Chapter 59: Fate or Destiny (1)
Chapter 59: Fate or Destiny (1)
During the Eight-Year War, the Emperor had made a point of memorizing the casualty lists even amidst his busy schedule. Simply providing adequate compensation to the bereaved families would have sufficed, yet he carved out time from his nonexistent free hours to deliberately go over the names of their fallen soldiers and the faces of those he had personally killed.
"Well, they are people who would not have died if not for me."
It could have been avoided. The Eight-Year War was a war waged entirely by his choice.
The throne was a position where countless lives were lost with a single decision.
Edoardo did not wish to easily forget those who had become victims of his selfish choices simply because they were dead.
If the leader of a nation did not take responsibility for the events that unfolded according to his choices, then who on earth would?
Responsibility for the consequences of one's choices.
This was something a person — before even being a monarch — ought to bear.
"Whether enemy or ally, are they not ultimately victims of the choices I made?"
And so they came to him like this, in dreams and hallucinations. For him, it was a joyful thing.
Elpidius could not easily continue speaking.
In the end, after a long stretch of time had passed, only a single phrase managed to escape his lips.
"...You are foolish."
It was a remark one dared not make to the Emperor, but Edoardo merely laughed.
Unlike usual, a powerless laugh spread emptily throughout the vast room.
"I know. This too is an illness."
The Emperor murmured, facing those who glared at him from a corner of the room.
"I have no appetite, so I shall skip dinner tonight. Eat together with Alethea."
I must entertain these guests.
The hesitating Elpidius left, and the Emperor, left alone, committed the familiar faces of those approaching him to memory before slowly closing his eyes.
Perhaps because they truly were hallucinations, he could see them approaching clearly even with his eyes closed.
He was not worried. They could not directly harm him anyway. That was enough.
Vividly feeling the hallucinations clutching at his throat, he merely scoffed as if it were ridiculous.
Collapsing from such trivial things — he carried far too many burdens for that.
After that, three damn days had passed.
Three days couldn't simply be dismissed as short. Who knew if Cruel had found a capable sorcerer in the meantime?
Actually, finding a sorcerer was not an easy task. Ninety-nine out of a hundred sorcerers hailed from the South, while most of the Empire's territory lay in the North.
Even the one remaining exception had a master from the South, which meant that finding a sorcerer ultimately required going to the South. Despite my unreasonable request to find a sorcerer in the nearest location, the capable butler Rememver had managed to locate and report on the nearest village that supposedly had a sorcerer without a single word of complaint.
Considering this, three days was an absurdly short amount of time, but since I had no way of knowing where Cruel was or what he was doing, it was... well.
"...Lady Rien."
"Yes, my lord."
"The back of my head is stinging..."
"It is your imagination."
Hiking up a mountain — something I had no business doing — to find a village supposedly located halfway up it was fine. It was tough, but bearable.
But this gaze drilling into the back of my head was simply unacceptable.
"I said I am fine."
"I am not fine. To dare cause an incident because I failed to properly remember the back of your... your figure, my lord. It is an unforgivable failure. I will engrave it into my mind this time and ensure such a thing never happens again."
"You just said the back of my head..."
"And please speak comfortably. The Count is my lord."
She definitely just changed the subject, right? I stared at her with a sulky expression before turning my head away.
'Speak comfortably, she says.'
She was a noble. Unlike me, who was merely an honorary title holder, she belonged to a high-ranking hereditary family. Even if she wasn't the family head, the household power didn't simply vanish, so despite our master-servant relationship, I found mutual formal speech far more comfortable.
So let's compromise by keeping the informal speech to my thoughts.
"I am more comfortable this way... Ah, over there!"
"It is a village. I heard it was small, but I didn't expect it to be this small."
Looking at the village that fit into a single glance, I nodded inwardly.
Right, it had to be at least this small for a sorcerer to live there. Sorcerers usually lived in seclusion. In that sense, this tiny village looked perfectly suitable for such a sorcerer to reside in.
Rememver had said he couldn't guarantee there really was a sorcerer, but...
"Let's go quickly."
"Yes."
I couldn't help but feel a budding sense of anticipation. Rien and I hurried toward the village entrance.
And then.
"Oh, fuck?"
"..."
"Ah, did I say that out loud? I'm sorry, brother. I was just so shocked."
As luck would have it, I ran straight into Cruel.
Could there be a coincidence like this? It was almost enough to make me suspect he was stalking me.
But before I could entertain such irrational suspicions, a clear reason explaining this encounter already existed, so I shut my mouth and furrowed my brow.
'He came looking for a sorcerer.'
According to Rememver, apart from this place, the nearest sorcerers all lived much further south. If he had any intelligence network at all, he would have had no choice but to come here.
Still, I couldn't help feeling irritated.
So I was glaring at him with a frown and my lips pressed tightly shut when, for some reason, the bastard's eyes began to widen. It almost sounded like something was cutting through the wind from somewhere too... No, wait. The sound was getting closer?
—Thwack!
My vision shook. My consciousness flew away for a brief moment.
"Get out of this village at once!!"
"Oh dear, grandmother, please calm down! Look at how those people are dressed! They're important people! Hey, someone stop grandmother!!"
"The Calamity, the Calamity has come! He must be driven out! No, he must be killed!!"
"My lord! Are you alright... Ah, the blood..."
"...Ha."
With his head bowed and utterly motionless, Deon let out a short, dry laugh as he raised his head.
He smiled.
The corners of his lips, lifted with absurdity and disbelief, made Rien stare blankly. She flinched and stepped back upon confirming his eyes.
Those were the eyes from that time. The eyes that had glistened with madness during the ambush.
"M-my lord..."
"..."
Deon swept his hair back along with the injured area and looked down at his palm.
It was soaked with blood. He could feel the warm liquid still trickling down his temple, so the wound must have been quite large.
Perhaps due to the blood loss, his eerily glinting crimson eyes rolled slowly toward the elderly woman causing the commotion. Despite the grown men clinging to her, the old woman possessed such incredible strength that she refused to let go of the stone in her hand.
Watching the scene, Deon casually shook the blood off his hand and began to walk.
As droplets of blood pattered and scattered onto the dirt floor, the gazes fixed on him involuntarily froze over with unease and fear. No one dared to look away carelessly.
A head awash with blood. Eyes glistening with a faint hint of madness.
The complexions of those already crushed under the alien sensation and the thick, gloomy atmosphere emanating from him began to pale rapidly as they confirmed where his steps were headed.
Rien was no exception.
"My lord..!"
"I won't kill her."
It looked for all the world like he was about to kill the old woman, but she could not doubt her lord's words. At the firm dismissal, Rien stopped in her tracks.
The gazes of the villagers pleading with her to do something were pointedly ignored.
Since her lord had stated it plainly, blocking him further would mean doubting him, and a knight doubting her lord was an unforgivable act.
Besides, she had already committed two errors.
One, failing to protect her lord. Two, failing to draw her sword and respond immediately when a stone struck him.
What right did such a knight have to stand in his way?
'I was too focused on the standoff between my lord and his brother.'
A discord between one's liege and his family wasted one's attention in a different way.
Consequently, she had overlooked an external threat.
Who could have known there would be someone in this remote mountain village who would threaten her lord?
'...No, that's an excuse.'
The previous justification became invalid the moment she failed to raise her sword when her lord was struck by a stone.
'Even if the opponent was an old woman, I should not have hesitated...'
As Rien clenched her fists and broke out in a cold sweat, Deon slowly walked until he stood right in front of the old woman. He bent slightly at the waist and met her eyes.
Bending down to meet her gaze should have appeared considerate enough, yet for some reason it looked like mockery. After tilting her head for a moment, Rien soon understood why.
Two eyes forcibly wide open and a pair of chilling red eyes stared at each other without a tremor before an unsettling conversation began. In that conversation—
"Hey, old lady."
"Th-the Calamity!!"
"Right, you call me the Calamity?"
Facing the old woman glaring at him head-on, Deon grinned.
The sight of him smiling while blood streamed from his head was so grotesque that everyone held their breath.
Amidst the subtle tension, a playful voice soon followed.
"Wrong. I'm closer to 'Sin' than 'Calamity,' aren't I?"
"Th-this...!!"
I stared blankly at the grandmother who was screaming her head off and making a scene.
She was incredibly spirited for her age. This wasn't just making a scene; it was practically shrieking at the top of her lungs.
In the meantime, my head hurt like it was about to crack open. Not figuratively, but literally.
Right, I had been hit by a stone. And this grandmother had shouted that I was the Calamity and had to be killed.
The Calamity. Calamity, huh...
'Well.'
If I had to say, wouldn't I be closer to Sin than Calamity?
I turned my head to find Cruel. The bastard was watching me from a short distance away with complicated eyes that I couldn't read at all.
When our eyes met, he naturally shifted his gaze past me and approached this way. No, to be precise, he approached the grandmother and the grown men making the scene.
"I came looking for a sorcerer."
A terribly cold voice flowed out.
I hadn't expected him to worry about my injury in the first place. I accepted the handkerchief Rien offered, pressed it to my injured head, and observed the situation.
"W-well, the truth is that this grandmother is the sorceress... but she's gone senile recently..."
"Let go of me, you fools! I must kill that bastard!!"
"...So does that mean there is no longer a sorcerer in this village?"
"Ah, well..."
The grown man's eyes darted around. His gaze soon landed on a woman who had approached and was gently persuading the grandmother while holding onto her.
"Grandmother, please calm down."
"Ran, kill that bastard. You saw him too, didn't you? Huh?"
"Of course I saw him. But we can't. You've always said so yourself, Grandmother. That we must not judge people for things that haven't happened yet."
At that, the old woman's struggling stopped.
As if struck on the head, the old woman, who had looked oddly blank, soon murmured vaguely like someone who had just reached an enlightenment.
"...Right, I did say that."
The old woman whipped her head around to stare at me.
I tried to flinch back, intimidated by her force, but my feeble reaction was thwarted when the old woman grabbed my shoulders firmly.
It hurt! I knew it from the moment the grown men were struggling with her—this old lady was ridiculously strong.
"Child."
"Ye-yes?"
"You must never hate anything."
"...Pardon?"
"Absolutely. Do you understand?"
Just moments ago she was throwing stones and screaming that I had to die, and now she was holding my shoulders and gently chiding and advising me.
Is this what they call senility? You'd need to have seen a senile person to know.
...No matter how much it's senility, this was unfair. Cruel was here, and Rien was here, so why was it only me...!
'Aaaah! This grandmother, seriously!'
And that was where I'd been hit by an arrow!!
When I didn't answer, the hands holding my shoulders tightened their grip.
Only after I hurriedly nodded at the unignorable grip strength did the old woman's hands drop away, satisfied.
I rubbed my throbbing shoulder and grumbled sulkily.
"I came because I need a sorcerer. You're telling me this grandmother is a sorceress?"
Not only had she tried to kill me, but she'd nearly shattered my shoulder too. I absolutely couldn't accept this particular grandmother.
She told me not to hate anything, right? Honestly, what human being could possibly do that? Starting with me right now...
"..."
I glanced at Cruel once, then whipped my head back.
...Anyway, I needed a different sorcerer. Did I have no choice but to go all the way down to the South? How long would that take?
"I shall accompany you."