Chapter 84
Having been tempered by fighting monsters all this time, a mere black magician felt laughable.
Besides, the black magician didn’t know that we had already identified his appearance.
After all, even though Karon had collided with him earlier, he’d acted far too calmly afterward—as if harboring no grudge at all—so the black magician would naturally assume Karon still hadn’t recovered his memories.
So that means we have the upper hand.
This search was being conducted in pairs, and naturally, the one moving together with me was Karon. I was the only one who knew about his current condition.
Aquilla will find out eventually anyway.
If I didn’t inform him quickly when something like this happened, Aquilla would definitely feel hurt. Hmm.
Even so, searching the village with Karon didn’t make it easy to find the man.
We couldn’t let the villagers know that we already recognized his face, so we couldn’t go around asking things like, “Have you seen a man with brown hair and freckles?”
“Karon, can you think of anywhere that black magician might go? Anything at all?”
“Hmm…”
Karon frowned as he sifted through his memories.
“He’s come to this village a few times before. Usually, that man never stayed in one place—he wandered around.”
“What did he do when he came here?”
“He ran scams.”
“Ah…”
A con artist through and through, both then and now.
“He’d claim he could heal the sick, or say that if you invested in him you’d make a fortune later, or that gold would come out if you dug up a certain plot of land. Things like that.”
“Wait a second…”
A thought flashed through my mind.
“Then let’s check the places where he’d most likely be pulling scams, just like you said.”
“In that case…”
“Let’s start with the clinic.”
If we catch him, he’s dead, that black magic bastard.
* * *
The village had a small medical clinic run by a single physician.
Instead of entering right away, we peeked inside through the window.
“Well? See anything?”
“I don’t see anyth—oh?”
Using his height to look through the high window, Karon suddenly stepped back.
“He’s coming out right now!”
“What?”
Figures. If there was anywhere he could scam people, he’d be there.
But once I heard the black magician was coming out, my mind went completely blank about what to do next. Because…
Should I go for the solar plexus first? Or the neck? Hitting him first would have more impact than swearing at him, right?
There were way too many places I wanted to hit!
At that moment, I finally saw the black magician’s profile as he stepped out of the clinic.
“Grab him first!”
I shouted at Karon, and the black magician, hearing my voice, noticed us too.
“W-What is this?!”
He panicked and tried to run, but there was no way an ordinary imperial citizen could escape from an Archon.
Bang—!
Karon grabbed the man’s arm from behind and slammed him to the ground, successfully restraining him.
“Ghk…!”
Even as the man thrashed violently, Karon didn’t loosen his grip. He had him completely subdued.
…Yes. Truly, only subdued.
“Karon, aren’t you pissed?”
“Pardon?”
“I thought you’d punch him at least once, but you didn’t.”
“You told me to restrain him.”
“…Ah.”
Seeing how excessively obedient Karon was made my chest ache all over again.
Zayden, Sanchez, Patty, and Matty… thinking of those troublemakers from every possible direction, then looking back at Karon standing in front of me, my affection for him shot straight up. Seriously, having a good junior is the best.
Just as I was basking in that emotion, the black magician—who had only been struggling—suddenly jerked his head up.
“Everything shall return to the world of nothingness!”
Beyond his gaping mouth, I saw a black tongue that I hadn’t noticed until now.
Looking closely, that black tongue bore markings like a magic circle!
The moment he chanted the spell, before I could even react, black smoke burst from his tongue and slammed straight into me.
“…Mm.”
I waited for something to happen.
But nothing happened at all…
“…What? Didn’t you just use black magic?”
The one more flustered than me was clearly the black magician himself.
“What?! That was my trump card I’ve been saving for years! You’re supposed to lose your sense of self completely and become a mindless idiot!”
Ah.
Right. The self.
I already lost that once, a long time ago…
When I crossed over into this world, I lost everything about my past self—my name included—bringing my previous world’s identity to a complete end.
That was probably why his black magic didn’t work on me. There was no “self” left to lose.
Of course, I consider myself Salubia now—but strictly speaking, I only became me starting from seventeen-year-old Salubia. Everything before that wasn’t really me… Anyway, it’s complicated.
The black magic failed, and when I rose to my feet with blazing eyes, the black magician looked at me with nothing but pitiful desperation.
Seeing how I couldn’t be resisted at all, he probably assumed no other black magic would work on me either. Maybe he thought I had some kind of resistance to it?
Honestly, if he wanted to misunderstand things on his own and behave himself, that worked out just fine for me.
“Clench your teeth.”
I raised my fist high, ready to strike—
“E-Excuse me! If I help you escape the contract magic, would you help me instead~?”
“…What?”
Wait. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“There’s a way to escape the contract magic?!”
“Yes~! Judging by the situation, you seem to be the Border Defense Force searching for me, and it looks like my identity has been exposed~. Actually, contract magic is a very complex process~. Because there’s a quota that has to be assigned every year, the magic still activates even as the bloodline gets diluted, you see~? Half-breeds, quarter-breeds—now even octa-breeds are filling the Border Defense Force, and as that happens, the power of contract magic weakens. If you utilize that gap properly~.”
“…First, take a breath and talk slowly.”
Desperate to survive by any means, he rattled on like a machine gun, and I couldn’t even understand half of what he was saying.
“Yes, our client here probably already has plenty of information~, but the blood of non-human races is being diluted more and more, right?”
“That’s true.”
Finding a pure-blooded non-human was practically impossible now. Even those called “non-humans” in the Border Defense Force surely had some imperial blood mixed in.
“If only pure-blooded non-humans were conscripted, the Border Defense Force wouldn’t be able to meet its quota of soldiers, right?”
“Right.”
“Since contract magic is structured to awaken a specific number of non-humans every year, people with even more imperial blood mixed in are being dragged into the Border Defense Force now~. So we just need to utilize that gap~.”
The black magician spoke kindly, like some sort of consultant. Even though what he was saying seriously pissed me off.
“What the hell, bastard. If what you’re saying is true, doesn’t that mean the imperial family has basically decided to wipe out the Archons? This isn’t about reducing monsters anymore—it’s about reducing Archons.”
“Well, that is one of the imperial family’s objectives, I suppose~?”
“Enough with the bullshit. So how exactly are we supposed to escape the contract magic?”
“Yes~, I have my own special mechanism~. First of all, unlike other black magicians, I use a triple-rotation mana technique~. For example, the memory magic and curses I use are applications of this triple-rotation method~.”
Only then did I realize that he hadn’t explained anything about escaping the contract magic at all—he’d just been repeating useless nonsense.
That unnecessarily long speech.
Those pointless “technical-sounding” terms scattered everywhere.
…Aha. He’s just scamming me.
I almost forgot that he’d just finished pulling a scam in the neighboring village.
Breaking contract magic, my ass. If a black magician capable of that actually existed, Sanchez would never have been dragged into the Border Defense Force in the first place.
So I just smiled sweetly.
“Hey, bastard. Shut your mouth.”
“Pardon~? Client, what did you say~?”
Thud—!
Yeah. The solar plexus definitely had better impact than the neck.
“Karon, you said you had a grudge, right? Want to hit him yourself?”
“Hmm, I actually enjoy watching you hit him more, Lady Salubia!”
“…Fine. Then I’ll hit him for your share too.”
Violence and fear would always save us all.
* * *
There had always been something empty in Karon’s life.
After passing through foster parents who gave him orders but no affection—
“You’re a non-human, huh? Hmm, if you were pure-blooded, your parents would’ve made a fuss… Say, are your parents still alive?”
—the day he happened to meet the black magician who had come to the village.
“Then want to come with me? You’ll be able to make plenty of money.”
Karon suspected that the black magician might try to use him.
But since he felt no attachment whatsoever to his foster parents, he decided it might be better to leave for someplace new. Maybe there, he could fill whatever emptiness he had inside.
Yet even while being used by the black magician afterward, Karon’s life remained just as hollow.
Other non-humans who were exploited alongside him sometimes tried to escape—but Karon genuinely didn’t think about it at all.
As he spent time there, Karon’s naturally antisocial personality gradually became more unethical, but he didn’t care.
He occasionally felt a sense of emptiness, but he didn’t even know what was missing.
And so, no matter how he changed, no matter where his life drifted, he simply lived as he was.
Then one day, while being used by the black magician, Karon accidentally saw a document containing classified information.
It talked about contract magic for non-humans and the like—honestly, Karon didn’t really understand it.
But judging by how important it was, the black magician decided that Karon’s memory of that classified document had to be erased.
