urgent negotiations.
urgent negotiations.
“Cool!”
Desferacio vomited a handful of blood from behind the mask and ran down the cracks of the half-damaged mask. I watched it leisurely.
If I cut my throat like this, will I die? Or does Desferacio, like the Liberatori prophet, have his own life-saving tools, like Pearly’s puppet?
In any case, I had no choice but to cut the answer myself.
“Quite…”
As I was about to strike the sword, I interrupted my flow and Desperacio opened his mouth appropriately.
“…seems to have been a pretty good choice.”
Lost in thought alone for a moment, I realized a little later that Desferacio’s answer was the answer to the question I had just asked.
“In some aspects?”
“If you’re going to work with someone, wouldn’t it be better to have someone like a knife than something soft like tofu? Cool!”
He coughed up blood once more, and muttered softly, ‘I’m so surprised it looks like a knife.’
“I have no intention of working with you. Anyway, even without you, my plan was already underway.”
Although it was exactly Pearly’s plan.
“Isn’t there a saying that it’s better if you get a blank sheet?”
“They say that if there are many boatmen, the boat goes to the mountain?”
“You’re not saying a word.”
“Now I can’t find a reason to lose.”
I squeezed his neck.
“Is the story over now?”
“It is still. wait a minute.”
After that one word, Desperacio was silent for a while, contemplating something. It didn’t take long for his answer to come out, as if he had finished his judgment quickly.
“The story of giving away other sacred objects in the church…”
“Do you want me to believe that now?”
“…Of course it must be hard to believe. In fact, those sacred relics are not under my jurisdiction, so it’s ambiguous to give them as I please. Just like the relics in this case.”
“Is that the end of your thoughts?”
“No!”
He tapped the broken mask and laughed softly.
“Then can’t you see it as an indication of the area where the other holy relics are supposed to be located?”
“I know that, but why didn’t you collect it?”
“We also don’t know the exact location, so we’re looking for it right now. Unfortunately, our liberatio does not have the ability to accurately detect the location of the relic. But isn’t Priest Marnak different?”
It was. Since I have a mother, the probability of finding a holy relic was very high just by walking around the area with my mother if the area was specific.
But how did this guy know I was capable of it?
As if checking my eyes behind the mask, he quickly opened his mouth.
“Seeing that even though we searched systematically and retrieved the divinity by finding a few undiscovered holy relics, we just made a natural inference as to whether there was a method of our own.”
“Did you retrieve the divinity?”
“Even we have the ability to determine whether the relic is intact or not! The priest recovered six divinities. If you retrieve even the sacred relics here in the capital of the Northern Empire, there will be seven.”
To think that even the number of divinities I retrieved could be grasped. A vague, ominous feeling ran down his spine.
“Who knows about it but you?”
“Am I the only one who doesn’t know exactly that Priest Marnak is retrieving the divinity? Only I know the number of divinities left. Because this is a story I heard from someone I attend!”
If he was a person he served, it meant an ‘evil god’ who resided in that lofty heaven. Has the story already spread among the gods? Or is it a story known only to the gods who are interested in Mother, as in the previous ‘Trumpet of Death and Rest’? If that’s not the case, did it attract the attention of the gods because one of the ‘gods’ that descended on Beatus the other day disappeared?
My head has become too complicated.
It’s a long way to find out the heavenly things with a mortal body, so even if I thought about it like this, there wouldn’t be a single fact that could be proven.
“How about the two places?”
It was, of course, Desperacio that cut off my thoughts.
“Two places?”
“A place in exchange for letting go of my head now. If Priest Marnak blocks Havas’ plan well this time, another place. I will tell you two places where the total holy relics are believed to be located.”
“What if I told you both places at once?”
Desperacio chuckled and replied.
“Then you’re going to kill me right now after hearing everything. That is a little difficult.”
“Are you certain that the two regions you mentioned are not false?”
He reached out and tapped the mouth part on the cracked mask.
“I am not lying. If I lie, the power of my ‘words’ is weakened. And I swear on the accuracy of the information I serve. So can you really just let this go? It’s hard to breathe.”
“…”
I pondered for a moment before making a decision.
“…So, where is the first area you’ll tell me?”
“Around the Southern Empire of Everton! It’s among the neighborhoods!”
“Where is it?”
For me, who had spent most of my time in the Northern Kingdom, I had no way of knowing where it was, even if it was the Southern Empire, Everton.
“It is an area southeast of the capital of the Southern Empire. I told you the place name, so you can buy a map and look for it.”
“What if I didn’t go?”
“It’s not impossible that the relic moved, but it’s been detected that it’s been in the same area for quite some time, so the probability that it doesn’t exist is low.”
“I swear that I will keep my promise once this is over.”
“I swear. Bet the person I serve.”
After hearing that, I let go of his collar.
“Kellogg! Kellogg!”
While he cleared his throat and cleared his throat, Lily, who had been far away because of my threat, quickly closed the distance and checked Desferacio’s condition.
“are you okay?”
“Please take the handkerchief out of my back pocket.”
“huh.”
When she handed Desperacio a handkerchief, he lifted the cracked mask and wiped his face. As he wiped his face, Lily showed fierce hostility toward me.
“You bad son of a bitch! What did we do to you that made people like this!!!”
I let her words go through one ear and replied roughly.
“What did the people of Beatus do so wrong that they had to die like that?”
“Say it right! It wasn’t me and Desferacio that did it, it was the little boy who did it of his own will! We just gave him the ability!”
“So you’re not responsible for anything?”
“No, we must be responsible to some extent!”
Lily glared at me with black eyes and growled.
“But you have no right to punish them for that! What are you? Can you be the judge of this world? If you judge, ah we say, ‘Yes, I understand.’ should I follow? If you judge, is it always right? huh?”
I lazily picked up the scabbard that had fallen on the floor and put my despair into the scabbard as I replied.
“Such rational logic and judgment should have been done before the people of Beatus died. They have already done everything and the victims have all died, but now they want reasonable judgment and proper procedures only for themselves? Don’t you feel too shameless even thinking about it yourself? And…”
I tapped the despair I put into the scabbard.
“If it bothers you, go for it. This time, I will blow your hair off without giving you any mercy.”
At the simple provocation, a small spark flew from the center of Lily’s pitch-black pupil.
“Yeah you son of a bitch! Where to stick properly…”
“Lily, stop it. It worked out well for now.”
Desperacio, wearing a new mask, stopped Lily. But rather, that appearance completely exploded Lily’s anger.
“Stop what! I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him! Because you don’t always explain everything to me! Since you act like this, it’s always just me! I always end up being a stupid, spoiled, and hot-tempered trash bitch!!!”
Tears welled up and overflowed from the big eyes. She looked back and forth between me and Desferacio with tears streaming down her face.
“I hate everything now! Both you and him don’t want to see you! Turn everything off!”
The completely angry Lily was ready to leave the seat right away, but there was no reason for me to appease her. Desperacio had it.
While Desperacio clings to Lily’s leg, who is about to run away, and comforts her, the owl woman who had left earlier returns.
She tilted her head at the sight of Lily running rampant in the distance.
“…why?”
“There were a few petty quarrels. By the way, how did you go?”
“Strange.”
The Owl Woman continued her speech with a subtle expression.
“I went to where the person in charge was. But now there is no one in hiding. no real one Only people evaporate cleanly.”
“Everyone was busy, so they went somewhere for a while… I guess not.”
The Owl Woman’s head moved.
“Wherever you go, there is one or two left. This is extremely abnormal.”
“Sniff.”
Somehow, Lily was sobbing behind Desferacio with a pair of black bunny ears hanging down. Desperacio approached us and opened his mouth, touching his chin.
“The thing I feared happened. Could you please guide us to that hiding place?”
“Do you have any tips?”
“What I thought was probably right.”
“What is it?”
“hmm.”
Desperacio let out a short silence and replied.
“Anyway, while I was late, it seems that Havas of blind faith moved first. Let me guide you right away. If it’s not too late, maybe I can help.”
***
The Owl Woman muttered something to herself, nodded, and obediently led us to the hiding place. As soon as Desperacio entered the hideout, he looked around carefully and then spoke to me.
“Do you know where the Liberatio usually gets people when they need them?”
I replied looking at his back.
“The meaning of the sentence, ‘I need a person,’ doesn’t mean that I am saving a person because I don’t have enough hands, right?”
He nodded without looking back.
“that’s right. The person I spoke of is not a single hand, but more of their flesh and blood. Who do you think our organization would kidnap in procuring such radical and compelling human material in general?”
“Aren’t the very poor the target? They are outside the net of the law, and no one is interested in them, so they are the kind of people who don’t know if one or two disappear.”
Desperacio turned to face me and shook his head.
“no. As Rev. Marnak said, it is true that there is a high probability that even if one or two of the poorest people disappear, they will not be interested. In particular, there are many priests who are on pilgrimage who are deeply interested in the underprivileged.”
The blue mask swayed. He swept the floor with his hand once and continued.
“That’s why our libertio’s main targets are not those of the lower classes. They target those who have a certain location and who will never report it even if one or two disappear. Those who have walked outside the net of the law themselves.”
Do you mean a back alley gang or an organization in the shadows? Well, if I had to choose between those who might find out and those who concealed their disappearance, it was right to choose the latter.
Although the latter organizations have their own strength, the kidnapping process may not be smooth, but if it is the strength of the libertio that I have seen so far, the strength of the poorest people and the strength of the back alley gang will be similar to them.
In that sense, did you kidnap the members of the anti-imperial faction? The superiors of the anti-emperor faction wanted to try to solve it by themselves, but there was no way to tell the emperor’s hands and feet that the person had disappeared while revealing the location of their hideout.
“okay.”
“But even taking that into account, the current mass kidnappings are too radical
.
“…I think the real bowl is on the verge of being completed?”
