“Leaving?”
Having heard Reitri suddenly saying they will be leaving Rainfield, Riley tilted his head side to side.
“Are you saying you sold all of your goods?”
The question he asked earlier was brought up again. Reitri shook his head and said,
“No, it is not like that.”
Reitri added that he may have to sell the umbrellas at a bargain price or he may not be able to sell them at this place at all. Reitri sighed big enough to make the ground sink.
“You are not acting like a businessman? Like the kid says sometimes, what are you going to do if you go bankrupt doing things like that?”
Looking at Reitri sighing, Riley thought about how Horai complained to Reitri. Riley asked further.
“Well, is there something else more important that came up?”
“No.”
Reitri shook his head again.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s important to make a profit, but people’s lives are more important… That’s what we thought.”
Reitri answered with a bitter look on his face.
Riley wiggled his eyebrows for a moment. He eventually understood where Reitri was coming from. Riley bought up the dark mage that they talked about earlier.
“Because of that bastard?”
“Yes…”
As if he was getting a headache from all this, Reitri scratched his head and messed up his hair. He started to talk about the book that the dark mage took.
“It’s about the raincloud.”
“Raincloud?”
“I gathered some information, and this is based on that. Soon, I think there will be acidic rain falling in Rainfield. On top of that… it will be a very dangerous one.”
Rainfield never had acidic rain before. Now, Reitri was talking about the possibility of acidic rain on the entire city. He sighed and explained.
“I think that dark mage is going to do something to the clouds and cause acidic rain.”
Having heard what Reitri said, Riley looked at Nainiae and asked.
“Is that possible?”
“… Theoretically, it is possible. Although it will take a very long time to prepare to make all clouds covering the entire city to be like that.”
Having heard Nainiae’s explanation, Reitri nodded and explained more.
“If what Ms. Nainiae said earlier is true, this acidic rain is probably… going to cause more than just little bit of hair loss or damage to properties.”
Reitri murmured that the dark mage was going to cause a large-scale disaster. He shook his head, thinking there is no way to solve this.
“I think… With this incident, the bounty on that dark mage is going to go up even further.”
Judging from the tone of his voice, Reitri seemed to have given up.
Listening to him talk, Riley asked with a confused look on his face.
“About what you are saying now, did you tell it to the Rainfield’s guards?”
“Yes.”
Having heard Riley’s question, Reitri looked like he was wronged. It seemed like he was thinking about when he tried to explain it to the guards.
“I said that… the situation seemed very serious, so it would be best to have people leave the city for safety even if they plan on hunting down the dark mage.”
Reitri said that he didn’t just go meet and talk to the guards, but he actually explained it to someone who was a higherup. Reitri tightened his fist.
“But.. they said it will be a little difficult.”
“Huh?”
“It’s because of money.”
Rainfield was currently enjoying the greatest peak season ever in the history.
This summer was hotter than usual, so even more people came to visit Rainfield. It meant a lot of outside money flowing in to the city.
“They said… it’s just rain, and it falls every day, every week, every month, every year, so it’s no big deal.”
To summarize what Reitri was trying to say, it was something like this.
“The higherups have rotten heads on their shoulders, so they don’t give a rat’s ass about evacuating the tourists? Did I understand you correctly?”
Reitri nodded calmly.
“When the acidic rain hits Rainfield, many people will die, and the dead will be, just like the people in the library…”
“Become puppets?”
“… Probably.”
Finding all this to be ridiculous, Riley started to flinch his facial muscles.
“Ha! Seriously, no matter where I go, there always are bastards like these.”
If Ian was here, if he heard what Reitri explained, Ian would have chewed and spat out immediately the following, ‘Those fucking runts! Who are they? What kind of boneheads are these bastards.’
“Ugh, it hasn’t even been two weeks since I started vacation here…”
‘Should I step in? It’s such a bother, but still? What about the shit-storm after I resolve this?’
Riley agonized over all sorts of things. Reitri, who quenched his neck with a sip of tea, asked Riley.
“Young Master Riley, what are you going to do?”
Riley was keeping from giving a response. Reitri started to explain what his group was going to do.
“First, we will be… finding new mercenaries and try to move to a different city. An umbrella could be used as a parasol too. Anyway, the loss won’t be so severe that it will make us go bankrupt.”
Having heard Reitri, Nainiae asked as she tilted her head side to side.
“New mercenaries? Aren’t you with Lightning Boulder mercenaries?”
Now that Riley thought about it, he didn’t see any of the Lightning Boulder mercenaries in the hotel.
“About that… I tried to convince them, but unfortunately, it didn’t go well. All three of them said they want to stay in Rainfield.”
“Stay here?”
Nainiae asked back, and Reitri nodded. He said,
“The commander’s life is tangled up with the dark mage. There is bad blood between them. He said he will take this opportunity to put an end to this bad blood.”
Having heard Reitri’s explanation, Riley narrowed his eyes and thought about what one of the members of the Lightning Boulder mercenary group said.
‘The former commander is one of the victims.’
Riley understood why they chose to stay in Rainfield. Riley narrowed his eyes.
* * *
One of street lights on Rainfield flickered.
“… Found him.”
It seemed that the street light’s lifespan was almost over. Under the flickering street light, there was a boy with his spear leaning against his shoulder. With a deadly look on his eyes, he was looking at the area in front of him.
“Um?”
In the direction of his gaze, there was a man wearing a pitch-black cape waving in the air. The man was looking back.
“One of the high grounds in Rainfield… The place that would be best for interfering with clouds… As expected of Mr. Reitri. Although there were very few clues, he deduced the right answer just on these.”
The boy said he came to find the man. Having heard the boy, the man under the black cape peeked a smile and asked back.
“Are you a tourist?”
“…”
“This place has a great view. In Rainfield, there is no place better suited for vacantly watching the rainy scenery.”
The boy, who was listening to the man talking, tapped the spear on his shoulder and tossed a question at the man.
“It looks like you are not done with preparations?”
“…”
The boy warned the man to be ready.
The face of the man, who was smiling until now, started to wiggle.
“If I successfully pierce through your neck before you finish preparing, will I be getting a step closer to being a true hero like Mr. Ian?”
The boy stepped closer as he mumbled. A puddle on the ground made splashing noise as if it was cheering for the boy.
“Pierce through the neck? Who’s neck?”
The man tilted his head side to side as if he didn’t quite understand.
Watching the man’s arrogance, the boy started to grind his teeth.
“5 years ago…”
The boy flipped over the hood part of the raincoat that covered his head and said,
“There was a bastard who laughed like a madman after massacring our ‘kind.’ Today, I’ll be piercing through that bastard’s neck.”
With the hood turned over, the boy’s face was revealed.
The boy’s face was completely filled with fury and deadly intent. On his face, his eyes were changed to something inhuman, sharp like the eyes of snakes.
“Ah?”
Facing the boy’s eyes, the man in black cape lifted his hood and opened his eyes wide.
“Ah! Those eyes?”
The boys eyes, which became like snakes, were glaring at the man’s face as if he was going to punch holes through it.
“…”
The man’s face was most certainly the face of the man that was laughing like a maniac at the horrific scene that the boy witnessed five years ago.
“Ah, those eyes! I remember! I remember! It was incredible!”
Having noticed the eyes, the man in black cape started to wiggle his face.
“To avoid eternal life, they set fire on their own bodies and charged at me. It was really… Wow, it was really incredible!”
The man continued in an excited tone.
The boy’s hand, which was holding the spear, shook from fury.
“To think that there was a survivor among your kind!”
“…”
“Is this revenge? Of course, this is revenge, right? Ah, how ungrateful! I merely tried to be generous in giving them eternal lives?”
“… Shut up.”
The boy murmured as if he was whispering.
Perhaps it was buried in the sound of rain. The man was still wiggling his facial muscles as he looked at the boy.
“Are you going to set fire on your body and charge at me?”
“Shut up…”
“Ah, wait! This is Rainfield? Unfortunately, it would be hard to set fire on your body here!”
The man in black cape tapped his wiggling face. He started to laugh as if he was happy.
“Back then, I only managed to save ‘one,’ but to think a great opportunity like this would come! Your kind will become ‘two’ now.”
The man flicked his finger, and the street light, which was flickering, started to weaken.
“Now that I think about it, your face looks similar to the face belonging to the one I have with me.”
Dududu…
The ground around the man under the cape started to shake.
The boy, wondering what it was, narrowed his eyes. What he witnessed was… a black hand that suddenly came out of the ground.
“… Guuuurrrr.”
The hand, which came out of the ground, pressed on to the ground, and thereafter, a shoulder, a head with hairs missing here and there, and a face appeared.
“Coincidence is really…”
The man with the cape mumbled, and the boy strained his eyes.
“…?!”
“As I thought, I was right!”
Clap clap!
The man clapped as if he was happy about this.
“Ah ah, I got to do two things in just one day! It’s such a great day! I’m getting closer to the goal, and I also get to help out on reuniting a father and a son with my own hands!”
A corpse came out of the ground near the man with the cape.
The corpse was rotten, but it had facial features that the boy knew very well.
It was the person who the boy missed very much, and he was even in the boy’s dreams often.
“Father…?”
In an uncomfortable pose, the dark corpse was holding a spear.
That corpse was… not only a kin that he lost five years ago, but also his father.
“Of all of you, he was the one who was especially talented, right? I didn’t want to lose him, so I worked very hard!”
“…”
“Well, to salvage the corpse, he ended up losing some hair and looks pretty bad, but… Still, you can recognize him, right? You are his blood!”
The man patted the corpse and smiled refreshingly.
Watching the man doing this, the boy, Nara Basilisk, tightly grabbed the spear, enough to break the part he was holding.
Ignoring the blood leaking out of his mouth, he said,
“I will kill you…”
“… Aw, come on…”
“Definitely… I’ll definitely kill you!!”
Swuuuwaaaa.
This time, his voice was loud enough to bury the sound of Rainfield’s rainfall. Basilisk roared loudly.
The man under the cape put up a scared look on his face.
“Aw…”
Along with a scream like sound, from the caped man’s blind side, an arrow came flying toward him.
It was from Rorona from the same mercenary group as Basilisk.
“Oh my!”
Before anyone realized, there was another corpse standing next to the man. Using its head, the corpse carried out perfectly the task of blocking the arrow.
“I allowed you meet your father again.”
Along with his mumble, the flickering street lights were turned off completely.
“Really…”
Along with a long echoing sound, several red lines soared up to the sky.
Boom…
Boom…
The waterproof fireworks, the specialty of Rainfield that were seen only in special occasions… started to decorate the sky.
“How ungrateful…”
The man with the cape looked at Basilisk and smiled.
It seemed Rainfield’s fireworks started.
