Kneeling for the Future
“I had received a vow from the Demon Knight.”
“What kind of vow, exactly?”
Dev, who had just returned with most of the double-tails he had seen earlier trailing behind him, asked the Inquisitor. She answered clearly, one word at a time.
“A vow that when I pointed out someone who was about to become infected and turn into a zombie, he would not harm them recklessly.”
“…What?”
The expressions on the faces of Dev’s tails, who had overheard unintentionally, turned terrifying. At the same time, so did the atmosphere among the surrounding crowd.
“Hey, does that mean… the person is here…?”
“They are.”
“In this port.”
“Yes. Which is why we need to resolve this as quickly as possible, but…”
Meanwhile, Dev’s face had gone pale. I could roughly guess what he was thinking, and it left me feeling a little bitter.
I’m sorry for messing things up when I couldn’t even help.
“Those temple bastards after all—!”
Someone roared at that moment. Boss Lahong, was it? An extremely old pirate. The wrinkles and scars on her face testified to the years she had lived.
“You can’t trust a single—!”
Then her eyes met mine. I hadn’t been thinking anything particular, but Lahong herself flinched in fright and swallowed her words.
“Y-you.”
In the meantime, Baramson approached with a tap, tap, tap and asked while trembling. His hand was gripping the Inquisitor’s shoulder—far gentler than a collar grab.
“That talk… that talk…”
“…It is not a lie. But do not worry about such things. I will not throw away the chance I only just received.”
If I’d heard this back when we were hunting the dragon, or when we first ran into each other on this island, would he have tried to kill me on the spot?
But Baramson had spent several days around the Inquisitor as a person. And the Inquisitor, frankly, was such an easy person to read that you could figure her out in a single day.
“I’ll believe you. I will.”
That finally drew a different reaction from him.
“So tell me. Who is it? Who the hell…”
“Baramson!”
“Tell me.”
The Inquisitor’s red eyebrows fluttered once. Her green eyes rolled about for a moment before coming to a stop in one place.
“They are standing over there.”
Everyone’s gazes whipped around. A short distance from the shop stood a young man of the Middle race, perched atop a barrel.
“……?”
Suddenly the center of attention, the youth wore a question mark on his face.
“Uh, is something wrong?”
He even spun around, thinking people were looking behind him, then realized that wasn’t the case and pointed a finger at himself.
From his boyish face he looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, which only made him seem younger.
“Ah, wait a second, Sir Knight—”
“Whoa!”
But right now he was my lunch… no, that wording was a bit off. Prey… assassination target… wait, I wasn’t planning to kill him. If he hadn’t been infected yet, even with the “hates demons” concept I could afford him a little time.
In the end I gave up on the bit and simply hauled the youth down by the body.
The young man, a full handspan shorter than me, trembled all over. The fact that he was so tense he didn’t even make a sound pricked my conscience quite a bit.
“Let that child go!”
In place of that, perhaps, Lahong—who had been crushed under my presence—erupted in a bellow.
“How dare you point a finger at one of my crew!”
From the way she had bowed earlier I hadn’t expected her to shout at me so easily. Still, a captain was a captain of her own ship. With one of her own sailors involved she was spitting fire.
“If the rest of you are going to just stand there, I’ll kill those bastards myself!”
“…! Wait, Lahong, stop!”
“Hold her back! Didn’t you see them helping us?!”
“Boss, you saw that fight earlier yourself! We can’t turn them into enemies!”
“All of you get out of the way! You all heard what that one just said!”
But I was a pure concept tool. Of course I didn’t listen, and Lahong finally tried to draw her weapon.
If the others hadn’t blocked her it would have gotten a bit awkward. Not that it wasn’t awkward even now.
“Can’t we please resolve this peacefully?!”
At the same time, just as Lahong was about to unleash her second roar, Dev—who had approached and seized my arm—whispered desperately.
It was not something you said to someone who had solved every problem with force so far. Especially not to someone still trying to solve this one with force right now.
“Let go…!”
“Aigo, Sir! If you lay a hand here we’re all finished and you know it…!”
“I-I have something to say about that part.”
“What is it?!”
“At this stage, treatment is possible. For that person.”
“Why are you only saying that now?!?!”
And now a peaceful solution shows up?
“I-I was going to say it! It’s just that I was cautioned it was a sensitive subject, so I couldn’t speak carelessly!”
“You absolute blockhead!!”
“Do not direct vulgar words at me!!”
“What are you talking about, you idiot!!”
Aigo, Dumpling! I didn’t expect that stubborn streak to pull another one here…!
“Wait, there’s a treatment method?”
“You said there’s a way to cure him?”
“No, we don’t need it! Nobody’s buying that crap!”
“Wait, Lahong! I told you to hold on!”
Haha, what a mess.
On one side Lahong was going wild; right in front of me the Inquisitor, Dev, and a few others were spitting out words in a clamor; and the surrounding crowd was murmuring with anxiety. Watching that complete chaos, I slowly raised my hand.
KWAANG!
Even though the ground was solid rock, the black gauntlet wrapped in pitch-black magic sank into it as easily as soft tofu. The accompanying roar and vibration silenced the entire gathering.
“Speak. In detail.”
Among those frozen solid by my show of force, Dev moved first. Poke. His elbow jabbed the Inquisitor, and like an answering machine she delivered her report.
“If the infection and fusion have not yet fully progressed, it has become possible to purify only the demon inside the body. However, given how much time has already been spent, delaying further may become dangerous.”
Is that so. Meaning if we just purify him now, the problem is solved?
“Choose.”
With a path for everyone to live now open, I reacted first. Before anyone else could open their mouths I grabbed the one still in my hand and shook him.
The youth still held in my grip instinctively thrashed.
“Die by my hand, or receive treatment.”
“Y-yes?”
Aigo, even while thrashing why are you so light? Still not done growing? Why so tiny. Are you even eating properly?
Muttering things that would never reach him inside my head, I calmly continued the roleplay.
“I will not offer twice.”
“Eek! W-wait, just a moment please. I still don’t understand what you’re talking about…!”
“Sir, please. You have to explain before you ask!”
“Put that kid down right now!”
“Look here, Lahong. They say they can purify just the demon inside the body, so what’s the problem?”
“Everything, everything is the problem! How are we supposed to trust the temple’s words!”
Boss Lahong screamed her distrust as if in agony.
“I—!”
But the Inquisitor cut her off by raising her hand. That instantly gathered everyone’s attention. Her intense crimson hair swayed lightly around the line of her neck.
“I know that you cannot accept me. However, the moment his brain is eaten away, that person will reach an irreversible state.”
“Temple, shut your mouth!”
“The heart that wishes to save him may end up killing him!”
“I said shut—!”
“Holy Power is!”
The Inquisitor was not a dumpling who yielded so easily. As Lahong’s voice rose, the Inquisitor’s rose right along with it.
It wasn’t screaming. She was simply roaring with guts and volume.
“The power of purification at least does not harm a human body! If you truly doubt it, allow us to perform the purification just once! Not a single hair on his head will be harmed!”
“How are we supposed to trust the likes of you and do that!”
“I am not asking for faith! I am asking for a chance!”
Wow, her voice is insanely loud. It was a volume that could fill the entire secret port and even reach out over the sea.
“I am not begging for forgiveness—I am only asking that you give us the chance to save a person who is dying right now!”
At the same time those words were true. I somehow understood the moment when she had supposedly persuaded the people of Zakrati through conversation.
“You—!”
“S-Sir Knight.”
Just as Lahong was about to swell the veins in her neck with rage, the youth held in my hand called out to me while trembling. In that short time he had heard the abbreviated explanation from Dev and was trying to make a decision.
“I-I’m… infected, right? That’s what it seems like?”
“No, no, Lianty! Don’t be fooled by those people’s words. You…!”
“Then I’ll take it. That treatment thing.”
“Lianty!”
“Hic, Captain.”
So the youth’s name was Lianty. At Lahong’s call he thrashed once more.
“C-Captain! I know you hate the temple, and I don’t exactly like them either…! But if I’m really infected, then it’ll hurt the other people too. So… just once… wouldn’t it be okay?! They said I won’t get hurt from the examination either. Would the people who saved the port really lie?”
Whether he was a coward or unexpectedly stout-hearted, the youth carefully watched Lahong’s expression yet still stated his opinion clearly, word by word.
At that, Lahong’s face—and the faces of quite a few others—transformed into those of people who had received a shock. Mostly they were of the Slend race, or those who looked older.
“That’s the temple.”
“Y-yeah. It looks like it.”
“The temple.”
“…Right.”
“And yet he says to give them a chance.”
“B-but our lives are on the line.”
Around then a realization suddenly struck me.
Lahong looked at face value to be at least over fifty. In contrast this youth was twenty-something at most even if you stretched it.
Of course, since it was an incident from forty years ago and the parties involved were still everywhere, it wasn’t as if the next generation had no hostility at all…
But those who lived it and those who only heard about it were ultimately different. Especially when it wasn’t just about caring for a comrade—your own life was on the line as well.
“I-it won’t hurt, right?”
“Depending on the progress of the infection, you may feel a little dizzy.”
“How much?”
“If it has already started eating the brain, a lot? Otherwise just a bit of nausea? Ah, there may be side effects depending on how much of the brain has been eaten.”
“…Could you do it for me quickly?”
“Lianty!”
“Hic.”
“How could you—how could you!”
“I-I’m sorry! But Captain, I don’t want to become a demon! I don’t want my brain eaten and I especially don’t want to attack my comrades!”
“What in the…!”
“I-I want to live and go back to my hometown village…! Captain, you said you’d make that happen too.”
The outlaw’s subordinate released the youth’s arm. There was no longer any need to hold him.
“So please… look the other way just this once. Please.”
In exchange, Lahong’s knees thudded to the ground.
“Boss!”
“B-Boss!”
Baramson felt as if his heart were being sliced as he looked at the kneeling figure.
It couldn’t be helped. Lahong’s knees were not hers alone. They were the knees representing him, them, every single person who shared that moment.
Pirates, city soldiers, civilians—regardless of occupation, gender, or age—the person who, on this spot, was crying out the rage of every soul who remembered that day.
“…How… how…”
“…Boss.”
“How can you… the temple…”
“…He’s young, isn’t he.”
“But—but look at what the temple did to us!”
The raw scream was like a dagger, piercing the hearts of those who had endured the same years.
Yes—it only pierced those of the same generation.
You could tell just by looking at the faces of those who deeply shared Lahong’s cry and those who could not.
“…Yeah. That’s right. But… he’s only sixteen now. He was born twenty-four years after that incident.”
“…….”
Our long-held hatred had now become ours alone.
“You know kids who never went through that… have a hard time hating the temple the way we do.”
“But—but…”
Just as he could still smell the ash of that day in the charcoal, while children of his kids’ age only thought about scribbling and playing.
“Lahong.”
“Baramson, even you. Even you have forgotten? How can even you…”
“As if I could forget. Hey, just because my face looks young doesn’t mean the fact that I’ve lived as long as you vanishes.”
“Then how…”
“Fuck, it’s shit. Absolute fucking shit. The hatred still lives and breathes inside this chest, but as the years pass the bastards who remember it all drop dead one by one. I’m still completely swallowed by that day’s memories and burn at the slightest trigger, yet those damn brats look at me like I’m the weird one.”
“Then—then why…”
“Goddamn it, that doesn’t mean I can lose my family all over again!”
Baramson quietly knelt in front of Lahong.
Their touching foreheads recalled the warmth of that time—that burning time—when they had clung to complete strangers and thrashed about, begging just to survive together.
“We can’t make our families go through the same experience as us again…”
It was endlessly sorrowful.
“Hey Lahong. Let’s endure just once. Fuck, even if it’s hard as hell, let’s endure. We’ll keep living on the ashes that burned forever, but those kids don’t have to.”
It was far too sorrowful…
“This damned life is enough for us.”
The cold meal tasted like absolute garbage. Still, if I wanted to live—and if I wanted the strength to keep going—filling my stomach was the right call.
“S-so I did bring back the information you requested.”
I greeted Dev while stuffing wilted leaves into my mouth. Thanks to the consideration of the port’s leaders, the tavern had become our private restaurant-and-rest area for as long as we stayed.
“The materials.”
“Yes sir.”
I set the bundle of papers Dev had brought onto the table. A world without Excel was this inconvenient; once again I had to read every line of prose just to grasp the contents.
“By the way, how did the treatment go?”
“That went well.”
While I was staring at the documents as if my eyes would fall out, the Inquisitor answered mid-way through wolfing down her stew.
There seemed to be a lot of potato and meat and who-knows-what crammed in her mouth, yet she somehow swallowed it all at once.
“The port search results?”
“Those were fine too.”
For reference, right after treating that youth earlier, the Inquisitor and I had walked the entire port just in case. We wanted to check if there were more people whose infections were progressing.
“Dozens more were discovered, but we treated them all.”
“Dozens, you say?”
“Someone had been supplying food ingredients containing parasites here. Those who ate them became infected.”
“…A traitor?”
“Nothing has been uncovered yet.”
“The source of the food?”
“For the time being we’ve gathered everyone with access to the food stores and are interrogating them. But the food itself was obtained from outside, so…”
“Catching the culprit will be tricky. Man, what a complicated situation.”
It was hard to say things were going to absolute shit when the situation was already so dire.
Traitor, spy, or even just a mistake—any of them could come out of a structure like this, so there wasn’t much to say. The problem was what would happen after we left.
“It’s not like Sir is going to stay until the traitor is found, either.”
That was true as well. If a formal and mandatory quest to find the traitor had been handed over I might stay, but otherwise there wasn’t much reason to hang around helping.
Unlike Dev, neither I nor the Inquisitor were particularly useful for hunting traitors.
On top of that, the longer we held out here the more the disadvantages stacked against us alone.
If we stayed and defended it would help in the short term, but it would also give the enemy time. I wanted to avoid giving them time only for them to summon some grotesque demon.
I intended to leave this place as soon as possible and race toward the end of this quest.
“You can ease your worries about this place a little. There’s a mage who came here for research and ended up getting caught in the incident; we’ve arranged to pass word to the main force through him.”
“Ah, I heard about that. Zakrati really managed to send a rescue request all the way to the mainland temple. Thanks to that this place will be able to receive support right away too.”
“…I can only be grateful for the opportunity.”
Ah, then even if we leave there won’t be any major problems. If the support arrives immediately they’ll at least be able to prepare.
Or they could evacuate people to the rear.
That’s a relief.
“Then the problems on this side are at least settled for now. The friction with the temple seems finished as well. What’s left is catching Bipurit?”
Right. The immediate goal was hitting Bipurit’s faction’s base, but the final objective was Bipurit’s neck after all.
“…You’re not heading out right away, are you?”
Well, are we going to hit the base? My fatigue is pretty dicey so I plan to rest a bit first.
I reflected on whether I had really been charging around so recklessly—while having zero intention of fixing it—and flipped through the documents.
Right after, I finally understood correctly—probably—the words Dev had spoken with the subject omitted, which I had taken the wrong way.
The map clearly marked the castle where Bipurit was located. It was a different place from the one Baramson had known.
∎ Find Bipurit’s Faction Base 11 / ?
∎ Eliminate Bipurit’s Faction Base 11 / ?
∎ Move to the Enemy-Occupied Ayu Hin
∎ Bonus: Kill Bipurit