Toward the Front Lines - 3
At the very hour when the Saintess and the Hero were meeting the companions who had once journeyed with their predecessors—the First Saintess and her party—Jerome was finally discovered by a laborer repairing the city walls and hauled to safety.
After thanking the man who had pulled him free, he asked after the Saintess and the Hero until, at last, he tracked them to the great church that stood in the heart of the Imperial Capital.
A few curious onlookers had come hoping for a glimpse of the pair, but the church guardians answered every request with the same textbook refusal and turned them away. When Jerome simply tried to walk inside, a nun stepped into his path. He produced the token of a Holy Knight; she examined it carefully, then stood aside.
Inside, the church was utterly still. Silence filled every corner. He walked the long corridor at an unhurried pace and opened the door to the ward.
The moment he saw the Saintess and the Hero lying on their beds, the last of the tension drained out of him. Everyone was safe. Only then could he loosen the taut string of vigilance he had held for so long and allow himself to rest.
Perhaps because he had kept every muscle locked for hours, a sudden weakness swept through his limbs; yet the long years of training kept him from collapsing. He had bargained with the Scales, driving his body past its limits to wring out a brief, explosive surge of power. Rest was no longer optional—it was essential.
He set his armor and sword on an empty cot, sat down, and closed his eyes, emptying his mind so that body and spirit might settle once more.
How much time passed he could not tell. Then, into the perfect hush of the ward, a faint sound drifted.
A soft, feminine moan.
His brow twitched at the interruption of his meditation. A heartbeat later he remembered that the only woman present was the Saintess herself, and a storm of unwelcome thoughts rose at once.
Why would the Saintess make a sound like that? With whom? Or while imagining whom?
He twisted the thought aside and scourged himself for it. How dare he entertain such fantasies about a pure young girl? He had known from the start that her body was fragile; how could he have misunderstood even for an instant? The mere fact that the suspicion had flickered through his mind filled him with guilt, and he berated himself again and again.
He forced his attention back into meditation, trying to erase both the stray thoughts and the faint sounds that kept seeping into his ears.
The Hero’s keen ears caught the same sound. A man standing on the threshold of becoming a Superhuman could hardly have missed it.
White curtains enclosed every bed; the church lights had been dimmed to a murky half-glow. Nothing beyond the fabric could be seen. For a moment a harsh suspicion crossed his mind, but he knew the Saintess’s condition too well. The sound could only be her stifling pain.
How long had she endured that agony alone? Why, after all the time they had spent side by side, had he never heard it? Why had he never noticed? Perhaps he had deliberately looked away. He had simply assumed she would always be there beside him, that her presence was a given. That was all.
But he was different now. He could not take away her suffering, yet he could still care for her in quiet ways that would not show. Someday, when he found a cure for her illness and confessed again—would she accept him?
It did not matter. He only wanted her to live. Even if she never looked his way, he wanted her alive. He wanted her happy. Therefore he would protect her. Behind the scenes he would search for any means to heal her disease.
The most important truth was this: the Hero was a greedy man. He would let nothing slip from his grasp—not his parents, not his comrades, not his friends, not even love. He would save them all.
He carved the vow once more into his heart, closed his eyes with deliberate force, and let exhaustion pull him under.
What am I doing right now?
Ah. Right. The dagger.
From the leather bag I drew a luxurious silver knife—the one that had traveled with me all the way from the Holy Kingdom into this foreign land. Cool metal kissed my palm as I closed my fingers around the hilt.
I checked the silence around me, then drew the curtain closed. The white fabric that sealed me off on every side looked, just then, as solid as a fortress wall. I felt safe. No one would see.
A permanent penalty that forces the host to self-harm in order to lower the Erosion Rate.
Yeah. I know.
I know, so just shut up. Please.
Girl, become a star.
Puella, esto stellar.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Be quiet.
I heard the Pope’s hallucination slowly chewing through my mind. Have you ever felt a voice crush your eyes to pulp and then remake them, over and over, until your consciousness dissolves and you sink into the black abyss of the deep sea, certain you will never surface again?
That is exactly what I lived through. I never want to feel it again.
So this is unavoidable.
Scattered thoughts and half-formed words circled in the air, rolled across my tongue, and were swallowed back down my throat, where they clung like parasites and gnawed at the walls of my stomach.
Ah—aah—
I ground my teeth. Click. Crunch.
When I come back to myself I must always stay calm, cold, restrained. Do only what is necessary. Restrain myself. That is what I do best, isn’t it?
Restrain. Slice. Excise. Stitch.
Only as much as needed—only enough for the hallucination to fade, only enough for the Self-Harm Impulse penalty to disappear.
I reversed my grip on the silver cutlery and drove it into my hand.
The Hero might notice, but if I kept my starlight focused solely on healing the faint glow, I could hide it. My skill had risen high enough. I was confident I could work with perfect precision.
Slowly I pushed deeper. It felt as though the blade might punch clean through to the other side. The elegant silver utensil, designed to slice tender meat, did not tear flesh like a saw; it parted it the way one carves a perfectly cooked steak.
Slowly.
Yet there was no pain.
The higher the Erosion Rate climbs, the more this body adapts, the more the personality shifts, the more the senses awaken. Viewed from the opposite angle—what happens when the Erosion Rate falls?
The personality stays the same. The senses die.
I watch myself from a third-person distance, a detached observer.
In the corner of my vision the warning texts that announced the Self-Harm Impulse penalty slowly faded away. A moan slipped past lips I had not realized were clenched. I cannot form words, yet somehow I can still make sounds of pain. Strange.
I drew the blade out carefully and whispered Purify inside my mind.
Good. Done.
Every drop of blood vanished. My white skin looked even more corpse-pale than usual today.
Now—Heal.
There. Finished.
For a while I will not have to worry about the penalty. Now it is time to let the fatigue go. In other words, time to sleep.
“Here again, huh?”
A girl who looked exactly like me—no, who wore the same body—stood before me and spoke with bright cheer.
“We meet again!”
Apparently even sleep offered me no real rest. I clicked my tongue inwardly and studied the cute creature tilting her head at me.
Wait. That cute creature was the body I currently inhabited. Realizing I had just praised my own appearance filled me with self-loathing.
The Saintess stepped closer and spoke again.
“No questions this time?”
“We got cut off last time, remember?”
“You must still have plenty of doubts.”
I answered her.
“No. I already heard that the Hero regressed.”
“Is there anything else you want to talk about?”
She lifted her chin with proud confidence.
“Nope!”
The sheer boldness of it left me speechless. Once I decided no further information would be forthcoming, the Saintess standing in front of me suddenly looked useless. In the game she had never been this kind of person. How had her personality changed so drastically? Or was this even her original personality to begin with?
“You… are the Saintess, right?”
As if the question itself were absurd, she nodded so vigorously it was almost violent.
“Of course!”
…I somehow doubt it.
Anyway, this was our second conversation. I needed to ask everything I could, everything I had wondered about. I had no idea how many more chances I would get, so I had to wring every drop of use from this one.