The men exchanged glances. If it came down to it, he could abduct the King of Zwelf and imprison him. The thought that this might be a way to avoid this war crossed their minds for a moment.
“But if we are to make effective use of this Power, we need a base of operations.”
“A base…? What do you mean?”
“It means I can’t simply leap to an unknown location. I have no bases in Zwelf.”
“Of course…?”
“If I want to abduct the king, I need to know the structure of the royal palace in more detail. I could leap to the capital, but… I see, I should try to infiltrate the royal palace of Zwelf to get a better grasp of it.”
“Please don’t do anything rash.”
“It doesn’t need to be rash. Leap with a few soldiers and solve several issues in one fell swoop—it’s not entirely out of the question.”
The general began to seriously consider it, but his second-in-command suddenly interrupted his train of thought.
“If you can leap to their capital… Sir, you don’t mean you’ve done it before?”
“I have. During the last war. I was going to kill that war criminal Vandarren, but I couldn’t find where he was imprisoned, so I ran out of time and gave up.”
“…Your Highness. What the hell have you been doing without our knowledge?” Lucas asked in exasperation. Gravis had just admitted he had once leaped to the capital of Zwelf intending to kill the king.
“…How could you risk such a thing?!”
Theodor’s lament was met with a forced smile from Gravis, who waved off his concern by saying that it was a long time ago.
“How did you get to Merhelique this time?”
“I start from a place I’ve been before and leap in the appropriate direction. I repeat the process little by little to get a better understanding of the area. That’s also what I did this time.”
“…Good to know?”
“I don’t know what I will find when I leap. First, I leap high above ground. Then I try to descend to the roof of a building or a safe place in my sight.”
Theodor reproached his master with an even more frightening expression. “So you mean to say that you have been to Gdaniraque many times before. Our kingdom has no formal diplomatic relations with that country, so…when was this?”
“I was young and stupid. I simply thought it couldn’t hurt to prepare a good number of bases for leaping purposes. I didn’t do anything dangerous.”
Hearing that, the men heaved another deep sigh.
They knew physical distance mattered little to Gravis due to his special ability. He must have been traveling around the continent all by himself, unbeknownst even to his valet. It was beyond reckless.
“…What does the Agalean continent look like in your mind, sir?”
A person without any special abilities could not comprehend how the world must have appeared to Gravis.
Gravis pondered the question for a moment, wondering how best to explain it.
“Let me think… We all have a sense of direction, don’t we? North, south, and so on?”
They all nodded.
“If I am the center, all the places I’ve leaped to in the past are flickering in my mind. In all directions.”
“…Flickering?”
“Yes. It feels as if all the locations are flickering in my mind, in front and behind me, left and right. They’re not quite glowing, but when I connect them together, they more or less form the shape of the continent. Does that clarify anything?”
It didn’t clarify much at all.
Lucas had closed his eyes, seemingly trying to recreate the sensation.
“Each location has its own distinctive flicker, with the nearer locations being brighter and stronger, and the more distant ones weaker. They are scattered in all directions from where I am standing, and the lines connecting them form a net. If I follow the structure of that net, I can leap wherever I want to… Does that help?”
The answer was no, but at the very least, the men understood that Gravis existed in an entirely different world from everyone else.
“What happens when you run out of Power?”
“The lights grow dim, and it feels as if the thread to my desired location has been cut. That’s when I sense I can leap no farther.”
“Pardon me. I might as well ask now, but what did you mean when you said earlier that you would leap high above the ground and then move on from there?” Ginter asked.
“…It’ll be faster to show you. This is what I meant.”
With that, Gravis suddenly vanished from the men’s sight. They were all startled.
“I’m here.”
A voice came from above. They looked up in a panic and saw Gravis holding onto a ceiling beam.
“Whoa!”
“This is how I leap above ground, though I usually leap many times this height.”
Everyone looked up at the ceiling, their mouths open. The next moment, Gravis vanished once more. He suddenly appeared at roughly the height of Ginter’s head.
Ginter instinctively flinched away. Then the man disappeared again.
“…?!”
And then Gravis was back to where he had been standing, as if he had never moved at all.
“Just like that. I leap high into the air, and before I hit the ground, I look for a safe place to land, then leap again. That’s what I always do when I go somewhere new.”
The men exhaled in unison. They had all been exposed to unusual abilities before, but seeing Gravis’s Power in action always reminded them that it was incredibly special.
“In truth, it’s more difficult than simply leaping long distances. The finer the travel, the more it wears me out, but it’s also safer.”
“…I’m realizing all over again that special abilities are truly superhuman Powers, a blessing from God.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to call it a blessing from God. The abilities are used at the cost of one’s life. Overuse kills the user. The reason Ionia was stabbed by Edgar Yorke that day was…because he used too much of his Power and was unable to move.”
The men were silent. The special abilities made the unthinkable possible, which made them tempting to rely on, but at the end of the day, human bodies had their limits.
Gravis forced a smile. “Carrying a few dozen men out of Merhelique will not be an issue. I will bring back the abducted people safe and sound.”
“I understand that we must keep the Marquis of Lagarea in the dark. We shall leave the rescue operation to you, Your Excellency.”
Dirk looked around at the men and raised his hand. “Your Excellency. I have something to report as well.”
“What is it?”
“You once said that the plan for the Special Forces that Ebbo Steiger and my brother were in was drafted during General Stolf’s time. So I asked the Stolf family about it.”
General Stolf had passed away fourteen years ago.
“The family introduced me to his second-in-command, who is still alive. I found some rather interesting information at his house… Here it is.”
With that, Dirk presented a thick stack of papers.
“What are we looking at?”
“A record of General Stolf’s activities. It describes when the plan for a special unit made up of ability users was drawn up thirty-five years ago… Here, it says that he consulted the Palace of the Interior about gathering information about our citizens to find people with special abilities from among the commoners.”
The men stood from their seats. Dirk nodded.
“There’s our connection,” he said. “It says here that the person consulted at the time was Bruno Henckel, who was then second-in-command to the Secretary of the Interior.”
It was not definitive evidence.
But the suspicions concerning the Marquis of Lagarea only deepened, and the facts leading to the truth about the betrayal were connected like a net.
“The Marquis of Lagarea knew in advance of the plan to select people with special abilities and create a special unit…”
“It is possible that this was also when he learned of Edgar Yorke’s existence.”
Dirk nodded at Ginter’s words.
Lucas gritted his teeth. “He personally gathered the commoners with special abilities…and sent them to their deaths. Just like with the craftsmen, does he think the lives of commoners are his to toy with?”
Gravis looked around at the men he had gathered. “Yes. There can be no justification for sacrificing innocent people for the sake of revenge against the royal family, no matter how valid the marquis’s reasons may be.”
The men nodded. Gravis declared in a low voice, “We will win the coming war. And we will hunt down the Marquis of Lagarea, expose his crimes to the world, and serve him the fate he deserves.”
As the trees in the royal capital lost all their leaves, the clashes between Francoure and Gdaniraque intensified. By now, the people of Fanoren were beginning to hear rumors of an upcoming war with Zwelf.
Anxieties about the impending war swept over the royal capital.
At long last, Zwelf declared war on Fanoren.
All before full-blown winter could arrive on the Agalean continent.