Chapter 41

Zeth stood in the middle of the roped-off medical area, staring down Erza, Rosalie, and Alfon. His muscles tensed, ready to spring into action the moment they moved against him.

His mind went to the three ritual circles stowed within his pockets. A second to withdraw them, and a couple seconds to arm them, then a couple more seconds to reach his enemies…He wasn’t sure if he could do all that in less time than it’d take for them to kill him.

They hadn’t attacked yet, though. That was a good sign.

“Come with us,” Erza said. “We’d like to talk.”

“About what?” Zeth asked, not bothering to hide the caution in his voice. From the looks on Rosalie and Alfon’s faces, Erza had informed them of his theory, after all.

“It’s not a conversation to have around others,” Erza said.

For once, Zeth found himself agreeing with the man’s words. If it really was gonna come down to a fight to the death, he certainly didn’t want a couple dozen witnesses to his blood magic. There was at least a possibility, if nobody directly saw him do it, that he’d be able to pass this off as some sort of accident unrelated to him.

“Zeth?” Turin called over to him from behind.

He didn’t dare take his eyes off of his opponents to look at his friend.

“Zeth, what’s up?” he called again. He heard footsteps approaching. “Who are those people?”

Turin appeared at Zeth’s side, looking between the three heavily armed individuals on the other side of the rope. Zeth glanced over at him. “Hey, I got that powder you needed.”

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Turin said, looking down as Zeth placed the bowl into his hand. “But seriously, are these people bothering you?”

“They’re my employers,” Zeth said. “Just here to talk.”

“No way, man! You never told me you got a new job. That’s great! They pay well?”

“Actually,” Erza said, “this is the type of discussion we’d rather have alone. You don’t mind if we steal your friend away for a moment, do you?”

“Huh? Oh, go ahead,” Turin said. “I can take things from here. Thanks for your help though, man. Seriously appreciate it.”

“Uh, right,” Zeth said. “No problem.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse us,” Erza said, nodding to Zeth.

Zeth took a breath, and stepped out of the cordoned-off area, sticking his hands in his pockets in the most casual way he could. His fingers gripped the scraps of cloth, ready to whip them out at a moment’s notice.

“Come with us,” Erza said. “We’ll go a little bit further away before we talk.”

He walked off ahead, with Rosalie and Alfon waiting for Zeth to begin walking so they could stand behind him. Unfortunately, Zeth had little choice but to simply allow himself to become surrounded like this. He certainly couldn’t fight in front of everyone. So, he began walking, following behind Erza.

As they walked, though, he frowned. He knew why he wanted to get to a secluded area, but why did they? Wouldn’t they want to be in an area with other people around, in case he got away? Certainly more eyewitnesses would be better for them. Something felt wrong here.

He glanced around. In front of him, Erza strode ahead with a grim determination. To his left, Alfon was walking along, eyes totally closed. Zeth had no idea how the man saw like that—probably some Skill related to whatever Class he had. And to his right, there was Rosalie, marching forth with an unwavering gaze fixed on the horizon. She looked determined.

Or…no, not quite. Zeth recognized her expression well—it was one he’d gotten quite used to wearing when around demons. The face of someone who was terrified out of their mind, but putting on a brave expression anyway. The eyes refusing to budge from an arbitrary point in the distance, the screwed-tight jaw as if to keep her teeth from chattering, the tensed neck muscles sending stress down the spine—she was afraid. He looked down at the hand which carried her warhammer. It was shaking. Just barely, but the metal gauntlet let out rings of steel on steel as the hand within it shivered.

Why was she so terrified, though? Zeth glanced back at Alfon, examining his expression more closely to try and glean any information possible. This man’s face was far less telling than Rosalie’s, but it also gave off a strange sense of unease. Or, maybe it was skepticism on his face.

Before Zeth could puzzle through why they would be feeling that way, though, Erza stopped and turned around to look at him.

He nodded over to the side, bringing Zeth’s attention to a tight alleyway between two buildings. “In there.”

Zeth glanced between Erza, Rosalie, and Alfon, then shot a look behind him, back at the medical outpost. Turin hurried around in the distance, still within his view. Zeth certainly didn’t want to fight here. But in this alley of Erza’s choosing? What if it was trapped?

He looked over at the other side of the street, where another similar alleyway was located. He stepped in its direction. “Let’s go here instead. It’s wider, so we can fit more easily.”

But as he went to take another step in that direction, Erza glanced over at Turin, as if to ensure nobody was looking, then grabbed Zeth’s collar and began dragging him toward the original alleyway.

Zeth instantly reached to pull Erza’s hand from his shirt, beginning to panic at the sudden contact, but Rosalie quietly grabbed his wrist and pulled him along, as well. “Just come with us.”

She easily yanked him between the two buildings with her superior strength, and for a moment, Zeth thought he was about to die right there. But then, after pushing him against a wall, she let go. Erza did too.

Zeth breathed out, figuring he’d try to at least try convincing them he was innocent—no matter how unlikely it seemed they’d believe him at this point. “Okay, what is all of this about?! Erza, don’t tell me you still think—”

“I don’t think, I know,” Erza interrupted, leaning forward. He was standing between Rosalie and Alfon, who both flanked Zeth, with him still pinned up against the wall. He had nowhere to go. “After I saw you show up in that stupid face mask, ordering your demon around, it left little room for interpretation.”

Zeth fought to keep a straight face as Rosalie lifted her warhammer, ready to smash his skull to pieces at a moment’s notice. How the hell did Erza figure out that was him? He’d concealed his face, he’d changed his voice, and Erza hadn’t said anything to imply he knew it was Zeth at the time.

He had to buy time and find some way to fish those Hellfire Ritual cloths out of his pockets so he could defend himself. There was no other way out of this situation.

“L-listen. I don’t know what you’re even talking about. But we can talk this out. So why don’t you just put the weapons down…”

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His voice trailed away as he looked at Rosalie’s hand, holding the greathammer. It was still shaking—even more now than it had been before.

Zeth’s mind went back to the first time Erza had accused him. That time, the man had seemed ready to kill him, but was really just pretending in order to try and blackmail Zeth with the information. Once again, Erza was threatening to kill him. But once again, if he was so sure, why would he do such a thing? Why would he have an entire verbal confrontation about this, trying to get Zeth to admit to his crimes? There was no reason if they actually knew he was guilty. And besides, what could Erza have said to Rosalie and Alfon to convince them? Zeth had used some magic one time? No way they’d execute him for just that.

This entire situation was staged. They were acting assured when they really had no evidence to try and scare Zeth into reacting carelessly. Well, if they were gonna try to trick him, he’d just trick them in response.

He took a shaky breath. “P-please don’t kill me. I-I know you tried to accuse me of being some kind of Blood Mage, but I’m not. I don’t know the first thing about those people!”

Erza frowned, evidently not expecting such a reaction. “Then how were you able to see the mana coming off of my magic items? And how were you able to patch up their fields? Why were you lying to us when you said you didn’t have a Class?”

“I-I really don’t have a Class, I swear!” Zeth said.

Rosalie squinted, lifting her hammer back a little further with her still-shaking hand.

In response, Zeth pressed himself flat against the wall, as though he was trying to get as far away from her as possible. “I, I have a little sister. She’s a total magic enthusiast—absolute genius, and sweet as can be. But she’s got no mentor. Nobody to teach her. So I just thought, what if I raised up my Shaping a little, right? And if I messed around with mana a little bit, maybe learned a thing or two, maybe I could teach her what I know.”

At that, Rosalie frowned. She glanced over to Erza. “...Is that possible? I thought you said he had to have a Class.”

“Of course it isn’t possible,” Erza spat. Then he frowned. “Well, technically it’s allowed by the System. All you need in order to see mana is Shaping. But the evidence was never that he could just see mana, it was that he could manipulate it. He closed the holes in a mana field with no trouble.”

“I had a lot of trouble with it!” Zeth protested. “It took me hours to do just one, and you did several in the same amount of time. Obviously I’m not as proficient in it as you.”

“You could have just been pretending. Nobody with enough practice in the magic arts to be able to complete such a task would still be ignorant about a basic fact such as what a mana field is.”

“If I was pretending, I wouldn’t have done it at all! I didn’t even know I was doing something special. Like I said, I’ve just raised my Shaping through purchasing Stats with spare Skill Points like normal, but I don’t have any formal education.”

He glanced down, muttering. “Hmph. Well, I suppose you uneducated folk are rather stupid.”

Rosalie’s once-shaking hand began to steady. She continued to stare at Erza. “You said you ‘basically knew for certain’ that this man was who we were looking for.”

“He might be!” he responded.

She shook her head, fully standing down from her combat-ready pose. Alfon did the same. “If he were the Blood Mage, he would have killed us by now.”

“No, we had him cornered,” Erza said. “He has no ritual circles set up here; we checked beforehand. And I saw him arguing with his disobedient demon before—there’s no way for him to fight us! He’s attempting to trick us with words because they’re all he has left.”

“Erza, we’ve already had this conversation. If what you said to me was true, and that man on the other side of town really was the Blood Mage…” Her voice wavered. “If the man I saw fighting the mannitor was the Blood Mage, then he is far, far more powerful than we first anticipated. And if that man were the same as the man in front of us, I have no doubt that we would be dead right now. Demon or no demon.”

Zeth blinked in surprise. Rosalie had seen him fighting the mannitor? That must’ve been why she’d been shaking in fear this whole time—if she saw that fight, then she would know he could do more than a normal Blood Mage could. He wondered if that meant she knew he was specifically a Blood Magus, then—or did she not know that much? Did anyone at all know about the existence of his Class? According to the message he’d gotten when he first received it, it was apparently limited so that only one person could have it at a time, so maybe information regarding it had simply never gotten out.

He let out a relieved sigh, and the two of them looked back over at him. “So you believe me?”

“I do,” Rosalie said.

“...I suppose the Blood Mage I saw did act differently from you,” Erza said. “You’re far more cowardly.”

“I’m very sorry we harassed you like that,” Rosalie continued. She stowed her weapon on her back and clasped her hands together, bowing her head with closed eyes. “I hope you can accept this humble Paladin’s apology.”

“U-um, yeah,” Zeth said, taken aback by her sudden formality. “I get it. You’ve got an important job, catching a killer. Gotta make some sacrifices to do it.”

“But harming an innocent man should never be one of those sacrifices,” she said, straightening her posture again. “It is never permissible to harm someone who even has the possibility of being innocent.”

Erza frowned, looking at Zeth. “One more thing. Rosalie, you said this Blood Mage fought using a ritual circle they carried around?”

“Supposedly.”

He nodded to Zeth. “Empty your pockets.”

Zeth’s heart instantly seized up. He had three separate ritual circles in his pockets right now. “Um. Y-yeah. Sure.”

Was this it? Did he have to fight after all?

Taking a deep breath, Zeth reached into his left pocket and wrapped his fingers around the cloth that was inside.

C’mon. Critical moment. Don’t mess this up.

In as natural a movement as he could make, he pressed the cloth against his leg, ritual side facing him, and pulled it out while applying that pressure, so the chalky lines would be rubbed clean off by his leg. When he pulled it out of his pocket, he glanced down at it. No circle to be seen.

“Let me see that,” Erza said. Zeth handed it over, and he began to investigate it.

As he did so, Zeth pulled the two other cloths out of his right pocket, doing the same maneuver with them, rubbing the circle off as he pulled them out of the pocket, and gave them to Erza as well. After that, he turned his pockets inside-out, showing that nothing else was contained within.

“What are these?” Erza asked, looking at the blank pieces of fabric.

“Uh, they’re sewing patches,” Zeth said, thinking fast. “Just in case I tear my pants open, or something. So I can just go and grab a needle and thread and sew the patch right on without any trouble.”

Erza sighed. “You small town folk are so weird. Rosalie, do these look like the same kind of cloth that you saw the Blood Mage using?”

She shrugged. “I was hundreds of feet away. It looked like it was some sort of cloth, but I have no idea what kind. But the object they were using had a ritual circle painted on it.”

“Well, they don’t have any sort of mana residue from natural leakage that I can see with the naked eye. Seems perfectly normal to me.” He handed them back to Zeth. “I suppose we don’t have enough evidence to prove you’re the Blood Mage for now.”

“For the gods’ sakes,” Rosalie scolded him, “leave the man alone. We just found him helping the injured with their wounds. Do you really think a Blood Mage would do such a thing?”

“Who knows? Maybe he’s collecting blood from them for his next ritual.”

“No. Blood Mages are evil. If they wanted blood, they would kill the injured. Not patch up their wounds.”

“It could be the optimal solution to a blood shortage to simply pose as a concerned citizen while secretly—”

“They don’t care about doing what is optimal, Erza. Nobody takes a Class like that because it is simply the right decision. They take it because they are vicious, destructive people who wish for a Class that rewards them for doing what they already want to do. Hurting people.”

“You said this Blood Mage was killing a mannitor—expending their mana to help the town. So clearly, your theory isn’t universal.”

“That’s…” She looked downward, frowning. “That’s different. We don’t know what this person was doing for sure. They looked like they were doing good, but if they’re truly a Blood Mage, there’s no way they didn’t have some sort of nefarious purpose to their actions.”

“Um,” Zeth interrupted, “can I…go?”

Rosalie looked over to him. “Oh, of course. I apologize once again for how we’ve inconvenienced you.”

“Right,” he said. “Just, one more thing first. Erza, I worked for you for about three hours or so, right? And the agreement was a base pay of fifty copper per hour? You still haven’t paid me what I’m due. So, y’know. Cough up the coin.”