Blurting Out Excuses (3)
There was no particular connection between the Great Demon and the Young Lord of Ednium.
Yet once a subjugation battle broke out in the forests under Ednium’s domain, he had no choice but to take an interest—as Young Lord. The lord sending thirty soldiers as a gesture of cooperation, the Archmage continuously reporting the incident’s outline not only to the temple but to the castle as well—it all sprang from the same context.
“I leave it in your care.”
That was why, when word arrived that the Great Demon’s corpse had been swallowed by grass roots, I—or more precisely, the temple people who had decided to head that way with me—asked the Young Lord to accompany us first of all.
No matter how I turned it over, the only being capable of such a bizarre feat was Biryuho. And the only person who could sound out Biryuho’s intentions without a fight was (as far as I knew) the Young Lord himself. For a more thorough grasp of the truth, he had no choice but to come with me and the temple folk.
“As you all requested, I intended to inquire of Lady Biryuho about the matter of the demon… but I never imagined things would turn out like this.”
Ah, for reference: that bit was about the Archmage asking him to inquire in his stead regarding Biryuho’s so-called credit with demons and the like. In the end the whole mess erupted before he could even ask.
“…Why would Lady Biryuho take the demon’s remains……”
Beats me. I’m familiar with clichés, not a prophet. Still, if I had to pick the most likely possibility, an alliance between the two would top the list. Setting Biryuho’s attitude aside, I had to wonder whether a pact between them would even net either side any real benefit.
“…Um, that is, Adventurer.”
After long hesitation over how to address me, Young Lord Leon finally settled on a suitable word and called out. My gaze flicked toward him. As always, I gave no reply. Deathbringer, who would normally cover for my social failings, and the Inquisitor, whose halo would let things slide, were both out cold at the temple—but by now I had the calling card of having taken down a Great Demon. Sure enough, no one called me on the rudeness.
“I heard that against the Great Demon… the Hero, the Adventurer, and one more—three of you in total—fought and at last seized victory.”
Anyway, the Young Lord asked carefully.
“…Was the Great Demon very strong?”
Whatever train of thought had led him to the question, it was nothing I couldn’t answer.
“The strength of something already dead is meaningless.”
I was the one who won, after all!
“I see.”
Of course our side had taken some damage… but honestly, that deserved understanding. Most of the injuries came not from the demon but from the unique circumstances of fighting several thousand meters up!
If we’d fought on the ground, the Inquisitor never would have fallen. No bluff—really.
“I heard both the Hero and the Adventurer collapsed as well……”
Oh, for—he had to go and poke that sore spot. Look here, Young Lord! Why don’t you try climbing several thousand meters yourself! You think fighting while making your own footholds without system help is easy? Ever felt the inescapable limits of the human body called altitude sickness?
This was genuinely unfair! Neither I nor the Inquisitor was weak—not at all!
I turned toward the Young Lord with an inward snarl. Maybe some personal feeling had crept into my eyes; the moment my gaze landed on him, he flinched.
“Had the bastard been on the ground, his head would have hit the dirt in under ten minutes.”
A slight exaggeration on the time, but twenty minutes or ten—same difference, right? Not like I’d be hunting another Great Demon anytime soon.
With that sly thought I eyed the tangle of grass drawing nearer. It wasn’t Jack and the Beanstalk, but vines several meters thick had knotted and coiled into a massive hill. Distinct from the existing forest’s vegetation, it was easy enough to tell apart.
“Then… could you kill Biryuho as well?”
Hold on—what did he just say?
“Could you kill Biryuho too, without anyone else coming to harm?”
I went beyond turning my eyes; I twisted my head and hips fully that way. The Young Lord met my gaze dead-on.
“Of c—”
“I’m sorry. Please pretend you didn’t hear that.”
And just as I was about to answer, the Young Lord cut in first. Seriously? This wasn’t a joke. He’d said everything he wanted and now wanted me to play deaf? Hey, Young Lord? Don’t you see the skull mark popping up over my head right now??
I let it slide only because lives were on the line.
“Young Lord!”
“You’ve arrived. And you as well.”
After that, the Young Lord and I walked without another word. Fortunately the destination was close, so we didn’t have to wallow in the awkwardness for long.
“I am truly sorry to have you come in person to such a dangerous place.”
“Not at all. It was only what needed to be done.”
“My apologies to you as well. I would have preferred to let you rest a while longer……”
Well, it wasn’t as if the Archmage had planned this—no need for him to apologize. I let the Archmage’s words slide in one ear and out the other as I approached the vines.
Berserk, halberd in hand, had possessed the spirit of a lumberjack and was hacking the vines down. However many she’d felled before I arrived, three stumps already stood at her feet.
“First of all, those vines are precisely why we called the two of you. According to the people, they suddenly sprouted and wrapped the Great Demon’s corpse without leaving so much as a gap.”
“That is……”
Thud, thud, thud!
Crunch-crunch-crunch.
So that was why the vines had grown into something almost oval. But where was this gnawing sound coming from, threading between the wood-chopping?
“Berserk has been cutting the vines continuously to check the inside, but……”
I felt a little bad for the Archmage, yet I tilted my ear more toward the gnawing than her words. If it wasn’t my imagination… it seemed to be coming from inside the vines.
“Had I known, I would have brought more soldiers. With these numbers, cutting them all will be difficult.”
“N-no. Had that been the case, I would have told the messenger.”
“Then?”
“Move them over before they tip!”
But I couldn’t focus on that alone. I still had to take in the information the Archmage was feeding me, and the priests and soldiers working together to haul the vines were shouting loud enough to drown everything out. They must have finished moving the earlier ones; five stalks of vine already lay stacked to one side.
“The vines grow too quickly. Ordinary cutting is useless.”
…Wait a second. Five stalks?
But only three stumps?
“They’re growing again!”
My question resolved the next instant. When Berserk had the vine halfway down, a new one sprouted from the severed spot. It even encroached on the existing stump positions, shoving Berserk back.
“Just like that.”
The Archmage shrugged, and the sweat-soaked Berserk let out a roar. Clatter. She was so furious she even flung her halberd away.
“Ah, perfect timing, comrade!!”
Right then Berserk, who had been raking her hands through her hair, spotted me and bellowed.
“Do that thing that goes swoosh and flies!”
Swoosh and flies. The cheapest description of Chamgyeok had just been updated.
“…Demon Knight, don’t scold her too harshly. I also decided to call you because I thought your abilities might prove more helpful.”
Well, I could understand the feeling. Berserk hit harder per strike, but I had more area-of-effect skills, didn’t I? If the vines kept getting sent back to the starter village like that, of course she’d want my power to carve straight through to the corpse in one go.
“Is burning them with magic impossible? Ah, because it might damage the body……?”
“No. We already tried; it was useless. Anything short of a considerable scale didn’t even leave a scratch.”
“Ah……”
I ignored Berserk’s vigorous waving and took up a suitable position. Cut too low and I’d slice into the Great Demon’s corpse as well; cut too high and I’d only see the vines’ cross-section. I had to gauge the height carefully.
“Everyone clear out.”
As a side measure, considering the chance the vines might topple, I herded the people back. I didn’t even bother wondering whether I could cut them or not. My body wasn’t fully recovered, but I could still throw one skill.
“Around here should do.”
…And she was helping? While the people withdrew I was measuring the cut, then checked the height Berserk was indicating. Unlike me, who had been unconscious and never laid eyes on the corpse, she had watched over it all night; following her judgment seemed wiser.
“Go.”
“Right!”
Still, I couldn’t leave her there forever. After chasing Berserk off as well, I gripped my zweihander firmly. Crunch-crunch-crunch. Beneath the vines under my feet, something kept gnawing without pause.
“I don’t know what scheme this is……”
It wasn’t that I had no idea what the sound was. But I’d know for certain once I looked, so—
“I’ll lay it bare.”
I pushed the speculation down for the moment and swung. A blade of pitch-black mana stretched from the zweihander’s edge, elongating into a blade dozens of meters long.
Shhhk! The feedback through my hands was perfect. I’d cut it.
“Is that… a human……?”
“Incredible……”
“But… why isn’t it falling?”
I’d cut it, so why the hell wouldn’t it fall? I blinked once at the faint remaining cut mark.
…It wasn’t one of those manga things where you slice so cleanly it doesn’t separate yet, was it?
“Achoo!!”
Right then a massive presence came flying over me. Thud! Berserk was delivering an extremely powerful kick to the vines.
They listed.
And it worked. The vines that had stood unmoving began to topple like dominoes. Given the sheer weight they moved incredibly slowly, but they were falling all the same.
“Let’s go!”
“……”
Still, falling slowly meant plenty of time to dodge. Berserk and I opened a safe distance—though not too far. We had to stay close enough to observe the inside before Biryuho’s new beanstalk grew.
“Heh-ha, fun!”
It wasn’t particularly difficult. Slower than the Sea Dragon, at least.
Boom-boom!
While the vines collapsed in clouds of dust I hurried to scan the interior. But what the parting walls revealed was far more serious than I had expected.
“……!”
“Oh, the demon bastard’s body is gone.”
“…It ate it.”
I’d half-dreaded, half-suspected it, and the guess had been right. That crunching had been the sound of something being gnawed. And that something was the Great Demon’s corpse, by something else.
“Are the vines not growing any more?”
Well, whether because they’d been found out or because they’d finished their business, there was no more need to grow them. Personally I leaned toward the latter. All that remained of Moby Dick’s traces were a few strands of hair, a scrap of silk, a fin, and a little hide.
“……?”
But what was that?
I jumped down into it, enduring the rising stench of blood. Overflowing blood turned the ground into a bog that sucked stickily at my ankles, but I could endure. My legs carried me toward the spot where a few bones, scraps of flesh, and organ pieces still remained—the place where the demon’s upper body should have been.
“Find something?”
Slick.
And from the very center, I lifted something up.
“Never knew tigers ate corpses too.”
What was probably Biryuho’s—a white tiger’s tail—rose in my grip. True to an Ancient Beast, it was larger than a human torso.
“I am sorry, Young Lord.”
Back again in Camborer.
“Even though I was present, I failed to stop the young master. The fault is mine.”
The townsfolk who had obtained fragments of the truth naturally sought to clarify what was real. That it had remained a relatively mild protest was surely out of consideration for the Young Lord’s face—and no one else’s. The face of the Young Lord who, while the lord and his son ran wild, had quietly covered for their follies and struggled on behalf of the people.
“I will gladly accept any punishment.”
Even so, the fact that she had failed to control the information and sparked needless strife did not vanish. Yohanna begged her lord for judgment.
“No need to apologize, Yohanna.”
No. Even if it wasn’t her direct responsibility, she who had been present yet failed to stop it still bore fault. Rather than let it slide because they were friends, an example should be made.
“No. I must properly take responsibility……”
“Ah, I’m telling you not to apologize because it really isn’t your fault.”
“But……”
“In the first place, I told that bastard about Biryuho myself.”
“What?”
So startled that casual speech slipped out in an official setting, Yohanna slapped her own cheek once and looked at the Young Lord again. Was it her imagination? Mia almost looked a little pleased.
“No special reason. Just… just… I got curious how people would react if they learned the truth of the situation.”
No—after you’d gone and drilled freedom and rights into them yourself, you were now curious how they’d react? Was she joking?
Yohanna thought she might have hit her if Mia hadn’t been her lord, then forced the feeling back down. Instead of resentment she tried to imagine the future her lord had hoped for. So far she couldn’t quite grasp it.
“S-so, the intention was……?”
“Calling it intention feels off. It’s not like I know how to control that bastard. I simply… left it to fate. Whether he’d go around blabbing, or whether he had enough brains to keep his mouth shut.”
“…And if the young master hadn’t spoken?”
“I was prepared to accept it as fate.”
But the more she listened, the stronger that tendency grew. Yohanna felt her once-pounding heart now seething for a different reason and pressed a hand to her temple. She would have preferred her forehead or the back of her neck, but she lacked the nerve to do so in front of her lord.
“Then what do you intend to do now?”
“Who knows. For now I have to tell the people the truth they want. Whether Biryuho really is the culprit, and why he did it.”
“Will you… encourage a subjugation?”
“No. I’m leaving that to the heavens as well. The opponent is none other than Biryuho. With no way of knowing what damage might come, if the people don’t wish for it… then we have to give up.”
Yet whatever the Young Lord desired, one thing was certain: Mia would follow the people’s will completely. Even if it meant breaking some part of herself.
“…Will the people risk the danger?”
So Yohanna asked as a friend. Catching the nuance, the Young Lord—Mia—smiled faintly.
“Doesn’t really matter.”
“Why?”
“Because it was spite, knowing they wouldn’t step forward. You know we can’t just kill him even if they want to, right? No telling what the fallout would be.”
“…You—you!”
“Pretty rotten of me, huh? Still, cut me some slack. They say pain and sorrow become half when shared.”
“…Says the person who usually shouts that they double.”
Mia offered no answer to Yohanna’s scolding. Yohanna likewise stopped tugging at the thread. Her tongue was too bitter for that.
“…If, if, Mia.”
“Mm?”
“If the people agree to subjugate Biryuho, and if killing Biryuho brings no side effects at all—what then?”
But the taste of lingering attachment was just as bitter. She asked one last time. At Yohanna’s question Mia took from a drawer a liquor bottle and a dagger.
“What kind of question is that? Obviously I’d kill him.”
The dagger struck the bottle’s neck clean off.