Residual Warmth
Upon waking and confirming that nothing at all had happened to my body, I felt a sigh of relief—and a faint twinge of regret.
Wait. Regret?
I needed to get a grip.
I drew a deep breath.
Hoo—haa—
Even now I hated the sensation of my own way of thinking twisting, warping, changing.
There were things in this world that simply refused to become familiar no matter how hard you tried.
My body was like a locomotive stuffed full of coal—ferociously difficult to control, and dangerous besides.
If it started to derail, the best I could do was force it back onto the tracks and keep it from jumping the rails entirely.
Just as the Pope had told me, my body shared something essential with a faucet bolted onto the open sea; I had to make certain no further strain fell on either flesh or mind.
My guess was that the reason the Saintess never lasted more than six months inside the game had everything to do with overusing holy power.
And I had already overused it. Extreme caution was required from here on.
It meant there was no going back.
To mend a cracked vessel you need glue, yet nothing in this world could serve as glue for what had cracked—because the vessel in question was soul and body.
The Saintess’s personality still floated separate from mine, held apart by a membrane as thin as the one that keeps oil from mixing with water. But if you keep shaking the bottle hard enough, even oil and water will blend.
Perhaps that membrane no longer existed at all.
Perhaps it was only hot water meeting cold water, and I was comforting myself with the illusion that some delicate film still kept them from mingling simply because their temperatures differed.
Now that the boundary had grown so faint the eye could barely catch it, I must never again draw holy power past the limit.
That was the only path left for me to keep living.
I drove the thought into my skull like a nail.
I turned to look at the Hero who should have been sleeping beside me—and found only empty, hollow space.
A faint residual warmth lingered on the mattress, the sole proof that anyone had ever been there.
I felt a flicker of confusion, then decided he must simply have woken first. That made sense.
Still… truly nothing had happened? I could hardly believe it.
I did not consider myself so utterly lacking in charm.
At this rate my confidence and self-esteem were going to plummet.
This body was extremely attractive. Extremely pretty.
Objectively speaking.
I could say with complete confidence that I was a thoroughly objective person.
Therefore I was not wrong.
It would be perfectly reasonable to consider the possibilities that the Hero simply had peculiar tastes, or was gay, or was impotent.
He rose early, too.
What a diligent human being.
If he always got up this early, cooking breakfast for him would be exhausting…
No. Better not waste energy on pointless worries.
Why on earth was I fretting about that guy’s future wife?
Damn it. My head was not right.
Get a grip, I told myself, and slapped my cheeks with cold hands—chap, chap—until the sound rang out.
A mild sting bloomed across my face; the skin flushed red.
Wait. Sensation?
So the Erosion Rate really had risen.
I could feel the difference in my senses.
They were sharper… keener… something like that.
It was extremely hard to put into words.
The world that had once felt as though I were buried inside a giant ball of fur, watching everything from a distance, was different now.
Having stepped free of that fur, the world I faced was blue, piercing, and frightening.
If I felt pain from now on, what would it actually feel like?
If I had to drive a dagger into myself, would I still be able to do it without hesitation?
Hadn’t I already stabbed myself once?
That time the Erosion Rate had been far too high; I had been reckless, not in my right mind.
Yes.
To keep moving forward I would have to cut away everything unnecessary.
Anxiety. Hesitation. Fear.
Anything that made me soft had no place here.
Yet a person’s emotions and innate nature were not things that could be peeled off so easily.
That was what it meant to be human.
Perhaps even Superhumans and gods were no different.
Nature was something heaven itself bestowed; therefore it could not be changed.
That was why it was called nature.
Even the gods of this world—those beings called Stars—were ultimately fixed in the sky.
Ahaha. A future that felt utterly hopeless was coming for me.
A future I could not see even an inch ahead, a road I did not know.
And still I would go on.
Lift a foot. Step forward. Set it down again.
That simple sequence of motions.
At last I moved my feet and left the room.
Personally I would have preferred to stay curled up in this narrow chamber, savoring its warmth.
But I could not remain shut away forever; it was time to move.
I touched the cold metal door handle—and found it was not cold at all, contrary to every expectation.
It matched the temperature of my own body perfectly.
Only then did I understand.
Ah. My body was the cold one.
…Why?
No. Never mind.
I already knew this body was frail. There was no need to remind myself of the fact all over again.
Getting angry at an unchangeable truth changed nothing.
I opened the door wide.
Jerome and the Hero would surely be waiting outside.
I should not keep them waiting any longer.
Beyond the door stretched only a desolate corridor empty of people.
…I could have sworn I felt a presence.
Had it been my imagination?
Thinking that, I started down the stairs.
At that same moment, a woman with deer horns crowning her head hid behind a tree and drew a long breath.
“Haa—”
She exhaled, muttering a string of vulgar curses under her breath.
“What is she, some kind of monster? That Saintess.”
She had been secretly watching the Hero’s party and had nearly been discovered more times than she could count. Lamenting her own miserable luck, she began organizing everything she had learned.
She pulled a notebook from a small black leather bag and began writing furiously. Any third party who knew nothing about her would almost certainly have called the sight cute.
But she hated being called cute. Anyone who dared say the word to her face would die for it.
Fortunately, no human was watching her now.
The Hero had never even come close, yet the way he had simply lain there with his eyes open had been terrifying enough.
The Holy Knight was definitely not a Superhuman, yet he had seemed to sense her presence dimly and had prowled the room without sleeping.
And finally the Saintess, with those razor-sharp senses of hers, had noticed her presence and opened the door. The woman had barely managed to hide herself and slip outside in time.
Autumn had not yet arrived, yet the place where she stood was already dyed in autumn colors; leaves drifted down from the trees in time with the breeze.
Beneath the branches she let the falling leaves brush pleasantly against her, savoring the multicolored maples and letting the stress drain away.
Her name was Caliph. Others called her Foliage—or [Autumn].
One of the four Disasters that existed in this world, beings judged equal to—or stronger than—the Superhumans.
Right now she had been assigned to monitor the Superhumans inside the Empire.
The front lines were originally Spring and Summer’s responsibility, and that damned Winter was still hibernating, so she was busy enough to need ten bodies.
And of all things, Spring had been captured.
It would have been cleaner if her head had simply been cut off.
If Spring’s ability fell into enemy hands, it would be the worst possible outcome.
Casting a mental ability on mindless beasts meant absolute domination.
War was nothing like small-scale skirmishes or a handful of party members clearing a dungeon.
It was a stage prepared precisely so that mental abilities could display their maximum utility.
Yet Spring had already torn the battlefield apart with that mental power, raised massive waves, and the matchup itself—two swordsmen and one priest—should have favored a mage.
So how in the world had she been caught?
The soil itself had been flooded with such overwhelming holy power that even the earth’s memory had been wiped clean, and there were far too many soldiers around to risk a proper investigation.
Even if the Saintess was a Superhuman, her combat ability was said to be pitifully weak. The Hero’s growth was fast, but still within expected parameters.
As for the Holy Knight—frankly, he looked like he would lose even to the Saintess.
Unless he sacrificed his lifespan, that is.
Anyway. Even if that idiot had been captured by the enemy, she possessed an ability that must never fall into their hands. Therefore Caliph had to manage the situation herself.
That was the order she had received. That was the final order she had been given.
The last command of the last king to whom she had sworn loyalty—the one who had bound every beast with chains of absolute obedience.
So she would see it done.
Wearing a light-brown coat and carrying a black leather bag, the brown-haired woman with deer horns stepped into the forest. The soft clink of glass bottles accompanied her as she vanished without a trace.
Looking ahead to the next time.