Regressor, Possessor, Reincarnator - Chapter 100

Acanders and Soned finally arrived in Elpis. Allen was able to meet with them promptly the next morning after hearing news of their arrival. Since there was a school rule that outsiders couldn’t enter into the Academy’s territory, Allen rented out a room on the top-floor of a decent inn.

“It’s been a long time, sir. Your great name is well known around here.”

Soned reunited with him, still showing a pale smile with a warm face.

“It’s very nice to see you again, too. It’s about time that you came up.”

“Haha, is that so?”

“Yes, but we can discuss work-related matters after chatting for a bit. Let’s talk… How’s your son? I hope he’s recovering well from his curse.”

When Allen wanted to put the important conversation aside, Soned gently began to talk to him about his recent situation.

“He’s been learning the trade from me since he returned to health. I’m not sure if he’d be awake at this hour.”

“It must be early in the morning over there, right?”

“Surely. He probably isn’t awake yet. In a little while, though, it will be time to help Karik with his work, learning firsthand the ways of being a merchant.”

“Oh, that’s right—wasn’t it Karik who originally wanted to come to the city?”

At Allen’s question, Soned proudly parted his lips with the face of an experienced merchant. “It would have been his first time, so we decided that I should be the one to come instead. You never know when something unique might occur. Going up to the city for the first time requires the prudence of those in their golden years, not the boldness of youth.” Someone like him, of course, whose greatest worry was that he lost more hair every time he woke up in the morning.

Soned laughed cheerfully as he said this. His expression revealed that he seemed to be better off than the last time they’d met—a good outcome.

⟬Isn’t it natural for a person in power like you to take care of him, even if he’s so much older? Hmph, when was the last time you’ve heard someone be so condescending to someone who wrote them such an impactful letter of recommendation.⟭

Allen snubbed her words neatly.

He just didn’t have to answer questions that he didn’t need to.

“You seem to be doing well… Then what about you, Acanders?”

“I don’t think I quite have anything to say. Life now is better than when I was a drunk. Although… I still haven’t been able to find any trace of my father.” Acanders appeared to be less sharp than he had been before, but Allen could make a fairly educated guess that he was just hiding his acuity.

“Really? We can talk about this a little more later. It’s only a guess, but I think I’ve found a clue.”

⟬Someone is listening,⟭ Allen’s voice rang in Acanders’s head. One of his threads quietly reached out and began to fill his body, first occupying his feet.

“…Is that so?”

Without a single change in his expression, Acanders recited the words that Allen fed to him.

“Yes, but such an uninteresting conversation really only ever makes you feel so drained after, don’t you think?”

“You’re right,” Soned responded slyly. Even he had caught on, feeling the change in the atmosphere.

Allen gave orders to Linbelle and Inellia. “Inellia, could you brew up a pot of that spirit tea from before? I haven’t been able to forget the scent I smelled last time.”

⟬Block off the sound in the area so that no voice can escape with the spirit,⟭ he ordered mentally.

“And Linbelle, would you go down to the kitchen and grab some other refreshments… If there’s none there, could you go out to the store and find some for us?”

⟬Make sure there are no suspicious people around here, and look around as carefully as possible. Nobody can overhear us here.⟭

Inellia’s expressions were naturally very similar in both situations, so she just nodded as if she had only heard one of his orders. “Okay, I’ll have it ready in a minute, so please wait a moment.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll find the gentlemen some refreshments.” Seeing Inellia act so naturally was normal. However, even Allen was surprised to see Linbelle act so calmly, to the point where he almost questioned the transparency of her typical demeanor.

Linbelle and Inellia were away for a while.

“Then let’s continue. Oh, Acanders, I heard you obtained a very rare drink?”

“Yes, Mr. Soned was there at that time, so I’m certain that he would remember it, too. I was able to get this ancient medicine from an elf I know…”

“Ah! You mean back then? I never would’ve thought of using herbs to make that kind of alcohol…”

He didn’t want to use his thread to cover the floor quite yet, so he started his escapade through the room by climbing up the wall.

When Inellia came back to serve the tea, they talked about trivial matters for a good ten minutes and more, before suddenly beginning to talk about the slight hardships they had suffered over the last few months.

“Sir, how much effort does it take to persuade those about to enter into an altercation to drop their weapons…”

The door clicked closed. Linbelle had returned.

At that very moment, a thread encircled the door through which she entered. The whole room was now covered with Allen’s thread.

“Has anyone bugged the room? Or any other places nearby?”

“Yes, the walls downstairs and outside, too. I checked all the people within 100 meters as well, but there was no one suspicious.”

All of the sound around them vanished. As if it was once unbearably noisy, the room had been now mired in silence.

* * *

* * *

Allen turned his head for a moment and looked at Inellia. They both sighed and nodded at each other. “You can say it now,” he said.

“Sir, what the hell is going on?

Soned, who had caught on and adapted to the situation by just feeling the atmosphere without saying a word to Allen, wore a serious look. “Are we being bugged? Or do you think we’re being targeted in some way…”

“First of all, may I ask you a few questions?” When Allen asked this with a serious look, Soned stepped back without a word of complaint.

“Go ahead.”

“Did you find the magic book with the red cover that I asked you to inquire about?”

“…I did not.”

“What about any large carriage processions, or people who you’ve never seen before moving in your territory without leaving much trace behind?”

“Just as you asked, I checked with my personal connections as much as I could, but… most of them were simply vagrants or bandits. Nothing that appeared to be a merchant group or anything like that.”

Allen paused for a moment before asking Acanders, who was lost in thought, “Have you ever seen anyone sneaking into the manor in the Duke’s territory, Acanders?”

“Yes, my men reported a few instances.”

“Did you follow where they went after they left?”

“Yes, but… they all managed to disappear at some point, with all search efforts ending in vain. The others were all local residents of the area.”

Allen recalled all of what had happened so far, both within and outside of his manor at home.

At some point, there were servants and maids who he had never seen before that appeared by his father’s side, servants and maids who he had never met; an administration maintained while consuming a good deal of their own assets, despite how clear it was that such unsustainable practices would lead to an insufficient budget; and Julius, who was able to resolve events that appeared out of nowhere like in novels, wherever he went.

He also thought of the fact that there were Circulators able to employ spatial movement, and they were able to appoint apostles freely now.

Blame didn’t think that Allen had gathered so much information, so he just moved forward with his plans at that time, but…

‘I pissed them off.’

That was his mistake.

He’d angered a group that he hadn’t grasped the influence of before his regression, secret forces helping out Julius from his father’s side.

He found a clue here.

“So sir, if you’ve finished going over it in your head, could you please explain?”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Allen smiled as he looked at them, who had been waiting for him to sort out his thoughts without any impatience. “Yes, of course you should know. It’s about time I told you.”

For months, they had gathered power by pushing forward and finishing their reports without betraying Allen, all the while without his presence. It was safe to say that they all had at least built a little bit of trust between each other.

‘No, if I have to keep even this small of a secret, there’ll be nothing but failure in store.’

That was what Allen felt from the bottom of his heart. If he was so worried about telling them his true thoughts about such a small matter, how would he be able to trust them to act as a part of his master plan to take revenge against Julius?

“Have you ever doubted my orders, felt any doubt at all?”

Soned pondered Allen’s question for a moment, but Acanders did not. “Yes, there are a few instances that come to mind. But I decided in the moment that it wasn’t something that I wanted to bring up without the trust of both sides.”

No matter how fierce the battle for succession may have been with his younger brother, Allen and Julius had a good relationship overall. There were rumors spreading around the Academy that they had a wonderful fraternal relationship. Yet Allen was gathering together those who held a grudge against Julius and watching over their homes, as if he were wary of his own family?

“To be honest, I was worried that I would only be a temporary stepping stone to you.” Acanders did not hide his thoughts, surmising that the reason Allen had brought up the topic was to test their ability to show him their sincere feelings.

Acknowledging Acanders’s mindset and response, Soned sighed and nodded. “…Yes, I felt the same way. Us merchants, we’re sensitive to rumors. To be honest, I doubted if there could even be a black market carrying all these magic books if merchants such as ourselves had never heard of it.”

As they revealed their true thoughts, they couldn’t help let them all pour out.

“If this continues, your position as the successor will be confirmed, but even if doing all this was to accumulate some power for yourself, it was difficult to guess at why you gathered the people that you did.”

As Allen listened to them, he became more and more vigilant on the inside. If he were to admit that he’d regressed, he would have to completely abandon the illusion that he would have otherwise had.

‘Knowledge of the place where I became an apostle made its rounds within a day. If so, then I should assume that at least some of my track record so far, if not all, has been revealed to a certain extent.’

Allen had snuck out of the city, so it was clear that they had followed the Circulators’ tracks to discover his whereabouts. There was a high probability that someone had noticed because there was an infiltrator in the Circulators, or because someone had been monitoring them from the outset.

‘Fortunately, they didn’t catch onto everything, but…’

It was obvious that even this amount of information would have reached Julius and lit the sparks of doubt in his mind.

‘…It’s a shame that I don’t have any intelligence organization under my control for now.’

A pity he couldn’t estimate their exact size. It would have been much easier to come up with countermeasures had he known that much.

Within Allen was the need he had felt from the time he’d commissioned Blame to find the culprit who committed the crimes at the thanksgiving festival. He felt it more keenly than before.

Inellia was in charge of ten or more people alone, and she knew that it would take time to raise the men under Acanders. However, he couldn’t help but regret the fact that he had no choice but to let go of his control in the process during the intermittent period.

‘I’d like to make an offer to the Queen of Darkness, no matter the cost.’

However, she must have already fled somewhere, so that was impossible.

“Before I explain everything, I have to tell you something first.”

The fundamental reason why Allen was doing any of this.

“Where should I start… hm… Yes. This is a good place to start. From before the time when Julius was considered to be a scoundrel.”

Inellia and Linbelle had already heard this tale, and Vestla, too, had heard the run-down.

“Us two brothers of the Reinhart family, we’re not brothers the way we once were.”

Thus began the story of the two brothers, deprived of their time together by demons.

* * *

“Please carefully think it over and give me an answer. I’ll give you as much time as you’d like.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

It wasn’t until late at night that the whole story had concluded.

Allen moved to another room, leaving Soned and Acanders to think. Inellia and Linbelle decided to sit in the next room, not waiting on him for the night.

He wanted time to think by himself today.

He’d also left his artifacts with telepathic functions over with Vestla, so they would be able to talk to each other.

Now was the right time for him to reflect alone. It’d allow them the room to think as well.

Step, step, step.

The dark, sunken hallway made him ruminate. Or at least, that was what Allen thought.

Demon or whatever, he only spoke of what he believed he understood.

“I’m getting used to all this since I keep talking about it.”

In other words, so many people had become involved in his and his younger brother’s affairs. Now he couldn’t stop it, even if he wanted to.

Allen laughed at the situation—leaving two people to rest as if it were something considerate.

“What shall I think about?”

Allen knew they would accept his story, even before telling them the conclusion. The fact that Acanders and Soned were lost in thought proved that there was potential in their relationship. Until now, it had been impossible to deny their increasingly strong relationship with Allen. Their business and their relationships with the people around him had advanced so well that it was too late to back out now.

To think he knew all of that and yet spoke as though he cared so much.

Allen suddenly felt that he had changed, if only a little.

There was no need to say why.

‘…Evan, Ariel, William.’

Was he doing well? Or, at least, was he doing right? It was a useless philosophical argument that couldn’t be answered.

However, there was nothing better than thinking about an unanswerable problem to pass the time.

Allen turned the door handle.

Click.

It wouldn’t hurt to sink into a philosophical quagmire tonight.

He collapsed into an exceptionally inky corner of the already dark room—so dark, as if something was sucking all the light away.

Had even the light of the moon vanished? Allen’s muscles quickly adjusted themselves into a defensive position. He turned around to exit the room. No, he was trying to escape.

However, the goosebumps rose on Allen’s neck, and as he let out a small breath, a voice spoke.

“You have quite the sense of humor, kiddo.”

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