53. A Shadow Cast Upon the Wind (2)
Meanwhile, Ryu Derick, who had been trailing Baek Yuseol and Hong Biyeon, remained hidden behind them, unable to erase the faintly stunned look from his face.
“How are they this fast?”
If they had been ordinary first-years, it would have been normal for them to run into the beasts and monsters inside the Persona, or get swept up in side stories and waste time along the way.
But Baek Yuseol was pushing forward by clearing every folktale and legend he encountered in the shortest time possible—or by finding shortcuts and ignoring them altogether.
He was moving so fast that if Ryu Derick did not chase after him with his eyes wide open and at a full sprint, he would lose him entirely.
“So the rumors were true. He really is insane.”
He had already heard plenty of rumors that Baek Yuseol was an unusually outstanding first-year. But to think it was to this extent. Only after seeing him in person did he truly realize just how deranged Baek Yuseol’s track record was.
If Baek Yuseol showed even the slightest opening, Ryu Derick had intended to offer him “just a tiny bit of help” as a senior—but in this situation, there was absolutely no need for that, and Ryu Derick found that deeply displeasing.
“No. It’s still fine.”
He stared into empty air and looked at the Guideline Message.
[The Tale of a Certain Yokai]
He was sure of it. Baek Yuseol had still not gone anywhere near that story. To begin with, Ryu Derick doubted he had even properly finished analyzing the phenomenon.
“The folktales and legends that occur here are tied to their locations.”
For example, let’s say there was an urban legend about someone wandering around the city wearing a red mask.
Could that same urban legend move to a forest or the countryside?
It could not.
There were a few stories that were not bound to any place, but most tales lingered around specific locations.
Which meant that if Baek Yuseol wanted to find the folktale needed to clear the Persona Gate, he had to search not in a place like this city district, but around the slums.
“Because this story… is presumed to have originated in some backwater village.”
Ryu Derick slowly read the forgotten story written in the Guideline Message.
[The people of that village saw the falling leaves and said it was the season when flames bloomed. To ■, it sounded like a rather peculiar thing to say. In the ■ autumn, when leaves were falling, it was far too chilly a sea■on for flames to bloom.]
It was not yet perfectly interpreted, so a few characters were still missing, but there was no problem reading it.
“Baek Yuseol. You couldn’t have interpreted it this far, could you?”
There was no way.
Ryu Derick was the heir to the Ryu family, the same family that had spent a full twenty years conquering a 9-Risk Persona Gate in the past.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that his family had mastered the interpretation of Personas. No matter how exceptional Baek Yuseol might be, there was no way he possessed a better formula than Ryu Derick.
Even Hong Biyeon and Ban Diyeon, both called geniuses, had still failed to draw out the Guideline Message—yet he himself had already grasped the ending almost perfectly.
“So keep wandering around a little more, Baek Yuseol.”
So that this senior of yours can lend a hand.
“Hm. But why did he suddenly start slowing down?”
Up until just a moment ago, Baek Yuseol had been in a hurry, but for some reason he slowed his pace and now walked side by side with Hong Biyeon, leisurely making his way through the Gate.
No, actually, leisurely was not the right word.
Before, it had felt as if he were barely forcing his way through the stories by the skin of his teeth. But now, it felt as if he were tackling them in the most stable and flawless way possible.
“…He really is impressive, no doubt about that.”
If anything, the Baek Yuseol of now felt even more frightening than the one from before. Perhaps that was because Ryu Derick himself was a cautious academic type.
“But waiting is boring.”
Watching those two put their heads together and brood over something among themselves made his insides twist for some reason.
The reason was probably because Princess Hong Biyeon was quite beautiful.
“Waiting around is boring anyway…”
Ryu Derick forcibly tore his gaze away from Baek Yuseol and read further down the Guideline Message.
He had been too busy chasing Baek Yuseol to finish reading it before, but now that he had some breathing room, he would be able to read it to the end.
[In the season when flames bloomed, there was a child in that village.]
[That child, with a hideous form that made it impossible to tell whether it was human or monster, in the village…….]
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
…When Anella opened her eyes again, she found herself in a forest where a cold wind was blowing.
To be precise, she was not simply lying abandoned in the woods. What had served as her bed was a heap of wooden planks—something someone had clearly tried to make look like a hut, but had failed at completely.
“Ugh…”
Rising while clutching her head, Anella stared at the pile of planks with a baffled expression.
“This is supposed to be a house…?”
The shack of boards looked as though a child had clumsily assembled it. It seemed so precarious that she thought it would be lucky if it could block even a little wind.
But the stranger thing was that inside the shack were daily necessities and piles of trash. In other words, someone who had lived here had been spending a very long time in this garbage house.
“Who lives in a place like this…”
But once she said it out loud, Anella realized that her own situation was not much different from that of the shack’s owner.
After all, she herself had been living in the ruins of a country that had already fallen, taking shelter beneath a torn roof full of holes that barely kept out the wind and rain.
“That aside… where is this?”
She searched through her last memories.
A sky that had turned pitch-black.
The King of Witches.
The talisman that had been taken from her.
“And then… did I jump?”
After that, her mind turned hazy, and she could remember nothing.
Slowly getting to her feet, Anella walked along the forest path.
The black sky seemed like a lie now. The weather was bright and clear. People always said autumn skies were high; as a child she had never understood what that meant, but now it felt as though she finally did.
“Ugh, this is hard.”
The forest path was rough, and there were almost no signs that people had ever used it, so even getting downhill took a long time.
She was genuinely starting to wonder what kind of person would ever think to build a shack and live in a place like this.
After walking for around two hours like that—
Anella came upon an unpaved gravel road in the countryside, and with a relieved expression, she began following it. A stream ran alongside it, and the rice in the fields drooped heavy-headed.
It was a peaceful village.
The chirping of sparrows sounded almost like singing.
“Huh?”
There was someone nearby.
An old woman seemed to have dropped some fruit and was hurriedly gathering it back into a basket. Anella could not simply ignore the sight, and rushed over at once.
“Grandma, I’ll help you.”
She reached down to pick up a piece of fruit and place it in the basket, but suddenly the old woman threw a potato at her head.
Thwack!
“Ghk!”
“Y-you vile thing! How dare you crawl down here!”
“E-Excuse me…?”
“Get out of here this instant!”
Then, with all her strength, she stomped on the fruit Anella had touched until it burst.
“Something disgusting got on it! Something disgusting!”
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch-crunch!
She was not stomping on Anella herself, but on the fruit Anella had touched—bursting every last one of them beneath her shoes. Yet for some reason, Anella felt as if her own heart were being crushed and split open like those fruits.
“Why… why…”
“You’re not even human, so how dare you act like one! Get out of here!!!”
At the old woman’s furious shout, villagers came running from all directions, each carrying pickaxes, shovels, and the like as they charged toward her.
“The monster came down!!”
“Drive it out!”
“W-wait! I’m not a mon…!”
Anella tried to say that much, but the words caught in her throat.
“Am I not?”
Really?
Anella was not human. She was Darkkin.
The word monster…
It was not exactly precise, but neither was it entirely wrong.
She could not deny it.
“Get out! Right now!”
“Leave the village!”
Thunk! Wham!
Pelted by stones, potatoes, fruit, and eggs, Anella turned and fled at full speed without once looking back.
Even after the villagers’ shouts could no longer be heard, she did not stop.
She ran for a long, long time.
Only when even someone with superhuman physical ability like her was gasping for breath, her vision turning yellow, the whole world spinning around her—
did she finally reach the limit of her body, and have no choice but to stop.
Thud!
Collapsed on the ground, Anella weakly writhed and twisted herself onto her back, spreading her limbs wide as she stared up at the sky.
“Heh… heh…”
A laugh escaped her for no reason.
“It’s pretty…”
The stars were sparkling overhead.
She had run for a very long time.
Raising one hand to cover her eyes, she shook her head hard from side to side.
“That’s right. I’m not human.”
Up until now, with the help of dark-magic control, she had hidden the fact that she was Darkkin and blended herself into human society.
Under normal circumstances, she would never have been able to go anywhere near humans.
This was normal.
A disgusting being that humans despised and feared.
“Haa…”
There was no point shrinking back now. She did not know why the dark-magic suppression had come undone, but had she not always lived while taking things like this into account?
“Whew… I should go back.”
At any rate, the mission was complete.
She had learned about the witch’s movements and even managed to survive, so surely this mission could be called a success.
Thinking that, Anella got to her feet and trudged along the gravel road.
Walking, and walking again.
And when the sun rose once more—
“…Huh?”
When she came back to herself, she had somehow returned to that same village.
“M-monster…!”
Around ten villagers were staring at her.
For an instant, they looked like Stella students in their teens wearing school uniforms—but as though it had been a hallucination, they returned to the appearances of farmers in their thirties and forties.
Flinch.
As Anella stepped backward, the farmers began shouting in confusion.
“W-what is that? That’s a monster.”
“What do we do? Kill it?”
“It’s so hideous… d-do we really have to fight it?”
“This definitely is the Forgotten Folktale the Guideline Message mentioned…”
“I-I don’t know! Just attack first!”
In an instant, the farmers pointed their pickaxes and sickles at Anella like staves and began firing flames, ice spikes, and the like.
Fwoosh!!
Boom!!
Why was magic shooting out of farming tools? Anella no longer had the leeway to question it.
Though she was hated by humans, she did not want to harm them, so she simply turned and ran in blind panic, and the villagers chased after her.
“Hey! The monster’s running away!”
“Go after it and kill it!”
“Damn it! It’s too fast!”
“No!”
With physical abilities no human could compare to, Anella fled again at full speed, eventually reaching a spring deep in the forest before collapsing.
“Hah… haa…”
With her face buried in the sand, Anella forced herself to gulp in rough breaths.
What was she so afraid of that she ran?
Yes, Anella was afraid.
Was it the humans’ attacks that frightened her?
Ridiculous. That level of attack only tickled. A Darkkin would not die from being struck by farming tools.
But—
being hated terrified her.
Enough to make her knees go weak.
Enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Enough to feel as though her heart would burst.
——
Anella was not so fragile that a fall could truly injure her, yet for some reason she was afraid to stand up again.
Even though she knew that if she did not rise now, she might never rise again, she still could not force strength into her body.
“Why do I… why do I…”
have to suffer something like this?
“Because I’m Darkkin…?”
Anella laughed bitterly at herself.
“Ah… yes.”
Of course I deserve to be hated.
Because I’m not human.
Because I can never become human.
“This… in the end, this must be my fate.”
As the night wind, so unusually chilly it seemed to freeze even her soul, swept over her, Anella shut her eyes tightly.
The starlight disappeared.
