The Weight They Could Not See
The scars left by the King of the Dark Withered Tree still marked the continent in places, and the roots of the infected had not yet been entirely purged.
Even so, people found hope in the news that the King of the Dark Withered Tree had fallen, and they kindled their will to live anew.
The vast shadow that had hung over the continent had, at last, been lifted.
"Mmm… I like how quick this is."
Megus smiled with satisfaction as she swung a plain iron sword. At the tip of the blade she had cut so casually lay a withered figure, dry as old timber — an undead.
"Looks like we made the right call leaving him behind, even if it was a little inconvenient for us."
Riel muttered as she watched the undead's head thump to the ground and roll across the dirt — the same neck Megus had severed without so much as a second thought a moment earlier.
Olivia held back from using attack magic and simply watched from the rear. Instead she cast spells that bolstered the party's stamina, strength, and speed, covering them from behind. There were too few undead for offensive magic to be worth the cost.
"Everyone, well done."
Once the nearby undead had all crumbled to ash and scattered on the wind, the Saintess Lora stretched out her hands. Sunlight seemed to sprout from her fingertips. The party stood in that radiance and let the corners of their mouths lift in quiet smiles.
"Still, it's strange."
"What is?"
After receiving the heal, they were walking the road toward the kingdom's capital when Megus murmured the thought half to herself. Riel, keeping pace at her shoulder, asked.
"I don't know… I'm more tired than before. Every time I kill one of those undead, my hands and feet feel heavier. It's so slight it barely matters, but it nags at me."
"You feel it too?"
Riel's eyes widened in surprise, and Megus's did the same.
"Then you as well?"
"From the way you're talking… it sounds like you do too."
"Yeah. I figured I was just worn out, but if you're feeling it as well…"
"Is something going on?"
Riel tilted her head, and Lora, following behind them, asked with a stiffened expression.
"If not only the Seeker but Riel as well… then it doesn't sound like simple fatigue. You aren't overdoing it, are you?"
"Hm? No. I'm fine. Once I take Lora's heal, it's nothing."
Riel twisted to glance back and answered as if it were hardly worth mentioning. She felt the wrongness, yes — but not enough to treat it as serious.
"That's a relief, then… but just to be safe, we should stop by the Great Temple."
The Great Temple not only produced saintesses; it also dispatched monks across the land to hold back the damage caused by the undead. It was, moreover, a religious order united beneath the name of the goddess. The prayers Lora recited every night before sleep were a product of the Great Temple's teaching.
"Then we'd better hurry back to the capital. The Great Temple is there too, right?"
Megus glanced over her shoulder, and Lora nodded.
"Yes. For now my meager holy power seems enough to treat it, but one never knows."
"Come on. What monk could be better than a saintess? Still, if you're saying so, we should get there quickly."
Their destination was the same capital, but the roads were not. They had deliberately taken the long way around to clear out the undead scattered along the path. With Olivia this worried, though, looping further was no longer realistic.
As leader — and as the Seeker — Megus made a cool decision.
"From here on we head straight for the capital. We've been walking on purpose until now, but we'll need to borrow horses. Everyone fine with that?"
Of course.
The whole party answered as one, firm and united. Every one of them stood behind Megus's call. She nodded, satisfied, and turned her gaze forward again.
By then, the face of the frail porter they had left behind no longer lingered in any of their minds.
It was something that happened one day after they had abandoned Edgar and gone on their way.
"What?! You were under Avalon's curse?!"
The moment Edgar's long story ended, the crack of a palm against the table rang through the room. Freesia had slammed it down in open shock.
"Yes. I couldn't reveal it until Avalon was dead. Because of the Vow of Silence — the instant I spoke of the curse with my own mouth, I would have died."
"But treatment would still have been pos— ah."
Freesia started to argue on instinct, then closed her mouth as his earlier words came back to her. The saintess who had treated him at first, then gradually decided he was faking and pushed him away.
"From their point of view, it must have looked like I was putting it on."
Edgar gave a bitter little smile. It was the smile of a man whose hope and sense of betrayal had long since rotted away to dust.
Crazy bastard. Freesia did not doubt a single word. She believed him exactly as he had spoken. She already knew about the curse, and she had seen with her own eyes the eight changes of that foul, rotting water. Evidence enough to force belief was piled everywhere around them.
"And those people knew nothing about the curse at all?"
Even from the Yo clan's perspective, the Seeker was a human worth respecting. But listening to the assessment that came from the mouth of the porter who had traveled with her, that respect melted away like spring snow. The snort of disbelief that left Freesia then was for that very reason.
Edgar nodded slightly as he answered.
"They set out in such a rush that I don't think they ever had time to hear an explanation."
"Does that even make sense? There's no way they walked that far without meeting a single person. They would have learned about the curse naturally…!"
"No. Humans don't know much about the curse, so… there was nothing to be done."
Edgar sighed, recalling the setting of the game. When you struck down an undead, a curse born of their grudge settled into the body, layer upon layer. Like Edgar, your limbs grew heavy; you coughed blood; the slightest movement left you gasping. And then, at last, your breath stopped.
The humans who knew this truth were vanishingly few. The Pope of the Great Temple. The kings of the various kingdoms, perhaps. And they had chosen to keep their mouths shut. If the curse of the undead — of the King of the Dark Withered Tree — became known, too many people would refuse to fight. In its place they spread a slightly wrong story: that the miasma released when an undead died ate away at the body. And they preached that special herbs or holy power were needed to treat that miasma.
Because of that, no one could imagine that Edgar, who never even entered combat, might fall under a curse. They believed the miasma only touched those who personally cut an undead down.
"We cut off contact with the human side, but… I never thought the gap would be this wide."
Freesia let out a long breath after hearing Edgar's wretched past.
"So how did you know you'd been cursed? If even the Seeker didn't know about it, you shouldn't have known either."
"Ah… that is…"
When Freesia drove straight to the heart of it, Edgar faltered and let the sentence trail off. He could appraise any status or item the way a game would, because his original role had been the inventory. Or he had known from the beginning because he had been dropped into this game. Neither answer was fit to give her now.
He weighed his options and settled on a reasonable dodge. Freesia's sharp gaze was oddly crushing, but he managed to keep his tone even.
"There was a time we stopped at some old ruins. While we were exploring, I realized I'd been cursed."
"What? Then you could have sa— ah. Right. You couldn't."
Freesia repeated herself and pressed a hand to her forehead. Forgetting the Vow of Silence in so short a span made her feel genuinely pathetic. Angry as she was, this was a bit much.
"Then couldn't you drop a book or something — send an indirect message?"
"That wouldn't work either. And even if it did, I couldn't risk trying it lightly."
"True… when the penalty is instant death, that's too dangerous a gamble to take."
Fair enough. Freesia folded her arms and nodded. Cursed in his party's place and unable even to speak of it. Branded a faker for his trouble. His life had been so wretched she could hardly help pitying him.
"You said you were the Seeker's party's porter, right? Even if you never landed a single blow, the courage to walk that dangerous road deserves praise. You did well."
So she offered that clumsy scrap of comfort, and—
"Thank… you."
Edgar answered in a voice that trembled so finely it nearly broke. At last he had spoken of the curse, and met someone who believed him. Freesia had no idea what to do with that and managed only an awkward cough.
"Ahem! Rest for now. I'm going to tell Mother everything and come back."
"Is it… all right if I stay here? I heard the Yo clan doesn't like humans…"
Edgar tilted his head as he asked, and Freesia rose from her seat to answer.
"It's fine, so just stay put. I changed the medicinal bath for you eight times. I've got to get my money's worth."
In truth, what she had already heard was worth plenty — and there might be still greater value to be had. Sensing as much, Freesia left him where he was and set off at once for the room where her mother would be.
Good heavens.
Iris could not contain her astonishment as she listened to the story Freesia had suddenly brought her. She had wondered what could have brought her daughter bursting in like that, and now…
"If that is true… it is both astonishing and deeply pitiful."
Outwardly eaten by a curse, inwardly rotting with frustration and injustice. Simply imagining the journey he must have endured left Iris's eyes shining wet.
"I feel a little sorry for him."
"Yes. Truly one for the ages."
"It is, isn't it."
Haa. Mother and daughter sighed in the same breath, as if they had rehearsed it. Even the way their heads drooped was perfectly in time.
"So what do you intend to do now?"
Iris lifted her lowered head as she asked. Freesia raised hers just as slowly and answered.
"I don't know. I don't have a plan yet… but throwing him out feels wrong, doesn't it?"
"Well, of course it does. He nearly died of that curse, and you would cast a child like that out? I never knew my daughter could be so cold-hearted. Mother is saddened."
Iris made a show of dabbing at her eyes, and Freesia let out a hollow laugh as she shouted back.
"Who said anything about throwing him out?! Anyway, we'll keep him here for now and think it through slowly."
Had the one who arrived sick been the Seeker, they would have received her with every honor. But Edgar was a porter. For all that he had borne a curse so thick and foul, he was still only a porter. So Iris hesitated over her judgment as well, then—
"Do you know what one does when no answer comes?"
—asked, watching Freesia's eyes go round.
At which—
"You run."
Freesia left those two words behind and bolted from the room. In the place she had occupied, only emptiness and a chill draft remained.