“Right.”
Frondier acknowledged it without hesitation.
'Still, so Karon was a Paladin.'
Well, if he received Poseidon’s Divine Power, that figures.
Colin went on from there.
“I don’t know why, but Karon is egging this civil war on.”
“He’s egging it on?”
Frondier looked at Carla. From what he’d heard from her, Karon was the one mediating the infighting.
Carla, looking puzzled, turned her gaze to Colin.
Colin shrugged.
“Of course that’s how it looks on the surface. You know [N O V E L I G H T] how it is. The sister-in-law who ‘tries to stop it’ is the more detestable one. That’s exactly what Karon is doing.”
“......That’s pretty harsh language. He’s your customer for information trades.”
“Not anymore.”
Colin was very clear-cut about endings.
“Judging from what he’s done lately, it’s obvious. He claims to mediate while quietly backing one side. Just enough not to offend the gods. It’s more than enough to ignite two factions that are on edge.”
Given the capital’s situation, a mediator must not take either side. It looks like a beauty contest, but in truth it’s a battle of pride between two goddesses.
Yet Karon, without making strong appeals, subtly backs one side, then later lends strength to the other, amplifying the conflict.
“Whether that’s Karon’s will or Poseidon’s, I don’t know. But either way, separate from siding with you, I don’t want to keep dealing with a lunatic like that.”
Colin was certainly quick on the uptake.
But there were, of course, things he couldn’t possibly know.
Frondier said,
“The problem doesn’t end there.”
“......What do you mean?”
“Colin, it seems you want to side with me to stop Antero and also preserve your own life.”
Frondier stepped closer to the map.
He took a ballpoint pen from Antero and slashed two lines through the name Poseidon that Antero had written.
“This one’s fake.”
“......!”
“I’ll only know the true identity when I see him myself, but the odds are high the other two goddesses are fake, too.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I’ve met the real Poseidon.”
Colin lifted his head from the map and looked at Frondier.
“......Is that true?”
“I’d like to startle that calmly smug face at least once.”
“I’ve been startled nonstop since earlier. To a degree I can’t handle.”
It would be nice if he showed that on his face.
Anyway, setting emotions aside, changing the expression on this face of Colin’s seemed impossible for now.
“By the way, you believe it easily. I thought you’d doubt me.”
“It’s neither belief nor doubt. If you’re telling the truth, I’ve no reason to press you; if you’re lying, pressing you won’t make you tell the truth. Either way, I’ve nothing to say.”
An extremely efficient mindset. The probability of truth can’t be literally zero, after all.
“Good. As long as the story moves forward, that’s enough. In any case, Poseidon is fake, and I came to the capital to confirm what he is.”
“What meaning is there in confirming that?”
“The confirmation itself has no meaning. I’ve already got a rough idea. What matters is what comes after the confirmation.”
“What do you mean by after?”
“We judge that Poseidon’s identity is one of the 72 Demons. He’s pretending to be a god. If Poseidon or his associates learn this, we can’t avoid war.”
Colin listened quietly, blinking a few times.
It’s the kind of story ordinary people can hardly swallow. Colin worked to accept it.
“......You mean gods and demons might go to war.”
“Yeah. In the capital of the Kingdom of Palma.”
“Why would a demon do that? Flaunting arrogance before a god—sounds like suicide.”
“We don’t know the reason yet.”
That point still bothered Frondier.
Why would the 72 Demons pick a losing fight? This wasn’t about a single life; it was a path to the extinction of the entire race. Surely preserving the race wouldn’t be so low in their priorities.
“So if you want to help me, there’s only one way—you fully board my plan.”
At that, Colin’s eyes narrowed a little. It was the most meaningful change in expression since Frondier had arrived.
“Maybe I chose the wrong side. Perhaps I should just drop everything and leave the capital.”
“Ha. Not exactly wrong. If war really breaks out, that is the best option.”
“Are you confident you can stop the war?”
Stopping a war is harder than winning one—especially if you’re a third party unrelated to it.
Frondier tilted his head briefly, then said,
“To be honest, preventing war isn’t the true objective.”
“Pardon?”
“Eh?”
Colin was startled; Carla, listening quietly at his side, was even more startled.
Carla asked,
“You—you’re saying stopping the war isn’t the goal?”
“Right. Call it secondary. Or a bonus that comes with the real goal.”
Colin roughly gauged Frondier’s scale—stronger than the Paladin Karon. By strict reason and logic, it was absurd, but Colin trusted his eyes and his gut.
For Colin, rational thinking is only an assistant. Important choices are always settled by intuition. In that sense, too, Colin was crazy in his own way—enough to know it himself.
But he still didn’t know—
What kind of person Frondier was.
Colin asked,
“What’s the real objective?”
“Hmm, to borrow your words just now.”
Frondier lifted his head loosely, as if recalling something.
“The demons are acting arrogant toward me, too.”
***
Frondier received all sorts of information from Colin.
Where the humans bearing the powers of Hera and Aphrodite were located, how they had gathered their forces and clashed, and what movements Karon had shown in between.
As originally planned, the party decided to head to where Karon was. Karon’s base wasn’t in the capital. They had to drive quite a long way. According to Colin, he had moved house recently.
At that, Frondier said,
“He really sounds like someone who knows the capital is about to be wrecked.”
And Colin nodded.
“And if it’s only a ‘civil disturbance,’ you don’t change your address. Maybe you leave for a while. This was a move made with certainty that the capital will be razed.”
Suspicions about Karon only grew.
In the car, Frondier slowly went through all the documents. Of course, that “slowly” meant he was leisurely feeding their contents into the Craft; to others, he was reading at an unbelievable speed.
As he looked over the materials, Frondier spoke.
“......Selena, about this.”
“Miss Selena’s in the car behind us.”
“Ah, right.”
At Carla’s words, Frondier lifted his head as if realizing.
In this car were only Carla and Arald—and Pielot, still sitting on the car roof.
Despite the strong headwind Pielot must be taking, perhaps he liked Heukcheon’s surface; he was enjoying a drive on the roof.
“Is it something only Miss Selena should hear?”
“No, not like that.”
When Arald asked, Frondier scratched his head. Carla lobbed a slightly mischievous question.
“How about telling us? We may not be as capable as Miss Selena, but we might help.”
“It’s just a mistaken impression......”
With a sigh, Frondier began to explain.
“Hera and Aphrodite each granted Divine Power to women named ‘Bruna’ and ‘Lupina.’ And their respective supporters are the ones fighting.”
“Hm, hm, I see. Bruna and Lupina.”
“But those two fight too often.”
“Pardon?”
Carla tilted her head. Frondier said,
“From what Colin said, the conflict between the two factions is worse than I imagined. It feels like it could explode tomorrow. No matter what, if it’s escalated this far, then Bruna and Lupina—the owners of those factions—should also have a terrible relationship.”
“That makes sense. Hence the frequent fights.”
Arald nodded, eyes fixed ahead as he drove.
Then Frondier said,
“I’m asking you two—do you often fight with someone you truly despise?”
“Well, of course...... Huh?”
Arald, about to nod without thinking, stopped.
“......No, not really.”
“Right. If possible, you try not to run into them at all.”
Carla nodded as well.
Frondier said,
“Unless it’s a place like school or work where you have to see each other daily, you wouldn’t want to encounter someone you genuinely loathe. Humans usually prefer not to get hurt themselves rather than to hurt the other side. Of course, if you happen to run into them, you might fight fiercely—but you’d make it so you don’t meet in the first place.”
Of course, there are exceptions—maniacs like Renzo.
If Bruna and Lupina were as crazy as Renzo, that’d be another exception.
“But Bruna and Lupina still fight often, you’re saying.”
“Yeah. That’s what’s strange. To fight, you first have to meet, right? No matter what, would they really run into each other that often? When it’s obvious the situation will only get worse?”
From what Frondier had seen, the capital was very wide—and complicated on top of that.
At the south and north gates stood statues of Bruna and Lupina respectively. In other words, their territories were demarcated arbitrarily. Naturally, they wouldn’t want to trespass.
Frondier touched his fingertips to his lips and said,
“The way I see it, they’re not running into each other—they’re meeting each other.”
“Meeting? Then they’ll just end up fighting.”
At Carla’s words, a voice came from the car roof.
“They want to fight.”
“You were listening, Pielot.”
More than that—can you hear us from up there?
But Pielot’s simple answer had a clear meaning.
“I think the same as Pielot.”
“They want to fight...... So the goal is to intensify the conflict?”
“Yeah. Though they must be working hard to pretend they aren’t.”
According to Colin, Karon was stoking the fight. To Frondier’s eyes, looking over the documents, that seemed true as well.
And Karon was a demon—and Frondier suspected Hera and Aphrodite were also demons.
If so, wouldn’t all three of them actually want a civil war?
'They dressed it up as the goddesses’ pride match over who picks the human to bear their Divine Power, but what if the excuse is just to wreck the capital?'
But this assumption, going round and round, only magnified the final question.
Arald said,
“In that case, the demons of the capital are really, sincerely picking a fight with the gods with everything they’ve got.”
“......Exactly. And with impossible heavyweights like Poseidon, Hera, and Aphrodite.”
If it were just one demon impersonating Poseidon, you could chalk it up to one crazy demon.
But if three demons are colluding to pose as gods, and on top of that driving humans into civil war, that changes everything.
'I thought they were walking a tightrope to profit without being noticed by the gods. But this looks like getting noticed is the goal.'
As he pondered that, a strange thought made Frondier lift his head.
“Come to think of it, Pielot.”
“Yes?”
“How are you hearing the conversation in the car? You couldn’t on the way to the capital.”
When they’d seen the statues in the capital, Pielot had reported it to Frondier—meaning he hadn’t heard the car’s internal conversation, since they’d repeated what they’d already discussed.
Pielot said,
“It’s quiet outside. It makes me, I don’t know, more sensitive.”
At Pielot’s words, Frondier looked out the window.
It was quiet. It had been that way on the way to the capital, too, but this silence felt different.
“Is it because we’re heading to where Karon is? He’d pick as deserted a route as possible.”
“......No, this is—”
Frondier narrowed his eyes.
He had intuition; Elodie had exceptional mana-sense; Selena was trained to read signs as an assassin. And Pielot had just proved his superior hearing.
Because of that, Frondier had set aside the worry that the enemy would attack first. One of them would react in time.
But if there was something that pierced all of that—
“......!”
At the very moment Frondier felt a strange tension—
In the car behind.
Selena reacted clearly.
“Riri! The car—!”
Whoosh—
KWA-AAAAAANG!!!
Everyone inside the car was thrown left.
The vehicle took a long, curving turn under a massive impact. Bodies toppled under inertia.
“Nrgh!”
Riri spun the wheel fast—more reflex than judgment.
The shuddering frame barely stabilized.
What? What just happened?
Having sensed it first, Selena checked the rear faster.
'An explosion!'
The ground had blown a huge hole, billowing smoke.
