Chapter 157
Chapter 157
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 157
Chapter Title: Heaven for You All (3)
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Kadim dipped the "needle of inscription" he had pulled from the shrine maiden's forehead into an iron canteen.
Fortunately, even though it had been lodged in such a vital spot, there was no damage to its function. He stabbed the blood-red hot tip, steeped in demon blood, into his back. As expected from such potent blood, a wave of dizziness and excruciating pain followed, twisting his face involuntarily.
Time passed, and the strokes of the pattern stabilized. He exhaled the compressed breath from his lungs in one sharp burst.
This time as well, without borrowing the shrine maiden's hand, Kadim successfully inscribed the "Akulanos's Tattoo."
A hollow laugh escaped him. At this rate, he'd master tattooing all by himself. Last time, a mad shrine maiden had popped up, and this time, a dead one... It almost made him think that running into perfectly sane shrine maidens one after another at the start had been an incredible stroke of luck.
A faint smile played on Kadim's lips as he approached the shrine maiden's corpse.
The mark left in the center of her forehead was a full inch deep. No matter how long and sturdy the needle, it would take an extraordinarily vicious will to carve such a wound. Especially if it was self-inflicted.
From the posture and angle, the culprit who drove the needle into her forehead was none other than the shrine maiden herself.
"......"
The reason why the shrine maiden had taken her own life remained unclear. Given the long, lonely wait, it wouldn't be strange if her spirit had simply broken... but.
The real reason might have been the stone mound at her feet.
Kadim turned the shrine maiden's body over. Then he scattered the stone mound in front of her. Amid the fragments of gravel, a bizarre set of remains emerged.
Bones far too small to be human.
And clinging to the ribcage, a green orb the size of a nightshade berry.
Thump-thump. The orb pulsed like a diseased heart. Two asymmetrical horns protruded from it, one longer than the other on each side. It was a mid-tier demon in the process of evolving into a higher one.
As expected, it was here. The nucleus of a fission-type demon.
Without hesitation, Kadim pried it off and crushed it.
Tsss—crack!
- Kyeeeeeee......
The orb let out a death screech. Ignoring it, Kadim collected the gushing blood in an empty canteen. Fission-type demon blood had limited uses, but it might come in handy someday.
The faint mana lingering after the demon's death dissipated. He had inscribed the tattoo, removed the demon, collected the blood... In truth, he was done with this ruin. All that remained was to smash through space like before and tear open the scenery to exit... but.
"......"
Kadim couldn't bring himself to leave easily.
The lone remains left in the stone mound and the shrine maiden who had guarded them held his ankles fast.
"......"
Suddenly, something thudded to the ground.
Kadim's eyes twitched. The shrine maiden's corpse, which he had turned away, had toppled toward the stone mound.
Objectively, it was just coincidence... but Kadim couldn't see it that way. The tiny remains the size of a newborn, the demon's eerie speech patterns, the shrine maiden who ended her life with a needle yet desperately guarded this stone mound to the end... The pieces of evidence fit together tightly.
After some deduction, the Great Warrior pieced together the truth.
'...This shrine maiden entered the ruins while pregnant.'
There was no other explanation.
It was probably a secret known only to her—or perhaps not even to her. If Cyril had known beforehand, she never would have allowed entry into the ruins.
Whether intentional or accidental... Either way, centuries ago, the shrine maiden had been sealed away not alone. It wasn't hard to imagine her feelings as she watched her swelling belly. Anxiety over the enclosed space, worry for the child's health, fear of the pitch-black future, and yet a thread of hope clinging on.
But even that profound maternal love ultimately amounted to nothing.
The child breathed its last the moment it emerged from her womb.
"......"
The skeleton was unmistakably that of a newborn. The child had died at birth—or perhaps even before.
Emotions can't be quantified. Ranking them by intensity is absurd. But the despair the shrine maiden felt when she painstakingly broke hard bricks into a crude stone mound unfit even for a toad's home and buried her cold, newborn infant there must have outweighed all the emotions she would feel in a lifetime, compressed into that moment.
It wasn't simply the loss of one child.
It was the event that confirmed she would spend eternity sealed alone, having lost the hope that would never return.
And such heavy despair is, to certain beings, the sweetest bait imaginable.
It was obvious without seeing. Like flies swarming rotten meat, demons must have gathered thickly around the stone slab. Desperate to enter the ruins and feast on her despair, they would have spun all sorts of sweet lies.
A demon's whispers can erode even the noblest mind like sand. For someone drowning in despair worse than hell, resisting was nearly impossible... but.
Surprisingly, the shrine maiden endured that temptation for over a century.
Until her body withered beyond human lifespan, she kept everything out of the ruins and waited in solitude for the Great Warrior of Atala. Bearing such despair through years exceeding a mortal's life while upholding her duty was nothing short of superhuman self-control.
Yet even the sturdiest rock cracks under endless pounding.
What finally shattered the shrine maiden's cracking mind was probably a whisper like this:
- Mommy, let me in, please. Mommy, let me in, please. Mommy, let me in, please...
'...!!'
Due to a moment's lapse or accumulated fatigue... the shrine maiden accidentally let the fission-type demon into the ruins. By the time she regained her senses, it was too late. In that interim, the demon had firmly attached its "nucleus" to the remains buried in the stone mound.
To expel the demon, she would have to cast out even the child's remains. An intolerable sacrifice. In the end, the shrine maiden gave up on driving it out.
From then on, an inescapable nightmare began. The demon mimicked the child's voice with hundreds of mouths, relentlessly squeezing despair from her.
- Why did I die, Mommy? I wanted to live. Why did I die, Mommy? I wanted to live. Why did I die, Mommy...
- Mommy, it's stuffy in here. Get me out of the grave. Mommy, it's stuffy. Get me out. Mommy, it's stuffy...
- What's the outside world like? Why do I have to be trapped? What's the outside world like? Why do I have to be trapped...
The shrine maiden's mind crumbled quickly. Eventually, she began confusing the demon's voice with the real child's will. In the end, for the demon that feigned curiosity about the outside, she chewed her fingers to the bone and painted murals on the walls with her blood.
Yet even then, she didn't fully break. A single thread of hope remained in her heart. The savior who would one day return to annihilate this horrific evil, restore her lost power, and lead them to the paradise where the Father of the Wilderness awaited—the Great Warrior of Atala.
But the problem was that the demon kept growing during those years of endurance. Swallowing her pain and despair, it had swollen into a massive lump of flesh. If it grew further here, even the Great Warrior might struggle...
After agonizing, the shrine maiden made her final decision.
To eliminate the source feeding the demon its despair.
- ...Mommyit'sstuffydigmeoutbeforeIchewandkillMommyit'sstuffydigmeoutbeforeIchewandkillMommyit'sstuffydigmeoutbeforeIchew...
A faint smile rose to the shrine maiden's parched lips.
'...Cease this. You are not my child. Defile no more that poor soul who never bloomed nor set.'
She then went and sat before the stone mound.
'The feast of gluttony ends now. You shall take not one crumb more of despair. Wither in famine, writhe in agony. And in time, as you endure that piteous existence, the War God’s Great Warrior shall return to pass judgment...'
Clutching the radiant needle tightly in both hands.
She drove it into her forehead with all her might.
Thud.
A chilling pierce, vision blacking out abruptly.
Kadim snapped back to his senses, eyes wide.
'...What was that?'
What he had just seen wasn't mere deduction. No, at some point, details too precise for imagination had surfaced. It was as if... he had directly received the shrine maiden's memories...
As he pondered the cause, the object in his hand caught his eye.
The "needle of inscription," having fulfilled its role and lost its glow.
This needle had originally been embedded in the shrine maiden's forehead. Then steeped in demon blood and stabbed into his back. But what if some of the shrine maiden's blood remained on the tip, transmitting her memories...
It wasn't a straightforward causal link. Yet from a shamanistic perspective, blood wasn't merely bodily fluid. Just as demon blood inscribed powers, receiving the intense will carried in the shrine maiden's blood wasn't implausible.
Kadim looked down at the shrine maiden's corpse. The wound on her forehead appeared different now.
"......"
The shrine maiden hadn't abandoned her duty because it overwhelmed her. She fulfilled it by killing herself. This wasn't the coward's way of passing the buck. It was the Atalan way—offering one's body as the foundation to build an altar against a mighty foe.
Had the fission-type demon feasted on her despair until now, even he might not have dispatched it so easily.
When a mortal confronts a demon, all noble resolve crumbles. But the shrine maiden fought unyieldingly to the end. And now, with the Great Warrior's return and judgment upon the demon, her indomitable will was finally rewarded.
"......"
But... was that enough?
The fact that she had lost what was most precious to her didn't change.
The fallen corpse still gazed toward the stone mound. A desolate, poignant stare, as if even in death she couldn't forget. Her fingers, worn to nubs like pencil stubs, came into view. The dark red murals filling the walls were painted with the colors of her pain and self-reproach.
Thus, Kadim resolved.
To console her spirit, he would give her and the child a chance to see the "real outside."
He carefully retrieved the tiny remains from the stone mound and placed them in the shrine maiden's arms. Then, gripping Atala's Judgment, he recited the prayer.
"[O God of Struggle and Wilderness, Atala. Look upon your Great Warrior, raise the torch and guide him to the battlefield...]"
⟨ Prayer to Atala ⟩
Wooooong...
Having done it once before, the second time was no great challenge. He swung the axe in all directions, relentlessly demolishing the cramped chamber.
―――――――― Quagagagagaga—!!
Carrying the shrine maiden and child's remains, he burst through the stone wall. A rough darkness blocked the path ahead. He cleaved it with resolute axe strikes. Crossing the gap where light streamed in suddenly, he finally arrived.
Drizzzzle...
Outside the ruins.
In a vibrant landscape bursting with every color, not the blood-red hues.
In the world the shrine maiden had so desperately wanted to show her unbloomed soul.
Beams of radiant sunlight, a cloudless sky, dry grasses swaying gently... Swarms of dragonflies toyed with the breeze, maple leaves fluttered down leaving handprints on the grass. It was the utterly ordinary scene of an autumn field, visible anywhere, anytime.
But in this moment, that trivial normalcy became more special than anything in the world. The old woman's lips, cradling the child, trembled faintly with the whisper of a breeze.
Regrettably, there was no long time to indulge in sentiment. The ruin's preservation spell had run its course. Her parched flesh flaked away like dust.
Paassss...
Even amid it, the shrine maiden desperately shielded the child in her arms.
Her brittle forearms shriveled. Her withered waist bent inward. When arms crumbled, she used her body; when body failed, her bones; when bones shattered, the fragments protected the child. Thanks to that, the child's remains retained their form even as the shrine maiden disintegrated completely.
Yet even so, they couldn't escape the merciless erosion of time.
Paassss...
Soon, only ephemeral dust piles remained where the two had been.
Kadim carefully gathered the dust. He dug a generous pit and buried them together. Placing a stone slab from the ruins as a tombstone, he murmured a eulogy.
"...The laws of the wilderness do not say. Warriors who complete their life's journey earn the chance to face Atala, and in his blood, reach a paradise of endless war and revelry. But such a boisterous place seems ill-suited for raising a child in peace."
The Great Warrior thrust the axe haft into the ground and solemnly declared.
"Thus, in Atala's name, I pray."
Having endured a life of sorrow, confined in that hell that tormented you.
May there be a heaven in the skies just for you two.
So that, for instance.
You may meet again in a field where the sun never sets, smiling like the moon.
May you never part again, eternally.
When he finished his silent prayer and opened his eyes, dusk had already blanketed the field. He had wasted quite some time on various matters.
'Duncan must be waiting a lot.'
Kadim hurried back the way he came.
The moment he turned and took a step, something brushed his feet and lay across his path.
Two clinging maple leaves.
One the size of a woman's palm, the other a child's. Different sizes, yet overlapped as if they had always been one. Even as fierce winds blew after, they held their place without scattering.
"......"
It didn't seem like coincidence. His firm lips curved faintly. Kadim lightly picked up the leaves and quickened his halted steps.
Thinking how polite a mother and child they were, leaving a farewell like this.
The savage who had gone to scout the surroundings briefly returned only as dusk fell, covered head to toe in dirt and gravel fragments, looking utterly disheveled.
Duncan had remained abandoned in the field like lost property until then. Spotting Kadim, he came running frantically, making a huge fuss.
"M-My lord! Why were you so late? Did something happen? And why are you such a mess again..."
Kadim lowered his gaze slightly. Letting the maple leaves slip from his hand on the wind, he replied in a voice where emotions had faded into the distance.
"......Nothing much. I just buried someone for a bit."
"......?"
Duncan's eyes widened like a rabbit's.
He was startled at first, but upon second thought, it wasn't that surprising. Who was this savage, after all? Soon, as if grasping the situation, he nodded to himself in understanding.
Ah, my lord went and buried a few more folks again.