The World (7)
“...If you wake up now, it’ll only hurt. It’ll hurt so much, so much! With the seal like this I can’t even control it, so really...!”
The sobbing voice had turned into outright scolding, as if trying to frighten me off. That was how desperately she did not want me to rise.
Demon energy erosion was vicious and cunning; at the start there was no pain at all. Not even a whisper of it until the eyes turned blood-red and black veins stood out in stark relief.
But once a shred of reason began to peel away, everything changed.
It hurt. Not the kind of agony that knocked you out at once, but a slow, gnawing pain that arrived layer by layer. It was like having the flesh stripped away one sheet at a time. The pain accumulated and came crashing in like waves.
“Ha!”
But so what? To someone who could endure molten lava poured over her entire body, that kind of pain meant nothing.
What mattered to her was the present moment.
“Die!”
She could break. She could die. She had already steeled herself for that the day she left her homeland and set foot on this soil.
But she would not go alone. Especially not when the enemy was a demon!
“Uwahahaha!”
She discarded the shoulder flesh gouged out by a merman’s claws and swung the stone clutched in her hand.
No matter how hard she trained, a fist could never become harder than rock. The jagged shard that had once been part of a boulder crushed a merman’s skull instead.
It was almost identical to the moment she had shattered her master’s head. Scalp tore, bone shattered, and brains and blood came pouring out.
Then she twisted her waist just enough to slip the attack of the merman lunging from behind. Even swollen with eggs the creatures were not slow; their claws still left a wound across her side, but not deep enough for her guts to spill.
And as if to exact the price of that wound, her empty left hand stabbed into the eye of the merman that had just charged her. The crooked fingers dragged the eyeball out into the open air.
“You’re not even worth comparing to the Glacial Trial!!”
If one had to compare the Glacial Trial—which only the carefully chosen Great Warriors of the tribe could face—with these ordinary demons that swarmed everywhere, the latter were of course far inferior… but that was none of her concern.
She sneered at the mermen and drove her foot into one’s belly. Thud! The demon that had wanted to make a nest of her died on the spot, and fresh ones rushed in from outside to fill the space.
Listen.
Crunch!
It didn’t matter. She kicked through the pooled blood and hurled the stone she still held. Even a bare-handed stone throw became genuinely threatening when her strength was behind it.
The fluid coating the merman’s hide made it slip, yet the impact was not completely lost; the creature staggered once or twice.
If we really die in this place.
Her grip did not miss the opening. She seized the merman’s hand, snapped its wrist, and forced it to stab its own throat with its own claws.
The merman that had been killed by its own nails flopped its tongue out and toppled backward.
What kind of death of Vidr will you mourn, then?
Slash! And it was torn into five pieces. The one that had aimed for her had chosen its position poorly and only shredded its own kin’s corpse instead.
Splash. Yet attacking one’s own kind was not limited to the mermen. Her movement paused for an instant before she barely twisted free of another creature’s strike.
Slash! Whatever she failed to dodge left its mark on her body as wounds.
Me? Or…
“Stop.”
Her fingers hooked into a merman’s mouth.
Rrrrip! They slipped past the teeth with uncanny precision and tore the creature’s cheeks apart before they could be bitten off.
“We promised never to talk about that.”
This is the moment right before death.
“Sister.”
Berserk.
Then her body bent with fluid grace.
As her upper body fell backward, the bowstring-tight muscles of her waist supported her entire frame for a single instant, and a merman’s claws carved empty air just above her belly.
Whoosh! The moment the claws passed her, she snapped everything forward again. The serratus muscles that had been stretched taut released in the same heartbeat and launched her shoulders ahead like a projectile.
A palm strike landed cleanly on the merman’s jaw and sent it flying.
Or should I call you Weapon Master?
“Sister…”
Fine. Either is fine. I just… I want you to face it.
Then her abdominal muscles twisted like a whirlpool, letting her slip the next set of claws by a hair’s breadth. The arm that had risen with the bend of her waist dropped and locked around a merman’s throat.
Unlike a human’s, the neck was thicker than the head; it filled her entire forearm.
The contradiction of mourning someone while still insisting the object of that mourning is alive.
Crack. Yet the future of a neck trapped between chest and arm was almost always the same.
She put her strength into it and snapped the spine. The creature thrashed and left claw marks across her thighs and hips, but that would not be a serious problem. Probably.
Instead she grabbed the corpse with her free hand and swung it like a club. Several incoming attacks slammed into the meat shield and died.
Calling something that is only one side of you “sister”… I want you to stop that.
She could not allow herself to relax just because she had blocked the assault. She seized the empty space the attacks had left and leapt into it.
Her thigh muscles, swollen with sudden force, sprayed blood as they launched her body toward relative safety. The enemy that had been standing where she landed had its brow crushed under her heel and died, so there was no need to think about it further.
A moment to catch her breath appeared.
Please, let’s just stop.
“Haa.”
Did it? She expelled a hot breath.
Whether the heat came from moving several steps while holding her breath or from the demon energy that was about to crest the top of her skull, she could not tell.
If this continued, even in the moment death stood right before her eyes she would not be able to mourn Vidr’s death properly.
She simply wanted to run.
Even though she already knew there was nowhere left to run.
“Damn it!!”
She moved her hands while suffering under the demon energy that muddied her thoughts, or while screaming because the choice she refused to accept had finally been shoved in front of her face.
Crunch! Another merman was born with its eyeball crushed and its socket shattered under her grip.
“I know, I know!!”
…Berserk.
“I know it perfectly well!!”
Slash!
But she was reaching her limit. The number of mermen pouring in was simply too great, and the reason clouded by demon energy was driving her into a corner.
A mind that could no longer clearly judge right from wrong finally allowed a piercing wound near her lung.
“I know you’re dead!!”
And for a single instant everything stopped.
No. Time kept flowing. Even the time of the girl who had frozen at thirteen years old began to move again.
“I know my sister is dead—!!”
Boom!
“……!”
In the moment it felt as though time itself had halted, the floor gave way. The rotten flesh could no longer support dozens of mermen and dropped them all into the empty space that had opened below.
Thud, thud.
The uneven ground dropped her, rolled her, then dropped her again.
Her massive frame tumbled across the slick sheets of meat until she was completely drenched in blood. It was a sight that truly suited the name Berserk.
Roll…
Yet as if that were still not enough, her body kept heading toward something worse. She finally reached the largest pool of blood.
Splash!
She had deliberately left herself tumbling in order to buy a temporary escape from the situation; only after she sank into the blood did she push herself upright.
Slosh. Even at the edge of the pit the blood reached her shins and lapped in lazy waves.
It looked almost like a lake.
“Ha.”
The mermen had not rolled this far; any presence other than her own was still distant.
She staggered once and leaned against a nearby rock—whatever it was, at least it was not flesh. Blood that had soaked her from head to toe poured down in thick rivulets.
“I… I know……”
Matching it, a voice close to a lament echoed above the pit. It was the kind of resonance that belonged to a last will from someone who had already sensed the end of her life.
“I know, but… how am I supposed to stop?”
She still remembered. The person who had shone like the sun and lit up the snowfields. The being who had raised her and supported her in place of her parents. That endlessly vast embrace…
“How am I supposed to.”
My sun. My world. My giant.
My…
“Sister……”
In truth she had realized her sister’s death a very long time ago.
The reason she had challenged the Demon Knight to a spar yet could never ask him to kill her, the reason she had quietly granted her master’s final wish instead of shattering it, the reason she had not ended her life on that snowfield that day—all of it came from the same place.
If she died, the mourning for her sister would become twisted. Should she mourn the one she herself had created, or the one who was already dead yet whom she had refused to look at?
In the end, no matter how far she circled, she would still have to face it.
Let’s stop being stubborn.
“Please, Vidr.”
I’m fine. We were one from the beginning.
“My poor sister.”
You’re only returning to the place you were always meant to be, so what’s the problem?
She hated that. She hated it so much.
『I challenge you, Great Warrior.』
She refused to accept that you had died in a place where the sun never rose. That you had walked into death yourself just to keep her alive.
『There is only one condition. If I manage to wound you even once, you must take my little sister in.』
She refused to accept that such a miserable end—where not even the remains could be recovered—was the final destination of someone who had once been her entire world…
So… let’s stop, for Vidr’s sake as well.
“You’re… you’re so selfish……”
Yet a child’s stubbornness has to end someday.
Even stubbornness that had lasted more than thirty years was the same.
Just as the halberd that had been passed from master to master for over a hundred years had finally shattered, so too did things that were meant to break have to break eventually.
She rose while sobbing like a child who did not want to grow up. Splash, splash.
At the same time something rose from the lake-like expanse of blood. It was the largest and most vicious-looking merman she had seen yet.
[Y-you, sh-shouldn’t c-come h-heeere.]
And honestly, if we were going to die and go to Vidr’s side anyway, a whole single self would be better than us split in two, right?
[H-hu-human, no.]
Right?
Was she afraid of that? If asked, the only answer that would come back was never.
“…Yeah.”
Berserk finally accepted it.
“You’re right.”
The yoke she had inherited after killing her master—Weapon Master—was also her name.
[D-die, d-die, die.]
The voice in her head fell silent.
It hurt.
“The demon sealed you so you might just lie there completely unable to move and feel nothing but pain. Even if you somehow break free of the seal, with your body the way it is now there’s a high chance you still won’t be able to move a finger. Are you still going to get up? Even knowing that, will you still choose to rise……?”
Yet the reason that didn’t feel unpleasant was because the worry lying beneath those words was so easy to read.
“Haa, haa.”
The Inquisitor forced herself to keep drawing the breath that had already climbed all the way to her chin.
The air she dragged in through both nose and mouth scorched her throat the instant it passed.
[Is it almost over?]
Before she could fully recover her breath, a cannonball of pure lava slammed into the right half of her body.
The molten rock punched through the chainmail beneath her plate and roasted her blood and flesh to a golden brown. “Akh.” A scream slipped between her clenched teeth and then stopped.
Her pride would not allow her to make a weak sound in front of a demon.
Crackle.
In the meantime some of the lava that had cooled while stuck to her armor crumbled into powder.
It was the result of not even having enough power left to purify the unclean.
[Stubborn, aren’t you.]
Even so she did not lower the barrier.
The Inquisitor swallowed the thick burned taste coating her tongue and twitched her fingers. The heated pieces of armor clinked against one another.
Even though she had worn armor for half her life, it suddenly felt unbearably heavy. Honestly, she no longer had the strength to move.
The edges of her blurred vision were thick with haze.
“…I…”
will not lose. She could not even finish the words; the pain lancing through her side forced her mouth open.
At this point the sensation of pain itself should have disappeared, yet somehow this body insisted on collecting every single agony. Her fingers trembled violently and then went completely limp.
[Still clinging to pride? Just give up already.]
But, but……
“O God.”
She prayed with her ruined face.
Please look down upon this city. Look down upon the pitiful ones.
Look down upon the devotion of one who was merely possessed by a demon, yet who is more noble than anyone.
[Honestly. Humans……]
…And if there is a next time, please choose someone better than this inadequate person as the hero and give the world a chance.
[A hero is nothing more than a title given to a vessel that happens to fit.]
To someone who can save more people……
“Do not… disgrace Him……”
[Ha, you really hate the idea of your god being insulted, don’t you?]
“His most exalted self……”
[So what? He’s just another being equal to our king.]
Perhaps because she was certain of her victory, the embodiment of greed herself stepped forward and crushed her underfoot.
A leg made of rock and flame pressed down hard; the armor grew scorching hot and melted the Inquisitor’s skin right through it.
The trapped heat swirled inside the armor and only multiplied the suffering.
[We don’t even revere our own king. So of course I have no reason to revere your god either.]
“Demons……”
But not yet. Not yet.
“are all the same……!”
[……!]
The Inquisitor forced her half-lidded eyes wide open and thrust forward the single scrap of strength she had been scraping together this whole time.
A chamgyeok that used the edge of her face plate lightly split the demon’s body; Pandemonium leapt far backward.
[Fine, that one was my mistake.]
“…You filial-piety-less bastards who don’t even know the word ‘revere.’ Our god does not want the likes of your respect. Just die.”
Meanwhile the Inquisitor tried to force her body back into fighting condition. The problem was the lava still covering everything. The moment she recovered even a little, it would send out all sorts of filth and thorns…
BOOOOM!
Whoooosh!
[……?!]
In the middle of her words something came surging from the far side. Somehow the waterway had been opened; a wave large enough to flood an entire section of the city was racing toward them.
The parts of the lava that touched seawater solidified on the spot and lost their heat.
[…I left the little rat alone because it looked like it would die even if I did nothing, and this is what I get.]
Pandemonium’s brow furrowed.
[You, go kill—]
BOOM!
Right as Pandemonium was about to order the demon guarding the ancient structure,
a colossal surge of mana whirled up and a meteor-like beam of light slammed into the ground. It struck the structure and the demon in front of it with perfect accuracy.
Thud. The hole from which endless demons had been crawling vanished; only the structure remained.
The demon that had been standing guard before it was left with nothing but its lower half, already dead in silence.
[……]
Pandemonium fell silent.
“This is……”
On the other hand the Inquisitor half-instinctively understood and awkwardly lifted the corner of her mouth.
Somewhere out of sight, she could almost picture that slippery bastard waving a hand.
[Foolish human……!]
“You idiot……!”
Strangely enough, the strength to stand rose again.
Golden light once more blocked the lava that reared up in answer to Pandemonium’s rage.
And so I smiled and accepted that worry.
After all, maybe someone could still be saved.