Sapiens Must Die (1)
The third time he asked, Nathan’s voice was flat. “What exactly does your father kill?”
“Babies marked by the Mark of the Beast. It’s the cleanest solution while they’re still powerless. When the host dies, the Mark simply seeks a new one, and Orkos can track the infant again.”
“…Babies? Not ‘children,’ not even ‘kids’—specifically babies?”
“If we waited until they grew up, the adult host would bring about catastrophe.”
“Catastrophe?”
“The murder of a god. The extinction of an entire race. A singular being who makes every other existence look pathetic by comparison. Orkos fled the Heavens to prevent that very thing.”
Suddenly the horrifying words the demon had spat at him resurfaced. Orkos killed your mother. And your father. The creature had said exactly that to Nathan… No. Nathan scratched the back of his head compulsively. None of it made sense.
“This is a nightmare to even ask, but then why am I still alive? Did he have a sudden change of heart?”
“Ask Orkos. How should I know?”
Nathan clutched his hair. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t… but then again, what could be real anymore? The world outside was literally a floating continent in the sky, and some thousand-year-old devil was apparently living inside him. The thing that was truly driving him insane was—
“Who was that man chopping down the tree? And what the hell was that bleeding tree?”
“The Celestial God Uranus. The dead silver tree was the deity of Angilphyre. After the mages massacred them and even their chief god was lost, the wood elves of Angilphyre were wiped out. Uranus kept devouring the gods of many other races after that—until he had enough power to lift the earth itself and create the Heavens.”
“…Then the face I saw in that vision that day, why did it—”
“Look like Aspen? Because the Peres family are my distant descendants. We have served Keres for generations.”
The conversation had become brutally economical. Almost painfully so. Nathan couldn’t tell whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. All he felt was a rising surge of anger.
“In that scene from your past, your ears—”
“Weren’t long. All Eleim were once human. We simply stole the elves’ eternity.”
“It’s easier to follow when you stick to the main points, but your explanations are nothing but bare bones.”
“I have answered every question you asked.”
The severed head of Santra spoke in a tearful voice.
“Just… leave me alone.”
She hadn’t suddenly grown kind. She had simply seen that Nathan wouldn’t leave until his doubts were resolved. Nathan’s irritation boiled over.
“There are always people who, when they see someone already on the ground, feel the need to kick them one more time and laugh about it.”
Santra shuddered at the hand that lifted her by the cheeks. She couldn’t even begin to guess what he intended to do. Fortunately—or perhaps not—Nathan only raised her to eye level.
“Of course, I’m not one of those people. I can’t stand thugs like that.”
Nathan remained perfectly still for a long moment. Santra bit her lip.
“I told you to leave me—”
“But to me, you are exactly that kind of person.”
Santra realized it then. Though a mere human like Nathan lacked divine insight, he still possessed basic intuition. He was toying with her while she was helpless to resist.
“Yes, I deliberately tormented you. Only by applying unbearable pressure would the Mark of the Beast begin to tempt you. How much more do I have to tell you before you’ll quietly leave?”
“If it bothers you that much, open a door under my feet right now.”
He said it knowing she couldn’t. If she had that kind of power, she would have done it already. Santra let out a sigh and fell silent.
Nathan felt the faint stirrings of sympathy inside him wither away. Apparently he preferred it when the other party was at least honest. When her silence displeased him, he deliberately conjured up a truly horrible image. Having read it, Santra finally opened her mouth again.
“I found a way to imprison the Mark of the Beast. By grafting the corpse of a dead god that Vandberg discovered in a corner of the Heavens onto anti-magic red iron alloy—”
“Skip the technical terms.”
“I found a way to imprison the Mark of the Beast. And I planned to turn it into a weapon to kill a Celestial God.”
“A Celestial God? Why?”
“Because he’s my little brother.”
Nathan made a face. He had hoped for a slightly better reason. Something like wanting to escape the Heavens to return to humanity’s side, the way he had told Aspen.
“So the sibling gods are fighting over territory? How is that any different from those northern ear-twisters? Don’t tell me that even though the Heavens are a complete mess, there’s some widespread custom of selectively killing off their own kind—”
“That child is in pain.”
Santra’s voice broke into sobs.
“For fifteen hundred years he has kept gods of immeasurable power trapped inside his own body, and in return he suffers endlessly! My poor little brother—I couldn’t bear to watch it any longer! All that sinful power ever earned him was the endless nagging of those decrepit old monsters! Damn those children! Hundreds of years old, yet trapped inside their tiny plots of land with boundless desire, knowing nothing but tantrums and vice! All for the sake of those pathetic creatures, my brother—! I— That child—!”
The sudden flood of grief burst out like a broken dam. Nathan was taken aback. He nearly dropped her head, repeatedly catching it between his fingers like a ball before he managed to hold on. He accidentally slapped her several times in the process, but Santra didn’t seem to care.
“Why on earth—!”
“Can I be honest? If you had sold me your story from the beginning, I might have at least considered helping you. Of course, it would have been more effective if you’d come to me with your head already in a bowl. That look is pretty heartbreaking right now.”
“Ask for cooperation from you? From someone born with the Mark of the Beast? Don’t make me laugh. The Mark was supposed to remain ignorant until the very end. If it realized that I knew of its existence, it might twist time and flee instead of willingly walking into my trap.”
“Stop. You look exhausted.”
Nathan set the head down on the bed in the middle of the room. Then he hesitated. Should he put a pillow under it, or was that pointless since there was no neck? At the fleeting brush of the pillow against the back of her head, Santra’s eyelids trembled.
“Why do you keep lifting and lowering it?”
“Sorry. Never tried to lay down a person who’s just a head before. Ah, damn. I think I’m gonna puke.”
“Are you doing this on purpose?”
“No way.”
Even as he said it, Nathan changed his mind.
“Now that I think about it, you do look pretty ridiculous.”
Santra ground her teeth. Having grown tired of mocking her, Nathan sat down on the floor with his back against the bed.
“You cut me off so cleanly when I said I couldn’t explain beforehand that I can’t even complain about you only explaining now.”
“Do it.”
“Do what?”
“Do it. Everything you thought the moment you saw my severed head. Then leave me alone.”
Nathan of course knew exactly what he had imagined. But being given permission to voice an idea he hadn’t dared speak aloud was a strangely novel experience.
“Are you sure?”
“What choice do I have? It’s the only way you’ll leave. In the end it’s the result of my own choices, so I’ll accept it. And I’ll take it as my apology for what I did to you.”
It was an extremely unusual way to broker reconciliation. Nathan tilted his head but eventually stood up. He lifted Santra’s head from the center of the bed and set it down on the wide floor.
The Lion Wing Knights had a tradition. A rather beautiful tradition that applied only to irredeemable criminals—child murderers, abyss sorcerers—or creatures that had killed a Lion Wing Knight. They would bury the body in the ground and kick the head as hard as they could, sending it flying high into the sky. It was their own ritual to show that vengeance had been delivered to the departed soul.
Of course, to Nathan it was nothing but pretentious meaning-making. No matter who started it, the real purpose of that grotesque act had probably been catharsis rather than ceremony.
That was what Nathan had imagined. Santra, now terrified of the moment of retribution, squeezed her eyes shut. Even with only a head remaining, the pain an Eleim body could feel was always the same. Would it hurt? Probably. A great deal.
The sound of Nathan’s receding footsteps rang clearly in the silence. The powerless god resigned herself and waited. For this moment to pass as well. For the tip of a foot kicking with all its strength.
But what touched her was only Nathan’s voice, distant now.
“Should I close the door?”
Feeling utterly drained, Santra opened her eyes. Nathan had poked only his upper body back through the doorway and gave a shrug toward the owner of the Great Arena, who was now nothing but a head.
“Yeah.”
At the homeowner’s confirmation, the doorknob and hinges creaked as the door folded shut. With the sound of the door closing, the owner of the Great Arena was left alone in the spacious hall.
She hadn’t been mistaken. Despite the burning desire and rage contained within him, the boy had ultimately suppressed it. Even while acknowledging his innate nature that knew only violence as a solution, he somehow possessed the monstrous self-control to hold it down with crushing weight.
Santra felt she now understood a little of Orkos’s arrangement. Why he had chosen to raise the child burdened with a load no human could bear, rather than simply granting him an easy death.
The owner of the Great Arena quietly closed her eyes and sank into thought. Even after fifteen hundred years, part of her remained exactly as she had been back then. Infinitely foolish—
“Just in case.”
The old door creaked open again with an uncomfortable sound.
“That… even if you’re just a head, you won’t starve to death or anything, right? Should I call someone to help or….”
“…I don’t need anything, so go. If you’re worried about finding your way back, my servants will guide you.”
Nathan awkwardly closed the door again. A few minutes later, the very thing she had said she didn’t need finally arrived. Santra let out a heavy sigh as she watched her own servants walk into the hall with utterly bewildered expressions.
While the entire Heavens trembled in fear and anticipation, war finally broke out.
It began with the ‘Winter King’s Blades’ and the central ‘Sword Star Sect.’ The elite Winter Kingdom troops who had followed Morbi on his southern invasion and been taken prisoner finally escaped. They seized several members of the Eastern Council and began a hostage crisis.
The first to arrive on the scene was the Sword Star Sect, whose members were mostly scions of prestigious families. The Eleim cheered for their courage in coming to rescue their parents and acquaintances. But those cheers soon turned to screams.
Rather than backing down, both sides traded insults until they finally drew blood. The battle was rather one-sided. The Winter Kingdom’s elite swordsmen—forged from only two or three survivors out of ten carefully selected candidates, steeped in the cold and poison of the north. Yet the Sword Star Sect sliced through both the swords and their owners. The warriors of Ingur were mercilessly slaughtered by the terrifying power of Sword Qi.
In the chaos, no one properly noticed. No one saw the Sword Star Sect assassinate not only the Winter King’s elite soldiers but also several councilors—the political rivals of their own parents—who had been taken hostage.
The noble scions of the Sword Star Sect, their blades stained with blood, emerged from the council chamber. Days later they stood before the crowd gathered in the plaza, weeping as they read the list of victims. Next came the bereaved families. The relatives of the deceased, dragged onto the platform, explained with somewhat stiff expressions why the dead had deserved respect.
The crowd’s rage boiled over in the plaza. The surviving councilors calmed them and spoke.
We must see the true nature of this incident.
“Citizens, is this truly what you desire?”
The crowd roared with heated voices.
“We want his blood—!”
“Liberation from fear—! Retribution—!”
In response to that fervor, the councilors of East Heaven each spoke with passionate voices. They would do as the people wished. The Sapiens who had caused this war would surely die.
Kill him. Kill the Sapiens who burned the East and sacrificed so many Eleim.
The crowd let out thunderous cheers. The Sword Star Sect members lined up beside the councilors drew their blades and raised them high, answering with their own cheers. As if they would fight the enemy one-on-one and heroically take his life.
Yet not a single Sword Star Sect member would willingly set foot inside a lowly place like the Arena of Punishment. Sapiens Nathan was fated to grow exhausted fighting far more pathetic opponents. The Sword Star Sect paid no mind to that absurdity. It was simply a cheap way to earn the favor of fools.
Among the lined-up Sword Star Sect members, however, one stood out with an especially bored expression. He even yawned discreetly with his mouth slightly open—an utterly undisciplined attitude. Even when the sect leader glared at him from behind, he continued to go through the motions of cheering with minimal effort.
“Hey. Where the hell is your head at?”
At the senior member’s voice, the blond Sword Star Sect member Bin Baistis answered in a hushed tone. At least lowering his voice was the minimum courtesy he observed.
“My mind left a long time ago. Looks like I’m about to get a free new Segway.”
“You’re going to the Galarhorn brand store in person?”
“How did you know?”
Bin dodged the slap aimed at the back of his head without even looking. His senior let out a sigh.
After the memorial service ended, the senior stopped Bin on the way back.
“Don’t even think about hanging around anywhere connected to Galarhorn, you crazy bastard. Do you not see the atmosphere right now? You want to get torn apart by the captain?”
Bin looked back with a blank face. Only after hearing the rest of his senior’s words did he finally realize.
“That Sapiens is a gladiator affiliated with Galarhorn?”
“Did you throw your brain outside the Heavens? It’s a miracle you survived after chucking it. Though I guess the border guards wouldn’t have called that ‘national asset leakage.’”
Bin sighed.
“Ugh. That’s it then. Guess I won’t get to see their products for a while.”
“A while? Bullshit. Haven’t you heard? Galarhorn joined the gladiator fights because of that one Sapiens. Pretty soon they’ll be dragged from one corporate-sponsored match to another. Every time he loses, they’ll start losing rights and ownership little by little, like clothes getting wet in drizzle. Galarhorn’s products will just be sold under different brand names. I’m really curious what company name your precious one-wheeled scooter will end up with. You can go buy it then. It won’t take more than a few years, so just be patient.”
The senior chewed on a cigarette and sneered.
“They must have really wanted that Sapiens who even captured royalty. Can’t believe how stupid they were. All that effort to obtain him, and now he’s going to die in the Arena of Punishment anyway. Those councilors really have nasty personalities. The kid’s already doomed to scream his way to death, yet they’re going to wring him dry to the marrow and use him thoroughly—all in the name of doing it for the citizens.”
The senior, who had been smoking as if starved for it, flicked the ashes off and spoke bluntly.
“It’s a frightening time. Half-breeds like you should be especially careful.”
Any ordinary half-elf would have flared up at those words. But Bin only gave a faint smile.
“Sapiens must die, huh. The Winter Kingdom is terrifying, Sapiens are easy prey. They’re too scared for all-out war but happy to enjoy an execution. Everyone’s thinking way too simply.”
Waving goodbye to his senior, whose mood had now soured, Bin muttered quietly to himself.
“But it doesn’t look like it’s going to be that easy.”