The Anniversary (1)
Unwelcome no matter where she went, Rasha had stuffed her sub-space pouch with every supply imaginable. She wrung herself dry, then changed into fresh clothes.
Chasing the old man out was no longer an option. After enduring him for so long, Rasha knew all too well that he was not the kind of person who listened when people spoke.
Rather than waste energy on a pointless struggle, it would be faster to simply grant what the old man wanted and send him on his way. That was the resolution she'd made — and yet there was no helping how irritating it was to have him humming tunelessly at her side the whole while.
"So what exactly is on this island that a big shot like you came running all the way here yourself?"
At her question, voiced while she did her best to suppress the friction between them, the old man cracked a grin.
"The Chief God left a miracle behind with His own hands."
"Ah. Of course you'd say that."
Had anything about this man changed since ascending to the papacy? Then again, only a lunatic like this would have clawed his way to that seat in the first place.
"By the way, old man. Before we hit the dungeon, can we look around the city for a bit? There's someone I'm looking for."
"If you mean Heishan, who reached A-rank not long ago, she is not here at present."
"...Seriously?"
"A noble of the Soladin Kingdom took her along, I hear. Someone of her caliber must have proven useful in some fashion."
"Ha. Goddamn it."
She had swum herself half to death to reach the Archipelago, only to gain a headache instead of the person she'd come for. Whoever had taken Heishan away — if Rasha ever got her hands on them, she'd wreck them.
"Let's head straight to the dungeon. When our business is done, I'll put you on a ship."
Hearing this, Rasha weighed her options. Which was worse — riding on the same boat as this creepy human being, or swimming all the way back to the continent?
The answer came quickly. Even a body as hardened as Rasha's found the memory of crossing the ocean utterly horrifying.
"A miracle is supposed to be left in a dump like this?"
Rasha peered at the burrow that looked ready to collapse at any moment and tilted her head. No matter how she looked at it, the place seemed unlikely to shelter a miracle — she doubted even a stray beast would nest here.
"Try stepping inside."
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just try it. You'll see."
Rasha did as the old man said, half in doubt and half in compliance — and found herself blocked by something of unknowable nature.
"What is this?"
"One of the miracles of the past. Those without qualification can never pass beyond it."
At the pride steeping the old man's voice, Rasha let out a hollow laugh.
"Old man. It can be entered, right?"
"Ho. I never thought I'd hear you talk weak first. Lost your confidence to break it?"
"No — ugh, obviously I could smash it to pieces. But then the whole burrow would go flying with it, wouldn't it?"
For all that Rasha adored contending with the strong, making an enemy of the old man was where she drew the line. The moment she earned his hatred, what awaited her wouldn't be a contest — it would be a hunt.
She pictured herself dying miserably without ever knowing a single happiness, and scratched at the gooseflesh rising on her skin.
"A little power control like that—"
"Enough. There's obviously some method to this, or I wouldn't have brought you. Just get to work."
"Heh heh. So impatient, aren't we? One must also learn to appreciate the beauty a miracle holds."
"Aren't you the last person who should be saying that to an Apostle of the Evil God?"
"An Apostle of the Evil God is not thereby deprived of eyes, is she not?"
"Ugh! Seriously!"
When the disgust finally boiled over and Rasha shrieked, the old man chuckled.
"Fine, fine. I'll quit the teasing."
"The idiots at the church should've gotten a look at this."
Ignoring Rasha's mutter, the old man approached the barrier and caressed it with his own divinity.
What lay sealed within was a miracle lost to the war between evil gods and benevolent gods — something the clergymen of the present age could not even begin to comprehend, let alone unravel.
But when it came to the old man, none of those words applied. He was one of the precious few survivors who had lived through the Mythological Age.
"Wow. Seriously, it creeps me out every single time I see it."
"Creeps you out? The feat I just performed?"
"Ah — hell, forget it. Don't explain."
"No, I cannot. I have a duty to expound upon the miracles of God."
"Please. I'm sorry. I was wrong, okay?"
"Listen well. This is—"
Even as Rasha carried on with every manner of obnoxious antics, the old man pressed on with his explanation, thereby proving to the world that the only thing capable of beating a madman is an even greater madman.
Exhausted by a voice that drilled into her ears whether she wanted it or not, Rasha was wearing down — until she saw the barrier ripple and vanish, and sprang to her feet.
"Alright! Get inside already! You came all this way for that thing too, didn't you!"
"Hm? Oh no, I'm quite fine. Now, as I was explaining to you—"
"Aagh! Not listening! Not listening! I'm going in first, whatever!"
Watching Rasha stride boldly into the burrow, the old man laughed — then rose unhurriedly and followed after her.
"What is this? It's no ordinary dungeon, is it?"
Having entered first, Rasha cocked her head at the dungeon's entrance. Ordinary dungeons gave off an ominous aura from their very threshold. Every dungeon in this world drew its origin from an evil god, after all — there was no helping it.
But not this one. From the entrance of the dungeon inside the burrow, she felt a faint divinity — the very same divinity she had sensed that day, facing off against Lucy.
"Oooooh!"
The old man, who had followed in late, seemed to sense it too as he examined the entrance with a face brimming with rapture.
"As expected, my instincts never fail me! This place was prepared by the Chief God Himself, without a doubt!"
"Sure. That's what it looks like."
"Come, Rasha! Let us enter at once! We must etch into our eyes what waits at the end of this place!"
"Huh? Hey! Old man! Hold up! You can't go in ahead of me! Ah — damn it!"
For all her grumbling, Rasha hadn't been worried about anything going wrong.
Rasha, a powerhouse with few if any rivals on the continent, together with the old man, the sitting Pope — what dungeon on earth could such a pairing fail to clear?
"...Wow. Hell. Seriously."
Rasha only came to realize how arrogant that thought had been about ten near-death experiences into the dungeon.
Watching her arm — blown away deflecting a trap laced with mana — be restored by the old man's magic, she flexed her newly regrown hand open and shut before speaking up.
"Hey. Old man. Haven't you gotten something wrong? Is this really a place the Chief God left behind?"
The old man would ordinarily have reprimanded her for such insolence — but for once, he found himself unable to rebut her rebuke.
Even by his own estimation, this dungeon, wherever the Chief God had arranged it, was saturated with a malice so extreme it defied imagination.
"Even the deepest layers of a large-scale dungeon aren't this vicious."
"I know."
"Going any further is out of the question. We'd die before we ever laid eyes on the end of it."
The old man expressed his agreement with a bitter smile.
They had walked for barely an hour, and had already weathered countless brushes with death — all without managing a proper exploration of the dungeon. A clear was impossible here and now.
"We turn back. It seems I have overlooked something."
"Phew. Thank god. If you'd told me to keep dragging myself forward, I was seriously planning to ram you over."
"I may be a madman, but I am not mad enough to throw my life away for nothing."
The old man gazed past the dungeon with eyes full of lingering regret — then turned his head away.
He had lived long enough that death held no fear for him. But his life was not so meaningless a thing as to be cast away in a place of no worth.
"Move out. We must board the ship before nightfall."
As the old man retraced their path back, Rasha stretched and fell in behind him.
The hellish road that had taken them a full hour to cross took mere minutes on the way back.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The day after our return to House Aln from the Archipelago, snow was falling from a sky gone the color of ash.
"Damn it. If it's going to snow, it might as well pour down hard enough that training gets cancelled outright — what's the point of this half-hearted dribble?"
"...If my skill were better, I would have whipped up a blizzard on purpose."
"Third Prince! Lady Partran! Stop complaining over a single day off! While you two were resting, I've been stuck in this hell the entire time!"
No one welcomed our return more than Jackal did. His eyes were brimming with venom, honed through training after training that the knight order had discarded him into.
"And did you truly believe the Aln Knight Order would call off training over a mere snowstorm?!"
"What kind of lunatic talk is that? Even brutal training has its limits."
"That's right. If the weather worsens badly enough, accidents become a real possibility."
Arthur and Joy made the most reasonable remarks imaginable while shooting me looks — as if begging me to back them up, quickly.
Unfortunately, however, I could only throw my weight behind Jackal's words instead of theirs. The Aln Knight Order was not a place where common sense applied.
"Normally you're all trash talk and no sense, Inferior Young Master, but this time the guy's right. Aln's blockhead knights don't know the word 'rest' exists."
Saying that brought the midterm exams back to mind. Training alongside the knight order through the storm had been genuinely brutal. When the wind swept me off my feet and my body went airborne, I honestly thought I was reincarnating into yet another world.
Seeing my smile, the two of them realized Jackal hadn't been joking, and the color drained from their faces.
"Joy. Can you use magic to clear away the snowstorm?"
"If I could do that, I wouldn't be an Academy student — I'd already be in the Mage Tower."
"...Fair enough. Damn it. Prayer's the only option left, isn't it."
The pair promptly did an about-face and began praying for the snowstorm to let up. Ignoring their chatter, I fiddled with my necklace.
In a few days would come the anniversary of Mira's passing — Lucy's mother.
Last year I'd known nothing, and so nothing could be done. This year was different.
Having traced Lucy's past and witnessed how deeply Mira had loved her, I had resolved to visit her grave.
I did have my doubts about whether the present me had any right to make that visit. But the ache that rose in my chest whenever I thought of Mira's grave refused to let me simply ignore her anniversary.
'Come quickly, Lucy. I've been waiting for you.'
'It's all right. Someday, someone will come to stand beside you who understands your true heart.'
'They simply don't know how kind you are, that's all. No one hates you on purpose.'
'Lucy, it's all right. This mother will always be by your side.'
'Lucy. My daughter.'
As sorrow welled up within me beneath the flood of miserable memories pouring in, I remembered that I was not alone right now, and hurriedly clawed my way out of the daydream.
"What? Why's everyone making that weird face at me? Do you get teary-eyed imagining yourselves rolling around in a blizzard? Puhahaha. I only feel like laughing. Tragic, really."
The gazes around me were too uncomfortable, so I forced out the practiced laugh — but my friends' complicated expressions didn't change one bit.
Unable to bear those looks a moment longer, I shot up from my seat and fled the dining hall.