Chapter 68 - The Monstrosity - 3

The stranger shimmered.

Its form distorted. The surrounding scenery rippled. Bera’s perception wavered.

As his muscles tensed in response, the stranger smoothly faded out of sight.

Bera flinched, his body trembling. His gaze remained fixed on the spot where the stranger had stood.

'How...?'

He had not taken his eyes off it for even a moment. How had it vanished? No, how had it slipped past his senses to approach him in the first place?

Confusion crossed Bera’s face at those thoughts. Then, realizing he was alone, he sheathed his dagger.

His heart was still pounding, unable to settle. As he worked to dispel his tension, a question rose in his mind.

'What...?'

What had he just seen? The illusion, Aisha appearing at its end, the stranger?

Bera began going over everything he had just witnessed, one detail at a time.

'... The ticking.'

That ticking sound. He was certain he remembered hearing it before. He cast his thoughts farther back, recalling the moment he had heard it.

'The end of my previous life.'

The moment of his Regression. He had certainly heard that sound as his consciousness sank into the depths.

Then the strange figure he had just seen was...

'Someone who intervened in my Regression.'

He could only arrive at that conjecture. Otherwise, there was no explaining what the stranger had done.

Following that line of thought, Bera began speculating about its identity.

'A god?'

Had he just seen a god? They were the likeliest beings to have intervened in his Regression, so naturally they came to mind first.

'... No.'

Bera soon dismissed the idea.

Among the beings he knew of that could account for the stranger, there was already one that fit better than the gods.

A shabby figure with its hood pulled low, hiding its face. A skeletal hand, half-transparent, with the background showing through it. And...

'... The pocket watch.'

An enormous watch, seemingly too large to call a pocket watch. It had definitely been hanging around the stranger’s neck.

Bera’s eyes grew somber.

'... Orgus.'

The Pilgrim Who Walks Through Time.

A monstrosity belonging to the ancient species, just like Terdan and Aedrin, whom he had encountered before.

A monstrosity that traveled between past, present, and future, sowing mysteries.

Only upon remembering it did Bera understand the nature of the vision he had just experienced.

'... The future.'

No, perhaps he ought to call it the past.

An event that would occur if he did not intervene. Surely that was what Orgus’s vision had shown him.

Yet even after realizing that, something still troubled him.

'Why?'

Why had it shown him that? And what had its words just before vanishing meant?

["Four."]

It had certainly said that while folding down a finger.

'A count?'

He wanted to recall something else that might serve as a clue, but he had far too little to work with.

Even among the nine ancient species, information about Orgus, the Pilgrim Who Walks Through Time, was particularly scarce. Naturally so, given how difficult it was to encounter.

Its very existence was uncertain, and it was dismissed as a monstrosity found only in stories. Bera’s knowledge of the ancient species was no better than that of an ordinary person on the continent; he could not deduce much from what he had just seen.

Feeling frustration rise within him, Bera clicked his tongue, then recalled the scene Orgus had shown him.

'It was Aisha, and the demonic sword.'

An older Aisha running with the demonic sword clasped to her chest. Her urgent expression, as though she were fleeing something. And her tearful, filthy appearance, her clothes torn all over.

Bera remembered clearly what he had seen in that moment.

'The demonic sword was being forged.'

The moment Aisha let out those muttered words, the demonic sword had unmistakably responded. The dark crimson light of resentment had risen from it.

Suddenly, a hollow laugh burst from Bera’s lips.

'Was Aisha the one who completed the demonic sword?'

The question that had plagued him all this time was answered.

'Dovan dies, and Aisha’s hatred takes root in the unfinished demonic sword.'

That would have completed the sword, and led Aisha to join the ranks of the heroes.

Once again, Bera frowned as he thought of Orgus, who had just vanished. He ground his teeth hard. Tendons stood out on the back of the hand that had held his dagger.

'What are you after?'

He could not fathom Orgus’s intentions, or what it hoped to gain by showing him that future. That was what troubled him.

Surely it had acted with some purpose, but he could not grasp what that purpose was.

Bera felt confusion welling up within him.

* * *

Dovan was in the smithy’s front yard, sipping his drink and gazing at the sky, when he sensed someone approaching and turned his head.

Who could be coming at this late hour? As he looked over, he saw...

"... Sir Bera?"

Bera walking toward him, bundled tightly in a robe.

Dovan tilted his head and asked the approaching Bera a question.

"You haven’t gone to bed yet?"

He had been certain Bera was asleep. Wondering why he was emerging from the forest, he asked, and Bera dipped his head slightly before answering.

"No. I went for a short walk."

"Ah, I see. You startled me. I thought something might have happened."

Dovan laughed.

Bera watched him, then glanced at the cup in his hand and spoke.

"... Were you having a drink?"

"Indeed. With the moon so bright and sleep eluding me, how could I not think of a drink? Ah, would you like some?"

Bera stared blankly at the cup Dovan offered, then shook his head.

"No, thank you. I’m not particularly fond of drinking."

"A pity."

Dovan did not press him after his refusal, and drained the liquor in his cup.

Watching him, Bera felt the hesitation that had lingered within him surface once more.

'I have to get them to safety.'

He could not delay any longer. They had to flee from Gartea, down below the mountains, immediately.

Clear as that was, the reason he still hesitated was none other than the Oath he had engraved upon himself.

Taking Dovan and Renée to safety to prepare for another day meant, in other words, turning a blind eye to the atrocities Gartea would commit.

Because that would violate his Oath, Bera could find no way forward.

A shadow began to fall over Bera’s face.

In his mind, he saw the Aisha from another time that Orgus had projected before him. He saw that face shedding tears steeped in hatred, forging resentment to complete the demonic sword.

Bera wanted to stop it.

He did not believe in a greater cause fulfilled through the sacrifice of someone unwilling. He thought it wrong to ignore such a thing, and wanted to get these people to safety at once.

Yet to do so, he would have to turn a blind eye to something else. Was this not a truly impossible predicament?

Those down below who would fall victim to Gartea stood on one side of the scales, and Dovan and Aisha on the other.

He could not possibly choose either side.

As Bera sank deeper into his dilemma...

"Is something troubling you?"

Dovan spoke.

Bera flinched at the sudden question and looked at him.

Dovan was meeting his eyes directly, his expression calm and peaceful.

"You look troubled. Am I wrong?"

With that same expression, Dovan grinned.

"At my age, there are things one comes to know. Even an ignorant fellow who’s done nothing but hammer swords all his life picks up a little wisdom. I think I might be able to offer some small help. Would you care to tell me?"

Bera’s lips parted briefly at Dovan’s words, then closed again.

For some reason, he felt pathetic for nearly blurting out the situation.

Would telling Dovan what was happening not be shifting the responsibility onto him?

Would it not amount to telling him to weigh his own life against the lives of others and make the choice?

Frowning briefly, Bera swallowed the words rising in his throat, then conveyed his dilemma in a somewhat less direct form.

"... I must choose one of two things, but I simply don’t think I can do it."

"A choice, you say?"

"Yes. Two things, neither of which I can let go of, lie in opposite directions. And now I have reasons why I must not abandon either."

Throughout his explanation, his gaze remained fixed on empty space. He looked at the tranquil moon hanging in the black night sky, deliberately avoiding Dovan’s expression.

Watching Bera, Dovan quickly discarded his initial thought that this must concern his relationship with Renée, and chose his words.

A choice.

This young man was struggling with a dilemma that had been inseparable from Dovan’s own years. Fortunately, he thought, he might be able to help.

"Do you know?"

"Know what?"

"When anxiety rises, a person’s field of vision narrows."

Bera’s gaze, which had remained on the sky, turned toward Dovan at those words. Thinking how melancholy the gray eyes in the face before him looked, Dovan continued.

"There are many reasons for anxiety. The pressure of having too little time, the compulsion to be perfect, or perhaps a lack of faith in oneself. But if I had to choose the most vicious of them, I believe I would choose a sense of responsibility."

Once, he had wrestled with precisely that sort of dilemma.

"When I first learned I was an imperial scion, I went to the battlefield. I thought I had to end the war. Overwhelmed by that unwarranted sense of responsibility, that was what I did."

He had believed the devastation of war was the result of his own lack of virtue. He had believed ending the war was his calling, that it was something he must not turn away from.

"I think I spent about ten years wandering from battlefield to battlefield. That was how long I persisted in the belief that I would personally rise up and mediate between them. Do you know what came of it?"

Bera looked at Dovan, then down at the wheelchair in which he sat.

When imagining what Dovan had lost to the war, that wheelchair was the first thing that stirred his imagination.

Dovan smiled deeply and nodded.

"That’s right. I lost the use of these legs. And I could not end the war."

Dovan picked up the bottle and continued as he filled his empty cup.

"Only after that loss did I begin to see certain things. That I was not, in fact, important to them at all. That their war had nothing to do with me. That what I could do lay elsewhere."

The cup filled to the brim. Reflecting the black night sky, it clothed itself in pitch darkness.

"The day I realized that, I left the battlefield. And I took Aisha in. If the war was beyond my control, then as someone with this imperial blood, I thought I should at least reduce the number of people suffering from it by one. That was why I did it."

Dovan sipped the night sky that had settled in his cup, then added,

"The moment people bind themselves to something beyond their control, they begin to break. I think it’s all right to set aside your anxiety and turn your head a little. Surely there is something you can do in that direction?"

Before long, his cup was empty again.

Dovan looked into it and smacked his lips regretfully, then added in a teasing tone,

"If the two choices lie in opposite directions, why not open another path to connect them? As far as I know, there’s no rule that says you must follow only the paths already laid out."

As Bera listened silently to Dovan, one phrase stirred his heart.

"... Something I can do."

"Exactly. It’s not as though your lower body is crippled like this old man’s, is it? You’re healthy, and an apostle besides. Surely you can find a way."

Then Dovan added a touch of humor of his own.

"Well, if even that fails, try blaming the gods up in the heavens. ‘The trial you’ve given me is so difficult that I’m suffering like this!’ If you complain to them, perhaps they’ll grant you a miracle."

At the heightened intonation, as though Dovan were reciting a script, a laugh slipped from Bera’s lips.

"... That is an amusing suggestion."

"Have I offended you?"

"Not in the slightest."

As he answered, Bera once again brought the phrase “something I can do” into his inner landscape.

What he could do.

What he did best.

When he considered it, an answer finally sprang to mind that suited him perfectly.

'Swordplay.'

He had that strength of his, in which he would lose to no one.

"Master Dovan."

"Hm?"

"May I borrow a sword?"

Dovan turned his gaze to Bera. Bera met it and waited for his answer.

It was absurd. There had been nothing to agonize over in the first place.

Belatedly, Bera realized that his hesitation had sprung from fear of something that had not even happened.

He realized he had become so fixated on fulfilling the most obvious of duties that he had tried to secure a perfect ending without the slightest risk.

What if he lost?

He erased that assumption.

'I simply have to not lose.'

He had to win.

It was that simple.

Fortress Destroyer, the Demon King’s legion commander—what did any of that matter?

He had not become a holy knight only to fall to something like that.

"... Go ahead."

Those were Dovan’s words.

Looking at Bera’s uncharacteristically belligerent smile, Dovan gave his permission.