Chapter 424

“How does someone just suddenly die?”

“Exactly. Looks like even they don’t know the cause.”

“You can tell that just from this?”

“A hunch.”

“Yeah… figures.”

I grabbed my head again. Then I asked Narke, who was staring intently at the single-line newspaper article.

“Do you think someone killed the Prime Minister with Atropos?”

“I don’t know about that, but I just came to the same conclusion you did.”

The timing was simply too suspicious. We had only just deciphered the code about “loading a hundred barrels of Atropos onto a train bound for Austria-Hungary,” and not long afterward, the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister had suddenly died. It wasn’t hard to suspect that the two incidents were connected. Narke’s Insight only gave that suspicion more weight.

Assuming the Prime Minister had indeed been killed by Atropos, his death gave us something else to work with: Adrian Askanien’s judgment now seemed far more accurate than the Commander’s.

If France really was behind it, as the Commander believed, why would they kill the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister? Even if they had been accused of stealing the parure, that wasn’t enough reason to assassinate a foreign official, much less the most powerful person in the cabinet aside from the Imperial Family. Anyone could see that.

There were plenty of other ways to put pressure on a foreign country. They could interfere with foreign policy by messing with tariffs and trade, causing widespread economic trouble, or raise tensions by getting closer to countries hostile to Austria-Hungary. Even nowadays, when countries were bound to have their share of conflicts, those kinds of foreign sanctions were much more common than simply assassinating another country’s politician.

Ironically, unless Atropos had been used for some other purpose, using it to kill the Prime Minister actually made France less suspicious. If they really were behind it, there had to be another motive.

Of course, France was still an obvious suspect from Austria-Hungary’s point of view, given their current diplomatic tensions. But even they probably wouldn’t rank France as a particularly likely culprit.

The Prime Minister was either killed because of a personal grudge or interest, or by a third party who stood to benefit from his death, even if they had no personal connection to him. There was no way to know about the first possibility for now, so starting with the second, what naturally came to mind?

The death of the Prime Minister naturally suggested that someone had a grievance with the domestic affairs under his jurisdiction. And if you knew even a little about the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was one group of suspects that immediately came to mind.

Who were the people who currently held the greatest grudge against the Austrians? Who were the people who had been ruled by the Habsburgs, the predecessors of the Empire’s ruling house, Österreich-Este?

The Hungarians. Even after the revolution and the Compromise had put the name of their kingdom alongside that of the Austrian Empire, they were still treated as second-class citizens within the empire, facing the same discrimination and exclusion at the hands of the Austrians. Every movement had its radicals and moderates, so by now, the Austrians were probably already up in arms, loudly insisting that, ‘Those radical Hungarian nationalists must have killed our Austrian prime minister,’ despite having no evidence whatsoever.

I pressed a hand to my forehead and muttered, “Austria must be in complete chaos. Finding the Atropos is going to be even harder.”

“Yeah. Makes me a little scared to go there~ Hmm.”

“Would it be better to pretend we’re foreigners, or pretend we’re Austrians…?”

I muttered to myself before coming to a decision. Pretending to be foreigners would be better. No matter how confident I was in my acting, with everyone’s nerves this frayed, it was better not to put myself in a situation where I could give them any reason to suspect me. It wasn’t as though I knew Austrian culture particularly well, either, and I certainly couldn’t speak Austrian Standard German very well. However, in this case, I couldn’t say I was Prussian. Absolutely not.

From what I could tell, Austrians at this time weren’t particularly fond of Prussians. After losing the Austro-Prussian War, they had been forced to surrender their position as the leading power among the German states to the “rootless” House of Hohenzollern, a mere count family from the sandy wastes of Brandenburg. Considering that they saw their own country as little different from the successor to the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, it was understandable that they would take some pride in it.

Narke rubbed his chin, dropped down beside me, and answered, “That’s difficult. How about pretending to be Bavarians~?”

“Hmm…”

That was a decent option. Bavaria and Austria had fairly good relations. Partly because the two states had been connected through marriages since long ago—though, of course, Prussia and Bavaria had also been connected by marriage back in the Old Human era, and even now the ruling houses of Europe still exchanged mana with one another. Perhaps because Bavaria and Austria had such a strong image as longtime allies, their people seemed to regard their relationship as something more meaningful—but more importantly, both were dissatisfied with the current power structure with Prussia as its leader. During the Austro-Prussian War, Bavaria had been an enemy of Prussia and an ally of Austria.

The problem was that I wasn’t particularly fluent in Bavarian. I could always pretend to be from Anhalt, Mecklenburg, or Oldenburg, places where people didn’t use the Bavarian accent, but unfortunately, they would all be seen as Prussian lackeys—or at least something close to that in their eyes. That made them my second-best options. The only varieties of German I could speak fluently were the Low German used in Anhalt, Prussian German, and High German as the standard language. I closed my eyes and furrowed my brow.

“I think pretending to be from Baden or Bavaria would be the best option, but even if I want to do that, my accent could be a problem. Should I learn it…?”

“I don’t think learning it now will be enough.”

“True. Narke, can you speak Austro-Bavarian?”

“Nope! I’m planning to mix an Italian accent into my German~”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

Since the Austro-Hungarian Empire had absorbed parts of northern Italy when it was still the Habsburg Monarchy, someone with Italian blood traveling around wouldn’t seem all that out of place. Especially since Narke was actually from northern Italy.

Narke carefully packed several unusual artifacts that appeared to belong to the Papal See into his suitcase, then stood by the door.

“We should get going to the Imperial Palace soon, Lukas.”

At the Imperial Palace, they had given us a reception room and set up a temporary portal. It led directly to the border checkpoint for crossing into Austria-Hungary. Adrian Askanien didn’t show his face even once until the very end. He was too busy fulfilling his duties as a politician of the Empire.

One of Adrian Askanien’s aides held out his hand to me.

“Have you memorized all the materials? If you still have them, please hand them over.”

I passed the file to him. The government had gathered information that might be useful for our investigation and given it to us, but we couldn’t take it with us into Austria. Of everything they’d provided, the only things we were allowed to bring were a couple of forged passports made according to our specifications and the money the government had given us. So, in the meantime, I’d gone through the file five times and committed everything to memory. I probably didn’t need to read it that thoroughly, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

“Once it strikes two, the portal will open. There are five minutes left, so if you need anything before then, just let me know.”

“Nothing. Please be at ease.”

I gave him a brief answer and sat down on the sofa to wait. Just then, the aide touched his ear and suddenly said, “Tell him he can come in.”

He must have received word from the mage guarding the room. The moment the door opened, I saw a familiar face.

“Lukas.”

It was a welcome sight. As he entered, the aide left the room. Leo, dressed in an Eszett uniform, took off his hat with a serious expression, nodded a greeting to Narke, and then spoke in a concerned voice.

“I heard. You got assigned a new operation.”

“Didn’t you have extra training? I heard all the other teams were doing it.”

“We did. I finished it and left, but they told me to go back in. They showed me your footage, so I just copied it and came out.”

“You can just copy it after watching it once?”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

Leo let out a long sigh and tugged at the front of his shirt, straightening his clothes. There were only three of us in the room now, but perhaps worried that the room might be bugged, he cast a soundproofing spell. Leo quietly stared at the clock for a moment, then ran a hand through his hair and said almost to himself, “You did well, Lukas.”

“Thanks. It’s not like this is my first day.”

What was that supposed to mean? Leo muttered those words with a disbelieving laugh. I snickered along with him, then patted the seat beside me. Leo gave a small shake of his head and looked down at me before quietly saying, “I know there’s nothing I can say that’ll change what happened, but I can’t help thinking about it. If I’d done a better job…”

“You’d be going to Austria-Hungary with Narke instead of me.”

“Yeah. That’s what I want.”

I could feel Narke glance at him. I knew exactly what Leo meant, but I just shrugged in the same flat voice, playing it off casually.

“You wanting to get close to Narke is something I learned for the first time today, too. I still can’t forget that end-of-month evaluation when we rode out to the outskirts together.”

“Ah! That time~”

Narke burst out laughing, clearly delighted by the memory. Leo, however, only gave a faint smile, his gaze drifting elsewhere. Then again, there was no way Leo had come here just to talk about what happened before. He wasn’t the kind of person to dwell on the past for long. If anything, he was the type to turn his mistakes into opportunities to improve. There was no way he had come here just to reminisce about that exam. Still, I didn’t want him to be even a little down after I left. I caught Narke’s eye and gestured for his understanding before casting a soundproofing spell. Then I narrowed my eyes at Leo.

“I can’t help but be disappointed.”

Leo glanced at me, tilting his head slightly. I leaned forward and continued.

“You don’t trust the abilities of someone you were willing to risk your life for? I don’t even know what to say when my closest friend underestimates me this much. If we barely knew each other, I could at least try to explain myself.”

“So that’s how you see it? Hahaha…”

For once, Leo laughed out loud. Then, with a faint smile, he lightly rubbed the corner of his mouth and said in a displeased tone, “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s the others.”

“I know. But the results aren’t even out yet. You already made it into the top ranks, and now you’re regretting not coming first in training because there’s nothing else left for you to regret?”

“It’s not really regret…”

“Then what is it?”

“…….”

He fell silent for a moment, thinking over what to say. But before he could speak, I shook my head and continued.

“Just trust me once. I’ll make sure all that time you spent regretting this wasn’t wasted.”

With a confident smile, I held out my pinky. Leo looked down at me with an incredulous expression, the corner of his mouth raised as he tried to hold back a laugh. I felt just as ridiculous saying something I normally never would, even if I was just trying to make it playful.

I shrugged again, giving him a look that said, Well? What are you going to do? Leo waved a hand and nodded, accepting my words. Before he could say anything, I quickly spoke up.

“Sit down for a moment. There was actually something I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“You’re speaking Standard German right now, aren’t you?”

“…I am. Why?”

“If you don’t mind, could you speak Bavarian for me?”

“Why?”

Leo looked genuinely baffled. Then he narrowed his eyes and pointed at me.

“I’ll speak it if you want me to. But when I’m around someone who speaks Standard German like you do… I don’t really use it.”

“You know I speak Anhalt Low German. And you used Bavarian sometimes when you were in Bavaria.”

“That was when I was around Bavarians. You’re not one. Have I ever spoken Bavarian to you?”

“No, you haven’t. Why?”

“Why do you think? Just tell me what you want to hear it for.”

“I was wondering if I could pass myself off as a Bavarian for the operation. It’s better to have several identities prepared in case something happens. I want to know if my accent is convincing.”

“Then I shouldn’t be the one speaking. You should. Go on. Let me hear it.”

I’d also wanted to hear him speak it so I could copy him while I was at it. But really, what difference would hearing a few words make? I cleared my throat for no particular reason. Then I recalled all the Bavarian I had heard so far, along with the countless pronunciation marks I had studied, and opened my mouth, doing my best to reproduce every sound as accurately as possible.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. How is it? Do I sound Bavarian?”

Leo had been watching me with his arms crossed and a smile on his face, looking as though he was waiting to see what I would come up with. He kept the same expression as I answered his faint smile with one of my own. Then, with a gentle look, he waved his hand dismissively.

“Do you really have to imitate it? Forget it.”

“…….”

For some reason, Leo suddenly burst out laughing, even though I hadn’t said a word. I was laughing too, though mine was more of a hollow laugh.

All right. Passing myself off as a Bavarian was out. It wasn’t as though Bavarians had to speak Bavarian all the time, so I could still use Standard German. But if I happened to run into someone from the same region, it would be troublesome, so I decided against it.

One minute remained. Just as the second hand reached twelve, the aide knocked on the door with impeccable timing. Before dispelling the soundproofing spell, Leo gave me a small smile.

“Take care of yourself. Come back in one piece.”

Stepping through the portal was difficult this time as well. It wasn’t until Narke shoved me from behind, sending me into the door on the other side like before, that I was finally able to feel the outside air.

Before coming out, I had changed my eye and hair color. With an artifact strapped around my wrist to neatly suppress and regulate the mana I was giving off, I passed myself off as a completely ordinary Old Human German, with dark golden eyes and equally dark blond hair, with Narke’s help. Narke, meanwhile, came out looking like himself as usual.

Thanks to the Imperial Family, getting through the checkpoint was easy enough. But what came after was the problem. We had learned the local coordinate system with the government’s help, so we could technically warp around Austria from here, but we couldn’t exactly go around doing that in the open. We could use it when appropriate, but we couldn’t abuse it. So, partly to gather information along the way, we decided to take a train to Vienna, the center of the incident.

Before that, we needed to stop by a restaurant in Salzburg, the nearest major city to the checkpoint. We weren’t hungry, but if we wanted to properly adjust our plans for what came next, it would be better to mingle with the locals before getting on the train in earnest.

After walking for about thirty minutes, we reached an area that was at least developed enough to pass for a proper town center. Narke and I entered the restaurant that looked the busiest. I greeted them with the Bavarian greeting I knew and took a seat, and a waiter brought us the menus.

While he did, my attention was drawn to the conversations around the restaurant.

“…It’s Hungarians. Are there any Hungarians in this restaurant?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“If there are, get the hell out! Get out of Austria!”

Someone who was drunk suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs. Cheers of agreement filled the entire restaurant. There didn’t seem to be a single Hungarian here to begin with, yet they were still cursing Hungarians as though they were talking to someone right in front of them. As expected, they were blaming the Prime Minister’s sudden death on the Hungarians.

Narke didn’t spare them so much as a glance as he took the menu. I naturally scolded him when he immediately flipped it open to the alcohol section.

“No. You can’t get drunk in the middle of the day.”

“There is a way around that. Want me to get rid of it~?”

“…….”

He meant using divine power to sober himself up, no doubt. Narke wasn’t going to drink enough to actually get drunk anyway, but I didn’t particularly want to drink. Without answering, I turned toward the owner as he passed by our table and spoke.

“Can we order? Scrambled eggs and sparkling water, please.”

“German?”

At that sharp reply, every bit of noise in the restaurant died away. Everyone’s eyes turned toward me. The owner kept asking in a stiff voice.

“Prussian? Saxon? Hanoverian?”

He must have figured out that I was German from the way I had just spoken. I had used Standard German, and my words had been brief, so it probably wasn’t simply a matter of accent. Though perhaps I was imagining it. If it was a difference in vocabulary, then, as I had just confirmed, I couldn’t claim to be from Bavaria.

“I came from central Germany.”

“The one next to you too?”

Narke nodded at the question.

“Yes.”

“…Rührei? You mean Eierspeis, surely.”

He was talking about the scrambled eggs. The owner curtly corrected my “Standard German” into the Austrian usage before heading into the kitchen.

Even after he took our order and disappeared into the kitchen, the silence didn’t lift. Everyone was watching us foreigners with wary eyes. Under normal circumstances, it probably wouldn’t have been like this, but the Prime Minister’s sudden death, with the possibility of assassination still on the table, seemed to have frozen the entire country in fear. And now that the Austrians had already spent so much time blaming Hungarians, strengthening their sense of unity and solidarity in a rather unhealthy direction, it was only natural that foreigners wouldn’t be viewed favorably.

At a table some distance away, a group of middle-aged Austrian Old Humans, clearly drunk, began tapping on their table. When we looked over, one of them jerked his chin toward us.

“You two students over there.”

“…….”

Technically, he had said male students. German had very clear gender distinctions, even in the words themselves. The articles die, der, and das were one thing, of course, but the words themselves could be different as well. Thankfully, the plain, commoner-like clothes we had chosen meant they didn’t seem to suspect we were New Humans. Just as we had intended, they seemed to have mistaken us for male Old Humans.

An olderly Old Human asked us with bloodshot eyes, “When did you come to our country?”

“…A few days ago. This Monday.”

“Why did you come? It’s not even vacation season.”

“I have relatives living here.”

“Which relatives? What kind of—did both of you come to visit relatives?”

This was clearly hostility. Being questioned like this from a distant table in a restaurant was hardly something that could be considered small talk. Then again, both Narke and I knew perfectly well that this wasn’t exactly a country where small talk came naturally. Narke and I exchanged glances. It wasn’t that we had no excuse prepared. It was that their hostility had gone far beyond what I had expected. Apparently feeling the same way, Narke looked a little more serious than before.

Clack.

Before long, the owner set down the scrambled eggs and sparkling water at our table. We naturally avoided answering any further questions, finished our meal, and left the restaurant.

I stared at the train station in the distance and muttered, “I know now.”

“Yeah…”

Narke cast a soundproofing spell and answered in a whisper.

What did I know? That if we were going to travel through the Austro-Hungarian Empire in this state, we would have to be prepared for a lot more trouble. I called Narke by the alias we had prepared beforehand.

“Konrad.”

“Haha… Yeah?”

“We need to take the train now.”

“…….”

“The problem is that we have to buy tickets. Even if we show them passports stamped with the Imperial seal, they’ll definitely ask us the same questions as before—why we came to their country, and what two students are doing here. It’ll probably be even worse this time. And…”

I looked toward the Old Humans wearing the uniforms of the Austro-Hungarian police. They had swords hanging from their waists. They gave us a sharp glance before quickly walking past. Only after they were gone did I whisper, “There are police patrolling around.”

“Mm.”

“We need to revise the plan for now. I thought we could say we came to visit relatives, but that might only work in a bigger city.”

“Yeah. They looked ready to track them down the moment we said who our relatives were.”

“They probably won’t actually go that far, but it’s still a risk. …Should we say we came here to do odd jobs?”

Narke burst out laughing. Apparently, my suggestion sounded ridiculous. I followed after him as he walked, lowering my gaze and thinking.

“As long as they think we’re male students, we can’t say we came here to work as teachers. And we can’t say we’re newspaper boys either… Maybe we could say we’re traveling.”

“‘Two students traveling together’?”

“Don’t be sarcastic…”

Narke repeated the words that Old Human from earlier had used. I let out a hollow laugh and sighed deeply. I rubbed my chin, lost in thought, and when we reached the shade of some trees in a garden, I snapped my fingers.

“Looks like we don’t have much choice. Let’s make a more detailed list of relatives. And we need to decide when you’ll use your divine power. If I give you a signal, it’ll be too obvious…”

“No, Lukas.”

Narke had stopped behind me and answered in a serious voice. The moment I turned my head half a step backward, I froze upon realizing that my companion’s face was no longer at my eye level.

The person standing where Narke should have been was an Old Human I’d never seen before. A strange Old Human around my age, whose face I couldn’t even tell where he’d gotten, stood there adjusting an unfamiliar parasol. Wearing Narke’s expression, he smiled leisurely.

“I have a way.”