You Want Me to Fight Kal'tsit? Seriously?

The reason he started the conversation through Robin was, first, because she currently seemed to be the only normal person he could communicate with, and he needed to use her to draw out information on whoever was behind this; second, because she hadn't directly participated in the assassination attempt on Anthony.

It was obvious that she was hesitant, and she wasn't a killer at all. He guessed she'd only killed one or two people before, and only in self-defense.

As for extracting information, she'd basically said everything she was supposed to. The mastermind's stupidity ranked among the top three he'd encountered in all his life experience, and it had truly opened his eyes.

No matter the reason, it was impossible to send someone with no relevant experience—someone who only understood security systems and mechanical engineering—to carry out an assassination in a prison without even providing sufficient information. Whoever had arranged this clearly had something wrong with their head.

Besides, the target was incredibly easy to narrow down.

The warden wouldn't do the work personally, and the operation required constant monitoring. Only the prison guards had the relevant authority within the prison, so they merely had to screen them one by one.

Then, once Saria looked over today's shift schedule and pinpointed the target without fail, this joke of a farce would be just about over.

As for this girl, when he'd demanded her dagger right away, Gerald had actually felt a little pleased.

He liked people who could resist through their own will, even if they knew their chances of winning were minuscule.

After all, he himself was that sort of person. Robin's current predicament was the same as when the Feline general had first fought him: it was almost certain death, his chest had been pierced clean through, and he hadn't even known whether his final move could hurt the other side.

Yet he would still choose to strike the enemy with one final sword, with dignity.

If she wanted to prove her ability to him and attack with all her skills and experience, he didn't mind lowering his standards for her. Even though he'd never intended to truly kill this child from the start—what he feared were hidden threats that couldn't be reasoned with and didn't understand the balance of consequences.

Neither choice was wrong. Gerald couldn't demand that others live by his own standards.

But showing surrender by hurting oneself was the sort of thing only Columbia's gangs liked to see.

He hated it.

"Go to the infirmary. Have the doctor there treat you."

Gerald glanced indifferently at Robin's wound and concealed a trace of his Originium Arts within her. "You're lucky. Only a vein was bleeding—you didn't hit the femoral artery. Otherwise, you'd have died before you even had time to bandage it... Though that doesn't stop certain people here from choosing to meddle."

After that, he didn't spare Robin another glance, leaving her to suddenly lose all strength and slump to the floor.

His attention was on someone else now.

"Gerald..."

Anthony wanted to say something, but for a moment, he couldn't form the words into a sentence. After all, everything the other man had done was for his friend.

Even if others had countless reasons to condemn Gerald from the moral high ground, Anthony had to stand firmly beside the person protecting him at this moment.

So, amid the silence, Anthony watched as the other man walked toward him.

Just as he was wondering what Gerald intended to do, Gerald walked straight past him and entered the cell on the other side.

"Enough. Stop pretending. If you keep it up, you'll end up just like those three."

Gerald crouched halfway down and frightened Kafka, who was curled into a ball beside the bed with her eyes tightly shut, trembling all over.

Her face paled, and she hurriedly opened her eyes, revealing an awkward smile.

"B-Big Brother, I was protecting that big idiot just now."

"Could you maybe not stab your own thigh with a knife?"

You've Already Had a Long Day. It's Time to Sleep

Indigo Originium Arts blossomed within the infirmary.

It was the indigo that symbolized Mansfield's infirmary, belonging solely to its master, Duma.

At that moment, she held a staff and restored the wound on Robin's thigh. With each flicker of blue light from the staff's tip, the pain that had been lingering in Robin's head eased a little.

"That'll do." Once the wound had been cleaned and treated, Duma lowered her staff and turned to write something on a sheet of paper nearby.

"Come to the infirmary once every other day from now on. If you develop a fever or inflammation, tell the guards directly and have them bring you here. This injury... may take at least two months to heal. The dagger went in a little too deep, and some of the torn muscle will need time to recover."

Robin nodded blankly and used the cabinet beside her to support herself as she stood. "I understand. Thank you."

When Gerald's expression had darkened, she'd truly thought she was going to die.

But he didn't seem prepared to hold her accountable now. Though many problems remained, such as how she was supposed to escape this prison... being allowed to keep her life was already the best outcome she could hope for.

Only after she slowly passed the remaining three and closed the infirmary door did the atmosphere inside improve somewhat.

"Ah, haha..." Kafka, who had helped Robin in the corridor, wore a complicated expression. "That person... how should I put it? I honestly couldn't sense any hostility from her."

"But it's also a fact that she wanted to kill Anthony."

The first to voice a strong objection was Duma, usually the quietest of them all. "...I don't want my friends beside me to get hurt. So she has to fail."

"No. If we get the chance, arranging for her to stay beside us might be the simplest way."

Anthony thought for a moment, then shook his head. "The biggest issue is still that the enemy can't be seen. If we let Robin join our conversations, there'd certainly be enormous risk, but we could use this intermediary to find the person backing her. It would turn a theory with countless possibilities into a high-risk wager."

After saying that, Anthony looked toward Gerald. "What do you think?"

"The assassination was aimed at you. You can handle it however you want."

However, Gerald was already considering when to drag the person on the other side out. It was too late today; tomorrow, when he spoke with Saria, would be about right. "I can't be your babysitter forever, Anthony. If you think you can take care of Duma while handling this, then do whatever you want."

"I..." Duma raised her hand and said weakly, "I don't need Anthony to protect me."

Oh, right.

Ever since he'd arrived at the prison, Duma's Originium Arts had risen several levels—mainly because every so often, he'd show up covered in injuries he'd inflicted on himself and ask Duma to treat him.

Over time, the power and sleep-inducing ability contained in Duma's Originium Arts had become utterly incomparable to what they once were.

If someone secretly took a hit from it, even Anthony might suffer badly.

As the three of them talked back and forth about Robin, as well as why the mastermind had acted in such a foolish manner...

Kafka felt like an outsider in front of these three.

She even felt like complaining tearfully to Silence, who had sent her here.

Did that big tiger in front of her really need her help to escape prison?

Just look at the Kuranta beside him. A single sentence had made Barton slink away. When those three assassins had begun surrounding Anthony earlier, she hadn't even seen him move before he'd sliced all three of their throats.

The rumors in the prison had been right. Even if Columbia sent an army to kill Anthony, she figured that Kuranta could slaughter every last soldier.

The question was...

Why was such a monster casually talking about killing people one moment, then suddenly chatting about everyday matters the next?!

"I was sent from outside to rescue Anthony, you know." Kafka found a moment when the little group had fallen silent and hurriedly inserted herself into the conversation. "Isn't it a little too much to just ignore me over here?!"

"Oh, sorry." For some reason, Gerald had drifted from discussing assassins to Kazimierz cuisine, but he snapped back to his senses and gave Kafka an apologetic look.

"Looks like we can't have Kazimierz cuisine right now, since we're in prison. Next time, I'll check the cafeteria for ingredients and make some for you to try. Do you want a portion too?"

"No—that's—not—the—point!!" Kafka felt like she was really about to cry. She looked pitifully toward Anthony, the only person who had been listening to her seriously. "Big guy, you're the assassination target. Don't you at least want to know why someone wants you dead?"

"...I do."

The atmosphere in the room quickly returned to that heavy, clinging state. Even someone as innocent as Duma knew that what they were about to hear probably wouldn't be good news.

Anthony felt his hands begin to tremble, but he quickly forced them still. "My father received more than ten accusations, but I didn't have the time to investigate each detail. All I know is that if even I was thrown into prison... then the only possibility is that they've already dealt with all the problems they needed to deal with."

"So now, they have the leeway to handle the final risk and eliminate the roots."

He spoke each word clearly. "I have only one question. Who are they?"

Kafka hadn't expected him to have thought that far ahead. She cautiously glanced around, and only after confirming that everyone present could be trusted did she nod.

"Silence said they're called the Hyde Brothers."

Night.

The rooms in Zone C had never felt so cold.

The guards had carried away the corpses, and the pool of blood on the floor had been carelessly wiped a few times with a mop. But some of the heavier stones and rubble were still difficult to clear away. Even after they returned to their cells, the pungent smell of disinfectant mixed with blood still lingered in the air.

Gerald wasn't holding the professional book he usually read before bed today. Instead, he took down the photograph on the wall.

The wind could slip into every smallest corner, and the glue on it had long shown signs of coming loose. He didn't know whether the photo hadn't been blown down that morning because of luck, or because the wind had sensed his mood.

Through that large hole, he could see Anthony carelessly drape himself across the bed. His usually glossy fur looked as though it had been washed over and over with water, every strand steeped in despondency.

"Gerald."

"I'm here."

"I'll have my revenge." Anthony didn't ask a question or seek his opinion. He merely clenched his will between his teeth, pressed it beneath his tongue, and waited for the day it would break through the soil. "This isn't over. I'll make the Hyde Brothers pay for their blood debt."

"What Kafka said... I'd thought of it before, too."

He rested his head against the pillow, feeling the coldness of the shackles and the blood marks they had already pressed into him. "My family, the Simon Family, once stood on the same side as the Hyde Brothers, each holding fifty percent of the profits. At this point, whoever swallowed whom couldn't really be called wrong."

"Just to survive, just for greater profit, they had to bring down the other side. I was simply unfortunate enough to be one of the losers."

"But where is the hatred in my heart supposed to go?! This hatred I've carried for six years?!"

Anthony roared wildly. He bared his sharp teeth, revealing the beast within. "I know that even revenge can't bring my family back! Columbia has far too many ways to torment the living, but no matter what I do, I can't return to the past!"

"I know." Gerald calmly looked at the figure in the photograph. "I know, Anthony."

"How could you know?! Gerald, the pain in my heart—"

"Because my father met the same end." Gerald cut Anthony off directly. "My father, who believed he'd lost everything and wanted nothing more than to perish alongside his enemies."

The voices vanished from the cells.

There were two silver-haired Pegasi in the photograph.

The still-youthful Gerald stood beside his tall father, whose face always wore that gentle, refined smile, as though he had never been angry in his life.

"My experience won't be of much use to you, but this is what I did."

"The cycle of hatred had to end with me."

"—By killing every enemy, and ending it that way."

The Banshee's River Valley

Gerald closed his eyes.

It had been a busy day. He had reclaimed his Originium Arts, encountered unexpected events, met people he didn't particularly like, and recalled the pain of two years ago.

The blood in the air was still pungent, but his mood gradually calmed, sinking into a new dream.

There would be no so many twists and turns there, only simple, brutal conflict and pain.

It should have been that way.

When a soft, velvet-like sensation quietly covered him, the instantaneous comfort briefly dulled even his exceptionally keen sense of smell, as though the entire world had been gently wrapped in that softness.

It was something he hadn't dreamed of in a long time. From the first day of his birth, he had always been wrapped in similar luxury, as though all the warmth and affection in the world had long woven an endless velvet embrace for him.

Yet when that long-lost sensation surfaced again, all he felt was a strange daze.

So he abruptly opened his eyes and took deep breaths of the overly sweet air.

An unfamiliar room.

He rose, checked his condition, found his sword, and made sure he could still use his Originium Arts. In only a second, the Pegasus had shifted from sleep into a combat stance.

The fragrance in the air was quickly blown away by a wind without a source, drifting out through the room's vent.

Gerald could feel the calming effect of the scent, but he couldn't understand the situation at all.

The room he was in wasn't particularly resplendent, yet faint light seemed to seep from every corner.

Gentle candlelight leapt from iron candleholders on the walls, reflecting upon the slightly dark wooden panels. In one corner stood a low wooden cabinet, its surface seemingly weathered by wind and rain, marked with scratches of varying depths. Several ceramic jars and bottles rested atop it. Their bodies looked quite rough, but their glaze had a simple sheen, faintly giving off the scent of spices and herbs.

Yet a closer look revealed that they weren't candle flames at all, and the shadows on the jars weren't cast by light.

They were slender spells made of flowing words.

"Banshee," Gerald muttered. "What a shame."

The book Saria had given him contained records about the Banshee race.

They had little connection to Kazdel. Most tribal members lived in a place called River Valley. As one of the more mysterious and representative Sarkaz races, there were almost no known cases of male Banshees among them. Correspondingly, nearly every Banshee was skilled in Wordcraft.

In their hands, words could take physical form and transform into another special mode of existence.