Chapter 86

SUB.33 Kagun Kihara had first met Marianne Sringeneier about three years ago. At the time, there had been no World War III, so the framework of Gremlin—which had sprung up as a result of the war—naturally didn’t exist, either. In a way, Marianne was closer with him any other sorcerer in Gremlin. “He’s just like you, Mjölnir. I just can’t seem to get away from him. Neither of you can eat raw shellfish, either.” At the time, Marianne wasn’t creating divine armaments as a dvergr but rather striving for advancements in dvergr tools. The dvergr had nearly gone extinct in the past. But just as the steam engine had brought about the Industrial Revolution and had taken warfare to explosive heights, Marianne wanted to improve her people’s tools enough that the whole world would come to know their strength and technology. To fulfill her objective, she needed the right people. The one she’d chosen had been Kagun Kihara, who was a wanderer at the time. As for how that worked out… “I don’t really understand how her technology works, which is exactly why I’m so curious about it. But as far as I can tell, she’s already perfected the golden ratio in machine form. A Kihara I know could add to it, but its purity would only decrease.” And so Kagun had turned her down. That said, being able to calmly point out an error in somebody’s goal in life was a kind of talent—especially for a psychopath like Marianne. Perhaps Kagun’s previous post was at play. Marianne had taught Kagun very little. Once he was convinced that sorcery did, in fact, exist, he began learning how to refine his magic power and assemble spells almost completely on his own. Marianne once confessed this to Mjölnir: “Why even teach the guy? There’s so many things for him to learn. But as soon as I try to teach him something by the book, it transforms into something different in his mind. He’ll just have to figure it all out for himself. The only thing I can really do is correct him. It’s like I’m not giving him the power to blow things up like a missile—I’m just correcting the explosives’ trajectories by adding wings to them, I guess? …Ha-ha. He must have infected me with all that tech talk.” After he joined Gremlin, Kagun made many achievements not as a sorcerer but as a nonconforming researcher from the science side. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that his knowledge was the reason that Gremlin’s sorcerers were trying to use both science and magic in the first place. In all likelihood, his knowledge would continue to be useful to Gremlin even if he died. Kagun may have abandoned Academy City, but he was never able to abandon science. How powerful a sorcerer was he, then, as someone who had voluntarily left Academy City in search of new power? Marianne had this simple comment on the topic. “He might be strong, but he has zero use cases.” Kagun’s only goal was self-destruction. He didn’t want to win or lose against the object of his revenge. He wanted to assure their mutual destruction. That was what all those spells he created and sharpened were for. Gremlin had a lot of twisted sorcerers in its ranks, but nobody was willing to try and learn from his methods. Everyone thought them to risky to mess with. In truth, Marianne had brought him into the fold as part of a larger plan. If they needed Kagun the scientist rather than Kagun the sorcerer, then maybe she’d be able to stop him from carrying out his reckless—that was the only word Marianne could think of to describe it—revenge plot. Ultimately, though, that wasn’t how things had played out. Kagun certainly ended up busier, being one of the very few cores of the Gremlin operation’s science field. But whenever he had a free moment, he would improve his own spells and learn from other sorcerers’ techniques, honing his already risky magic to a razor’s edge. He clearly wanted to carry out this vengeance at all costs, and he never stopped thinking about it. He could come across a baby bird and wonder how he might use it to further his goals. At that point, Marianne switched tactics. She couldn’t stop him from trying to exact vengeance. Instead, she began throwing her full support behind him, trying to make the man incredibly powerful. Strong enough that even if this reckless revenge plot worked, he would still survive and come back. She would distort the very ending of the story of vengeance in his mind. She thought that would be enough. She thought she’d be able to save this person she considered a friend from his deep-seated obsession with revenge. “If you end up surviving somehow after everything, and you don’t see a point in living anymore, just come to me, all right?” She’d said it half-jokingly, but it wasn’t a joke in the slightest. Kagun had smiled vaguely at her but never nodded. Because the answer was already set in stone. She couldn’t change anything. She couldn’t save him. In the end, all Marianne had been able to do was watch her friend meet death. Kagun had settled things with the person who’d caused the incident he’d gotten caught up in. His vengeance was complete. So she, too, would stay true to herself. Even if it was pointless. Even if it would help nobody. Marianne bared her fangs at everything that had driven Kagun to his death—herself included.