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Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu (Light Novel) - Volume 8, Chapter 2: A Worthless God, A Boring Goddess
Volume 8, Chapter 2: A Worthless God, A Boring Goddess
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
He felt like he was dreaming.
Some time had passed since that incident, where Sion wouldn’t smile at him meanly and Ferris wouldn’t bully him.
Ryner mumbled to himself as he recalled those events.
“…Seriously, what was I even thinking…”
He had sloppy, bedhead-ridden black hair, and a lanky, slouched figure. His eyes were the same black as his hair, but a red pentagram floated in them…
He closed his eyes, then pressed at them with his fingers. Hard. Hard enough to smash them, if they’d been normal eyes… But his eyes didn’t give. Of course they didn’t. He’d tried cutting them out with a knife before, but even that didn’t work. So he already knew his fingers were useless. He didn’t think it was possible for him to rip them out. The Alpha Stigma wouldn’t let him off that easily…
The scarlet brand in his eyes was feared and loathed by all, and if he went berserk, he’d massacre everyone around him. It didn’t matter if he didn’t want it or if they meant a lot to him. He’d still kill them. So he didn’t think it was strange that people called them the devil’s eyes or said that he was a monster. Even Ryner felt that his eyes were truly cursed.
“……”
If only he didn’t have those eyes. Then he might…
“…This is dumb,” Ryner mumbled and shook his head. It was so dumb. He’d already given up, after all.
He was a cursed monster. He brought unhappiness to everyone around him just by living. He already knew that perfectly well. And yet… he’d come to love people again. He knew it was stupid of him, but he still did it.
For Sion’s smile. For the fact that Ferris was by his side.
He’d even come to think that he might be able to just live, like the normal people around him could…
“……”
His dreams led him there… and let him hurt people again.
He thought of Sion’s face the last time they met. He’d been making a horribly pained expression.
Sion had ordered someone to kill Ryner to deal with him if need be. But that was obvious. Because Ryner was a human killing monster. He had to be killed if he went berserk.
It was a natural order for a king to give.
But… what expression was Sion making back when he gave it? He’d even thought about that.
And then there was Ferris.
She…
“……”
Ryner stopped there.
There was no point in thinking about it. They’d never meet again.
But… he still recalled those words she’d said to him.
“You’re not a monster.”
She’d said that when he’d gone berserk and was trying to kill her.
“You’re not a monster.”
She’d said that for his sake. And it made him happy.
“You’re my ally, my slave, and my friend who I drink tea with. You’re nothing like a monster. Can you hear me, Ryner?”
He’d seriously wanted to believe in those words then. But it wasn’t like that. Reality just wasn’t like that. He was a monster. He didn’t know when he’d kill Sion and Ferris. He’d hurt those two just by being around them. He’d hurt the people who meant a lot to him just by being there. So he couldn’t be with them. So…
“Hey, Ryner. Are you hungry?”
“Hm?”
Ryner looked to his side. To the man walking beside him.
Tiir Rumibul.
His clothes were reminiscent of a priest’s, but they were pitch black from his neck to his shoes. He even had the same black hair and eyes as Ryner… and a scarlet brand faintly visible on his eyes, much like Ryner’s… Tiir’s were a different shape, though. They were crosses, not pentagrams. Because he didn’t have the Alpha Stigma. He said his was called Iino Doue.
Tiir hadn’t explained it yet, but from what Ryner had seen, Iino Doue had different powers.
Ryner’s Alpha Stigma could copy and replicate any spell he saw, unless he was berserk. But Tiir’s Iino Doue was different. His eyes could eat both magic and people. Well, to be precise, it wasn’t eating ‘people.’ It was eating the life force capable of creating magic within them - their spirit, as magic scholars called it. Devouring magic, people, and spirits gave him an abnormally fast recovery rate and physical ability. It let him move even faster than Ferris, who boasted incredible physical ability, and Ryner when he used magic to accelerate himself.
Honestly, it was past the point of being able to compare his strength to that of other people’s. He had the destructive power to take an army. He devoured people, then used the power that gave him to kill even more people.
Alpha Stigma’s monstrousness couldn’t even hold a candle to Iino Doue’s.
“I was just thinking that you might have gotten hungry since we’ve been walking all this time without stopping to eat,” the monster said. He seemed awfully cheerful…
“Whoa, wait, you’re not thinking of eating more people, are you!?”
Tiir’s eyes, branded with scarlet crosses, widened. Then he looked at Ryner. “Of course I wouldn’t make you eat humans. You won’t them, will you?”
“O-obviously. Why would I be able to eat a human being of all things!?”
Tiir smiled happily. “Oh, you’ve said something good. You’re right. Humans are a lower life form. They’re not even worthy of being our food!”
“…No, that’s really not how I meant that.”
Tiir tilted his head. “Then how did you mean it? Why can’t you eat people?”
“W-well…”
Ryner’s words trailed off. Why couldn’t they eat people? That was simple. Even a small child understood why they couldn’t. They were humans… so they couldn’t eat other humans. It was seriously that easy. But…
“Hm. I guess I need to correct your misunderstanding first,” Tiir said. “Ryner, the humans brainwashed you and gave you the wrong idea entirely. The truth is that we bear God’s eyes. We’re a superior species, not inferior.”
Ryner grimaced. “So you’re saying we’re not even human?”
Tiir smiled, sad. “Right… Most Alpha Stigma bearers make that same face when I try to convey that we’re not human. But that belief is the root of your unhappiness…”
“Mm? Our unhappiness?”
Tiir nodded. “It starts when you’re born. You’re born as a human child and raised as one for the first few years of your life. You’re brainwashed in that time period. Brainwashed and told that you can live as a human and be happy as a human. You love humans, believe in them, devote yourself to them… but in the end, they betray you. They curse you, call you a monster, fear you as a demon… and then they kill you. Am I wrong?”
“……”
No, he wasn’t. Tiir was right.
The vast majority of humans feared, loathed, and threatened to kill Alpha Stigma bearers. Ryner might have been different, but he didn’t know either way because he didn’t have any memories of the first few years of his life. But Arua… Arua had that exact thing happen to him. Both his parents were killed and he was taken in by the military for research just because he had the Alpha Stigma. Ryner had also been taken in by the military…
But…
“…That didn’t happen to you?” Ryner asked. “What about before your scarlet cross appeared—”
“No,” Tiir said and shook his head. “I have never loved a human before. I have never felt that I was the same as humans before. Since the very beginning, my eyes…” Tiir pointed to the scarlet pentagrams in Ryner’s eyes, then back at his own crosses. “Iino Doue appears at a different time from the Alpha Stigma. The Alpha Stigma generally appears when you’re five or six years old. That’s about when yours did, right?”
Even if Tiir said so, Ryner didn’t have the memories to confirm or deny it with. He had no idea when the pentagram had first risen in his eyes… He knew when he first used their power, but he didn’t know for sure if the pentagrams had been there before then or not… After all, they weren’t all that visible as long as he wasn’t using his power. The people around him probably wouldn’t have looked for it, and therefore not noticed it even if it had already activated. So he really had no idea if his eyes already bore the Alpha Stigma or not when he came to and began to remember things…
But if Tiir said that it generally happened at age five or six, then that was probably the case with him too. Arua was at that age, too.
“……”
In any case, he’d never heard about this stuff before.
Ryner looked to Tiir.
He was glad that he’d come with him.
He didn’t like the logic a guy who calmly killed and ate human beings followed, but… he was still a wealth of knowledge. There was value in them sticking together.
“So when does Iino Doue, um… activate? You said the timing’s different from Alpha Stigma?”
“Yeah. Iino Doue activates when we’re still in the womb.”
“Whoa, really?”
Tiir nodded. “Mm.”
That answer left Ryner with a certain doubt. “But even if your eyes activated in the womb, you still had a human mother, right? Would she not raise you? If she did, don’t you think you would have thought of yourself as human?”
Tiir smiled. “I don’t think that could have happened. I mean, I don’t even know the face of the woman who carried me.”
“Huh? Then… do you not have any memories of your childhood either?”
Tiir looked puzzled. “Hm? You don’t have any memories of then, Ryner?”
Tiir turned the question back on him…
Ryner recalled his very first memory. It was a memory of the world, dyed red to its edges… the world he suddenly woke up to. It was a wide-open savanna, red from the sunset… and from the bodies and blood of hundreds. No matter which way he looked, all he saw were bodies, bodies, bodies…
That was his first memories. All he knew at the time was his own name. He didn’t know who he was, why he was there, or what he was doing. He couldn’t remember any of it.
So Ryner nodded. “Yeah… I don’t have any memories from before I was five or so. All I knew was my name. Does that kind of thing happen often to Alpha Stigma bearers?”
“…Hm. I wonder.” Tiir folded his arms and seriously considered it for a moment before continuing. “No, I’ve not heard that from any of the Alpha Stigma bearers I’ve found. All the Alpha Stigma bearers I know… were either persecuted along with their parents, or were persecuted by their parents…”
Arua fell into that first category. So most of them were like him, then… but what about Ryner?
Tiir gazed at Ryner with pitying eyes. “Something psychologically unbearable might’ve happened to you. The humans must have done something so horrible that you had to suppress your memories of it to survive. They say they love you but then discriminate, and kill people who are supposed to be the same as them with perfect composure… That’s why I think they’re lesser beings. They’re the monsters, not us…”
“…I can’t deny that,” Ryner said.
Tiir smiled. “That’s why you don’t need to make such a sad face. You’re not human, see? What they do has nothing to do with you. You’re different from them.”
Even if he said that… it just made Ryner’s feelings on the matter even more complicated. Tiir was praising him with a big smile, full of fondness. But…
“…You’re just praising me for not being a human, though, aren’t you?” Ryner mumbled to himself and scowled.
It wasn’t like he’d gone this long without considering that he might not be human. He had thought of it before. But was that really the case? Yes, he had the eyes of a monster. But…
Ryner looked down at his hands. They looked the exact same as a human’s would - his skin, his nails, even down to his faintly visible veins. Everything about them looked perfectly human. Everything about him was like that… except for his eyes. That’s what he thought. That’s how he’d always thought of it. He always, always thought that. Yes, he was a monster. But only because of his eyes…
If it weren’t for those eyes…
“……”
It looked like… he was thinking himself in circles again. His mind always got wrapped up in the same train of thought, following it around and around…
And then… those words resounded through his mind. The thing Ferris’ brother Lucile said.
“What kind of impossible dreams do you ugly monsters have?”
He was… a monster. He knew that.
“You should already know. Monsters’ hands are already covered in blood. They can’t grasp anything… and they can’t make it anywhere.”
Of course he knew that. But… but even so, if maybe… just…
Tiir looked at him like he could see right into his thoughts, then spoke. “By the way… there’s more to the story about the woman who was pregnant with me.”
“…Huh?”
“See, before she reached full-term, I opened up my eyes inside of her, and my Iino Doue activated. What do you think happened next?”
Ryner. Looked at Tiir. And forced himself to speak. “Y, you can’t have.” He shivered.
The information he had let him to theorize a certain conclusion. But.. that shouldn’t…
Tiir was made like any human child, but he didn’t know his mother’s face. Why? Why…?
“…You can’t have… devoured your mother from the inside out?”
Tiir wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t call that thing my mother, okay?”
“You…”
Ryner’s voice trailed off. He couldn’t really continue, could he? It’d become a conversation that they definitely couldn’t have. It was stupid. Ridiculous. So… so…
Tiir looked him over and smiled. “Yes. You’ve finally realized. A fetus inside of a womb shouldn’t have a consciousness or will of its own yet. And yet, I ate the woman who carried me from within her stomach. What do you think that means?”
Ryner shivered. He was at a loss for words.
What did it mean? It meant… that Tiir, that Iino Doue, weren’t the same as people from the beginning. It was like how everyone knew that birds would eventually fly. Iino Doue would eventually eat their mothers.
He wasn’t human, then. He was…
“Y-you’ve got to be kidding!” Ryner said.
But Tiir continued, calmly pleased. “Are you… insulting me? Are you trying to say that something that is born by eating its ‘mother’ alive can only be a monster?”
“…Ah, ughh…”
Tiir remained in good spirits, and almost appeared to be worried for Ryner’s sake. “It’s probably best if you don’t speak too ill of me. You’ll just turn it back on yourself in the end, after all. It’s going to be alright. You don’t need to be afraid anymore. You aren’t alone. You aren’t human, so all of us will be there for you.”
Tiir reached out to hold him, but…
“D, don’t touch me,” Ryner said and batted his arms away.
Tiir watched him, eyes full of sympathy. “This is the root of the Alpha Stigma bearer’s… this is the root of your unhappiness. I was given my decree when I was still just a fetus, but your decree never came…”
“…Decree? What are you talking about?”
Tiir pointed to the sky. “Of course I mean God’s divine orders. See, from the second I opened my eyes, I began to hear a voice descending from the heavens. Only I can hear it. It said, ‘Kill the original prey. Devour those lowly humans,’ see?”
“…What?” Ryner asked. His shivering stopped. “It descends on you from the sky?”
Tiir was a bit surprised. “Hm? This is the first time an Alpha Stigma bearer has ever reacted to that.”
“Just answer me. You’re saying the voice descends from the sky, right?”
Tiir nodded. “Yes. In reality, it’s spoken directly into my mind, but I’m not sure that fact is all that relevant… um, yeah. It leaves me with the sensation that it’s descended on me. All Iino Doue bearers say the same thing. Will Heim bearers tend to say they started hearing it about two months after birth, but they seem to hear it in the end…”
“Will Heim…? You mentioned them before too, right? They’re Cursed Eyes too, right?”
Tiir was fast to chide him. “I told you, we’re not Cursed Eyes. That’s a discriminatory term that humans use for us. We’re God’s Eyes.”
…Yeah, Ryner really didn’t give a shit about that. “So, Cursed Eyes… er, I mean, definitely not that. God’s Eyes. There’s Alpha Stigma, Iino Doue, and Will Heim, so that makes three kinds, right…?”
“No, there are two more - Torch Curse and Ebra Crypt.”
“There’s so many…”
It was starting to get exhausting keeping up with it all. There were five types of Cursed Eyes… no, maybe he should say God’s Eyes after all. But he’d never met any of them. He’d been reading up on it, too. In Roland, Nelpha, Runa, Iyet… he read up on the subject everywhere he went, but he’d never heard of any of them except for Alpha Stigmas. That meant…
“So there’s probably the most Alpha Stigma bearers out of all of the Cursed… I mean God’s Eyes…” Ryner trailed off. No, that wasn’t important now. There was something else they had to discuss. “Um, let me change my question here. Can we go back to what we were talking about before?”
“Earlier? Which thing? Oh, are you hungry?”
“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“…But really, you must be hungry by now, right? We’ve talked about it a few times now, after all.”
Well, that was true…
Ryner looked around.
They were currently travelling the main road from Roland to Nelpha. They weren’t far at all from the Nelphan border now. This road had teahouses spread here and there along it…
Ryner scowled. He’d been to a teahouse on this road, in fact. When he first met Ferris. They’d been headed to Nelpha to search for the Heroic Relics on Sion’s orders when Ferris poked her head into a teahouse. It wasn’t long before she was back out. “Eat this,” she’d said and expressionlessly handed Ryner some dango.
He’d wondered why she disliked him so much then. But the dango she gave him was surprisingly tasty… though he lost his appetite for it when he watched Ferris eating it. Because she was just so expressionless as she ate. He hadn’t known the extent of her love for dango yet at that point.
“……”
The teahouse in front of them now… didn’t have Ferris in it.
“See, we can eat dango here before we go to Nelpha,” Tiir said, bright and chipper.
Ryner shook his head. “No, nope, I’m actually not hungry at all…”
“Hm? Ryner, do you not like dango?”
“Huh?” Ryner thought about it for a moment. Dango. Dango… “…Yeah. I’m not a fan.”
“Oh, okay. How about we just eat the humans working th—”
“I’m not gonna do that!!” Ryner yelled.
Tiir put his hands on his hips. “It’s not healthy to be so picky about food!” He said in a preachy tone.
“…Come on, my only choices here are dango and humans…”
He felt the joke fall flat between them.
Tiir looked worried. “Are you really okay with not eating here? You won’t get another chance for food until we’ve crossed the border into Nelpha!”
He was awfully persistent. “Ugh, what are you, my mom? I’m not hungry if I say I’m not. What about you? Are you okay leaving without eating any dango yourself?”
Tiir looked past the teahouse, far along the path in front of them. “My meal’s waiting for me over there—”
“You mean the guards at the border!? Don’t go eating people in front of me!”
“I know better. Besides, I already said it, but humans are inferior life forms. They’re no better than shit. I’m going to eat their magic, not their bodies. They’ll definitely fire some at us when we try to cross the border, right?”
Ryner eyed Tiir suspiciously. “You better not be tellin’ lies.”
Tiir met his eyes. “I won’t lie to you. Humans are the ones who can lie with a straight face, not us. We’d never lie to our allies.”
He was serious. Anyone could tell that he was telling the truth. Not because he seemed like an honest, upstanding guy or anything… but because he despised humans from the depths of his heart.
Humans told lies, and God’s Eyes didn’t. They were different from humans. Humans were inferior and they were superior. But…
“……”
Was that really true?
Ryner gazed at Tiir. At his eyes. At the scarlet cross in them. Was it actually a certificate? Proof that their abilities surpassed what humans could do, something that meant that they were superior?
It was true that they could do things humans couldn’t, but… it wasn’t something they’d chosen. It was something that was forced upon them.
For example. There were a number of people in Roland with magic circles tattooed on their bodies to increase their war potential. But that wasn’t something they’d chosen to have happen. It happened because human experimentation was such a hot topic of research under the last king. Many, many people died because of it. Many people were sacrificed. But the result was a country filled with people with extraordinary abilities.
Ryner had met people like that in the Hidden Elites, an organization affiliated with the orphanage he came from. They’d been human. Everyone knew that. They might have had abilities that made them stronger than others, but they were still human. What else would they be? They were humans with magic circles on them. Nothing more and nothing less…
So what about Cursed Eyes? Were they any different? Weren’t they just humans with weird marks on their eyes?
“……”
Ryner looked back to Tiir again. At his eyes that held faint crosses. That was the only off thing about him. The only proof that he was different from others. That was the only reason they were cursed, feared, loathed, called monsters, and abused.
And maybe they were monsters. Monsters who killed humans.
But if they killed humans, wasn’t that proof that they were above them, in a way?
Or rather…
“…Gh, ahh…”
Those thoughts just appeared in his head on their own. He couldn’t help but react to it.
“Hm? What’s wrong?” Tiir asked. “Did you decide to have some dango while we can after all?”
Ryner didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.
The fog that had clouded his mind until now was clearing. He looked back to Tiir. To the red crosses in his black eyes.
Tiir tilted his head, concerned. “What’s gotten into you?”
Ryner didn’t answer. He just stared at Tiir’s eyes. His black eyes. And scarlet crosses.
“…Shit. How am I so dumb? How’d it take me so long to notice something so obvious?” Ryner spat.
Tiir looked troubled. “What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
He recalled something he himself had said as he stared at Tiir’s eyes. Something about the Runa Empire, back from when he went to save Arua from abuse and experimentation that was happening for the sole reason of him being an Alpha Stigma bearer.
“Let the demon go. It’s our research subject. If you don’t let it go, God will bestow punishment upon you, as an ally of demons…”
And Ryner had replied, “You guys just said… god’s punishment, right? That we’d be punished for having these eyes…? You guys have done unspeakable atrocities and won’t be punished for squat, but we’ll be punished just because of our eyes?”
He hadn’t been offended, or even angry. Just sad. Sad because he was watching the same tragedies repeat time and time again. So seeing them made him emotional. And it made him overlook something. The most important part of it all.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit… What the hell. What the hell was that? God will punish us? Then why did he make us? God, answer me if you exist. Why did you make us? You went out of the way for us to be born… was it just so you could punish us when you’re done playing with us? Don’t fuck with me! We aren’t your toys. We’re just… living. We didn’t want to be like this… we didn’t want to be born monsters. We don’t like having these eyes…”
That was it.
They didn’t like having those eyes. Why, then, were their eyes branded? Why did they have them at all?
Ryner stared at Tiir’s eyes. His black eyes with a scarlet brand. The brand that Tiir said was proof of them being a superior existence.
“……”
But what if he couldn’t accept that?
What if Tiir was just a normal human. Even his black eyes were the same as a normal human’s eyes. And the cross…
“……”
The cross was just… engraved in them from behind. Then what? It was no different from the human experimentation that went on inside Roland. It was the same as when people were tattooed with magic circles.
That left one question.
Who had engraved their brands…?
He recalled what he said one more time.
“Why did you make us? You went out of the way for us to be born… was it just so you could punish us when you’re done playing with us?”
“…I’m so fucking dumb…”
There was no way that was true. There was no way they were made for that dumbass reason. It’d be meaningless.
So who did it? And why?
“Tiir.”
Relief washed over Tiir’s face. “I’m so glad you feel like having a normal convers—”
“Earlier,” Ryner interrupted, “You said that you hear god’s voice descend from the sky… right?”
“Ahh, yeah. But you shouldn’t fuss over that too much, Ryner. Normal Alpha Stigma bearers can’t hear the voice of God, so they typically don’t have too much interest in the topic anyway.”
Even his rebuttal had a few interesting things in it.
One: Normal Alpha Stigma bearers couldn’t hear that voice descending on them. Ryner already sort of knew that, though, because of something the Gastark spies Sui and Kuu said. They hunted Cursed Eyes so they knew a lot about the topic. They said something interesting when Ryner went berserk.
“Wh-what’s with him? He isn’t a normal Alpha Stigma bearer, is he? That power… and that voice. What in the world was talking!? It was like it was someone else entirely…”
Apparently… it wasn’t normal. Apparently that shouldn’t happen to a normal Alpha Stigma bearer. But he already knew he wasn’t like normal Alpha Stigma bearers. Because normal ones couldn’t go back to how they were after going berserk. They’d stay that way until they were killed. Ryner, on the other hand, would regain his sense of self. That was why Roland’s military decided to keep him like a pet. Because he was unusual.
Another point that proved him to be different from normal Alpha Stigma bearers came up at Ferris’ house. He could see something that Arua couldn’t.
So… where did the differences start, and what were they? Did it have something to do with that voice?
“……”
A voice from the sky.
What was it?
Tiir, an Iino Doue bearer, said that he could hear it too. While he was still in the womb, no less.
Then there was the second interesting thing Tiir said: that Tiir believed the voice was god. Ryner didn’t think it was, though. He didn’t believe in god in the first place. Like, what was god even supposed to be? Religion really wasn’t all that big in Roland, so he wasn’t sure… but a god was supposed to protect the peace and be all powerful and all knowing and stuff, right?
Would war and discrimination really exist if there were a god like that?
There was no way such a convenient thing could exist. At least, not one who’d help humans out with divine intervention. There was no doubt about that.
So, with that in mind, what was that voice?
Tiir said that it gave him an order when he was still in the womb. That it told him, ‘Kill the original prey. Devour those lowly humans.’
Was god someone who’d say that? There was just no way. Absolutely none. No way in hell that was a god. What was it, then?
A fuzzy memory popped into his mind. A memory of something that happened after the Alpha Stigma crushed his conscious mind.
It was a voice. A voice descending upon him.
What did it say?
“A god. A demon. An evil god. A hero. A monster. What did you guys call me? What was I called? Hahahah.”
“You mean to kill me? Kill me with your current power? With items such as Elemio’s? You are nothing but a worm crawling on the ground. Ha, hahaha, hahahahaha. Disappear. disappear. DISAPPEAR. Everything is nothing. Idle. Return to nothing.”
“In the beginning, there was destruction. We didn’t create, bless, or save. We just erased until everything was pure white.”
“…Elemio,” Ryner whispered. That was a clue. A clue that he’d overlooked until now that could lead him ever closer to the truth.
“Hm? Ele… what? What’s that?” Tiir asked, puzzled.
Ryner shook his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s continue our conversation.”
Tiir smiled bitterly. “That’s fine, but if you’re not going to eat any dango, don’t you think we should get a move on? Standing like this will tire our feet out, and besides, everyone’s waiting for us, so I want to go home as soon as possible.”
“Oh, uh… yeah. Okay,” Ryner said. He walked forward on the road that stretched out before them. They’d soon cross the border soon and be somewhere that wasn’t Roland. But for now, they were still standing on Rolandic ground.
“……”
Ryner turned around.
Of course the path behind him hadn’t changed. They’d only just been there. And if he walked back along it, he’d reach Roland’s royal capital in about five days. And yet Roland felt so far away right now.
He hadn’t felt like this when he left Roland and went to Nelpha and Runa with Ferris. But now… it seemed so, so far away…
Tiir had walked about ten steps ahead of him in the time he took to stop and stare. He turned back to Ryner, exasperated. “Are you reluctant…?”
Ryner shook his head. “I’m fine. It’s not like I’m particularly fond of this country or anything—”
“That’s not it,” Tiir interrupted. “That’s not what I was asking.”
“Hm? Then what did you mean?”
Tiir smiled, a little sad. Like he was worried about Ryner from the bottom of his heart. “I was asking if you were reluctant to leave your time as a human here in Roland behind.”
Ryner looked at Tiir, whose face was full of pity. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to see Tiir making that face at him.
But Tiir continued. His tone was, at its core, kind. “I can imagine what you might be feeling right now. Alpha Stigma bearers all feel like that at first… because they can’t hear that voice. But you don’t need to feel like that. Because we’re not human. We’re superior. Ah, if you don’t like me calling us ‘superior,’ then I can use different vocabulary for it,” Tiir said, then thought for a moment before continuing. “Even if we were human instead of something superior… we still wouldn’t be able to coexist with them.”
“……”
“You understand that most of all, don’t you? Remember everything that’s happened to you. No matter how much you wanted to be saved, no one would save you. The closer they get, the more it hurts… right?”
“……”
Tiir held a hand out for him. “That’s why you took my hand. Isn’t it?”
“……”
“Things have been tough, haven’t they? But it’s okay now. You don’t need to worry anymore. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone in this world. You aren’t someone who only hurts the people around you. You’re not a demon.”
“……”
“Come on. Our friends are waiting for us. No one will ever betray you again.”
Ryner didn’t say anything. He just turned back one last time to look at the road behind them. At Roland behind them.
It was… far away. Horribly far away. Overwhelmingly far away.
“…You’re the ‘human’ of our side,” Tiir said.
“…Yeah… you’re right…”
Ryner didn’t turn back again after that.
---
Ferris stood on a road near Imperial Nelpha, but still within the borders of Roland.
“……Mgh.”
She was deeply, deeply troubled, her clear blue eyes focused on the scene before her. She was an absolute beauty, with needlessly shiny golden hair and porcelain limbs. Anyone and everyone called her beautiful. It didn’t matter if they were old or young, men or women. She caught everyone’s eye as she travelled.
But no one talked to her as she stood there. Not a single person. Because right after they noticed how beautiful she was, they noticed the massive longsword strapped to her waist. Then they noticed the six full backpacks she was somehow managing to carry. To top it all off, her expression was completely, unchangingly blank. It was impossible to tell if it was blankness from displeasure or a calm blankness as she stared fixedly at the two teahouses before her…
“……Mghmghmmgh.”
Everyone who saw her thought the same thing - she was thinking about something serious. They didn’t know what, but it had to be serious…
So they all kept their distance. Though Ferris was completely unaware of all that. Because she was horribly torn.
There were two teahouses before her.
She’d been to the one on the left before. They had a reputation for having delicious dango, so there was no way that Ferris could have left the area without checking it out. The bigger problem here was the one on the right. It was one that she couldn’t recall ever seeing before. It was most likely a new one that had been built over the course of her travels.
“……”
Ferris stared right at it.
The signs were dirtier than she’d expect, though. The wooden building didn’t have that fresh and new look, either. It definitely looked like some time had passed since it appeared. Also, she’d never received information about a new store around here where she could eat tasty dango. Eight or nine times out of ten, a store she’d never heard about would only have so-so dango.
She shook her head.
“No, no. Wait, Ferris. Think about this for a second. How, from a business perspective, would it manage to run right here next to the famous dango shop…? Maybe, just maybe… mghmgh…”
This was a seriously tough problem.
People seldom came here unless they had business in Nelpha. So on the rare cases that people came all this way due to business abroad, they’d surely fill their stomaches with the famous dango while they were here. Of course, one could also trial the new store while they were here and then take some of the famous dango to go.
She’d brought seven backpacks full of dango from Roland’s capital, and she’d just finished eating everything in the first one. Yes, she could eat her fill of the new dango and take the famed dango with her… but those were two completely different experiences. And what if? What if, no matter how small the chance, it was delicious…? She might miss out on eating more of an absolutely splendid new recipe…
“Kgh… I always knew it in my heart, but mastering the way of dango is no easy feat…”
She was torn.
“Mgh.”
Very torn.
“Mghmgh.”
Ferris was very very torn.
And then it dissipated entirely.
“Alright, let’s go with this one.”
She walked to the new store, sat down, and ordered tea and dango.
She picked the dango up by its skewer, lifted it to her mouth, and chewed. Her eyes widened.
“…Mm, this is…”
The flavor of dango spread through her mouth.
If she had to describe it, she’d say the texture was crinkley and the flexibility was hollowy. It wasn’t sweet or savory, and it reeked of old flour.
It was horrible… unbelievably horrible…
Ferris shivered.
It was terrible. So terrible that she couldn’t stand it.
It was absolutely enraging.
Where should she direct her anger?
“…At that bastard, Ryner!!” Ferris shouted.
Apparently she was taking it out on Ryner.
She didn’t even care about how bad the dango was anymore. Ryner just made her more and more angry the longer this went on. She punched the air in front of her as she recalled that goth guy and Ryner, whose whereabouts were currently unknown…
“……”
She thought of Ryner’s face then. The last expression she’d seen him make. He’d looked like he’d given up on everything and was ready to cry. Like he thought that Ferris was far, far away…
She didn’t… want to see him making that face. She hadn’t chased after him so she could see that face. She didn’t know why she did it, but she did know that it wasn’t to see what had ended up happening.
Ferris sighed quietly. She took another bite of the horrible dango. No matter how terrible it was, she’d long since pledged to never waste any dango. She looked out at the sky as she endured the horrid taste in her mouth. She watched the clouds drift into Nelpha from Roland.
“…Geez. Where is he?”
She didn’t have much to go off of. The biggest clue she had was what that goth cannibal and Ryner had talked about before they left together.
“Ahh… so I need to explain all the way from the beginning… I heard that there were few God’s Eyes bearers in the south, but I didn’t think it was this bad… well, there’s nothing I can do about that now. I’ll explain. Come on, let’s go.”
“Huh? Where?”
“To where my friends are. I came here specifically to pick you up.”
And so on.
Apparently the goth had friends, and not in the Southern Continent. They were either in the Central or Northern Continent.
Roland was the southernmost country on the continent now, so she figured that she should at least head north for the time being, which was why she was heading to Nelpha now…
Ferris looked down from the sky and over to the teahouse next door. The one that was famous for its dango. She came to check it out soon after she heard the rumors. The dango was indeed delicious, and she’d left satisfied. Then she came back a second time on Sion’s orders along with that man of doubtful origins, Ryner Lute, an endlessly apathetic super perverted sex manic.
She’d bought him dango from there and had him try it while he loitered.
When he did, his eyes had widened.
“Whoa, this is good!” He said.
“Hehe.”
“It’s like, better flour than most? Maybe?”
“Hehhehehheh.”
“Hey, you. You’ve gotta know the secret, laughing like that.”
“Naturally.”
“Spill it then.”
“Heheh, you want me to explain it to you?” Ferris asked.
“Well… oh, wait. Is it a long explanation?”
“Hm. I can give you a summary in two hours—”
“I’ll pass.”
“No passing.”
“Whaa? Guess I’ll sleep while you explain… whoa, why’d you get your sword out?”
“Mm? Did you not read the rules before entering school? Nodding off equals death in dango class.”
“What kind of rule is that!? Also, when the hell did I sign up for this school!?”
“Forget about that… And give it up. You said it yourself, did you not? ‘Whoa, this is good! Please let me enroll in your dango schoo—’”
“I never said thaaaaatttt!!!”
In the end, Ryner cried and listened to the whole lecture on dango history.
It had been fun. Ryner said the same thing she thought was good was, in fact, good. It was much more enjoyable than just eating dango by herself. Surprisingly, the dango had tasted better then than it did the previous time she ate there, too.
“……”
And now, the third time she was here…
Ferris looked down at the dango she wanted to do nothing more than throw away. She’d have Ryner be her human garbage disposal if he were here, and yet he wasn’t here in this crucial time.
What a good-for-nothing. Useless. Lazy bones…
“……Being alone… is kind of boring.”
She couldn’t place the emotion she was feeling. She’d already spent so much time alone. She spend every day since birth into the Eris family training to be suitably strong. She had always been alone. But she never thought it was tough. It was just normal to her. So she’d never once thought that being alone was boring before.
And if he’d never been here at all…
“……”
She recalled something that guy had said to Ryner.
“Let’s go. Our friends are waiting.”
The hand that held her dango shook.
Friends? Friends?
Stupid. What was he, crazy?
Why did he look at her with that expression?
At her… at his…
“…We’re friends, aren’t we?” She whispered weakly.
She put her half-eaten dango back on the plate. This was the first time she was ever leaving dango uneaten. But she really didn’t have an appetite right now. She really didn’t feel well.
Perhaps the dango was so awful that it caused her health to deteriorate.
Just how old was the flour they used to make it…?
It was hard to breathe and her stomach hurt.
She shook her arms and dug some coins out of her pocket. “I’ll just leave the money for it here…”
With that, she stood and continued on her way.
The owner ran out to call to her, flustered. “M-ma’am! You’ve left your backpacks here! Six of them!”
Ferris turned back to face her. “I won’t be taking them. I might be travelling for a long while now. Do you think you could take them off my hands?”
“W-won’t you need luggage on a long trip…? Being asked to take care of all this is trouble for me, too…”
Ferris ignored her and continued to walk. But then she turned back one more time. “Uu…”
She hurried back to the backpacks to grab two skewers of dango.
“A, alright.”
She set out one more time, determined not to look back anymore. She could never catch up to Ryner with all that baggage.
“That damned Ryner. He’ll pay dearly when I find him.”
And so she left Roland.
