“Mama! Faster!” Alice exclaimed, pulling my arm.
“Wait, Alice. There’s no need for us to rush.”
Today was the fifth day of the festival. To celebrate the end of the festivities, there would be even more stalls, as well as performances taking place in the main square.
“Alice sure loves to watch street performers,” Egret said. He laughed and picked up the little girl, letting her ride on his shoulders. Carol, who’d been walking on the ground, hurriedly climbed up his body so she could settle on Alice’s head.
Egret and Oulu had accompanied us for the last day, so we formed a large group. We were walking alongside the avenue, which was currently closed off to most carriages, and heading toward the main square.
Suddenly, I heard someone scream in the distance in front of us. My view was blocked by the crowd, so I couldn’t tell what was going on. After a few seconds, more screams echoed and people started running en masse. Panic erupted through the crowd as the smell of blood wafted through the air.
“Wh-What happened?” Alice asked, worried.
“Egret!” I yelled.
“I know!” he replied. “Alice, hold on to Carol, all right?”
“O-Okay!”
“Kyuu?!”
“Lunoa, hold on to me! Misha, make sure to keep up!”
“Y-Yes!” Lunoa yelped.
“I will!” Misha said.
Egret held Alice, making sure she wouldn’t fall from his shoulders, and jumped. He kicked off the wall beside him and landed on a nearby roof. I did the same thing, lifting Lunoa and carrying her under my arm while Misha, Mireille, Barl, and Oulu followed.
“What happened?” Mireille asked.
“It came from over there,” I said. I looked over at the area that was the source of the screams. It was far away, but even at that distance I could make out a sea of blood.
“A terrorist attack?” Egret surmised. He put Alice down.
In the middle of the ever-growing puddle of blood was a man clad in black. He was mercilessly slaughtering every last person he could reach. There were no signs of why he was doing this. Unlike during the opening parade, there were no important nobles or royalty here.
“Do you think it’s a political terrorist attack?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Egret replied. “The killer seems to be attacking people at random.”
What would be the goal of such an attack here in the capital? I wondered. I pulled Alice toward me so she wouldn’t see the carnage.
The two knights guarding the square finally made it to the scene.
“Looks like they’ll take care of things at last,” Egret said.
“You’re right. There’s no way that man could fend off two—” I swallowed the rest of my sentence down.
With a single swing of his weapon, the man had just severed the arms and legs of one of the knights even though he was still far away. The second knight lost focus for an instant, turning to look at his dismembered comrade. In the blink of an eye, the man’s dagger pierced his throat.
“That man is no regular hoodlum!”
Egret was right. Even if the killer had some sort of trick to attack at such a distance, the knight had only been distracted for a moment. For an average adversary, that window would never have been long enough to land a critical blow. The black-clad man was powerful.
However, this was still the middle of the imperial capital. Reinforcements would rush here as soon as they realized that two knights had been killed. In fact, I could already see knights riding on horseback from the imperial palace.
“It seems like even the Imperial Guard is making an appearance,” I said, noticing their unique armor.
The Imperial Guard was an elite force assigned to protect the imperial family. Only members of the imperial family had the right to issue them orders, so if they were coming, it meant that the emperor was already aware of the situation.
The Imperial Guard wasn’t coming alone. Ten knights—not on horseback—were already closing in on the terrorist after using body reinforcement techniques to enhance their speed. The first to reach the man swung his blade at him with expert technique. The terrorist twisted his body to dodge, but he wasn’t quick enough and the knight managed to wound his right leg. He fell down in the pool of blood that covered the ground. The knight brought his arm down once again to finish him off, but the man tried to unleash another of his peculiar long-range attacks. Thankfully, some of the imperial guards noticed and they rode faster, arriving just in time to block it.
“It’s finally over,” Egret said.
“Indeed,” I replied. “Let’s leave.”
I still didn’t understand what that man’s goal had been, but the attack was finished. I was convinced there was nothing more he could do when all of a sudden I sensed a colossal surge of mana. I turned around in a hurry to look at the man in black and saw that he was holding something. The object was the source of all this mana.
“A magic item?!” one of us exclaimed, but I was too taken aback to tell who.
A magic item that contained such an overwhelming quantity of mana was bad news. There was no telling what could happen. I immediately materialized my Grimoire of Beelzebub and tried to put up a barrier, but the mana of the man’s magic item condensed before I could do so. Then, the mana began seeping out of the jewel and spreading outward.
“What in the world...?” Egret looked equal parts astonished and confused.
Now that I’d seen the jewel, I knew what this item was. I’d read about it in the records from the forbidden collection in the Haldorian palace. Even in the days of the Old Kingdom, using these items had been a grave taboo, and not even the oldest documents recorded their method of fabrication.
“A jewel of death...” I whispered.
The mana coming out of the jewel touched the first knights in its path and their bodies convulsed. They started rotting before our very eyes, and before long, only bones remained. The resulting skeletons bore a strong resemblance to lower-level undead monsters, but the mana they exuded was far beyond that of such creatures.
The imperial guards who had yet to come into contact with the mana retreated immediately, but the skeletons picked their swords right back up and rushed at them. They were ridiculously fast and closed the distance in a heartbeat.
“AAARGH!” an imperial guard shrieked as a skeleton’s blade pierced his body through a gap in his armor.
It passed through him entirely, emerging out of his back. The imperial guard fell to his knees and stopped moving entirely for a moment before rising back up with an eerie groan.