SWY 21

As soon as Lestel stepped forward and asked, Derry let out a startled gasp. He seemed shocked by Lestel’s intensity.

“D-Do you know about Paphun?”

Derry answered the question with a question. Lestel’s brow furrowed.

“I asked you first. Do you know about Paphun tea? How much do you know? Who made it, and for what purpose?!”

As his emotions flared, so did his voice, and Derry, eyes wide in panic, hastily tried to calm him down.

“Y-You can’t raise your voice!”

He pressed his ear to the door to check outside, only relaxing once he was sure no one was near. Still, his face remained pale, and he looked terrified. From all this, it was clear Derry knew quite a bit about both the creatures and the tea. Growing desperate with a glimmer of hope, Lestel dropped any pretense of politeness. His gaze turned sharp and hostile as he stared at Derry.

“Tell me everything you know about them and about Paphun.”

“P-Paphun… was made by the Lord.”

Derry’s eyes darted for a moment before he cautiously began speaking. Then he quietly added, “With Master and my brothers.”

“Why the hell would Lord Luhas make something like that?!”

“To… to get revenge on the Imperial Family.”

“What?”

The answer was so unexpected that Lestel’s brow creased even deeper.

“After he received the tragic news that the young lady had died, the Lord changed. He opened up the library that the First Lord had sealed away and locked himself inside. Then suddenly, he said he had to create something. He took Master and the others. I… I haven’t seen them for almost a year because of that.”

“You’re telling me this Paphun tea was made by Lord Luhas, your master, and your brothers?”

Derry simply nodded.

“What did your master do?”

“H-He was a dark mage.”

“What?! There are still mages?!”

Sharhan, who had been silently listening, burst out in shock. Derry, hugging his knees to his chest, mumbled in response.

“Yes. My master’s master was a disciple of the First Lord. But he wasn’t really a powerful dark mage like those from the ancient empire. To use strong magic, you need a large mana core, but when the empire collapsed, so did the means to grow a core. There was a relic the First Lord left behind that helped them make a mana core, but it was so small that…”

At the academy, it was taught that mages formed a mana core near their heart to cast magic. Creating one required special tools and innate magical talent, but with the fall of the ancient empire, both tools and mentors vanished, and new mages stopped appearing.

“A-Anyway, Master and the others were technically dark mages, but they mostly studied the grimoires left by the First Lord. I was just the youngest disciple, too young to do anything but chores. But I wasn’t unhappy. They took me in as an orphan and even taught me some spells from the grimoires. Oh, but I’m not a dark mage. They said my affinity was with white magic…”

“Forget that nonsense and talk about the Paphun tea!”

Lestel, growing anxious as the story wandered off track, snapped. Derry’s shoulders shrank under the pressure of Lestel’s cold tone.

“P-Paphun is made from a herb called R-Rascul… and R-Rascul grows from the blood and flesh of monsters. Originally, monsters were sealed away under a vow made to the Founding Emperor, but the Lord secretly brought them from the forest to cultivate R-Rascul. He found a way to enhance its toxicity in the First Lord’s library. Apparently, you let monsters fight to the death and use the last one standing to grow it. Thanks to the long years of sealing, the groundwork for a highly toxic version was already in place. So many people died just trying to kill those venom-soaked monsters. The Lord forced my brothers into the forest too… and they all died…”

Derry’s nose turned red. But Lestel didn’t have the luxury of letting him wallow in grief.

“And?”

Prompted by Lestel, Derry swallowed back a sob rising to his throat and continued.

“The Lord threatened them… They experimented to see at what ratio of R-Rascul in the tea it became most toxic. If you drink P-Paphun tea… if you drink it…”

“What happens?!”

“Because of the toxicity of the R-Rascul, the main ingredient… you die and then… turn into one of those things outside…”

“Is that true?!”

Sharhan grabbed Derry’s shoulders, asking urgently. Derry nodded frantically.

“I-It’s true. That’s what my master said, and I saw it with my own eyes.”

Sharhan’s eyes widened until it felt like they’d tear. As memories of the Paphun tea addicts on their way to Luhas came flooding back, a chill settled over him. It was more horrifying than the idea of being bitten to turn, this was death itself turning people.

“Shit!”

A curse burst out, and his fingers trembled. His throat tightened until he could barely breathe. Lestel’s face was ashen. Stunned as if hit by a brick, he stood frozen, then suddenly grabbed Derry by the collar.

“What about an antidote?!”

“I-I don’t know.”

“How could you not?! Didn’t your master make it?!”

“I really don’t know! I only found out about all this today. T-Today’s the birthday of the young lady who passed away. Her birthday is the biggest festival in our territory. Everyone gathers in the inner city for the Lord’s banquet, with food and drinks. I went, but then Master found me and secretly told me… told me about P-Paphun and said I had to run away… That my brothers were already d-dead…”

Derry finally started crying. He cupped his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound, his body shaking. Lestel let go of his collar, but the murderous glare in his eyes hadn’t faded.

“Where’s your master?!”

“H-He died. Right in front of me… while saving me…”

Derry sobbed for a long time. For an orphan like him, his master must have been like a parent. To watch someone so precious die before his eyes, it was a miracle he was still coherent. Even his brothers were dead.

Overwhelmed with sorrow, Derry cried for a long time, until suddenly a thought struck him and he jerked his head up. Almost clinging to Lestel, who was barely holding back his rage, he asked desperately.

“H-Has the tea spread a lot outside?! My master said the Lord had gone mad and was trying to turn people into monsters… and was spreading the tea through his private troops. How far… how far has it gone?!”

“If what you say is true, then probably enough to plunge the entire Empire into chaos.”

Lestel wasn’t trying to scare him, it was the truth. Even in Verden, addicts were everywhere. If they’d all turned, the horror would be unimaginable. No doubt it was as much of a hell as this place.

“N-No way…”

Pale with despair, Derry dropped to the floor with a thud.

“What happened to the Lord?”

“W-What did Master do…”

“I asked you what happened to the Lord!”

If the Lord was alive, maybe he could be forced to give up a solution. Lestel’s question held that last shred of hope, but the answer was nothing but despair.

“H-He’s dead.”

“Did you see it yourself? Are you sure?!”

“Y-Yes. I saw it with my own eyes. Tea was served at the party today. I didn’t drink any because I was going to meet Master secretly. But suddenly, people who drank it dropped dead and then got up and attacked others. The festival turned into a bloodbath in an instant. Screaming, running, getting torn apart… It was chaos.”

“Ah…”

Sharhan let out a sigh, as if he had seen it himself, the horror was that vivid.

“I barely escaped with Master’s help. But as I fled the inner city… I saw it. A walking corpse in a soldier’s uniform was tearing the Lord apart. A-And the Lord… he was smiling.”

He had been smiling, even while being ripped apart. Arms wide, clothes flung open, inviting them to devour him. It was madness itself.

Fleeing in tears, Derry finally found an abandoned house to hide in. Just getting here had been a struggle, he didn’t even know how many times he’d fallen. He locked the door, covered the windows, and trembled like a rat. But as the thought of needing to escape Luhas finally struck, he peeked outside again and again, too scared to act, until he spotted the two of them.

“Shit, if that bastard Lord and your master are both dead… what about everyone else? You said your brothers helped make the tea!”

Lestel’s desperation was heartbreaking, he must have forgotten that Derry had already said his brothers were dead.

“T-They’re all dead. The Lord forced them into the forest to catch monsters…”

“…Wasn’t there anyone else involved in making the tea?!”

“A few scholars who studied ancient grimoires were taken too. B-But Master said some of them refused to help and were killed by the Lord… I don’t know what happened to the rest. I didn’t see them. But they’re probably dead. Thousands of villagers were gathered in the inner city.”

All packed together, the casualties must have been massive.

“How many… do you think survived?”