Filled with Anguish (2)
Berserk opened her eyes. Am I alive? How? That was the first question that struck her, even before she could take stock of her surroundings.
A stir.
Next came the sense of something moving on her stomach.
She forced the stiffness from her body, worked the tension out of her arm muscles as best she could, then undid her tattered clothes. Layer after layer of fabric fell away, and bare skin showed beneath.
The black veins and the rough, swollen nodules had all vanished, leaving clean flesh. The scars she had earned long ago still remained, of course.
A grip.
"……?"
Correction. Not only the scars — there was also a turtle smaller than the span of her belly.
Whether they were fins or flippers, the creature clung to her human skin with limbs that, on a person, would have been arms and legs.
"What is this?"
Could turtles even do that? More importantly, when had the thing crawled into her clothes?
She lifted the turtle, voicing her puzzlement — half unconsciously, half as if expecting someone to answer.
But no voice came, no matter how long she waited. Of course it didn't. The lie she had crafted had dissolved the moment she acknowledged it, vanishing like foam on water. Or else it had simply returned to where it belonged.
The campfire she had clung to, longing for a sun that was gone, was no more.
The instant Berserk realized that, misery washed over her. Better to have died — this was the wretchedness of surviving without knowing why.
"...How sad."
Would it have been better if she had died there instead?
Like her sisters who had fallen in a place where the sun never rose, their remains never even recovered — would a wretched end like that have been preferable?
"Different beginnings, but I wanted our ends to match."
If she had died the way she had decided to mourn them as a child, perhaps not even regret would have lingered...
"Even that was beyond me."
She set the thrashing turtle down on the ground.
Having put it down without thinking, it landed on its back and flailed its limbs, paddling helplessly at the air.
Feeling a faint pity, Berserk flicked its shell with a finger. The rebound flipped the turtle right-side up, and it began crawling across the dirt. Soft soil yielded under its flippers, leaving faint tracks.
"You're awake?"
"……?"
She had been watching it for a moment when someone a few meters away, who had been tending another's wounds, spoke. A man who looked utterly exhausted.
"If you're awake, go find Archmage. I've already told him."
His manner matched his look — sharp as his features.
Whether that was his nature or just a shortage of composure making him irritable, who could say.
"Doctor! We're out of bandages!"
"We boiled cloth earlier! Tear that up and use it!"
"That's all used up too!"
"This is insane!"
"Medic! Open fracture of the leg!!"
The surroundings told the same story.
Berserk glanced at the patients packed everywhere, the people still streaming in, and those weaving between them treating the wounded.
She had meant to look for the Demon Knight, the young hunter, or the red-haired priest — but other things caught her eye first.
Like how the medics moving about were reasonably many, yet those who needed their hands far outnumbered them.
"Medic?! Medic?! Anyone free?!"
A new arrival carrying a patient shouted. The man who had spoken to Berserk answered.
"I want to cry, for real..." Having no time even to catch his breath before treating someone else, he looked thoroughly worn.
"Over here... over here!"
"Open fracture of the leg! You heard that?!"
"Yes...!"
The man somehow cleared space in the cramped area, laid the patient down, then called to a girl running errands — pressed into service because they were short-handed.
"Painkillers here! And bandages for the bleeding, bandages..."
"Uh, we just ran out of painkillers, so I don't have any..."
"What?"
"I went to get more too, but they said there's no more painkillers."
The situation only seemed to worsen. Painkillers and bandages were the absolute basics of treatment — of trauma care — and both were gone.
At least with painkillers, patients could simply endure more, but without bandages, every bleeding patient might as well be abandoned.
As a warrior with a basic grasp of field medicine, Berserk clicked her tongue.
"The priests, the priests? Any spare hands over there? We need to at least stop the bleeding..."
"I'll go ask. But probably..."
"Yeah, no chance..."
So that was why she hadn't seen anyone from the temple. They weren't absent — they were already working elsewhere. And they seemed just as short on resources.
"Bandages, any spare bandages at least..."
Well, the temple could keep people alive with Holy Power, so they tended to take the critically injured who might die any moment. Considering that, they might have even less room to spare than here.
Here at least the patients were lightly wounded or the more stable of the seriously injured. Over there, the moment hands ran short, people would start dying.
If the red-haired priest Berserk knew were here, things might be a little better... but would the Hero even be in any condition to treat others?
The fighting she remembered in the city had been the kind that left no room to think about what came after.
Squeak.
Suddenly the turtle made a strange cry. At the same time, a question rose that puzzled Berserk.
Right. It had been a fight with no room to think of the aftermath. So why was she herself in such perfect condition? Surviving was one thing, but shouldn't some injuries have remained?
Had that young priest still been awake and given her special treatment as a companion who had traveled with them?
No — before that, who had even brought her out of the turtle shell? To say the Hero had done it... that young priest had seemed overwhelmed by Pandemonium alone... and the timing didn't add up either.
A tap.
Then a lukewarm warmth touched Berserk's hand. The turtle, crawling along, had climbed onto the back of her hand.
"What."
Go away. She flicked the turtle off. A grip. The flipped turtle flailed, then righted itself under its own power. And crawled right back to her again.
She wondered if it thought she was its mother.
"...Give me a break."
Did a little turtle really have to cling so desperately? She considered abandoning it, then decided to keep it.
Well — she disliked the weak, not the young. And if the young thing was clawing for its life with pure grit, all the more so.
She had no intention of keeping it forever, but she was willing to look after it until she could release it into the sea.
"Stay put. Fall off and I'm leaving you behind."
She set the turtle on her broad shoulder and rose. The people she had been looking for were nowhere in sight, and she had been told the Great Sage had summoned her. Time to leave.
But when she stood, the clothes she had undone earlier flapped at her waist. Quite annoying. Putting them back on was out of the question — too tattered.
"Hmm."
They were too filthy to use even as bandages, so tearing them off wouldn't matter. She stripped them away as if ripping them free.
The discarded clothes were crushed under her leather boots.
Squeak.
The turtle, nearly flung off with the clothes, cried in protest.
"Do all turtles sound like you?"
Squeak?
Before seeking Archmage, she left the chaotic treatment area first. Well — the place was far too busy to ask about the Great Sage's location. And she doubted they knew what was happening outside either.
Squeak.
"What a mess..."
But was the area around the treatment center any better? Not really.
Berserk exhaled a long breath at the people sprawled everywhere like defeated soldiers.
There were some who had pulled themselves together and were moving, but more still crouched on the ground, utterly despondent. A sight she truly disliked.
"What the hell were the soldiers doing? Why did a demon appear in the city..."
"Fuck... this is all the nobles' fault. The nobles and the temple conspired to kill the guardian deity and this is our punishment..."
And they were spouting that kind of nonsense.
"Pathetic."
She understood the shock of having to abandon the city and flee. But so what?
They had evacuated in relative safety under the soldiers' protection, yet they couldn't overcome the loss of their city and just blamed others — it left her speechless. The soldiers who had died for them deserved better.
She walked on, despising those who, after being saved, offered no thanks and only sat devastated over lost belongings. In the distance, she saw soldiers moving.
"Let— let go...!"
"Stop before I break your arm!"
Drawing closer, she saw what the soldiers were doing. They were subduing a man who had been causing a disturbance.
"Hey, soldier."
"As if this shitty situation isn't enough— what?"
"Where is Archmage?"
"Hey, can't you see what we're— who are you?"
The soldier, snapping the rioter's arm while turning his head irritably, hesitated. Berserk's brutal muscles and expression clearly made him revise his tone.
Though his face still held an edge.
"I'm an adventurer who was hired by Archmage. I was ordered to report, but I don't know the location, so I'm asking."
"...If you're really an adventurer, show your badge—"
"Hey! You!"
Then a shout erupted from a little farther off.
"You're alive!"
"You know me?"
"You fought the Seiren on the walls."
Ah, a soldier who had seen that. She scratched her neck. Unfortunately, she had no memory of this particular soldier.
"I lost my adventurer badge."
And she had no badge either. She had definitely lost it in combat — she hadn't found it when discarding her clothes — but where was anyone's guess. The battlefields she had crossed, broadly speaking, came in three kinds; she couldn't even estimate.
"Then I can't tell you. How am I supposed to know who you are and just hand out that kind of—"
But of course the soldier she had run into now was the rigid type. Berserk narrowed her eyes, annoyed.
"If you're looking for Archmage, go that way. I saw him earlier."
"Hey!"
"I get why you're careful, but cut them some slack. Someone who fought on the walls is either a soldier or an adventurer — who else would it be?"
"Even so, they're claiming out of their own mouth that they were hired by the Great Sage! You believe that?"
"Well... if they have the skill to hunt dozens of Seiren, being hired by the Great Sage makes sense, doesn't it? I think it's fine."
"Argh..."
Luck, in the end, favored her. Berserk assessed the helpful soldier positively — even if she didn't remember him — and moved again in the direction he had indicated.
Fortunately, the group of mages was there.
Together with people from the temple.
"Any free hands?!"
"Priest!"
"...Give up on that one! We can't save them in this situation!"
Ah, right. Mages could use healing magic too. Watching the mages mixed in among the temple people — golden light from the hands meant priest, pale blue light meant mage — she observed a scene even worse than the earlier treatment area.
"Priest! People who evacuated west are starting to arrive one by one! But according to the survivors, there are wounded over there...!"
"...We're short-handed here too! Were there no surviving priests over there?!"
"Most of them were killed protecting the citizens from the demons... So there aren't people who can treat..."
"Damn it!"
Archmage was among those with the worst injuries gathered together.
Even if less effective than Holy Power, he was treating multiple people at once, already holding the life-threads of five.
"You're here? Then start over there..."
"I heard you were looking for me."
"Hm? Ah, ah. It was you."
Berserk approached only as far as she wouldn't interfere with Archmage, then scanned the area again.
She was looking for any sign of the Hero moving about, but unfortunately the young priest was nowhere to be seen.
"First... let me express my gratitude for your efforts. Without you, the damage would have been far greater. Truly, thank you."
"I didn't stay at that post to receive thanks. So I don't need it."
"Is that so."
"More importantly, the situation?"
"...How much do you know?"
"Almost nothing. Discovering the Merman nest inside a turtle shell and going in to fight is my last memory."
Deathbringer and Demon Knight were the same. She didn't know where they were, but at least they weren't in the wounded lines.
"I also remember that even if support had arrived in time, my chances of surviving were nearly zero."
"...I see."
"So I ask. How did I survive?"
Then where on earth were those three? Surely they hadn't ended up on the list of the dead that even she hadn't joined? Surely not?
"...I don't really know either. But... according to Deathbringer's testimony, a demon likely saved you."
"...A demon?"
Berserk carefully studied the face of the only one who held answers. He didn't seem dead. If he were, his expression would have been pure grief.
But...
"Or the Demon Knight."
There are lives more wretched than death.
Sensing the conversation would be long, Berserk sat down.
Squeak.
The turtle on her shoulder cried out.