The Saintess of Slaughter
The Saintess of Slaughter
Aslan had guessed that Ereta was a masochist, and the guess was correct.
It wasn't the sort of thing one could normally know. Even if you asked outright, a person's private preferences weren't exactly public information.
Aslan knew because of the game—specifically, because of its dummy data.
Dummy data meant information left behind in the files, unused in the actual game. Aslan had found the data for recruiting the Saintess of Slaughter as a companion. The interactions, the dialogue trees, the trait labeled Masochism—all of it sat there, implemented but never triggered.
That was the foundation for his guess.
'Still, I never thought the dummy data would turn out to be right.'
He hadn't treated it as certainty. Dummy data was discarded data. It could easily have been wrong. He'd leaned on the masochism angle purely because he'd judged that even if the approach failed, Ereta wouldn't hold a grudge.
In the end, it had worked out. No harm done.
He set aside thoughts of Ereta and called Harod and Angie to him.
Harod bore the unmistakable marks of battle, wounds still fresh. Angie stood without a single bandage, her body clean. Aslan met both their gazes and spoke.
"I'm bringing Ereta into the party. Officially, she'll be a prisoner, but that's just the surface."
Harod, sprawled on the bed with his battered body, let out a pained noise. "Truly?"
"Yes."
The dragon-kin's expression soured, a skeptical snort escaping his snout. Angie simply nodded, her face unreadable. She stared down at the fruit in her hand.
"I'm for it," she said lightly.
"What—?"
Harod's surprise was obvious, but Angie only shrugged.
"I'm not a Master like her, and I'm not a warrior like you. So I don't know much. But... she and I were almost evenly matched. Even so, I got beaten senseless." A quiet frustration flickered across the girl's face. The fruit in her small grip cracked with a soft snap under the pressure. "Even with her power taken away, she's still got her skills, right? That means she'll be useful."
"You don't mind?"
Aslan found her easy acceptance welcome but strange. It wasn't the temperament he'd expected from her. When he pressed, the girl lowered her eyes.
"Of course I mind. Still... fighting her taught me something. My own strength isn't enough. I fought exactly the way you signaled, exactly according to your plan, but in the end, I was overwhelmed and passed out." She gazed at the split fruit, then pushed a piece into her mouth. "We're going to keep running into enemies like that, aren't we?"
Aslan answered with silence, which was agreement enough. Angie smiled ruefully.
"Then we take her with us. I'm an idiot, and I'm no good with words, but you—you've figured out how to make use of her, right?"
"...That's right."
"Then I can trust that. I've decided not to worry about the things I can't do. The thinking part is your job."
Aslan fell quiet. Leaving the judgment entirely to him meant leaving life and death in his hands. Absolute trust. Harod seemed to read the weight of it, because he spoke up.
"You have no suspicions?"
"Of course I'm suspicious. But he says he'll do it." Angie popped the rest of the fruit into her mouth. "I trust my companion."
Aslan and Harod both stared at her as if seeing something unfamiliar. Angie just laughed under their gaze.
"What about you?" she asked Harod.
Still lying on the bed, the dragon-kin exhaled heavily through his nostrils. "I... do not see the wisdom in traveling with such a person. Prisoner or not, she is a Master, is she not? But... I doubt my objections would change anything. Lord Aslan has already weighed the matter and decided. Besides, my opinion is of no importance."
Angie tilted her head at the last remark. Harod closed his eyes.
"I mean that this is as far as I go."
"Huh?"
Angie blinked, uncomprehending. Harod opened his eyes and met her gaze.
"Angela."
Until now, he had always called her Angela Tail—insisting on the surname as if to cement the identity of the girl from Belus Alpen. This time, he used only her given name. Even Angie noticed the shift, her expression flickering with confusion.
"I saw the place where you and Lord Aslan fought that woman."
Harod Claw had seen it. A battlefield so ravaged it barely looked like the work of humans—the stench of blood, shattered weapons, splintered trees, the earth torn into jagged fragments.
He had lost a few fingers fighting monsters and cultists. Angie and Aslan had fought through that hell and come out with all their limbs attached. Injured, yes—but victorious.
A warrior all his life, Harod Claw could read an opponent's strength and measure the distance between himself and them.
"Angela, you have surpassed me."
Angie's face grew serious at the words. The dragon-kin closed his eyes again.
"You said you felt lacking in the fight against Lord Aslan. That version of you—the one who feels lacking—is already far stronger than me."
"You..."
"I would be of no help if I followed. Not even much use as a meat shield. And I've no taste for chasing battles with no odds of winning."
At the declaration that he would not continue with them, Angie frowned, but Aslan remained silent. As if he'd already known.
"Where will you go, then?" she asked.
"I thought I'd take mercenary work in the Baramunz Mountain Kingdom. Eventually... I may find my way back to Belus Alpen."
"Did Aslan give you permission—"
"He already did. When we broke out of prison, Lord Aslan gave me my freedom. I chose to follow him with that freedom. Now the time has come to use it to leave."
Angie's expression tightened—regret, perhaps, at losing someone she'd traveled with, however briefly. But she didn't try to stop him.
"Right... you'll do fine. You're pretty damn strong, after all."
Harod smiled faintly and nodded. The silence stretched taut between them before he spoke again.
"I realize it isn't my place to press the question... but I would like to hear it. Why are you willing to accept Ereta?"
Aslan made a show of considering the question. He already had his answer, but answering without hesitation would make the decision seem flippant. After a suitable pause, he countered gravely.
"Do you know what my goal is?"
"...Hm, I cannot say I do."
"Pissing off the gods?"
The two answers came at once. Aslan shook his head.
He looked at the pair waiting for his reply and gathered his thoughts.
Geladrion was a wretched place. Endlessly, senselessly so. Gods plundered and defiled life without a shred of meaning. Their apostles wielded borrowed divine authority and killed in their gods' names.
Aslan hated the sight of it.
No life was worthless. Even the frailest creature still had the right to go on living. That was what he had been taught, and how he had lived. He refused to shrug it off just because the world was different.
He had no way to change such a world alone. Even against a single high priest, with every preparation made, Aslan by himself barely managed. He could not defeat a human army on his own.
There was only one way to change things: the game's ending.
Eternal Dominion had two endings—three, if you branched deeper.
You could close the world, push the gods out, and leave the realm still defiled: the Bystander. You could become a god yourself, a good god suffering eternally as prey for the Evil Gods: the Sacrifice. Or you could become an Evil God and add one more cursed deity to the tally: the Greed.
None of those were the happy ending Aslan wanted. And in twelve years, he'd learned that breaking free of the game's constraints was not easily done. Reaching any ending at all would be monstrously difficult.
For the happy ending he envisioned, he needed power. What that power would do was simple.
"Kill every god. That's my goal."
At those absurd words, Harod's eyes snapped open. Angie let out a small, blank sound.
It was a bewildering statement. Gods were not things you could kill. But Aslan believed in his plan.
"The first step is gathering companions."
"You don't mean..."
"You're probably right. I intend to gather the Masters."
Setting aside any potential for priesthood, their combat strength alone was guaranteed. Even if some of them had never surpassed human limits, it didn't matter. Aslan had spent twelve years fighting priests without ever surpassing human limits himself.
Master of Blunt Weapons. Ereta.
She would be the first Master he took as a companion.
Harod let out a long, low breath and sank his head back into the bed. His eyes, fixed on the ceiling, held open shock.
"The scale of it is too vast for my mind to grasp... Gather the Masters and kill gods? My lord, is it safe for me to even hear such words?"
Aslan answered without concern. "Even if you went around repeating it, no one would take it seriously. Not even the priests."
"...True enough. For a moment, I thought you had lost your mind."
The idea that gathering Masters would let anyone stand against gods seemed far-fetched. But Harod knew Aslan wasn't a man who spoke idly or spun empty schemes, so he held his objections. He simply rubbed his long snout with a large hand, chewing on the thought.
After a long moment, still wrestling with it, he asked, "Then where do you go next? The Masters' whereabouts are often unknown..."
"Next, I'll be recruiting the Master of the Sword."
The Master of the Sword. After the Master of Combat, the most famous of the Masters. Harod's gaze drifted toward the ceiling as the name and title surfaced in his mind. He made a small, questioning sound.
"Wait. The Master of the Sword..."
"Yes. Our next destination is the Kingdom of Bida."
*
"...The Kingdom of Bida? The one teeming with sanctuaries of the Cosmic Inevitability? Are you insane?"
They had moved from Harod's sickroom to the margrave's study. The Margrave of Saingirus stared at Aslan with naked alarm. Aslan only smiled ruefully.