Episode 13
“My, so you really were unharmed? I told you we should just throw a bomb at the carriage.”
A youthful voice leaked out through the acrid, swirling dust.
“What’s the point of killing horses instead of humans? Poor things.”
The girl who uttered those ungodly statements in a cute voice possessed neat, shoulder-length pink hair that reached down to her chin.
Mismatching her unnaturally bright face, several sharply honed weapons about the size of a finger were gripped between her fingers.
“Still, it’s better to make our objective precise, isn’t it?”
The man beside her spoke, trailing along unkempt long hair. His hollow eyes and sunken cheeks were somehow sinister.
“Who are you people?!”
Aidan drew his sword. If I had known this would happen, we should have brought escort knights along too!
Chew, chew.
However, without even batting an eye, the girl blew a bubble with the gum in her mouth, popped it, and smiled.
“Answer me! Why did you attack us?”
“Hm, so you don’t know about us, then?”
Still chewing her gum, the woman answered.
“You’re going to die anyway, so shall I give you our names, at least? I’m Mavis. One of the great Aclo.”
The girl who introduced herself as Mavis pulled out weapons with her left hand as well, smiling faintly.
“Since you were prying around the Eastern Central Neodymium and now even the South, I wondered if you knew our plan and were interfering in advance.”
“Plan?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that why you hid all the Hedrons’ nuclei?”
The man pulled a bomb out from beneath his long cloak and asked.
“Did you think no one would know you took them in advance because you found out we were gathering the Hedrons’ nuclei to open a gate?”
“…Gather the nuclei to open a gate?”
I mindlessly repeated the man’s words.
Are you saying that gathering the nuclei can open a gate?
“You idiot.”
Mavis stomped on the man’s foot and spoke.
“What were you planning to do, blabbering all that out so carelessly?”
“Ah, is that so?”
He seemed a bit dumber than expected. Stealing a glance at Aidan, he too was looking at them as if utterly dumbfounded.
“Anyway! This is why I said I wasn’t going to come with you, Malakai. What were you planning to do, blabbering all that out if those guys didn’t know anything?”
The man named Malakai stopped reading the room and lit a fire on the bomb.
“If we just kill them, it’s destruction of evidence anyway, isn’t it?”
At the sinister atmosphere, Aidan held his sword properly and aimed it at the bastards. Destruction of evidence—are they really going to throw a bomb at us just like this?
I thought it was quite an ignorant statement, but Mavis nodded her head as if it couldn’t be helped.
“Our Aclo will take the Hedrons nuclei to uphold the great God’s will!”
And then she threw her weapons. With a sharp sound of hidden weapons, my and Aidan’s hems were pinned to the carriage wall.
“Well then, farewell.”
The flame attached to the bomb he threw drew a parabola, approaching toward us.
“Ah!”
The moment I thought it was all over because we couldn’t escape, Aidan’s sword sliced through the air, severing the hems of our clothes pinned to the carriage wall in a single stroke.
Then, pulling my waist into an embrace, Aidan hit the flying bomb away with the flat side of his sword at the same time.
“Wh-What?”
The bomb returned precisely to the spot where Aclo was standing.
BOOM—!
Along with the sound of a massive explosion, flames shot up. Crouched down while holding my head in an embrace, Aidan slowly raised his upper body.
“Where did those bastards go?”
“Did we… miss them?”
“It seems so.”
The sound of clicking tongue was heard. I had no words to say in a situation like this.
“U-Um, by the way.”
“What.”
“C-Could you let go of me now?”
Only then did he seem to realize that he was currently holding me in his arms, and he hurriedly backed away.
Thanks to him, I wasn’t injured, but taken by surprise, my heart thudded wildly.
What was that just now? I thought we might cross paths with Aclo someday, but I didn’t expect them to come looking for us this quickly.
And…
I didn’t happen to smell from the crown of my head, right? I brought the end of my tied hair to my nose for no reason and subtly sniffed it.
It seemed okay so far, I think.
“Do you think I did that because I wanted to? Putting on a stern face after I saved your life.”
“It wasn’t to the point of a stern face.”
Dusting off the dirt on his clothes, Aidan looked truly unfazed.
Right, it’s not like you could call this a hug, right? Because he just saved me.
“You heard what those Aclo kids said earlier, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It seems my dad taking the cores really was in order to open a gate, after all.”
I looked toward the spot where the Aclo members had been standing just moments ago.
They thought we had taken the cores.
“Since Aclo is also looking for the cores, we need to hurry.”
Just as Aidan said, if they were targeting the cores, we needed to find them first in many ways. Because if Aclo opened a gate, the end of the world might come upon us.
Because the carriage was destroyed, Aidan and I arrived at the villa on foot. Seeing our appearance covered in dirt and dust, the faithful maids of the Winslow family screamed and immediately prepared a bath.
“Ha, this is nice.”
Warm water truly is the best.
To soak my body in a bathtub like this—it was the ultimate luxury.
Because houses with bathtubs were expensive, when I was little, Dad had made a large wooden tub for me instead.
“The scent is nice, too.”
I saw the maid who helped with my bath earlier put bath additives into the tub—this must be top-grade, right? As I poured water over my arm, my skin glistened in an instant.
“Aidan, there was a reason your skin was so good.”
When he held me earlier—no, correction: when he saved me, Aidan’s skin, seen from up close, was really good. How envious I was of his porcelain-like skin, fair and without a single blemish.
I stroked my face for no reason. Should I start taking care of my skin from now on, too?
While indulging in useless thoughts, I dipped my body deep into the hot water.
Although I had deduced that cores were needed to open a gate, I didn’t know the method.
Aclo knew that method.
‘Simply gathering the five cores won’t open a gate.’
If that were the case, a gate would have opened before the Gate Research Institute processed the Hedrons’ nuclei.
“What could the method be?”
Since the Hedron’s nucleus itself was an object not well known to the public, there probably weren’t many research results on it, either.
“How did Dad know that method?”
Was it a method simple enough for Dad to know? Or could Dad actually be… Aclo?
“No, Dad loathed gates.”
In the first place, becoming an Aclo member with Dad’s status would have been difficult.
“Did he raid Aclo?”
Could there be some clue at their hideout?
Since the only thing remaining among Dad’s belongings was his diary, I don’t even know where he obtained the clue.
“The diary…”
Come to think of it, while all the items Dad used had vanished, the diary remained. The diary in which Dad, unlike himself, used his brain to leave clues behind.
Could it be that in that diary, there was something more he wanted to say to me?
Bubble, bubble—
The breath I was holding burst out, creating water bubbles. Once my thoughts reached that point, I knew this was no time to be leisurely enjoying a bath.
Splash—
Water, still steaming hot, poured out along with me as I stepped outside. Though wasting the water was a pity, my curiosity had to be dug into immediately for me to feel satisfied, so after roughly wiping the water off my body, I pulled out the diary right away.
What could be the clue?
A clue related to the cores…
“Mixing the names that appeared this way and that doesn’t reveal much.”
Looking at Dad’s dispatch areas that I had organized after looking at the mercenary group’s work logs…
“Hmm, there’s not much here either.”
Combining the alphabets this way and that yielded nothing special.
“If it’s to the extent that my dad knew, it shouldn’t have been a difficult method.”
Dad wasn’t much of a brainiac, was he? He’s a simple person. It should be a principle similar to the code in the names.
However, combining words this way and that didn’t allow me to find a fitting content. Should I gather all the cores first and then think?
Once I gather them all, there might be some clue hidden in the cores themselves.
If I just find the cores, I can perform various experiments.
The problem is that I have no idea where the cores are.
“Ughhh. My brain isn’t working.”
As a rule, late-night studying required sugar or caffeine. However, since I couldn’t recklessly raid someone else’s kitchen, should I call it a day and go to sleep?
Lying on a bed as large as my room, I looked at the ceiling. Even the wallpaper pattern here is luxurious. My room has old and tacky wallpaper, though.
“Since I used what the original owner used as it was…”
As it was. What was originally there…
“Wait!”
I sat up abruptly.
Why didn’t I think of that?
