Even a Scoundrel Gets Tired

43 – Encounter (1)

Everything around is black.

The ground is damp, as if it were a swamp,

and the sides are gaping open with nothing to reach, no matter how one flails.

Attempting even a slight movement, each step brings a soft squelch.

My lower body is soaked, and ripples spread outward.

Yet, the ground beneath my feet does not sink; it holds my weight firm,

a truly peculiar place, to be sure.

After walking for what could be an eternity,

a faint sound, at last, begins to reach my ears.

[…■■…■■■…!]

A noise, riddled with static, still incomprehensible.

Yet, the voice was familiar.

One of the voices from that dream.

The voice that laughed last, then vanished.

Regardless, in this godforsaken place where no sound should exist,

to hear anything at all felt like a blessing.

Afraid the voice might flee, I approached it ever so slowly,

slower even than one might approach a feral cat, hoping to stroke it.

And how long did I walk thus?

At the end of the voice floated a sphere, suspended in the air.

At first, I couldn’t believe the voice belonged to the sphere, searching the surroundings more thoroughly.

But no matter how much I looked in the direction of the voice, or around it, there was nothing else.

I had no choice but to believe this sphere was the source of the voice.

[…]

“..Huh?”

Having ascertained the voice’s origin, I was contemplating my next move,

how to escape this place, when

I felt it watching me.

The moment I had that thought, the unsettling energies crawling over my body became perceptible,

and I recoiled reflexively.

[Kre…huhuhehe!!]

“…”

As I retreated, the thing emitting a violet light

suddenly spun towards me and began to laugh with a sickening sound.

[■■…!! ■■■ this ■■■!!]

The thing babbled incomprehensible sounds, overjoyed.

Its joy felt only unpleasant to me.

Then, tooth-like serrations began to form on the creature that had been only laughing.

Locked together and stretching upwards, it was undeniably a smile.

It slowly drifted closer.

I could flee if I wished,

but if I ran now, I might lose my only chance to escape this place.

Thinking this, I did not resist its approach,

and seeing that I wasn’t running, it pulled the corners of its toothy smile even higher.

Finally, when the thing was about a handspan away from my head,

my neck vanished directly into its gaping maw.

[Jae…■…]

*

The sudden pain in my neck made me jolt upright, as though flung from a catapult, and

Then, what caught my eye, fleetingly, was a scattering of stars.

*Thwack!*

“Ugh!”

A sound like hard stones clashing together reverberated through the room,

and someone who had been before me slumped backward with a small groan.

“You’re… awake?!”

“…Saintess?”

Her hair still flaunting a soft, russet sheen,

a rosary draped across her chest, she now diligently rubbed her forehead.

The Saintess, Hildegard.

“Where… am I?”

“…The academy dormitory. We brought you here after you collapsed.”

The Saintess began to explain to me what had transpired outside after Leon and I entered that sphere.

From the chairman’s spearheaded, rapid-fire reverse engineering of the magic,

to the discovery of Leon’s corpse and myself within.

I was most taken aback by the part about Leon’s corpse.

I had assumed they rescued me and then dealt with him.

Besides, I’d passed out from the pain at some point,

so whatever happened wasn’t something *I* did, that’s for sure.

“…Then, why did the Saintess come here?”

“Ahem… I have something to ask, Brother.”

Her posture shifting as she spoke, she seemed,

unlike before, to carry a certain weight.

And then there were the two figures outside the room.

Ready to burst in at the slightest opening.

Not toward the Saintess, but towards me.

“If we’re going to talk… have those outside withdraw.

And maybe dial back the hostility a little.”

“…!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Forgive me, I was ordered to have them present, for your safety…”

As the Saintess spoke, gesturing towards the door, I felt the subtle animosity directed at me finally recede.

Still, they didn’t stray far from the doorway,

indicating just how seriously they took the Saintess’s well-being.

“Now… let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“Why the change in─”

“Brother.”

“…Yes.”

“It seems… He has descended upon your very being.”

Only today did I learn.

That when a human hears words completely unexpected, without any preparation,

their mind empties completely.

And in my case, that mind soon overflowed with chaos and revulsion.

Followed by an uncontrollable wave of murderous intent.

So immense was its force, that the holy knights waiting just beyond the door

were startled enough to burst through it.

“Holy… Holy Maiden!”

“Are you alright?!”

Unlike the holy knights rushing towards us in a fluster,

the Holy Maiden did not so much as flinch at the murderous aura emanating from me, instead regarding me with unwavering eyes.

Apologizing for unintentionally radiating such intent, I quelled the knights’ hostility once more,

and met the Holy Maiden’s gaze again.

“…Are you certain? How am I to believe such a thing?”

“Kandel, would you fetch a mirror, please?”

As soon as the Holy Maiden issued her command, one of the knights who had been standing awkwardly in the room

produced a hand mirror from within his garments and offered it to her.

And the Holy Maiden, in turn, offered the mirror to me.

“Would you check your forehead, Brother?”

“…”

Without a word, I accepted the mirror and with my remaining hand

began to push back my bangs.

Revealing a single mark.

A symbol seen so easily in churches and cathedrals,

a symbol easily found as ornamentation even with a quick jaunt through the marketplace.

The Holy Grail.

The symbol of the divine now resided upon my forehead,

and the instant I confirmed the mark, I flung the hand mirror away.

“What…!! What is this… eh?!”

“It is the mark He left upon you.”

“But… why?!”

The Holy Maiden paused, closing her lips as if to tell me to calm myself,

but I do not think I could.

Even now, I feel an immense loathing for this damned mark etched into my flesh.

Loathsome, abhorrent, and filled with rage, I feel as if I am about to faint again.

I instantly conjured a small blade into my hand, and the holy knights surged forward,

but they could not stop me.

I slashed across my forehead in a grazing blow.

The expressions on the faces of the Holy Maiden and the rushing holy knights might have been something to behold, but I do not care.

Blood flows, and a pain like sparking electricity lances through me, but I pay it no mind.

My only concern now is to obliterate this sigil.

Scraping, tearing, squelching sounds consume my forehead.

Just as I feel chunks of flesh falling away, dangling precariously, the knights seize my hands.

“S-Stop this!!”

“Hold on…! Calm yourself!!”

I thrash with all my might, but this young body cannot overcome the strength of two adult knights, and

the Saintess massages her forehead as if she has a headache, then approaches me.

She likely intends to heal me, but I refuse to accept it willingly.

A wave of revulsion washes over me. I feel nauseous. Hatred blooms.

Even the faint divinity woven into the Saintess’s rosary sparks resistance within me.

“Don’t…don’t!”

“W-Wait…what’s wrong?!”

“It’s healing!! Healing! Don’t you know divine power?!”

‘That’s…!! What I don’t want, you b*stards!!’

I hastily regenerate my forehead, halting the Saintess’s approach.

To prove that I have no need of her healing, I display my forehead,

and she slowly retreats with a look of inexplicable pity,

and the knights who held my arms finally release me.

“…Brother… truly…”

“…Saintess.”

“Yes?”

“…I wish to meet… Him.”

The knights’ expressions widen in astonishment.

They wear the faces of those wondering if I understand the weight of my words.

They are clearly shocked that one such as I would seek to meet God, whom even the Pope has never actually seen.

“Actually… I came to speak to you about that.”

“W-Wait, Saintess?!”

“Th-This person is to meet… Him?!”

The Saintess nods in confirmation to their question,

deepening the knights’ troubled expressions.

For them, devout in their faith, a private audience with God would be a dream beyond measure, but

I am sorry, that is not my concern to worry about now.

Without delay, I ask the Saintess how it is to be done.

“So… what’s the method?”

“That sigil.”

“…?”

“If you infuse that sigil with mana, your soul will be…”

“They said I would be summoned to the Divine Realm.”

No sooner had the words left my lips than I offered thanks to the Saintess, and then I poured mana into the mark on my forehead – the mark that remained, unvanished, even when my forehead was torn.

Feel free to think it impolite.

My mind is brimming with thoughts of killing that b*stard, after all.

Before long, I instinctively felt my mana filling the chalice to its brim,

and immediately after, I felt my consciousness being sucked away somewhere.

*Whoosh—*

Finally, as all of my consciousness was drawn elsewhere and my eyes closed of their own accord,

I could see the Saintess’s lips moving, mouthing something.

“Tranquiel…”

‘Happiness unto you…?’

*

When I regained consciousness and opened my eyes, what met my gaze was

a starkly contrasting, pure white space.

And a single golden-haired angel standing before me.

“Greetings. I have come to escort you.”

“…”

The instant I considered that this might involve the divine,

I barely managed to restrain my hands from moving of their own accord.

I must hold back.

There’s no need to waste my emotions on this angel.

Calmly composing the thick, viscous feelings that threatened to overflow with even the slightest tremor,

I followed the angel as it began to walk ahead, as if beckoning me along.

Slowly, and carefully,

I walked with the feeling of a bomb about to explode if anything went wrong.

It wasn’t long before a grand temple began to appear.

The floor seemed to be marble, but with an even more intense sheen,

and the carved stone pillars evoked a majestic feeling that crept along my skin.

“You may enter inside, here.”

“…Thank you.”

I entered the temple and walked once more,

until finally, a single door appeared.

A wooden door, with a handle made of finely sculpted stone.

Lowering the handle and opening the door, what unfolded before my eyes was a scene

not unlike the headmaster’s office.

Piles of documents and bookshelves atop a desk.

The only difference would be the small orbs of light floating around, moving papers.

And in the center of the room, a chair, and a snow-white woman seated upon it.

A woman with her head bowed and her hands neatly placed upon her lap.

“[…I am sorry.]”

I was startled.

Startled by the voice.

Not because it was beautiful, nor because I hated hearing it,

but because it was a voice I had heard somewhere before.

One of the two voices from that dream.

The warm voice that apologized to me until the very end for reasons I couldn’t fathom, before vanishing.

She was the Goddess.

“…Finally…”

[…]

“Finally, we meet…? Heh…”

[…]

“Y-you… you…!”

[…]

“YOU!! You fucking b*tchhh!”