Between two cliffs through which the aerial railway passed.
Standing in mid-air, Osprey faced a girl.
“…Wow, you’re really floating. Grandpa.”
The girl spoke as if in awe, and Osprey smiled kindly.
“You’re the same, aren’t you?”
“…I’m a bit different.”
“Honest, I see.”
Osprey glanced beneath the girl’s feet. It was hard to see with the naked eye, but thin threads like filaments were supporting her.
“What brings you here, miss?”
“I came to blow up the train.”
“Ah, the train, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“A lot of people will die.”
“That’s right.”
The girl nodded. Her eyes were innocent.
“The students of Constel are too strong. Especially the first years. I need to take care of them all here.”
“Being strong is a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Right. If they were on our side. But they’re not.”
It was a remarkably simple dichotomy.
But Osprey strangely understood and agreed. It seemed that all the forces in the world were in conflict with such a simple dichotomy like this girl. They just added various justifications on top of it.
And according to this dichotomy, Osprey had enough reason to be hostile towards the girl because she belonged to “them”. It was truly refreshing logic.
Osprey said,
“However, blowing up the train wouldn’t be an option.”
“We’ll do it anyway.”
“It would ruin Indus’s image. For a ‘revolution,’ you have to know when to hold back.”
The girl’s eyes twitched at Osprey’s coaxing tone. It was brief, but Osprey didn’t miss it.
Indeed. Indus hadn’t yet considered that the word ‘revolution’ could get out.
Even Osprey himself hadn’t thought of it in such precise terms until he heard it from Frondier.
…Perhaps, this could be a way to plant doubt within Indus.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll still do it.”
“That’s impossible. Your revolution doesn’t know ‘moderation.’ If you aim ‘too high,’ you’ll miss your footing. What then of the ‘state of the nation’?”
Osprey emphasized certain words on purpose. It was a very cunning hint. He didn’t specify what he was referring to, but it was enough to plant ‘thoughts’ in the girl’s mind.
“……”
The girl didn’t show any reaction. She completely ignored Osprey’s words. It was a good stance for someone her age.
“So what are you doing here, grandfather?”
“Trying to catch a cockroach.”
“……Could it be.”
The girl’s eyes darkened. A murderous intent emerged, evenly spread from her head to her toes.
“Is that, about us?”
“Ha-ha-ha. Why so serious, miss?”
Osprey received the girl’s murderous intent while smiling comfortably.
“Are you calling yourself a cockroach, miss?”
“……We are not cockroaches.”
“You’ve been saying ‘we’ all this while, but you’re alone, aren’t you?”
The moment Osprey said that, he felt a peculiar sensation.
At first, it was a tiny sense of awareness, barely noticeable, but soon it grew into an unmistakable feeling of something crawling up from under his feet.
“Huh.”
Osprey briefly scanned the surroundings. Countless threads spread around the girl, and something was coming from beyond them.
Things were crawling on the thread from the edge of the cliff. They were spiders. The spiders were smaller than ordinary bugs, about as thin as the thread.
“We’re not cockroaches.”
The girl said.
“Well, well. Every word is true.”
Osprey nodded as if convinced.
“You’re ‘us’, but you’re not a ‘cockroach’. It is literally true. I apologize. When you get older, you tend to think about the implications of even simple words. Forgive me.”
Osprey raised one hand. The thumb of his horizontally held hand touched his chest. Mana swirled from the point of contact.
“But, young lady. Either way, you need a remedy.”
“It’s not us who need to be saved, but you people-!”
Boom!
The girl stopped talking. Her mouth didn’t move as she thought. The girl touched her face. No, she couldn’t touch it. Her fingers brushed through the air.
Half of her head was blown off. Only then did the girl realize that half of her vision was gone.
‘What is it, magic? What happened? I didn’t see it.’
The girl collapsed. She barely managed to grab onto the previously installed thread. However.
Boom!
This time, the hand she was holding onto was blown away. Her body swayed. She knew an attack was coming, but she couldn’t dodge or block it. The girl looked at her blown-off hand. It was clearly the effect of magic.
The girl’s hair trembled. Soon, every single strand of her hair split countless times and scattered along the thread. All of them were also spiders.
“Young lady, I hope you’ll come as your ‘main body’ next time. Only then can we have a genuine conversation.”
The girl, splitting into countless spiders, looked at Osprey with her last remaining eye.
She had come to see how strong Osprey was and what the nature of his strength was. She could barely grasp it.
The last remaining eye also soon scattered, becoming a spider.
* * *
From a distance, Indus member Thompson observed the scene.
He manipulated the components installed in his prosthetic arm, pulling a ring with his fingers. Then, with a click-click sound, a telescope popped out beside the prosthetic. Thompson brought his eye to the telescope.
“…Crazy old man.”
The Indus members were convinced, seeing Osprey waiting at the aerial railway. Constel must have noticed that our Indus was about to make a move!
To understand Osprey’s power, member Cain sent his dummy to Osprey. Thompson wanted to check how Osprey would fight.
“Damn, I don’t know?”
Even from this distance, it was impossible to discern what Osprey had done. Cain, who experienced it firsthand, wouldn’t have understood at all.
Then his phone rang. Thompson brought the phone to his ear.
“Hey, couldn’t even move a finger before being taken down.”
-So, what’s his identity? That old man.
“I have no idea.”
Thompson said shamelessly. A brief silence came from the other end of the call.
-That’s possible. Thompson is incompetent. It was my mistake in selecting him.
“This kid knows how to provoke, huh?”
-More importantly, there’s something else.
“What?”
There’s something more important than the nature of Osprey’s power?
Thompson frowned in confusion but then his expression hardened at Cain’s next words.
-Osprey knows about the ‘revolution’.
“…”
Thompson’s mouth shut tightly. His playful demeanor vanished.
“It wasn’t just a coincidence that such a word came up?”
-No. He knew not only about blowing up the train, but that it was for the ‘revolution’. It’s not a coincidence.
Thompson’s eyes grew cold. Probably, the eyes of Cain, who was on the call, did the same.
“…Then, really, what we were joking about last time,”
-Yeah, seems like it.
Both had the same thought. Confirming this, Cain said.
“There’s a traitor within Indus.”