I wondered what fixation could cause one person to work with this kind of precision.
After bringing back Erifell’s documents, we spent the whole night combing through them, and I couldn’t help but think this. Erifell had been truly, truly thorough, giving a highly detailed report of Cormeca’s activities. She had recorded when Cormeca had spoken to people, where she had gone, and what she had done, all down to the minute. Erifell’s records spanned from the day that the abnormality had occurred in Leston (or was believed to)—in other words, from the day that she lost track of Allen’s whereabouts—right up to a few days prior. Any witness statements were sourced from multiple people for absolute objectivity, and she even made sure to record the names of the people Cormeca spoke to. And then there was a trove of information that I doubted Erifell had managed to get firsthand, from the details of Cormeca’s purchases to the records of her carriage journeys. I expected that she had used her authority as a guild receptionist to engage in somewhat illegal forms of research.
You could summarize her documents like this: Allen and Cormeca borrowed a horse and headed to Leston. Afterward, Cormeca returned alone. This time frame overlapped with when contact with Leston had become lost.
“Erifell had been sitting on all this until Leen came back, huh...” I muttered.
Living dead cropping up in a village was reason enough to dispatch church knights right away, but Erifell had hid this fact from the guild. Her reasoning was obvious—she feared the church’s propensity to use fire to purify everything while burning every possible scrap of evidence in the process. These documents and the indictment itself were proof that Erifell had gone above her duties as a receptionist and conducted an illegal investigation. While it was true that there was enough evidence here to summon the Carbuncles and indict Cormeca, ultimately, it was highly likely that Erifell herself would be found guilty.
The question of why she had gone this far could be answered on the final line of her documents, penned in a script that looked as neat as the text in a common language textbook, alongside a seal in blood.
Erifell Leston.
A mad obsession had possessed this woman. She’d lost her hometown and everyone she had ever known there.
“Can we say that Cormeca’s motive was romantic problems...?” I asked.
“The documents do seem to suggest that,” Leen replied.
Cormeca had feelings for Allen. However, Allen left her side and got engaged to Krauna. Filled with rage, Cormeca enacted her own revenge.
When summarized this way, it was a pretty run-of-the-mill story. However, the methods Cormeca had chosen and the damages she had caused were enormous.
The sun had come up by the time we’d finished reading through the documents, and so Leen and I were heading back to the inn for a quick nap. Things would be at a standstill until the Carbuncles arrived. Well, there was a chance that Cormeca might try another nasty trick, so we left Derg and the slime with Erifell to keep her safe.
“What did you do to get the Carbuncles to come here quicker?” Leen asked.
“Oh yeah, I never explained that, huh,” I replied.
There was a reason my name would expedite the five-day journey of the Carbuncles, but in all honesty, it wasn’t too terribly interesting.
“The five-day arrival estimate refers to when all members of the Carbuncles unit come to Esma on carriage through other intermediary villages. However, that’s not a problem if I get just the one to come running.”
“Excuse me?”
It was truly a rare moment—Leen eyed me as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. I decided not to answer the doubts I could imagine were on her mind and looked up at the sky to try and get a moment of escape from reality. It was a beautiful blue.
“It was a measure I wasn’t willing to resort to. After all, she’s the leader of the Carbuncles. One of the few truly mighty people within the whole of the Church of Saphir.”
With little time remaining, there was a reason I had hesitated on going through with the plan despite it coming to my mind first.
“And I wonder...what would happen to a descendant of the Lingreen line if she were found by such a powerful person in the church...”
Leen paused for a good long moment. “Won’t that be dangerous for me?”
“You said you’ve got some bad memories with witch trials, right?”
“I did!”
“So, yeah, I wanna apologize. She’s the toughest witch hunter I know, so I dunno if I can protect you from the sort of chaos that might unfurl. Sorry.”
“Hold on! Please don’t summon someone like that so casually!”
“You’re the one who said I should rely on you, so I did.”
“I didn’t say to do that without telling me anything in advance!”
“Well, I doubt she’ll cut you down, no questions asked...I think.”
“H-Hakura, you idiot! What am I gonna do?! Actually, wait a second...”
“Yeah?”
“Why would she come here right away at the mere mention of your name?”
Leen’s question was completely apt. A bunch of stuff had happened before we met.
“Oh, yeah...” I said. “There was a witch trial in Lilliette, right?”
“Yes. Erifell mentioned it. It happened before we went to Leston.”
“The Carbuncles are directly under the church’s authority and are in charge of witch trials.”
“Yes, I know. That’s been mentioned many times before.”
“When they identified the witch in Lilliette, well, the witch in question went on a bit of a rampage.”
Once someone had pegged you as a witch, there was no reason to not do such a thing if it meant preventing your certain death. And in the case of Lilliette, it was unfortunate that the second-class knight in charge was so inexperienced. Luckily no one died, but that ignored everything that happened during. It was nothing short of a scandal.
“She was a slippery one and managed to escape from the Carbuncles. So the guild got involved before things got out of control.”
“Meaning...?”
“The church didn’t want to lose to the guild, so they brought in the Scarlet Star. However, as soon as she arrived in Lilliette, I had already killed the witch. Ha ha ha...”
“‘Ha ha ha’? Seriously?”
I often looked on at Leen with shock, so it was rare for the reverse to happen, which was why I let slip an awkward laugh.
Basically, not only had the Carbuncles messed up, but the church’s enemy, an adventurer, had cleaned up their mess. It was nothing short of shameful. The long and short of it was that the Carbuncles hated me. The reason I convinced my party, despite them not being totally on board, to leave Lilliette and come to Esma was because it’d be too awkward to bump into the Carbuncles in town.
“Hmm... Sounds pretty unreasonable of them to me.”
Leen’s comment was correct. But that was exactly why it came in handy now.