The Ruined Sanctuary
The church in the frontier pioneer village.
“So… in the end, there will be no support at all……”
Having heard the village chief’s words, Sister Celine nodded. Yet her head drooped so weakly that it looked as though she might collapse at any moment.
The village chief pondered for a while before nodding in return.
“Understood. I’ll pass the word on to the men of the village. You’ve worked hard helping with the village chores all day, Sister. You’ve only been here one day, yet it seems we’ve already put you to unnecessary trouble.”
The man who had introduced himself as the village chief appeared to be at least sixty years old. When such an elder bowed his head deeply, Sister Celine hurriedly waved her arms in protest.
“No, no! The villagers have been so kind to me that I truly enjoyed myself!”
“I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it.”
The village chief smiled at Celine’s words. His long beard twitched along with the corners of his mouth, and even his once-stern eyes softened into a gentle curve. Though he was well past sixty, his gaze remained as sharp as that of a young man. It was not only his eyes. His sun-darkened skin was evenly layered with muscle, and as if to prove those muscles were no mere decoration, several pheasants hung from his waist—each bearing wounds to the head.
Sister Celine stared at the pheasants for a moment before noticing the chief’s gaze. With a startled “Ah!” she quickly looked away.
More precisely, what she had sensed was the question in his eyes.
“Even as village chief, do you still go out hunting…?”
She asked cautiously, her large eyes blinking. Her question was reasonable. The position of village chief was usually that of an administrator who rarely left the village. The chief of this pioneer settlement understood her meaning well enough, and a sigh escaped his lips.
“……If we don’t do at least this much, survival here is difficult. We have to take nearly all the men from the village just to secure a day’s worth of food. In the past, such things were unthinkable. Now that we’ve built a palisade and maintain some defenses, attacks from monsters and bandits have lessened. But before, raids came openly even in broad daylight. There were times when praying not to die that day mattered more than worrying about where to find food. ……If the knight hadn’t come, I probably wouldn’t be standing here either. Thanks to him being here, the rest of us can go out hunting.”
At those words, Celine glanced toward where Harnok stood. He was examining the game the village men had brought back, standing behind the chief alongside them. Beyond them, the sunset cast long shadows, yet his figure was impossible to miss. Even at a glance, his height—towering a full head above the others—and his body, whose very shape of muscle was fundamentally different, made him unmistakable.
“By the way, the knight mentioned that a telegram arrived yesterday but he hadn’t yet informed the villagers. So I was wondering—where will you be staying tonight, Sister?”
“……Eh?”
Sister Celine’s large pupils contracted sharply. Soon they began to tremble as though struck by an earthquake. It was no exaggeration. Her entire body was shaking.
Where she would sleep had never been a major concern until yesterday. After all, one had to survive the bandits first before worrying about sleeping outdoors. Harnok’s sudden appearance had been truly unexpected.
Seeing her reaction, the village chief stroked his long beard once.
“Hmm… If you truly have nowhere to stay, I can speak to a few villagers about preparing a place. However, I must apologize—it won’t be for long. Given the situation here, we can’t build spacious homes like those in the Holy City. The accommodations would be temporary. Since no one lives in empty houses, building one would be a waste of labor. If we’re to prepare a place for you, we’d have to construct a new house. Of course, we can do that, but your living arrangements in the meantime would be a problem.”
As she listened to the chief, blinking rapidly, a thought flashed through Celine’s mind.
“Wait! Harnok’s place! I can just stay where Harnok is staying!!”
“Hmm? Ah, there was that option. But will that be all right? Rather… No, that was a foolish question. If it’s beside the knight, it would be safer than anywhere else in the village.”
Only then could Celine break into a wide smile.
“Then it’s settled! As a nun, I couldn’t possibly burden the villagers!”
Celine turned around with confidence, facing the direction where Harnok stood.
“Harnok!”
“Hm! What is it, Sister!”
“I’ll be staying with you at your place as well!”
And exactly ten minutes later, Sister Celine wanted nothing more than to tear her hair out.
‘But Sister, are you truly all right? Why not stay at our house tonight instead……’
‘That’s right. We can certainly prepare at least one spot for you, so until your house is finished, why not rotate between our homes?’
‘No! How could I, as one who serves the Lord, burden all of you! A person of the cloth troubling her neighbors—even as a joke, it’s not a subject for laughter!’
And indeed, that was the case. Celine was certain that if her past self from ten minutes ago could see her now, she would never be able to laugh.
‘Uwaaaah!’
And her present self desperately wanted to burst into tears.
“Sister, we’ve now reached the two-thirds mark!”
Harnok’s voice, brimming with cheer and utterly at odds with her feelings, only sank her deeper into despair.
‘I should have said thank you!!! I should have offered to make breakfast tomorrow instead and accepted it that way!!! Celine, you fool, you idiot!!!’
It was self-reproach bordering on self-harm. Unable to hide her gloom, Celine looked ahead—and grew even more depressed.
The place where Harnok was carrying her on his back was halfway up a tall mountain. Nowhere could she see anything that might shield them from the night wind or dew. Celine thought it might have been better to sleep in the log cabin where she had been held captive. She wasn’t exaggerating. The log cabin had stood in a wide clearing, surrounded by what could generously be called a fence. But the mountain they were now climbing held only trees that rose ominously. Especially with the twilight’s red light flowing along their bark, the trees looked as though they were bleeding, giving off an eerie atmosphere.
Celine sniffled and turned her head. Rather than this gloomy sight, she thought it might be better to look at the bright light of the sunset instead.
She narrowed her eyes slightly. Thanks to that, a few weak tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. The sky had darkened to an inky hue, making the sunlight sinking into the earth seem all the brighter. Because they were traveling along the mountain ridge, the horizon stood out clearly against the sun’s glow. The horizon itself was monotonous—almost painfully so. That only made the strange, towering structure visible in the distance all the more striking.
A tower, or perhaps an elongated rock of that shape. If one were to enlarge its scale, it might even pass for a castle. Bathed in direct sunlight, it looked as though it were cleaving the sky from top to bottom.
“That is……”
“A remnant of the War.”
Startled by Harnok’s suddenly low voice, Celine flinched. His voice was like a massive boulder dropped into the sea. There was none of his usual shouting—only weight.
Of course, what surprised Celine was not merely that he had spoken calmly.
‘The War……’
Celine repeated Harnok’s words. There was only one situation in which one could speak of “war” as a common noun without further explanation: the war against the Archdemon. And the fact that its remnant stood on the horizon meant something else as well.
That structure had been built by the Archdemon’s side. Otherwise, there would be no reason for this place to be the edge of the pioneer lands. If that had been built by the “heroes,” the frontier of the pioneer territory would at least extend to the vicinity of that structure.
Just as Sister Celine was lost in thought, Harnok’s low voice fell once more.
“In these frontier lands, you can see things like that from time to time.”
Celine’s eyes widened in surprise. Harnok’s low voice continued slowly.
“Because this is the pioneer frontier.”
Celine’s golden eyes trembled with astonishment. Indeed. This was the pioneer frontier. The land where the Archdemon and the heroes had clashed. The land that had burned with the flames of war. Because it belonged to no one, it was a land that could be pioneered. Such a place.
And the nun’s tears, frozen by the cruelty of war, began to melt once more upon reaching their destination. Because they had been frozen by the cold of the past, reality felt all too hot.
“We’ve arrived, Sister!”
Once again, Harnok’s cheerful voice dragged her deeper into sorrow.
“As expected, the clergy must stay in a church! To be able to sleep in a place no different from the Lord’s embrace—what a blessed thing! I was truly delighted when I heard you would sleep in a church! Indeed, you have the character worthy of being dispatched here!”
Harnok’s words sounded reasonable. After all, where else should a person of the cloth stay but in a church? That is, if the building before her eyes—the dilapidated ruin crouching in a corner of the land, with something that could barely be called a half-rotted cross stuck on its roof—could indeed be called a church.
—Caw! Caw!
A flock of crows took flight among the trees, as if to confirm Sister Celine’s guess. The nun could no longer even cry. A hollow laugh escaped her lips.
“Ha… ha… ha……”
—Caaaw! Caaaw!
“What the—why are the crows making such a racket in the middle of the night?”
“They must’ve found a corpse or something. Don’t worry about it and just keep watch. If anything happens, be ready to ring the bell for the knight.”
“Y-yes. By the way, Chief, even though the homeland is in a bit of turmoil right now, I guess a clergyman is still a clergyman? Just thinking about spending the night in those mountains makes my legs go weak…… Yet that Sister, who’s much younger than me, heard everything the chief said and still decided to spend the night there?”
“Huh? No. I never told her where the knight would be spending the night.”
“What?”
“Well, she must have heard it from the knight herself, which is why she spoke so confidently.”
“Right…… Even with the knight’s free-spirited personality, there’s no way he wouldn’t have told his companion……”
“Of course. So just focus on keeping watch.”