What Cause Does a Knight Fight For? (10)
The first to arrive was a paper airplane from Taechang.
Instructor, I have urgent business of my own, so I don't think I can be of any direct help. Still, if I scribble down a few trivial things I happen to know...
I looked into the records on Mordred, and it seems a terrible famine struck three hundred years ago. From what I hear, though, it wasn't a natural famine. There's talk it was the work of some evil spirit.
They say the head of Mordred at the time put that spirit down, but there's no detailed record of exactly how he did it.
...And Instructor, I know you'll hate hearing this, but if I may speak of the original game: the team lead in charge of that part is a complete pervert. No — a very strange person. The sort who insists on ending everything in despair, or in sheer ruin. So be careful. Whatever method you use, there's a real chance it slides toward the worst possible ending.
The second came from the regressor Blackie, in the old fashion: a message carried by hawk.
Instructor, it seems you've been dragged into something troublesome. You said you were going to hunt a vampire, and now, out of nowhere, you want Mordred's secret history. Honestly...
Even so, I owe you a great deal. So I'll tell you what I know.
I don't know much. The one thing I can say is that someday, Mordred will perish without a sound or a rumor. Please don't ask how I know. I simply know. I don't know the remedy, and I don't know any countermeasure. Had you never mentioned Mordred, I too would have gone on believing it was nothing more than destruction by natural disaster.
The only thing I could guess, after digging through Lionel's books, is that it may be connected to the Land-god. I don't know whether you're familiar with land-gods. They are something like a natural disaster — beings on par with fairies. Yet a land-god, like a fairy, cannot touch the world. If there is any way one might, it would be to keep a contractor, or to descend into a human body.
And Instructor — unlike the serpent the barbarians worship, or Lionel's lion, a land-god may not be kindly disposed toward humans. As the world has the good and the wicked, so do land-gods.
And if you confirm that a land-god is caught up in this... I beg you. Run.
Third, the blonde mage-chick sent a Gentle Breeze.
Instructor! I miss you so, so much! Lord Roen is working me to the bone, whaa...
But I'm working hard anyway—!
...Oh! Right. First, my answer to the message. Um... honestly, I don't really know.
S-still! I think I can help with magic! I'll send a present, hehe!
...I miss you.
Last of all came a scolding from the silver-haired elder sister.
Don't stay there. Get out. Now.
...Haah. Even if I say it, you won't listen. Wretched boy.
Hoo. One piece of advice. Never let that thing bewitch you. You must not show weakness. If you do, I will want to help you and still have no way to do it.
...May the Dragon's Blessing of the silver dragon lie upon the road ahead of you.
The day before, Lee Han hadn't expected much. Even so, after asking around through the people he knew, he had managed to scrape together a few scraps of information. Every one of them was vague, or else so heavy with implication that it made him tilt his head — and still he did his best to understand them as far as his own knowledge would stretch.
He didn't have Simon's gift for fitting facts together like puzzle pieces and teasing out other people's secrets. But there was one thing in which he would not lose to Simon.
"Imagination."
"...?"
"This is nothing but my own delusion. So listen, and then let it go."
"I'll listen..."
"I said don't take it seriously."
Speaking his own nonsense aloud embarrassed him. He chewed on the words a moment, then opened his mouth anyway. Say it with confidence, and even if he was wrong, at least he wouldn't look pathetic.
"Wales probably had a land-god, the way the North does, or the barbarians' jungle. My guess is it's tied to the Spirit Eye in Mordred blood."
"Then something twisted things between that land-god and Mordred. The famine three hundred years ago came out of that, and your ancestor fought the land-god to put an end to it."
"But from the land-god's side, it would have been absurd. The ones who received its blessing dared to turn on it. Like getting your throat bitten by the dog you raised. In other words, it was in a filthy mood."
He would have left a curse himself. This wasn't a question of who had been wrong first, or of principle. The emotional offense — the sheer gall of it — would have weighed far heavier.
"Well. Seeing how peaceful things are now, they must have managed, somehow, to bring the land-god down. But a god is a god, however rotten. It wouldn't have taken the blow and done nothing. It probably left a curse."
"And because of that curse, once every sixty years Wales gets a season when evil spirits like wraiths run wild. I went through your library. The spirits have done plenty of harm to the servants in the manor, haven't they?"
He had seen it for himself: Mordred's servants, loyal to a degree that was almost unnatural in its absence, and the people who shrank from so much as speaking the name. It was a culture bizarre enough to make one wonder how such a thing could exist on land ruled by a great house, and Lee Han took its cause to be those evil spirits, rising on their regular cycle.
"But here's the strange part. The servants who got hurt were, nine times out of ten, people who came to Mordred already carrying resentment, or some purpose of their own. Meaning a spy or a criminal sneaks in pretending to be a servant, and gets hurt for it."
It was almost as if something were protecting Mordred. And from that, he could tell—
"The land-god probably resents Mordred. And still, it wants something from you. That something is probably tied to Mordred's bloodline."
From there on, it was nothing but wild delusion. The sort of delusion a man would have to forgive even if it offended him enough to draw a sword.
"...There's something called the Black King in the North, isn't there? A fragment left behind by the North's guardian god, the Lion King. And the reason Lionel can rule the North is that they inherit, through blood, the power the Lion King left — possible because the Lion King's blood runs in Lionel's line."
"Same with you. Blessed by the land-god of Wales, you were probably made, in constitution, into vessels that take its power more easily than most. And... maybe the land-god of Wales wanted to descend into the world through you."
"A divine being like a fairy generally needs a body it can come down into, if it's going to touch this world."
The descents of the gods in ancient myth. Gods borrowing the bodies of saints to speak their word to the faithful and fatten their faith. Perhaps the land-god of Wales, in just the same way—
"—wanted to borrow your bodies and come down onto this land. But it couldn't be just anyone. For instance... hm?"
Why had it gone so quiet...?
Lee Han looked around at Mordred's blood. Faces had gone pale as if they had seen a ghost; mouths hung open. One of them in particular.
"...Y-you. Have you been spying on us from somewhere?"
"Hm?"
"H-how in the world do you know so much about us!?"
"...I told you."
Lee Han gave a light shrug. He couldn't see why they were reacting so sharply.
"It's a delusion. Just laugh it off."
They could have taken it for the nonsense of a fool. He didn't understand the violence of the reaction, and a dry laugh escaped him.
"...A dry laugh? I feel more like I'm about to fall over from the shock."
Heh...
The Mordred family could only stare, struck dumb, as if they had met someone more ghostly than the ghosts that drifted around them.
"Well. At this point there's hardly anything left for us to explain..."
The first to recover was the old knight. Years of experience were not so easily dismissed; he shook the astonishment off in a moment—
"...Only a possibility, but you aren't from a shaman's line, are you? Or a fortune-teller?"
"..."
"Ahem. A j-joke..."
Now that he looked, this old man was the most dangerous of the lot. A man who claimed he could see ghosts — wouldn't he fall for superstition at the drop of a hat? If Lee Han were a fortune-teller, he had the distinct feeling this one would show up carrying his entire fortune. Lee Han clicked his tongue and shook his head.
"I'm not some shaman."
"And what is that?"
"Like a fortune-teller. Anyway, I'll say it again. Everything I said is nothing but a delusion built on a pile of information. But judging by your faces, it seems my delusion was decently plausible."
"...Yes. Plausible enough to give me chills."
"Have your chills in moderation. Anyway, let me confirm one more time. The land-god — the Great Evil Spirit — is here, isn't it?"
"...And if you knew that, what would you intend to do?"
Ganok asked it back before he answered, wondering why the man would ask such a thing at all.
"Why ask something so obvious?"
Lee Han snorted, as if the question itself were absurd. And well he might.
Fwoosh—!
"I'm here to rip the head off a child-molesting bastard who's after an eight-year-old's body. You think I need a reason?"
"..."
For a moment, the Mordred family rubbed their eyes.
Just for an instant— D-did his face change?
If they claimed that a strikingly handsome young man had, for a single heartbeat, looked like a predator more frightening than any monster, would anyone believe them?
What...
He isn't transforming, is he?
The Mordred family, driven even into empty delusions. People couldn't transform...