Understandable (10)
"Stabbing and cutting him to inflict pain even inside a deathless mental landscape, tormenting him with burning agony while he's awake—it's all the same principle. The more the mind is worn down, the easier it collapses… and pain is a very efficient tool for breaking a person's spirit."
Ordinarily, as the watcher, he would have stopped it. But with his power gone, there was no longer any point. The boy squeezed his eyes shut.
"And his true nature is flame. While the Concealment of Ignorance still covered him, he probably would have died easily enough… but from the moment you heard this truth, even tearing out his heart or blowing his body apart won't kill him."
Eyes older than a ruined veteran's, more exhausted than a beggar's on a midwinter street, disappeared behind his lids.
"And that pain means nothing to him. Unlike us."
"…So what you're saying is."
"…Even if his whole body is crushed to powder, even if he's burned alive, even a moment's sleep is forbidden. The second he lets go of consciousness for any reason at all, he'll rise again without the slightest disturbance—unlike us."
The eyelids of the one who had endured all of it alone hung impossibly heavy.
"…I'm sorry. I really should have kept my mouth shut to the end."
A dull boom. Another corner of the world tore free.
"I really shouldn't have said anything……."
I still couldn't grasp the weight of the words the boy had spoken, yet the world collapsed without mercy. Kuuung. Falling fragments brushed closer and closer to my heart.
"That means… so…"
I forced the creaking gears of my mind to turn.
Even if his heart is torn out and his body blown apart, he will not die.
Even if his whole body is crushed, even if he burns alive, even if he fails to endure a single moment of sleep—he will be taken.
The moment those two lines of text reached for me like a swamp, the sound of shoes drew near.
It was coming toward me. Hands laced behind its head as if it had no intention of fighting, white hair swaying gently with each step.
The red light rising between goat bones kept seizing my gaze and refusing to let go.
"Nine years until the contract ends. Without sleep. Without yielding to the burning agony I'll inflict whenever I please. In a world where everything will try to kill you. In pain that can no longer be veiled—can you endure those nine years, Gretchen?"
"Stay back!"
The boy gripped his sword and tried to bar the demon's path. "I said stay back!" But the demon's steps did not stop.
Shunk! Instead, she reached out, seized the boy's blade, and drove it cleanly into her own abdomen. Blood, ash-water, and flame spilled down together.
And when the guard of the sword sank deep enough to press against her belly, the demon looked straight at me with the boy still caught between us. The blood-red light smiled strangely.
Ssslick. The demon stepped back again. The retreat tore the wound wide open, yet her expression never changed. Even the unmasked portion of her face made that clear.
Clap. A gloved hand struck another in applause, laughing in her place.
"Right. What was it you said earlier? That it was my fault for devouring the child, and that the one who suffered had done nothing wrong? But Gretchen—did you know? That child lasted less than eight months before he made a contract with me."
The black-and-white world shattered for the first time. "…I—!" A voice close to a scream stabbed into the hollow center of that empty world.
"I……!"
"I……."
The more the words continued, the more the pitch-black was erased, and the child's head sank lower and lower. Was it a good exchange rate? That was still impossible to say.
"And yet that child chose his family over you. You were only caught up in this. The pain you've already suffered is more than enough to break anyone. You cry for your family just the same as he does! Knowing all of that, he still shoved you into a worse hell to protect his own family."
"Ah……."
The other party had clearly given us something—yet at the same time, it was taking something away. Something far larger.
Poison spread through my entire body.
It was a deadly poison.
After the demons withdrew, the Inquisitor ordered the soldiers to rest for three hours. She meant to wait for the morning when the sky would grow wide, and to restore the strength they would need to run for Munmunt.
"Endless hunger, is it……."
So Deathbringer decided to use that time with Daniel to investigate why the village had become like this. They did not need to go far. The people who had opened the gates for them were right there.
"Would it be all right if we asked for the details?"
Only a few among them were in good enough condition to explain, however.
Deathbringer and Daniel shared out a little water and gently drew the story from a man who claimed to be a Munmunt soldier and a woman named Ticha.
"Please."
At first the two hesitated, but before the emblem of the Order they finally parted their lips.
"We first felt something strange yesterday at dawn. People were complaining of unusual thirst and hunger."
"Thirst and hunger……."
"It was still manageable until around noon. But from the afternoon on, the anomalies started. A few of the people who had been especially hungry ate every scrap of food in their houses, then started ripping vegetables straight out of the fields and devouring them."
"Even the vegetables in the fields?"
"Yes."
"…You mean they ate them raw? Without cooking them at all?"
"That's right."
When Daniel asked back with a touch of dismay, the soldier nodded calmly. For some reason he was here instead of Munmunt; he rested a hand on a recent injury.
"And what did you do after that?"
"Mm. You should hear this part from Ticha. She was the first to find them."
The soldier, accustomed to reports and leading the conversation until now, passed the baton to Ticha. The woman with the shadowed face bit her parched lips.
"…At first I tried to talk them down. But they wouldn't even listen. When I tried to hold them back they just kept shaking me off. So I called the soldier and we decided to lock them in their houses instead. Whether we found a solution or not, we had to protect the fields first. But while everyone was working together to lock the mad ones inside, more and more people started ripping up vegetables."
"…There was no distinction—old people, young people, children. Even one of my own comrades started searching for food like a lunatic."
That one had stuffed his stomach so full he threw everything back up, the soldier said, and still kept trying to put more in his mouth. With every word their faces twisted further.
"We locked up someone who'd lost their mind, and another madman appeared. We locked that one up, and another showed. Then people started falling into the wells because they were so thirsty… I realized it was hopeless. So I proposed that only the people still in their right minds stay outside to distribute rations, and everyone else wait inside their houses."
"…Yes."
"It seemed to work reasonably well—until past midnight."
And when they reached the final part, both of them shut their eyes with faces ruined beyond recognition.
"…While we were patrolling the village to watch for demons, we heard screaming from one of the houses where we'd locked the residents. When we opened the door to check… we found villagers eating their own bodies. Not one or two. Several of them."
It was as if a soundless scream reached them.
"Fuck. Even if there's nothing to eat—eating your own body? Does that make any goddamn sense……."
Ticha finally let the tears stream down her face.
"So the reason all of you are here……."
"…In case someone decided to start eating other people instead of themselves."
Humans devouring themselves was already hell enough; people attacking others would be a worse hell still. The decision had been made to escape that hell, the soldier said in a trembling voice.
"Of course we don't know what will happen to us either, so we agreed to keep gags in our mouths."
The soldier pointed to the scarves looped around his and Ticha's necks. So that was why everyone had cloth bound over their mouths.
"Um, Father."
After they finished the entire explanation, perhaps a few dozen seconds of silence passed. Then the soldier carefully spoke again, as if something remained unsaid.
"I—when I abandoned the villagers, I……."
The voice that had stayed relatively composed through the telling began to shake, and his eyes trembled violently.
The desperation of having to abandon the villagers so coldly. The fear that a priest who had heard it would rebuke him. The terror of a broken reality.
All of it could be felt in the soldier's trembling.
"Their deaths are not Brother's sin. Nor Sister's either."
A low clerical voice cut cleanly through that trembling.
"R-really? Really, I—I……."
"I swear in the name of God—you did the best that could be done at the time. As an Inquisitor, I guarantee it. So do not torment yourselves overmuch. Those people did not die because of you. Everyone still here is alive because of you."
Because he was a priest of sorts, the comfort landed all the more effectively. Borrowing the strength of faith, the two of them set down their burdens. Ordinarily the Inquisitors were an eyesore, but at times like this they proved genuinely useful.
"Hey, you old stick. So this is really……."
"…It is the curse of a Great Demon. I had heard the stories, but Erysichthon truly was in this area."
Separately, Deathbringer slipped the question in. The answer matched his expectations, and his brow creased.
"How could you not notice a curse spreading this wide?"
"I know it will sound like an excuse, but that particular curse truly cannot be helped. Endless hunger and eternal thirst are not curses laid upon a sacrifice—they move along with Erysichthon's domain."
"Fuck, that's just cheating."
"…On the other hand, it never lingers this long either. At most a day; usually only for the length of a battle."
Affecting a radius this large, this many living things, was no easy feat even for a Great Demon. The mere fact that the North had not already been reduced to scorched earth proved as much.
If Erysichthon could wield this curse freely, the creature would simply have planted itself in a city and sat there until the place collapsed.
"That's a relief, then."
"…Yes. It is a relief."
"But why has it lasted more than two days this time?"
"I couldn't say……."
Even Daniel could not easily pick an answer to the question Deathbringer had just posed. Having never operated in the North, he lacked clues about Erysichthon, which made it worse.
"It may be… aiming for something."
So he stopped at a hypothesis any reasonably sharp mind could have guessed.
"Something it wants badly enough to go to this much trouble for."
"Hmm."
"Of course, if the target were only Munmunt the numbers don't quite add up, so there must be a deeper scheme… but what that is, I don't know."
It was a hypothesis certain knights had once put forward as well.
"Munmunt is a famous city, but if we're being cold about it—after two Great Demons have already died—risking another life just to bring it down feels a little thin……."
"…Maybe it's confident it can get out alive?"
"I don't know. Even if a Great Demon itself escapes, its subordinates are definitely expended. Demons don't replenish their forces on the spot either. And the Hero is in the East, isn't he? The ground the demons have taken becomes much easier to reclaim the moment the Hero joins the fight. It's not as if the demons don't know that……."
"Then maybe they're after the bookworm…? No, that doesn't make sense. If they wanted the bookworm, a sudden ambush would be more effective."
"…Or the other one slipped down here in secret the same way Erysichthon did."
"So that one was used as bait to draw the Hero out? And when the Hero arrives, the two of them hit him together?"
"Yes. If they only kill the Hero, reclaiming the northern front they've been losing would become entirely possible."
"It's not impossible, but… would that actually work?"
Given the subject, the two of them set aside their grudge against each other for the moment. "That's not it." Then Meister cut in from the side.
"They don't even know whether the Hero will come to Munmunt or not. How are two Great Demons supposed to just latch on?"
"…Then what do you think this whole mess is for?"
"How should I know?"
"Oh for— You don't know either, so—"
"But the fact that so much manpower is being concentrated in the East, and that once they've almost all gathered every eye turns toward Munmunt—that itself is exactly the sight they wanted."
The glasses covering his eyes twitched at the tip of a finger.
"You're supposed to handle information and you still haven't noticed?"
"……?"
"The timeline's been twisted."
"Timeline? What are you—"
"…Yesterday at dawn."
At Meister's single remark, Deathbringer's pupils expanded without his willing it. His mind spun at blistering speed and found the distortion he had missed.
"…Erysichthon arrived here yesterday at dawn."
"I—I'm not sure what you mean……."
"Damn it! Think about the date we heard the news of a Great Demon's appearance and set out, versus the actual date Erysichthon showed up! You said it yourself earlier—the hunger and thirst these people are suffering moves with Erysichthon!"
"…Ah?"
"We heard about the Great Demon before Erysichthon even appeared! Probably as a scheme to concentrate manpower here!"
Daniel's eyes went wide.
I looked at the child's round back of the head while that poison flowed into my ears. The back that had stood to protect me was slowly collapsing.
Was it pity?
Or was it hatred?
"…Do you have some disease that forces you to wag your tongue every second? Shut up for a minute. I can't think with you talking."
Suddenly, the first day I met Licha floated up.
"I—"
The thought I had once allowed myself was being refined into sentences and recited back to me now, so of course I had no choice but to remember.
Ah. If I gathered every tear and drop of blood I had shed, would it run deeper than what the boy had spilled?
"……."
I clenched and unclenched my palms in front of the bowed child. The lack of feeling in my hands and feet was a little disgusting. White breath escaped me.
"It's not fine."
"……!"
What needed admitting, I would admit. This—was definitely not fine.
"Not even a little fine."
Someone who had stayed silent through every desperate plea only opened his mouth for his family's safety. And because of that, I had been driven into hell. That was truly not fine.
"It's not fine."
But, but…….
"…Still, it's not his fault."
Even if the boy's choice was selfish, did I have any right to be angry at him? I was the one who put the safety of someone precious on the negotiation table. I was the one who had driven the boy this far.
Did I have any right to be angry that he spoke?
"Loving your family isn't a sin."
The boy had prioritized his family over me, and this was the result. But if the boy had prioritized me over his family and stayed silent, I would never have felt glad of him either.
"No."
So it was only catastrophe.
"We've come too far for forgiveness."
From the moment I was summoned to this place, we had always been destined to end up like this.
"So, Pasha."
"……!"
"When everything is over, apologize for this."
"Ah……."
"That'll be enough."
Like knitting that went wrong from the first stitch—there is no choice but to unravel everything and start again—our relationship had to break and be remade.
"Eight months. You held on well."