Chapter 41
Isla strikes Wide.
Wide strikes Tisha.
For the ending to come out beautifully, Tisha really ought to attack Isla — but for the moment, Tisha and Isla are on the same side.
Anyway, fanatics poured into a battlefield where most of the soldiers were already spent. Even so, most of those fanatics were not enemies, not truly. They weren't especially drugged on anything, and once a few of them died, they tried to flee to the rear.
Then Wide burned the ones who ran and ordered them to keep fighting. That was a mistake. Because in that instant Tisha cried out that he would spare anyone who repented and turned to the Church of the Holy God.
For the record, Tisha is a tremendous hero in the Kingdom of Anselus. A profoundly noble hero. The reputation he had built was more than persuasive enough to make terrified believers turn their blades.
There were even low-ranking Blessed among them. You can see how little loyalty they commanded.
Even so, they amounted to only a small share of the strength on the field, and Wide and the powerful few who might be called his inner circle remained exactly as they were. It was, without question, a dangerous moment. The losses were severe enough that he ought to have compromised and withdrawn — and yet Wide flung aside the arm of a subordinate trying to hold him back, declaring that if not now, he would never be able to kill Tisha, and charged.
Somehow, he knows.
What the two of them have left to build is not the same. If things continue like this, Tisha gains the Kingdom of Anselus at his back. The cult that calls itself the Miriga Order, by contrast, stands on very shaky ground. That gap in power will only keep widening. So Wide, it seems, is willing to shut his eyes to the casualties among the faithful and press the attack.
Above all, there was almost no one left on the field who could still fight. He drove the assault until the sun went down, and Wide stood in unmistakable advantage. It was truly a moment when nothing remained but the finish.
But then it happened.
From out of nowhere, an army arrived in support. Tisha had never asked for help — and yet soldiers came running from the south and attacked Wide. Astonishingly, the one who had come to Tisha's aid was the count.
If you listen to what he says, it's honestly hilarious. He claimed he had moved for the sake of the Kingdom of Anselus — that when the enemy was wicked heretics, it was time to join forces. He must have stepped forward out of his own desire, and yet there he was, saying things like that. Tisha accepted him all the same.
Even so, the tide of battle only barely evened out to half and half. The count's army, too, was already thick with exhaustion.
Wide raged like wildfire and denounced the count. The count shut him down with a single retort. Then Tisha and the count charged in together, shouting the name of the Church of the Holy God.
That was when an extremely cowardly thing occurred.
Yes. Cowardly.
Light poured down from the sky, and the people around them were restored.
Kehehe.
It's a god.
Yes — a god unmistakably intervened. Oh? There really was a god? The priests drew power from the head and put it to use. I had guessed it was some psychic ability spilling out of the head, the way it is in certain fantasies, but that guess was wrong. There is a god over there.
What followed needs no telling. Once the wounded were restored, the tide reversed in an instant, and Wide and his people were defeated.
When defeat was sealed, Wide tried to flee again, but this time a short blade sank into his heart from behind.
It was Isla.
She had her revenge. The price was her whole body roasted in Wide's purple fire. Burns must be a horrific pain, and yet she died smiling.
Light falls downward.
Plop.
Two Warmths came to me.
Wide, who had always been the victor, and who for that reason always wanted to stand above someone else. Isla, who after her defeat had been picked up by Witga, and who had come to feel toward him an emotion threaded through with a father's affection and with love. Their stories ended like this.
But Tisha's story goes on.
He took in those who converted, and he killed those who meant to fight to the end. Then he returned to the royal capital. Immediately afterward he married the queen and became king.
The reason? Simple. He had shown a miracle. I'll say it again: the Kingdom of Anselus is a devout nation of the Church of the Holy God. In a moment of crisis, a god had personally bestowed a blessing and struck the heretics down. And the one who testified to it was none other than the count who had been Tisha's enemy. He described what had happened not as an ambitious count, but as a believer who had witnessed a miracle, and no one could deny it.
And if they did?
Of course it wasn't that no one tried. They were branded heretics, beaten by the mob, and died.
And so a king was born — an all-purpose laborer of a sovereign, able to keep vigil through the night forever, however old he grew. After that he held a wedding with the woman who had been queen, took a concubine as well, and was scolded tremendously by the queen. Even so, in his own way, he had children and lived well.
Meanwhile, Andrew expanded the Miriga Order step by step. Whether because he had learned it from the Future Hope Church, he no longer rushed. He gathered people, adjusted things so they would not be exploited too harshly, and grew the sect's strength. And while he did, he set his subordinates to preparing a call to a god.
On the day Wide took his men and went to strike Tisha, Andrew had not sent his own subordinates. So Blessed still remained. And among them were people who had learned Yasle's magic — not one, but several.
Yes.
That's right.
He had made ready to call me.
Not bad. They are people whose faces I know, so once I am summoned, it should be easy to move. He took his time and prepared a Sacrifice.
But he failed.
A summoning rite, made by several people cross-checking one another, had failed. Everyone was bitterly disappointed. But that wasn't the problem. If you fail, you simply try again, don't you? The chance itself had become dangerous.
They fell into a greater crisis.
The Blessed were murdered, one by one.
I don't know what happened either. Even looking through the memories of the dead, I can't tell how they died. Their heads simply snapped off and flew, and that was the end of them. Even the Blessed who survived until the last died rigid with terror. Still, there is something I can tell. Until every Blessed person in Andrew's order was dead, not a single ordinary person died.
In other words, they were killed with the Blessed clearly as the target.
So in the end, I don't know what became of Andrew after that. There were no eyes left through which I could see.
And it wasn't only those people who died. Blessed who had somehow survived and fled far away died as well. They died off, one by one. Among them were people who had been trying to summon me, which is genuinely infuriating. A few times, it seemed they had very nearly been able to succeed. So all I could do was watch, again and again, as my harvest season vanished all at once.
If you're going to do that, then go to Tisha!
He's the most famous of the Blessed!
Why are you killing the ones who fled to the middle of nowhere?! No! My customers, who barely made it across on the back of an advertisement!
I'm sad.
Seething, I was digging hard through the memories of the murdered and the gazes of those still living when I realized something. Looking truly closely, a question arose.
Did their attempts really fail?
They all failed because they made some mistake? These were people with better heads than mine, who interpreted Yasle's magic and then called. It's strange.
Am I being interfered with? So that I cannot come back over there?
Then I ought to change the kind of advertisement. I'll leave it as a book.
Yes. That's right.
If they are aiming precisely at the Blessed, I only need to set the board so that someone who isn't Blessed summons me. With a book, any number of unspecified people can call. Why didn't I think of it? This is a good idea. If I go to another world, I should make sure to leave it as a book there, too.
But this isn't enough. There are too few people I can give a blessing. Isn't there some way to do it from a distance? Not only harvesting — increasing the number of people who receive a blessing in my stead.
I've set the next goal.
Make a Blessing Proxy.
But no matter how I thought about it, I couldn't get a feel for the thing. Just like that, on and on. Only time passed.
So much time has passed now that I can no longer tell whether someone who dropped dead was murdered, or simply died of age.
Tisha is a great king now, whatever anyone may say. He did not stop at rebuilding the Kingdom of Anselus — he made it greater. Not only Anselus, but most of the kingdoms to the east of the Skad Rock Desert believe in the Church of the Holy God. And then a kingdom appeared, ruled by a man who had received a blessing directly from a god. Anselus absorbed the small kingdoms around it and grew far larger.
But at the age of sixty he passed the throne to a son with purple hair like his own and stepped down. Perhaps because of his regeneration, even well past sixty he looks fifty. He is still hale — and still he gave the seat to his son. Honoring the wife who died first, he lives on with the wife who remains.
More time passed. All his wives departed before him. And around the time his son passed the throne to his grandson and stepped down as his father had, even regeneration, it seemed, could not endure the conditions of a later age. He, too, is dying. He is surrounded by his sons and daughters, his grandsons and granddaughters. He shares his last farewells and closes his eyes.
And the last flame of life went out.
Yes.
The time has come to fulfill the contract.
I said this:
All that you hold then.
Even I, up to that point, thought that receiving Tisha's Warmth was all of it. But no. His children. His grandchildren. Lines stretch out from him and run on into his descendants. I can take hold of them. The people a god helped are crowded in there. By rights, I ought to take only Tisha's Warmth. That is the safe choice.
But.
I.
Gods.
I hate them.
I reached out a hand to every one of them.
But a veil — similar to what I had seen with Yasle before, yet different in feeling — wrapped Tisha's light.
So.
Well.
The contract comes first.
I shattered the veil and seized, in a single grasp, everything he had built.
Crack.
Huh?
From Tisha's center, cracks spread as if a pane of glass were breaking. And those cracks run through every one of his descendants. Threads of fracture have set into their heads, but no one seems to know.
Crrrack.
The hole grows larger. And it isn't the sensation of being dragged upward, as it was last time. It is more like a ledge set high above — something I could reach for, set a hand on, and climb.
So that is what I did.
Crash.
There was no actual sound of breaking. But a vast hole opened together with the veil that wrapped the light, and I caught hold of it and went inside.
I open my eyes, and there is a room familiar to Tisha. Turning, I find people whose heads are sheathed in dark-purple spheres. There is no light, and no Warmth, but they stand with their heads replaced by unreal dark-purple orbs, like something out of a horror game. Looking down, something like a shattered window stretches out in every direction, and the hole has taken the place of Tisha's upper body. Like a flower set atop his lower half.
Inside the hole is not blood and flesh, but endless dark.
So that is where I came from.
At a nearby window there is a shape of broken polygons, lighting up at random.
Is this what I look like? Couldn't I have a form that's a little cooler, or prettier?
Ah. I've taken Rebecca's appearance. But I feel a little freer than I did when I entered Rebecca's body.
Crash!
Then the window beside me burst into pieces, and a silver-haired girl astride a staff of bone — one I had seen a very long time ago — came inside. She looked around and simply sank down where she was. Then she fixed her gaze on a single point.
Yes.
On me.
I walked up in front of her. And after a very long time, I offer a greeting.
"Hello, Witch of Ecstasy."
Hyungkesuni smiles brightly. She is terrified — but she is someone for whom, when she is terrified, that is the only expression she has.
"No. At a time like this, I ought to say it this way, shouldn't I?"
I went to her, crouched, and brought my eyes level with hers.
"It's been so long. I'm glad to see you again, Hyungkesuni."
Kehehe.