The downcast golden eyes narrowed.
'Glass bottle?'
What flashed through Leonardo's mind were the two prisoners who’d been snickering in the Council’s underground prison.
They had said the reason the horses pulling the iron bars in the grand plaza had been startled and reared was because a glass bottle had flown in from somewhere and shattered. One of them had called Leonardo Blaine’s escape “lucky.” Though he’d figured it wasn’t a coincidence, he hadn’t expected Tergio to have been hidden among the crowd.
Leonardo scratched the inside of his cheek with the tip of his tongue and casually asked:
"You were in the imperial capital then? You haven’t set foot there for years, saying you were laying low."
"I’m already a dead person, so what’s stopping me? Besides, I couldn’t just stay quiet when our prince was captured."
Tergio gracefully curved his lips where scars intersected. It was a discordant, yet strangely fitting smile. Judy, seeing him like that, cut in:
"Acting cool all by yourself. If it weren’t for me, you would’ve just slept here. I was the one who told Terju when I saw the newspaper about Leo’s arrest!"
"Ah, well, that’s true."
Judy, who said she had infiltrated the imperial capital to obtain poison herbs, claimed she had been the first to spot the newspaper published that morning. ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) She said she had kicked over the newspaper stand in front of a shop on the main street in anger, because everyone was making such a fuss as if it were a celebration. She explained that she had then contacted everyone gathered here via a communication magic tool to relay the situation immediately.
Leonardo, who had been listening, chuckled and asked back:
"You kicked over the newspaper stand? Didn’t people stare? You hate drawing attention."
"But I was so angry then..."
As if recalling that moment made her angry again, Judy twisted her small lips. Though Leonardo laughed as if it were ridiculous, he set his hand on the backrest of her chair, appreciating that she had gotten angry for his sake.
"Well done. Thank you."
Judy’s eyes widened at the sudden expression of gratitude. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, seemingly embarrassed.
Leonardo gave her a smile with his eyes, then turned his gaze idly to the empty cup on the table.
"It’s true that Judy contacted everyone, and Terju created an opening by throwing the glass bottle. Thanks to that, I was able to remove the handcuffs and shackles and get out of the iron bars."
He touched the smooth surface, then returned to the main point.
"...However, there were too many people there. Even if I might have succeeded in escaping if I’d attacked right after breaking out, it would’ve been a major disaster. You’re not asking me to become a real criminal, are you?"
Leonardo asked as if joking while shifting his gaze to Tergio. Still leaning forward and looking up at him, Tergio relaxed his mouth and made a strange expression.
Everyone here knew that he, who had taken more lives than anyone, didn’t enjoy meaningless slaughter. However, showing mercy even to the public who hurled curses at him was somewhat incomprehensible to Tergio, who had lived a life of always removing obstacles.
"Can’t become a wanted person. That’s really troublesome."
Tergio replied naturally, sprawling his upper body on the table and staring at Leonardo. Leonardo glanced at him, almost lying down, and said while tracing the groove on the tabletop with his fingertip:
"To begin with, it wasn’t a situation where I could attempt an escape with tens of thousands of people watching me. And you must’ve seen it too, right? I fought one-on-two against Council battalion-commander-level opponents."
Leonardo joked uncharacteristically, as if asking who else could have endured that much.
"In a mana control zone, anyone would get pushed back by pure strength against those two. With two nearly two-meter-tall guys attacking... first of all, the weight difference was huge. Plus, at the end, two more battalion commanders showed up as reinforcements and ambushed me."
He calmly stressed that it had clearly been a disadvantageous situation, adding a few memories from that time. Mirail, who had been quietly observing, added a word:
"Though you knew the situation was disadvantageous, you deliberately went out of the iron bars."
A moment of silence fell at her words. Mirail was the one to break it again.
"You were testing."
Leonardo fixed his gaze on her while touching around his lips. Then he slowly nodded.
"Half right. But I didn’t cause that commotion just to test. Quietly being dragged away didn’t suit my temperament either..."
He turned his head smoothly and leaned back against the chair. His eyes traced the lone strip of sunlight coming through the window into the dark interior.
His suddenly nostalgic golden eyes drifted over the scenery of that day, that moment.
"I wanted to see outside after a long time. The imperial capital I returned to after three years."
Leonardo recalled the moment when he had still been struggling inside the iron bars, glaring at the darkness-stained front and making a resolution.
'Even if I fail to escape, it's worth one chance to get outside.'
He still didn’t know whether that “one chance” had been worth it for achieving his goal, or for useless sentiment. But what was certain was that after saving the child, watching the familiar path where the mother and child disappeared into the distance, he thought he had made the right choice in going outside.
The four people seated around the table silently waited for Leonardo, who seemed lost in thought. The past few months must have been an unprecedented period of upheaval for him. He needed time to settle his mind.
After about one or two minutes of silence, he opened his right hand and formed a red sphere of condensed mana. This was the predecessor of the red beam he often used as attack magic. He had once gauged its firing speed while shooting down the clone of the 4th Battalion Commander he had confronted in the grand plaza with this.
Leonardo rolled his eyes, looking around at those seated around him.
"Now that I’ve explained the general situation, shall we get to the main point?"
The first to stand as soon as he finished speaking was Andrew. He drew the curtains over the window where light was coming in and turned on the dim indoor lights.
Mirail lifted the covering cloth hanging behind her and moved her seat to the side. On the wall revealed behind her were papers stuck all over like some kind of investigation board.
Tergio, who had raised his upper body, pushed the groove in the middle of the tabletop left and right, and between the opened wooden panels appeared a huge map, with circles marked on specific regions.
Judy, who had hurriedly run to the inner room, opened a cabinet and came out struggling under a thick stack of papers from inside. It took less than thirty seconds for all four people to gather back around the table.
When everyone seemed ready, Leonardo continued speaking while rolling the red sphere floating in the air with his fingertip.
"Two seconds. It took about two seconds to attempt a one-time attack in the middle of the grand plaza. In the imperial capital’s mana control zone 2, you can assume casting speed is about ten times slower than usual."
"As much as ten times?"
"Yeah. My average casting speed is 0.2 seconds. And the attack range also drops to about one-tenth. It means it’s half as weak as the scale we expected. In other words, we need to gather at least three times more etaide than now to be safe."
Leonardo raised his eyebrows and recited with a grin:
"Isn’t this quite high-grade information?"
There were multiple purposes mixed into his breaking out of the iron bars and causing a disturbance in the imperial capital. But the most fundamental reason was indeed that it was a golden opportunity: a chance to test how powerful attack magic and explosions were in the imperial capital, which had been called a sanctuary with absolutely no disturbances for several decades. Because he had the “justification” of resistance.
"Still, if it has that much impact in mana control zone 2, we can easily destroy gates in zone 1. When I confronted the Commander coming out of Frost territory, he deflected the fireball I threw toward the gate. When it collided with the mana stone barrier spread in the air, it left a scratch. Though the magic dissipated, I think the fact that it scratched the barrier itself is significant. It means the shock-absorption rate isn’t one hundred percent. A physical explosion would probably be more effective."
"Without this incident, this would have been information impossible to obtain from anywhere. Normally, one would be arrested immediately at the scene before even attacking the gate."
Andrew, who liked “information,” muttered with an interested face. Though it was annoying that he treated his suffering as mere information-gathering, Leonardo only furrowed his brows slightly and nodded.
"This incident was unbelievably lucky. Not only did I clear my charges and become a legal, free person, but I also gained internal Council information. If there’s one problem, it’s that etaide has been exposed to the Council—"
"Etaide was exposed? Did they discover what we were collecting?"
When Judy asked in alarm, Leonardo slowly waved his hand.
"No, not that far. But the existence of etaide has probably already been discussed within the Council. There was a period when I moved independently during the peninsula subjugation, and at that time I encountered someone carrying a large amount of etaide in a bag. That guy was one of the workers belonging to an illegal mining team, and later I heard the Council had arrested some of the mining team. The executives of the mining team embezzled the etaide and fled."
"Did those mining team people also enter the peninsula targeting etaide?"
"Though other minerals were piled up too, etaide was the main objective. And shall I tell you one amazing fact? Those guys who’d been sweeping up etaide from the black market until recently—I think they’re from the noble faction. Because the official overseeing the illegal mining team in the peninsula was the 3rd Battalion Commander of the Council’s Central Branch."
"Meterion Clinder?"
Judy and Tergio echoed at the same time, shocked. Mirail, who had maintained her composure, spoke in a rather grave voice:
"Then their purpose seems similar to ours. That’s why they swept up the etaide."
"The noble faction’s uprising... so it was true after all. Leo, good work."
Andrew leaned forward and covered Leonardo’s hand with his own, smiling. Leonardo gave him a look that clearly said move it, and added:
"Anyway, it’s better to temporarily stop securing additional etaide after this incident. A platoon leader from the 1st Battalion who accompanied me in the peninsula was injured in that explosion. Now that the Council must be aware of etaide’s explosive function, they’ll probably quietly track down dealers. We should also erase traces of our etaide purchases, just in case. In the worst case, we might have to give up securing more."
"Then do we have to find a new explosive material again? Hah... after how hard we worked to discover this one..."
Judy slumped in her chair as if she’d lost all strength. Leonardo patted the crown of her head, soothing her.
"Don’t feel too disappointed, since we’ve gathered quite a lot so far. The rest can be managed somehow by procuring explosives from military supply companies. We agreed to take it slow, remember?"
"About procuring those explosives, I think we should be careful with that for a while too. During the monthly report conducted within the Council while you were captured, the embezzlement of military supply procurement companies came up as a major agenda item."
At Mirail’s words, Leonardo raised one eyebrow and asked her:
"...How do you know that?"
"I had hidden a few butterflies near the Council meeting room while trying to track your movements. Though I could only hear the beginning part because the window closed midway... anyway, procuring explosives is dangerous right now too. Now that Kazad is back, all military supply company officials will soon be summoned for questioning."
"..."
"I wanted to grasp more, but after one battalion commander cut a butterfly in half, I’ve been careful since then."
"Battalion commander? Who?"
"The 2nd Battalion Commander of the Central Branch."
Loren Opience. Leonardo muttered the name silently. The impression of her—cold and rational, like the Commander—flashed through him.
They say they’re old friends, so that person must have sharp intuition too.
"Right. We’ll have to suspend explosive procurement for a while too. Then let’s focus on the noble faction’s planned uprising for now. It’s a good opportunity to gain information without us having to move. Confirm etaide’s power, understand the noble faction’s purpose. And piggyback along the way... how much time is left now?"
"Five days."
Tergio answered, propping his chin. His gaze, which had been fixed on the calendar marked with D-day, fell on a place circled on the map.
Among the information Andrew had been collecting for several months, there had been rumors mixed in by chance about the noble faction preparing an uprising. Though no one had paid much attention at the time, once Leonardo confirmed with his own eyes the hidden side of the illegal mining team and Meterion Clinder, that information became a tremendous turning point.
"Five days later, six PM... Mirail, contact Mikhail by that morning, and tell those who are out now to be at the location in advance. We can discuss the details when we gather on the day."
"Understood."
"Ah, and don’t send butterflies out for a few months. That battalion commander you mentioned—what I saw tells me her intuition is no joke."
"Nothing can be found out from just butterfly corpses. Don’t worry about that."
"I know. But what I’m worried about..."
Leonardo bit his lip and thought to himself:
'Being a 2nd Battalion Commander means she must be strong, but I don’t know what her ability is.'
After a brief pause, he lowered his eyes, then shook his head.
"No, anyway. The fact that butterflies act as our messengers for exchanging information might have been exposed. The 6th Battalion Commander of the Council can control inanimate objects, though in a different field from you. Since we should keep possibilities open on that side too, let’s be careful in various ways."
The three people aside from Leonardo and Mirail gave looks of agreement. Mirail also nodded, reluctantly.
