The Last Chance
"That mark on your neck is a Geas, I take it."
I considered my words for a moment before I went on.
"……."
"I hardly need to ask who placed it there."
A Geas. In the days when slavery still flourished, it had been a kind of contract branded upon a slave. Anyone bound by one could not refuse their master, no matter what they did — they were not even granted the right to reject a command.
A Geas, however, fundamentally required mutual consent. Either the two parties entered a contest of some kind, or a contract was drawn up in the subject's own blood. During the era of slavery, the latter was the usual method. A Geas born of a contest was the more powerful of the two, but it carried a risk — if something went wrong, the master could end up the slave.
"Let me say this first: that Geas does not erase your crime."
"……."
"And the reason you cooperated wasn't the Geas alone… Hmm. Do you know anything about the World Tree?"
"……!! How do you know about that?"
"I see. That explains it."
"Well I don't understand!"
"Alex must have been quite the silver tongue. So he knows the World Tree is in poor condition as well."
Still, Rayna had not been especially shocked to find Olivia alive. That meant the two of them had been in contact. And given how warily Alex regarded Olivia, he likely knew the World Tree was unwell — but not that it was too far gone to produce World Tree Sap.
"You…"
"For what it's worth, I may be meeting with Titania again tomorrow. I may even be going inside the World Tree."
"What? You?"
"Depending on how things go, I'll likely form a contract with the Spirit of the World Tree."
Alex had probably promised to use the kingdom's power to find her a Spiritist capable of contracting with the Spirit of the World Tree. She was already bound by a Geas; refusal had never been an option. Once he'd stripped away her psychological defenses, even if guilt crept in afterward, she could always manufacture the excuse that it had been for Elvenheim — that she'd had no choice.
I rose to my feet.
"That's enough conversation, I think. …Please don't disappoint Olivia. You've already betrayed her once, and with that Geas, you must be in a dangerous position."
"……."
And on the neck, of all places. Even in the age of slavery, a Geas on the neck had been reserved for those who were truly beyond redemption. In other words, a mark there was proof that you were living at the very bottom. If he had put it there on purpose, there was no word ugly enough for that kind of cruelty.
A Geas, incidentally, was neither poison nor curse. World Tree Sap could not undo it.
"That hand of yours that drew the bowstring when you betrayed Olivia — was it truly for Elvenheim? Think carefully about that."
"Why don't you just curse me out and condemn me?"
"Olivia isn't doing it, so I can hardly do it in her place. Think about what you need to do now. From where I stand, I can only see one path. If you can see several…"
"……."
"That would mean you aren't in your right mind."
Bound by a Geas, and she may well have heard that the World Tree was in decline. On top of that, the strength she had believed in had been utterly shattered by Olivia, the Hero. Her mind was in tatters, her self-worth crumbling by the hour. There were parts of it I could understand — but what she had done was still unforgivable.
"Whether your crime comes to light through Olivia, or whether you reveal it yourself… this is the last chance she's giving you. I hope you'll consider what that means."
"It's impossible… I can't confess."
"If you know who you committed this crime against, you should know those words are meaningless. You're not a stupid person."
"……."
"I'll be going, then. Whatever you choose, the responsibility for that choice is yours. Keep manufacturing excuses that you did it for some greater cause, and sooner or later you'll forget who you are."
"I…"
"……."
"I don't know."
I stood without hesitation.
"Thinking about that is what this time is for."
With that, I left Rayna there, trembling, and walked away.
I may have been somewhat cold with her. Given the crime she had committed, I rather thought I'd handled it like a gentleman. The last chance Olivia was offering her — until that chance ran out, I had decided not to press. The victim was Olivia. Her choice was the one that deserved respect.
I could only hope she would meet the ending she wished for.
"Wahahaha!! I figured as much, but I didn't think nobody would actually beat Sylphy! This is too good!!"
"Ghh!!"
"No fair!! We trained so hard too!!"
"L-Lord Sylphy! Please teach us archery!"
"Have you no pride as a member of the Elven Guard?!"
"I have pride, which is why you should treat me as promised!"
"Hahahaha!!"
"Lady Olivia, please don't just sit there laughing — stop them."
Me? Why?
I was in an excellent mood. For all the back and forth, we had traveled together, and we had talked about all sorts of things. If you counted the private, idle chatter rather than the business of the road, I had the feeling I'd spoken with them more than I ever had with my companions in the Hero's party.
No — if I was thinking that, then I really had been the only one who thought we were close.
That was a little sad.
"……."
I fell silent and looked toward the entrance of the training ground.
Was Rayna not coming?
I was staying silent. I had told Titania, and I had done nothing else. She couldn't possibly fail to understand what that meant.
Why wasn't she here?
It wasn't that I particularly wanted to cut her down. But if this was how she was going to act, I would have no choice but to cut her down as a criminal.
The victim is me. This is the last chance the victim is giving you, Rayna.
If you don't come to me before I'm healed here in Elvenheim, I'll have no choice but to erase you from my mind.
People commit crimes. Everyone makes mistakes, and this one was enormous — but the only victim was me, so it was all right. If she had done it to anyone else, I might not have been able to forgive her. I still had that bad habit of putting others before myself, and it made me somewhat softer toward the things that were done to me. I knew it was a flaw. I also thought of it as a virtue.
At any rate. You can commit a crime. You can make a mistake. I even understand the urge to run from it.
But you have to face it.
Come to me. Come and beg. Weep and tell me you're sorry. Apologize. Tell everyone what you've done. Promise you'll stand for judgment. Take your punishment. Then, at the very least, I'll remember you as a comrade who lost her way.
But if you don't come…
I'll just kill you like the piece of trash you are. And every truth will come to light by my hand, not yours.
Pick what you want. I hope this story begins because of you, not me.
"Lady Olivia? What's the matter?"
"Hm? It's nothing. More importantly — you've all got real grit! This is how a kingdom's guard ought to be!"
"I-it's not as if we're worthy of being praised by the Hero."
"Besides, we lost even more completely to you than we did to Sylphy…"
A few of them had at least managed to keep up with Sylphy, even if they'd lost in the end. In a match against me, not a single one had made me take so much as a step. If Sylphy and Les came at me together, I might have to get somewhat serious. In a one-on-one, there was no need to move at all. Frankly, there were a few I could have stood there and taken hits from without even guarding — the mana circulating naturally through my body would have been enough to stop them.
"H-Hero! How can we become as strong as you?"
"Talent."
"Ah."
Oops. Was that a bit too blunt? Still, it was the truth.
"Mm. I'd love to stand here and fill you with dreams and hope, but you're soldiers. You already know how the world works. So I'll be blunt: I had talent. Overwhelmingly more than other people."
Talent, and hunger, and the moment I closed my hand around a weapon I knew how to use it. For me, a weapon was less something you learned to wield than something you grasped by feel. This would be more efficient. This would be faster. This, and the opponent wouldn't be able to stop it. That kind of instinct. Which meant that to copy my swordsmanship, you needed reflexes and a body on par with mine. Otherwise it simply couldn't be done.
"That said, it isn't as though I never put in the work. From the moment I was born, it was as if becoming the Hero had already been decided for me, and I spent my whole life swinging a weapon toward that end. Not a single day of rest. Every day."
If I didn't, my father beat me. The pressure from everyone around me was so crushing that training had actually been the more comfortable option.
"If this world truly let you achieve anything through effort alone, the long-lived elves would have won at everything by now."
Heroes would have been born among the elves, too. But they weren't.
"I had overwhelming talent, and I put in overwhelming effort. …But that doesn't mean I'm telling you to give up because you don't have talent. Well — if you were aiming to be the strongest in the world without any, I might try to talk you out of it."
Even so, history had its late bloomers now and then — people of every race who had seemed to have no talent at all, only to suddenly grow strong. So a lack of talent today was no guarantee of a lack of talent tomorrow. That said, they were rare enough that treating it as a general principle would have been dishonest. Truly few and far between, like rain in a drought.
"You're soldiers. Your role isn't to be the strongest — it's to protect your country."
"……."
"I was the Hero, so becoming the strongest was my role. That's all there is to it."
"Lady Olivia…"
"Hm? What is it?"
"For the first time, you looked like a grown-up…"
"Sylphy, what is that supposed to mean?"
What exactly have I looked like until now, then?
"A-anyway! All right! If any of you can land a hit on me within the next three minutes, I'll teach you an interesting technique."
"Yes! Charge!!"
"Huh? No, wait — one at a time!!"
"There was no such rule! This is our chance to learn a technique from the Hero! Everyone charge!!"
Pride, dignity, all of it already thrown aside. They were going to tear a secret of strength out of me by any means necessary. An excellent attitude. I liked it.
I moved lightly, slipping past every strike, tapping them on the head with the wooden sword just hard enough to sting.
"Ow!"
"Ghk! She hit the same spot again!!"
"Where? Where is she!?"
"Argh, I tripped!"
"Hero! Could you at least move at a speed we can see?!"
A few of the soldiers could roughly follow my movements with their eyes, but their bodies couldn't keep up. Les and Sylphy, of course, knew exactly where I was. Still, I spotted a handful of elves among them who looked like they might grow into something. Not explosively powerful, perhaps — but given time, the kind of soldiers who would be spoken of with respect among their people.
Thwack!
Thwack!
Thwack!
"Hahahaha! You think you can catch me like that? Even if every last one of you comes at me, it's meaningless if you can't coordinate!"
"Ghh!"
"Hahahaha! Haha… ha?"
I was still laughing when I saw someone standing at the entrance.
It was Lois.
Lois, and he was smiling.
"Lois?"
I froze on the spot, and an elf who'd been sprawled on the ground naturally seized my ankle.
"Got you."
"We got her!!"
"Yes!! We caught her!"
"So who's that? A human, right?"
"That's him — the Hero's companion."
"He's pretty handsome…"
"Isn't that a weird thing to say, as an elf?"
Everyone had something to say. I alone stayed frozen, staring at that smiling Lois.
I knew at once that it was a smile meant to hide his anger.
Slowly, Sylphy and Les put distance between us.
Why. Why are you backing away from me?
The elves, too, seemed to pick up on the shift in the air, and they drifted away of their own accord until I was left standing alone in the center of the training ground.
"……."
"Olivia."
"Yes."
"Why don't you just tear the bandages off entirely and go on a rampage while you're at it?"
"……."
"You don't seem to realize you're a patient. Do you?"
"No, I… I thought I was fine, so…"
"And what if you have a seizure after being 'fine'? Didn't you say you were only going to do some light exercise? You've worked up quite a sweat."
"……."
A sweat quite different from the kind that came of exercise began to creep down my body.
"I, um… I got caught up in the mood, and everyone was having such a good time… and it would be good in a lot of ways to get along with the elves… and the soldiers were so passionate, and, um…"
"Olivia."
I trembled at that voice — light, and yet so full of weight.
And then:
"I'm sorry."
I understood with perfect clarity that, in this moment, I had no option but to throw myself to the ground.
It is said that after this day, a rumor spread throughout Elvenheim: somewhere in the elven lands, there was a human man stronger than the Hero.