Chapter 61
“Ugh……”
The only thing somewhat lucky about this was that Barka was alone.
According to the novel’s plot, three people would raid the Golden Bank.
Krod the swift sword, the servitor-mage Barka, and the wizard Solus — just those three.
While the servitor-mage and the wizard caused havoc inside the Golden Bank, Krod would smash open the main vault alone.
Literally pry open the great vault by hand and sweep away the ancient artifacts hidden inside.
But neither Krod nor Solus were in sight.
I didn’t know exactly why yet, but for now I’d been relieved of two big burdens.
“Hey! You came in person?”
Barka grinned at me like a kid who’d just been handed a fun new toy.
For now I pretended not to know and tried to read his intentions.
Why had he come here alone, without Krod or Solus?
There were still a lot of unknowns.
And the most important one:
Why had they rushed the Golden Bank robbery sooner, even advancing it by five years?
Since I knew the novel’s storyline, I had to find out the whole reason.
Maybe the plot I remembered had been completely thrown out the window.
I held the Dragon-Scale Sword leveled at him and spoke.
“…Do you know me?”
“Of course! You haven’t seen how popular you are lately?”
“Popular?”
“Yes! Why else would they go through all this trouble aiming at you?”
His words were the last thing I expected.
Not only did he know who I was, but I was “popular”?
And they’d made this ruckus targeting me?
“…What do you mean by that?”
Why would they?
“‘He’ told us to check whether you’d be useful to us or a threat!”
If “he” referred to the leader of the Imperial faction remnant, then that must be who Barka meant.
They actually wanted to see whether I would be useful or dangerous to them?
“…They stole the Golden Bank for just that?”
“Well…yeah! If you’d died at the hands of monsters it would’ve been pointless, but you survived, so it’s not pointless!”
This was insane.
My uneasy feeling never seemed to be wrong.
The reason the Golden Bank raid had been advanced was, unsurprisingly, my fault.
Because I had carelessly told Krod some information, things had come to this.
Everything I said to him probably flowed up to the upper echelons of the Imperial faction remnant; naturally, talk about me would have followed.
I’d only given information that seemed low-value, but the real problem was my existence.
For some reason I knew dangerous information that others didn’t.
From their perspective, I might transform into a huge threat.
I even knew information about those hiding and working covertly across the continent.
If I were on their side I could be a great help — but there was no guarantee I would support them.
Someone like that, they’d rather eliminate.
That was the leader’s thinking.
“Damn……”
As a result, the disaster that should have occurred years later had been advanced to this very moment.
Not for an ancient artifact in the main vault, but because of one annoying individual named Ian Impera — me.
This was my mistake.
I’d been careless despite the danger posed by the Imperial remnant, and now it had come back on me.
While I was brooding, Barka approached with a sneer.
He shouted at me, excited.
“Next question then! Are you someone who’ll be a threat to us?”
“You bastard!”
Priyana, having had enough of listening to him, drew her sword.
She unleashed a relentless blue aura and shouted, “Master! I’ll handle him!”
She bobbed her head lightly to signal “let’s go with the plan for now.”
Barka was a servitor rank holder.
If his summoned monsters’ feet were tied up, the fight would be manageable.
“I’ll help too!”
My role was clear.
To allow Priyana and Islin to fight Barka at ease, I had to pin down the feet of the monster he’d summoned.
I hurried to find the monster Barka had under servitude.
But the central hall held only the corpses of guards; there was nothing that looked like a monster.
Could it be dark magic?
Was he going to reanimate the corpses as monsters and then evolve them into higher forms?
But the guards’ corpses were motionless — just corpses.
“Heh heh heh! What are you doing? You said you’d face me?”
Barka tossed a taunting smile at Priyana.
“You bastard!”
“Haah!”
Islin’s hand formed a blue ice blade.
A torrent of ice-blades rained down on Barka.
Simultaneously, Priyana’s speed sword strikes rained sharply.
Her whole body’s strength focused into a single sword technique at terrifying speed.
A blue afterimage marked Priyana’s flash forward.
…Kaang!
But the faint barrier that formed around Barka’s body easily blocked them.
Islin’s ice blades scattered only white snowflakes around, failing to land meaningful hits.
“Hmph!”
“Keep going!”
Maybe expecting this, the two did not retreat and continued their assault.
Blue streaks glinted along Priyana’s form; Islin poured all her mana into a rain of ice blades.
I couldn’t just stand by either.
Barka was the only enemy servitor-mage here.
It was a fight I could try.
I summoned aura into my hand gripping the Dragon-Scale Sword.
Just as I was about to manifest aura into the blade—
My hand froze.
According to plan, one of the three of us should be dealing with a monster while the others brought down Barka.
Servitor ranks are strongest when they control monsters.
But Barka was handling the two of them without any monster at all.
Watching, I felt a nauseating sense of déjà vu.
This made no sense.
A servitor rank holder fighting two people alone without any monsters?
That meant Barka had another rank.
Judging by how easily he handled Priyana, it had to be at least rank 5.
“Hah.”
Thinking of the novel’s plot, this was impossible.
If my guess was right, Barka’s servitor rank now was 6.
Comparable to Krod — but there was no mention in the novel of him holding any other rank.
I realized what was happening.
“Damn that woman.”
There ought to be limits even to humiliating someone.
This kind of prank?
Gnash.
I was so angered my teeth clenched, and I ordered the two who were engrossed in battle.
“Priyana, Islin, stop attacking.”
“Pardon? What do you mean?”
“What? Stop attacking…?”
No matter how I seethed, I had to accept reality.
“We’ve already lost.”
“Kya ha hat! This one already saw through my trick!”
Barka was grinding Ian’s head with his boot as Ian lay unconscious.
At the moment Ian’s party burst in, Solus’s hypnosis skill had detonated.
Before the three of them could resist, the rank-6 magic skill put them into a deep sleep.
From that state, Barka used a servitor succubus.
In appearance it was a repulsive octopus with three eyeballs, but when it entered a target’s dream it took the form of the most ideal lover to seduce the victim.
But because Barka had it under servitude, it was shaping dreams exactly as she wished to show Ian’s party.
Everything happened so fast that they couldn’t tell dream from reality.
Standing next to her, a rugged man’s expression quickly hardened.
Just from his build he could look like a swordsman, but he was a monster who’d raised his magic rank to 6.
His name was Solus.
He was one of the main forces in the rebel group dreaming of reviving Emperor Kazan.
Solus examined Ian’s face and adjusted his grip on his staff.
It was an oddly-shaped staff.
A long wooden staff decorated with a small coiling dragon caught the eye.
From the staff’s midsection the dragon wound itself around to the tip.
The dragon’s mouth bit its own tail — a unique form.
Any remnant of the Imperial faction would recognize the terrifying ornament.
Uroboros.
It was a decoration only the Eternity Knights could use.
The Eternity Knights weren’t only sword-rank holders.
There were magic-rank holders like Solus and servitor-rank holders like Barka, but all belonged to the Eternity Knights.
Their ranks varied, but one thing was the same:
They were all terrifying monsters.
“Really? He already noticed?”
“Told you so! Hee hee!”
“Haah……”
Solus couldn’t help being surprised at her words.
It’d been only minutes since the succubus latched onto the backs of their heads.
And already he’d noticed?
It was impossible for the culprit.
‘This one is dangerous.’
Solus recalled his lord’s words.
‘If he’s a threat to the Emperor’s rebirth, eliminate him.’
Solus filled mana into the staff.
The Uroboros’ eyes on the staff began to glow red.
“‘He’ said it. If the fellow will be a threat, eliminate him without mercy.”
“Hm…… but it feels a pity, right? I said he knows more than a few things.”
“…Right. No one’s sure where he picked them up, but he knew the location of the Knights’ relics exactly.”
Barka pursed her lips and frowned.
Her expression brightened again.
“Ah! Then how about this? I’ll pull everything from his head with the succubus! That way ‘he’ gets his order and we get the info he holds!”
“That could work….”
Barka was right.
If the succubus rummaged through his head and turned him into a wreck, he’d spill everything.
Killing him afterward wouldn’t be a problem.
But whether it was instinct from being a rank-6 mage, or some inexplicable unease, a chill crawled up Solus’s neck.
“Heh heh heh! Wait a bit! I’ll make him blurt everything he knows……”
“W-wait!”
Even though Solus tried to stop her, Barka ignored him and linked her mind with the succubus.
Reaching servitor rank 6 is extremely hard and a sign of tremendous strength.
But to single-handedly handle Priyana and Islin? Impossible.
Servitor ranks specialize in commanding monsters.
Their personal combat abilities are far weaker.
That meant everything before my eyes was an illusion.
He was a demon that controlled dreams, showing a mirage.
“Damn.”
“Kihi hit!”
I spat a curse, and the Barka in front of me gave a vile chuckle.
I wanted to sock that face with a fist, but it was only an illusion.
‘Now I must do what I can.’
Let me summarize the situation.
Right now not only I, but Priyana and Islin, were swallowed by the illusion.
Our true bodies must be lying outside the illusion in a deep sleep.
Killing our sleeping party would be easier than eating soup.
Yet he wasn’t doing that; he insisted on showing the illusion.
‘Why?’
According to the novel, Barka is an extreme sadist.
Given her personality, she might be humiliating for fun.
But Barka alone could not have looted the Golden Bank.
Someone must have joined her.
Who could break all the bank’s wards and land hypnosis before anyone noticed?
‘Solus, probably.’
The Eternity Knights’ mage Solus — he was with her.
Given his personality, he wouldn’t just watch Barka’s fun and do nothing.
If they still used this bothersome approach, it meant they had some reason to keep me alive for now.
‘They probably want the information I know.’
It was too early to despair.
