It was not a very pleasant sight.
He eyed the bodies with disgust. They were alternate versions of himself. By the grace of fortune, he had survived the experiments, but with one misstep, he would have died like these children. He vowed anew to capture every last remnant of old Etherium.
But on the other hand, he felt conflicted.
Richard gazed at the experimental subjects. He couldn’t look away from them. Having once been put through experiments himself, he could tell these subjects had gotten very close. One more step, and these children would certainly have become able to wield the Power of God. Their half-draconic corpses were evidence of this.
As Richard examined the bodies, there came a cry from somewhere.
Someone was screaming.
“M-monster…!”
Richard was just about to turn around. Right before he could, however, he caught something twitching in the corner of his vision. He reflexively jumped back.
“It can’t be…” He doubted his eyes.
The corpses he had just been looking at were getting up.
“They were alive?”
He quickly realized that wasn’t the case. Their eyes were clouded, and they didn’t look as if they were breathing.
The corpses were moving.
Looking around, he saw that just about all the bodies that lay in the workshop were rising. And then, like puppets being controlled, they attacked the knights.
Two of the bodies attacked Richard, too. One of them swung half-dragon claws, while another bared knifelike fangs.
Richard immediately parried with his longsword. Fortunately, the corpses weren’t very strong. Slicing through his foes, Richard began to think of the corpses. Most likely, they were animated using foreign sorcery. He had heard tales of spells from another continent that could manipulate the dead.
He cut the corpses down, but they got right back up again. You couldn’t kill something that was already dead. Cutting them would slow them down, but it would take time to disable them. Richard figured he would have to defeat the person wielding the spell to put the bodies down for good.
He soon found the individual he was looking for; the man had killed a knight and was trying to escape the workshop.
He was a swarthy man. You could tell at a glance he was not from the kingdom. There were unfamiliar tattoos all over his body. Richard assumed they were foreign spells. The man was fighting with a knight, slinging spells with his dagger.
Two knights attacked the foreigner. The foreigner sliced them as they passed by, the blade sinking into the cracks of their armor. He was very fit, not at all what one expected from a scholar.
Blood was dripping from the tip of his blade.
The other knights made to attack him all at once. But—
“Stand down,” Richard ordered them. “Leave him to me. This will be a tough one. I don’t want you knights to shed blood for nothing.”
His troops left the foreigner to Richard and headed off to hold back the animated corpses.
Richard drew his weapons. His specialty was dual-wielding. With a longsword in his right hand and a main-gauche in his left, he faced the foreigner.
The two of them silently glared at one another. It seemed both were waiting for the other to make a move.
The first to act was the foreigner. He charged at Richard like an arrow. Richard met his strike, thrusting out with his longsword.
The foreigner outdid him, turning aside the longsword with the blade of his dagger. The longsword just slightly skimmed the foreigner’s cheek as it passed him.
A heartbeat later, they closed in. The foreigner kept going with his dagger, making to pierce Richard’s heart.
Richard blocked the blade with the knife in his left hand. A main-gauche was a defensive weapon. Using the shield built into the hilt, he turned aside his foe’s dagger.
Richard took a step back, adjusted the distance between them, and moved his feet continuously to maintain an advantageous space between them, where his longsword would just barely reach the foreigner. He swung his sword once more. The foreigner turned aside adroitly to avoid it, a technique characteristic of powerful fighters from his homeland. He moved gracefully, like a leopard.
Then the foreigner backed off. He also understood Richard would not be an easy foe to beat. He had to be rethinking how to attack.
Once again, the two men were glaring at each other, just like at the beginning of their duel. Neither had found any opening to strike.
But this fight was already over.
The foreigner’s legs began to tremble. His knees hit the floor.
The tip of Richard’s longsword was dipped in a numbing poison extracted from a fish. The battle had been his from the moment his blade skimmed the foreigner’s cheek.
The knights sighed in admiration. “Amazing as ever, Lord Richard.” “He’s not the king’s confidant for nothing…”
The animated corpses all fell. Disabling the foreigner appeared to have stripped him of his ability to control the dead.
Now all Richard had to do was deliver the foreigner to the knights under his command. With that, his task of wiping out this laboratory would be complete.
The knights came over, ready to take the foreigner into custody.
“Wait.” Richard stopped them. “Leave me and him alone. There’s something I want to ask this man.”
Upon receiving this order, the knights swiftly left the room. They must have assumed Richard was going to torture the foreigner to extract information about the laboratory.
Once they were alone, Richard said to the foreigner, “You can relax. I just want to talk.”
“Torture me as much as you like. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Such resolve… It seems you’re no mere scholar. If my estimation is correct…are you perhaps a soldier of an enemy nation? Seeing how you’ve bought up an estate in this town, large sums of money are most certainly involved.”
The foreigner glared at Richard silently.
“No fear in your eyes, even faced with your imminent death. I’m impressed. I suppose this means that you cannot betray your motherland.”
The foreigner did not reply. So Richard kept talking.
“Let’s talk about this laboratory. Doubtless, you were trying to create dragons capable of controlling the Power of God. And since you’re a foreign spy…that makes it quite obvious what the people researching the power here were trying to achieve.”
“Let me guess,” Richard said. “Your goal is to kill King Sigurd. To accomplish this, you need the Power of God.”
Sigurd was the hero of the kingdom. Being a child of God, he not only repelled attacks from foreign lands but also sought to expand the kingdom’s territory through war. Naturally, this had made him many enemies. The foreigner was not the only spy who had been sent to this land with orders to somehow kill its invincible king. However, if that were everything, then Richard would not have bothered to try to speak to this man.
There was one thing about this laboratory that was special compared to others. Namely, the progress of their research was remarkable. Richard had destroyed many laboratories before, but never had he seen one that had come so close to acquiring the Power of God.
In other words…
If Richard were to lend this foreigner a hand, he might acquire a weapon for killing Sigurd.
On a personal level, Richard loathed experiments involving children. He felt a sense of obligation to prevent others from being sacrificed like he had been. That was why he took the initiative with Sigurd to destroy the workshops.
However…
Brunhild’s frightened expression in the garden crossed his mind.
He wanted to see her smiling from the heart once more.
For her sake…
At present, Richard possessed no weapon that could kill the king.
And the man in front of him could give him exactly that.
Richard fell silent for a very long time, deep in thought. He hesitated so long that the foreigner grew suspicious.
But he finally opened his mouth. “Scum,” Richard insulted the foreigner. Or perhaps he was directing this at himself. “This workshop used children as test subjects for its experiments. If I got involved, I could furnish you with as many as you need.”
For the first time, the foreigner reacted to Richard’s words.
“Cooperate with me. Let us kill Sigurd together,” said Richard.
After finishing his takedown of the laboratory, Richard returned to the castle. The foreigner and his subordinates were confined in the dungeon, but Richard planned to help them escape later. From here on out, he would have his hands full providing an alternate laboratory for the remnants and devising a place to procure orphans.
On the inside, however, Richard was feeling slightly giddy. Despite the guilt he felt over the orphans he would have to sacrifice, he was glad he had found a way to save Brunhild.
I can finally kill Sigurd.
Still feeling worked up, he returned to his quarters. He was wide awake and anticipated a sleepless night.
Then his eyes fell on the table in his room. There was a ceramic jug of alcohol left there, one with a sophisticated pattern on it. It was not one of his possessions.
There was a cork in the jug. He opened the bottle, and a sweet scent tickled his nostrils. Peering inside, he saw it was filled with golden liquid. It was mead.
Then it clicked.
Sigurd had left this.
The king would show appreciation for his vassals’ efforts by granting them rewards. On top of that, he and Richard were like-minded in their hatred for the remnants of old Etherium. Sigurd must have left this for Richard, thinking him tired after wiping out the workshop.
But Richard snorted at the king’s consideration.
He opened up a window, thrust out the jug of liquor, and upturned it. Its sparkling contents spilled to the ground.
He wasn’t going to accept any charity from that man.
After throwing away the liquor, Richard scoffed. “How laughable.”
The king thought of the man trying to kill him as a friend. Richard found the kindness the man demonstrated to him on occasion unbearably disgusting.
But he would only have to suffer this unpleasantness a little longer.
Slowly but surely, his plans to kill the king were being laid.