"…Have you realized you can't escape?"
Rei held Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear at the ready, prepared to strike at a moment's notice, and called out to what appeared to be an empty room.
The door hadn't opened—which meant the one who had thrown the dagger at him was still inside.
Why hadn't they fled?
That question lingered in Rei's mind, but considering he had unleashed Flying Slash in the previous room, it was entirely possible the attacker had been too terrified to keep running.
Rei carefully scanned the room in search of his opponent, but as expected—or rather, naturally—he couldn't find anyone.
Even when the dagger had first been thrown, Rei's five senses hadn't been enough to detect the attacker. Given that, spotting them in this room would be equally impossible.
So instead of swinging his weapons again, Rei closed the door he had come through, held Death Scythe in hand, and began chanting.
"Oh flame, spread as you display thy crimson blaze. Become a carpet of flames at my will."
Fire gathered at the butt of Death Scythe's shoe… and the spell completed.
"Pale Flame!"
The moment he activated the magic, fire erupted outward from the floor where he struck with the scythe's butt, spreading across the room in all directions.
The fire looked like ordinary flame, but its temperature was only about twenty degrees. There was no need to worry about anyone getting burned if they accidentally touched it.
(I know it's too late, but I should have used this in the first room too. Though at the time, I didn't know whether there were enemies inside, so it probably would have been wasted. Ah, Wind Fang… well, leaving that to Morning Star was the right call.)
While he mulled this over, the fire enveloped the entire room…
"Huh?"
A startled voice escaped Rei's mouth. Even after the flames covered every inch of the room, he detected no abnormality whatsoever.
That left only a few possible explanations.
First: the opponent was floating in the air by some means. Pale Flame could search floors, walls, and ceilings, but it couldn't reach someone suspended in midair.
But flying was no simple feat. Rei himself could kick through the air with his Sleipnir boots, but those were an extremely rare Magic Item—not something easily obtained.
It was possible they were using some other Magic Item he didn't know about to float, but the most likely explanation was…
"They were never in this room to begin with?"
If they hadn't been here from the start, Pale Flame wouldn't have reacted at all. But Rei had definitely seen the door open…!
He dismissed Pale Flame, seized Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear, and rushed back to the previous room.
In hindsight, it was a simple trick—one so basic it could be called child's play. The enemy had opened the door but never actually moved through it, staying behind in the previous room instead. Since they remained invisible, Rei hadn't noticed.
Or rather, if not for the persistent unease he'd felt since entering Gilm, he might have caught on. But that unease made it harder to detect killing intent and presence alike. Under those conditions, expecting him to notice an opponent lying in wait was simply unreasonable.
"…Got me."
Falling for a child's trick was galling. Galling as it was, he had to acknowledge his mistake.
He scanned the room. Given that the enemy had let him pass, they had likely already slipped out while Rei was in the next room over.
"In that case… what now?"
Whether anyone from the Clown still remained in this hideout was an open question. After all, Rei had only found—no, encountered—a single person so far.
He considered using Pale Flame to search the entire building, but the enemy he'd let escape weighed too heavily on his mind. If the roles were reversed, Rei was confident he could react to any attack instantly—but he had let this opponent slip away. That meant the initiative now belonged to them.
What would happen if he tried to cast magic and they caught wind of it? Normally, they would recognize his magic as a serious threat and move to disrupt it before he could activate it.
(Ah, but thinking about it the other way—if I deliberately show that I'm about to cast, they'll definitely come to interfere… right? They'd have to. Please don't tell me they've already fled the building and casting magic would be completely pointless.)
Rei entertained the unpleasant thought, but ultimately decided that drawing the enemy out offered a better chance of finding them than chasing an invisible foe. Gripping Death Scythe, he focused his mind.
"Oh flame, spread as you display thy crimson blaze. Become a carpet of flames at my will."
Fire gathered at the butt of Death Scythe's shoe… the spell completed, but there was no sign of the enemy emerging.
Bracing for anything, he moved to strike the floor—
"They're here!"
Catching sight of a dagger materializing from thin air, Rei deflected the thrown blade with Death Scythe while simultaneously hurling the Twilight Spear. The motion wasn't calculated—it was almost pure reflex.
"Gyah!"
A man's voice—pierced by the thrown Twilight Spear—rang out through the room.
"Did I get him!?"
Even as he shouted, Rei swung Death Scythe to prevent the invisible opponent from escaping.
Normally, not knowing the enemy's position meant a swing with Death Scythe was a gamble. But not this time. The Twilight Spear had skewered the man's body—or perhaps a limb—and the weapon was plainly visible. Aiming a follow-up strike was trivial.
Ideally, he would have captured the target alive to extract information about the Clown, and more importantly, about the unease that had haunted him since arriving in Gilm. Rei understood that perfectly. But the opponent had fought true to the name "Clown," using trickery at every turn, and Rei's instinct told him it was better to put this one down here and now.
The instant Death Scythe completed its arc, a man's corpse materialized before Rei's eyes—his body cleaved clean in two, top from bottom.
With a wet, squelching rather than a simple thud, the corpse collapsed to the floor. The expression frozen on his face wasn't pain but sheer astonishment. The Twilight Spear jutted from his right shoulder—no, it had pierced clean through—but what surprised him more than the agony was the fact that Rei had attacked him when he should have been invisible.
"Well, whatever."
Rei regarded the corpse and muttered with a hint of regret. He knew killing the man had been unavoidable, but even so, he wished he'd managed to take him alive.
He studied the body, then swept his gaze across the room. Perhaps another invisible opponent was still lurking about. This man had tried to interfere the instant Rei began casting magic. But with the enemy invisible, there was no way to confirm whether this was the same person he'd been chasing. Depending on how you looked at it, that left open the possibility that a similar adversary was still hiding somewhere in this building, waiting to be squeezed for information.
…Though he understood full well that possibility was vanishingly slim.
"In any case, I took out the one targeting me. That's something. The problem is—"
Clap, clap, clap.
Applause rang out, cutting Rei off mid-sentence. He furrowed his brow. The unease had grown noticeably stronger since entering this building. After all, he hadn't sensed the person in the same room at all—not even in the direction he'd been looking.
(If she's carrying something that makes her disappear, same as that corpse… then at least I'd understand.)
What Rei hoped even more was that they weren't intensifying the unease through some unknown method.
"Who are you? …Actually, no need to ask, is there?"
He addressed the person applauding. From the elegant curves of her figure, it was obvious the woman was female. However, her face was painted not with ordinary makeup but with clown makeup, making her age impossible to determine.
"Yes, that's right."
"The Clown, huh. Fitting."
"Oh my, thank you for the compliment. So, what do you plan to do now?"
"Destroy the Clown, obviously."
"That's a problem."
Producing several fist-sized stones from seemingly nowhere, the woman didn't throw them at Rei as he'd expected. Instead, she began juggling.
"…Hey?"
Even for Rei, this was unexpected. True, the organization was called the Clown, so it wasn't completely out of character. Still, standing before someone who had come to annihilate her organization, why on earth would she start juggling?
"How about it? I can use even more, you know? And I can do things like this."
She crossed her hands, varied the height of specific stones mid-juggle, clacked stones against each other in the air, and even continued juggling while reaching behind her back. Even judged as a street performer, she was unquestionably first-class.
With magic or a Magic Item, one might replicate something similar, but from what Rei could tell, the woman before him didn't appear to be using any such item. She might have been employing magic or some skill, but he couldn't say for certain.
"Impressive. …But so what? You're not seriously expecting me to be so dazzled by your street performance that I call off destroying your organization, are you?"
Halting a battle with a street performance—on paper, it might sound remarkable. But Rei had zero intention of humoring such nonsense.
The woman surely understood that. She continued her highly difficult juggling routine and spoke.
"Is that so? What a shame."
But it was unmistakable that she didn't find it nearly as disappointing as her words suggested. After all, the very fact that she had shown herself made it obvious she wasn't genuinely trying to use street performance to dissuade Rei. They belonged to an Underworld Organization—one that had carved out its place in Gilm through sheer strength, with no backing whatsoever.
"So? What'll it be? Your persuasion failed, so are we doing this? Seems like there are several others in this building, after all."
Rei didn't say this with any real certainty. But both the dagger wielder he'd fought and the woman standing before him—neither presence had he been able to detect. It wouldn't be strange if more were still hiding inside.
"My, how impatient. Couldn't you at least watch my performance a little longer before deciding?"
"I'd love to, but I've got more organizations to crush after this. I don't have the luxury of lingering on the Clown alone."
With that, Rei readied Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear. Yet even facing him, the woman continued juggling without the slightest sign of tension.
Normally, standing before a armed Rei—wielding Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear, weapons that in their own way were as synonymous with him as Set himself—poised for combat at any moment, tension would be unavoidable. Of course, there were people in the world whose abilities matched or exceeded Rei's, so it wasn't as though absolutely everyone would tense up.
"I suppose it can't be helped. If you absolutely refuse to leave us be… we'll come at you with everything we have. You don't mind, do you? Whether you can really handle all of us in your current state, Rei… I'm looking forward to finding out!"
With those words, the woman hurled the stones she'd been juggling straight at him.