'Want me to ask again?' Lily teased.
Yeah, well.
'According to Soap, Ghost said that Strelok came here,' Konrad noted. Yes, he was aware of how sketchy that sounded. But that's all they had. 'Or—who'd you ask?'
Since she killed his comrades, they weren't exactly swimming in options.
'Rude,' the girl thought, her pouting evident. 'It was Kaede, you know. Kaede.'
'And we both know that she's you.'
'She's been. Like, thousands of years ago.'
The Captain must have thought Konrad had gone crazy, rolling his eyes at random.
But it was a breath of fresh air that he couldn't read his mind.
'Ugh, I won't bother you, either,' the demoness scoffed. 'Things've heated up since you were out.'
Right, he'd been in a coma, but the urgency never went away.
'What's happening?' Konrad asked, worried.
The demoness didn't answer immediately.
Like she was searching for the right words.
Or, rather, filtered her thoughts so that they wouldn't scare him—very unlike her.
'Lucifer's preparing an invasion,' she claimed. 'Meow Midori's been banishing his agents left, right, and center, but—um. Gabby says Michael's barrier around Kasserlane is gone.'
'What?!'
And that was the filtered version?! Hold on.
'Doesn't that mean my whole mission became redundant?!'
He could feel Lily's resigned sigh echo in her thoughts.
'No. They're not reincarnated. Turns out, Lu's smarter than that, even if he didn't figure out our plans yet. But they can still open a large-scale portal for an invading army if we're not careful.'
And if portals were in play, they could no longer hide behind the mountains, either.
He'd better hurry. And he hadn't even got an idea where to start—
'Well, sorry, not sorry,' the girl scoffed. 'Strelok's pals attacked me, and now they're dead.'
Fair. If it were up to him, he'd choose Lily's safety over the extra intel, too.
And, ticking clock or not, there was nothing they could do about them now.
Unless—
Nope. No. Necromancy and time travel were out of the question.
In theory, they've entertained the former, but it couldn't solve their problem.
Since they needed Lucifer's puppets for the bond their souls formed with their master—
Even if Stella reanimated their corpses, those would be gone for good.
'Well, that doesn't mean I can't interrogate 'em,' Lily offered, and he could almost see her smirk.
'Please don't,' Konrad pleaded, for many reasons. But if there was one in particular— 'You ate them, remember? There are no bodies to resurrect.'
But at that point, Lily only argued for the sake of argument.
'No, no, no, sweetheart. I—no, Kaede only ate one of them. That Fang guy was way too big, so I'm sure he's been, like, incinerated, or something.'
Case in point.
'Still nothing to bring back,' Konrad tried to cut this short and not think about it too hard.
The conversation wasn't going anywhere.
And it burned through the mana he had only recovered, too.
'Fine, fine, I'll let you figure it out,' Lily sighed. 'Go, deal with your handsome little officer.'
Who was, by the way, staring a hole into his face the entire time.
Konrad blinked. Was he actually that good-looking?!
Captain Bandera held up his hands and averted his eyes when their gazes met.
"S-sorry, I'm, uh," he muttered. "Still struggling to believe that this is all real, you know. N-not trying to be offensive, or anything. But you're, like—very unremarkable."
Ouch. How was that not offensive?!
And right when his first wife called him handsome again.
Did he look that much better?!
'Oh, look at the time,' the demoness chirped, stretching every sound. 'I've gotta go now, so good luck, sweetheart. I know you can find this Strelok guy with this good-looking helper you got—'
And with that, her presence completely disappeared from his mind.
Traitor.
Konrad was the fucking Prodigy of Haiten.
Well, because of the memories he inherited from his past life. B-but he was also the duke of, uh, a big smelly scrapheap as Halaima was right now. And his magic—ugh. It almost killed him.
Yeah, okay, he got nothing.
Even Mister Handsome must have noticed the change in the mood.
"S-so uh, can we rule out the possibility of him enlisting?" Bandera asked.
Almost as if he was trying to change the topic.
Konrad had no answers.
When he first heard of the guy turning Lu down, it seemed like the obvious reason.
But Strelok could have had his own agenda.
Plans that this invasion could have thwarted, without meaning that he was a patriot.
Nor that he wasn't.
Again, he got nothing.
"All I know is he flew home and assumed he took the Kyiv airport," Konrad admitted. "The rest?My assumptions. Thought I'd find traces across the city, but if the airport was offline—"
"Well, there aren't many places he could've entered the country," the Captain offered.
He counted on his fingers.
"We can ignore the Russian border, Belarus, and, uh, the Moldovan one is a bit problematic as well. Which leaves us with Poland, Hungary, and Romania. If anyone saw him—"
Yeah, well, they didn't have a photo or even a description.
For all Konrad knew, he might have already run into the guy.
Or he never would, no matter what.
"If he were to enlist," Bandera pondered, "I would have heard about it by now. But the border guards would also check his passport. It's that—well, they won't record it without a reason."
And even if they did by some miracle, and they found an entry in their logs—
It wouldn't have answered the question of where he went from there.
"Ugh, why did I agree to this?" Konrad moaned, scratching the back of his head with way more force than necessary. "I knew it would be a pain to find him, but now it seems impossible."
The Captain smirked.
"Yeah, when you showed up with this request, I couldn't help but smile, too."
And, as it turns out, he was quite handsome doing so.
Ugh. He didn't have the same taste as his wives.
But if only he could have borrowed their mana sight—
"Help me out here," Konrad pleaded. "I can stop a ballistic missile, but I've no idea how to find a stranger here. Bet you have connections—and you did say you owed me, right?"
The officer sighed, scratching the stubble on his chin.
Was that pose handsome, too? He couldn't stop analyzing him anymore.
"It'd be difficult, for sure," Bandera claimed. "We've too many missing people as is, and the war only started. Even if I take advantage of my position, it'd be like playing the lottery."
"Take advantage, how?"
Konrad was grasping at straws, too. Anything was better than nothing at this point.
Having wasted three days in a coma—
"Well, uh, I could ask to have a look at the whole register of who entered the country. Check the results in bulk to see if anyone visited Japan before, and um—visit every pub along the borders."
"Pubs?" Konrad repeated, scowling.
The Captain shrugged.
"You never know what kinda weirdo you might find there—or who remembers them."
Well, it was better than wailing about how much time he had wasted already.
"Pubs it is, then," he decided. "And let's see that register, if at all possible."