Ghouls
The ghoul glanced around the professor’s office, sizing up the room with furtive eyes before carefully speaking.
"What happened to the one from last time...?"
"He died."
"...You mean he passed away?"
"He was a heretic."
Color drained from the ghoul’s face in an instant.
His lips trembled as if he wanted to ask something else, so I cut him off first.
I wasn’t in the mood to answer questions.
None of that mattered anyway.
"More importantly, you said you could tell who the heretics were, didn’t you?"
I pulled the list I’d been keeping folded and crumpled in my breast pocket and tossed it onto the desk.
The paper spread across the wood with a rustle.
There were places where the ink had bled through.
It looked as though a bottle had tipped over and soaked the page.
"These ones. Bring them to me."
The ghoul picked up the paper and narrowed his eyes as he read it, then tilted his head.
"What is... this?"
"People the Church says might be heretics. You, too."
"......The Church would invent crimes where none existed, and you want me to bring these children to you?"
"For the record, I’m a man of the Church myself. So have I been accused of crimes that don’t exist, too?"
The ghoul fell silent.
He drew in a quiet lungful of smoke and blew it up toward the ceiling.
Watching it scatter before it ever reached the top, he finally opened his mouth again.
"I’m a frail and righteous man, so I don’t wish to harm the innocent and the pitiful without cause. That’s why I’m asking you to identify them, isn’t it? You said you could tell, didn’t you?"
Even as I said it, the words lingering in my mouth sounded absurd.
Not the sort of thing that should come out of the mouth of a man who had hacked apart people who didn’t even need to be killed.
But lies, once spoken, sometimes brushed close to truth.
Of course, if it seemed like the ghoul knew something and was hiding it, or if he looked suspicious, I’d kill whoever he brought in.
"......How should I bring them here?"
"Just tell them the professor summoned them and bring them here one by one."
I pointed at the door with my chin.
The ghoul folded the list back into a crumpled shape and tucked it into his clothes before retreating carefully.
I only heard footsteps after the door closed.
About an hour passed.
In that time, I burned through at least ten more smokes.
I stared blankly at the row of cigarette butts lying in the ashtray when birdcalls drifted in from outside.
Through the window, I could see students crossing the courtyard.
Then there was movement beyond the door.
The ghoul had brought back a student.
She was a horned demi-human with sharp eyes and a sickly complexion.
Seeing that her horns were black, I tensed a little.
For some reason, the ones with black horns had always been stronger than the rest.
She stepped into the professor’s office looking less like someone who had walked in of her own will than someone who had been shoved here.
I didn’t know what the ghoul had said to her, but it clearly hadn’t been anything pleasant.
"So how do you tell?"
The ghoul began rattling off an explanation.
Something about letting mana flow and resonating with some nameless force as proof that she had performed the old rites of the heretical faith. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Still, I nodded slowly as though I had understood.
"Go ahead."
The ghoul closed his eyes and worked at something for a long while.
Faint light flickered from his fingertips, appearing and vanishing again and again.
The student we had brought in kept looking back and forth between the ghoul and me, as if she had no idea what was going on.
At last, the ghoul turned and looked at me.
"So, what is it?"
"I’m not... sure."
The ghoul spoke vaguely, almost evasively.
Useless.
I thought it might be better to speak to the student directly, so I addressed her first.
"Student. What’s your name?"
"My name is Mirana Costea... and you’re Grian."
"You know me?"
"My kin have... died by your hand more than a few times. The human they called the Sword Demon on the front lines... you look rather shabby here, don’t you?"
"Shabby?"
"Unlike the Empire, we of the Black Horn Tribe can appreciate warriors like you...?"
The moment I heard her words, I drew my sword.
I’d heard it plenty of times before.
Warriors like you should be with us.
Come over to our side, and we’ll give you whatever you want—wealth, women, all of it.
As if I would listen.
As if I’d ever listen to anything a demi-human said.
In the flash of morning sunlight glinting off the blade, the enemy’s head came away from her shoulders.
Before blood could even burst from the severed neck, her body collapsed to the floor.
The heavy sound echoed through the office and then faded.
The smell of blood rose up.
The ghoul, horrified, tried to scream, then clapped both hands over his mouth.
His eyes twitched convulsively as they darted between the corpse and me.
I’d nearly swung at him by reflex.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.
It wasn’t the dust-choked front lines anymore.
It was the professor’s office again.
No shattered wood scattered around me, no poisonous wasteland—just an intact stone floor, a desk, and an ink bottle.
A dead student.
Did I do that?
Was it my fault?
Somehow it felt as though whatever had been restraining my actions and thoughts after killing Arin had vanished.
I’d just keep being pushed along as I pleased, as I had before, as though it were a habit.
Standing there looking down at the student I’d killed without even realizing it, I was still capable of thinking all this now... and yet I had the feeling that before long I’d be swinging my sword again as if shoved forward by invisible hands.
Of course, for the moment... I could still pretend to be normal.
Pretend I had a reason. Pretend I was doing this for some greater good.
"If even you can’t tell, then she must have been a heretic who hid her tainted mana well."
I said it to the ghoul, who was trembling all over, and exhaled a mouthful of cigarette smoke.
"Go. Come back when I call for you."
The ghoul said nothing and backed out of the office like a man fleeing for his life.
His footsteps sped away down the hall.
Almost as if he were running.
I didn’t even think about cleaning up the corpse.
The blood spreading across the floor seeped beneath the desk legs.
Wasn’t there a rule about taking prisoners?
Orders from above had always been to exterminate them all.
And besides, they called them prisoners, but if you weren’t dragging them back to the barracks to torment them and play with them... there was no real reason to take them alive.
I wasn’t about to fraternize with inferior demi-humans, either.
And with a face that pretty, if I handed her over to the soldiers, she’d be tossed around in misery for a week and die anyway, so it was kinder to let her die here.
I roughly wiped the blood from my sword with a towel and slid it back into its sheath.
The blood left on the blade smeared in a long streak across the cloth.
I lit another cigarette.
Then one more. And then another.
This wasn’t what I’d meant to do.
I’d been told to root out heretics, not cut off their heads.
My hand had moved before I could think.
Even if it was only a habit from the front, habit wouldn’t absolve me of anything.
I pressed my palms hard against my eyes, let out a long breath, and clamped another cigarette between my lips.
I just stood there like that for a long time without even lighting it, staring blankly at the corpse.
I didn’t know how much time passed.
By the time I was soaked through with the smoke of the cigarette I had finally lit, footsteps were striding toward me from the far end of the corridor.
The door flew open as if the visitor had no intention of knocking.
It was the headmaster I had seen before.
Maybe the ghoul had gone to him, shaking all the while.
Or maybe the blood had seeped out into the hallway in front of the professor’s office.
What did it matter?
The headmaster’s gaze, the instant he entered the office, went straight to the student lying sprawled on the floor.
He stopped walking.
For a long while he remained there, staring down at the body in silence, before pressing his lips together and slowly walking over.
He knelt and lifted the severed head.
Through the blood-soaked hair, a peaceful face was revealed.
At least she hadn’t died in pain.
The headmaster gently closed the open eyelids with the tip of a finger.
Then he set the head back down on the floor, stood slowly, and looked at me, completely unconcerned with the blood staining his knees.
"You killed a student. On campus, no less."
"Can you really call a horned thing like that a student?"
"Have you lost your mind?"
I shrugged.
I hadn’t exactly been sane to begin with.
"She might have just been an innocent student with a passing interest in the old religion."
"That may be so... but unfortunately, she was a heretic, wasn’t she?"
"And now you expect me to just accept this after a man who’s been here less than a few days suddenly brands a student a heretic and kills her?"
"Aren’t you speaking now because you’ve already accepted it in your heart?"
"Do you really think I’ll tolerate this kind of violence just because the Church sent you?"
"Then keep your mouth shut and draw your sword, or recite your spells, or whatever it is you do."
I ground the cigarette I had been holding against the windowsill and put it out.
The ember hissed.
I laid my hand on the hilt of my sword.
Then I said quietly, "You could crush someone like me without even trying, couldn’t you?"
"......Tell His Holiness that I’d like to meet him in person."
"His Holiness isn’t exactly an idle man. I doubt he’d spare the time to meet with someone from a place that doesn’t even teach proper doctrine."
"And add that, if I wasn’t sufficiently respectful, I’m willing to make up for it."
"Why don’t you say it to him yourself? Unfortunately, I’m not a messenger."
".......”
The headmaster glared at me.
His body was trembling.
I couldn’t tell if it was anger or fear.
After standing there like that for a while, he turned on his heel and slammed the door as he left the office.
So the Church... was that powerful after all.
To think even a man at the level of headmaster would swallow his rage like that.
I looked down at the enemy lying on the floor.
The cut surface of her severed neck was already beginning to stiffen.
It was no different from the things I’d seen on the front, except that the floor was a little cleaner.
I left the office too.
I had no hobby for sharing a room with a corpse.
Out in the corridor, the smell of cigarette smoke and blood had soaked into my clothes.
A student passing by glanced at me, bowed her head, and hurried aside.
I didn’t know her.
Anyway, I couldn’t just stand around wasting time.
Since I’d already gone this far... I decided to meet all the students on the list.
They were all in class now, so it wasn’t as if any of them could run off somewhere.
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