Echoes
"Are you confessing that you killed my parents yourself?"
Were all magicians as absurd as this? William remained calm enough to be faintly unnerving.
"That is not a confession. I am merely confirming the premises before I ask and answer questions—about you, Justina Schumacher, and in order to answer your questions as well."
This looked like it was going to be a long conversation.
I muttered the words and tapped the floor twice with the tip of my staff.
The wind that had been humming around the buildings fell silent at once.
It was Mystery. The Mystery William ruled had seized the wind in an iron grip.
He straightened and walked toward me.
Up close, he was about a head and a half taller than I was, with shoulders that were much broader too.
When he blocked the light from the streetlamp, his shadow fell over me.
Fine. I’d admit it—I was a little overwhelmed. Especially in this body, like this.
"Are you not curious why I had no choice but to kill your parents?"
"Because they stood in the way of your grand cause, I assume."
"More precisely, because they would not sympathize with it, and because they refused to negotiate."
Somehow, irritation flared up in me.
"So you and people like you just kill anyone who doesn’t agree with you?"
"It was an unavoidable killing. A necessary one, nothing more."
He wasn’t making any sense.
It felt less like talking to a person and more like muttering at a wall. My eyes narrowed at the unpleasant sensation.
"Let me make this perfectly clear. I don’t know exactly what your so-called grand cause is aiming for, but in the end it has no choice but to fail."
It wasn’t as if nobody had ever tried to do something about it.
It was a half-mad idea, but there had even been research into repurposing its strange properties into a purifier—something that would absorb the contamination and erosion spreading across a wide region.
Of course, the result had been a complete failure.
Yggdrasil had not accepted full control the moment the Gate opened.
On the contrary, it had turned the contamination and erosion it consumed into fuel and bloomed in spectacular fashion.
"Yggdrasil is not something humans can lay a hand on. Stop this now."
"Then let me ask you this: aside from restoring magic, what other method exists to guarantee humanity’s safety?"
For a moment, I felt the faintest flicker of surprise at the realization that restoring magic hadn’t been his final goal after all, and then it vanished.
After that, all I could do was laugh at the irony.
Did he ever realize that what he’d done to protect humanity had become the very first step in narrowing humanity’s lifeline?
Perhaps he took my laughter for mockery, because his voice rose slightly.
"The restoration of magic is not fantasy. If our shameful downfall caused mana to wither, then all we need do is make it flourish again."
"Flourish?"
"Yggdrasil feeds on all manner of energy. And when the time for blooming comes, it opens the Gate and spreads the erosion energy pouring from it far and wide."
I knew that much.
It was knowledge I didn’t need him to repeat. For that very reason, it only deepened the sense that something ominous was looming.
And when the truth stood before me, I realized that omen had been a prelude to something I could never have imagined.
"If Yggdrasil is the one opening the Gate, then would it not also be possible to open a door to the Sea of Mana?"
▼
The Sea of Mana.
In today’s terms, the Sea of Mystery.
It was the source of Mystery, the wellspring from which magic and Mystery Armament both drew their power. And, true to the name “sea,” it was also a place presumed to be so saturated with Mystery that it had condensed, almost to the point of liquefaction.
But that was only a hypothesis.
The reason it was called a hypothesis was simple: nobody had ever observed it directly.
No one recorded in history had ever seen the Sea of Mystery with their own eyes, much less entered it.
A place that clearly existed and could even be proven, yet could not be observed, was a subject that gave even the magicians of the old age, and the scientists of the present, a headache.
And yet—
This William bastard standing before me now—
"If Yggdrasil’s Gate were replaced with a door leading to the Sea of Mana, this world would once again be abundant with mana."
"...What nonsense."
Even after my small rebuke, he did not waver. If anything, William shot a question right back at me.
"Then what, if not magic, can stop the Unliving swarming in from beyond?"
"Because of them, the people of this land have suffered for over a thousand years."
"No, no. We bought humanity over a thousand years of time. And what did the humans of this land accomplish with the time we gave them?"
I did not answer.
"Right now, as we speak, the Unliving outside are licking their lips and waiting for their chance. Who, besides us, noticed their greed? For a thousand years, who besides us prepared for them?"
Was it because I said nothing? Heat and irritation began to seep into his voice.
"The humans of this land turned their spears against one another. I witnessed nations collapse, the strong prey upon the weak, and even the most basic rights go unprotected."
"..."
"Humanity today is satisfied with that ridiculous thing called Mystery Armament, and does not think about the greater threat that will come later."
He had forgotten history. Or perhaps the mention of history itself had put him in a foul mood, because his expression twisted.
"Have you ever seen the Unliving burn this land? Have you ever witnessed the wounds carved into the earth that can never be erased? Have you ever seen our struggle to survive those abominations firsthand?"
No, of course I hadn’t. There was no way he would have.
You lived on a land made of our corpses!
Something churned in my gut at his words.
It felt like molten metal turned red-hot, and like a field of ice-cold needles at the same time.
The blue eye in me throbbed with pain, and the skin around it twitched.
Memories from long ago rose up. The first Gate of Yggdrasil appearing, the news reporting the scene turned to chaos, the city drowning in hell.
My parents’ grave, soaked by cold rain, surfaced in my mind.
"And even so, how could I—how could we—entrust the future to humanity as it is now? Better to accept sacrifice and bring back magic so that we ourselves can stand at the forefront."
Ruins came to mind. Ruins where people of every name lay buried without ever understanding why, and graveyards of the nameless.
At last, trembling, I opened my mouth.
"Sacrifice, you say?"
"If the price of securing humanity’s future is a few dozen lives, that is a burden we can easily bear."
"So you killed my parents, and on top of that blew up an entire block?"
"If it means leaving no trace, it is better to bury the truth with the aid of the Unliving."
Then I didn’t need to hold back anymore, did I?
"Your version of humanity sure is convenient. Humanity that lives on sacrifices no one agreed to make. Then are the humans who were sacrificed not human too?"
William’s face stiffened.
I thought back to the past.
Of the people at the top who were desperate to dress up needless deaths as noble sacrifice, of the soldiers who carried out bad orders with their lives on the line, of civilians left defenseless before the Origin Species without anyone to help them.
Some of it had truly been unavoidable—mistakes that could happen because people were human. I could understand that much, if not accept it outright.
But this man, William—what he was saying was another matter entirely.
"The humanity you’re talking about died out long ago. It died out by repeating the sacrifices you speak of."
"..."
"If killing a few dozen lets the rest live, then you should’ve died instead."
"You—"
"What, is it easier to sacrifice others than to sacrifice yourself? Since they look less important than you do, because it’s more convenient for you, it’s okay to sacrifice them? Hah."
Honestly, how arrogant.
I had no idea what my expression looked like now, but I let a thoroughly twisted smile show.
"The arrogant one here is you. Without sacrifice, there is no future. I understand that your young heart may be inflamed with anger, but—"
"—Sacrifice? Don’t make me laugh. You’re nothing more than a murderer dressing up murder as sacrifice."
And then, at last, I spat out the words I’d been keeping inside.
"You murdering bastard sure loves to brag. Is picking out who to kill really something to be proud of?"
Anomaly detected at extremely close range.
His body moved faster than his words.
In a flash, he drew a smooth dagger from inside his coat and pointed it at me.
Mystery spiraled at its tip. The movement was clean and efficient, with no hesitation and no wasted motion whatsoever.
If he had truly meant to harm me, some part of my body would already have been pierced by a magic bullet before I could even draw my Mystery Armament.
"Your insolence has finally provoked me."
"Am I wrong about you being arrogant? Is it some absurd lie that you’re a murderer? Isn’t this only happening because you thought I could never beat you, because you thought I’d back off?"
In the end, none of what I said was wrong, was it?
As I sneered, the corner of his eye twitched.
The roughness in his breathing eased after a moment.
"I came here for a conversation, not a duel. I will not go further than this. At this point, you will come to stop me. However, I will grant you one last chance. Leave this place. If you die here, it will be nothing more than a pointless death."
"Ha."
I laughed out loud on reflex.
"You should be worrying about your tree root getting ripped out. I’ll tear it out from the bottom until there’s nothing left."
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