[Lifespan Remaining: 25 days, 8 hours, 58 minutes.]
"We need to go after him."
"Lord Faust?"
"The ordered captives were moved there. Which means whatever he’s planning, those people are part of it. They have to be."
"Then we should leave quickly," she agreed, before reaching for his sleeve. "But Young Master, we don’t know what’s waiting underground. If those passages belong to him, we should assume they’re guarded."
"I know."
"Then let’s ask Mistress Lenia to accompany us. Or at least take some of Lady Aurora’s crusaders."
Noct wanted to agree, but looking at both Lenia’s state as well as the crusaders, it was highly unlikely. On the rooftop overlooking Altaire River, the witch was still in the same position, her attention entirely focused on the dam.
He concentrated on the mana flowing from her. Earlier, he had been too relieved to notice, but her spell extended well beyond the makeshift dam. Thin streams of mana stretched between the buildings, branching into streets he couldn’t even see from here.
And something else was moving between them. A faint purple strand slipped from a broken drain near the courtyard gate. It barely resembled the thick mist from before, but Noct recognized the unpleasant sensation immediately.
A woman in the merchant’s district stepped out like many others to see what the commotion was about, only for her to take a big whiff of the drifting vapor. As soon as she did, her hands dangled in front of her, like she had been paralyzed by its effects.
A crusader quickly managed to catch her by the shoulder. A second hurried past him, raising a hand that shone with pale light. The strand retreated, trying to escape to the drain. But before it could, frost spread across the stones and trapped it.
"Keep them away from the river!" the witch ordered. "Everyone, stay in your homes! It’s not safe outside!"
’Damn it...even if we did manage to contain it. It’s still giving us problems?! Lenia definitely needs more time to completely do away with it.’
’They’re all preoccupied with the recovery of Altaire...’
Even if they did take some of the paladins, Noct speculated that traveling with too many people, especially with armored knights in an underground space, would be too encumbering and slow.
And every minute they spent here would give Faust another minute to do whatever the hell he intended to do with the captives.
"No, there’s no time. We need to go."
***
By the time they reached the shore, the sounds of fighting had grown distant. Still, everyone here seemed to get the memo, as all curtains were shut, and all doors were seemingly locked.
Noelle led him past a row of buildings before stepping beside a warehouse overlooking the water. Strangely, it seemed to belong to the Diamond Merchantry, as stated by the plaque out in front.
"The Diamond Merchantry...?"
"Yes," Noelle said softly. "I followed one of the Baron’s properties connected here."
This must have been one of the warehouses Amelia used to store her secretly mined crystals. If a tunnel connected directly to the mines, she almost certainly knew about it.
Yet she hadn’t said a word.
Even after Noct began investigating how people were disappearing from a city with its roads and port being watched, she had kept that information to herself.
’Damn it, Amelia. I’m trying to help you here.’
Apparently, she wanted his help without handing over every secret of her business. She had stopped mining when Amon intervened, but a concealed route would still be useful if she eventually regained control of the mines.
One of its doors hung slightly open, though there wasn’t anyone standing guard, mostly because everyone was on the ground, completely unconscious. Two knights had been propped against a stack of crates while another was face down with his arm bound behind his back.
"Your doing?"
"They gave me a hard time."
Noct thought it best not to question.
Noelle stepped over the nearest knight and headed toward the back of the warehouse. Noct followed, squeezing between stacks of wooden crates until they reached a shelving unit that had been pulled away from the wall.
Behind it, a square opening led into the floor, where a flight of stone steps descended into darkness.
"This is it?"
"Yes. Please watch your footing."
The air grew colder as they descended. Above them, the sounds from the waterfront faded until all he could hear were their footsteps and the occasional drip of water. At the bottom, the narrow staircase opened into a passage much larger than he had expected.
’She wasn’t exaggerating.’
A loaded carriage could’ve fit down here. Thick wooden supports lined the walls, and deep wheel marks ran through the dirt covering the floor. One would think they were for minecarts containing mana crystals, but who would reasonably assume they were for transporting captives.
And the workers handling both shipments might as well have been the same.
Noct frowned as the pieces began to fall into place. "Faust really has thought of everything, hasn’t he? His scheme had been running deeper than I thought..."
Edward, Amelia’s bookkeeper, who Noct already exposed as a spy...He was the one who had "discovered" the mines and brought the opportunity to her. At the time, it must have seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. An untouched source of mana crystals, a hidden route to transport them, and enough profit to make keeping it from Amon worth the risk.
Faust knew his sister well enough to understand what she would do with an opportunity like that.
Amelia supplied the warehouses, the money, and most importantly, her name. Faust only needed to place his own people among her workers.
Faust could’ve pinned everything on Amelia at once on Noct’s birthday if she hadn’t confessed to mining them first. Amon confiscated the undeclared crystals and ordered the mines sealed. He had already judged her misconduct, which meant Faust couldn’t simply expose the same offense again and expect a different result.
’So was this his next move? Pinning her for something worse?’
So Amelia’s operation shut down, but she never knew that her own workers never belonged to her in the first place. Faust could continue using the route while Amelia believed the mines were sitting idle. In fact, her withdrawal probably made it easier.
Noct couldn’t know exactly when the kidnappings had begun. Some might have happened while crystals were still being transported. But after Amelia pulled out, Faust had been free to pick up the pace.
And because of this commotion, everyone’s eyes would likely be on Altaire, and its most important resource—the mines. Her defense would amount to admitting to knowing everything but not the missing people...which was quite the likely excuse.
’But if he needed inspectors...why did the first inspector have to die? Was it simply because his plan wasn’t ready?’
This was all well and good, corrupt political happenings, sure. But what Noct couldn’t fathom...was the fact that he needed to kidnap those people to begin with.
’He talked about some kind of power...’
Along with the deformed state Noct had seen him in, as well as through the media he had consumed, kidnappings being associated with some kind of power could only possibly mean one thing:
He was going to sacrifice them.
’No...I was thinking about this wrong. Maybe pinning Amelia for the kidnappings was just a byproduct, something he thought of along the way as a "two birds with one stone" type of thing.’
With the power that he had shown during the banquet, Noct reasonably assumed that what happened during the protest was his doing as well...
The man had somehow gained the ability to influence the minds of others, and he probably used that same power to rule over Altaire.
And apparently, even that wasn’t good enough.