Chapter 88
Aquila could not conceal his bewildernt when he suddenly ca face to face with soone he had believed he would never see again.
Gilesha.
A corrupted follower of the night and a mber of the Guild of Darkness.
The man who had personally co to Reschenhardt to kill Aquila, and who had handed over the mud of the Black Swamp to Celsia.
In every iteration, he had been Aquila’s enemy.
And yet, why was this man—who should have been imprisoned in Saintroia or dead—here?
“My earnest wish… no, no! It must have been fate that brought here. Yes, yes! That must be it!”
Gilesha trembled with emotion, his face flushed.
CLANK, CLATTER!
Each ti he shouted in an exaggerated tone and flung his arms about, the shackles around his wrists rattled heavily.
The one gripping the chains to ensure the sinner could not move was a temple knight standing behind Ianpel, clad in silver armor engraved with the emblem of Sun God Raspalara.
Thus, Gilesha could not advance any farther and rely flailed where he stood.
“It must be that I have been granted another chance. Did I not do everything for you? So please, please save . O Al Siden…!”
“What? Whom did you just call…?”
Al Siden?
Yet Gilesha stared only at Aquila, clasped his hands together, and began to plead as though no one else existed.
Before he had fully grasped the situation, Aquila’s gaze shifted sharply to Ianpel.
His eyes narrowed coldly as they fixed upon the Saint.
“…You will explain what this ans.”
“Of course. I was going to. I was on my way to explain, but everyone insisted on blocking , so what could I do?”
Despite the frosty stares around him, Ianpel remained perfectly composed.
He had already anticipated the reaction they would have the mont Gilesha appeared.
CLANK, CLANG!
Amid the tense atmosphere, only Gilesha seed desperate to approach Aquila.
Without sparing the sinner even a single glance, Aquila stared coldly at the Saint for a mont before turning his head.
He knew there was nothing to be gained by continuing this standoff in the corridor of an ordinary inn.
Especially in a place devoid of even the most basic soundproofing spell.
“…Let us go inside and talk. You will give a proper explanation.”
“Certainly. Do not worry. I will tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail.”
Ianpel smiled faintly.
Aquila shot him a sidelong look at that shalessly brazen expression and clicked his tongue softly before turning away.
***
“In short, it seems I ddled with his head a little too recklessly.”
Ianpel wore his usual gentle smile.
To any observer, he would have appeared benevolent. That was precisely the problem, given what he had just said.
“So, while rummaging through his mind to read his mories, that man…”
“Yes. You could say his brain burned and he went a little mad.”
Ianpel replied as though it were nothing of consequence.
According to his explanation, this was what had happened.
Upon arriving in Saintroia, they had locked Gilesha in a prison from which no one could escape.
By that point, Gilesha had already lost his sanity.
After Aquila’s visit, his mind had grown even more shattered. He had possessed no will to live, yet he could not bring himself to end his own life, and so he had passed each day in utter aninglessness.
Though Ianpel would not have known it, Gilesha had likely fallen into despair after realizing, from Aquila’s expression of “disappointnt,” that he would never receive salvation.
If there was no salvation in the form of death, then only endless suffering awaited him.
Ianpel, however, had paid little attention to the sinner’s condition.
His task was not to care for the prisoner, but to extract the necessary information.
Using the Invasion skill, Ianpel had begun to examine Gilesha’s mind piece by piece.
Although he had sensed the overload from early on—given that it was practically the sa as connecting their minds—he had focused solely on drawing out information, even if it ant the sinner’s brain would lt away.
“It required quite a bit of caution. It was the most difficult one yet. So I tried to tornt him for as long as possible—ah, no, to obtain as much assistance as I could…”
Ianpel placed the tip of his index finger against his lips and paused briefly.
“How should I put this? Hmm… To put it simply, you could say the mories beca mixed during the process of tampering with them.”
“Mixed?”
“Yes. I will not explain exactly how it works, but when inducing mories, it does not proceed chronologically from the most recent to the distant past.”
Even if Ianpel phrased it that way, Aquila already knew how the Invasion skill worked from a previous iteration.
Forcibly rummaging through soone’s mind was akin to flinging open countless doors at random.
And from each door began the mory the person possessed.
That was how Ianpel had described it in another life.
He had also said that when the brain beca overloaded, mories could beco hopelessly entangled.
More often than not, such cases ended in death before long.
“Yes, well. And? Exactly which mories beca entangled to leave him in that state?”
Aquila glanced sideways at Gilesha, who was kneeling in a corner and gazing at him fervently.
Their eyes t for the briefest instant, and joy imdiately flooded Gilesha’s face, which had long been twisted.
It was the unmistakable reaction of a fanatic.
Seeing a gaze he had never once imagined would be directed at him, Aquila frowned, irritation creasing his brow.
“It is a mory you know well, from the day we t in Celteng before the Founding Festival was held.”
It was not an old mory, and Aquila recalled it at once.
The journey during which they had been transporting Gilesha to Portplum.
Ianpel’s sudden appearance in Celteng, and the events that had followed, ca back to him one by one.
Which ant…
“Were you that curious about what I did during the interrogation? About what might have happened?”
The ti when he and Gilesha had been left alone in the carriage at Gilesha’s request.
It was that mory Ianpel had wanted to see.
“You would never tell , would you? How you befriended him, what you did to make him behave that way in the Grand Temple’s prison—everything.”
He had persistently questioned Aquila even in the prison. It seed he had not wanted to miss his chance before Gilesha’s brain burned beyond recovery.
Even as Aquila’s face twisted in disbelief, Ianpel rely shrugged shalessly.
It was not as though Aquila had failed to consider that Ianpel might read that mory.
Still…
He recalled the interrogation in Celteng.
After first learning of Belmaburn, he had tried by any ans to coax Gilesha into revealing what had happened.
In the process, he had shown the mark known only to corrupted fanatics, claid to be a ssenger of Al Siden, and said he could grant salvation…
Did those actions beco entangled with mories from the past, causing Gilesha to believe Aquila himself was Al Siden?
How much had Ianpel seen?
Had he also seen the mont Aquila cut his own arm with a blade to carve the crescent-shaped mark?
Ianpel spoke quietly.
“In his older mories, I saw an altar. A robe like the night sky, a staff set with a red jewel, and a long strip of black cloth hanging from the head. Things like that.”
Al Siden.
Everything Ianpel described symbolized Al Siden.
Aquila now understood exactly how this had happened.
Gilesha’s previous encounter with Al Siden had beco hopelessly intertwined with Aquila’s actions in Celteng when he had shown the mark.
“What kind of….”
How could the timing have been so absurdly precise?
Aquila ran a hand through his hair in disbelief.
“Very well… I understand. But why is he so docile?”
“Ha ha. As I said, his brain burned. After that, he does not care who stands before him. Yet he reacts only to you. So I wondered what would happen if I brought him here.”
Ianpel smiled lightly.
The Saint, still wearing an utterly untroubled expression, added, “If I touch his mind even a little more, it will lt completely.”
It was his first ti opening the mind of a Sword Expert, so he could not be certain. But even with a Fractured Heart, Gilesha had trained himself diligently and steadily climbed the ranks.
That stubborn vitality was likely why he still lived, though now he stood on the brink.
“I may have used too much force at the start to ensure the connection. I did not gain as much as I hoped. And yet there is a mountain of things left to uncover.”
Ianpel revealed that the reason he had brought Gilesha all the way before Aquila was to ask for a favor.
“Would you ask the sinner sothing? Sothing secret—sothing he would not normally answer. If my theory is correct, I believe he will answer anything you ask.”
He had decided to wager on the possibility that Gilesha would follow Aquila.
After all, using the Invasion skill again would surely kill him.
Though Aquila did not welco the encounter, the Saint’s reasoning held so rit.
So this ti, he did not avert his gaze.
He looked directly at Gilesha.
“Gilesha. Where did you say the headquarters of the Guild of Darkness was located?”
Realizing the question had been directed at him, Gilesha’s eyes filled with joy.
At the sound of his na, he sprang to his feet, chains rattling loudly.
Clutching his hands together as though in prayer, he began to speak.
“I never imagined you would take interest in the Guild of Darkness! Of course I know! Labyrinth City, Labyrinth! Among the breeding grounds of secrecy, go to the building painted white…”
Ianpel’s gamble had succeeded.
***
With his face hidden beneath the hood of his robe, Gilesha was once again shoved into a corner of a barred carriage.
It seed true that his attention lay solely with Aquila. He beca docile at once.
Gilesha’s mories had never beco entangled like this before. The situation was taking a strange turn.
Ianpel had already learned the location of the Guild of Darkness headquarters while rummaging through his mind, so he knew Gilesha had not lied.
Now that he had confird Gilesha followed Aquila, once their schedule in Denimarad concluded, Aquila would inevitably have to participate in another interrogation.
…It was better than gaining nothing at all.
Thus, the incident of the “surprise gift” ca to an unexpected conclusion.
One that pleased Ianpel most of all.
In any case, after the storm had passed, Aquila and Ianpel’s party decided to move their lodgings to the central district before the effects wore off any further.
From the mont they had entered the room, Aquila had skillfully cast a soundproofing spell, but better lodgings already bore such formulas by default. There would be no need to expend his mana unnecessarily.
Even so, though they had stayed only half a day, they handed the innkeeper a considerable sum before boarding the carriage and heading toward the center of Denimarad.
***
“Your hair at the back is sticking up a little, Young Master. Please lower your head for a mont.”
After smoothing the back of Aquila’s bowed head, the attendant checked more than ten tis for any other imperfections before stepping away.
Servants bustled about, holding up ornants to his hands and ears, shaking their heads before moving off again.
The preparations had begun early in the morning.
Fully dressed and with his hair neatly fixed in place, Aquila was examining his reflection in the mirror when Shen, who had stepped outside briefly, knocked lightly and spoke.
“Young Master. Lady Astia has arrived.”
At those words, the door opened.
And at the sa ti, a figure with luxuriant crimson hair appeared before Aquila’s eyes.
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