Arc 2 - Chapter 39: Answer Arc (3/3)

As the executioner cleaned up the blood on the floor, Yu could start asking his questions. He asked his first question.

"Did you plan the murder?"

"I just..."

When the executioner looked up from his work, Salery gasped and tears welled up in his eyes. Yu intervened when he was unable to speak because of the executioner and began to stammer.

"Go on."

"I... I swear I only did what I was told, I didn't plan the murder. Really! Really!"

When the executioner took another look to make sure the words were true, Salery began to sob as if he were a small child and not a forty-year-old man.

"Who told you what?"

"The House of Vermilia, they made the plan! I swear they did it! I was just trying to protect my own family!"

And what Yu had been waiting for had come, it was dragging on.

"What is this House Vermilia?" Yu asked. It was not Salery who answered his question, but the healer next to them.

"Vermilia is a family from the dri title. They were relatives of the king from the Huo branch in Mora. They fell out of favor when the kingdom passed from the Huo branch to the Zao branch. They are now on the side of the Zodianists who want to put a king from the Huo branch in power. The House of Bishory is the vassals of House of Vermilia."

In most countries in the center of the map of this world, separate suffixes were used to distinguish the nobility. Those at the top - kings, emperors and religious leaders - were given the title "el" to distinguish them.

Princes and princesses were addressed as 'zi,' royal relatives as 'dri,' and all other nobles outside the knightly families as 'von.'

The only exception was the Rolder family, which ruled Rolderhelm. Rolderhelm was referred to in the constitution as a principality and its ruler was called a prince or princess. The suffix 'el' was used for the princess and her husband, who now ruled the country.

"The whole family got together and planned how to kill one person? There must have been one person in charge."

"Cecilus dri Vermilia gave the order to my relatives who ruled the Bishory lands in the Mora, and if I had not obeyed, my family would have been exiled..."

Salery had already made a life for himself in Rolderhelm, but he still worried about the family he had left behind in Mora. Yu didn't want to let this soften him, so he kept talking without thinking too much about it.

"Who's him?"

"The duke's second child and heir."

When the healer saw that Yu was uninformed, he interjected again. He didn't have to do this, but he gave his information in good faith.

"The head of the family is very old and everyone expects him to die. The heir is Cecilus because he is a boy, but people don't want Cecilus to take over."

"Why?"

"There are unpleasant rumors about him... that he is mentally unstable, prone to violence... Many of Vermilia's loyalists want to make Cornelia, Cecilus' sister, duchess. Of course, I'm only telling you what I've heard. I've heard that Cornelia is a much better choice than Cecilus."

Yu wondered if Cornelia and the head of the family were also involved in the murder. Cecilus was said to be mentally unstable, had he planned the whole thing on his own?

"Isn't inheritance passed down from father to son?"

"Yes, that's how it normally works. It seems that in the future there will be a land dispute within the House of Vermilia. It's none of us Rolderhelm citizens' business, but I want what's best for the people."

"I see, thank you."

It was now certain that they would go to the Mora for this job. There he would meet the House of Vermilia and do what was necessary.

"When did Cecilus contact your relatives in the Mora?"

"It passed at the end of last January, and Rie came at the beginning of spring."

Salery's testimony matched what Yurine had told him earlier. Rie and Yurine had come to Rolderhelm in early spring.

"But why? Rie died at the end of August. Did they devise a six-month plan to kill her? Why didn't they kill her when she was in the Mora or in the last six months?"

"I don't know... I SWEAR I DON'T KNOW! I REALLY DON'T KNOW! I'M TELLING THE TRUTH!"

When the executioner waved the castration scissors in his hand to check his honesty, Salery started crying and screaming again. Yu signaled the executioner to stop with his hand.

"Why did Cecilus want to kill her?"

"I don't know, I just did what I was told, I did it so my family wouldn't be exiled, that's all I did!"

Salery was crying with fear. Yu could not blame him for crying because he had seen the torture, Salery had withstood it well.

"I'll tell you what I understand so far: Cecilus dri Vermilia contacted your relatives at the end of January and I assume they referred Rie to you? Did I understand this part correctly?"

"Yes," Salery nodded.

"And you didn't come up with the plan to kill Rie."

"Yes," Salery nodded again, his head shaking like it was going to fall off.

"Who gave you the plan?"

"Cecilus himself... We met him in the capital a week before Rie went to that tower, and that's when he told me his plan."

"Why did Rie go to that tower?"

"She believed the Quasar Blessing was kept there."

"What about the Quasar Blessing?"

"One of the Three Great Blessings, the others being Andromeda and Soe."

Although he and Yurine had a conversation about the Blessings, which was not detailed, he had not heard about them. New ones were added to the Blessings he knew.

"Why did Rie want to take it? Or let me put it this way, what was Rie's goal? Your family guided her here, but you probably didn't bring her here saying, 'Rolderhelm is very good, hang out there for a while.'"

Even the slightest scrap of information about why Rie had come would have quenched his thirst for knowledge.

"I want you to tell me everything from the beginning."

Salery immediately began to tell what he knew.

"When she came here I knew she was being manipulated by my family, but I didn't know about her plans. As far as I know, she wanted to protect herself or something like that. I don't know who she wanted to protect herself from, but she wanted to kill whoever was after her without getting hurt, that's what I understood from what she said. My relatives told her about this place and that I was its headmaster, so she came here to get more information and get stronger."

After explaining, he stopped and looked at Yu, who nodded for him to continue.

"When she came here, I told her about the little library, that there was a possibility that she could find information there on any subject she was curious about, but I added that she needed special permission to go in there, and that I couldn't give it to someone who just appeared out of nowhere, that she had to work her way up through the academy."

"Wait a minute... You were planning to let Rie go? Why didn't you let Maron go?"

Maron Martin was the second headmaster of the Wizarding Academy and even he couldn't get into the little library. He said he did all these things to get in there.

Salery was silent at first, but when the executioner shouted at him, he immediately squealed.

"I... I was jealous of his wife..."

Yu was just disgusted after those three words. He didn't want to hear it, he went back to his own topic.

"Keep telling me."

"She accepted and moved to the Wizarding Academy, even though she had a position as Cardinal of Virgo. Here I apprenticed my own nephew to her, not out of malice, but because she came through my relatives and I wanted to do her a favor."

"What kind of a favor it is to give your nephew..."

Yu wishes he had given Rie a pretty girl as an apprentice and not Sharley. Then this adventure would have been a little more beautiful.

"Of course, she could have had the same scars as Sharley, couldn't she? Maybe it was Sharley for the best."

He would rather see Sharley hurt than any ordinary human being. He didn't even like him the first time he saw him.

"At the end of the summer Cecilus came here with my brother. The two of them told me that Rie was looking for the Quasar Blessing and included me in their plan, saying that my family would be harmed if I didn't cooperate. I forged records that the Sigma Tower had the Blessing Rie was looking for and showed them to Rie. Then I found a map of Rolderhelm's sewer system, gave it to Rie and sent her to the tower. Everything that happened there was prepared in advance, the killers were there waiting for her."

They had literally gone to the Sigma Tower for nothing.

Yu clenched his fist and smashed it into Salery's face. This move surprised even the executioner, but no one made a sound.

"I'm sorry, I'm just angry that I put my life in danger for nothing."

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was more resentful than angry, so he took one more shot to take his anger out. His own hand hurt because he was not used to this kind of thing.

He still wanted to hit him, but he had to stop somewhere.

"But Rie said she took what she was looking for when she was in the tower. If the recordings were faked, what did Rie take?"

If that was the case, Rie didn't even know she had been tricked.

"Is there any particular reason why the hunter gorilla and those killers were chosen?"

"Hunter gorilla?" repeated Salery. "I don't know anything about that."

"What about those killers? They must have been chosen for a special reason, Rie knew them." He wondered how far this story would go, everything was connected somehow. "I don't understand. Sorrow managed to kill Rie, but even I was able to kill Sorrow. How come I succeeded and Rie didn't? Isn't she stronger than me?"

Salery was surprised, blinking his eyes as he looked Yu up and down, trying to understand how he had managed it.

"Hey, are you serious? You said you killed Sorrow?" It was the healer who asked the question. He grabbed Yu by the shoulder and turned him towards him. Yu was uncomfortable with such contact, but he didn't make a sound. "Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes. Rie killed Joy and Sorrow killed Rie and I killed Grief."

Healer's eyes widened and, like Salery, he looked Yu up and down.

"They have been the most popular killers in the underworld for the last fifteen years. Because they have the Gemini Blessing, they can lock the cores of people within a certain distance and prevent them from using magic. They also cause various effects on people, such as fatigue, headaches and confusion. As far we know, effects of their Blessing gets stronger as this distance decreases. At a distance of a few kilometers, the most obvious effect is fatigue, but when the distance is reduced to a few meters, people cannot use magic at all. It is said that they never fail."

"Uh... Yeah, they didn't technically fail at that either, but I understand..."

Yu used a simple logic. Sorrow and Joy had negative effects on others' bodies and prevented them from casting spells. This was why Rie and Yurine couldn't use magic and why Rie lost in close combat.

But their power was useless on Yu because Yu did not belong to this world. He was born in a different world and crossed over to this world. As such, his body, which was formed according to the standards of the other world, did not have the core that every living thing in this world has.

And because he didn't have a core, the Gemini Blessing that Sorrow and Joy had didn't work on him. Now that he thought about it, maybe if he had sword training he could have killed them both.

He was going to fall for it. He had disarmed Sorrow without a weapon and managed to kill him with his own weapon. But could he kill Joy?

"Then Sorrow and Joy were weak people by this world's standards."

He felt as if Joy was stronger than Sorrow. In any case, they would meet again when they turned back time. So he had to prepare.

"If that's true, you deserve a prize."

"Keep it," Yu said. He had learned what he wanted to know and headed for the dungeon door. "It's better to keep this quiet, I don't want my name out there, at least not about something like this."