That Should Be Enough (1)
“We’re terribly sorry. This is all due to our own shortcomings…”
A proper night’s rest had carried them straight through to noon.
In that time the Archmage had taken stock of the people who had never quite dared to enter, instead pacing restlessly outside. Had it not been for the barriers she had painstakingly raised before going to sleep, one of them would surely have slipped inside. Their overly deferential expressions and the way their eyes kept sliding past her toward the room beyond made that plain enough.
If they had truly been worried about the Demon Knight’s condition, some genuine concern would have shown on their faces. Clearly they were thinking of the child. Well, given the circumstances it wasn’t entirely strange—after all, a child of a man executed for treason had attacked a guest because of their own failure of management.
Yet the underside of the matter was different. The child had clearly escaped with someone’s help, and in the process had targeted the Demon Knight—on the very night the Demon Knight had clashed with the chieftain of this land. Too clumsy to be a proper plan, too convenient to be pure chance. The Archmage had no intention of overlooking that subtlety. Even if it hadn’t been the chieftain’s scheme, they should never have sent the child if they truly cared for her safety.
And now that the Demon Knight had chosen to give the girl a chance, the Archmage had every reason to protect that choice.
“It’s all right.”
“Th-the child…”
“We’ll handle her disposition ourselves.”
“What?”
The victim forgiving the perpetrator—and then protecting her—might look faintly ridiculous. But what was done was done; she had already said it. She gave them a dry smile, declined the offer of a meal, and shut the door again.
They now knew the Bigabol chieftain had cheated them, and suspicion of soliciting murder had also taken root. She would accept no further favors of any kind.
“Nngh…”
Just then the child stirred and sat up unsteadily. Light gathered in her yellow eyes until they shone a clear, flowing gold, like honey. “Ah!” She checked the place where she had been lying and the covering over her, then began to fidget. The flush that rose on her cheeks made her look exactly her age, and somehow soft.
“Would you like something to eat?”
She had refused every meal they offered, but she had set aside a few simple provisions in advance. She suggested it partly to ease the atmosphere. The child looked awkward, yet she did not refuse.
“…Th-that man… is it all right if we don’t wake him?”
“It’s fine.”
Food mattered, of course, but there was no need to drag a sleeping man out of bed for it. He needed the rest more. Whether it was the aftereffects of the poison or something else, he had been sleeping longer these past few days—yet even so his hours remained far below average.
Actually… the one who sleeps least of all is probably Berserk. Warriors, honestly.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Eat.”
In any case the Demon Knight could sleep a little longer. She left him undisturbed. Only when the next day’s sun stood high and he still had not opened his eyes did she begin to wonder whether something was wrong.
Get angry. Rage against every unjust pain.
Even the cheapest sleight of hand has gone on long enough. Isn’t it about time you felt wrath?
You must be tired of swallowing lies you can see right through.
Doesn’t it burn that they made you stain your hands with blood?
The child who drove a blade into your heart is right in front of you. She tried to kill you. How can you forgive that?
Even running from reality has its lim—
…
…
“…ht.”
A dreamless sleep is more comfortable than one expects.
“…Knight!”
Even without true exhaustion, the system that lets me drop straight into sleep without tossing and turning is still useful. No—this is basically the best feature of all.
“…mon Knight!”
In reality stress would have kept me awake; here at least sleep itself is always easy.
“Demon Knight!”
But sleep has to end sometime. It was time to return.
“…What.”
I opened my eyes slowly and took stock. Having cycled through sleep and waking so many times, I had no idea how long I had actually been out. My voice was rough enough that I must have slept more than half a day.
“…Are you all right?”
“I asked what you wanted.”
How long had I slept? I checked the surroundings in case something urgent had forced the wake-up call. Nothing special stood out.
“…Ah, nothing like that. More importantly—aren’t you hungry?”
Still, sunlight was filtering in, so it was daytime. I had fallen asleep around dawn; if it was only noon that would be roughly normal… but if that were true the Archmage would not be wearing that startled look. And my satiety had dropped farther than expected.
Had I slept more than a full day?
“I woke you because it was time to eat.”
If so… I had slept far longer than I thought. Every time I woke half-conscious my thoughts had wandered so miserably that I just mashed the system function over and over. My mistake.
“I won’t force you… but if you feel up to it, have a little.”
What was done was done. Fatigue sitting at zero meant it wasn’t entirely a bad thing either. I accepted the situation and joined her at the table. A flicker of worry about breaking character rose, then faded just as quickly.
It didn’t fit the concept, true—but I had been stabbed near the heart only a short while ago. They would probably write it off as aftereffects. Honestly, scolding me for character-breaking at this point would have been the stranger reaction.
“Accepting any more of the chieftain’s ‘hospitality’ felt like a bad idea, so I made do with what I had on hand. The spread is simple… will it be all right?”
While I was thinking, the Archmage offered a small apology over the meal. The difference from previous tables had been stark; so that was the reason. Fair enough. Even I wouldn’t want favors from a domestic abuser who held children’s lives as hostages. Better to eat rice with soy sauce than take one more bite from that bastard. Absolutely.
So this much was perfectly fine. A simple table someone else had prepared was nothing to complain about. And while I am a picky eater… nothing here was worth picking over.
I accepted the grain-flour soup without comment and ate. The child, somehow reading the situation perfectly even though my words had been rough, stayed in her seat as well. She and the Archmage seemed to have grown rather close while I slept; the air between them was easy.
“Well… I was thinking we might set out soon. Or would you rather rest a little longer?”
Closeness was good.
Still a bit dazed, I pushed another spoonful of soup into my mouth. The Archmage’s words traveled through the fog, reached my ears, then my brain; only on the second pass did the meaning land.
At last going to meet Sangun? Or had they realized the chieftain was trash and decided to drop the whole Sangun business? Personally I would have preferred the latter, but this was a Magic Tower quest, so probably the former.
“No need.”
I sorted it out on my own and gave a suitable answer. If she was being considerate because she thought my long sleep came from the injury, it wasn’t necessary. My condition wasn’t bad enough to delay departure.
“Truly… well. All right. Just don’t overdo it. Resting wouldn’t cause any trouble, you know.”
True enough—if the concept allowed it.
I mechanically finished the soup. The heat seemed to warm my insides, yet a subtle chill refused to leave.
“Um… what are you talking about…?”
“Ah, nothing important. The story I told you yesterday, Akata.”
“Oh…”
Even if the air around me was warm, even if I ate the hottest food—
the cold born of a sorrow that would never leave remained.
“Then let’s depart. Gather everything you need…”
…Still, I had to pull myself together. I wiped away the thoughts that had started to drift again and fixed my expression. The concept never allowed weariness of heart to show, not for a single moment. That was GAO… or was it KAO? Suddenly I couldn’t remember the English abbreviation.
BOOM!!!
And of course the narrative would help me focus by throwing something else at me like this?
I scowled at the sheer excess of it. Yes, I understood how small incidents balloon into huge set pieces in quests, but a chain of events like this was a bit much. This was already the third explosion since we entered the Great Forest! Overuse a pattern like that and players would get bored and call it trash.
“…Truly a place that never knows a quiet day.”
See? Even the Archmage looked like she was having an existential moment.
I grumbled inwardly that the scenario writer must be stealing a paycheck—though of course I didn’t really think that. Once I looked into it, that job turned out to involve a ridiculous amount of work.
“What was that sound…?”
“Akata, stay here for a moment.”
While the Archmage soothed the child, I opened the door and stepped outside. My eyes swept the surroundings, seeking the situation, and quickly narrowed.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!!
“Raid!”
“The Jatav are here!”
I had half-guessed from the roar alone, but it certainly looked like an attack.
“The Jatav must truly have soldiers to spare…”
I watched people sprinting toward the village entrance with a flat gaze (inwardly). Combined with the Archmage’s words, it confirmed both that this was a raid and that the attackers were Jatav—the same lot who had once forced me into a hard day’s work back with the Serhang tribe. A thoroughly warlike people. Something about electing a great chieftain—Katana or Katina or whatever—had them stabbing in every direction. Was that really how politics was supposed to work?
“There’s no further reason for us to involve ourselves in this fight. Better to…”
The Archmage pressed her temple and thought hard for a moment.
“They cheated us first, so we hardly need to pay our respects. Let’s just use the chaos and slip away quietly.”
The explanation had skipped so many steps that from my position the words were almost absurd.
Excuse me. You can’t just say that without the foundation; I can’t follow. What scam? Don’t tell me that kid really was an assassin Atart sent?
“What are you talking about.”
I asked with a touch of irritation. Concept or no concept of not caring about surroundings, this one I had to ask. The word “scam” had appeared; of course I did. My concept could not live with being swindled.
“Ah… I forgot you hadn’t heard.”
The Archmage apologized for her aging memory—though in my opinion my own memory was worse—and gave a brief account of the previous day’s events.
Once I finished listening, my only impression was that Atart was a genuine, thoroughgoing bastard. I had already found him distasteful the moment I learned he was a domestic abuser; now even the terms of the commission he had offered us were a fraud? The guy had been rotten from the start.
Shouldn’t we just kill him?
Shouldn’t we actually just kill him?
I clenched my fist for an instant, then hastily unclenched it. No matter how thoroughly the man was human garbage that couldn’t even be recycled, killing him would violate human rights—chiefly my own. Dirtying my hands just to dispose of trash like that would be an insult to the hands themselves. Besides, the whole attitude of solving everything with violence was already bad.
Yet the fact remained that the man was a criminal who deserved to be removed from society. I thought of the victims I had no standing to help and my lips trembled. Concept demanded I decide how to act in this moment, but personal feelings kept piling on and tilting me toward beating the bastard down. I wasn’t supposed to live like this.
“Ah… you wouldn’t happen to be…”
My expression must have looked grim. The Archmage spoke up while sweating bullets—figuratively; she didn’t actually sweat, but that was the vibe.
“Damn it, the magic—!!”
But the timing was off. Another roar shook the air and an explosion bloomed. Unlike earlier when we had been indoors, the open view made every stage of it painfully clear.
“They’ll break through.”
An exact assessment. Every priest of this place had joined the rebellion, so there was no one left to counter the enemy’s magic—except, of course, the Archmage, who was here as a guest and de-facto mercenary.
“Guests!!”
See? Here they come running.
The Archmage and I both grimaced at the approaching figures. It wasn’t that we had been dawdling; all the explaining and fretting had taken less than a minute outside. Still, spotting someone and calling out didn’t require being at close range. That was all it was.
“The traitors have brought the Jatav in! Please, we beg your aid—”
“I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible.”
She hadn’t even finished deciding, yet the Archmage cut them off coldly. Perhaps she had rushed the decision for fear I might go kill Atart myself… only she would know the truth.
“We’ve received word from the Magic Tower. Our own situation has become urgent.”
“At this rate we’ll be slaughtered!”
“I truly regret that we cannot help.”
The chill in her tone could have frozen the Siberian plains.
“Why…!”
“My apologies. As I said yesterday, we will handle the child ourselves.”
Separately I was still weighing whether to go thrash Atart right now, then decided that at this rate Bigabol would fall anyway. For all that Atart was a villain, far too many threads were tangled in this situation. Damn it all.
“…In the event that our guests refuse the request, the chieftain left a message.”
Damn it all.
“If you will not come, then we are already doomed to lose. In that case we will kill every child in the village. That is what he said.”
A true bastard never commits only one evil.
“Ugh, hell. We finally get here and now this place is a mess too…”
“Fight! Battle! Berserk wants to join in there!”
“Warrior-nim, please restrain yourself. No—why would you even want to jump into a fight that’s pure loss??”
Until now the absolute number-one most unmanageable, unreachable person in Deathbringer’s life had been the Demon Knight. Ever since Berserk joined, that ranking had begun to wobble, just a little. This one was fine in ordinary times, but the moment a fight appeared her eyes spun.
The Demon Knight’s eyes spun for anything demon-related, and conversation with him was rough even on good days, so he still held first place… for now.
“I clearly joined so I could find more fights. Yet every time you only tell me not to fight… You people are liars…”
“I never said any such thing.”
When she announced she was joining he had merely gone “uh, okay, joining then,” and had never once tried to persuade her. Deathbringer neatly washed his hands of responsibility and lifted the item White Wind had given him to his eye.
It was supposed to detect the natural life-energy every living thing possessed and let you see beings even through walls… useful for mapping infiltration routes, but terrible for actually finding people. Everyone looked like a rough outline filled in with assorted colors—
“Oh!”
So this was what they meant when they said magic-users would be easy to spot.
Ordinary people’s colors were so pale they almost blended into the background; magic-users’ colors were denser and stood out more clearly. And the Demon Knight and the Archmage…
“No chance of mistaking these two.”
Their auras were so vast they no longer even held human shape. The Archmage’s outline had at least blurred while remaining vaguely human; the Demon Knight was simply… simply…
as if that space had been scooped out in a perfect circle. As if observation itself were not permitted.
“But why are they coming this way…”
Surely they weren’t planning to join the fight? Well, Sangun was involved, so cooperating wouldn’t be strange—but hadn’t they agreed to stay out of local politics as much as possible?
“…Young hunter.”
And yet—
“Get down.”
In an instant a crushing weight pinned him; Deathbringer swallowed his breath. The sheer mass of muscle pressing down on him was heavier than expected. But that was nothing compared to what came next.
───!
A wave that could barely be called sound shook heaven and earth. Hood and hair whipped wildly. If Berserk hadn’t been holding him down, the wind pressure alone would have been a nightmare.
“What the hell…”
And then he saw it. Directly above his head, the dense canopy of trees that had stretched out in every direction had vanished without a trace—exactly the way half a castle on Montata Island had been reduced to powder, leaving only the lower walls.