent.

The sight of people cheering after discovering fire for the first time in the distant past could no longer be found anywhere.

Those wandering groups had become farming societies. Factories rose where fields and rice paddies had once stood, and humanity forged the modern world from steel and blood.

Humanity, once the weakest of all, had thus become the master of this blue planet.

They flew across the sky faster than light, ventured into space, and used weapons born of that progress to kill one another.

Humanity was the ruler of this land, its people, and an explorer forever moving forward.

But even humanity could not do everything.

Some unknown realms remained beyond its reach after hundreds of millions of years, impossible to explore even with magic.

One was the infinite expanse of space. The other lay deep beneath the sea, where light could not reach.

The deep sea.

Even adventurers who had discovered the five oceans and six continents and reached into the domain of outer space had never set foot there. It was still filled with countless speculations and secrets.

No—perhaps it was a secret that should never have been pried into.

Shhrrk.

Something enormous moved. Hundreds of deep-sea fish had mistaken it for part of the terrain and strayed close. They could not withstand the power within it and were torn in half.

Crunch.

The lightless depths swallowed their red blood.

Hssss.

A faint light spread beyond the darkness.

Each time the scales covering something enormous, several meters¹ in radius, shifted, the surrounding space alternately brightened and darkened.

At last, the center of the glow shone clearly.

It was no luminous organ like those found on some deep-sea fish. The power it held was beyond comparison.

It was an eye.

The eye of a creature so enormous that it was difficult to believe.

A monster everyone thought had vanished long ago had awakened after an unfathomable span of time.