He Lived Because He Felt Nothing
The screaming had stopped. The monsters no longer moved, and a hush settled over his blood-soaked shoulder.
Ludville drew a shallow breath.
He remembered as far as entering the grauters' territory, and he remembered driving straight into the first monster that lunged at him, never once slowing. Its claws tore through his armor and a sharp pain flared, but Ludville did not dodge. He left the talons buried in the muscle, locked that arm in place like an anchor, and severed the monster's neck in a single stroke. Then he drove his sword into the next one as it opened its jaws to tear him apart—past the root of the tongue, into the skull beyond. It pierced clean through.
Black blood fountained up.
A moment's pleasure, and the emptiness that followed. There was no joy in victory and no fear of death, only the monster's blood drenching him from head to foot in an instant. All that remained was an unconscious certainty: so long as he still drew breath, he had to keep swinging the sword. He cut because it was simply there before his eyes. He cut because something moved. Blood sprayed, and he paid it no mind. There was no will to survive, and no desperate wish to die.
How long passed that way?
All at once, he came back to himself.
A drop of blood gathered at the tip of his sword and fell, slowly, to the ground. Only after he blinked once, and then again, did he realize he had slaughtered every grauter. His face, his hands, even the inside of his armor were soaked through with monster blood and the wreckage of their bodies.
My memory cut out again.
It had been that way for some time. Whenever he faced a monster, whenever miasma seeped into his lungs, his mind stayed clear, and yet the feeling in his fingertips dimmed one by one, as if going out. He liked that sensation. A sensation close to death. As if eternal rest were coming to find him.
In that moment alone, he could think of nothing at all. It was why he rolled those herbs—the ones whose side effects were said to be severe—into cigarettes and burned them: to feel it.
This time, though, even the familiar numbness felt somehow strange. His heart gave one hard thud, and then the rhythm began to slow. Blood that ought to have burst free moved sluggishly, as if something were damming it. His mind grew heavy, as though he were sinking, little by little, into deep water.
Something is going wrong.
The certainty settled in him. A body that had somehow held together all this time seemed to have crossed its threshold and was finally showing its limit.
Is this as far as I go?
He had known, somewhere, that he would pay a great price one day. But what of it? He had wanted it, then and there. He had not thought deeply. Think too hard, and it only came back as another vicious headache.
Ah. Come to think of it...
...the young lady will take the headaches away now.
The thought came to him unbidden. With a hand slick with monster blood, he groped at the forehead her touch had once reached. He thought he had wanted, one last time, to feel that faint, cool warmth again.
And then, as if a god who had never once answered his call in all his life were hearing a prayer of his for the first time—
From behind him came the voice he had been waiting for—the voice he had not even known he was waiting for.
The forest was already the aftermath of a war. Trees torn out by the roots. Mounds of crushed earth. Monster corpses ripped apart as mercilessly as if a gale had taken them. A hellscape made by a single man.
And at its center stood Ludville.
The hem of his cloak was already torn and soaked in blood. His sword hung half-slipped from his hand, and through the split gloves blood ran down the joints of his fingers, drop by drop. Ludville was not moving. He stood like a statue driven into the ground.
Don't tell me monsterification has already begun?
A monster was a transcendent being born when human despair condensed. A pure monster came into the world by feeding on that despair, but now and then a human exposed to a monster's miasma for a very long time transformed into a monster as well. People called that monsterification.
It was rare. Special conditions had to align before it was possible. Exposed to miasma, most bodies blackened with necrosis, rotted from within, and died. That was why she had not known. There was no trace of necrosis anywhere on Ludville's body.
But what if the reason he looked whole was that monsterification was already underway? What if, of all days, in this very battle, Ludville had met the conditions? The worst imaginings chased one another, and it felt as if her breath had been cut off.
Odelli hauled on the reins, then leapt down, nearly tumbling to the ground, and went to him. Without hesitation she set her hand against his back. Through the armor torn to shreds she felt a presence—thick, sticky, and hot.
This is...
She flinched, and held her breath as she focused on the sensation. What reached her fingertips was far beyond mere exposure to miasma. It was as if he himself had become its source.
To this extent...
The inside of his body seemed filled with a liquid in which miasma had been concentrated—enough to call it the very essence of the thing.
How could I not have known, all this time?
No. How had he endured this pain at all? He had not shown so much as a hint of it. At this level, it was a wonder he had kept his reason and gone on living as if nothing were wrong. How had he walked, how had he spoken, how had he worked, how had he—
Perhaps even the way he had turned impulsive, as if he had become someone else entirely, had been the miasma working on him.
But...
"...Hah."
Odelli let out a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness. Monsterification hasn't begun yet.
It was true. Ludville's body was saturated with miasma, but he had not turned into a monster. There was only one reason. He had no despair. More precisely, every emotion in him had dried up so completely that he could not even feel despair.
There was no nourishment called despair.
It was the same for monsters and for monsterification alike. A certain measure of feeling had to be there before roots could take hold and a flower of malice bloom. Ironically, because his emotions were utterly depleted, monsterification had not progressed even though this much miasma had already been fulfilled. Because he had gone on feeling nothing...
To think he lived because he had no feelings.
Odelli lifted her hand and brought it to his heart. Soon the power of purification gathered there. Over the red current beading like blood, a golden tide of purification began to seep in.