Ch.206The Sixth Entanglement – Bebop with the Sun God (4)

Famine, now transformed into greed, came knocking belatedly at the door. Perhaps he hadn’t changed at all, since everyone had become so consumed by greed that they could never be satisfied with anything.

“Agent Desmond! I’ve found a driver! Agent Desmond?”

Famine could easily sense that Death was not inside. Professor Albert opened the door instead of Agent Desmond, and in walked an ogre with a body like a balloon—severely overweight yet somehow hollow inside.

The driver behind him was barely visible. War, who had been sleeping with his hat over his face, awoke at the ogre’s heavy yet weightless footsteps and looked at him.

War had been fast asleep even while Death and Conquest were present, but now he began speaking as if he knew everything. The detective felt uncomfortable.

“The old man went out with Connor. You brought a driver, so why are you blocking the doorway with that bloated body of yours? Why don’t you move that carcass aside?”

Only then did Famine step aside. Ogres were naturally prone to gaining weight, but it was rare to see one that was such a mass of fat. They were typically a race that gained muscle as readily as fat.

After that enormous body moved out of the way, the driver behind him entered the hospital room with an expression of someone looking for a windfall opportunity. Unlike the professor, he seemed like a simple man.

Being a “simple man” was more of a compliment than an insult. The detective himself was just as simple. If the pay was sufficient, he took the job. Once he took a job, he solved it. That was all.

Like the detective, he wasn’t here to settle past accounts, nor was he driven by theological passion like the professor—which made him perhaps the most trustworthy of them all.

The driver was a man somewhere between the detective in his twenties and the professor who appeared to be over sixty. He was around forty. Though he had tried to look neat, his suit with patched elbows was not particularly new.

There was nothing remarkable about his face either. Had the God-President really chosen just any responsible driver who could take them to their destination? The detective looked him up and down.

He appeared to have no obvious flaws. He didn’t look like someone who could harm others. To be more honest, he seemed like the type who would ask if his job was done once the driving was complete.

In other words, he was perfectly trustworthy as a driver. Expecting anything more from a driver would be unreasonable.

Professor Albert had similar thoughts. He seemed like an ordinary driver with no distinctive features, which made him completely reliable.

Standing at attention under the gaze of the two men, the driver, thinking he had passed some unspoken test, spoke in an energetic voice. He extended his hand to the professor first, as if offering a handshake.

“That was a suffocating interview. I’m Willis Greenlow, in charge of driving for the Sol Invictus hunt. I’m guessing the young fellow is the hunter, and you’re the expert, sir? It’s fine if that’s not the case. I’m open-minded—I could accept a young professor and an old hunter just as easily!”

He was an energetic person. Professor Albert introduced himself first. It was better to have at least one talkative person in the group.

“Unfortunately, your prejudice is correct. I’m Professor Albert Piper. I’m the expert. This fellow is the hunter. Can’t you tell just by looking? He could beat both of us with his hands tied.”

Willis, who had been promised a fee with at least four zeros, continued in his cheerful voice. He knew how to act tough, but he also knew when such an act was necessary.

“He could probably beat me with his legs tied too! I should call you Professor Albert…”

The detective decided to maintain a proper level of courtesy. He had become more careful since Professor Albert had caught him being cynical about the God-President.

“I’m Michael Husband. As you’ve heard, I’m in charge of hunting… and when I fight Sol Invictus, I won’t tie my hands or feet.”

He curled up one corner of his mouth in a smile at Willis, whom he had thought to be taciturn, for specifically addressing his joke.

“I was worried it would be dreary with just three men, but I’m glad you both seem more reasonable than I expected. You know how it is—when three people get together, two of them set the mood. If both of you had been the taciturn type, no matter how much I talked, the atmosphere wouldn’t have lightened up at all!”

The detective quite liked this driver. He was the type who would clear away any uncomfortable silence when you took a taxi to a bar, even if you just stared out the window.

However, he was rather blindly focused on compensation. Whatever amount he had been promised, it was problematic that he acted as if hunting an unworshipped god was obviously going to be successful.

Professor Albert was the type to keep his mouth shut rather than say something unpleasant. The detective, on the other hand, was as accustomed to making such remarks as he was to being polite.

“Do you think we’re going on a picnic, Mr. Willis? We’re going to catch a god. A war god, at that. I don’t know how much you’ve been promised, but I’d appreciate it if you could be a bit more solemn.”

Willis seemed to shrink a little at those words. Nevertheless, he also appeared somewhat wronged, and ultimately tried to explain why he had to act the way he did.

“That’s… my mistake, I admit. But don’t you all have promised compensation? Given what was said about the compensation being similar for everyone, you must have been promised quite a lot…”

Had they explained the compensation differently to each of them? This seemed unusually sloppy for how the Sacred Protection Bureau handled things. If they had actually set different compensation amounts from the beginning, they would have instructed everyone not to disclose it.

Otherwise, it would inevitably be exposed the moment all three of them got together. To deal with Sol Invictus, they needed to understand what the God-President and the Sacred Protection Bureau were thinking.

“How much were you promised to act like this? I was promised an opportunity to make a direct request to the higher-ups of the Sacred Protection Bureau after the job is done.”

Willis also looked somewhat dubious. Employers who assigned parts of the same job to different people and paid them separately were generally untrustworthy.

If that was the case, the employees needed to rebuild trust among themselves. Though he wasn’t a communist, he knew that dialogue among employees usually produced good results.

“Ah, well, I… Hmm, I’ll be honest with you. I was promised fifteen thousand dollars one-way. And if it’s fifteen thousand one-way, that’s thirty thousand round-trip, isn’t it? That’s enough money to buy a fancy three-story building somewhere. Ah, Professor Albert, perhaps you…”

So Willis was truly hired for money. The fact that the detective’s compensation hadn’t been determined yet was somewhat concerning. Albert himself had also been promised compensation—something sweet for a researcher.

“I was given the opportunity to meet the God-President in person. While one can study unworshipped gods, it’s not common for the God-President to directly assist with research. If I can provide investigative consultation and receive such compensation, I think it’s well worth doing.”

So these two were here with definite compensation promised? The detective also had something specific to demand, so the situation wasn’t that different. Was it simply a courtesy to hide his past? Or…

Or there was no next thought. It would be ridiculous to think that the Sacred Protection Bureau would discard any of them in the name of the God-President.

If they were going to use and discard someone, they wouldn’t have brought a New York University professor in the first place. Hundreds of people would know his name, and dozens would question his death.

Besides, the Sacred Protection Bureau wasn’t an organization that could do whatever it wanted. Their every move—literally every move—was under the eye of the God-President.

At the very least, while that god might not save people, he wasn’t one who killed them. So it was better to put aside suspicions about the employer for now. Compensation would come after the job was done.

The detective dampened the growing suspicions of the other two. He was always a man with the necessary words.

“Unless it’s a daily rate, it’s normal to negotiate after the job is done. It seems the higher-ups at the Sacred Protection Bureau know my working methods and how I receive compensation.”

With that, the two seemed somewhat reassured. It was the kind of statement that would work well with devout believers in the God-President, so both must be quite devout.

For him, devout people were good in that they were predictable. It would be better to say they were easy to use rather than genuinely likable.

They were simple to deceive and simple in their trust. Sol Invictus mocked them. The God-President had made people too soft. He had turned devotion into the temperament of slaves!

They could do nothing but recite the God-President’s scriptures. Despite preaching that struggle for life was right, he had created people who didn’t know how to struggle.

They were all things that needed to be completely uprooted. Nevertheless, Sol Invictus kindly waved to the devout woman who had sat in front of him before getting off at Lancaster Station.

It was indeed a less trustworthy city than New York, but at least it was close to Sol Invictus’s destination. It wasn’t a bad place to stop by before heading to answer the letter from Centralia.

After leaving the station, Sol Invictus instinctively headed toward a strangely large gathering of people he spotted. He almost jumped into the middle of the crowd, nearly demanding words of praise.

He was barely able to restrain his desire. He just needed to get to Centralia. Once there, he would meet someone who would gladly worship him.

Then, a woman in the middle of the crowd made eye contact with Sol Invictus. She looked human but was slightly startled to see Sol Invictus, who was much larger than any human.

She wore a white shirt with lace under a black velvet suit embroidered with gold thread, and had red hair. Sol Invictus didn’t recognize her, but he could tell she was a demon, contrary to her appearance.

The woman had an extremely relaxed expression. She was surrounded by people who willingly gave her worship-like loyalty, yet she wasn’t using that worship at all.

Gremory waved to Sol Invictus as well. The complete lack of wariness in her gesture angered Sol Invictus.

“I don’t recognize your face from around here. Are you looking for something specific?”

The demons Sol Invictus had met when he killed demon worshippers who dared worship demons instead of him were not such comfortable creatures. They had all been filled with the heat of struggle.

How beautiful was the demon who tried to magically extract Sol Invictus’s heart until he crushed its head, and how brilliantly shone the demon who wrapped its body in steel using metal-manipulating magic and charged at him after seeing Sol Invictus kill all its followers. In contrast, this demon was barely serving as an idol.

The 20th century ruins everything. Sol Invictus resisted the urge to click his tongue. He didn’t remember that he had been the first to kill demons who were living peacefully, claiming that demons should be vanquished by the hand of a god.

The reason for struggle was not important; only the struggle itself mattered. Sol Invictus believed himself to be such a god. He believed that one must seize and seize, advancing day by day.

He was pure struggle. In a good sense, he was pure struggle that gave strength to those who stood against great evil, but in a bad sense, he was also pure struggle that willingly tore at the flesh of the weak.

If Sol Invictus had truly been a war god, this statement wouldn’t have been so ridiculous. He was as much a sun god as the detective was human.

As he was getting closer to his destination, Sol Invictus concealed his purpose even more.

“Does a wanderer need a purpose to visit a local dignitary? Could you tell me how to get to a city called Centralia?”

At those words, a black-haired woman standing next to Gremory unfolded a map for her. Gremory tilted her head as if looking for the location of Centralia, then clapped her hands once like a child.

Gremory’s personal bodyguards were usually muscular ogres, but today was different—though there was no way for Sol Invictus to know this. He didn’t even care.

“I can certainly extend the kindness of giving you directions. Just wait a moment. Let’s see… Ah, yes!”

During the brief pause in her speech, she raised her hand to her ear, tucking her hair behind it and momentarily covering her ear. The ozone smell of chlorine magic began to spread around, but due to the humid air, the smell didn’t travel far.

It wasn’t a coincidence. Since her college days studying mana dynamics, water magic had been Gremory’s specialty. Even this humidity was water captured by Gremory’s magic.

When threats were needed, she imitated hydraulic cutters as she had shown the detective, but Gremory preferred to use her magic in this more elegant and delicate way.

“I found it. Centralia…”

She removed the hand she had placed near her ear. The movement was so natural that to Sol Invictus, it appeared to be nothing more than tucking her hair back.

He also didn’t know that in a few minutes, people gathered in a hospital room in New York would be celebrating.

“…is quite far north, so you’d better take another train. Since you seem to have come from Lancaster Station, why don’t you go back and check there again?”

While Sol Invictus was quite a cunning and immoral god, this was the 20th century. It was modern times. The vile streets of New York were no more honorable than this ancient sun god, and Gremory knew New York.

He thought he had received only kindness from this soft great demon, but that wasn’t the case. Gremory had willingly kicked this sun god into a pit and made the god-hunter chase after him.

Gremory hadn’t eagerly informed on him for the God-President. It wasn’t for the Sacred Protection Bureau either, and she hadn’t discussed any small compensation at length.

Everything they could offer, Gremory already possessed. She had never lacked money despite numerous investments, and her reputation and fame made that money seem paltry in comparison.

She had simply learned that beings who make dozens of people fight and die should be dealt with by calling hunters or experts.

She remembered the lesson as much as she remembered the shame of that time. This fact was another stumbling block invisible to Sol Invictus.