The Rider Who Calls Death (7)

I kept my gaze steady on Stella’s tattoos, careful not to be rude. The deep green ink had the exact shade of a certain black pigment I knew too well. They must have mixed the dyes. Furnace Oak Soot.

So is this just another flavor of anger management issues? Maybe the pigment itself had driven Stella insane. Mother and daughter, both of them. I sighed and opened my mouth to bring some order to the chaos.

“Chief. Lady Stella. There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Please, speak freely.”

“The truth is, the dye you’re using—”

…But what if that’s just her natural personality? The thought flashed through my head mid-sentence, but I pretended it hadn’t. Stella’s temperament and the dye were separate problems.

“…You’re saying it’s a toxic substance?” The chief looked at Stella in disbelief. She herself apparently didn’t use the black dye. Since the patterns were tattoos, they wouldn’t be changed often. Unlike the woman who had tried to stab me earlier—if those had been painted on, they would need daily reapplication.

“The craftsman who taught us how to make the charcoal powder would never have lied to me…”

“He might not have known either. After you started using the charcoal powder for the patterns, have there been any changes you can think of?”

“…I thought it was simply the wildness of youth.” The chief looked young, but her speech suggested she was actually quite old. I decided not to dwell on it. She must have gone hard on the anti-aging. Maybe she had her villagers grinding up snail cream or something.

“I will inform the villagers… As soon as we opened ourselves to the outside world, it’s been one disaster after another. In my successor’s generation, all contact will likely be severed again.”

The chief looked devastated, but even when she lowered her eyes it was hard to read her face. Human eyes really do have an enormous effect on impression, don’t they?

“It isn’t our place as outsiders to say this, but I hope you find strength.” I comforted the gloomy chief. She had every right to feel crushed; her own judgment had harmed her people. And it wasn’t as if she only led a handful of lives. If my family had ended up eating something strange because of me, I would have looked exactly like her. My wives had each borne a son and a daughter, making an eleven-member household with me, my wives, and the children. If all of them had been eating Chinese naked kimchi and fly-powder chili flakes every day because of my mistake or delusion? Just imagining it made my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠blood boil. Though honestly I still couldn’t quite picture my children’s faces. If possible, I hoped they wouldn’t take after me.

“By the way, is Miss Stella all right?”

“What?”

Blunt as ever. I tapped my own wrist. “The tattoo. You engraved the charcoal powder I mentioned onto your skin, didn’t you? Is there a way to remove it?”

“You, knowledgeable in Erin ways. But no problem! Mana ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tattoo—erase with mana!! Hup!!”

—Boom!

Still seated, Stella released a burst of mana that exploded ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her clothes. The thin midi dress fluttered down like a burst balloon. At this point I felt like nothing she did could surprise me anymore—even if she suddenly snatched up a cockroach and ate it mid-conversation. She manipulated her tattoos like living snakes, gathering the pigment into a lump before hurling it into the fireplace where green flames roared.

“Incinerate!!”

“Don’t say incinerate!!” The chief tackled the lump of dye away with her body and shouted in fury. “Didn’t you just hear it’s dangerous?! What if poisonous gas fills my house?!”

“Poison gas? Britannia language difficult.”

Maybe she had a screw loose even before the dye. It was entertaining for us spectators, but living with it day in and day out would give anyone an ulcer. Still, the chief seemed to have recovered her spirit, which was a relief. A true my-pace personality can energize others just by existing—at least within the limits of the people being dragged along can endure.

“If you wish, we can treat it for you.”

“Treat? If I leave this, will I die? Or will it not heal?”

“It should heal as long as you avoid contact with the dye.” Magical paprika was ultimately still a drug. It didn’t tear the body apart; it only affected the mind and mana. Endure it and it would pass. Especially if she cut off all contact with the pigment, she would recover quickly.

“If it heals, that’s enough. Medicine makes people weak.”

“It’s not medicine. It’s magical treatment.”

“Treatment also makes people weak. A war chief must be strong.”

I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but forcing treatment on someone who refused felt wrong, so I dropped it. Coercing medical care was only acceptable during an epidemic.

“……Huu. In any case, the discussion is more or less finished.” The chief let out a long breath. Stella’s interruption had turned everything into a circus, but the important points had been covered. We now knew the location of the Nuckelavee’s spawning ground—appropriate enough for an aquatic creature—and I had also learned about the knockoff Beast Regression magic I’d been curious about.

Plus we have a place to sleep tonight.

Though the thought of stumbling to the bathroom at night and running into a naked, tattooed old man was terrifying. Fucking hell. Barbarian-man land was no joke.

“It has grown late. Shall we continue the conversation tomorrow?”

We quietly accepted the chief’s suggestion. I still had a lot to talk about with Heiromain, but he had apparently grown too excited; his wounds reopened and he had fallen asleep as if he had fainted. Just to be safe I had released sleeping gas, but there was no resistance at all. He really was out cold.

If his liver isn’t hanging outside his body, it means he doesn’t suspect us. As expected of a professor who doesn’t exploit graduate students—he was probably just an innocent who didn’t understand how the world worked.

“Zzzzzzz……” Heiromain was sleeping so deeply that a knife to the throat probably wouldn’t wake him. As the Professor Slayer I felt a bitter taste rise in my mouth at the enormous contradiction before me. Could a good professor exist? If so, was he good? Or because he was fated to eventually become evil, should he be viewed as evil from the start? Being born good, or overcoming an evil nature through tremendous effort—which was more admirable? It was a question that would torment me for some time.

The Ulster village, poetically named ‘Shore of the Strong Sea,’ was vast, yet it contained surprisingly few houses. Aside from the garden where they grew dye plants, they didn’t seem to practice any real agriculture. They used the land lavishly. Still, we had been given a separate place to rest. Of course I didn’t sleep. Neither did Veronica.

─Swish.

We slipped quietly out of the tent. If the whole group went together we would obviously raise suspicion, so only the minimum number—Veronica and I—had come out. Our destination? Saying it out loud would be a waste of breath. We were headed for the carriage. Since the village had no stable, they had simply pitched a tent over it. The horses were sleeping inside. Or rather, most of them were. One was awake. Almost as if it had known we would come looking for it.

The broken-horned unicorn spoke using the ᚨ (Ansuz) rune. It was the one-way telepathy I had once used on Veronica in a dream long ago.

Wait, from the voice… it’s female?

The unicorn was a mare. Her name was Alice, if I remembered correctly. She must have had a true name, but she couldn’t have told it to Heiromain. The curse would have made even rune speech useless.

Alice seemed startled that I could speak her tongue, but she quickly regained her composure. Veronica drew forth the rune and linked our minds. Now only the three of us could converse in silence. Neighing with a horse in the middle of the night would have earned us a beating from the superstitious Ulster folk.

Alice answered Veronica as though she had been waiting for exactly those words. Judging by her size in horse form, she was clearly much older than Veronica.

However, as our mother used to say, among women past twenty the younger one holds the advantage in attitude. Alice lacked the composure Veronica possessed. Ugh. I could practically smell the old-maid hysteria in her tone.

Her tone was cynical. Veronica and I exchanged a quick glance. Unless she was simply angry at us, Alice seemed to carry deep self-loathing about her own situation.

We spoke. I touched my bracelet and muttered under my breath. Alice had seen—in perfect 5D—how this bracelet had turned into a spear and turned the Nuckelavee that tried to kill her into horse meat mixed with human flesh. She immediately straightened her posture.

I was already feeling disappointed. I hadn’t expected this unicorn to know how to lift the curse. I had only hoped that, sharing the common ground of a broken horn, she might know something about that black-mage bastard.

But from the way she talks, this is probably a dead end. The way she kept staring at Veronica’s horn with sparkling eyes suggested she had no idea who the ‘great one’ the black mage had babbled about was. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

When I snapped at her, Alice shrieked as if frightened. Veronica tugged my collar. Thanks to her I regained some calm; my preconceptions had made me too suspicious. Beating and interrogating Alice when she had done nothing evil yet would make me no different from the bastards I despised.

Veronica supplied the support I needed. When I glanced at her, our faithful servant was smiling. She knew how bad I was with names. A little embarrassing.

Alice’s reaction changed instantly. Her eyes widened and she spoke in clear panic.

Not quite a jackpot, but maybe a thirty-centimeter bass? At my clearly expectant tone Alice frowned and answered slowly, as though dredging up old memories.

Fortunately Alice was capable of three-line summaries. She continued.

That was something I had heard far too many times before. ……It shares a disturbing similarity with Hoenir’s goal. Perhaps madmen really do share ideological common ground. I could both understand and not understand why he had been close with that Yerna bitch. The crucial difference between those two insane bastards was whether their final objective was the destruction of humanity or the destruction of other races. To carry out Abidus’s plan, the elf Yerna would also have to die, since the unicorn and bicorn curses applied even in front of elves and dwarves. They really should kill each other first if possible.

She should have started like that. Alice answered instantly, like a fanatic. I felt as if I had become some cult leader. The Horsehead Liberation Church—a religion that received absolute devotion from only a very specific demographic. I gave a small chuckle and asked.