Traces of the God - 2
I only met them today, but as of this day I am withdrawing mere support for the fairies. From now on, the fairies and I are of one heart and mind. Persecution or contempt toward the fairies shall be considered a challenge against the Imperial Audit Department Chief. Object, and you duel me.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
"Auntie Sky's energy—good. We'll be full for the first time in ages."
"Good human! Good human!"
The power of the Eternal Blue Sky still branded into my body like a seal. When I told them they could take it free of charge if they were able, the fairies spun joyful circles around me.
A few even clung to my hair or perched on my shoulders. Considering how they had avoided everyone's touch but Tanian's, this had to be the highest form of gratitude they knew.
Kids this good…
Watching the chattering fairies, my hatred for Apels surged. Driving pure, innocent children to the brink of extinction—could those people even call themselves human?
Apels. You were a nation that deserved to fall.
"Um, Karl? Auntie Sky's energy—what does that mean?"
Unlike the fairies overflowing with joy, everyone else could only fall into confusion. From the looks of it the fairies were after the divine power dwelling in me, yet I was neither a priest nor even a particularly devout believer. From a position of knowing nothing, there was simply nothing to grab onto.
"I got tangled up with a heretical faith in the North. The nomads worship a sky god. That's probably what they mean."
I gave my chest a light tap as I spoke. Margeta, who had been staring blankly for a moment, hurriedly nodded. She had seen the wound before; that much should have been enough for her to understand.
"Ah, yes. I see."
Her face darkened briefly as she must have recalled the scar, then she smoothed her expression and closed the topic. With so many people who still knew nothing about the wound, it was an awkward subject to drag out at length.
Of course, only Margeta had been satisfied. Everyone else still wore faces full of questions—
"I don't know what happened, but fortunately it seems the fairies will take care of it."
The Demon Duke casually cut off any room for the conversation to continue. Once she declared a conclusion like that, pressing further did feel a little awkward.
I offered her a light nod of thanks; she returned a faint smile and a small shake of her head.
She must have worried a great deal.
Margeta had not been the first to see my wound. The Demon Duke had known before her.
After the Great Subjugation War we had formed a connection, and once we were acquainted I had shown her the scar and asked whether treatment was possible. Other mages had failed, but I had hoped the pinnacle of magic might be different. Of course it had proven impossible, which is why I was still like this.
From her perspective it was a wound even she could not erase—and a wound left on her lover's body. How heavily must it have weighed on her? To see a chance of healing appear from such an unexpected quarter… she must have been glad.
"Then! Then! We'll take it right now!"
"Go ahead."
And at the center of that miraculous healing stood the fairies. Their excitement was plain, so I nodded gently. Truth be told, my own heart was pounding.
It had been a long, long stretch of suffering. Once the Eternal Blue Sky's power vanished, the wound would become an ordinary wound—something magic or holy power could heal. At last I could say goodbye to this damn scar—
"Clothes are in the way. Let's erase the clothes first."
"Yeah, yeah."
"We'll erase them! We'll erase them!"
My mind locked solid at the sudden words. Kids. Erase the clothes? What are you talking about? Weren't you just going to take it as is?
But before I could even open my mouth, the fairies' wings sparkled and my upper clothes gradually faded, baring more and more of my body. Ah. Not stripping me completely—just making the fabric transparent. Being fairies, they really did use the strangest magic.
"……."
I finished a brief stretch of reality denial and checked my surroundings. Naturally, every gaze had locked onto the wound now exposed for all to see.
"Ah, uh, oh? O-Oppa…?"
The moment I saw Luise trembling violently, I squeezed my eyes shut.
I'm fucked.
It took no time at all for a lover to turn into a guilty party.
"Oppa! Th-this—how—how did this happen!"
Irina shrieked, eyes brimming with tears.
"A wound—a wound like that—and I didn't know a thing…"
Luise stammered as if she had fallen into full panic.
"He split the sky with a body like that?"
"He never once showed he was in pain."
Erich and Ryutis whispered rapidly, shaken in more ways than one.
Yeah. Thoroughly fucked. I had wanted to hide it as long as possible, and if I ever had to reveal it I had planned to do so carefully, step by step. Instead I had torn the cover off all at once. The sole silver lining was that Margeta, who had noticed the clothes fading, had quickly covered the young duke's eyes. For a ten-year-old, that sight would have been trauma material. Truly fortunate.
But fortune ended right there.
"Come to think of it, Oppa… even at the sea you wore ordinary clothes instead of a swimsuit."
Luise's murmur made Irina's eyes sharpen further.
So you still remembered that. I'm grateful you hold onto the little things—but right now I would have preferred you hadn't known.
"Did the two of you know?"
Having wiped her eyes, Irina turned her gaze on the relatively quiet Margeta and Demon Duke. An accurate hit; both of them flinched. It was almost pitiful to watch.
"I knew, but Karl was hiding it, so it was difficult for me to speak. I thought it best that Karl tell you himself."
"The wound is large, so I understand the worry, but it is not as serious a problem as it may seem. As long as no one deliberately agitates it, it does not interfere with daily life."
Suddenly cast as conspirators of silence, Margeta and the Demon Duke hurried to explain—but no matter how reasonable the reasons, the fact that they had kept quiet did not change.
Which was why Luise's and Irina's faces remained dark. The shock of not knowing their lover's wound until now—and that they alone had been left in the dark—was clearly enormous.
"If I had known Oppa was hurting, I wouldn't have been such a bother… I pestered you during the inter-academy tournament, dragged you around when we went out, asked you for all sorts of things…"
Luise's guilt-soaked words made cold sweat prickle down my back. I'm not that much of a patient. The wound simply refuses to fully heal; it doesn't ruin my daily life.
"Human looks like crying."
"What do we do? What do we do?"
"Did we do something wrong?"
"Mommy… Mommy…"
Meanwhile, as the atmosphere grew heavy, the fairies that had been circling me dove into my hair and trembled. As if they thought the people were sad because of them.
No. You didn't do anything wrong. I handled this in the weirdest possible way. This is all my karma.
"H-hey, kids."
So I forced myself to speak, and tear-bright gazes stabbed into me hard enough to sting. Honestly, I was a little scared.
"It was something hard to talk about comfortably, so I couldn't say it until now. I wasn't trying to hide it forever. I meant to tell you someday."
The tearful stares did not change. Even I had to admit it sounded like a late excuse after being caught.
But I meant it. What was so glorious about an unerasable scar that I would proudly announce it? I had wanted to choose a decent moment and reveal it carefully, not rush it—but everything had twisted sideways. Trying not to worry them by waiting for the right timing, I had ended up giving them worry and heartache at the same time.
"I'll explain everything once we're back at the hotel. Could you let it go for now?"
In the end I offered not persuasion but a strange compromise. Spelling everything out here meant outsiders—my subordinates, the young duke—and the place itself was hardly comfortable.
When I subtly showed them the still-trembling fairies, Luise and Irina managed to accept it, just barely. They wouldn't want others reading the room over our private matters either.
"You have to explain properly."
"I will."
Once it was just us, I was probably going to suffer for that long again—but I decided to treat it as karma for botching the timing.
"…You can come out now."
"Mm. Okay, okay."
The fairies crept out of my hair, set their hands on my wound, and began to glow.
It felt a little bitter. If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have done it outside.
"Huh? Hmm?"
"Weird. Weird."
I looked blankly down at them as the sparkling fairies spoke in uneasy voices.
What now. What is it this time. If something goes wrong here, I'm the one who has to clean it up. Keep this up and I may have to review downgrading our one-body relationship to ordinary support.
"Auntie Sky was here."
?
"What do you mea—"
Before I could finish, the world in front of me began to turn white.
Today really did seem to be a day where everything went sideways no matter what I did. Or else I was being punished for trying to half-ass the extraction of a god's power.
And the odds leaned heavily toward the latter.
Damn it.
Nothing but pure white. Not merely a whiteout of my vision—my body itself had fallen into a pure white space.
Had I been teleported? But I felt no movement of mana at all, so it wasn't teleportation. For that matter, I wasn't even sure this counted as a space. Had I fallen somewhere? My senses felt all wrong—had only my mind been dragged into some strange place while my body stayed behind?
But this was no time to fuss over minor details.
"Well now. Finally we meet."
With the fairies clinging to me and every person nearby vanished, a presence appeared out of nowhere.
"I don't even know how long it's been since I last met a mortal."
A woman with deep blue hair falling to her waist and blue eyes of nearly the same shade. She wore the nomad attire I had seen to the point of exhaustion in the North.
"Should I say it's nice to meet you?"
The moment I saw the woman grinning with a leather waterskin in hand, instinct told me everything.
This situation had gotten seriously twisted.