Retribution
Retribution
The one who saved me as I was being battered without being able to lift a single finger under Asilie's dark history offensive was Saintess Deoni.
After inviting the saintess—who appeared with a face that looked calm yet somehow solemn—into the cabin, I handed Laika, whom I'd been holding to endure the dark history attack, back to Asilie, set out a seat and tea for the saintess, and asked.
"Did you obtain anything?"
"Yes. I obtained everything there was to obtain."
It was hard to find pride or boastfulness in the saintess's manner as she declared she'd taken everything, not just a little.
I wondered if she felt guilt because of the process one could call interrogation but read as torture, but judging from the firm faith she had shown, the possibility of her sympathizing with or pitying an apostate asymptotically approached zero, so that uneasy feeling clearly stemmed from another reason.
"The series of incidents the Hero experienced in childhood... every single one of them, from beginning to end, was the plan of the Demon King's Army."
Fortunately, I didn't need to guess the cause myself. Because a deep guilt toward me flowed from the saintess as she gave me the results of the interrogation like a report.
She probably reacted that way because she considered it a crime committed by her own kind, but honestly, as I listened to the story, such a trivial matter became completely irrelevant.
"You're saying they already guessed I would appear?"
"To be precise, they 'knew' that a 'Hero' would appear. They said they were convinced that if they recovered all the holy relics within Demonfolk Territory and severed the link, that was the only way the Demon God could exert influence without harming the continent."
It was hard to believe, and I couldn't even know what method they'd used, but there was no reason to doubt it.
They might have been so loyal that they bluffed about having something close to precognition until the moment they died, but since I had already been ambushed by the wyvern unit at an inexplicable location, precognition felt more plausible than loyalty.
The saintess also answered firmly that there was no need even to consider the possibility that his loyalty had been maintained until the moment of death. Since it was the words of the person who had taken the lead in doing the unsavory work on my behalf, I simply nodded, and we naturally moved on to the next topic.
"So we can't know the specific reason they attacked the slave merchant group."
"Yes. They said the objective was to rescue just one member of the Demonfolk, but they couldn't even guess why. It was just an ordinary Demonfolk child, not one connected to any high-ranking noble."
"Still... there's no way it was an ordinary person, right?"
"You're right. We need to look into it more."
As I closed my mouth to organize my thoughts after hearing the story, silence naturally settled over the cabin.
The saintess, clearly acting as if she felt guilty for something she hadn't even done, was gauging my reaction, and Asilie seemed to be gauging my reaction as well, worried about the shock I might take.
Though I was actually more preoccupied with what the source of their absurd intelligence was, rather than being shocked.
"There's a rumor that the Demon King has a future eye, right?"
"Huh? Ah, yes. To be precise, it's that he appears to see several moves ahead, to the point where there's suspicion that he might possess a future eye."
As I listened to the saintess's answer—she was momentarily flustered perhaps because my sudden question was far from emotional—I racked my brain.
To the saintess, it seemed she considered it an utterly absurd story within the realm of the normal and common sense, but my honest impression was that, in a situation where there were already two people from another world, it wouldn't be strange to have one more who could see the future.
But there were too many holes to say they really saw the future.
The Demon King's Army not only didn't know I was hiding in the cave that day, they couldn't even find my family's cabin. At the time, I thought that was possible because there was quite a distance between the house and the village, but if they had precognition, it was absurd.
But...
"Rather than precognition, it's more likely that someone died in the distant future and returned to the past. Should I call them a regressor?"
...If they were retracing based on their own knowledge and experience, wouldn't that be sufficiently possible?
"......Huh?"
Looking at the saintess, who asked back as if saying "What kind of random nonsense is that at a time like this?" failing to control her expression, I asked as seriously as I could.
"Among the Evil Gods, are there perhaps those who can pull tricks related to time?"
What rule says a world with only two otherworlders can't have a regressor on top of that? Right now, it might be more realistic to examine the most absurd possibility among those we can consider.
Fortunately, the saintess was only flustered at first, and instead of dismissing my question, she stood up with an extremely serious expression.
"I will go and bring Brother Mender. He is so knowledgeable that I asked him to accompany us on the ruin investigation, so he might know something."
◈
The regressor concept is one of those settings used extremely commonly in novels, so to a modern person it's nothing special, but in this place where all sorts of mysteries have become reality, it feels very different.
"Eldi? Is that regressor thing also a story from your past life?"
The moment the saintess stepped out, Asilie immediately voiced her question.
"That's right. It wasn't that such a person actually existed, it was just one of many imaginations."
In my past life, they treated such things as fantasy and just used them as novel material for amusement, but here, where gods can directly intervene in the world, the concept of 'turning back time' carries a weight that is by no means light.
Take the Holy Art of recovery, for instance. Didn't the recovery orb that the self-destructing Saintess Teneasi bribed me with exhibit the divine authority to rewind time itself and heal wounds?
This was a world where even a saintess could do such a thing with power granted by a god. If they mobilized the full power of those who could overturn the continent and its laws merely by descending and turn land into sea with a single finger, wouldn't it be enough to turn back time over a vast area?
"That doesn't mean I'm just spouting nonsense off the top of my head. This, the self-destruct... no, this is a recovery consumable I received from Saintess Teneasi of the Imperial Divine Council, and it's an item in the domain of turning back time."
When I took out the orb I'd hung like a necklace at the right height so it would shatter too if I ever faced an extreme situation where my solar plexus was pierced, Asilie's eyes widened.
"If it weren't for this, I wouldn't have easily had such a thought. I would have considered it nothing but a wild delusion."
The gods widely worshipped across the continent are, after all, good gods.
They are not monsters of another dimension that feed on faith, nor are they utterly selfish bastards driven by their own desires like the gods of Greco-Roman mythology. They are beings who want to bless and guide mortals onto the right path by exercising a goodwill beyond mortal understanding.
And that also includes the desire for mortals to lead their own lives by their own will. It doesn't mean they should live however the hell they want, but in the sense that they respect that choice as much as possible.
Therefore, while they may grant blessings to overcome near-death situations, no god permits the act of overturning death. Because they consider it an act that insults all living beings in the world wholesale.
In a world where people live by the teachings of such gods, turning back time is no different from the advent of an apocalypse.
Because if the time of a world where gods who even consider the act of reversing a single death taboo is wholly rewound, that would be the greatest proof that this world has departed from the protection of the gods.
So I suspect not the gods, but the Evil Gods who stand at their opposite pole.
"There's the story Luwiming told me when I went to big sis's hometown, and the dagger the Axe-wielder used was also said to be made from something called the remnants of an Evil God, so suspicion arose naturally."
It might be nothing more than a clumsy patchwork, but after experiencing so many rotten things, it felt overflowing with possibility. The scale was getting overwhelmingly large, but since I was already a Hero, it was right to abandon any optimistic observations.
"If that's really the case, it's a terrifying thing."
"Yeah."
How could the chance to revive someone who died unjustly not be sweet?
How could you refuse an opportunity to undo all the mistakes you've made and rebuild from scratch?
It would be hard for me to wholly shake off that temptation too, but it's a different story if the price is going back up the lives and time built up by everyone in this world. Because changing my future means changing the futures of others as well—people who would die might live, but people who should have lived might die.
If they had messed with me, that might be one thing, but otherwise I don't want to put others on the scales at my whim.
Naturally, I won't feel any kindness toward the bastard who did such a thing.
Seeing that the situation continues even after their plans have encountered such setbacks, it's clear that even if there is a regressor, there must be a great many restrictions. Perhaps they've used up their only chance, or maybe they can't act recklessly because it demands a tremendous price.
The best ending would be that it's not a regressor but the result of intelligence-gathering that slaps the internet silly... but honestly, I don't even hope for that far. It's a slim possibility anyway.
While I was having such worries, the sound of knocking on the cabin door came again, and I opened the door, hoping that Priest Mender would at least present one concrete possibility.