Even in a Life Like This (8)
“If you want to dig into it further, take it inside. Overusing a tool that muzzles conversation starts looking suspicious.”
While the Archmage was zealously searching for his friend, Meister shot a sidelong glance at the onlookers around them. There weren’t many, but the fact that every last one of them was a mage was a problem.
Mages’ minds were far too sharp; there was a real risk that even the things they did not want known would get out.
“Especially in a situation like this, where loud voices would be the natural thing.”
Inside his coat he had a tool that absorbed sound.
Only then did Deathbringer grasp the situation and wince.
“…Let’s head inside.”
“I don’t know what this is about. Do I need to come too?”
“If possible, Lady Berserk should also—ack. When did you get here?!”
“I came with the craftsman earlier.”
“If you don’t have anything particular to do, come listen with us.”
The Archmage only now noticed Berserk’s presence and felt a slight jolt of embarrassment, but he said as much. After all, it would be odd to send away someone who was already here, wouldn’t it? She was part of the party too.
“What about this one?”
“That is…”
Leave him. That was Deathbringer’s opinion.
We should take him. Surprisingly, that was Meister’s wish.
“That bastard’s the Inquisitor who witnessed that meeting earlier. We need to keep him quiet, don’t we?”
“…You’re saying we need to keep him quiet, and you hit him in the head? He’s definitely going to be pissed when he wakes up.”
“So would it have been better to keep that conversation going right there? When someone’s already emotionally worked up, treating them the same way isn’t going to get you a conversation. In times like these, a fist is the answer.”
“Just say you got pissed while thinking about it and hit him. Fuck, this is the guy who’s a Grandmaster Craftsman?”
…Let’s take him inside and look after him for now. The Archmage reached his conclusion. Sending him to the temple as he was would be troublesome in its own way, and there were things he wanted to say when the man woke up.
Of course… first they needed to deal with the onlookers.
“Berserk, take this man inside and look after him. Meanwhile, I should at least offer some excuse to the people around…”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You should stay inside… No. Come with me.”
After a moment’s hesitation over Meister’s displayed temper, the Archmage finally changed his mind. Considering the onlookers were mages and likely knew Meister, it might actually make persuasion easier.
Or it could make things worse precisely because they knew him, but still.
“About what just happened…”
“It’s fine. He just couldn’t control his temper and hit the guy.”
“Nice hit.”
Fortunately, it was the former case. They all knew Meister’s temper too well, or simply disliked the temple enough, that they were willing to let it slide with a shrug.
Of course, their underlying attitude seemed closer to “whatever the truth is, we don’t want to get involved with Meister—or rather, get on his bad side.”
“Just what kind of life have you been living, young man?”
“I showed a few of the ones who looked down on me and sneered the greatness of physical magic.”
That made sense. The Archmage gave up on the throbbing in his head. If persuasion was easy, that was a good thing. It was a resignation that could almost be called enlightenment.
“So why did you really call me? I don’t particularly like wasting time.”
“Well, ah. There are two reasons… One of them is that your grandfather was wondering how you’ve been doing.”
“Ah…”
So the bond between grandfather and grandson ran deep after all.
On the way back to the lodging, when the subject of his grandfather came up, Meister’s violet eyes darkened a little. The chain of his red-framed glasses swayed—dozens of pieces of coral, carved and inscribed with magic formulas, then strung together one by one.
“With the heresy charges, he can’t even come see you, so he seems quite worried.”
How long must it have taken to make those pieces serve as their own power sources, considering the wearer had no mana? The Archmage felt Cheongsanho’s affection anew as he watched the silent young man. The other seemed to have much to say as well, and couldn’t easily continue.
“If you know that, tell him to use that head of his a little while living. Does that old geezer think the world will look the other way no matter how recklessly he moves without thinking of the consequences? If he’s going to help, he should do it a little more discreetly. If age has eaten away at his skill, tell him to hurry up and retire. His grandson will support him.”
Please don’t continue so easily.
The Archmage placed a hand on his chest as Meister sniped. Cheongsanho, I don’t understand. Is it the fashion among young people these days to speak viciously while subtly showing concern? But if that’s the case, can’t they just speak kindly?
“You’re finally here?”
In the meantime, through the open door of the lodging, two people could be seen sitting close together. Inquisitor Daniel still hadn’t woken and was lying neatly behind Berserk.
“…Why is there a white cloth over his face?”
“It’s hard to check his breathing. And it’s convenient for checking when he wakes up.”
That didn’t seem like the intention. Absolutely not.
It looked like they’d covered him with the white cloth hoping he’d just go straight into a coffin.
The Archmage’s pupils trembled again, then he simply gave up. His old heart had suffered enough. Now he just wanted to let it all slide with a “whatever.”
“So what’s the other reason you called me?”
“Well… I was wondering if you might know anything about why the Demon Knight left.”
But he still had work left to do. The Archmage squeezed out every last bit of energy he had left and brought out the question he most wanted to ask.
“For reference, I heard everything you testified at the temple. The reason I’m asking now… is because I wonder if there’s anything you hid for fear of being branded a heretic.”
He also quickly added,
“You don’t need to worry about being informed on.”
In case the other party might mistake this for a temple trap.
“The moment we inform, we’d get tangled up in quite a bit ourselves.”
That was only natural; they happened to be people with the Hero as their center. If they got misunderstood and couldn’t even get the information they wanted, it would be the end.
“Hmm.”
At that, Meister’s eyes rolled this way and that. More precisely, he seemed to be gauging Deathbringer and Berserk’s true feelings.
“For reference, they didn’t know things would turn out like this. I didn’t know the situation would unfold this way either. But… they don’t need to worry either. Right? I thought you all would be quite curious about this matter as well.”
Though he hadn’t said it in advance, he believed they shared the same opinion and the same curiosity. Deathbringer was the one who most firmly believed in the Demon Knight’s innocence, and Berserk… even if Berserk had no interest in this conversation, she at least wasn’t the type to leak things to the temple.
“Well, I welcome conversations like this, but…”
As expected, Deathbringer nodded with a somewhat awkward look. Seeing that Berserk didn’t leave her seat either, she must have been curious. She shrugged her shoulders and offered only one line: “Don’t worry about anything leaking.” Combined with her track record, it carried considerable trustworthiness.
“Well, fine. If everyone’s of the same mind, I don’t mind… But separately, did you all investigate separately without sharing information?”
Yet, making the Archmage’s faith look pale, Meister crossed his arms with an indifferent face. Without sharing information. It was a phrase that pricked somewhere in the chest.
“We didn’t have time to share information, but… is there a problem?”
“Not exactly a problem.”
He said it wasn’t a problem, but his attitude suggested it was. The Archmage blinked as he watched Meister lean back.
“Anyway, if you called me for that, listen to the rest from that guy. I’ve already told him everything I have to say.”
“Ah, so the two of you already talked?”
Fortunately, the explanation that followed woke him up and also relieved him. So that was it—before he could even set the stage, those two had already had a conversation.
“Surprising… I had my suspicions, but to think it was true.”
“Then can I go? As for silencing him, that guy will handle it himself.”
“You’re going to leave after beating someone up? Are you kidding me?”
“Why? You should be thanking me instead. If you’d kept arguing in that state, only you would have been the loser.”
“No…”
But how had Meister come to know the reason the Demon Knight stopped holding back? The Archmage lightly interjected into the quarrel that was about to restart with only the participants changed.
“How did you know? The cause of the Demon Knight no longer holding back?”
“Huh?”
It was the moment when the different pieces of the puzzle they each held created confusion from the gap.
“So… you’re saying the Demon Knight has no memories?”
“That’s my guess. Only that sly bastard would know for sure.”
Meister pondered for a moment over the words from his grandfather that the Archmage had relayed. As expected of a Great Sage’s words, they were cunningly ambiguous, with far too much to think about.
“Qualifications.”
What particularly snagged was that word. Not a moral issue, but speaking of qualifications? Looking at what his grandfather had listed earlier, it clearly seemed like a sentence targeting the sacrifice of the few for the many. If that wasn’t discussing ethics, then what on earth was it?
…If even the city lord and archbishop would snort and brush it off, yet his grandfather spoke of qualifications, how deep and heavy must the weight the other party carried be?
“In all my life, I’ve never seen Grandfather step back for reasons of qualifications.”
His grandfather wasn’t the kind of mage who used such abstract things as excuses. If it could be done, it could; if not, it couldn’t. The only things that decided that were his own stance and circumstances. He had never once dared to make excuses with the word “qualifications.”
“…I’m of the same mind. You would know recent Cheongsanho better, but… the friend I knew in the past wasn’t someone who put ‘qualifications’ in his mouth either.”
And yet he had. That must mean there was ultimately nothing else he could put in his mouth.
Meister focused on that.
“This kind of hurts my pride.”
The man who, even when he pulled me out of that prison, called it a whim—helps a complete stranger and then talks about qualifications? Just what does the Demon Knight have?
This is a bit curious. Not a little—a lot. A whole lot.
“W-why all of a sudden?”
“Grandfather picked a fight with me.”
“Where on earth?”
If he says something this ambiguous and then shuts his mouth, that’s picking a fight, what else is it? It’s not like people don’t know that mages go crazy for things that are hidden.
“I have to take a fight like this.”
“I completely fail to understand why your thought process jumps like that.”
This won’t do. I was going to just know enough and move on, but I need to investigate further. As a seeker of truth, I absolutely cannot let this pass.
“Do you understand, Lord Magician?”
“Roughly…?”
“Damn it. So I couldn’t understand because I’m not a mage.”
“Don’t worry. That’s not a universal trait.”
Tap-tap.
Meister tapped his knee with his finger and switched the subject of his thoughts. What he was truly curious about was the other’s caliber, but since he currently had neither the ability nor the clues to figure that out, he intended to dig for information elsewhere first.
“He still hasn’t come, right?”
For example, something like this.
“What?”
“The information I bought this time.”
“Not yet, right?”
“Tsk.”
He turned his gaze to the second clue his grandfather had given: “He decided not to hold back.” Since he was the only one among this group who could estimate the range of the memories the Demon Knight had lost, that gaze was all the more persistent and sharp.
“A bet.”
“What?”
First, the motive for the memories disappearing. What if it was because of a bet?
He pulled out again the hypothesis he had thought of while talking on the night before the Demon Knight escaped. Honestly, that was the only thing that could be pointed to as the reason the Demon Knight lost his memories.
“But…”
“Hey, don’t mutter to yourself. No, if you’re going to mutter, say everything, or don’t leave out all the important parts.”
But if the cause of the amnesia was a bet, then why did looking over his tracks a bit produce the result of “I won’t hold back”? The evaporated memories would have taken the emotions of that time with them, so just reading a few lines of writing shouldn’t immediately produce such a radical reaction.
The hypothesis that by learning about a past he didn’t know, the memories returned also didn’t seem like the answer sheet. He didn’t think something offered as the price of a bet would return so easily.
So in the end, there was something.
There had to be something.
Something that forced his grandfather to speak of qualifications.
Something that made it so the Demon Knight without memories no longer needed to hold back.
“If we know the Demon Knight’s tracks, will some answer come out…?”
“Let us know too, okay?”
“Why are you pressing me instead of Archmage-nim?”
“Because you have more information.”
The Archmage himself hadn’t demanded that Meister tell him anything, so why was this guy with insufficient intelligence making a fuss? Was he leaning on others because he knew he couldn’t do it with his own head? Nasty personality.
Meister discussed Deathbringer’s character while conveniently omitting that he himself had kept his mouth shut. The idea that others would see them as two of a kind never entered his mind.
“So, the Demon Knight has no memories?”
At that moment, the one who had been silent until now spoke indifferently. Sitting in a way that blocked the view of the lying Inquisitor, she seemed quite regretful that she couldn’t lean against the tent. She was propping her body up with an arm on the ground. That was how it looked. What the hidden hand was really doing, no one could know.
“This one’s opinion is that it is so.”
“And you don’t know the reason for the lack of memories?”
“Since I haven’t heard anything, that would inevitably be the case.”
“Then maybe it’s not that he has no memories, but that he’s pretending not to?”
“What…?”
“You and I both know that the Demon Knight isn’t someone who would escape on baseless grounds. So we’re in a situation where we think there must be a corresponding reason for this escape.”
“…Why is that?”
“If there is no such complication?”
Yet contrary to that languid appearance, the words she offered were sharp as could be.
“If everything we’ve seen is a lie, and he simply left to survive—then what will you do?”
The thing they had so stubbornly denied and deliberately averted their eyes from was once again on the chopping block.