The Existence of Divinity
Just as Helga Sentle had said, a full fortnight passed, and Pareta Island showed itself across the distance.
"Hm. Cold out here. We haven't even crossed the Red Line yet."
Drawing my cloak tighter, I watched from the bow as Pareta Island drew nearer.
Jin shivered in the empty air, as if something had startled him.
"A thousand years have passed with room to spare since you were sealed. The Demon King must have worked out some countermeasure of his own."
......Jin. Why does your mouth keep getting fouler?
In any case, it was not good news.
The one threatening my life at this very moment was my own father, Canniel de Jevitz, but the one I ultimately had to cut down was Demon King Moloch. If the Demon King still lived, fleeing to the edge of the continent would mean nothing.
Pareta Island truly had nothing to it. A harbor kept up only for show, and a forward outpost thrown together from wooden palisades—neither was much to look at. Aside from a few wooden buildings, the rest was all tents.
This was no ancient tribe of Vikings. What was this sorry state supposed to be? I could roughly guess why the knights of the Human Lighthouse Order posted to Lighthouse Village had sunk into as much despair as the ones assigned to Keldarin Castle. Cram any other knight order into a dump like this, and a rebellion would have broken out on the spot. It was a stunt possible only because the Human Lighthouse Order drew no line between high and low.
"Hey. Something comes out every time you breathe."
"What? You're right. Hey—you too!"
The candidates, seeing their own breath for the first time in their lives, huffed and blew in wonder.
Enjoy it while you can. From here on, you'll be looking at it until you're sick of the sight.
The sailing ship moored at the harbor set its knights ashore, and the candidates, led by their instructors, set foot on Pareta Island as well.
"You can see the glacier even from this far, now."
"Yeah. On a clear day you catch a glimpse now and then. Snow comes far more often than it used to, too."
Shouldering through the idle talk between a knight boarding for the rotation and an instructor, the candidates went inside the outpost.
Around dawn, the candidates of the Human Lighthouse Order were to carry out the opening of a grand ancient rite there. Until that hour they shook off the fatigue of the journey and made the acquaintance of the Order's knights. The outpost commander, telling them to warm themselves, broke out liquor for the candidates. With the rite still ahead of them it came to no more than two or three cups, but that alone brightened their faces considerably.
"Don't forget the bet. If there really is a demon, the ten thousand libra is mine."
"......We don't know yet."
Barton showed no intention of believing it until he had seen one with his own eyes. Or perhaps he simply couldn't stand the thought of losing to Ember, who was coming at him fully prepared to wring out a genuine ten thousand libra. Either way, his future did not look particularly bright.
The long dark night passed, and far off the dawn began to break. Every candidate climbed aboard a small boat.
To say they were not afraid would have been a lie. Setting foot on the Homeland, known until now only in legend, was no privilege granted to just anyone. Only the Human Lighthouse Order could do it.
Before they set out, the outpost commander saw them off.
"Men who have come this far—I congratulate you. You know where this is, I trust? Pareta Island is the end of the world that humanity, as it now stands, can reach. Only a bare handful of human beings can come this far."
Mouthing the sort of speech any man who had worn a uniform would have heard somewhere before, he offered the candidates a brief encouragement.
"What you have to do is very simple. Kill the first demon you encounter in the Homeland, and bring its corpse back here. With that corpse as an offering, we will steel the resolve of the Human Lighthouse Order, handed down through the generations at this outpost. I wish you fortune in battle."
With the commander's short send-off at an end, the boat set out for the Homeland.
It was the hour of dawn, when even the rising sun showed only faintly through the haze. The knights sharpened their sight with mana and slowly worked the skiff onward.
"What you candidates are crossing now is the Red Line."
At those words I poured magical power into my own eyes, and a colossal line appeared, cleaving the vast sea in one straight stroke. Between the blue and the black, the Red Line burned red.
Strange. But why is it red?
However poor my sense of beauty, I knew that mixing blue and black could not produce red. Scientifically, the phenomenon was nonsense as well.
Jin resolved the question for me.
A magic circle?
What are you talking about?
Wait. Don't tell me those volcanoes are—
Good God. Red Hill, sowing ash across the whole of the Esteria Continent, was this bastard's handiwork? Just how many disasters had he gone around causing?
"So that's this Red Line?"
So you thought that was checkmate, and got it turned back on you?
In the folk tales, Jin appears as a fool drunk on his own strength. Moloch, driven to the brink by Draygonak's scheme, speaks to him.
Taken in by the Demon King's provocation, Jin faced Moloch alone, and in the end was defeated and sealed. The alliance of the three gods, which had driven the Demon King into a corner, could not finish Moloch once Jin was gone. The Demon King fled to the polar regions, stockpiled his strength, drove out the humans who lived upon the Homeland, and so the world came down to the present day.
"Wow. I didn't have you pegged for it, but you're even dumber than you look."
But then Jin told a story I had not expected.
As if calling that time back, a darkness like frost edged into Jin's voice.
He told Draygonak and the World Tree that they, who had descended to lead humanity, could not stand by and permit a massacre. Draygonak and the World Tree ignored him. Strike Moloch now, they answered, and every sacrifice built up until that moment would be rendered meaningless. When the humans of the Esteria Continent had been cut in half, and even their groans of agony had faded, Jin led those who followed him and stood before Moloch.
In that case, Jin had as good as let Moloch go for the sake of the humans then living in Esteria. A fool's act—throwing away the greater for the sake of the lesser. And yet every impulse to rebuke him went out of me.
As if the past hardly mattered, Jin studied the Red Line in a grave voice. Not that staring at it was going to produce an answer.
Leaving his worry behind, the boat had by then reached the frozen coast of the Homeland.
"From here, we walk."
The instructors seemed tense as well. They drew their swords and sank low, and the candidates slowly drew after them.
From here on, it was the demons' domain—a hinterland no human hand had touched in long ages. Coast though it was, no one knew what might happen.
Snow lay thick over the frozen sea, crunching underfoot with every step. At a sensation nothing like ash, the candidates glanced awkwardly down at their feet again and again. Dense fog kept their vision from coming clear.
I calmly scattered mana and searched for presences. Fortunately, only a few of the lowest rank of demon—Icicle Hounds—were caught in the search. This was a place the Demon King's rule touched directly, so they were far stronger than the Icicle Hounds of the dungeon where Jin had been sealed. One of them, and even a Sword User might have managed something; several, and your life was at risk. Of course, that was a problem only for Sword Users. Counting the four instructors, this party held five Sword Experts.
"This rite ought to go easily."
The instructors, finished with their own search just as I was, let out breaths of relief.
"Have there been difficult ones, too?"
"Yes. Our seniors in the class above us—the first demon they faced was a Death Knight. Of the two instructors and fifteen candidates at the time, eight died, I hear."
"Th-that's horrible."
The candidates had never faced a demon, but they had studied demonology and already knew that strength. Even a mid-rank demon demanded a Sword Expert before one could stand against it—and this had been a high-rank demon. For the candidates of that day, it must have been no different from hell. That any of them came back alive was something.
Looks like I was worrying too much, Jin.
Jin, who ought to have answered the jab, gave no reaction. Now that I thought of it, the mass of flame that should always have been flitting about somewhere nearby had at some point vanished from sight. I didn't know the particulars, but something was happening. And it was probably something very bad.
"......help......"
"......please......help......me......"
In that instant, a sound that should never have been heard drove itself into my ear.