And then she suddenly asked, “Hey... tell me. Why? How?”
“E-Eh?! You ask me that, b-but...” I turned to look at the happy puppy, which was still wiggling in my arms.
Is this really true? This puppy is a familiar of darkness? I... guess it did come out of the black thing, yeah. But what is a familiar of darkness anyway? Is it dangerous? But it’s so cute, I don’t think it would hurt anyone...
“But, well... since you’ve taken it for yourself, there’s not much to be done. Can’t do much now, so... you can have that puppy.”
“E-Eh...? Really? Thank you...” I thanked her reflexively, but... hmm? Something didn’t feel right.
“Hee hee. You really are an interesting one, Katarina Claes...” the girl said, once again laughing in that same way.
“Wait... why do you know my name...?” There was no reason for her to know something like that.
Before I could ask, the girl moved. She raised an arm and muttered something under her breath. I saw Jeord raise his sword in response to her movements, but—
Before anything else could happen, the room was enveloped in an absolute, pitch-black darkness. It was a pure absence of light. I could not see a thing.
In the darkness, her voice echoed. “Honestly... I wanted to chat more, but I have to be going soon. We’ll meet again somewhere, I’m sure...”
And with that, light suddenly returned to the room. But the girl was long gone.
“What... was that?” I muttered.
There was no response except for a single happy bark from the puppy cradled in my arms.
Immediately after the woman vanished, Larna and company rushed into the room. They had finally picked up on the trail of the perpetrator, and then felt a strong presence of dark magic, which eventually led them back to this very room. Jeord and I explained everything that had happened up until this point to Larna.
“Hmm. I see. And this is the familiar of darkness?” Larna asked, looking at the puppy in my arms. “There are many questions I would like to ask you, and in great detail. But we shouldn’t stay here. Now that the Dark Magic cast upon Keith has been dispelled, we should go to a safe location immediately.”
As she said, that was the best thing to do. So our little group started to exit the new-money mansion.
“...Um. Could we bring the little puppy with us?” It was simply too adorable. I couldn’t just let it go. When I had set it down onto the ground and tried to leave, the puppy immediately plodded after me — it would break my heart to simply leave it in that room.
“Of course. It’s definitely an interesting thing. And it doesn’t pose any harm, from what I can see. Yes, we shall take it with us.”
“Great! Thank you!” With Larna’s permission, I scooped up the little black puppy and took it with us.
Perhaps because Keith was simply that tired, he remained fast asleep. He was terribly hurt all over, with injuries visible everywhere. But Maria helped heal his wounds with her Light Magic, and he at least looked a bit more like his old self now.
Our conversation shifted to the question of who should carry the injured and sleeping Keith.
“Ah, I have just the thing,” Larna said. She withdrew a mat from the luggage pack Sora was carrying. It was the same one we’d had our picnics on.
Keith was laid gently on the mat, and Larna said something under her breath. Before I knew it, the mat had lifted a few centimeters off the ground.
“Wow! That’s amazing!” I cheered, unable to contain my excitement.
Larna informed me that this was nothing more than a simple adaptation of the Wind Magic she specialized in. It was very much like a flying carpet of some kind. I asked enthusiastically if the mat would take to the skies and zip around freely in the air, but unfortunately it turned out that a few centimeters was the limit.
As I described my vision of a flying carpet to Larna, her eyes sparkled with delight. “I see... what a novel idea! Perhaps we could expand on that...” Maybe we would see a real flying carpet in the future!
With Keith now safely on the hovering mat and the black puppy cradled in my arms, we finally stepped out of the new-money mansion. There were hardly any guards on the way out. I asked Larna what that was all about, and was told that they had been dealt with while the three of them had been searching for the Wielder of Darkness. This really was the strongest party ever.
With that... my journey, and the search for Keith, was finally over.
Chapter 4: Hence the Incident is Resolved
Under the name Larna Smith, I hold a senior position at the Magical Ministry — though my real name is Susanna Randall.
I had just finished compiling a report detailing the Keith Claes kidnapping incident. With the report in hand, I decided to pay a visit to Jeffery Stuart, the first crown prince of the kingdom, and technically my fiancé.
Jeffery greeted me with his usual flippant smile. “Hey there. That all ended up being quite the ordeal, didn’t it?”
“Yes, quite. It really went beyond my expectations, and not in a good way.” Indeed, this particular case had ended up being a lot more trouble than I could have ever imagined. As for how it ended, Keith had been rescued, and the mansion and its owner had been seized by the Ministry.
We were still dealing with the aftermath. The staff assigned to the case had been working hard, especially my subordinate, Raphael. He had quite literally been working around the clock, hardly resting, if at all.
“Good work indeed! Well then, I helped out too, so let’s hear all about the specifics.”
“Sure. I owe you one, after all.” By sharing what information I had with him, we were always able to plan for the worst. If and when the situation called for it, Jeffery’s power and status as a royal, combined with my capabilities as a high-ranking member of the Ministry, could be put to good use. So we often shared information with each other, unless it was incriminating or disadvantageous for one or the other of us to know about.
I started going over the specifics of the Keith Claes kidnapping case. Firstly, the main suspect who had currently been accused of the kidnapping and violent abuse of Keith was one Thomas Coleman — Keith’s half-brother, born to a different mother. The son of Viscount Coleman and originally the heir to the family name, he had been raised without ever wanting for anything, and somewhere along the way became a useless, conceited man.
He was quite the troublemaker in the Coleman estate. Shortly after his social debut, there were reports of him kicking up trouble with other nobles. As a result of his behavior, Viscount Coleman decided that Thomas’s younger brother should inherit his title instead. That caused Thomas to fly into a rage, and he soon started to get involved with ruffians and criminal elements, causing one outrageous scene after another. In the end, even Viscount Coleman himself could no longer cover for his wayward son, and had to resort to expelling him from the family estate.
With that being said, he wasn’t simply kicked out the door — in fact, the viscount saw fit to grant Thomas a small home in the city, as well as provide him with a fair sum of coin. Given how spoiled he was and how he had lived most of his life, however, there was no way Thomas would keep quiet for long.
Indeed, he soon used up all of his money, and then turned toward extortion, causing no end of problems for those around him. Soon enough, no one would interact with Thomas in any way, shape, or form. That was when he coincidentally witnessed Keith in the city, and experienced a sharp pang of jealousy. These feelings caused him to fantasize about Keith’s downfall, which was the root cause of the kidnapping.
But at that point, Thomas had neither coin nor status. How could he take his revenge, given that he had no allies of any kind...? The answer came in the form of a certain woman. According to Thomas’s testimony, said woman approached him one day out of the blue. She bought him food and drinks, and listened to all he had to say enthusiastically — passionately, even. Thomas spoke of his jealousy and hatred toward Keith, and about his plans for his half-brother’s
downfall. That was when the mysterious woman offered to help.
Before he knew it, and without even lifting a finger, Thomas found himself in a mansion once more, living the elegant and opulent life that he craved. Although he had assumed that the mansion simply belonged to the woman in question, the reality was quite different. In truth, the woman had used Thomas’s noble title and a fair sum of her own coin to temporarily rent the place.
As for the original inhabitants of the mansion, though they were certainly guilty of crimes and dark deeds, neither the servants nor their master knew a thing about the events that transpired in the house. They had been paid to act a certain way and do certain things, and they had followed those instructions unquestioningly. In fact, there was a high chance that the Dark Arts had been used on them — strongly suggesting that they should overlook any suspicious points, and not ask any questions. Given that there were many fuzzy points in their collective memories, this was highly likely.
Soon enough, the woman brought Keith from someplace, after which he was confined to a room and restrained. Thomas would commit acts of physical violence against the restrained Keith, claiming that he would soon become a slave and be sold to bidders in foreign lands.
Piecing together the various pieces of testimony I had received from eyewitnesses, it was plain to see that Thomas was hardly the mastermind behind all this. He was nothing more than a cowardly puppet, whose status and name had been used to commit this crime. The one truly responsible, surely, was the woman who had approached Thomas to begin with. She was none other than the Wielder of Darkness who had spirited Keith away in the first place. However...
“Well? Has she been captured yet? The mastermind.”
“...Not yet.” I furrowed my brow as I gave Jeffery my response. She was a loose end that still eluded us.
“Oh ho. For someone as clever as you to let her slip away...”
“The enemy is every bit as clever, I assure you. I cannot find her location.”
“So... you mean to say that we still don’t know who she is, or where she is?”
“Well... I do have an idea. It’s somewhat of a leap, but still...”
“Oh? So who is this mystery person that has caused so much trouble for you? Do tell.”
“...If my assumptions are correct, the culprit is most likely someone from within the Dieke family.”
“Marquess Dieke and company, right? The very same that Raphael testified against?”
“Indeed, yes. The family that stained their hands and got involved with Dark Magic quite some years ago.”
“But didn’t we round up everyone in that family who had anything to do with Dark Magic, even in the slightest?”
“So we thought, yes...” I proceeded to inform Jeffery of the truths uncovered during this incident — secrets about the Dieke family.
The many crimes of the powerful and well-connected Dieke family had been brought to light thanks to Raphael’s testimony. For their crimes directly involving the use of Dark Magic, Madam Dieke and all of her conspirators were arrested — at least, that was what we assumed.
However... there was more to it. Firstly, that woman, who introduced herself as Sarah to Thomas, knew a little too much about the Dark Arts; she knew of the existence of familiars of darkness and how to craft them, and how to absorb and drain the essence of others to bolster her powers.
As I thought, this Sarah woman was by no means an incredibly powerful mage with bottomless reserves of Dark Magic. All she had been doing was draining energy from Thomas. Dark Magic was, after all, obtainable in exchange for a life. But the magic granted in such an exchange was finite, and could very well be used up over time.
However, there was a workaround. This was information that few within the Ministry knew of, but it was possible to replenish one’s reserves of Dark Magic by absorbing energy from other people. “Energy” did not mean mana, or magic, or anything like that. Instead, the Wielder of Darkness drained the life force out of someone, and if that continued, the victim would die.
On top of all that, individuals bearing strong negative emotions supplied much more Dark Magic when drained. Putting the pieces together, it was fair to assume that Thomas’s life force had been continuously drained from him over the course of this incident.
After we had arrested Thomas, we had done all we could for him. Although he recovered enough to be able to talk, he was exceedingly weak, and from the looks of it didn’t have long to live. I did some research on Thomas and his activities up until this point, and from what I gathered, he had been healthy as a horse up until a while ago. Ministry staff who didn’t know about the details of the incident could only scratch their heads at his sudden downturn.
This information about Dark Magic was only known to a select few. So why did that woman know of it? And then there was the case of Marquess David Mason, the perpetrator behind Katarina Claes’s kidnapping. He, too, had received information on how to gain Dark Magic from the Dieke family.
However, he was only taught how to obtain it, not to adapt it or properly use it. The man knew nothing. In fact, the same was true within the Dieke family — even with its hands stained in the pursuit of Dark Magic, the specifics of certain techniques weren’t widely known throughout the family.
As such, the fact that this Sarah woman knew so much about the Dark Arts and its intricacies was very suspicious. Perhaps she was also one of the individuals heavily involved in the research of Dark Magic in the Dieke family...
...Or so I thought. I decided to question our captives, and soon more new information about the Diekes was revealed. In their pursuit and research of the Dark Arts, the Diekes had granted a few specific people these powers, not just Raphael and the man who had possessed him. It was all part of Madam Dieke’s contingency plan — should anything ever happen to Sirius (Raphael), there would be a Plan B.
The unwilling recipients for these dark powers were often orphans or slave children purchased or picked up from one source or another. Amongst them, many lost their lives when the ritual failed, and many more to the complications that followed even if the ritual did succeed. Though they prepared these children for future use, with the apparent success of Sirius’s ritual, they became unnecessary. Sirius was raised as planned, and the Dieke family could do whatever they wanted with these children.
Those that survived and successfully obtained Dark Magic ended up being used in the family’s research. However, due to the twisted nature of the experiments that they were made to undergo, most of these survivors lost their minds — it was all too much to bear.
In the end, Raphael’s testimony revealed all of the Dieke’s crimes. But those conducting the research feared that their sentences would be compounded if the Ministry learned of these experiments — so many of these children were disposed of before the truth of the matter was discovered. Amongst them there was a young girl with black hair who was particularly known for her high Dark Magic aptitude.
“That’s pretty messed up. I see now that the twisted nature of the Dieke family went a lot further than I thought,” Jeffery said, frowning.
“Villains and scum, all of them. If I had not gone along this line of questioning, they would surely have all remained silent. Good thing they did talk — saved me a lot of trouble.” They hadn’t wanted to talk, of course, but with some persuasion and confronting them with evidence, they’d had no choice but to start talking.
“However, if your deductions ring true... this Sarah girl is also a victim of the Dieke family’s deeds, isn’t she? If what those scoundrels said is true, shouldn’t she be dead, disposed of by their own hands? Is this Sarah truly the mastermind?”
“They say disposed, yes, but not with their own hands. They used the services of some crooks here and there, to hide bodies and the evidence. Shoddy work, most likely. There’s a high chance that some of them could have survived. In addition, based on the information I extracted from Thomas and all those involved in the case, their descriptions match this woma
n. There’s no mistaking it.”
“Is that right? This mysterious girl from the Dieke family... what is her real name, then? Sarah would be nothing more than an alias, no?”
The furrow in my brow intensified at Jeffery’s question. “...About that. The girl never had a name to begin with. They were... assigned a number, you see.”
Jeffery’s expression twisted into a look of disgust. I probably looked the same way. Yes, the origin of the girl named Sarah was far too cruel. She was a tragic victim of her circumstances. Her plight should be empathized with. However... that gave her no reason to exact this same hurt and pain unto others.
Why did Sara cause all this pain? Was it a sort of twisted retribution against Katarina and the others for bringing about the downfall of the Dieke family? Or was it just like the imprisoned researchers claimed — had she simply lost her mind, and committed crimes for her own amusement?
None of this would ever come to light as long as the girl remained on the loose. We knew who she was. All that was left was her location.
I organized my thoughts. It was time for the next report, which was about Katarina Claes, and a bizarre event that had happened during this case. From what I had heard, Katarina had freed her brother Keith who, at the time, was bound by the Dark Arts. He was to become a sacrifice for the creation of a familiar of darkness.
According to Jeord, this black mist (most likely the familiar’s incubational form) was torn apart by Katarina’s bare hands. And then Katarina dealt the finishing blow to the scattered pieces of dark mist on the ground by crushing them, again with her bare hands.
Jeord then went on to describe how Katarina looked at the time — according to him, she looked very much like when she had finished off a snake that had wandered into her fields. For some reason, he had a faraway gaze in his eyes as he described the events.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Volume 4 Page 14
