Chapter 7: You Stole One of My Achievements

—They were conducting human experiments on members of the minority races.

Even setting aside my personal feelings, that was something that absolutely must never happen.

Looking back through history, one cause of the collapse of the Spirit Temple’s former absolute rule had been its unjust persecution of minority races.

Near the end of the Temple Era, citizens with powerful mana cooperated with persecuted minority forces to crush the Spirit Temple. They became nobles and created a new age.

With the beginning of that Noble Era, each minority race formed its own independent nation and spent time gathering its people from throughout the world. They formed a group called the Union of Minority-Race Nations—commonly known as the Racial Union—and supported one another’s independence.

What would happen if people learned that human experiments had been conducted on members of those minority races?

Handled poorly, it wouldn’t be strange for all-out war to erupt between the Racial Union and the Azukai Empire. Regardless of victory or defeat, a great deal of blood would be spilled.

Furthermore…

I couldn’t imagine that a mere local yakuza family was directing an atrocity of this magnitude. We needed to investigate the forces behind them.

“—Whatever else happens, rescuing the victims comes first.”

In the middle of the night, after the people of the city had fallen asleep, we infiltrated one of the cotton-goods factories controlled by the Sapojira Family by hiding together inside Kiko’s shadow magic.

Their research facility was concealed deep underground.

“Kiko, I need your help infiltrating the facility. Garnet, I need yours treating the victims. I’m counting on both of you.”

When I glanced over, Garnet was trembling slightly, probably from tension.

“Leading Candidate. A-are such experiments truly being conducted? Naturally, I don’t doubt Kiko, but I can’t imagine anything so inhumane actually taking place.”

“Yes. Even if you can’t imagine it, you’ll see the reality soon. The fact that such dense miasma exists in an underground space beneath the city is already beyond anything I expected. This human experimentation is probably the true cause of the air pollution as well.”

I’d thought it was strange from the beginning.

No matter how unpleasant a factory’s exhaust was, operating machinery for manufacturing cotton goods shouldn’t have worsened the air throughout an entire city to this degree. We’d also heard that the miasma concentration in the Tainted Forest outside the city had increased.

There had to be a much larger source of miasma.

“Garnet. Carry a weapon as a precaution.”

I handed her a crossbow.

It was a magic tool capable of firing the magic art Bolt, prepared as a means of self-defense for Garnet, who struggled in combat.

Kiko’s shadow magic was exceptionally useful for infiltration.

The surroundings were dimly lit, but even when we passed people in the underground laboratory, they never noticed us while we hid inside the shadow. Well, I intended to take every last research document later and restrain every researcher, so our presence would eventually be exposed.

For now, however, rescuing the victims and sheltering them in my subspace took priority over everything else.

We descended a long staircase and slipped a shadow through the gap beneath a heavily locked door.

Beyond it…

The sight was far worse than I’d imagined.

“Garnet, Kiko. Wait inside the shadow. I’ll speak to that alchemist first. At the very least, we need to confirm whether moving those victims directly into the subspace will endanger their lives.”

After telling them that, I quietly emerged from the shadow in the corner of the room.

First, I needed to extract as much information as possible from that man.

Remain calm.

Settle my emotions.

“Hello.”

“—Who are you?”

“An unannounced inspector. I heard the experiment was producing rather interesting results, so I came to observe. I would appreciate hearing something useful.”

I released my mana gently, fixed a smile onto my face, and intimidated the male alchemist.

When I greeted him casually while pretending that I wasn’t an enemy, he straightened himself despite trembling.

Yes, yes.

Apparently, a bluff like this was quite effective when there was a great disparity in mana.

After all, it was like having a ferocious beast directly in front of you. Under the pressure of knowing it would kill you if you resisted, when the very beast causing that terror smiled and said, “I won’t eat you,” a person naturally wanted to believe it.

I examined the six figures connected to the apparatus.

“Long-eared elves, beast-tailed Farly, and dragon-scaled Dragonewts… One man and one woman of each race. The tubes connected to their bodies are injecting miasma medicine, aren’t they? Have the recent experiments produced any new knowledge?”

“Y-yes. It appears the demi-humans may, after all, be beings closer to monsters than we true humans are. If we gradually accustom their bodies while injecting miasma, they lose their reason, but adapt to concentrations far beyond the lethal dose for a true human. Please examine this graph. Each race displays different tendencies in the rate at which its miasma tolerance limit rises, but the Dragonewts are closest to monsters—”

The word “demi-human,” as used by this alchemist, was a slur directed at minority races.

Six glass cylinders filled with miasma stood before me. Inside, six men and women from three races were restrained with tubes connected throughout their bodies.

Every face twisted in suffering, and their limbs struggled against the chains.

Fortunately or unfortunately, they were probably unconscious in their current state.

“I see… But if you stop injecting miasma and allow time to pass, won’t the experiment’s effects fade? Are the changes to their bodies irreversible?”

“Yes. That is a significant problem. Unfortunately, unless they continue receiving miasma, they eventually return to their original state.”

I see.

In other words, if we rescued the victims and safely removed the miasma, they would return to their original condition.

We would also need to cure their symptoms of miasma-medicine poisoning. An old book I’d obtained recently should have contained information about a treatment method.

I needed to verify the details quickly.

“Do you expect the experiment to achieve its objective?”

“No signs have appeared yet… However, the director predicts that once their miasma tolerance exceeds a particular threshold, their bodies will transform. Our objective is surely within reach.”

Hmm.

What was the purpose of their experiment?

I couldn’t determine it clearly, but they were unquestionably attempting to transform the bodies of minority-race people through miasma. Compared with the passages in the Spirit Scripture, the objective of this experiment was probably—

“…The demon race.”

“Yes. It will prove the common-origin theory of demons and demi-humans advocated by our Spirit Temple. At last, we will sweep aside the factions of impious fools who doubt the scripture, and the truly faithful will receive their reward—”

The word fanaticism crossed my mind.

He used minority-race people for human experiments and spoke nothing but incoherent nonsense with clouded eyes.

Did I find him so disgusting because I possessed memories from my previous life?

Suppressing the nausea rising inside me, I questioned him.

“Even so, isn’t this somewhat too severe? If you continue administering miasma medicine at the very edge of a lethal dose, the subjects won’t last long.”

“Ha! Who cares about the lives of demi-humans?”

Control your emotions.

Remain calm.

“Heh heh heh. This holds immense significance not merely for the Spirit Temple, but for the great history of alchemy as well—”

Thud.

The alchemist suddenly collapsed.

When I looked, a magical arrow was embedded in his forehead.

I turned around.

“Leading Candidate… I…”

Garnet stood there with a pale face, the discharged crossbow rattling in her hands.

Ah.

This terrible scene must have been unbearable for her.

She’d studied alchemy to heal people…

Only to encounter a place where that very art was being abused to inflict suffering.

She no longer wanted to hear another word from a man like him.

I understood that feeling very well.

Looking back, giving her a weapon so casually had probably been wrong, even if it was for self-defense.

I approached the trembling Garnet and gently stroked her head.

I’m sorry.

This was my fault.

“—Oh, you beat me to it. If you’d waited one more moment, I would’ve disposed of that man with my own hands. You stole one of my achievements.”

“…I…”

“Removing the miasma from those six victims’ bodies will take time. Caring for them will require work, and helping them recover enough to live normally will be difficult. So… I want to entrust that task to you. Alchemy exists to heal people and make them smile, doesn’t it? Prove that to me, Garnet.”

I extended Mage Hands, opened the glass cylinders, and collected the six minority-race victims into my subspace.

…Yes.

I couldn’t allow only Garnet’s hands to become stained.

“Kiko, would you come out?”

“—Mm.”

“Garnet got slightly ahead of us, but from this point forward, the work belongs to us. I’ll collect every document and device in this laboratory and kill every researcher with my own hands. Kiko, I want you to bring me the severed heads of every Sapojira Family executive or member involved in this matter. Ah, leave the boss’s head where it is. We owe the frontier count’s family that courtesy.”

So it was all right.

Garnet hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Garnet, enter the subspace and begin treatment immediately. Put those six in beds for the time being and arrange to monitor their vital information. I’ll join you soon.”

I invited Garnet into my subspace.

Then I meticulously searched every room in the experimental facility for other victims. We found a considerable number unrelated to the minority races, so I sent them to Garnet for treatment too.

I collected the documents and equipment, took the researchers’ lives, and emptied the facility.

This moment was probably a kind of turning point.

Was I a baker’s son, or was I yakuza?

Well, no matter how long I worried, my choice wouldn’t change.

It was far too late for any of this anyway.