The Great Bank City of Lithia

There used to be a large metropolitan city called the New Principality of Lithia.

With an enormous wyvern air force at her back, the independent nation established by Taren the Punished was annihilated in a single night as a result of their war with Aureatia. Officially, its ruin had come at the hands of a massive conflagration.

The sections that suffered damage in the conflict were still slowly being restored under Aureatia, but the wyvern soldiers' spires, now with no one to make use of them, were left behind as a peculiar part of the town's scenery.

Although the New Principality army Taren commanded was disbanded, she had still left a large impact, and to Aureatia, Lithia continued to be a dissident element they couldn't ignore.

"And that's why you were sent out here to monitor us; is that it, Kuuro?"

An ogre looked down over the city from a room in one of the spires. He was a former soldier of the New Principality who went by the name Zizma the Miasma.

The difference in build between him and Kuuro the Cautious, sitting down close to the door, was even more stark than between an adult and child.

"No, of course not. I don't plan on spending a long time here. I was just the best person to come talk to you—given our old friendship."

Zizma the Miasma had another career in his past. There was a time when he worked as an intelligence agent with the spy guild Obsidian Eyes, just like Kuuro.

"What I want to know is where the New Principality army wandered off to. I've heard after the great fire, a not-insignificant number of soldiers drifted over to the Old Kingdoms. I wanted to hear all the details."

"Pfft, ha-ha." The ogre scoffed.

"The clairvoyant Kuuro, coming out and asking for info? Almost like a detective. Nothing like how we used to…how Obsidian Eyes used to do

things."

"I am a detective," Kuuro replied, irritated.

With his former talents, he could've known everything there was to know while sitting in the spire. Now things were different. He had to ask for information directly.

"Those Aureatia guys, well…they think someone's vouching for those guys. There were some in the New Principality from the beginning who had ties with the Old Kingdoms' side of things, so goods and soldiers were flowing between the two."

"There're some real idiots out there. Even if they're both against Aureatia, the Old Kingdoms are rigid in their dedication to the royal monarchy, and the New Principality was all about anti-minian rhetoric—basically the exact opposites of each other… Though some of them still went over there, huh? A bunch of ideologically inconsistent fools that don't give a damn as long as they get to war against the Aureatia they hate so much."

"…There isn't anyone out there that can wage war with logic. Anyone would try to take back something stolen from them. There's gotta be some of them that think they deserve some sort of reward for New Principality's sacrifice."

"What about us? We put our lives on the line to fight, and were we ever rewarded with anything?"

"..."

"Lana the Moon Tempest died. She was in a miserable rotting heap on the outskirts of the city. I buried her, but I later heard that she had been an Aureatia collaborator. What was Obsidian Eyes, anyway? What happened to all those ideals we touted? Were we just simpletons? Useless without war? Killing for the sake of killing?"

During the age of the True Demon King, as the largest spy guild, they were roped into wars in every region, continuously fighting without any regard for the powers they were affiliated with. This wasn't only the case for the ogre, Zizma. Both Lana and Kuuro were people unable to live in the bright open world. They were soldiers of the shadows who thrived during times of war.

Equality among all classes of people, regardless of appearance or race. They believed that during war, where all life is stolen equality, they instead might be able to make this ideal a reality.

"For the monstrous races, eating people is a way of life. There's nothing I can do about that. The minian races expelled the goblins from this world, and now they're trying to do the same to us ogres. I…at the very least, I fought for a world where I could live a proper life. Guess that was a meaningless fight in the end."

"…We lost. You lost, and I lost, too. In every fight, there is a winner and loser. If you're thinking of taking it all out on me, you picked the wrong guy."

"You hate fighting, then, Kuuro?"

Zizma pulled out his weapon. A deeply curved, sickle-like blade.

"I thought that you and Lana were both comrades. But in the end, you people are still minian races in the end. You're exactly right. The New Principality lost, and you people won. Whether the Old Kingdoms wins or Aureatia wins, it's all the same to me now."

"…I'm sick and tired of this."

Kuuro lowered his eyes. He had determined the intelligence agent who had connections to the Old Kingdoms' loyalist. Nevertheless, putting down Zizma here wasn't going to solve a damn thing.

"Too late for that now. The weight of the lives you stole is enough to drag you to the pits of hell."

Zizma's slash didn't come. Kuuro clicked his heels. Though the color in the air didn't change, he sensed that the transmission of sound had sped up, ever so slightly. This was because the composition of gases in the air had changed.

"…Poison, then? You've changed up the mixture from what you used before."

"You're slow on the uptake, Kuuro."

Zizma himself was also engulfed in the gaseous poison. Even if he exposed himself to the same gas, the effective doses of poison for an ogre and a leprechaun were vastly different. With his opponent first to have the poison flowing through his veins, he then relied on his ogreish vitality to force them into a fight and kill them—such was Zizma's modus operandi.

"That clairvoyance talent of yours faded away, huh?"

The sickle blade glinted. The ogre, with his long arms and legs, was in range to kill Kuuro instantly. Now, engulfed in poison, he was blocked off from the basic breathing necessary to move to the counterattack.

Zizma stepped forward. Kuuro could see everything. "Say that again."

A bolt pierced Zizma's eyeball. It happened in an instant.

Kuuro's hand was already finished with its follow-through. "One more time, go ahead."

"…Hngh, augh…"

"My clairvoyance has what now?"

Even when confronting a hardened master of combat face-to-face, he could deliver a surprise attack. Perceiving every single iota of the opponent's behavior, he recognized the exact moment when the ogre would be unable to react. This was clairvoyance.

"Hrng… Keh-heh-heh… Don't be so mad. That was just a joke, Kuuro."

Zizma chuckled in self-deprecation, his eye having been fatally pierced through.

With his back against the wall, he slid down to sit on the floor. "…Winning against you…? I w-would've never even dreamed of it…" "…What are the Old Kingdoms planning?"

He couldn't step inside the room filled with poison gas. Kuuro kept his crossbow trained on Zizma as he questioned him.

"I've intercepted communications from the frontier. Am I the only one worried about this? I've got a bad feeling… A feeling that all our efforts will amount to nothing."

"I couldn't tell you one way or another. They don't tell me anything…" The ogre murmured vacantly. The age had come where even former

Obsidian Eyes comrades fought against one another. "No one trusts any of us monstrous races." "..."

Zizma's labored breaths and weakened heartbeats both came to a stop. All five of Kuuro's senses perceived the truth of his passing.

There was nothing else for them to discuss. From the very beginning, this was how things were fated to end.

Clenching his jaw, he turned away from Zizma.

I'm fed up.

He longed for a life in which his hands weren't constantly stained with blood.

…Who am I to even say that?

More than anything else, he was scared. If people knew he truly had lost his clairvoyance, death would find him soon enough. His usefulness to Aureatia…and his ability to survive on the battlefield were both owed to his clairvoyance.

He could only live through killing and inciting fear. With his clairvoyance, he should have had a whole host of possibilities before him, but this was the only way he ever used it.

Zizma, who had killed in order to eat minians, was a considerably finer person than he.

"Kuuro!"

Exiting the spire, Cuneigh fluttered up and dived inside Kuuro's coat.

It had been necessary to have her keep watch over the entrance. While he was engaged with a master hand from Obsidian Eyes, in his current state, he couldn't keep his focus on constant lookout for other intruders.

People hired with money would eventually turn the knife on you. Even longtime comrades wound up killing each other sooner or later.

Silly little Cuneigh was the only companion he could trust.

"No one came by at all! Hey. You got to talk with your old friend, right?" "Yeah. He was one of those friends I never quite saw eye-to-eye with,

though."

He could feel the quick pulse in Cuneigh's hands—a reminder of her fragile lifespan.

If Kuuro was in her position, he would probably be terrified of being squeezed to a pulp within her grasp. She should've feared that she would one day outlive her usefulness and end up betrayed.

"I need to reward you for being a good lookout. What would you like?" "Hmm, I want to eat hawthorn berries. Is that okay?"

"Is that really all you want?"

Kuuro chuckled dryly. If it kept her from betraying him, he wouldn't begrudge her asking for jewels or paintings, and yet she only ever requested the simplest rewards.

He was a man capable of killing his former comrades. Kuuro's true nature was one of brutality and mercilessness, but perhaps Cuneigh's childishness was what allowed her to keep placing her trust in someone like him.

"I envy you…" "Hm?"

"Never mind. It's not important."

There were eleven days left until the disaster's arrival.