The One Asking Right Now Is Your Mother
"Silence!"
The priest of the Pantheon Temple's command carried real weight. Whether it came from his rank or the divine power threaded through his voice, no one could say, but the mercenaries who had been squealing like they were under the witch's spell and the villagers who had been buzzing with chatter all shut their mouths at once. It was even enough to cool Thirin's own rising excitement.
The priest turned to Gordo.
"Is what you just said—'revenge for the dead vice-leader'—the reason for your duel with her and the mercenary company?"
His tone stayed dry, yet a faint trace of irritation bled through.
Gordo still looked dazed, face slack from the lingering sting of Thirin's tongue-lashing, but he nodded on reflex.
"Y-yeah! For our comrade's revenge and our honor!"
"Very well."
The priest gave a short reply and turned toward Thirin.
"You have not yet given your reason for the duel."
He paused, then gestured at Martha, Merye, and the murmuring villagers.
"Will you adopt what these people have said as your own reason? Is your cause to deliver judgment in place of those who suffered unjustly?"
Thirin, who had been breathing deeply to settle her nerves, suddenly tilted her head.
"Huu... What happens if I accept their reason?"
The priest explained.
"If the scales recognize their cause, you become the villagers' champion. You will fight on their behalf for their honor and safety."
"Champion? So they'd be direct parties to this too?"
"Correct."
Thirin remembered the priest's earlier words: The winner shall claim all rights over the loser.
"Then they'd be bound by the outcome as well?"
"Correct."
The villagers finally grasped the meaning and began turning pale. If Thirin lost, they would share the consequences. Martha and Merye in particular staggered as though they might faint any second.
The winner's mercy? As if those mercenaries would show any.
While they swayed, Martha and Merye met Thirin's eyes. They trembled, hesitant. The villagers hurried to support the pair before they collapsed.
Thirin watched them and gave a small, crooked smile.
"No thanks. Not necessary."
"What?"
The priest, the villagers, and even the mercenaries all froze with identical looks of confusion.
The priest waited a beat, then asked in a low voice.
"......Their cause is legitimate. You still refuse to accept it?"
What the priest hinted at was obvious: becoming the villagers' champion would greatly raise the odds of receiving the goddess's blessing. Yet Thirin shook her head.
To her, the villagers—Martha excluded—were nothing more than background props. Things that changed nothing whether they existed or not. But the fact they had found the courage to stand up for that beggar woman had touched her. Even if Peter had talked them into it, courage was courage. No need to drag them into bloodshed.
Besides, Thirin had a far more important reason.
Whatever she did, the cause had to be entirely her own.
"I'm not interested in playing champion for them. I have my own reason."
"Then state it."
Thirin was already sick of this circus. She wanted to get hit, acquire the technique, achieve rebirth, and be done. Arguing over legitimacy felt like a fast track to dying of old age. She decided to throw the scales out the window.
"That bastard."
Thirin jerked her chin toward Heres's corpse sprawled behind Gordo.
"That piece of shit Heres insulted my mother."
"......What?"
The one who echoed her was Imperial Guard Commander Roderick. He knew Heres had stabbed first. Thirin's act had been self-defense—far more legitimate than the mercenaries' excuse. Yet here she was, spouting complete nonsense.
What the hell was the crazy woman saying?
The others wore the same expression.
Thirin swept them with a look of pure disdain and snapped.
"You barbarians! Don't you even know that much? Your mother is my mother!"
"......?!"
Murmurs surged like a wave. Even the villagers who had been condemning the mercenaries stared at her in utter disbelief.
Was the woman actually insane?
The priest holding the goddess's scales stepped forward. The scales in his hand remained perfectly still.
"The scales have not yet judged your claim. Explain."
Since it had come to this, Thirin decided to teach these ignorant fools a little Eastern philosophy.
"A great sage once said, 'Respect even the mother of the lowliest wretch as you would your own mother!'"
This was what Master Wonhyo had declared to the monks who tried to stop him—citing monastic dignity—while he carried the funeral bier of a dirt peddler's mother.
To Thirin, this was the very essence of Buddhist philosophy. Treat their mothers the same as your own.
"According to that great teaching, you must cherish even the mother of a roadside pebble or a wild blade of grass as dearly as your own! How much more so your own mothers! In other words, your mothers are my mother, therefore—"
Thirin pointed at Heres's fallen body.
"That filthy pedophilic, murderous, immoral bastard Heres went around doing things that insulted his own mother! That is no different from tarnishing my mother's honor! I could not tolerate such filial betrayal! That is my reason!"
- Ding!
Your sophistry has maximized the effect of the title Witch!
The mind eroded by fear is beginning to accept your sophistry as truth!
Fear of the witch has triggered collective delusion!
The brain-dead mercenaries couldn't follow any of it and immediately started throwing another fit.
"The witch was my long-lost sister!"
"I can't accept thiiiiis!!!!!!"
"Shut up!"
The mercenaries clamped their mouths shut.
- Ding!
The witch's presence overwhelms the entire crowd!
The witch's notoriety is soaring!
- Ding! Ding! Ding!
The witch's deranged ramblings are beginning to dominate the minds of these insignificant creatures...
"Shut up!"
"I did shut up..."
One idiot grumbled like he had been wronged, only to catch Thirin's murderous glare and immediately slam his face into the dirt.
Perfect silence returned.
Peter, watching the whole spectacle, stood with his mouth hanging open and eyes bulging so hard they looked ready to pop out of his skull.
Thirin nodded in satisfaction.
"Maintain proper decorum!"
The priest issued another weighty command. Once the surroundings had fallen quiet again, he lifted the scales. The brass instrument refused to move even a fraction.
The priest finally spoke.
"The scales... will not judge your reason."
Gordo's tense face immediately relaxed. Did that mean the scales refused to acknowledge the witch's absurd claim? Then the goddess's blessing would surely come to them.
The lives and deaths of mercenaries danced on the edge of a single sword stroke or footstep. A blessing that could tip the scales of luck in that critical instant was priceless.
Gordo's face brightened as he said, "Then we shall receive the—"
"That is not what I meant!"
The priest cut him off, irritation plain in his voice.
"It means the scales refuse to weigh whether that woman's reason is right or wrong at all. Her reason is not something this scale can measure."
His tone suggested he had touched something filthy.
The priest handed the goddess's scales to Roderick as if he no longer wished to look at them.
Roderick accepted them with his mouth still hanging open in shock.
"Take it. The Pantheon will involve itself no further."
"W-wait! Priest! Then... what about this duel?"
"I do not know."
The priest's answer was curt.
"It is none of my concern. Deal with it among yourselves."
With that, he turned away without a shred of hesitation, pushing through the murmuring crowd and retracing his steps.
In the priest's absence, an awkward silence fell, quickly overtaken by even louder buzzing voices.
"By the gods... the goddess herself refused to render judgment..."
"That woman really must be a witch... even the goddess's scales..."
"The Pantheon has washed its hands of the whole thing..."
Similar whispers leaked from the mercenaries' side.
"The witch cast a veil over the goddess's eyes..."
"It's sorcery! That bitch is a real witch...!"
"That's why Heres... Damn it, we need to get out of this cursed village!"
It seemed Gordo had overheard the ominous muttering. The bluster he'd shown while criticizing the villagers and Thirin had completely vanished. His face now held bewilderment and a flicker of genuine fear.
He glanced around anxiously, fingers toying with his feather necklace.
Gordo had always been superstitious. Before every battle he would pull out a worn animal-bone talisman and fiddle with it; the caw of a crow was enough to make him grumble all day. That sort of man. It was also why he had refused to enter the village.
He had his own bizarre criteria for judging bad luck.
So learning they had fallen outside the goddess's gaze was bound to frighten him.
Watching Gordo hesitate like that, Thirin felt a surge of inexplicable rage. Stronger than any anger she had felt before.
Physical realization, rebirth—none of it mattered right now.
She simply could not stand the pathetic sight of that muscle-brained idiot.
"Gordo!" Thirin shouted sharply.
"Are you backing out of the duel?!"
"B-but the scales..." Gordo mumbled. His voice had already lost most of its fighting spirit.
"You brainless moron! Nothing has changed!" Thirin roared.
"Is your will something a cheap pair of scales gets to decide? Is the goddess your owner? If she tells you to lick her feet, will you lick them? If she tells you to roll over, will you roll?"
When Thirin stomped her foot, Gordo flinched. The sight only fueled her fury further.
"If the goddess puts a collar on you, will you wear it and crawl around on all fours like a dog?!"
Thirin spat her burning rage.
"Your lover or whatever is dead! The woman who killed your lover is standing right here! Right in front of your stupid face!"
Even Thirin didn't fully understand why she was this angry.
Because of physical realization? You couldn't gain it without getting hit. Those meaty fists on that pea-brained oaf would hurt like hell. She might not even acquire anything after getting beaten.
Thirin hated pain. She loathed it. It wasn't simply that it hurt.
She still remembered the vivid sensation of her brain breaking after the fall from the cliff. The suffocating frustration of being unable to say what she wanted, the urge to smash her own skull. Above all, the wiring between her brain and tongue had never fully recovered.
Pulling Heres's sword out of her stomach had wrecked that connection all over again. If she went through that agony once more, her tongue might break for good.
Part of her mind whispered that it was fine if the duel never happened.
But she could not tolerate watching that pea-brained idiot cower like a coward.
"There must be something you came here to do! Something you have to accomplish with everything you have!"
Thirin drew the sword and leveled it at Gordo.
"Do what you came to do, you idiot!"
Gordo stared blankly at the blade. It was Heres's sword. Thirin's slender white fingers gripped the hilt tightly. Below them stretched the crude crossguard, and beneath that ran the straight blade, dark red and clouded with her dried blood.
"......"
Yet its tip sparkled as it caught the sunlight. The light reflecting off the sword's point somehow looked as though it were flowing out from Thirin herself.
The words she had spoken. The thing Gordo had to do.
Without realizing it, Gordo muttered.
"Revenge... and..."
A low growl tore from his throat.
"Honor...!"
His wavering pupils regained their focus. Hesitation vanished. Forgotten emotions roared back to life—the insult to their honor, the fury over their comrade's death.
"Uwaaaaaah—!"
Boom!
Gordo smashed his gauntlets together as if trying to shake off his fear, roaring.
He exhaled a hot breath. He no longer wavered.
Fighting spirit blazed in Gordo's eyes.
"There we go."
Only then did Thirin's anger finally ease. The pea-brained idiot had finally become a man.
"You've stopped looking quite so pathetic."
Thirin smiled with satisfaction and raised her sword.