How Far Did You Look Into It? - 4
Bedler's burning gaze made my own curiosity swell in equal measure. If you were going to blurt out something about heresy and deliberately hook a man's interest, you had a duty to follow through. Clamping your mouth shut right after was far too wicked a tactic. Of the two ways of speaking guaranteed to drive someone mad, one was starting a sentence and trailing off, and the second was—
"Ah, my apologies."
Fortunately, Bedler seemed to realize the rudeness of his silence and hastily opened his mouth again. Fine. Since he spoke up before I had to prod him, I would let it slide.
"As I just said, I sensed the aura of a heretical faith on you, Brother. Yet I cannot quite place which god's power it is."
Even so, my curiosity remained thoroughly stirred, so I cast a sidelong glance at Tanian. From the way Bedler was talking, there really was some heretical aura on me that I myself did not know about. But an aura strong enough for a priest I had just met today to pick up on immediately—how had Tanian, who had spent nearly a year at my side, never noticed?
If Tanian had been a mere novice priest, I might have shrugged it off as inexperience. Tanian, however, was the next Saint. If anyone was going to fail to sense it, it ought to have been this Bedler fellow, not him.
"I am weak at detecting heresy," Tanian protested first, catching my look. This, he insisted, was simply not his field.
That struck me as odd. Back during last summer's break, Tanian's tracking holy arts had let us thrash the Twilight Cult one-sidedly. It had been like having map hacks, looking down from the sky itself. And now he claimed to be weak at detecting heresy? If he was weak, then only Enen himself would count as strong.
"Couldn't your tracking holy arts find it right away?"
"Haha. What the tracking holy arts can locate are heretics who have directly received a god's power. Mere residual traces are a separate matter entirely."
That only confused me further. Whether it was a heretic or a residual trace, the presence of a heretical aura was the same thing, was it not?
"To explain in detail would require a theological digression... Do you require it?"
"No."
Sensing the approach of far more information than I wanted, I firmly shook my head. I did not need to know that much.
"Record-keepers of heresy like myself are sensitive to such auras. In this particular field, at least, I am more of a specialist than Lord Tanian."
Bedler supplied a timely enough elaboration that I decided simply to accept it. In the first place, for someone as completely ignorant of holy arts and priests as I was to argue the point would have been ridiculous. If the experts said so, I just had to believe them and move on.
Besides, it made sense that priests would have their own specialized skill trees. Knights and mages branched into different paths; there was no reason priests would be any different.
"Brother, if it would not be too great an imposition..."
Still unable to pin down the owner of the trace, Bedler tilted his head this way and that before carefully speaking again.
"Might you remove your clothes?"
?
For a moment my mind went blank.
Naturally, the request was not made in any unsavory sense.
"There are limits to what I can grasp by sensation alone. I believe I will only get a proper sense of it once I examine the trace directly."
To put it another way, it was like saying he could not identify a voice alone and asking me to remove the mask so he could see the face. Certainly it would be better to look with his own eyes rather than relying solely on the aura seeping from beneath my clothes.
"Of course, this is purely a personal request born of curiosity, so you may refuse. In fact I am already ashamed merely to ask such a thing, but..."
"It's fine. I can take off my upper clothes, at least."
It was hardly a normal request, so Bedler had already begun to back away—but withdrawing after thoroughly stoking a man's curiosity was a sin in itself. By now I was curious even if Bedler lost interest.
And the moment I heard the request to undress, something finally clicked. I should have noticed it the instant he started staring at my upper body.
The scar.
The scar that ran like a highway from my left shoulder down toward my right hip. The final parting gift Kagan had left me just before he died. No matter how I thought about it, that had to be the source. He had carved it while ranting about the Eternal Blue Sky or whatever; it was unmistakably that.
"Ah. This is it."
So when I moved to a quieter spot and showed him the wound, Bedler—who had been wearing an unreadable expression—broke into a broad smile.
Seeing that reaction, he really was an odd one. Even the Minister had scowled and called the scar hideous the first time he saw it.
Is pure scholarly hunger driving him?
He seemed like the sort for whom the thirst for knowledge came first, the same way Gerhardt had devoted his life to northern history. Nothing else could explain a reaction like that.
"Indeed. It is a vast yet cramped aura, turbulent yet gentle. No wonder it was so difficult to identify, being this complex."
"I see."
Strange descriptions poured out in the middle of it all, but I ignored them. If that was how specialists talked, I simply had to take it as it came.
After examining the wound for quite some time, Bedler finally nodded with a satisfied look. The puzzlement he had shown back at the booth had vanished without a trace; he had clearly identified whose mark it was.
"Thank you for granting such an unreasonable request."
I gave a light shake of my head at Bedler, who was bowing nearly ninety degrees. I had cooperated out of my own curiosity, and there was something I wanted to ask a heresy specialist anyway.
"So. Do you know what heresy it is?"
"It is the Eternal Blue Sky. The god worshipped by the northern nomads—a unique divine nature that is both a nature deity and an animal deity."
My prediction had been correct, so I nodded. As expected of the sword wound Kagan had left behind; it really was the mark of that Eternal whatever. An ordinary curse would never have attached a permanent, unhealable penalty simply for being cut.
That vicious bastard. I had half-suspected it, but he really had packed a god's power into that final blow. Did that mean his basic attacks counted as divine punishment? No wonder they had hit like absolute hell.
At any rate, knowing the identity was enough. It was not some unexpected, unrelated god popping up out of nowhere, and since Bedler already knew of this one, making a request would be easier.
"I have a request of my own."
"Ah, yes. Please speak freely. If it lies within the reach of my abilities, I will do whatever I can."
Fortunately, Bedler had no intention of taking the priestly calling card and then stiffing me; he answered with a bright expression.
Good. After a promise like that, I could speak without holding back.
"That heretical aura you mentioned—can it be purified?"
I asked carefully, steadying the slight tremor in my chest. If he was a specialist in detecting heresy, surely he could also erase a heretical aura, right?
From the circumstances, the reason this wound remained so stubborn was that Eternal Blue Sky bastard. It had nested inside my body and refused to leave, so healing was impossible. If I could just evict this insane illegal tenant, wouldn't the wound finally close?
Please. I did not want to carry this thing around for the rest of my life. Put bluntly, if I had to show a scar like this every night, my wives would cry. Luise and Irina did not even know I still had this wound.
"Ah."
The moment I heard Bedler's quiet reaction, I knew. So it was impossible.
Damn it.
Of course. Even a heresy specialist was still a priest; if this wound had been something priests could fix, it would have been fixed long ago. Right after the war, how many priests had attached themselves to me just to treat the injury? Surely at least one of them would have sensed the heretical aura.
"I seem to have spoken out of turn. Pay it no mind."
Still, the disappointment was unavoidable. Now that I knew the cause of the wound, I had quietly begun to hope that healing might follow—
"I can weaken it, however."
"What."
Hope surged up again. Weaken it? He could weaken this illegal tenant?
"If it were a divine punishment delivered by a god in person, even suppressing it would be impossible. But Brother's wound appears to have been inflicted by a human. If the aura entered through a human intermediary, it can be suppressed."
The hopeful words set my mind spinning furiously. In other words, because the wound came from that bastard Kagan rather than the Eternal Blue Sky itself, it was not completely hopeless?
My apologies, Eternal Blue Sky. I briefly pinned Kagan's crimes on you.
"Of course, completely erasing it is impossible. Even so, weakening it to that degree should restore a great deal of your health, so I hope you will take comfort in—"
"Of course. Even that much would be more than enough."
"I am glad you think so."
Bedler gave a small laugh and, reciting a prayer, placed his hand on my shoulder.
"Guh—!"
"Kkh—"
And in the same instant, we both coughed up blood.
What the fuck was it this time.
I flopped onto the ground right beside Bedler and writhed. When an unimaginable shock slammed into you while you were full of hope, you went down instantly. Was this what it felt like to have a titanium spear driven through your heart?
My fellow blood-spitter Bedler was clearly just as stunned; he groaned and barely managed to lift his face. The words "you quack bastard" rose all the way to the back of my throat, but one look at his expression and I could not spit them out.
"Th-this is strange. The god's power... the god's will is far too strong."
Bedler spat the blood pooled in his mouth and muttered in confusion. Anyone could see this was nothing like the face of a man who had been negligent. This was the face of someone who had been diligently performing a treatment and then gotten blindsided.
"This is the sort of thing that happens only when a god is truly enraged... To interfere this much over a wound merely inflicted by a human...?"
He kept muttering without pause, then continued with a just-in-case look on his face.
"Brother. There is one thing I would like to confirm."
"What is it?"
"Have you ever killed an apostle of the Eternal Blue Sky, desecrated one of its temples, or insulted one of its sacred relics?"
The words alone were so ominous that goosebumps rose on my skin. What kind of insane behavior was that? Even a god who loved humanity would turn into an evil deity after something like that.
And the fact that something was already clicking into place only made the chills worse.
"An apostle is one who receives a god's favor and carries out the god's will—if I may compare it, a being similar to a Saint of the Dawn Church. A sacred relic is an object the god bestows upon such an apostle."
Something had already come to mind, so I briefly closed my mouth; Bedler kindly supplied the terminology as well.
Regrettably, once I heard the definitions, my half-formed suspicion hardened into certainty.
An apostle?
"The final offering to the Eternal Blue Sky was myself."
That... that sounded exactly like Kagan. And I had been the one to land the finishing blow on that bastard.
A temple?
"Team Leader. There's a building that looks like a religious facility—"
"Burn it. Erase every possible rallying point for the Gaar tribe to reassemble."
We had probably burned it while mopping up the remnants of the Gaar tribe. There had been a wolf-shaped stone statue at the entrance, so I smashed that too.
A sacred relic?
"Master. This is—"
"Just toss it in a warehouse. No need to manage it."
Could it have been that greatsword and huge scythe? Kagan had always carried them around.
...
I'm fucked.
What the hell was I supposed to do about this? It seemed the one who had been screwing up my path all this time was not Enen after all, but the Eternal Blue Sky.