Personality - 4

Spring ignored my words and kept laughing.

What, exactly, was so funny?

"You—you're crazy too! Ahahah!"

Was that really something to get so excited about?

Yes. I might have been a little crazy myself.

Do you know what it feels like to have your entire living environment overturned overnight, to be dragged into a strange place, to have every relationship you ever had severed, and to be left utterly alone?

I could not understand it.

I had wanted to be like the protagonists in novels—someone who took charge of events, made a grand entrance, saved other people, and rescued the world. I had wanted my life to be filled, always, with joy and delight the way a story is. Even in the games I played, I wanted happy endings for nearly every character.

In Four Seasons, the only character who died was the Saintess. Everyone else, if you just kept saving and loading and looping through the playthroughs, would eventually reach a certain happy ending.

And yet here I was—cut off from every relationship, dragged into this place without consent—and this was all I had gotten for it.

Why choose me, of all people, to be the Saintess?

Why send me into this world?

I hated God. I hated every existence that looked at me and laughed.

The strange scroll that transmitted not every thought but only the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ones I chose to send delivered nothing but that final sentence to her. She looked puzzled at the sentence with its beginning and end cut away—then her eyes wavered when she saw the dagger in my hand.

I am the Saintess, after all.

No one is allowed to feel pity for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you.

If anyone is going to be pitied—pity me. Pity me.

I raised the dagger and set it against one of her horns. Then I shoved one of my arms into her mouth, to keep her from screaming.

She seemed to have realized what I intended to do. She looked as though she desperately wanted to say something.

"Ah—! Ngh—! Mmph—!"

But the sounds never became words or sentences. They scattered like ash and vanished into the air—as if she, too, had been struck with aphasia, just like me.

It made me want to laugh.

Hoping she might understand even a fraction of how I felt, I began to file down the tip of her horn, just a little.

Her eyes rolled back. Foam gathered at her mouth. Her arms and legs began to thrash in spasms. The arm that had already been severed and healed over into a blunt stump flailed uselessly in empty air, having lost its target.

Deep ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tooth marks and wounds sank into my pure white skin.

And almost at once, new flesh rose to fill the wounds.

Slick with spit. Disgusting.

But if I used Purification, she might burn to death. My goal was to take this slowly—to savor it. And to manage the Erosion Rate.

Hmm. The order of priorities seemed to have gotten a little scrambled. Not that it mattered.

I'd filed it down a bit. That was enough for now.

Yes! Good.

I pulled my hand free of her mouth and tucked the dagger back into my leather bag.

"I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

"I swear I'll kill you!"

"A—aah!!!! Aaaaah!!!!!"

Watching her thrash her head from side to side, trying to shake the dizziness out of it, I felt a surge of superiority. Finding comfort in the existence of something more wretched and suffering than myself was a little dangerous—but without even that, I thought I might truly go mad.

Someone called from outside.

"Saintess, the carriage has arrived."

Ah. Right. We were going to the Imperial Capital.

I untied Spring from the post and bound her again, then dragged her along behind me. Her manners could be corrected next time.

Now—back toward the Imperial Capital.

I turned toward the tent flap and, afraid her mouth might open again, fitted a gag between her teeth. This place had more tools than I had expected. The previous owner of the tent had apparently been a stranger sort of person than I'd imagined. Since other people simply inherited the tents of the dead, that entertaining man—or woman—was probably already gone. Useful, though, all the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠same.

Rope, leather straps, belts, a whip, candles, matches, a leather gag—all sorts of things. When I had first arrived at the tent I had been too exhausted to look properly, and only now were they catching my eye.

Come to think of it, I had asked the Hero to step outside so I could change clothes… and then forgotten to change. Then again, changing in front of Spring would have been its own problem. Should I have put a blindfold on her?

For now, everything into the bag.

And then, just before I stepped out, I cast Purification over my own body with meticulous care. Perhaps—just perhaps—I hated myself enough that holy fire might catch on my skin. That was why I was being so careful. Purification and holy fire really were only a hair's breadth apart.

Satisfied by the sight of my clothes, now free of sweat and mud and bloodstains, I dragged Spring out with me.

At last!

Outside. The open air after a single day sealed inside that narrow world of my own—the tent. Wait. Had it really been that long? My sense of time felt completely numb.

Anyway. I shoved everything unimportant into a far corner of my mind and set out with as much cheer as I could manage.

The carriage, elaborately engraved in gold, had grown so familiar to my eyes that I could almost convince myself it no longer looked particularly splendid. The Hero and Jerome were already waiting. I was relieved Jerome looked all right—but how much of his lifespan had he spent? I hoped he would not die within the year. At the very least, I hoped he would still be alive when I died. I wanted someone to cry over my death. Otherwise, what was the point?

I gathered up the gloomy thoughts and the digressions that kept wandering off into the weeds and tried hard to come back to my senses. The effort was not wasted. When I finally managed it, I focused my vacant eyes, looked at them, and dragged Spring forward.

She was heavy. Couldn't she just crawl on her own? Still—too many eyes watching. I couldn't hit her. Image management!

Yes.

Anyway. At last, we were leaving.

An awkward atmosphere hung inside the rattling carriage.

One enemy officer with a gag in her mouth. One Hero. One Holy Knight. And me—Theas, the Saintess, most beloved of the stars, flawless and beautiful. No matter how many times I looked at it, this particular combination refused to feel normal.

The Hero kept glancing over, tension plain on his face. Jerome, who had only just come back from the brink of death, was watching my every cue. Of course he was. What kind of knight dies before his master? That would be disloyalty.

Hmm. Judging by the lack of any particular reaction, the Hero still had not reached certainty—certainty that I was not the Saintess. If he was only at the stage of suspicion, that was good news for me. It meant I still had a chance to recover.

From this moment on, I had to drive home the conviction that I was the Saintess.

Acting cute—rejected. The Saintess never acted cute.

Displays of affection—rejected. The Saintess never showed romantic feelings toward the Hero.

…Though for a moment I did think that trying to work on the Hero might not be such a bad idea. Love has a way of blinding people's hearts and eyes. If he fell for me hard enough to short-circuit ordinary thought, it might be worth—

No. What kind of insane idea was that.

Think normally.

I began to organize my thoughts. A long road to the Imperial Capital was the perfect time for calm reflection.

First.

If this world was the game made real, then class restrictions might not apply. Put simply: even as the Saintess, I might be free to take up magic, black magic, swordsmanship, or alchemy. Level caps and time limits had always forced specialized builds to survive—but the Hero had regressed six months, and I had already been a Superhuman from the game's starting point. In other words, there was time enough to master two disciplines. There was still a great deal to prove and refine, but I would have liked even a single experiment. I might need to stop by a bookstore the moment we reached the Imperial Capital. I could discover knowledge or background lore I didn't know.

Second.

The Hero's suspicion. Honestly, by temperament, he was not the sort of merciless man who would kill me—but I had no idea how regression might have changed him. I didn't even know whether that regression had truly only happened once. In short, the Hero was not the player I had moved so familiarly for so many runs. He was a complete stranger—an unknown personality. I had to understand him thoroughly and break him down. Chip away at him slowly. Erode him. Even solid rock turns to sand in the end.

Third, and last.

What to do with Spring. The Emperor would certainly try to kill her. She had attacked the Imperial Capital, left countless dead, and was one of the Four Disasters so powerful that humanity had spent a hundred-odd years barely holding a fixed front line. Setting aside Winter, still deep in long hibernation, and Autumn, still grinding away at the alchemist's hut in the Great Forest and pouring years into breaching the barrier—Spring and Summer alone had sealed the front. Kill Spring, and the only remaining obstacle to advancing the line would be Summer. Even as the weakest of them, a single Season was an enemy equal to at least one Superhuman—or more.

That was the inventory done. The most urgent matter was the Hero.

One way or another, I was going to hammer into him that I was the Saintess.

It was time to get down from the carriage. We would need to find an inn soon.

It was a beautiful night.

And the Hero had finished making every resolution.