Chapter 169 - Between Master and Friend (2)

Master.

"..."

I gazed steadily at him. One look at the Inquisitor’s beaming face told me he wasn’t using the word master as a mere metaphor or symbol. This man, sometimes a boy and sometimes a young man, didn’t know how to joke.

Even so, I had to ask.

"Just to be sure. Inquisitor, when you say you’ll serve me as your master..."

"I will obey your commands," the Inquisitor answered immediately.

"I will kill the enemies you tell me to kill. I will spare the enemies you tell me to spare! As I said, I will defer my judgment to yours and align my actions with yours."

He raised his right hand to his chest, his posture precise, as though imitating a butler.

"I am quite a useful tool!"

"..."

"The merit of a good tool is that [its performance remains consistent]. Not to boast, but you will find no tool as useful as me for purging warlords, enforcing internal discipline, and holding a group together! Death King, you can always trust in my performance and put me to use!"

In other words, the Inquisitor was telling me:

[I will never change.]

"Please use me!"

He smiled broadly. For some reason, seeing him so certain of his own immutability made my chest ache.

「Now that I have emotions, I’ve become a bit of a prankster!」

Because I knew what he looked like when he had changed.

「I am becoming addicted to feeling emotions.」

「Do all of you live with these feelings all the time?」

Only me.

I alone remembered a side of him that even the Inquisitor himself had never experienced.

Beneath a magnolia tree shedding white blossoms, he had murmured:

「If I had done that then. If I had done this at that moment. Do you drift and wander through such thoughts, and live on all the same?」

「That must be why you are all so beautiful, so lovable.」

「If I, too, could be like you...」

He hadn’t been able to finish speaking then. I could easily guess the end of the sentence he had swallowed.

[If I, too, could have felt emotions like you, could I have lived a slightly different life?]

Having met many psychopaths, I knew. The boundary between being a psychopath and not being one was made up of three fragments of a phrase.

‘If I, too, could be like you.’

From the moment he uttered those words, I saw the Inquisitor not as a mere psycho, but as a man who had somehow ended up living the life he did.

"... Your name."

I spoke.

"Pardon?"

"Your name. Not your epithet, but your real name. The Sword Star’s name is Markus Kallenberg, and Viper’s is Liao Fan."

And the Count’s real name was Nisha. The Paladin had once called her by her real name without thinking. But since the Count had never told me herself, I pretended not to know it.

So far, only two companions had revealed their real names to me: the Sword Star and Viper.

"Inquisitor, I’d like to know your name."

"Aha."

He blinked.

"Is that an order?"

"You can’t tell me if it’s a request rather than an order?"

"Correct!"

"Why?"

"I—no, we made a promise to the Black Dragon leader long ago. [We have abandoned the outside world. We are strangers who have let our nationality, wealth, relationships—everything—flow into the Dead Sea. Therefore, let us erase the name tags the outside world attached to us as well. When we address one another, let us speak only the names we gained in the Tower.]"

I see.

‘So they made that promise.’

It struck me anew that I wasn’t one of the Tower’s original members.

"The Black Dragon leader has complicated feelings about the outside world! She hates and despises it, yet craves recognition from its people. Ahaha. She probably has the most intense emotions of any of us!"

The Inquisitor winked his left eye.

"In any case, the Sword Star withdrew from our organization. He has no need to be bound by the promise! And Viper was never the sort to feel particularly bound by such promises in the first place. But I take promises seriously. Death King, if you truly wish to know the name I had in the outside world..."

He opened his eyes to narrow slits.

"Please order me to tell you."

"..."

"I will obey."

I understood. This wasn’t merely a question of whether he would tell me his name.

He meant he would place my [orders] above the [promise] the original members had made to one another.

It was a pledge of loyalty to me.

‘Can I take responsibility for him...?’

I pondered it.

‘Can I give this man a different life? Can I take responsibility for a psychopath—for someone who ended up living as one? I have the will. I have the desire, too. But do I have the ability?’

I quietly looked down at the Inquisitor. Without a word, he simply waited for me to speak.

‘I had a chance to change his heart in [Tales of Sormwin Academy]. But I failed. I missed the opportunity. I was giving my all to help Raviel, so I never had the time to look after this child, too.’

If I were given just one more chance, could I provide him with another life? I considered it, then reached my answer.

‘I can.’

‘I want to do that for him.’

I nodded.

"Yes."

The second chance hadn’t come yet. But until it did, I would take responsibility for the child before me, at least for the time being.

"Tell me your name."

"..."

The Inquisitor smiled.

"My real name is Bambolina."

Laughter spilled from beneath his golden hair.

"Strictly speaking, it is difficult to call it my real name. A pet name, perhaps!"

A pet name.

"As a child, I grew up in the hands of the mafia. They often called me ‘baby doll,’ and that simply became my name. Ah, Bambolina means doll! They also called me Kukla."

He said it brightly.

"The organization that imprisoned me had its headquarters in Bulgaria. It had tentacles reaching into all sorts of fields. I was trained to be used in its business operations."

"The reason you specifically used the past tense, ‘had’..."

"Is that it no longer exists on this earth!"

Smiling, he took a padlock from inside his clothes. With quick flicks, he sent it dancing across his left hand, as though twirling a pen.

"I was confined for eleven years. One day, after training as usual, I lay down in bed, and a question suddenly occurred to me. [I can open the padlock on that door. Is there any reason I shouldn’t?]"

CLICK.

The padlock opened in his hand with a metallic sound.

"On further reflection, there wasn’t!"

So he escaped.

"There seemed to be no reason not to kill the guard assigned to watch me. Nor was there any reason not to murder the boss!"

Some people refrained from acting if there was no reason to act, while others made certain to act if there was no reason not to. The Inquisitor was unequivocally the latter.

"I sowed discord between two senior officers and four junior officers. I tampered with the scenes just enough to let suspicion grow. Sure enough, after half a year they began suspecting it was my doing, but, aha! By then, half the organization had already been destroyed!"

The mafia’s baby doll entered the Tower at his leisure.

The Tower acquired a terrifyingly capable beast.

"... Why choose me, of all people, as your master?"

"The first reason, of course, is that you are more capable than I am, Death King."

He slowly drew out the end of his sentence.

"The second reason... is that I hesitated."

"Hesitated?"

"Hmm. Yes... How can I explain it so you’ll understand?"

In a rare display, he furrowed his brow as though quite troubled.

"Since clearing [Tales of Sormwin Academy], I have become somewhat... strange. Even when I tried to execute terrorists as usual, I couldn’t carry it out as quickly as before. To anyone else, the difference would have been only a second, but to me, that very second was strange..."

He sank deep into thought.

"During that second, I recalled scenes from the time I spent with you at Sormwin Academy."

"..."

"Strange, isn’t it?"

No. Not strange at all.

If anything, I was inwardly astonished.

‘It left a mark.’

The route in which the Inquisitor had become completely immersed in Golden Silk Blossom was gone. Lost. But even in the new main history I had followed, he must have felt her emotions, however faintly.

Even if his immersion rate had been less than ten percent.

No, even if it had been only one percent.

The little doll had undoubtedly experienced ‘emotion.’

"Death King, you are my hesitation," he said.

"You claimed one second of my life. That was something I had never experienced before. Perhaps you could connect one second to another in my life, until someday they become a minute, then an hour!"

He smiled radiantly.

"Now, I can understand. This is probably what they call hope in another human being. Perhaps people are always waiting for someone else to occupy their time. In that sense, you are my hope!"

"..."

"I will not become any less of myself because you occupy my time. Yes, somehow I feel certain of that."

He handed me the padlock. It was old and rusty.

"Your rhythm will simply be added to the melody that is me. My single melodic line. Your lyrics might be added to my monotonous humming—that is what I can just barely imagine, even if only through metaphor."

I took the padlock.

"Because of you, I might become music, Death King. Even someone like me."

He smiled.

"May I make you my hope?"

"..."

Heavy words. Frightening words.

There was only a hair’s breadth between that weight and that fear. One misstep, and I might become afraid of shouldering the Inquisitor.

I thought of the weight of Hungry Ghost. Of the weight of the faithful and Sylvia Evanail. Of the Heaven-Slaying Star’s weight. My thoughts reached the weight of the Earth Spiritfolk, and by then, I decided I could add one more burden.

"Yes."

The Inquisitor was my companion.

"I will be your hope."

It didn’t matter if he was like a beast.

Humans, after all, were merely beasts who yearned to be people.

Both the child before me and I were on the road toward becoming people.

"Without my permission," I ordered, "do not kill anyone."

"Yes!"

"Do not torture anyone without my permission."

"Yes."

"Please don’t imprison anyone without my permission."

"Understood!"

"Tell me when something troubles you. In return, I won’t despise you for what you tell me. I won’t look at you as though you’re strange, either. I’ll think from your perspective, so, Bambolina, please consider me a person just like you."

"..."

He brought both hands together at his chest.

For the first time, I felt that he was [praying].

"Yes, you who are more capable than I. So long as you are my hope, I will strive for you."

Rank Four. Master of the Pantheon.

The little doll pledged his loyalty to me.

"I have been eliminated from this stage. I cannot accompany you to the thirty-second floor. Even this time together is merely a temporary arrangement I requested from [The Princess Who Walks Through Mirages]. It will end soon. In Babylon, I will keep your commands firmly in mind, Death King!"

"Yes."

I stroked his head.

"Please be good and look after the house, you phony cult leader."

"Ahaha—"

He laughed.

"I will obey your command, Lord Gongja!"

The Inquisitor’s form melted away.

[The Inquisitor fails to complete the quest.]

[The Inquisitor is eliminated from the stage!]

The next moment, my other companions appeared around me.

The Sword Star. The Black Dragon leader. The Count. Viper. The Paladin.

Our clearing party, now six including me, looked at one another in bewilderment.