I Want to Hear Your Story (1)
I Want to Hear Your Story (1)
To deceive someone, you must never reveal your intent above the surface. You hide it and hide it until the very end, until the other person, unable to bear it any longer, throws themselves into the water of their own accord.
The same applied when dealing with Kiel.
No matter how much Kiel might be a wandering swordsman who abandoned his family to roam the continent, he was still an undeniable noble educated in the higher arts of politics and diplomacy.
Just like modern politicians, the nobles of this world learned from childhood how to infer hidden meaning from a single word, a single gesture of their opponent.
Lower nobles like viscounts and barons quarreled over profit margins with the hardened merchants of the great trading companies. A single word from them could decide the rise and fall of dozens of mid-sized firms.
High-ranking nobles like marquesses and counts kept such lower nobles under their command. They could not control nature, but by controlling the volume of a flowing river, they could bend the harvest and market price of grain to their will.
Nobles who decided the fate of tens of thousands with a slick tongue. And reigning at the pinnacle of those nobles was a duke.
One man below the throne, but above ten thousand others.
That was Kiel's current position.
If I clumsily revealed my intentions to a man like him, my dark ulterior motives would surely be discovered and I would be thrown out.
Perhaps I would even be treated as 'a ghost that tried to seize Olivia's consciousness.'
I absolutely could not come on too strong. That was how human psychology worked. To make the other person impatient, I had to become calmer instead.
I calmed my heart. No matter how the other person reacted, I had to remain nonchalant.
That was conversation. The one who revealed the emotion of 'urgency' first lost the initiative.
[Remaining Time: 9:34]
'And I'm the one who's going to win.'
Both information and time were on Olivia's side.
I was unilaterally controlling the information. Even the fact that the time I could maintain my [consciousness] was limited worked in Olivia's favor. Because no human could throw a tantrum in the face of a comrade's limited time.
Kiel's face was one of extreme confusion. That was only natural.
By now, he must have begun to suspect which of the two was the real one: the perfect Olivia he had spent months with, or the human Olivia before his eyes.
'Separation, up to this point.'
The first step was to make him perceive the Olivia of the Genocide Run and my current self as different beings.
Normally, the 'perfect' Olivia should have been considered the real one. Because of the absolute difference in the time they had spent together.
But instead of doing that, Kiel chose to reserve judgment.
I could roughly guess the reason he chose to do so.
'I was too perfect.'
I wasn't bragging. When I played the Genocide Run, my character didn't have a single flaw. I tolerated not a single mistake and always moved along the most efficient route.
As a result, I not only reached Max Level but also finished grinding Favorability with every major NPC.
Why did being perfect become the reason?
Because Kiel was a living, breathing human. He was no longer a scrap of data whose Favorability rose just because I handed him a sandwich without tomatoes.
Humans could not accept perfection.
"What's with that face? You'd think someone was dying or something."
"..."
Olivia spoke nonchalantly.
"If you have something to ask, ask it now. Time is still ticking away even while we're doing this."
"You..."
"Hey, I said ask a question instead of making a pathetic fuss. What's wrong? It's not like you."
Kiel gritted his teeth. For a long time, he stood speechless like a man struck on the back of the head with a hammer. Watching him quietly, Olivia took something out of her Subspace and tossed it to him.
Thwack. Kiel checked the object caught in his hand.
It was a familiar-looking weed.
"Chew it. It's an herb called Arnica; it'll help calm you down."
Seeing Kiel staring blankly at the Arnica, Olivia raised her eyes sharply.
"Shall I chew it up and put it in your mouth for you? I said chew."
Crunch.
The sharp, bitter fragrance washed over him, and Kiel furrowed his eyelids. But the next moment, as if it were a lie, his heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm.
"How is it? Effective, right?"
Kiel nodded.
But he still kept his mouth firmly shut.
In truth, he wanted to ask.
Which of the two was the real one. Whether she was truly the Olivia he knew.
But Kiel couldn't bring himself to open his mouth.
"..."
It was because he had faced the endless void hidden beyond Olivia's pupils.
- Someday... won't she just... disappear?
Those were eyes he had never once seen before.
Why his chest grew so heavy whenever he met her, why his heart trembled and his words were blocked.
He felt as though he had just now discovered the answer.
'Just what...'
No human being could conceal their own weakness in the face of death.
Generals standing on the front lines were no different. They simply possessed a greater ability than others to suppress their fear.
It wasn't the sharp blade that was frightening. It wasn't the magic that could incinerate your whole body in an instant that was frightening. It wasn't the pain of your body being mutilated and your mind shattering that was frightening.
Those were merely the means that led toward death; they were not death itself.
Death was frightening because it was the unknown.
Death was frightening because you didn't know its final destination.
It was frightening because you had no way to confirm whether your final choice had been right.
It was frightening because you could never again face the ones you loved.
Therefore, any who claimed they were not afraid of death were all liars.
At least, that was what Kiel thought.
No matter how many times he repeated his training, his fear of death alone was something he could never shake off.
So he planned a journey.
A journey to understand the unknown that was death.
At first, he threw himself recklessly into battle at any time, believing that standing on the boundary between life and death would help him understand death better.
Once, he even fought a Dragon. Every time the Dragon unleashed its Dragon Breath, he teetered between life and death.
Once, he had driven himself to the very brink of death. He threw himself off a cliff with his bare body, and faced an Ogre with his bare hands.
After repeating such acts for three years, he realized something. His fear of death, far from diminishing, had only grown.
It was because those things had only ever been the means.
After that, he set out to find the holy sites of various regions. He thought that if he met the saints of each religion and sought their wise answers, he might be able to shake off his fear of death.
That was how he met the Saintess Rebekah. Among all the saints he had ever met, she was the person who best suited the word 'holy.'
Not only in words, but with her whole heart, she loved her enemies, and she faithfully carried out the role her God gave her without missing a single day. She even seriously answered the questions of a rude, uninvited guest who had appeared without any prior notice.
- Duke Kiel. Did you ask if I am not afraid of death? Of course I am afraid. Where in the world could there be a human who is not afraid? However, I am simply more afraid of the sins I will commit while living in the future.
Their God had freed his followers from the fear of death by creating a hell even more fearful than death.
But that was not the answer Kiel sought. He wanted to understand death in and of itself, without the escape called hell.
The last place he headed to was the Gold Magic Tower. He went hoping that those possessing the greatest intellect on the continent might be researching the unknown that was death.
But...
- Death, is it. Interesting. Kiel, I never knew you had such a sentimental side. But Kiel, let me ask you just one thing. Do you know why mages try so desperately to extend their lifespans? Even to the point of becoming an Undead like a lich?
Melina stared intently at the sky as she spoke.
- It is because life is too short to reach Truth.
The greatest intellects on the continent were the wisest, and so, paradoxically, they had no time to spare to look back at death.
Kiel did not stop his journey. To be precise, he could not stop.
Because neither a will harder than steel, nor religious faith, nor intellect that had reached the Pinnacle, could be used to understand and overcome death.
But...
But the Olivia before his eyes was different.
She was smiling as she spoke of her own disintegration. It wasn't a bluff to shake off fear.
He knew because he had met countless people with death before their eyes. Her eyes resembled theirs.
No, they were much darker. So deep and cold that the end was unfathomable.
"Aren't you going to ask? I genuinely don't have much time left now."
She genuinely did not care about her own annihilation.
Just what kind of life had she lived?
What kind of death had she experienced?
How could she smile so calmly in the face of her own extinction?
Kiel spoke to the unfamiliar friend.
"...Next time."
Kiel raised his head. Olivia's shoulders, faintly illuminated by the moonlight, looked especially small and fragile today.
"When did you say you would return next time?"
"In twelve days."
"Is that so?"
Kiel answered with a placid smile.
"I'll be waiting."
He had wanted to hear her story.
*****
[Clue #1 reading time has ended.]
Returned to reality, Olivia stood there blankly for a long time.
"Uh..."
...Why didn't he ask which one was real?
He was definitely supposed to ask. Maybe not someone else, but Kiel, as a duke, absolutely should have.
Unease blossomed on Olivia's face.
'Status Window.'
Since it had come to this, I had to at least check if anything had changed...
Huh?
What's that?
Olivia's eyes flew wide open.
