I Became the Leader of a Villain Organization

Chapter 39: Rain Gray (3)

~An abandoned factory, with moonlight seeping through the broken ceiling~

“Light the way to the mausoleum.”

Taking up the holy spear, Ergo nodded in silence.

Whether this will be the answer to the graves of the heroes, or a new mystery, like the one in The Commander’s Secret, is yet to be seen. We’ll find out from now on.

It was then.

“Pardon me, sir.”

Aria, at my side, spoke up, faster than anyone else in the room. And then, just a fraction of a second later, the dark-haired Selena spoke. So close, in fact, that they could almost be considered simultaneous.

“……Looks like we have an uninvited guest.”

I frowned at the words since it happened just when I least wanted to be interrupted. Even I, who tried not to let my emotions show, found it hard to keep my cool.

“Who is it?”

“At least they don’t appear to be from the Three Nations.”

A country or power other than the Empire, Kingdom, or Duchy and yet, it dared to follow the Black Snake to our lodgings. I wonder if it has some other purpose or reason.

“What do you think we should do, Master?”

“Let’s see what they have to say.”

I said, and prepared to greet them.

Inside the abandoned factory, where moonlight seeps through the cracks in the ceiling, I perched on a moderately tall steel beam, with the moonlight backlighting my back.

Hmmm, maybe it should be this high so I can see it from above.

Even without that, thanks to the intricately intertwined steel frame and pipes, it was an amazing place for villains to gather and show off.

From the looks of it, not everyone has been to this place for a day or two anyway.

Each person is in the process of taking a stance with preliminary movements in their respective positions and after a moment of silence that felt a little awkward, they finally appeared.

A group dressed in oriental clothing that looked similar to those who claimed to be heavenly people that I had seen before in the labyrinth city.

Leading them, a woman dressed in garb like a fairy’s wings appeared.

She simultaneously kneels and postures herself politely in front of us.

“I’m Dalgi.”

After bowing in the manner of her country, the woman, who referred to herself as “Dalgi,” spoke.

“You are the black dragon that will devour the world in the future.”

“……We are not dragons,” I replied sourly.

“We’re just snakes.”

“Just as dragons fall and become snakes, and snakes ascend and become dragons…….”

The woman called Dalgi smiled and replied.

“The difference between the two is not as great as you might think.”

She smirked, her eyes full of seduction and bewitchment.

“Tell me your business.”

I can’t afford to waste time on useless nonsense so I asked. With the moonlight from the broken ceiling behind my back, I straddle the steel beams.

Dalgi looked up from the floor of the abandoned factory and answered my question.

“The scouts have told me that the King of the Black Dragon has his sights set on the Mausoleum.”

“……Who did you hear that from?”

“Huhu, it’s a woman’s unspeakable secret.”

Dalgi smiled and trailed off meaningfully and I was silent for a moment in front of that laugh.

“Are you laughing?”

But in the face of my curiosity, the attitudes of the men by my side changed and that alone changed the air in the room. Into this new air, I spoke.

“You might want to choose your next answer a little more carefully.”

“…….”

“Who did you hear that from?”

Dalgi was no longer smiling. She didn’t even blur her words meaningfully.

Without hesitation, she knelt down in front of me and put her head on the floor. Then she answered.

“The scout just wanted to say something helpful about the mausoleum…….”

“Tell me.”

“Lord of the Black Dragon- Lord Rain, you must never go to the mausoleum!”

Dalgi shouted.

“I just wanted to warn you of that fact!”

“Why?”

“Because the heroes of the Mausoleum already have……threads wound around them!”

─ Those who remember heroes can reel us in.

The words from the popped into my head again.

“Sir Roland’s death and the spear you obtained are both traps for the Black Dragon King!”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the spy was also trying to target the Mausoleum.”

Dalgi said, still in an attitude of submission, with her head bowed deeply to the floor.

“But by the time his men got there, the heroes of the tomb had already been ‘threaded’. Not one of them came back alive.”

“……I see.”

“So please, this Dalgi–I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“To Lord Rain, and to anyone else who dares to speak the name of the Black Snake.”

Dalgi said.

“Come to Silver, the Land of the Snake.”

Come to her country.

“Come, please, and rule and reign over all of this country!”

Her next words were even more outrageous.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because unless we join forces, we will never win.”

Dalgi replied.

“There, in the mausoleum, the ‘threaded puppeteer’ moves-when it devours this continent.”

“…….”

“Until then, there is no way for us to live but to join forces.”

I didn’t answer right away and after a short silence, I asked again.

“Do you know the one who wound the thread to the heroes?”

“I know.”

Dalgi replied, burying her head in the floor once more.

“─the Queen of the Empire, the girl who carried the sun.”

“…….”

“By the time we, the Silver Empire, learned of the Mausoleum’s existence and began tracking it down, the Breton Empire had already learned of its existence and location and had secured it in its entirety.”

“When was that?”

“From the very day she, the Sun bearer, was born.”

The day the Queen of the Empire carried the sun.

I swallowed wordlessly at that.

I bought this damn game series that churns out games like a factory, no questions asked but I was possessed by the Ultimate Edition before I’d even played it.

And its immediate predecessor.

In that one, after defeating Romeo and Juliet in The Black Snake as the final boss, I remembered the epilogue that followed.

It told the story of a girl who succeeded the dead queen and became the new queen of the Breton Empire.

The title of the epilogue, by the way, was “The Girl Who Carried the Sun.”

I couldn’t say anything. The thread had been wound to the heroes already in the graveyard of heroes. But who are those heroes? What does it mean to wound the thread?

None of my doubts were answered.

And so nothing would change.

“Ergo.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Light the way to the mausoleum.”

“!”

I commanded without hesitation, and Ergo did as he was told.

He fixed the holy spear I had handed him and moved his hand carefully, as if to peer into what was hidden there.

As he did so, Dalgi screamed. She stood in front of me, knees clenched and head bowed in a posture of submission.

“Uh, why?!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a trap, Lord Rain! Roland’s death, the holy spear you handed over, it’s all part of her plan!”

“Of course.”

It finally dawned on me. A situation where Roland died without any plan and handed over the Holy Spear. Even though everyone in this somewhat powerful country was expecting it, he obediently handed over the Holy Spear, the key and map to the mausoleum.

Judging by the warnings of Dalgi, and assuming she was right, the Mausoleum was nothing more than a trap from the start.

I thought that perhaps, in the past, I would have listened, changed course, and joined hands with the woman before me.

I would have trusted her, the one from the Silver Country, and cooperated with her, relying on her information.

It’s not that I don’t want to work with her now, but there is just one thing that has changed.

From that moment when I confronted Sir Roland and read aloud the Braille that had been etched deep into my consciousness, unbeknownst to me, I realized something painfully obvious.

This man, Rain Gray, was unfathomable to my vague imagination.

So I imagined how insignificant and ridiculous all the shenanigans going on in places I don’t know would seem to him.

It would be no different now.

“Way, open.”

Ergo answered, bowing his head and Dalgi was about to protest, but then it happened.

-Thud.

Suddenly, a black sword pointed in front of her.

“Master.”

Aria spoke, her eyes covered by a black bandage with dark, dark chains.

“You have already made up your mind.”

So calmly.

“You’d better remember that, because you’re going to be bowing your head in front of him and claiming to be his servant.”

Aria said.

“That nothing in this world can stand in the way of the Master’s will.”

“…….”

Dalgi said nothing.

With that, Ergo fixed the star spear and drew an arc into the nothingness.

Then, following the trajectory of the swinging spear, the nothingness was torn apart.

Beyond the tear, a “passageway” barely big enough for a man to fit through opened up.

Just as the constellations of the night sky shine with brilliance, so too does a barely large enough for a single person.

A crevice that does not exist in this world, a tomb of heroes.

The key leading to the mausoleum. That was literally what it meant.

I stood before it, wordlessly, glancing back to study the faces of those who watched me there.

Nothing changed.

Whatever lies ahead, even if it was a trap, I had a duty to know.

So I took a step and as I stepped to move on, I was afraid to touch the edge.

The world I was stepping into spun.

The sensation of being alone, of leaving them behind, of slipping away into the world beyond.

“Brother……!”

Then, a voice called out to me.

It was a voice that was determined not to let go of me until the end.

As I walked away from the abandoned factory on the brink, the landscape twisted and turned-

The next thing I knew, I was walking on the stars, like walking on the transparent glass floor of a space station.

I wasn’t alone there, we were walking there together on an endless curtain of galaxies.

“……Aria.”

She was there, as ever, at my side, and she spoke.

“Forgive me, Master.”

─Undoing the black bandage that covers her eyes as usual.