Chapter 80 – Information Guild

In the frigid atmosphere, Ophelia swallowed nervously.

“…Even if you’re a direct descendant of Eustetia… the Cartel—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just shut up and answer the question. What’s it going to be? Are you giving me the information, or not?”

Naturally, I’d already gathered information on the Cartel.

If those bastards came after me, I also had a plan to deal with them.

It might be a hassle, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hand over what Arisa had left behind to someone else.

Not even to Eustetia.

It’s mine.

“I’ll count to three. If you don’t answer by then, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

I held up three fingers.

“One.”

Ophelia chewed on her lip.

“Two.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and answered.

“…Let’s move to a quieter place.”

“Good.”

I folded my last finger and pulled my hood back on. Then I looked at the punks behind me, who had somehow straightened themselves up.

“When did I say you could stand?”

“Huh, gulp!”

They immediately slammed their heads back down.

“Today, nothing happened here. Got it?”

“Yes! We understand!”

“If, by any chance, even the slightest rumor about me being here spreads, and I hear about it, then even a kind soul like me might get angry. You understand?”

“We’ll keep it in mind!”

I nodded, satisfied. But I wasn’t done.

“And listen up, you punks. Do you think it’s okay to talk to someone like me the way you did earlier? Huh?”

“W-we’re sorry!”

“Is sorry all it takes? If saying sorry was all it took, why do we have guards? Why do laws exist? Shit, just thinking about it makes me mad. Hey, you. Get over here.”

The punks froze, muttering amongst themselves. But it didn’t matter. I was only focusing on one person.

“Look at that bastard pretending he doesn’t know anything, lips all sealed shut.”

Ignoring Ophelia’s look of disbelief, I walked over to him.

“I don’t like repeating myself.”

Rosley, who had been flopping around like a fish out of water, suddenly jumped up.

“Y-yes!”

“Don’t you know how to manage your people?”

“I’m sorry!”

Judging from his clear speech, the potion seemed to be working quite well.

Though his lips curled inward awkwardly from his missing teeth, his pronunciation was impeccable.

“And you, brat. When I asked you to bring your boss, why the hell did you bring a clone?”

“Th-that’s… I, I didn’t know either!”

“Is ‘not knowing’ an excuse?”

“…S-sorry.”

“Be good. Understand?”

“I’ll carve it into my bones…!”

“Good. Now, brush your damn teeth, brat. What, you have money for booze but not for toothpaste?”

“I’m sorry!”

I could smell the stench from Rosley’s mouth again as he shouted.

“Ugh, for fuck’s sake.”

I immediately punched him in the jaw.

Crack!
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the ground.

Wiping the blood off my hands, I turned to face Ophelia, who stood there, seething silently.

I gave her a cheeky grin.

“I took care of disciplining your men for you. You’re welcome.”

“…Thank you so much,” she responded sarcastically.

“Yeah. Now, I think I deserve compensation.”

“…Excuse me?”

“What, ‘excuse me’? I helped rehabilitate your punks. Of course, I should get paid.”

Ophelia’s face crumpled like a discarded newspaper.

“What? You don’t like it? You think you can refuse?”

I placed my foot on Rosley’s head.

Creak, creak,
a sound like a cracking watermelon echoed throughout the tavern.

Hearing that, Ophelia gritted her teeth.

“…What do you want?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

“Let’s… let’s go somewhere more private first.”

“Okay.”

I kicked Rosley’s already unconscious head and grinned cheerfully.

The intimidation tactics were more than enough.

***

Unlike that den of punks, Ophelia’s private office was surprisingly polished.

As if it were trying to live up to the term “office,” the room contained massive bookshelves, stacks of documents, and most notably, dozens of communication crystals lined up for contacting others.

“Not bad, pretty impressive,” I remarked casually.

Ophelia’s face twisted in annoyance.

I continued, “Judging from the state of your subordinates, this is pretty impressive.”

“…They’re just putting up an act.”

“Funny, though their eyes seemed pretty lustful before I beat them up.”

“If they bother you… I’ll get rid of them.”

“No need. Just act like a decent human being. Got it?”

Although I had said it casually, the underlying meaning wasn’t.

Ophelia understood what I meant and nodded seriously.

“…We are not working with demons.”

She probably said that so readily because I was from Eustetia. It wasn’t a bad answer.

But.

“How am I supposed to trust that?”

I couldn’t trust that.

The reason I came here, even though I knew I couldn’t trust them, was simple.

I wanted to cross-check the information I had with what they knew.

There was something in the underground of the capital.

The presence that Pina had talked about, the demon.

That demon is somewhere underground.

And what Arisa had left was underground too.

I knew about the demon’s existence because of my spirit connection.

And I was able to learn about my tomb because of who I was.

Because I was Ronan in my past life, and because I had entered the Forbidden Archive, received information, and seen the illusion.

Had the demons known about that information beforehand?

If they did, where did they learn it?

It could be a coincidence.

But it also couldn’t be.

And the Information Guild seemed to be aware of something being in the capital’s underground as well.

I needed to know how they had obtained their information.

So, I decided to cross-check with them.

If I find anything unusual.

If they had colluded with the demons.

I wouldn’t hesitate to kill the woman before me.

“Our guild, Uranos, exists based on trust. If… if you can’t trust us, then there would be no point in me sharing this information.”

“That’s something
I
decide.”

I leaned back against the soft sofa and crossed my legs.

“Tell me. What is in the capital’s underground?”

Ophelia, who was glaring at me, sighed quietly and came back with some documents from the back.

“Uranos, no, I discovered an unknown path in the underground seven years ago.”

I took the document and listened to what she had to say.

“As written in this document, I discovered it after I received a request from an anonymous client to look around Mirinae.”

Mirinae refers to the river in the capital.

I flipped through the pages, looking at the picture of the river.

…It’s the street Arisa had walked down.

“However, we weren’t able to discover the identity of the client. We surmised they were a magician, but no other information was available.”

“You guys usually pry into your client’s personal information, huh?”

“…We usually don’t. As long as they pay us, or rather… as long as anyone besides demons pay us, then we will do anything… that’s our guild’s motto.”

I narrowed my eyes at Ophelia.

“Have you ever accepted a request from a Black Magician or demons?”

“Not demons, but… Black Magicians, yes.”

In the past, that would have been enough reason for me to blow her head off, but things have changed now.

While demons are still treated as a separate entity, Black Magicians have more or less blended into common society… though it’s still infuriating, it’s not an unusual thing these days.

“That’s a very honest answer.”

“Honesty is how we make a living.”

“Is that why you sent a clone to meet me?”

“…That was—”

“Forget it. Continue.”

I cut her off mid-sentence and looked at the document.

I was getting tired. I just wanted to go back and fall into bed.

“The client had just one condition. To find an empty space underground somewhere in the capital. But the reward for the request was so huge… we had no choice but to be suspicious and… dug into the client’s background.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

Almost as if…

“Someone had intentionally erased it…”

As Ophelia had said, the information about their client was blank, as though someone had deliberately wiped it.

They even made an identikit, but even that was hazy and blurred.

Unnaturally obscured details.

Intentionally erased information.

Those two things made me think of one person.

Kaloso Verheigen.

Click,
I gritted my teeth. My body was burning up, filling up with a rage I couldn’t express.

“…I don’t need information on the client, just the request.”

“Yes. Following the request, we found an entrance to the sewers from a hidden corner of the Mirinae river, and there, at the end of the sewers, we found a hidden path that wasn’t even on the Empire’s maps.”

I looked at the picture of the hidden path, which was spread out across 5 pages.

It was the path I had seen in the illusion, the path Arisa had walked.

“And at the end of the path, we encountered a giant door.”

“A door?”

There wasn’t a door in the illusion.

Arisa just kept walking until she reached a massive cavern.

Then did Arisa set up that door herself?

I turned the page.

Just as Ophelia had said, a picture of a massive door could be seen on the next page.

A door with cherry blossom patterns drawn on it.

It was so large it could be called a wall.

“We… weren’t able to open that door, even with everything we had. Even the client failed to open it.”

The document had no further information past the picture.

So, I tossed it on the table and looked at Ophelia.

“So, what happened next?”

“We received a new request from the client,” Ophelia said and handed me a new document.

“The request was to protect the door no matter what. The minimum duration of the request was 10 years, but… we failed.”

I skimmed the pages as my eyes widened.

“All of our combatants… were killed by an unidentified Black Magician… one who could control snakes.”

“…Hah…”

On the first page of the documents, there was a picture of a snake biting its own tail.

No. This isn’t a snake.

It was a dragon.

An Ouroboros. A dragon biting its own tail.

“…Labyrinth.”

A follower of Labyrinth was in the underground of the capital.

***

“The Nameless have moved.”

Deep within the capital’s underground.

A man bowed low before a woman seated atop a mound of corpses.

Robert’s heavy voice echoed ominously.

“It seems that they are trying to pinpoint this location.”

“They won’t find it. What’s next?”

“We’ve detected the presence of a spirit.”

“A spirit.”

“Additionally, it is frequently seen with ‘Star,’ our secondary target.”

“Oh my.”

A seductive chuckle escaped the woman’s lips as she licked the blood off her fingers.

“Can you secure it?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Give me five days.”

The woman chuckled softly as she tapped the armor of the corpse she was using as a seat.

“Five days. That’s reasonable.”

The armor had the crest of the Imperial Knights on it, a shield marking their identity.

“I’ll distract the crow… Adelia Baros. Robert, you focus on securing the spirit.”

“Understood.”

The woman’s gaze then shifted toward the enormous door standing behind Robert.

The woman had received her orders from her master, Labyrinth.

The order was to open the door adorned with cherry blossom patterns.

But even with everything they tried, they weren’t able to open it. A year had already passed.

Then they found out the truth.

The door was locked with spirit magic, so if they were able to use the power of a spirit, they’d be able to open it.

Now that they knew how, they had to act immediately.

They had to secure a spirit.

“I wonder what is behind that door…”

Five days. In five days, that disgusting door would open.