The Knight Hates Rofan Events (3)
"...I'm only saying this on the off chance, Instructor. If you're thinking of laying a hand on the temple, give it up."
"...?"
"Put away that look that says You learned to read minds too? I can predict it only because I've gotten good enough at reading the way you move."
"...Not bad."
"Never mind not bad. Do not even think of touching the temple. Better to catch the true culprit and be done with it. Lay a hand on the temple, and all you'll buy yourself is a headache."
As if Lee Han's assault on the temple were already a settled fact, Roen even put on a desperate face, the look of a man begging him to exercise a little patience.
"I myself feel a powerful 'regret' toward the temple, and 'displeasure,' 'rage' and 'hatred,' 'contempt,' 'revulsion' and 'nausea.' Even so, the temple is not something that may be attacked."
"...No, I mean—what is it. You hate the temple even more than I do, don't you?"
Before genuine madness, counterfeit madness could not so much as offer a calling card, and the hatred Roen was baring burned so hot it looked a great deal like the feeling Lee Han himself reserved for mages. If a mage, to him, was a horrific monster that ought to be wiped from the world, then perhaps the temple was exactly that to this kid. The one difference between them, if there was any...
He tries to choke the feeling down and move like a rational man.
As he was doing now.
"As you know, Instructor, the temple's standing on the southern continent is tremendous. Strictly speaking, it is the authority of the Light of Radiance that is great, but the priests are so widely known as chosen proxies of that Light that the authority they hold is nothing to take lightly. Because of that, a great many among the common people will believe and follow anything a priest says."
"That's all common knowledge, isn't it? Where's the southerner who doesn't know it?"
Wondering why the boy was going on at such length about something everyone already knew, Lee Han gave a shrug. Far too obvious to—
"—And the man who claims to know it still means to attack the temple?"
"......"
"Instructor, attacking the temple is an incident of an entirely different order from striking the Magic Tower. The reason you have stayed intact until now, even after raiding the organizations you faced, is that you had a proper justification, the strength to match it, and some unidentified patron at your back. Is that not so?"
"W-well, yeah?"
"Since you admit it, this is considerably easier to say. Then, though I know it is impudent, I will venture a word of advice. Instructor, even if that patron is the king himself, you cannot attack the temple. An attack upon the temple is, quite literally, the act of turning the entire common people into your enemy."
"......"
"It is also the danger in the power that faith holds—the faith possessed by the temple, no, by religion."
"...Hm."
Lee Han was a little surprised by two things. One was that this cold, mannerless brat was speaking his mind because he was genuinely worried for him. The other—
This bastard already tried to do what I'm about to do, didn't he?
He had no gift for reading a man's thoughts from his eyes alone, but there was such a thing as a feeling, wasn't there? Lee Han cautiously guessed that the kid had done a great many things, whether in the past or in the "future," and that not all of them had come to nothing. Those bleak eyes, with countless hollow defeats and despairs passing through them, could have been nothing else.
...Right. They said the future version of this kid fought the temple an absurd number of times.
A mortal enemy? He carefully supposed it had been a hatred even more terrible than that. And the kid was telling him this because he had already tried so much of it.
—Just how catastrophic it was to attack the temple.
"...Of course, if it were you, Instructor, you could bring down a mere temple by yourself easily enough. What you could not bring down is the faith of the common people, nor their hatred. No matter how well you look after them, the people worship a god and long for one, and in the end they will only go on building a second temple, and a third, with their own hands...."
"......"
"So attacking the temple in the open will not do. It would be nothing but a meaningless act, and you would only become the object of their hate."
"......"
"And furthermore..."
Whether it was advice, a warning, or a grievance no one could quite name, the talk went on. Someone else might have grown sick of counsel that never ended, might even have felt a little stress, but listening to the grievance left Lee Han with an entirely different feeling. Not irritation. Pity.
He's carrying a lot of old grudges.
Setting aside that this was the first he'd known the kid could talk this much, it seemed a great deal had piled up inside him. A boy this young was already showing the signs of an illness born from swallowed rage. Just how much had he been eating himself alive?
It feels worse than anything I went through in the army...
Lee Han cautiously guessed that the stress he had taken in his past life might be nothing but a scratch beside this one's.
...Poor bastard.
For the first time, he thought the kid was truly pitiful, and he simply listened to the counsel in silence.
"...Instructor. Why are you looking at me with those eyes?"
From the side receiving the look, though, it was bound to feel unpleasant. People are poor at knowing how they appear to others, and the pitiful one—Roen—had no idea he looked like a black mutt caught in the rain.
......Lee Han accepted his disciple's counsel.
He did sometimes move as his heart pulled him, but he was not a fool who left everything to emotion. And with a commendable disciple offering advice for his sake, he could hardly refuse to listen. Of course, if he ever truly felt a line had been crossed hard enough, then he would unleash I'll kill you, and I'll desert.
The season for seriously considering where to emigrate is drawing near.
Not clashing with the temple would be best, but a man had to keep the worst case in mind. Honestly, he hesitated. Half a year ago he really could have left without a shred of lingering attachment, but of all times...
So this is what it means to grow attached.
In the meantime, Lee Han had ended up with far too many precious things.
His people.
The acquaintances and friends he had grown close to, and his disciples as well. So long as they were here, he could no longer leave the kingdom easily, and he could no longer toss off the word desertion the way he once had. Attacking the temple outright was, for the Lee Han of now, an extreme measure and the worst possible course, and so his thoughts only multiplied.
And at that choice of his—
"You thought it through! I don't think touching the temple is right either."
Gray-haired Taechang showed his delight.
"You're against attacking the temple too?"
"Yes. It wouldn't matter to you, Instructor, since you don't believe in any religion, but other people aren't like that. The harder life is, the more they have no choice but to lean on a god. In that sense, the power religion holds in this world can't be anything but absolute. And to go touching a place like that... Yeesh, the commoners would stone you."
"...You talk exactly as if you've seen it."
"...I didn't actually see it. I saw it from beyond the screen. ...Young Lord Roen being stoned..."
"......"
"...Shall I tell you in more detail?"
"No..."
He'd heard enough.
They were on the road home. Taechang had stepped out from behind a tree as if he had been waiting there, and Lee Han was not startled even by the sudden appearance. Too many of the people around him popped out like assassins; he was already used to it. But as he listened to the counsel, he found a strangely troubling red mark and tilted his head.
That couldn't be...
"Anyway. What's wrong with your neck?"
"Yes?"
"Looks like something bit you."
"Ah, this? Mm. I hid from Lady Karin that I was going to the Empire. A whole month has already passed, and she still seems a little angry—every time she sees me, she bites my neck and my shoulders and places like that. It doesn't hurt, but, well..."
"......"
"Haah. Did I do something terribly wrong?"
"...You rotten little shit, lower than a beast."
"Yes?"
"Forget it. Just don't say another word, you deceitful little bastard."
??
The kid's eyes went perfectly round, as if he truly had no idea why anyone would be angry, and that innocent face only felt all the more detestable.
The innocent act is elite.
Looked at a certain way, wasn't that a talent too? The talent for pretending not to notice. Lee Han found himself wanting to beat that kid worse than he wanted to beat the temple, but he knew that if he did, he would be the only one who came out looking ugly, so he had to swallow it in silence.
"...Um, Instructor. Aren't you going to ask Judia Pierre directly? Why she met someone connected to the temple, and what they talked about. I-if it's you, Instructor, I feel as if you could find out easily enough..."
Derek asked, carefully. Lee Han had suddenly snapped at him, but it had not looked like real anger, so he had been able to ask. Fortunately—
"Like that bastard would ever talk. He's insane. Torture him, beat him, threaten him, and he just endures it, or else he tries to kill himself. There's no attachment to living in him."
"......"
He did get an answer, but hearing what came out of it, his face stiffened on its own.
"No. There is some attachment to living, but he doesn't hold his life dear—is that the way to put it? He goes on with the mindset that if he lives, he lives, and if he dies, he dies. ...A damned unpleasant bastard."
"......"
A thick displeasure settled into his expression: the look of a man who found the way the priest Pierre lived repulsive beyond anything that could be added to it.
"That's why the bastards who use a god's name as a shield disgust me. They figure they'll be forgiven no matter what they do."
"...So they're like modern terrorist groups."
"They're just lunatics."
"Mm!"
He had heard the circumstances Pierre carried. Two personalities: Judia, the personality of the Dream Fiend, and Pierre, the personality of the inquisitor. The shocking part was why the personality called Pierre had come into being at all. It was none other than this—Judia, made into a test subject and drowning in pain, had created him "so she could shove her own suffering and misery onto someone else and sleep."
Because of that, Pierre's personality hated Judia, and in order to affirm his own existence as a human being, he showed an even more fanatical obsession with the temple. Pitiful beyond measure, and yet there was far too much blood on those hands for anyone to declare him pitiful without end.
The Dream Fiend personality is just a villainess. That's all there is to it.
And a considerably vicious sort of human, at that. A woman for whom the title of villainess young lady seemed to suit better than it did anyone.
"Th-then how are you going to handle it?"
"Handle it? The way a person with common sense would. With a conversation."
"......"
"Hey. What's that silence supposed to mean?"
"...No. It's nothing."
Derek could not bring himself to open his mouth.
Solve it with a conversation...
Wouldn't that be impossible for the Instructor?
Of course, the Instructor was not that violent a person. Judging only by his face and his usual behavior, one might mistake him for a violent man, but he was kind enough in his own way, and sensible. The problem was—
"—Lady Irene, will you not serve the Light of Radiance? You may be the adopted daughter of sinful Galahad, and you may have learned that wicked thing called magic, but if you serve the Light, that sin too will surely be wa—"
"—Crazy bastard."
—CRACK!!
...that the people around him had a way of driving a man to violence.
Every rib, broken? ...The belly didn't burst, so he held his strength back.
The Instructor's perfect hectopascal kick slammed home, and an ominous sound rang from the man's flank, but Derek nodded, knowing full well that tremendous patience had just been exercised. Not killing him—truly, a man of remarkable forbearance.