Chapter Two Hundred and Twenty-Nine: Child in the Darkness
Karen was led into a dim room that resembled an interrogation chamber. The attendant pulled out a chair for Karen to sit, then placed an incense clock on the desk.
“The visiting time is one quarter. When the guard brings the prisoner, he will light this incense clock, so please use the time until it burns out as your guide.”
Thirty minutes was apparently the time allotted to Karen.
Karen nodded at the attendant’s words.
“The guard will bring the prisoner shortly, so please wait a moment—please do not let your heart be swayed by the prisoner’s words under any circumstances. Even though you are a B-rank alchemist, please be especially careful of the miasma of the child of the dark night.”
This facility was the Agency for Special Menial Workers. It was a massive, fortified building near the west gate of the royal capital of Earthfill.
True to its "special" designation, it was an agency for employing people with shady circumstances as laborers. The special laborers were confined within this building and could leave if they were hired. Anyone who hired them was required to impose a life-binding magical contract on the special laborers.
This was a place where people who borrowed money and couldn’t repay it, or who committed crimes, ended up. Naturally, there was no way the work one hired people here to do would be respectable. They were made to do jobs that even F-rank laborers refused to do.
There was no place in this world that wasted resources simply by locking criminals away, so if they were kept alive instead of executed, their lives were put to practical use.
Debtors could leave once they worked off the amount of debt that was covered for them, and those who committed minor crimes could also be released once they were deemed to have sufficiently atoned. It was said that some could also get out with money, connections, or pardons.
—In this facility, there was someone Karen wanted to meet.
That’s why she had asked Natalia and was here using her authority as a B-rank alchemist. The person in question wasn’t yet allowed to appear even as a special laborer, but was confined as a prisoner in a dark underground cell.
“Thank you for waiting.”
After a while, a guard entered the room with someone bound by rope, and Karen widened her eyes in surprise.
The one brought before Karen was a fluffy, white-haired girl with both hands bound in rope.
“Huh…? This child is?”
“Don’t let your guard down just because she has the form of a child. Number 265, stand against the wall and answer this person’s questions without lies or deception. Answer only what you are asked, and do not speak of unnecessary things. Understood?”
A red crest carved into the back of the hand of the girl called Number 265 glowed faintly. With this, through a life-binding contract, the girl could no longer lie to Karen.
“She is an alchemist trained by the organization calling themselves the ‘Children of the Dark Night.’ Adventurers captured her when they raided one of the group’s hideouts. The adventurers on site confirmed she was indeed synthesizing poison before apprehending her.”
“So there’s no doubt she’s an alchemist of the Dark Night.”
The girl watched the conversation between the guard and Karen with wide, sparkling eyes. When Karen gave a slight smile, the girl also smiled brightly.
Karen was taken aback by that friendliness, and the girl moved her mouth silently. She seemed to want to say something, but couldn’t.
Then Karen remembered the guard had ordered her not to say anything unnecessary, so she likely could not speak unless Karen asked a question.
Karen cleared her throat and collected herself.
“Um, I’m Karen, an alchemist. I came here because I have something I want to ask you. I want you to teach me how to make potions from non-magical materials, since you made poison potions from non-magical materials as an alchemist in the organization called Children of the Dark Night.”
“You want to make poison too? Then I’ll be your teacher!”
A bouncy reply came from the girl, and Karen was startled. The voice that came from the girl who looked to be about ten years old sounded like that of a withered old woman.
Seeing Karen’s reaction, the girl made a sad face and grasped her throat with both hands bound in rope.
“This voice is weird, isn’t it? But that’s why I can make potions, you know?”
“…That’s why you can make them? What do you mean?”
“If you eat poison leaves every single day, you become like this. The poison I was in charge of had jagged edges, so I called it Jaggy. To understand Jaggy, I did all sorts of things. And while I was eating Jaggy, my voice became like this. But you know, once that happened, I became able to make potions with Jaggy. They say if you drink my potion, your throat gets burned and you can’t speak anymore. Amazing, right?”
The sadness vanished, and the girl immediately spoke with a somewhat proud air. Surely the people in the organization had praised the girl for being able to make poison.
“…Can you make other potions? For example, healing potions using medicinal herbs?”
“Those are potions that need lots of magical power, right? People who can make those kinds of potions can’t become able to make potions with Jaggy. In other words, it means I have talent.”
The girl puffed out her thin chest.
Karen held her head. To understand non-magical material poison with one’s body, one had to be a person with so little magical power that they couldn’t withstand the poison. Like Harald, for instance. People with abundant magical power would neutralize the poison even if they ate it, so they couldn’t understand the poison.
“Children without talent are made to do dangerous work. They have to do the job of making bad people drink the poison we made. It’s dangerous work, so there are many children who don’t come back. But it can’t be helped. They’re children without talent.”
The children without talent that the girl mentioned were probably children with so much magical power that they could withstand the non-magical material poison. In the organization called Children of the Dark Night, unlike in normal society, children with less magical power might be treated as more talented.
“But I have talent, so someday my teachers will come to save me.”
Karen looked at the guard holding the rope binding the girl while feeling dizzy.
“—What is this child’s magical power?”
“F-rank.”
Normally, that was not enough magical power to become an alchemist. But she had become able to make only poisons through alchemy—probably in exchange for that throat.
The goddess acknowledged the effort. The goddess probably hadn’t abandoned this girl’s life-risking effort even as her body was ravaged by poison. Whether that effort was good or evil didn’t matter to the goddess. And this method was something Karen could never replicate. Something she couldn’t make anyone do.
“So basically, because you worked hard, the goddess acknowledged you, and you were able to ascend the steps, right?”
Karen tried to end the conversation by agreeing with the girl while wearing a bitter smile.
But the girl widened her eyes in puzzlement.
“Huh? No. If you ascend the steps, you lose your talent.”
Losing talent. In other words, she was saying that about the increase in magical power. Just how young had she been when she started receiving education in the organization—she said things completely opposite to common sense in the world.
“But the fact that you became able to make potions means you ascended the steps, right?”
“You have to descend the steps, you know?”
The girl said it matter-of-factly, as if stating obvious common knowledge.
A chill ran down Karen’s spine, and a vision of Horst descending the steps flashed through her mind.
“If the goddess acknowledges you, you can descend the steps. If you descend the steps, your wish will be granted.”
“If you descend the steps? Not if you ascend it?”
“You don’t know anything, do you, miss?”
The girl said with an exasperated look.
“If you ascend the steps, you become a monster. When you die, nothing remains except a magic core—you become a magic beast.”
Karen’s eyes widened.
Karen herself had once referred to a way of dying that left no body after death as being like a magic beast.
“So for people to die while remaining people, they have to descend the steps.”
“—Could it be that the goddess is at the bottom of the stairs?”
“Of course!”
The girl nodded vigorously.
“Beyond the Thorn Forest, the goddess is waiting for us to come. We teach that to lots of people and help them so they don’t become magical beasts. People who’ve already become magical beasts, we exterminate. That’s the job of us Children of the Dark Night!”
Just as the girl finished telling her this, the incense clock burned out completely.
Immediately, the girl was forcibly silenced and led away.
“The criminals calling themselves Children of the Dark Night speak such nonsense and disturb people’s hearts. Please keep your spirits strong, even though you are a B-rank alchemist.”
“Yes… Thank you for your concern.”
The attendant returned to the visiting room and rubbed the shoulders of Karen, who sat slumped over the desk.
If Karen couldn’t train alchemists who could make potions from non-magical materials on her own, she had been thinking of hiring alchemists from the organization called Children of the Dark Night as special laborers to create an environment where someone other than herself could make potions.
But Karen decided to give up on that method. The girl’s perception was too far removed from common sense in this world and seemed beyond what Karen could handle.
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