章 290: The Successors (2)
"It was you, the one who brought the Night Hound and the Saint into the vault."
A tone that seemed to catch an insider.
Demian turned his head and was stunned.
Eyes as big as a deer's, pupils as clear, and white hair that glistened with silver.
She looked like a dead Juliette come back to life.
But the illusion is literally a blink of an eye.
He lowered his eyelids once, then lifted them, and reality set in.
The girl in front of him looked a little younger than Juliet, and her hair was much shorter.
Most importantly, she was someone Demian knew.
"...Sinclair J Bourgeois."
Niece of Demian J Bourgeois and daughter of Bartolomeo J Bourgeois.
The scion of the Bourgeois family stood there.
Demian swallowed a faint groan.
It was because he'd seen the name on the list that he'd attended a party thrown by a bunch of academy students that he'd become the director of the Money Manufacturing Bureau in the first place.
"It's a misunderstanding."
Demian shook his head.
He was familiar with Night Hound, but he didn't know much about demons.
"I haven't heard of it either, I just happened to notice it a bit before everyone else and ran. In fact, I hadn't even arrived home yet."
Because of this, he was able to skillfully mix truth and lies.
Sinclair glanced at Demian, then looked away.
"...Well, never mind, that's not important right now."
She stood before the body of her father, Bartolomeo.
She murmured in a low voice.
"There was something I wanted to ask you, and now I'll never get to ask you."
Sinclair thought back to her time at the Academy.
-'I have questions about the future state of the Empire's economy, questions about our current financial metrics, questions about our criteria for finding new businesses, questions about the recent mergers and acquisitions between the promising small merchant guilds and the mercenary guilds... and questions about whether tycoons eat chicken!'
-'I have questions, too.'
-'Oh, Sinclair, what do you want to know? Do you want to guess the questions with me?'
-'...No. I only have one question.'
-'Eh? Only one? Only one?'
-'Yeah.'
-'No, come on, we should learn a lot from meeting the Empire's greatest tycoon, it's a chance we might never get again!'
While her teammate Piggy was getting all excited about meeting the Empire's greatest tycoon, Sinclair had only one question on her list.
But it was all for nothing now that the man who was supposed to answer it was dead in this place.
Then.
"'Why did you abandon me', that's it, that's the question."
Demian, behind her, spoke up.
Sinclair stared, and Demian shrugged.
"Juliet asked me the same thing. When she was alive."
"...Juliet's sister too?"
Sinclair's eyes widened a little.
Then Demian bit his lip slightly. The look of surprise on Sinclair's face was the same as Juliet's on that day so long ago.
"Yes. In conclusion, your father and family did not abandon you."
Bourgeois family tradition. It is exactly as Demian explained to Night Hound earlier.
The average young Bourgeois grows up in the family, but the "real" ones are different.
Like a lion's cub falling off a cliff, the future leaders of the family are thrown into society as commoners with their family name sealed.
Survival in society is as difficult as survival in the wild.
Achieving success in the imperial capital, the center of the empire, solely on one's own strength, without any help from parents or family. That is the process of 'proof'.
Esse, Non Videri. The belief that 'it exists, but is not revealed'.
"The Bourgeois family always cultivates more than one leader for checks and balances, for competition. In my generation, it was brother and me; in the next, you and Juliet."
Demian told Sinclair that fact.
Then, hesitantly, he added a word.
"...I don't know why my brother didn't tell you that, because it's something he should have told you much earlier."
A moment.
Throbbing-
Sinclair felt a throbbing headache.
Blood was flowing from where she'd been cut by the shard of gold coin earlier.
The sight of blood triggered a memory from earlier.
[It wouldn't be a bad idea to weed out useless relationships at this point. As of this time, all plays have ended.]
Bartolomeo, or rather the giant monster floating above him, spoke.
"Useless relationships, plays?
Sinclair staggered, holding her spinning head.
"Are you okay?"
Demian stepped closer, but Sinclair jerked back, startled.
Sinclair was wary, like a stray cat on edge.
She backed away slowly, palms up toward Demian.
Her eyes as if she didn't have a single thing in the world to believe.
"If a demon really did take over my father's body,... who raised me as a child? Which one is my father, and when did that happen?"
"?"
Demian didn't understand what Sinclair was saying now.
But Sinclair kept muttering anyway.
"What if my father was never my father in the first place? What then? What if it wasn't the demon who died, but my father? Or what if it wasn't my father, but the demon? What the hell, I don't know...."
Sinclair ran her hands through her hair in agony.
Suddenly, she snapped her head up.
"...Night Hound. I need to see him again."
Whether it was the demon, her father, the demon in her father's mask, or her father in the demon's mask that Night Hound killed, all things are resolved.
Rising from his seat, Sinclair approached Bartolomeo's body in front of him.
She reached out and closed the bulging eyes.
"Farewell, father, I'll take over the reins."
"Goodbye, Father, I'll take over the reigns."
Words Demian doesn't even think about behind Sinclair's back.
But Demian can only stare at Sinclair's back in silence.
And then.
Sinclair's eyes calm down.
Sinclair looks like she's made a decision.
* * *
"Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh!"
A suburb far from the Bourgeois family. A road leading to the Imperial Capital.
A middle-aged man was running through a mountain pass.
His once clean face was stained with scars, and his neat white robe was stained with mud.
Humbert. Why is he, a cardinal of the Great Lun Order, running so quickly, even abandoning his carriage?
"Damn it! Damn it! Bartolomeo was a demon, I had no idea!"
He ran through the bushes with a frightened expression.
Shortly before Vikir's meeting with Bartolomeo, Humbert had lunch with Bartolomeo.
This is because the imperial family began an investigation as the criminal chain leading to the Old Testament faction of Quovadis, the cults, and the Bourgeois was revealed to some extent.
Fearing that he was being thrown out with his tail between his legs, Humbert met with Bartolomeo and threatened to blow the whole thing up if he was ever investigated or arrested.
And that's where Belial showed his true colors.
Humbert threw himself at Belial's feet and begged for mercy, and the capricious Belial readily let him live.
[Use this in a moment of crisis, weak human].
As an added bonus, he gave him a 'gift'.
"... Huh. A gift from the demon."
Humbert clutched the thing in his hand tighter and tighter.
It was a round object made of gold. A sphere shaped like an eyeball.
It was imbued with the power of the Demon King Belial, and as expected, it exuded a strange aura.
Humbert had just broken through the bushes.
"Hic!"
What he saw was a cliff that was as high as the sky.
Humbert jumped back in horror.
Rustle-
The sound of crashing branches could be heard from above.
"Whaaaat!?"
Humbert dropped to the ground, startled by the sound.
Lying flat on his back in the dirt, Humbert tried to cover his head with his hands.
But he had to wonder why he couldn't get his hands to his head, even though he raised his arms.
"...?"
Looking up and down at his hands, Humbert was horrified.
Both hands were gone from the wrists up.
Only hot blood was gushing out of them.
[Oho? I only wanted to take what was in your hands, but you cut them off?]
A woman's muffled laughter could be heard overhead.
Where Humbert hurriedly looked up, he saw a tree branch gently bending.
And the person sitting on top of it is a monster with two horns.
Ms. Uroboros. The one who made Humbert run all the way here.
She cut off Humbert's hand!
[Oooh- it's pretty. Is this it? A sacred object said to have been received from the demon?]
She laughed as she touched the golden orb stained with blood.
"Gi, give it back!"
Humbert summoned his courage and shouted.
The only thing more disturbing than the loss of his two limbs was the loss of the Demon's Eyeball that Belial had given him.
And of course Miss Uroboros would not give it back.
[A priest with a reputation, selling children for money behind his back, and now working with the demon? That's a lot to take in].
"Ugh, ugh!"
Humbert cringes at her words, as if she's penetrating his mind.
But Miss Uroboros still only smiles her seductive smile.
[I don't mind, though, a criminal like you, I'm 'collecting'].
"...What, collect?"
Humbert looks puzzled.
Thud!
Suddenly, a snake-like creature flies out from behind and wraps itself around Humbert's neck, suffocating him.
It was Miss Uroboros's whip.
"Kuhugh!?"
Humbert was unable to resist even as he was dragged upward, strangled.
Both his hands had already been sliced off.
As Humbert struggled frantically in the air, Miss Uroboros spoke with a hint of laughter in her voice.
[I'll 'assist' you, too. Let's go 'Old Era' with me].
"?"
What does 'Old Era' mean? Isn't it usually 'New Era' when someone wants to welcome something together?
Humbert questioned her words even as his consciousness slowly faded.
Then Miss Uroboros whispered another word into his ear.
[The 'Warring States Period'.]
That was the last thing Humbert heard in his right mind.
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