Chương 23: The Nameless

Director Edouard Daladier de Pourtier, an elven nobleman who led the Alsatian branch of the Oracle Network, was not having a good day. Earlier, an unexpected guest, Crown Princess Lucille, arrived, requesting information about an individual named 'Alice Kasperska.' Not only was it strange for someone so high up in the imperial hierarchy to personally use the Oracle Network as a proxy to get information, but the findings gathered by the network about the individual she needed information about weren't stellar.

Presenting herself as a mere Polonian immigrant who was a daughter of a wealthy magnate, Alice Kasperska had a near-perfect and spotless paper trail ever since she arrived in Alsatia and set up shop here. She paid her taxes and conducted business legitimately, and every contact of hers appeared to be rather satisfied working with her. The problem was, there definitely was something extremely fishy about her. First of all, where was her Polonian family?

If they were so wealthy, they would be rather high-profile, wouldn't they? Yet, the Polonian branch of the Oracle Network couldn't find a Kasperska family wealthy enough to be dealing business with the Alsatian crown princess. Fortunately for Edouard, the Polonian government did have records about Alice Kasperska, but again, nothing about her family. What happened to her family then? Did they die and find themselves obscured from public records?

Did the Polonian government wipe out their existence while expelling Alice as an exile? Edouard didn't know, as they would have to do more digging, but it was difficult to dig in a cold trail present only in another country. At the very least, they knew her origin was most likely from Polonia, as her first transactions in the capital did involve her transacting using Polonian currency, largely exchanging it for Alsatian ducats, but this didn't answer everything else about her.

Why was her business expanding so rapidly? Why was she making deals with the Alsatian princess? Where was she sending the assets and goods that she was routinely buying and routing to her warehouse? At some point, Edouard considered the possibility of aggressive intelligence-gathering methods. That was when one of his subordinates reported to him that Alice Kasperska also visited them, asking directly for the Oracle Network, earlier.

Now that was beyond suspicious, but it was also a good opportunity to get a talk with her to extract some clues. Unfortunately for him, he was told that the employee who entertained her followed protocol and promptly kicked her out because she wasn't referred to the Oracle Network beforehand. That naturally pissed him off, but it wasn't the fault of his subordinates for following standard protocols, so he simply gave them the order to let Alice Kasperska in if she ever came back again.

Time passed as Edouard found himself buried in more pressing cases over the day, and he somewhat forgot about Alice Kasperska. Quite frankly, while she was an interesting case, at the same time, it wasn't like she did anything major yet, and thus, she was largely not an urgent issue to be prioritized when there were more important cases out there.

Due to the situation in Alsatia, there was a lot more critical information to be gathered and sold to their usual customers, like mages attempting to illegally break the fabric of reality, politicians and nobles fighting amongst each other, new developments in large industrial interest groups, and even something as simple as information about Third Estate figureheads that was attracting way too much popularity in the masses. Eventually, evening passed, and Edouard prepared to clock out.

He already passed the files containing new directives to his secretary, and buried within them was an order about conducting active investigations on Alice Kasperska. For now though, he was free to leave the Oracle Network's premises and return to his villa outside of Lorienval by train. Before he could leave, though, he received a report that Alice Kasperska had returned. This time, she was escorted by the crown princess's knight.

"This is strange. Why is she escorted by the princess's knight this time?" Edouard asked aloud, though his secretary was unable to answer that question.

"How long has she been here?"

"About ten minutes?" His secretary meekly said.

"Oh, and Dame Lorraine left before she could explain anything. It seems that Her Highness simply referred Ms. Kasperska to us."

"That…doesn't even make sense. Whatever. Tell the guy assigned to her that I'm taking over. And don't let her in the meeting room yet."

"Alright, sir." Within minutes, Edouard was walking rapidly through the hallways, a sinking suspicion within his chest that something more was happening right now. Something that shouldn't be easily dismissed as a trivial matter. He entered the empty meeting room, now vacated in advance by the guy originally assigned to deal with her, and Edouard waited. Quite frankly, this was the type of case that Edouard hated.

Most of the time, cases such as her's were largely a waste of time, simply because while Alice was 'suspicious,' it wasn't like they had established that she was doing anything major. Nearly everyone doing business had 'suspicious' dealings. That, however, didn't mean that information about it was truly viable. As an example, Alice was wealthy, seemingly conducting business with the crown princess, but otherwise, that was it.

At the same time though, he knew at the back of his mind that a lot of extremely valuable information was sometimes extracted from characters that appeared too simple and clean. It was an exceedingly annoying part of running an information guild. While the Oracle Network had many eyes, it didn't have enough to keep an eye on every trifling matter that appeared 'suspicious,' but at the same time, they couldn't afford letting things slip out of their network's grasp. Soon, the woman entered.

She was plainclothed, and while her appearance was above average, Edouard wouldn't call her remarkable. For all intents and purposes, she simply looked like a prim and proper woman dipping her toes in commercial matters. And so, before he even greeted her, Edouard used his signature skill, cultivated to great heights after two centuries of using it. [Identify]. She was only level 22.

There was nothing special at all about her, but Edouard saw a brief, nearly unrecognizable flicker on the stat sheet that the system returned to him. He had just seen an anomaly that never happened before. His [Identify] skill was tampered with. What…? Alice stared blankly at Edouard, and with a huff, she said something.

"Is there something on my face, sir?" Alice asked.

"Ah, apologies, Miss!" Edouard said, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead.

"Please take your seat." What the hell? She looks like a normal human, yet she tampered with my skill. What is she?! How did she do that? Indeed, she somehow knew that Edouard used [Identify] on her and promptly blocked it. That must be why she was annoyed. As a powerful elf, this was beyond unprecedented for Edouard. He considered firing off more spells to analyze and figure out what this anomaly before him was, but his instincts screamed at him not to make any further attempts that might offend her.

His instincts was clear about this, and in his long life, Edouard learned that in times like this, it was best to trust his guts, even when he didn't have enough information about what was truly happening. Before he could continue mulling about what to do to her, though, Alice sat as he had directed, and she went straight to business.

"Anyway, I'm here to buy information about establishments involved in furniture and lumber production," Alice said, smiling a bit.

"Preferably, I want information about people close to the Lorienval area."

"Of course," Edouard said, still recovering from the shock that someone managed to block his powerful skill, but he recomposed himself nonetheless.

"We have a pretty wide catalog about that. If you can give me a few minutes, I can check our records and see what copies you can buy."

"Sure, I don't mind."

"Excellent." In the meantime, Edouard retreated from his investigations and simply treated Alice as a normal customer. He gave her everything she asked for, which was largely just harmless information that would help her business, and that was that. In an hour, Alice Kasperska left, seemingly satisfied. Somehow, contrary to her extremely suspicious capabilities, Alice didn't seem interested in anything but generic information.

Well, if she's strong enough to block my skill casually, there's a chance that she's just an ancient trying to keep her head down and live a normal life. Those kinds of people weren't exactly nonexistent. In fact, Edouard himself knew a powerful elf who lived 400 years already but lived like a bum in the countryside. Still, because this was nothing but a hopeful assumption, Edouard decided to stay on the safe side and gave the order to investigate her with some caveats.

To avoid the risk of offending a potentially powerful ancient that didn't want any attention, the Oracle Network wouldn't poke into her business too aggressively for now. It was the best compromise solution he could implement for now, and that… Was how the Oracle Network survived for centuries. It was already evening. Upon arriving at Chateau d'Montclaire, Lucille went straight to her office and collapsed on her seat with a tired sigh.

Lucille barely had time until bedtime, but she still had a mountain of work placed on her desk after her assistants sent reports about her project's progress, alongside other daily matters she hadn't been able to attend to. Picking up her quill, Lucille shook her head dejectedly.

"Ms. Kasperska confuses me too much," Lucille said.

"She barely even reacted when I told her that I'm trying to find information about her."

"Even I'm confused," Lorraine said, taking a seat on the sofa at the side of Lucille's office.

"I don't really consider myself a good judge of character, but after escorting her to the Oracle Network, I'm starting to also doubt the possibility that she's anything malicious. I still wouldn't trust her though." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"I don't either."

"That, and even if she's not hostile to us, if our competition finds out that she has compromising secrets…"

"It'll be my headache." Alice was now an unfortunate liability to Lucille no matter how she looked at it. Whether or not Alice was hiding a malevolent secret or not, the fact that she was hiding it meant that it would probably be compromising if it was out in the open. As the crown princess, she would be easily implicated if exposed. If she could, she shouldn't connect with Alice at all. Unfortunately for her, no disruptions to her project could be tolerated.

Most of all, Alice still couldn't source a reliable supply of monster cores with a decent grade. While Lorraine and Lucille could technically venture out into a dungeon to farm it themselves, it wouldn't be comparable to the enormous amount of monster cores Alice was shipping to them on the regular. In the end, she had no choice for now but to keep working with Alice, though, of course, Lucille was still going to try to find alternatives.

"Keep trying to find potential buyers," Lucille said to Lorraine.

"Ideally, by next year, we should try to find someone to replace her."

"As you wish," Lorraine smiled, eager again to prove herself. And the princess smiled at her knight because of that. Even in a world such as this where loyal people were rare, she was glad to have found Lorraine, who was willing to be with her through thick and thin. A knock interrupted the two. Lorraine immediately stood up and opened the door. A knight from the Imperial Guard entered, saluting stiffly afterward.

He was a young knight under Lorraine's employ, and like many members of the Imperial Guard who sided with Lucille, he was ardently loyal to Lucille's dreams of reforming the empire. His face was strained, and he seemed like he ran miles just to get here.

"Your Highness! My connections in the army tipped me off to a new development at the Rhonne Exclusion Zone. An attack is happening in one of the suppression fields present, and…" The knight stumbled over his words as his face darkened.

"The Vaelrin soldiers there say that it's him leading the attack," the knight said.

"Your Highness, I—""Lorraine, prepare to set out at once." Lucille stood up, a frown on her face.

"I'm bringing my first artificial spirits with me this time, so we won't need a larger escort force."

"But the zone is becoming even more dangerous!" Lorraine immediately protested.

"You can't keep doing this while reducing your escorts."

"That may be so, but as much as possible, we shouldn't expose too many people to the zone's corruption." Lucille walked past Lorraine, curling her fist.

"After all, that's why I'm building an army of spirits in the first place." Both of Lucille's knights had a conflicted expression on their faces, but they reluctantly followed her anyway and ran to catch up to her in the hallways. As for Lucille, her mind drifted back to the Vaelrin soldier lost to the zone back when she was a mere helpless child. A hero she abandoned in that hell. The Nameless. A man clad in obsidian black armor, an armor far too terrifying, leaned down to look at a small elven girl.

His face was completely obscured by his helmet, and he seemed devoid of humanity. The fact that he had two straight horns and a tail that had wisps of fire only made him look all the more unsettling. He was a demon, a race known as an enemy of Lucille's kind. Yet, strangely, he had just saved her from a pack of devils, who had ripped the empress's guards apart and nearly did the same to her. Lucille stared at him with tears in her eyes as questions swirled in her mind.

"Why…?" Her small, innocent voice broke through the silence.

"Why did you save me?" The man didn't answer her. Instead, he bent down to check her for wounds. For someone who seemed vicious and strong, his touch was so gentle that not even her bruised shoulder hurt when he checked it. After that, the soldier picked her up, his deep, distorted voice coming out of his helmet.

"Don't worry," the soldier said, not bothering to answer her previous question.

"I'll get you out of here." Before she knew it, she broke down into tears about her mother's death. She tried to keep silent as they walked through the broken earth, but Lucille couldn't help it. She cried and cried until she fell asleep, held by a person deemed evil by her people. When she woke up, they seemed to be camping in a secluded area. That was the first time she had glimpsed the soldier's face.

He seemed young, probably around the age when human men graduated from school, yet his face was marred with scars and injuries. His skin was unhealthy pale, and there was a hint of deep misery in his red eyes. He was muttering something to himself, something about his 'platoon' all dying and leaving him behind. She watched as he gritted his teeth and massaged his temples. He seemed sad, completely on the verge of despair. Yet, upon seeing Lucille, the man smiled at her.

"Ah, you're awake," the soldier said.

"Here, have some of this." The soldier stood up and handed her a chocolate bar.

"Won't be much actual food for now. I have to get you out of here quickly, or else you'll end up like those monsters too." The man laughed.

"Not that I'll let that happen. I think I'm good enough to get a princess out of hell on my own." Lucille looked down at the chocolate bar. Her eyes was still red and puffy.

"You're Vaelrin, aren't you?" Lucille slowly asked.

"A draco, to be specific." The man sat beside her, resting his back on the log.

"Why do you ask?"

"My mother always tells me that we do horrible things to your kind. Then why? Why are you protecting me?" The draco beside her turned silent for a good while. He looked up at the stars before answering firmly.

"Simple. Just like you, I was born and raised here. We may have different blood running through our veins, but this is my homeland too. Isn't it a man's duty to fight for his home?"

"You're…just like me?"

"Yes. I also have a family behind me, just like you. It doesn't matter how unfair all of this is or that it's just people like me that are forced to fight and die here. Even if our country seems to believe that my life is worth as much a blighted sack of potatoes because I was born with horns—" The draco gritted his teeth.

"—I still have to fight and win. Or else, I won't have a place to call home. Or else, the people I love will die. Those devils, they don't view us any differently. They'll kill every last one of us, whether you're an elf, a human, a dwarf, or a Vaelrin like me." The draco looked at Lucille, his eyes full of grim determination.

"One day, this nightmare must end, and I'll fight to see that day." After saying such a serious speech, Lucille heard the draco's stomach rumbling a bit. An awkward laugh came from him as he scratched the back of his head. Realizing that he was starving too, Lucille stood up and walked close to him. She presented the chocolate bar he gave to her. A grateful smile grew on his face. Understanding that she wanted to share, the draco took the chocolate bar and split it, taking a smaller portion for himself.

"Anyway, you don't have to worry about any of that, though. Not yet anyway." He handed her portion to her.

"What matters is that I'll get you out of here. I promise that, princess." And he did. That draco, who was so kind and gentle, protected Lucille like a knight from the fantasy books she read as bedtime stories. Within just days of endless running, fighting, and close calls with death, Lucille eventually found herself escorted out of the newly established exclusion zone around the black dungeon. She had come to admire that man, and she realized that indeed, her mother's words were true.

The Vaelrin was just like them too. People. Yet, she had unknowingly committed a grave sin, just like most Alsatians. She could have asked the people around her to reward him and save him from the duties forced on him as a Vaelrin, yet, on the last day of seeing him, all she did was give him her flower hair clip and wave goodbye. The draco smiled at her as she left him behind in that hell. He saved Lucille, yet she never repaid or recognized him. She didn't even ask for his name.

Like a broken magical recording, echoes of a deep, troubling voice repeated themselves over and over on the battlefield.

"I'll end this. I'll end this. I'll end this. I'll end this…" Darkness and shadows surrounded and swirled around the Nameless as he advanced. With a body so malformed and distorted, the hero that Lucille remembered was barely recognizable. His right arm was now gone, replaced by dozens of shadowy arms that protruded with unnatural lengths to the skies. Dark spikes pierced through the right side of his helmet, and on the left side, only a reddish glow of what once must be his eyes was visible through the slits.

Just like most other miasma distortions, his current form seemed like a bridge between corporeal and non-corporeal. The darkness obscured him, and one would think he was nothing but a hallucination in a child's nightmares if they were to see him. Yet, Lucille knew that he was her hero because of an item pinned on the left side of his chest plate. It was her blue flower hair clip, still attached to the most terrifying creature of this exclusion zone. It was the only item on him that wasn't obscured by the darkness.

She prepared her new artificial spirits to fight him again. Behind her, the Vaelrin soldiers of the Demon Brigades formed up their usual formations around the suppression tower. It was a building designed to fire suppression pulses that slowed down the spread of miasma from black dungeons, created using ancient Vaelrin arts and modern Concordian engineering. Every year, thousands of Vaelrin of the Demon Brigades assigned to the exclusion zones routinely died to defend these towers.

Sneaking here, fighting here, it was all so risky that Lucille could technically be classified as a madwoman for rushing in here to help them out whenever he appeared. The Nameless, an extremely powerful distortion, was beyond dangerous. While he attacked the devils that the black dungeon released to the world, he also attacked everyone else. Whatever remained of her hero, Lucille knew that it was just a fraction of his broken mind. All this creature knew was to fight, fight, and fight. Nothing more, nothing less.

And so, she watched as he advanced.

"I'll end this. I'll end this. I'll end this." Her heart ached. Were those his last words before he turned into this? Behind her, Lorraine summoned dozens of swords made of golden light, ready to defend Lucille.

"Your Highness, he seems like he's preparing a long-range attack!" Lorraine shouted.

"We should pull out now!"

"No, I can stop him. I just need to get his attention." Lucille refused Lorraine's advice and walked forward instead, her artificial spirits spreading to a formation in front of her. The Nameless already killed thousands. The Vaelrin soldiers here were barely even capable of stopping him the last time he went here. But Lucille knew one thing. Over there, in that dark, distorted mind of his was someone kind and gentle. Someone who wouldn't hurt a fly if he could. She just needed to reach out to him.

"I'll end this. I'll end this. I'll end—" Dozens of fiery rods shot straight into the darkness. The repeated phrases coming out of the Nameless stopped momentarily as fires broke out in the distance. Lucille squinted her eyes to get a good look at the results of her work. The miasma, after all, routinely changed the rules of the exclusion zone, sometimes causing landscapes to shift, creating illusions, and even slowing down time. And that was exactly what was happening.

Lucille could see the world around them begin flickering, as if it was going to collapse. Everything seemed like an awful nightmare, and she could even see multiple broken system notifications appearing on her field of vision. But in the end, the red light in the distance locked on to her. Silence. The Nameless was staring at Lucille. He was unharmed, untouched by her attack. Yet, within seconds, he flickered out of existence.

It was like a nightmare ending until all that was left was the broken earth and the darkness of night. As always, you choose to spare me. Even after I left you here. Lucille stared blankly at the place where he stood earlier. One day, I swear, I'll be strong enough to free you from this hell. Soon, black rain began to fall from the skies, and Lucille's team was forced to leave the exclusion zone.