Two hundred years ago, when I was still a part of the magecraft organization known as Chaos Raid, I was an assassin. It didn’t matter when or where—if I was working, the stench of blood and smoke followed me wherever I went.
“Eek! Stay away! Please!”
“Hey! Someone stop him!”
“How’s this brat movin’ like that?!”
It was my job to take the lives of people who I didn’t even know. I had no memory of how many people I killed. I stopped counting when it hit the double digits. It just felt pointless.
✦ ✦ ✦
After completing my mission today, I made my way back to the Chaos Raid headquarters to receive new orders from Grim. Our base was located in a place called Gensokyo.
Gensokyo was a unique area of the world due to its incredibly high concentration of mana, and as a result, all the trees grew at an alarming rate. The scenery constantly changed; even if you memorized the route to get to the entrance once, there was no way you’d be able to retrace that path to get there again. The area was also known as the Lost Woods.
The magic beasts that also roamed the wood were naturally incredibly strong. All this meant that only a few people could safely traverse the forest. Overall it was an inconvenient place to live, but a perfect place to hide the organization.
After getting through the Lost Woods, I reached a building of modern design, a stark contrast to the rural landscape surrounding it. This was our base. A barrier erected around the perimeter made it so that the chance that any outsiders would find us was close to zero.
“Hey, did you hear rumors about the newbie?”
“Oh yeah, the silver wolf? I hear he’s shooting up almost as fast as the black cat!”
The moment I entered the building and made my way through the halls, the gossip of other organization members reached my ears. The “silver wolf” they were talking about was Cain, who’d recently entered the organization. Everyone in the organization was given an animal codename, and silver wolf was his.
“Sheesh, our organization’s full of monsters. It’s rough.”
“Yeah, we gotta step it up. I wanna try working with black cat someday!”
Good grief. The very person you’re talking about is right next to you. I barely worked with any other members, so nobody really knew what I looked like. But as I was thinking that, I heard a familiar voice.
“Gaaaaaah!”
This scream... Ayane. She was a year older than me, but I was higher ranked than her, somehow making me her senior.
“Save me, Sir! I’m being attacked!” Upon seeing me, Ayane immediately screamed her vague pleas.
As usual, she says the most incomprehensible things. Who would do that to you in the middle of our base? That’s when I realized that it was Cain chasing her. He was a rare case—a human raised by demons. Ever since we rescued him from captivity, I’d left Ayane to look after him.
“Oh, Mr. Abel!” Cain exclaimed.
“Attacked,” huh? I suppose the term is accurate here, for a lack of a better word.
Cain was chasing Ayane around while holding a bloody knife. It’d been about a year since Cain joined Chaos Raid, and now he was in the midst of puberty; he was taller than when I’d first met him.
“What are you doing, Cain?” I asked.
“Oh. Well, in order to develop a new magecraft, it just so happens that I need the blood of a live, young woman. I thought that I’d have Ms. Ayane share some of hers with me.” Cain smiled while he spoke, as if what he said was the most natural thing in the world.
“This isn’t a joke! Sir, please tell him to stop! He doesn’t know how to hold back!”
For better or worse, being raised by demons had deprived Cain of any notion of common sense. Saying that he was innocent would be a nice way to describe him, but it was more like he had no clue what was right or what was wrong. To put it simply, he would do anything—anything—to get what he wanted. Some might say his willingness to sacrifice everything he had for his own ends was a mark of insanity.
“Well, it’s good to be passionate about your research,” I said.
“I know, right?” Cain replied happily.
“Aaagh! How could you?! You bastard!” Ayane yelled.
I decided to ignore Ayane’s plight. It’d be okay if Cain was a little rough as long as his target was Ayane. After all, her mentality was a lot stronger than most people.
“On your way to see Grim, Mr. Abel?” Cain asked.
“Yeah, I gotta tell him I completed my mission.”
Grim was my supervisor who’d shown me the ropes when I first entered the organization. Usually he was in his owl form, hiding his true self, so I never really knew too much about him. The only thing I could say for sure was that without him, Chaos Raid would fall apart.
“Be careful,” Cain said. “He smells just like me. I’m sure he’s up to no good.”
I fell silent. It was true that I didn’t exactly trust Grim. Though I owed him for his help when I first started, I had no clue what he was thinking, and it was hard to really judge what his true intentions were.
“You’re overthinking things, Cain,” Ayane said leisurely, hearing our conversation. “Grim’s adorable. He’s not a bad person at all.”
Cain’s warning touched on something I’d been thinking for a while: Grim was hiding a big secret from all of us. It made me grow less trusting of the organization day by day.
In fact, today, I was planning to talk to Grim about something important.