Episode 49 — The Most Dangerous Creature in the World Is... (1)
...His head was spinning.
That was the first thing Lee Han registered once his mind clawed its way back.
"Urgh...!"
It felt like a hangover. A truly vicious one. Mind and body seemed to have been torn apart, and only now were they fusing back into one....
He could only guess, but when he turned over his talk with the thing called the Gatekeeper, he thought his spirit might have lingered in that Gate—or whatever the place was—and only just come home. That would explain the violent rift between mind and flesh.
And as if to prove the guess:
"......These two dead?"
No answer. Not from either of them.
"No. Not dead.... Suspended animation."
Maximus and Lark lay collapsed with their eyes shut. Knights of that caliber, and they didn't so much as twitch at Lee Han's muttering. They were still breathing, and their hearts were still beating, but the presence that usually hung around them was gone. Suspended animation, then. Which meant their minds were trapped in the same Gate he had just left.
"...This going to take a while?"
It wasn't quite certainty, and yet it was. He was sure the two of them would need a little time to pass the Gate. He had fulfilled the conditions for breaking through without ever meaning to, and there was no promise they would be as lucky. Still, if that business the Gatekeeper had mentioned—strength of the soul, or whatever it was—put them on his level or above, the Gate's illusion wouldn't snare them.
So.
Even if it takes a while, they'll wake up. ...Probably?
Shaky as the conviction was, he held it. Rather than fuss over them, he decided to look around—and not ten seconds had passed before the awe slipped out of him on its own.
"......Live long enough and you really do see everything."
The Sacred Vault.
The treasure house where the Sacred Relics slept was, quite literally, a world like a painting.
...Or, to put it more precisely—
A world inside a watercolor?
Lee Han, abruptly a resident of a strange realm that looked as if someone had laid paint over reality in thick strokes, could not hide his astonishment for a long while.
If the watercolor world needed a name, Museum seemed about right. The structure called the Parthenon to mind, but what filled it was a museum's worth of relics on display.
"Oh...."
Splash.
Even walking felt wrong. It was like stepping across water—no, across wet paint—and the farther he went, the more it felt like sinking into a bog. That strangeness, though, was a trifle. The moment he stepped inside, he had no choice but to be overwhelmed.
Fwoooosh.
"......"
Sacred Relics beyond any hope of counting, each one pouring out a presence too vast to measure. Not a single fake among them. Only the genuine article. Nothing here but true relics, and any one of them, carried outside, would be a treasure loud enough to shake the world. And there were not merely hundreds of such treasures. Thousands, easily. Being overwhelmed was a given. The pressure was so fierce it felt as if it might crush him flat, and had he not been a knight who had forged his body to its limit, he would have burst long ago.
Fwip.
"...They exist, all right. You just can't touch them."
Lee Han shoved back the pressure bearing down on him and reached for one of the relics. His hand didn't so much as meet it. The sensation was closer to slapping the surface of a pond. The thing clearly had a shape, and yet his fingers passed through as if he had touched liquid—and the phenomenon was not limited to the relic he had tried to grab.
"So every last one of them is like this."
Everything in this space possessed a definite substance, and yet it ran like liquid, impossible to hold.
Mirror Flower, Water Moon. You could see it with your eyes and never catch it in your hand—a moon reflected in water, a flower reflected in a mirror....
Figures. Nothing about this place comes easy.
Mystery befitting a treasure house of mystery, where countless Sacred Relics lay sleeping. Well. Obvious, if you thought about it. A single Mystery was already hailed as a miracle, and here were treasures bearing such Mysteries by the hundreds, by the thousands.... A phenomenon this uncanny was, by that measure, almost cute.
The place can call up the souls of the bastards I hated in my past life. Next to that, this is nothing.
Lee Han confirmed that he could not touch the relics glittering in front of him, and let the regret go. These were things far beyond anything he could manage at his level.
Which meant....
"Now what?"
He was at a complete loss.
He had, in fact, been given advice before he ever came here.
From whom?
From Raphael. An ally—and not quite an ally. What the old man had told him was this.
"Bringing a Sacred Relic out will probably not be easy for you."
"What are you talking about, old man?"
"A prohibition lies over this matter, so even if I wished to tell you with my own mouth, there is nothing I can say. In truth, no one at all can recite anything about the Sacred Vault. Not by voice, and not in writing. No information can be left behind."
"...Come again?"
"And so this is the only counsel I can offer. Simply act as you are led. That will become your answer."
"......What does that even mean?"
"Heh heh. The Light will guide you."
"......Huh?"
"...Never did understand a word of it. Right to the end."
Turning the memory over now only left him more at a loss. It hadn't been the sort of advice a man could use. If anything, the questions had only sunk deeper.
"...Old man, nothing's leading me anywhere?"
He respected the old priest. He did. But at times like this the man was a little infuriating. Could he not have said it so a person could actually understand?
"What does that even mean, the Light will guide you?"
"Don't overthink it. If anything, that old man of yours explained it well. Search as you're led, and the answer will come."
"That's the same grade of bullshit as 'believe, and blessings will come.'"
"Now, now! That's impious!"
"Impious, my ass. I'm the one sitting here swallowing curses a lot filthier than— wait, that's not—!"
Who was he even talking to?
For an instant Lee Han nearly jumped out of his skin. Something had popped out in a place he was certain was empty, and any human being would have been startled. He was so badly startled that his fist flew on pure reflex—and unfortunately, it never landed. It passed through, empty.
Splash.
More precisely, just as with the relics and the space itself, there was only the soft sound of striking liquid.
"Violent, aren't you."
"......You?"
"We meet again. Yes. It's me."
The Gatekeeper.
The horned owl cocked its head stiffly upward and named itself.
Today, it seemed, was a day for collecting unusual experiences. He had entered the Sacred Vault, met old ties inside that strange space called the Gate, and now this.
...A talking horned owl, on top of everything.
You really did have to live through a thing to see it.
"Don't look at me like I'm a stranger. We were talking not ten minutes ago, weren't we?"
"Doesn't that make it more bewildering?"
He had been sure he would never see the thing again, and here it was.
"Ah. Is that so?"
"Don't 'is that so' me. What even are you? Weren't you something that only exists in the Gate?"
His disbelief was, in a way, only natural. This was the fellow who had draped itself in every shred of mystical atmosphere available and gone on about whether or not to grant him a trial. It had even closed their meeting on that same mystical note. Meeting it again under circumstances like these was bound to feel absurd.
But—
"Shall I go, then? I came to help, but if you don't need my help..."
"......"
"I'm really going?"
"...Ah. No."
How did a mere owl manage that many expressions? The unbearably smug little smile was mildly infuriating, but the one with something to ask was the one who had to bend, wasn't he? If he was going to count this sudden meeting as luck, then he would count it as luck. He had not the slightest intention of picking a fight over something pointless.
Even so....
"But why show yourself? And why in that shape, of all things?"
Some questions still had to be asked.
"Humans like cute creatures, don't they? Come at them like this and they drop their guard, so in front of humans I take this form whenever I can. A cat or a dog works too. Want me to change?"
"You really do know humans, don't you? ...Forget it. Better to have a productive conversation than waste time playing dress-up."
"That rational mind of yours. I like it very much."
The horned owl beat its wings, enormously pleased, and for a moment Lee Han thought the Gatekeeper a thoroughly cunning creature.
Cute, though. Damn it, it was cute....
Fur white as snow, and glossy besides—the gloss was one thing, but the plumpness was another. It might as well have been a doll. A very expensive one. Look at it long enough and affection came on its own. Lee Han gave it high marks for having properly learned how to get under a person's skin.
Then—
"You'll have questions, I'm sure. Why a Gatekeeper like me would show itself before an illegal intruder like you."
"......"
The owl gave off a keen, calculating air that did not match its cute exterior, and Lee Han's face hardened. He would rather not have imagined it, but the Gatekeeper's sudden appearance, and the shift in the air, felt ominous.
Sure enough.
"It's nothing else. It's just—"
Shing!
"H-huh?! Wh-why all of a sudden? Did I do something wrong?"
"No. You didn't do anything. It's just... looks like they found us first. From over there."
"...Ah."
For a moment the horned owl failed to grasp the situation. Then, a beat late, it seemed to feel something, and its wings beat hard. Lee Han didn't spare the time to take the sight in.
BOOOOM!
He blew the head clean off the one trying to take him.
In an instant a Dullahan was born, head and body parted—but unfortunately, the opponent had not piled up the sort of accomplishments required to become a Dullahan, and simply died. The bastard did, unlike Lee Han, seem to have some luck where companions were concerned.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
One after another, figures dressed exactly like the one who had just lost his head came gathering in. Even counting only the ones he could see, they numbered well over fifty. Lee Han turned a still gaze straight ahead.
"......"
Of course he wasn't watching the front because he was wary of trash like them.
The reason he faced forward was—
"Oh my. Already down, are you?"
...because there were about four presences he could not afford to lower his guard against.
"That's what I came for. Could you chase them out for me? I'll make it worth your while."
"...Even if you hadn't said it, I think I'd have to."
Because if he didn't kill them, they looked ready to tear him to shreds.
......They're the ones who are going to die.