Spouting Nonsense Doesn't Make It Human Speech
Spewing nonsense doesn't make it human speech.
"A sacrifice? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. A sacrificial ritual that uses living lives."
"That's impossible."
Hoa seized the tools scattered haphazardly across the table. Even a complete stranger to shamanism and magic could have identified them at a glance — they were that obvious. Everything the furious tiger beastman touched crumbled to dust in his grip.
"The High Priest... why would he..."
"......"
"Cora. Say something, damn it. You were the last one to see the High Priest, weren't you?"
"...The High Priest..."
"SAY SOMETHING!!"
Thud. Cora crumpled where she stood.
Hoa couldn't hold himself up either, sliding down until his back met the wall.
"This was the plan from the very beginning, wasn't it. Refusing the treatment itself..."
"That resistance to healing — that was all because of it too, wasn't it. They meant to kill us all from the start."
"DAMN IT!"
BOOM!
Hoa's massive fist came down on the floor. Once it started, it fell again, and again — three times in all. Papers fluttered into the air, and everything on the table crashed to the ground.
There was no way out. Their kin kept dying one after another, and even the High Priest, the very object of their faith, had been planning to use them all along. Worse, the woman they had believed to be their savior had shown every sign of defending the butcher.
Grrk—! Rage surged up all at once, and he roared through clenched teeth.
"WHY─!"
"Why won't you try harder? Why won't you throw everything you have into stopping the butcher, into catching the culprit?"
Someone with your power could resolve every single one of our problems.
"......"
I knelt on one knee in front of Hoa and met his eyes.
"Why do you get to hope whenever you please, and despair whenever you please?"
"...You could—"
"Save us? Or is it just that you covet a power strong enough to fix everything for you?"
If it were me, I wouldn't.
If it were me, I could save everyone.
If it were me, I'd strike down the wicked evil and return to ordinary life, and live happily ever after.
"......"
"Let me say it again. I am not a savior."
I saved people. And then, from the nearest village, or from whatever town was large enough to have one, those who had lost family to the heavenly tribes or the demon tribes would come and confront me.
'Why didn't you save them... everyone except me...'
'With your ability, it would have been entirely possible!'
'And you still dare call yourself a saint?'
They were right. With my power, I could have saved them all — and I was a saint. My body never tired, and no distance was too far to cross in a single step. I only had to rest a little less. Try a little harder. I was a saint, and I had a duty to rescue the pitiable.
'That's simply the kind of person I am, and it's only natural that I do.'
But I hadn't.
'Do not dismiss the price of being a heavenly being. You may believe you're fine, but if it continues like that, it will devour you bit by bit until you break.'
'Never forget. What sustains you is not your humanity. It is the blood of a heavenly being.'
I shook my head.
'I am human.'
What keeps me standing is my humanity.
So he was the one who was wrong.
"Didn't I tell you? It's just a whim."
"...So you were no different from them after all."
Hoo... I rose to my feet and drew out my spear. The moment Hoa saw the killing intent wreathing the blade, his body staggered backward.
"And this is a whim too."
"So that's what you were planning to—"
The Spear's Roar tore loose. Hoa threw everything into his beast transformation, fangs bared as he braced to block it — but the roar simply swept past him.
FWOOOM!
A merciless strike ripped the darkness apart.
"...Ghk!"
Something in the shadows came apart, spilling particles of blood.
A staggering silhouette walked out of the darkness. A fox beastwoman with pink hair, dressed in pink robes. She was breathing in ragged bursts, her chilly pink eyes fixed on me with naked hostility.
Cora stared at her in open disbelief.
"The former High Priest... no, Lady... Miho?"
"It's been a while, Cora... Five months, or has it been six?"
"Why... no. Why?"
"There is a reason for everything. I ask that you try to understand..."
She was putting on a brave face, but I — the one who had used the Spear's Roar — knew the truth. Tearing apart the space around her without any guard up, and shredding her insides just as thoroughly, meant no recovery was possible without healing of divine grade. Blue-Ring's authority might well include something restorative, but judging by her current state, she didn't seem to be using it.
"AAAAAAARGH!! IT WAS YOUUUU!"
Driven mad by his runaway beastification, Hoa caught sight of Miho and hurled himself at her. Miho gave a light flick of her mana-laden hand, and Hoa simply went flying — slammed into the wall and crumpled forward where he lay.
"Hoo... hah..."
Having taken grave internal damage on top of overexerting herself, Miho's face twisted as she ground her lips together.
"You really ought to have explained things properly..."
"Explained what, exactly?"
"Haa... I would have rather had you... Never mind. The plan has come apart, but there's nothing to be done about it now."
She had no choice but to play her hand here.
Miho's hand slowly began to trace a magic circle. It looked as though she were sketching the image of a fox, but the mana gathering within it was no ordinary beastman's mana.
DRRRRK─!
In an instant, the entire space began to move, as though it answered to Miho alone. The space suppressed any attack made within it — the moment I tried to exert force, a crushing pressure bore down on me — yet, conversely, there was no hostile intent directed back at us either.
'At the very least, it isn't an offensive technique.'
"To think you could pierce even Blue-Ring's formless authority... I find myself regretting that we couldn't choose you."
Choose?
Ah. She's talking about Yena.
I tilted my spear slightly.
"Then why didn't you choose me instead?"
"...Because you would never have done it, no matter what."
"Fair enough."
I wouldn't have taken a quest like that no matter what reward they dangled.
"It doesn't matter. Yena is every bit as exceptional as you are."
"What is the sacrifice ritual meant to seal?"
A hitch. Miho's hand, in the middle of gathering an ocean of mana, stopped dead. Stopped — and then her whole body began to tremble, little by little.
"If you'd rather not say, fine. It won't matter what you do anyway."
"...A stiff, joyless creature like you could never understand. Why we had no choice but to sacrifice our own kin."
Why so much sacrifice had been unavoidable.
Now seeming less like someone gathering mana and more like mana itself, Miho suddenly cried out as if all of it had come flooding back at once — a protest, shouted at the top of her lungs.
"If you understood even a fraction of our devotion to Lord Blue-Ring, you would never be able to stop—!"
"Spewing nonsense doesn't make it human speech..."
"......"
"One victim or a thousand — the moment you demanded a sacrifice, your legitimacy was gone. So just behave like the villains you are. It's more honest that way."
The reason I despise mixed-blood heavenly beings even more than demons.
Because they commit their abominations while clamoring all the louder about 'justice' and 'good.'
'Hypocrisy is more repulsive than evil ever was.'
Miho choked for an instant, opened her mouth to spit out a retort — and then let out a long sigh instead.
"Now I understand why Blen chose her over you. You're right. It is all sophistry."
But.
"This time, at least, you are the one who is wrong."
Thud.
"Because justice is decided by the strong."
Cracks spiderwebbed across the space woven from Blue-Ring's own body, and it began to collapse. Blue sky and light flooded the darkness, and everything made of mana was dragged, screaming, toward a single point.
"Come out. Number one."
"GEEZ! Where even is it, before Lily finishes waking up— huh?"
Yena's head snapped back and forth. She had been abruptly teleported to some strange place in the middle of the forest, and the moment her gaze landed on me, I gave her a friendly little wave.
The color drained from Yena's face.