Evidence (5)
“I’m going to die…….”
I had finally succeeded in burning Behemoth’s brain to ash. It had been such an arduous process that I felt genuinely grateful there was no bone between the eyeball and the brain.
…You goddamn pushover.
I should have expected it the moment the vitreous humor filling most of the eyeball turned out to be as hard as frozen pork belly. If even the part that was supposed to be jelly was that tough, how solid must the actual flesh have been?
I started to wonder if I’d picked up a brand-new profession as a miner. The stuff just would not dig.
Damn it, if the Hero gets here first……!
In the end, though, I was the one who won.
I stepped carefully around the incinerated brain and onto the rim of Behemoth’s empty eye socket. The stench of blood and rot lessened a little, and the open landscape finally let me breathe.
“I burned through all my mana, so why does it feel like my stamina’s the thing that’s empty…….”
The total exhaustion of having dumped every last scrap of Demon Energy into the work made my feet stop of their own accord. If I could have, I would have just lain down somewhere convenient and rested.
You planning on walking anytime soon?
“…Maybe I should just take a break.”
I rolled my eyes at the demon who was prodding me purely because she didn’t want to die. If it hadn’t been for Faust, I would have flopped down and told the world to go to hell; the fact that I couldn’t was a genuine shame.
I-I’m fine, though…….
“No. We’re going.”
I started easing myself down the outside of the eye socket. Behemoth’s head was not a gentle slope you could simply walk down, but the tusks made it just possible enough.
With a pained grunt I stepped onto a tusk and slid the rest of the way. My slightly unsteady body nearly turned the landing into a slapstick scene.
“Almost face-planted…….”
I had come within a hair of introducing myself to this hard earth with my face. I straightened up against the tusk, rubbing the nose that had just barely escaped being broken.
I had run out of mana, not stamina, so I could still stand more or less upright.
“…Where the hell do we go now.”
One problem had appeared, however.
I had nowhere to go.
We can pick a destination later—just start moving.
“Shut up for a second.”
Please, just think while you walk!
If I had my way I would have headed straight back to that city. To Licha, to the young lord with the deep-blue hair. Faust would definitely want to see them again.
There was also the sword I needed to return, and the lucky-charm necklace.
“…Wonder if I’ll ever be able to come back here.”
But the Hero was there, my disguise had already been blown, and—most decisively—I had no Demon Energy left. More precisely, I no longer had the power that would let me escape no matter what I did.
I’m really fine.
So going back right now was probably impossible. I scratched my head while looking at the boy who was doing his best to sound calm.
“…Let’s come back in about five years.”
That was all I could offer him. The boy smiled faintly without answering.
“If I leave the sword here… not sure it’ll get recovered. Maybe I should just take it with me.”
Are you stalling on purpose?
If I was going to come back someday, I could return it then, right? I glanced at the amber sword stored in my inventory, then at the carcass of the beast I had just killed.
…I wouldn’t be able to take that either, would I? I gazed longingly at the hide that was hideously tough and hard—then shuddered as one particular past incident flashed through my mind.
“Hey hey hey hey.”
Please, Gretchen, just walk while you—!
“No, this time I’m not trying to piss you off. Is there seriously no way to take this with us?”
…Why that?
“Because I don’t want to end up like Biryuho after she ate Moby Dick.”
…….
The demon glared at me. The red light glowing from the goat-skull mask carried no special expression, yet somehow it still felt exactly like a glare.
…If we just left it, that could happen, but the Hero’s already heading this way. Leave it. They’ll purify it on their own.
“…We really can’t take the material?”
You damn Gretchen, do you think this is a game? You grab that and suddenly you’ll be able to craft a legendary item? You think some god-tier purple-named gear is going to drop?
“I know it’s not a game. Still, with hide that tough, if you made clothes out of it…….”
My dear, motherfucking Gretchen. You’re not seriously thinking a needle will go through leather that swords can’t pierce, are you? Or were you planning to cut and sew every single piece yourself?
Oh, she was pissed. I had unintentionally scratched her temper, and her lecture actually convinced me.
Fair enough—even I, overflowing with mana, had only managed to kill the relatively soft eyeball. There was no way an ordinary craftsman could turn that hide into anything useful.
“Fine, let’s go.”
I shifted Faust so he wouldn’t fall from my forearm—though he was only an illusion, so it wouldn’t have mattered—and set him on my shoulder, then turned south.
With the eastern wall on my left while I ran horizontally, this should be south.
“…Think the stuff I’ve been doing the last few weeks might get me wanted?”
At the same time I started worrying about the future. Worry over the second identity I had barely managed to build, now blown.
Who cares?
W-well…….
“I’d be pretty sad if I got wanted.”
If that form ended up on a wanted poster, I wouldn’t be able to set foot in Manahfelt again either.
That really was a shame. There were things I had wanted to say to Sir Walter. That the swordsmanship he taught me had saved my life. That I was truly grateful.
I swallowed the thick regret and bounced across the rocky desert. Demon Energy showed no sign of recovering anytime soon, so I was running completely raw—yet my speed was still respectable.
…Pick up the pace.
“Ugh, you’re so damn pushy.”
Meanwhile the demon kept needling me without ever raising her voice.
Probably because I had locked her into an unfair contract from a position of superiority. In a way she even looked pathetic.
“And you—stop playing weak.”
But did that make her look funny or pitiful? Absolutely not.
“I know people like you. People who, instead of repenting to the very end, just wait for a chance to betray.”
That bastard had wiped out an entire family, parasitized the sole survivor’s body, and slaughtered any number of humans. She had forced an unfair contract on a child, kept up the psychological abuse, and just a little while ago had even threatened him with his hometown. A complete piece of garbage.
“You’re definitely running calculations right now on how to stab me in the back. Looking for loopholes in the contract so you can gut me at the critical moment. And you’ve got some trump card you’ll only reveal when it’s truly the last resort. Scum like you value your own lives that much.”
In short, she was the worst kind of irredeemable criminal. Even the pathetic act could be performance meant to lower my guard. Trash that deserved neither mercy nor opportunity.
“So don’t try to get cozy with me. My kindness isn’t for the likes of you.”
…….
I pushed the now expressionless demon—so blank it made her earlier begging look ridiculous—out of my field of vision.
…Um.
Instead I tilted my head slightly toward the child who was whispering. The boy was so small it was hard to read his face as he mumbled.
If the Hero finds us, it might hurt a little, but you could still die in a stable way.
Because we were close—or because he was linked to my mind—his voice came through with perfect clarity.
So… I’m really fine. Maybe you should just go back now. Nine years is… too long.
That was, honestly, the last thing I wanted to hear.
“You might have already guessed.”
Thud, thud. My body, kicking off the ground without mana, leapt over a rock. I could have gone around, but it was easy enough to clear, so I just jumped it.
“If there had been even one person around you who could help, I never would have helped you. Why? Because even if there was no malice, what I went through because of you is something I still can’t forgive.”
Even after the first rock, the path was not smooth. A second boulder appeared almost immediately. Maybe it was better to call the whole ground uneven. Fractured earth rose like a giant staircase.
“Honestly, even looking at you right now makes me a little uncomfortable. I’m human too. I’m someone who wants to say it hurts sometimes.”
I studied the rise carefully, found a protruding spot, and stepped on it. The tiny bit of mana that had recovered in the meantime helped my jump. After that the mana bar slammed back to empty.
“But more than that, I feel sorry for you. The circumstances that force a kid to say things like that. The tragedy of having nowhere to ask for help. I hate it and I pity it.”
Thud, thud, thud. My body zigzagged up the rocks and returned to the main track.
“That’s why. The only reason I’m helping you is because of that.”
But I… I don’t deserve your pity.
And of course there was always another mountain beyond the mountain. More to climb.
A new stretch of terrain appeared—too high and steep to simply step up the protrusions, and too wide left-to-right to go around easily.
I stopped for a moment in front of the jutting cliff face.
“What do you mean, ‘deserve’.”
You already know. Setting aside what I did to you… I couldn’t properly control that demon and created dozens of victims. And to bring you here I offered thousands of people as sacrifices.
The voice ringing in my ears rode the breath that was starting to come hard.
I’m trash like that. A fool who has no right to be saved by anyone. So no matter how I look at it, this is the right call. I… I’m not worth you investing nine years of your life.
How was I supposed to get over this? Hey, Gretchen. I hooked my fingers into the collar of my shirt, trying to ease the frustration even a little. We have to go. But the shirt was already completely unbuttoned. That kid chose this side over the beast’s corpse. In the end I just sighed.
“…Let’s review from the beginning.”
Still, if I climbed carefully, I would reach the top eventually. I rolled up my sleeves—already so tattered it made no difference—and grabbed the uneven surface of the cliff.
“First, failing to control the demon and creating dozens of victims was never your fault. You didn’t give up on controlling it; you tried and came up short. Right?”
But if I’d just been a little stronger…….
“‘If I’d been a little stronger’ is an unnecessary assumption. That’s not something you can control.”
Even without mana, my sturdy body wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t have much rock-climbing experience, so I kept losing the route, but at least I never failed from lack of grip strength or core power. Not at the beginning, anyway.
“When people get hurt by external factors they can’t interfere with or control, we usually call that a disaster. And when a disaster hits, the fault is never the victim’s. It’s absolutely not your fault. Got it?”
…….
“And offering people as sacrifices… yeah. That one I can’t approve of either. Wrong is wrong.”
Around the halfway point I started to feel the strain. To be more honest, it was getting pretty damn hard.
Crumble. The occasional collapsing foothold and the burning muscles were more exhausting than running hundreds of meters. Even dumping the scraps of recovered mana in between didn’t change that.
Climbing bare-handed as a total amateur was not something anyone should do.
“But… you were young, and there wasn’t a single person who could help you—you couldn’t even call for rescue. On top of that, the environment you were abandoned in was something even an adult couldn’t easily endure. I think we have to acknowledge that.”
Still, I had passed the halfway mark. Yeah, halfway. I looked down at the ground that was now too awkward to return to, and up at the remaining distance that had shrunk a lot, then reached again. Only half left.
“I’m not saying being young excuses everything. And I’m not saying the people you killed being criminals somehow justifies it. I’m just saying that considering your age and your circumstances, I believe you deserve one chance.”
Even though I… even though I killed that many people?
“Yeah. Even so, that’s what I think.”
Could the blood price of thousands of lives ever really be forgiven? Probably not. Whether they were criminals or not, the dead would never understand a child.
“If struggling to stay alive is a sin that means you have to die, that’s just too unreasonable.”
And I didn’t believe many people could have made a different choice in an environment where you never slept, hurt every second, and would kill someone the moment you let your guard down.
So the chance had to be given. Withholding even the chance to become better just because the pile of sins was large was far too cruel.
But how… how could I do that? What right do I have to live on top of those people’s blood…….
Leaving him to die when he had never even properly gotten to live felt too pitiful.
“You know, Faust. The reason I spent a while thrashing around saying I didn’t care if I died was because I couldn’t see any hope of things getting better. Guilt was crushing me, and the demon problem could explode anytime, anywhere. I couldn’t feel any reason to stay alive, so I thought dying might be better.”
…Yes.
“But not anymore. If I hold out for nine years, you get a chance to live. The time I endure now has meaning.”
At the very edge of the cliff I had finally reached, I moved my arm one last time.
“My nine years will become your fifty. And your fifty years might save more people than you killed. You might end up doing more good than the sins you committed.”
Crumble. My fingertips found the top of the cliff. My whole body, soaked in sweat, felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“So live, Faust. The sins on your shoulders will be heavy and the guilt will torment you constantly, but live anyway. If you keep living, the chance to atone will come. Moments will come when, because you weren’t forgiven, you can become a better person. That’s life. That’s what life is.”
Since it was the end, I put the last of my strength into those fingertips. My body was hauled up and I collapsed onto the top of the cliff. Fuck. Never again was I rock-climbing without mana.
“And let’s be honest—after killing thousands of people and grinding down one adult just to keep yourself barely alive, cutting that life short here would just be rude.”
Even though I could feel the presence of holy power drawing near, I stayed sprawled on the ground without the slightest intention of moving. The Inquisitor was in full armor; there was no way she could free-climb a cliff in that. That was the calculation behind my boldness.
“Faust.”
…Yes.
“Even after all that, do you still want to die?”
The calculation seemed correct—the holy power presence stopped at the base of the cliff and didn’t move.
“Do you really want to die?”
No. It moved.
…I…
Uh-oh. Hey, Gretchen. My instincts suddenly started ringing every alarm. I think we need to move right now— My eyes flew wide open.
I…….
KRAAAAAANG!
A massive surge of holy power smashed into the cliff, and the whole face began to collapse.