Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Fort Polrwin (4)

“It is nothing else... There is a blood mage in that brothel.”

“Y-you should say something like that first...!”

“Miss Kaen asked where we were going... I apologize.”

Of all places, it was a place like that... and because I was conscious of it, the words seemed to slip out without me realizing.

Only then did Kaen drop her guard and slowly approach me.

I waited for her, then opened my mouth.

“In any case, the fact that we must go to the brothel has not changed. The one we need to deal with this time never leaves that place.”

“He never leaves the brothel? Just how much stamina does that man have...?!”

“...That is not what I mean. I received information that his hideout is inside the brothel.”

My answer followed after a short pause.

There were times when I could not immediately understand the meaning behind Kaen’s words.

Hearing this, Kaen let out a small “Aha...”

I continued reciting the information.

“The opponent is one blood mage. He has a hideout inside the brothel, and to enter the hideout, virgin blood is needed.”

Ever since Kaen asked whether there was no information, I had looked back on whether there had been any quests in Polrwin that only a “female character” could solve.

Unfortunately, the range of choices was not wide.

This was the one that suited the “setting” Kaen firmly believed in.

It was hard to call the reward good, but it was simple by that much.

If this matter strengthened Kaen’s belief, that would be a gain in its own way.

“Again... a virgin...? What information do you have about the brothel we are going to?”

Kaen said this in a slightly shy voice after mulling over my explanation.

“It is apparently a shop called the Lewd Adventurers.”

“The name is...”

“...It is a brothel, after all.”

After finishing that awkward conversation with Kaen, I immediately handed her the robe I had prepared and got ready to leave.

[ Hmm... A blood mage, is it... ]

Sierra only muttered and did not say anything else to me.

Of course, I knew the location of the brothel, but since, as Zeto, I had never been there...

...I would probably need to walk around the street lined with brothels with Kaen for a while.

***

“The Thrilling Angels... It is not here... The Sultry Fur... Not here either... Uuuh...”

Every time I read down the signs of the brothels, my face grew hot.

When I traveled all over the continent with Grandfather, I remembered occasionally seeing prostitutes from brothels touting for customers.

However, perhaps because this was the North, where fierce cold seeped in, most of the brothels had their doors firmly shut.

If those doors opened, an unknown world would unfold.

“Virgin blood, huh...”

I liked secretly catching villains while hiding in the shadows, but why was I only called out for matters like this?

I suddenly remembered what the unicorn chimera with the horn on his head had said when we wiped out the criminal organization crawling with chimeras.

“She is a perfect virgin, this one!”

I did not know what a perfect virgin was... but thanks to that, it seemed there would be no problem opening the door this time.

When I turned my head, I saw Zeto quietly following behind me.

“...”

When he, whose head was lowered, vaguely lifted it, I hurriedly turned my head forward.

Honestly, recently, it had been difficult to face him.

Everything was because of the sauna.

His body that I had seen in the sauna was...

“...Miss Kaen.”

“Uuuh... Y-yes...?!”

Zeto suddenly grabbed my shoulder and spoke from behind, and a strange sound slipped from my mouth before I could stop it.

I immediately fixed my posture and answered him again.

“...What is it?”

“Have you still not found it?”

“Ah, that would be...”

I trailed off and looked around.

“...I found it. The L-Lewd Adventurers...”

I stood with him in front of the shop.

Even though the door was firmly closed, once we drew closer, I could hear women’s laughter from inside... and moans from time to time.

“Let us not be too nervous. We are entering only as ‘customers,’ after all.”

“C-customers... Right...!”

Customers of a brothel could only sound strange, but I could understand an expression at this level.

To begin with, I had never entered a brothel either as a customer or as an assassin.

I was confident in acting.

I immediately linked arms with Zeto and opened the brothel door.

When I linked arms with him, Zeto tilted his head, but the brothel door had already opened.

Before long, I faced the unknown world.

The first thing I could feel was warmth.

The brothel’s sticky heat touched my chilled nose.

Then the prostitutes working in the brothel and the customers began entering my sight.

The prostitutes in particular were wearing extremely revealing clothes.

“Uh...”

“Focus.”

As I stood there with my mouth open and my mind blank, Zeto beside me whispered.

...But I could not help my eyes being drawn again and again.

Lewd and obscene scenes unfolded, and heat rose in my face so much that it was hard to focus.

Especially the breath I felt at my ear from Zeto made me recall the wretched dream I had had in the inn room.

I felt terribly ashamed, and yet Zeto seemed to take it for granted, showing no particular reaction.

How did this sight feel to him?

Was he sensitive to sound, after all?

When moans rang out inside the brothel, his face turned slightly red.

“Get a hold of yourself, Kaen...”

Those things were not important.

Right now, we had come to kill a blood mage.

I pulled myself together and moved deeper into the brothel with Zeto.

Then a woman barely covering only her important parts slipped toward us.

“Mmm? This is my first time seeing a customer with his eyes covered.”

She approached Zeto and circled around him.

“It’s a shame you can’t see my figure, but it’s all right. I can cover my eyes too. Both of us blindfolded, going at it like beasts in the dark... that doesn’t sound bad, does it? But the one beside you is your lover? Then... will the three of us do it together?”

The woman was extremely talkative.

No, perhaps rather than talkative, should I say she was faithfully carrying out the role given to her?

Zeto’s mouth did not move, and he said nothing.

I decided to act exactly as Zeto had told me.

I took a coin from my pocket, handed it to her, and opened my mouth.

“We would like to look around the rooms without being disturbed... We will just take a look for a moment.”

When I said that and smiled at the woman, she accepted the coin, approached me, and whispered.

“...Hehehe. You must like your boyfriend a lot. I can satisfy both sides, so after you look around a little, you should come find me. Opportunities like this are rare, you know? Mmm.”

Soon, the woman snorted and left us.

“Satisfy both sides... How exactly...?”

Because of the image that drew itself in my head without my realizing it, I felt as if my face might explode.

At that moment, Zeto, who was linked arm-in-arm with me, whispered in my ear.

“I am a little curious about that.”

“U-uuuh... Please do not suddenly whisper...! Y-you heard all of that?”

At his breath, which gave me a strange stimulation, my body shrank on its own.

Ordinarily, it would have been nothing but a whisper, yet the mood hanging in the brothel seemed to be making my body strange.

“My hearing is rather good, so unintentionally... It was a joke. Let us hurry and move.”

Zeto tapped his ear and said that.

“Honestly...”

For some reason, it became hard to resist Zeto.

My body reacted on its own.

When I turned my head away from him, the prostitutes’ clothing entered my sight.

Had I not also worn something that erotic in front of Zeto because he could not see?

Then there were the moans echoing through the brothel.

Before my head grew strange, I had to resolve this quickly and get out of the brothel.

Like that, Zeto and I moved deep into the brothel.

The customers and prostitutes of the brothel all seemed out of their minds, so avoiding their gazes was an easy task.

“It seems to be a storage room. I don’t see any separate door.”

“Hmm...”

At my words, Zeto let out a hum, released our linked arms, then walked all around the room, tapping the walls and thumping the floor.

In the middle of that, Zeto stood by one wall and called me.

“I think it is here.”

The wall he was pointing at had nothing there.

It was an ordinary wall.

Then Zeto sniffed around the wall and muttered, “The scent of blood.”

“Miss Kaen, could you put some blood on this area here?”

After he stopped smelling it, Zeto pointed to one part of the wall and said that to me.

I trusted Zeto’s senses.

Soon, I bit my thumb hard and drew blood.

I placed my thumb against the part Zeto had indicated with his finger.

—Rumble...

Then the ordinary-looking wall vibrated and moved, revealing a dark passage.

“It really was there...”

“Of course.”

The passage was terribly dark, so I had no choice but to hold Zeto’s arm as I walked.

He walked extremely well through this darkness without a single speck of light.

To Zeto, visual information was of no use.

It was fascinating, but at the same time, my chest felt a little tight.

How many times had he fallen and collided with things in order to walk through the darkness that was the world on his own?

I wore a bitter smile and quietly followed Zeto.

His back, faintly visible in the darkness, felt reliable.

“To make entry possible with virgin blood inside a brothel... It is quite ingenious.”

Zeto, walking ahead, said this.

Indeed, just as he said, it was an ingenious hideout.

Not an ordinary woman’s blood, but virgin blood.

And yet the place where the hideout was located happened to be a brothel.

It could be considered a place where it would be extremely difficult for a maiden who had kept her purity to be found.

Moreover, the entrance was hidden like this...

“...What kind of person is he, to hide this thoroughly?”

While thinking about the hideout, that question came to me, so I asked Zeto.

“You will know the answer if you think about what kind of people blood mages are.”

“A blood mage would be...”

“Bloodstones. They are people obsessed with bloodstones.”

Zeto cut off my words and gave a concise answer.

“Then the reason he is hiding in this brothel too... is to create bloodstones?”

“They say the prostitutes of this brothel are disappearing in secret. It is not rare for a prostitute to run away in order to erase her past and live a new life... so there were not many people interested in the disappearance of prostitutes.”

“It was the perfect place to make bloodstones?”

At my words that followed, Zeto nodded.

“You said this is your first time facing a blood mage, yes?”

“Yes, aside from other mages... blood mages are not easy to find.”

“When facing a blood mage, there is one important thing you must never miss.”

At his words, I remembered that Grandfather had once told me about blood mages.

Based on that memory, I answered him.

“...Whether the blood mage has consumed a bloodstone or not, correct?”

“You know it well. That is a relief. Fortunately, I believe the one we will face has not made a bloodstone yet. It is only a judgment my informant made based on rumors that reached them... but apparently, the number of people still seems insufficient.”

Being praised by Zeto made me feel strangely good.

Zeto knew far more about the world than I did.

From what I had heard from him, just as I had wandered the world with Grandfather, he too seemed to have traveled the world with his master.

“Could we have met when we were young...?”

Perhaps we had run into each other without either of us knowing.

But even when I looked back, I had no memory of meeting or seeing a child with bandages around his eyes.

Like that, as I spoke with him and walked down the stairs, light began to appear.

“It seems we have arrived. To think something like this was made beneath a brothel...”

I said that as I opened the door in front of me.

The moment I opened the door, a sharp red shape flew toward me.

It was easy to react, so I avoided it.

—Crash!

The red spear lodged into the wall behind me, then melted into liquid.

“Some rats got in...? How the hell did you get inside...?”

A woman wearing a black robe inside the room said that.

“Are you from the Order? Or were you sent by the Empire? You’re definitely a virgin... and the blind man beside you... Hah, what kind of combination is this...?”

The blood mage was filled with anger and began prattling on.

Soon, Zeto grabbed my shoulder and said quietly.

“It seems Miss Kaen alone will be enough. May I leave this to you?”

“Of course.”

I tugged at the “gloves” I had received from Zeto as I spoke.

Soon, the blood mage, who had overheard my conversation with Zeto, opened her mouth.

“My head already hurts because of those crazy bitches moaning upstairs. Are you two going to do this too?”

“...Shall we shut our mouths and fight first?”

At my sharp answer, blood began gathering in the blood mage’s hand.

“Hmph, what a feisty bitch... I will be sure to turn you into a whore and grind you into a bloodstone.”

I grasped her level at once.

It seemed I would not need to draw out Grandfather’s swordsmanship today either.