Inside the office of the Gaderia Lord's Manor, patched up in makeshift fashion with boards nailed crosswise and lengthwise, a few threads of sunlight slipped in through the gaps between the planks. It was broad daylight, yet the lamps had to stay lit to keep the room from feeling gloomy.
The smell of blood from the night before still hung in the air. The desk that had been smashed to splinters was gone, replaced by a long table, and shadows lined up in neat rows under the lamplight as a secret daytime council convened.
"How embarrassing, Lugner. You're a lord now, and you still nearly got assassinated by a Human. Pff, pff, pff."
In the seat to the right of the head of the table sat Aura, one hand propping up her head against the armrest, legs crossed, mocking a certain member of her own race.
Across from her sat last night's victim, Lugner, wrapped head to toe in bandages like a mummy. "..." He said nothing at all.
"Come now, Aura's hardly one to talk. That assassination attempt thirty or forty years ago had you scurrying around in a panic too."
One line from Nanoda at the head of the table, and Aura's smile froze on her face.
Scales of Obedience: I can vouch for that. I even took a knife for her!
"Still, that attacker really was strong, to wound Lord Lugner this badly."
Linie, seated beside Aura, had worked alongside Lugner for years in the Demon Association and knew exactly what he was capable of.
"Do you have any leads on the attacker?" Qual tapped the "cane" in his hand.
Only then did Lugner produce a hoarse rasp. "No... ne..."
"Good heavens, that's Undying Böse! Wasn't he subjugated by the Hero ag— er, hasn't he been dead for ages?!"
Schwenk's abrupt exclamation drew every eye in the room.
"Nofi wanted to sleep, so she sent a puppet in her place. That is Böse, but not in essence. It's simply a thing being controlled. Nofi didn't use magic when the Apostle rankings were decided, so you never saw it. It was because of Böse that I gave Nofi two of the Apostle seats at the time," Nanoda explained.
"So that's how it is." Understanding dawned on Schwenk. Nofi was one of those Apostles in name only, like Aura, who almost never dealt with the Church of the New God at all.
"A puppet is certainly all it can be called. There are obvious impurities in the Mana. It isn't the state he was in while alive, after all." Qual withdrew his gaze.
"That corpse bastard... but why is this one here too?"
Aura's expression shifted fast, curdling into open distaste, and not only for the puppet Böse. It was aimed at Bishop Schwenk as well. Something about that Human gave off a quality she loathed on pure instinct.
"Lady Aura, those words wound me. Of everyone at this table, you and I go back the furthest with Lady Nanoda. Besides, Lady Nanoda is the Acting Bishop of the Church of the New God, and everyone seated here is an Apostle of the Church, an executor of great importance." Schwenk delivered the speech with an actor's heartfelt conviction. Aura didn't care in the slightest, so long as she didn't provoke Nanoda, who knew her secret.
"Church this, Church that. Just let Macht handle all that tiresome business."
At that very moment, Macht, who was busy escorting refugees from the Southern Lands to the Church's Northern strongholds in the name of the Church of the New God, sneezed without warning. Once he finished this task, he would have to hurry straight back to the Fortified City of Weise to deal with the matter Glück had been preparing.
"All right, on to business. This is what we found on the attacker: several poisoned weapons, and a small pouch containing nothing but a single gold coin and the leftovers of some compressed rations. None of it lets us identify him. And his face happened to be destroyed as well."
This world had nothing so convenient as a database. Even knowing a man's face was no guarantee of finding him, and what turned up might only be the trail of someone who merely looked alike.
"There's no trace of Mana here. This Human was simply an assassin, a warrior, of exceptional strength."
Qual pushed his monocle up his nose. Tracking people down was not his field. Killing Humans, on the other hand, he was rather good at.
"Everyone... in my fight with... the attacker, I noticed. He loathed... the Demon Race... he even said... the Demon Race must die." Lugner spoke up to add what he knew of the man.
"So the assassin took a contract to kill the lord of Gaderia, then turned hostile once he discovered Lord Lugner was of the Demon Race?" Linie offered her reading, and the demons around the table nodded in agreement.
Gaderia's old guard, men like Aaron, Hend, Zari and Vincent, had all long since settled into retirement.
Yuna had the orphans at the orphanage and Übel to look after, so Nanoda hadn't sent word to her, which left Schwenk as the only Human at the table.
"The enemy is most likely someone hostile to Gaderia. An assassin of formidable skill who nonetheless has no name. And a particular hatred and revulsion for the Demon Race..." Schwenk began working through the logic.
"He was... very skilled... at fighting opponents... who use magic." Lugner added the detail. With the fight over and his head clear, he had gone back over it and remembered that speed, too quick to track, and the poison prepared specifically for the job.
An ordinary Human Mage might well have died from a single lapse of attention.
"Then could it be a Shadow Warrior of the Northern Empire?" Schwenk had found a candidate that fit.
"Waros and I had a verbal agreement once. The Shadow Warriors know I exist, and they should be steering clear of anywhere I am."
Nanoda shook her head, though privately she couldn't rule out Commander Levi suddenly deciding to tear up that agreement. "Besides, the Northern Empire has its eyes fixed on the war in the Southern Lands right now. The shadows should all be heading south."
"Then we can only look at those who hate the Demon Race, or else at Gaderia's enemies."
"That's a long list. Apart from the nobles on Glück's side, almost nobody is particularly friendly toward Gaderia. That includes some of the nations of the Central Lands, and the Northern Empire, which probably wants Gaderia gone more than anyone."
Nanoda spread her hands. Gaderia had plenty of allies, but not all of them reliable, and its hidden enemies might well outnumber them.
"Oh, that reminds me. Hatred of the Demon Race. There is one organization like that: a demon-hunting organization. Just as the name suggests, a private group formed by people who came together to hunt the Demon Race."
Schwenk was recalling a record pilfered from the Goddess's Order, now filed away in the intelligence archives of the Church of the New God.
"So they're the sort who kill the Demon Race, like the Hero did?" Aura clicked her tongue in fascination.
"No. If the Hero was the sun, then this organization is the moon. Their methods are a great deal darker. Hunting the Demon Race, illegal trafficking. I have never seen it firsthand, but according to the records, their treatment of the Demon Race is genuinely cruel. And most of those Demon Hunters are formidably strong."
"Demon Hunters?"
To Nanoda, it sounded like a title that belonged in a video game.
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