[159] Marsha Clay (2)
"Anything's fine. If you spill everything you know, I'll send you back to prison nice and easy."
Lucas kept silent. His crafty mind was spinning fast.
He'd joined back when they were the Aengmu Thieves, not the Aengmu Mercenary Corps, and he had no particular loyalty to Marsha. Admitting what he knew would be easy.
But if he confessed here, he'd never leave the deep underground cells until he died of old age.
"How about we make a deal?"
"A deal? What kind of deal?"
"I'll tell you everything about Marsha. In return, reduce my sentence. Let me out before I die, and I'll hand over whatever information you want."
"Ha…"
Sakiri stared at Lucas, slack-jawed—then suddenly burst into laughter and stamped both feet.
"Hahahahaha!"
With a clatter the desk toppled sideways. Sakiri sprang up and came at him, yelling.
"You crazy bastard! Do you even know where you are right now?"
One kick sent Lucas over with the chair. Still not satisfied, Sakiri stomped on the fallen man again and again.
But this time Lucas was desperate.
Die this way or that, what difference did it make? If he failed to get something out of this, his life was over anyway.
"Go on! Kick me all you like! I'll never talk! So let's deal!"
Sakiri's foot stopped cold.
Why are the bad ones all the same—so shameless? If you hate prison that much, don't commit crimes in the first place.
"Ahh, this is driving me nuts."
Sakiri calmed their breathing and turned away.
Even terrified, Lucas watched closely. Stopping the kicks meant Sakiri was torn. If he held out a little longer, maybe a window for talks would open.
But instead, against his expectations, Sakiri opened the interrogation room door and gave a chilling order.
"Hey. Disengage the magic-restriction apparatus in here."
Magic restriction wasn't the same as Anti-Magic. It was a technique that prevented casting in the first place.
That, too, was a kind of magic, of course—but there weren't many thieves in the world who could break a magic circle designed by first-class archmagi.
Lucas swallowed. He mustn't show fear. It had to be Sakiri's last-ditch measure as well. If he could ride out this bump, maybe someday he'd see the world again.
Sakiri waited calmly. A moment later there was a low hum, as if the air settled.
Lucas couldn't tell what had changed, but Sakiri rolled their neck as if feeling lighter and approached.
"Tell me everything you know about Marsha. If you withhold truth or perjure yourself, an unbearable terror will descend upon you."
"I—I won't talk. I absolutely won't."
Ignoring him, Sakiri extended a hand toward Lucas. Eyes closed in composure, Sakiri intoned a phrase like an incantation.
"As Judge I command: the Word answers to the Word. The Scales of Truth rest with you alone."
Color drained from Lucas's face until he looked like a corpse.
He'd been mistaken to think Sakiri was just an ordinary investigator. Sakiri was one of those people you must never cross.
"Y-you son of a—!"
Ten minutes later—
"UaaaAAAAAAAH!"
A tearing scream rang through the interrogation room.
Lucas was barely sane. Even when he'd undergone leg amputation, it hadn't hurt like this.
"Fine! I'll talk! I'll tell you everything—just make it stop!"
The moment he shouted, the pain vanished as if it had been a lie.
Curled up in a corner of the room, Lucas looked up at Sakiri, cringing.
"It's your choice. If you want relief, confess cleanly."
Lucas resigned himself. Silence wouldn't be allowed—nor would lies.
Before Sakiri's magic, the Scales of Truth, any criminal would end up spilling the facts.
"Marsha's clever. And she doesn't make mistakes. She'll pretend to be on the back foot at first and draw out all of her opponent's trump cards. But she always lays a trick so you can never bring yourself to hate her."
"A textbook con artist's method."
"Heh heh—con artist? No. She's no con artist. Do you know why she's terrifying? Because she doesn't lie to deceive someone. Her whole life is the lie. You won't catch her by ordinary means."
"Hm. I can picture the type. But that alone wouldn't make the intel coming in this messy."
Chin in hand, Sakiri fell into thought—then, suddenly, a possibility came to mind.
Others might not know, but Sakiri could be sure. Why the reports had been so erratic.
"No way—could she be…?"
"Yeah. She's the same kind as you."
Relieved that the pain was gone, Lucas put some force into his voice.
"Marsha… is an Ex-Regulation Mage."
Sirone analyzed her by any means he could muster. But he couldn't grasp her. She was a person of a nature completely unlike anyone he'd met in life.
"You're… saying it's fine to kill you?"
"Fufu. That's right. You hate me, don't you? So kill me as much as you like."
Sirone stopped thinking. If there was no answer to be found anyway, he would hold to his convictions.
"If Yuna is unharmed, then I have no reason to fight you either."
A faint, crack-like smile traced Marsha's lips.
Then, as an offensive Spirit Zone lunged in, Sirone reflexively cast teleportation.
'Huh?'
Sirone was thrown—his Spirit Zone vanished all of a sudden, and the teleport unraveled.
In that instant, the roar of an Acoustic Cannon swept by, and his eardrums burned as if on fire.
Unable to withstand the shock, Sirone tumbled across the floor. Rian, startled, blurted,
"What the—why's Sirone suddenly like that?"
Because the Acoustic Cannon compresses its sound wave, the sound doesn't spread indiscriminately. So his friends at a distance heard only a shrill scream.
"That's an Acoustic Cannon—a kind of sound magic. But that's not the problem."
At Amy's words, Tess chimed in.
"Right. It's that Sirone got hit."
A dark shadow fell across Amy's face. Sirone had clearly tried to evade by teleportation—but just before the spell triggered, his Photonization had unraveled.
"That wasn't getting hit. That was getting robbed."
"Robbed? Robbed of what?"
Amy could confirm it through her synesthetic sense. The instant Marsha had sucked in Sirone's Spirit Zone like dew.
"Most likely… his mental power."
"That's impossible. How do you steal someone else's mental power?"
Amy hurried a step toward Sirone.
Class-A criminal Marsha Clay.
If her hunch was right, that woman was extremely dangerous.
"Sirone! Be careful! That woman's an Ex-Regulation Mage!"
Sirone snapped his head up. Thanks to the Acoustic Cannon's force, his ears felt wet, as if bleeding, but his indomitable mind was still sound.
"This… is Ex-Regulation?"
"Oh my, you know Ex-Regulation too? You lot really are something. Goes to show long schooling pays off."
Mages developed countless spells day after day, and the Association registered them as regulated magic.
But there were magics in the world that could never be registered—that was Ex-Regulation.
Ex-Regulation's power source was peculiar.
It wasn't built on shared, objective facts—it was composed solely of an individual's blind ideology.
In short, they were mages who made their own rules and could force them on others.
Sirone recalled what Shiina had said in class about Ex-Regulation.
"Omnipotence is belief. The reason the speed of photons is divided into four categories, temperatures of flame vary, and plasma can be generated even at mid-temperatures is that a mage's omnipotence supports the power source."
Shiina wrote the word "Ex-Regulation" on the board.
At the appearance of an unfamiliar term, the students murmured; she paid it no mind and continued.
"But there are those who use omnipotence for private ends. That is—they don't support the power source; they twist it. The magic such people use is called Ex-Regulation."
"Teacher, I don't quite get it."
"I'll explain from here. Everyone—what's my profession?"
"Obviously, you're a teacher."
"Correct. I'm a teacher. Then let's begin. Is there anyone among you who doesn't think I'm a teacher? Please raise your hand."
Of course, no one raised a hand. It was impossible. Knowing she was a teacher and denying it would be a contradiction.
"This is the nature of the mind. Unlike the body, when a concept enters the mind, the mind doesn't push it out. It absorbs it and forms a new mass."
Shiina raised a finger for emphasis.
"In other words, one person's thought can apply to another, and in fact all the thoughts that make us up are obtained from others. Now I'll demonstrate Ex-Regulation."
Shiina stepped down from the dais and stared fixedly at the students.
"Anyone who thinks I am a teacher dies."
The class buzzed. Because Shiina was serious, some students tried to deny it—but ultimately they could not.
The mind is not negated. It only changes.
"Teacher, is… this for real?"
"Don't be alarmed. I'm explaining the mechanism. I'm not an Ex-Regulation Mage."
Relieved voices popped up around the room.
Shiina adjusted her glasses and stepped back onto the dais.
"Of course, in practice it's not this simple. No Ex-Regulation Mage can inject a fundamental concept and kill people outright. Ex-Regulation is still magic, and the principle of equivalent exchange always applies."
A male student raised his hand.
"But there could be someone like that, right? A madman who thinks that rule we just heard qualifies as equivalent exchange."
"It's possible. But magic is a product of reason. Someone that far gone couldn't handle magic to begin with—and even if such a person existed, it wouldn't work on you."
"Because they couldn't even infiltrate our minds."
"Exactly. Thus Ex-Regulation comes with heavy constraints and costs. For example, a rule like this is possible: Anyone who thinks I'm a teacher must use honorifics with me."
"Eh, that's just common sense."
"Right. And that is the frightening part of Ex-Regulation. Just as that feels natural to you, an Ex-Regulation Mage implants their own rules in others and makes them feel natural. Then how about this: Anyone who thinks I'm a teacher must fall in love with me."
"Haha! That still feels obvious!"
The kids laughed and tittered. Shiina went on, unbothered.
"Those who fall in love with me must obey my words unconditionally."
The laughter gradually died down.
"Those who obey my words must die before me."
Silence fell over the lecture hall.
"This is Constraint—one of the techniques of Ex-Regulation. You layer several constraints to expand a rule. Where the logic leaps, you bridge it with omnipotence. Because the caster truly believes it, that's exactly what happens. And once you're caught, you can't get free."
Someone gulped. A magic like that existed in the world? If it were real, it was a mage you'd never want to meet.
"But the truly tricky part of Ex-Regulation isn't constraint—it's cost. A moment ago I said you can't kill with a fundamental concept, but add a cost and it changes a bit. I'll do it now: Anyone who does not think I am a teacher dies."