247

Chapter 247 — Will It Mean Anything? (1)

Squish.

The moment I heard that sound, I finally had no choice but to stop walking.

Ignoring things had its limits. Pretending not to notice the bloody pus pooled deeply enough inside my combat boots to form a layer was asking too much.

So that was as far as today’s march would go.

I thought that blankly as I searched for a suitable rock. Fortunately, there was one nearby. It looked useful both as a windbreak and as something to sit on.

Shhk.

Once there, I leaned my back against the rock and took off my boots.

The bandages I had wrapped around my feet in place of the socks I lacked were soaked red and yellow.

Still, there was no need to be horrified by this.

The moment I started walking around in combat boots, something like this had been inevitable to a degree.

If I hadn’t spent so much of the journey riding horses or wagons, it would have happened much sooner.

After all, even with the time I spent walking reduced that much, I’d still ended up developing corns and skin rashes.

So I calmly began unwrapping the bandages.

The feet revealed underneath had patches where the epidermis and dermis had peeled away in uneven layers, and they were swollen all over, distorted into a bizarre shape.

The clotted scabs of blood and pus scattered here and there, along with wounds that had already split open and were still bleeding, only made things worse.

These were not feet in any normal condition.

Rustle.

But like I said, this was simply something that had been expected.

Something that would have happened eventually.

This might have been the first time it had become this severe, but there was still no reason to panic.

While I waited for the bandages to become like new again, I smeared ointment generously over my feet.

Twitch.

During the process, my feet, which felt hot but not painful, moved several times at my command.

I was roughly checking whether the nerves had gone bad.

No purplish blotches, and they moved fine.

So I probably didn’t have to worry about skin necrosis just yet.

And for now, that should be enough.

I thought of the baseball player I’d once heard had been hospitalized with cellulitis, then simply shut my eyes and ignored the thought.

I deliberately ignored the fact that cellulitis was not the kind of illness anyone should take lightly.

From my point of view, getting caught and killed by my pursuers or dying from complications like sepsis amounted to much the same thing.

Instead, once I finished treating everything, I lifted my head without thinking much about it.

It seemed unlikely I’d be walking any farther today, so I figured I might as well catch my breath.

For the last few days, I’d been so obsessed with the fact that I was running away that I hadn’t even bothered checking where I was actually going.

“…Ah.”

But yeah.

If I’d known the sky would be decorated in luscious peach-pink, iolite blue, blazing gold, and gray clouds so dark they seemed almost navy yet nearly achromatic, I would have looked up sooner.

“I wish I could take a picture.”

Nature displayed its greatness through a palette bolder than most painters would dare use.

Freshly moved by the sight, I widened my field of view.

A flock of dozens of shadow birds flying far in the distance and a pitch-black mountain ridge contrasting with the golden horizon entered my sight as well.

The blackness looked almost absurd beside the sky.

Honestly, the contrast was so extreme that it almost looked like stage scenery set up for dramatic effect.

“…….”

But that faint awkwardness hardly mattered.

I quietly enjoyed the moment, engraving into my memory a scene I couldn’t even preserve in a painting.

My head, foggy from lack of sleep, seemed to clear a little.

Kreeeek, kyok-kyok-kyok-kyok.

Just as that fogginess threatened to turn into a daze, a bird’s cry snapped me awake.

A pursuer?

The obsession that had settled into me over the last few days spat the thought out before logic had any chance to intervene.

Naturally, it wasn’t.

My taut nerves settled again.

“Haah.”

Realizing that I had become hypersensitive—not that anyone in this situation wouldn’t have—I pressed firmly between my brows.

All the problems I’d been putting off were enthusiastically invading the precious scrap of leisure I’d finally been given.

But it was also true that I had done nothing but run, telling myself I didn’t have time to think.

And the worries surfacing now really were things I eventually needed to consider for the sake of the future.

So I finally began thinking about the tail that might be following me.

The opening question was naturally whether they had truly pursued me, and if so, whether that pursuit was still continuing.

If I went one step farther, the next question would probably be who exactly those pursuers were.

For example, was it the Hero’s party tracing my steps?

Or personnel personally selected by the Order?

Things like that.

But no answer came.

Obviously.

I hadn’t seen a single pursuer’s face this whole time.

The reason was that on the first day, I had run desperately after judging that I might be at a disadvantage if they came after me on horseback.

And that wasn’t all.

Even that had felt insufficiently safe, so I’d relied on Mana and run through the nights for four full days without sleeping.

Only four days ago had I finally started mixing in a little food and sleep because I’d thought that, by then, I might be safe enough.

At this point, even if they had followed me at first, I thought they probably would have lost my trail halfway through.

And if they had simply given up the pursuit from the beginning, well, I would be grateful for that too.

Guaranteeing my safety mattered more than whether all the hardship I had endured while fleeing turned out to have been pointless.

“Still, you never know…….”

Of course, that didn’t mean I could completely relax.

I had neither talent nor experience when it came to fleeing—meaning I wasn’t someone capable of perfectly erasing my trail—and I had no idea how capable professional trackers could be.

And more importantly, magic.

Magic existed in this world.

I could loosen my guard a little.

But never completely.

Leaning my upper body back on the arm braced behind me, I blinked slowly.

The steadily darkening sky was beginning to reveal several bright stars.

“…Cold.”

Rustle, rustle.

The wild grasses around me bent violently in the wind.

Read only on MUGEX

Tap.

“……!”

Something faint tapped against the thin strip of exposed ear between strands of hair.

My eyes snapped open reflexively, only to meet darkness so complete there was almost no difference between having my eyes open or shut.

It seemed to be… night.

But hadn’t there still been some red left in the sky just a moment ago……?

There was no way it could’ve turned pitch-black in the time it took me to close and open my eyes…

Couldn’t…

have……

The theory forming vaguely in my mind kept stretching apart under the weight of sleepiness.

I muttered that I had to wake up, had to wake up, while my eyelids slowly began slipping shut again beneath the incoming wave of drowsiness.

I was tired.

Tap-tap.

But not long afterward, I began feeling faint impacts against my clothes as well.

That went beyond what even sleepiness could make me ignore.

Eventually my eyelids opened completely and I lifted my head.

Tap.

As if timed perfectly, a fat raindrop struck the bridge of my nose.

“Goddammit…….”

There had been dark clouds over in the northeast, but I hadn’t imagined they were rain clouds—and rain clouds coming this way, at that.

If Deathbringer had been here, he probably would have noticed beforehand and we could have prepared.

What a shame.

“…….”

No.

I shouldn’t call it a shame.

Leaving him behind was my choice.

And the fact that we could no longer keep traveling together was karma brought about by him, or me.

Yes.

This was simply the proper consequence.

“…Wonder if there’s somewhere to get out of the rain.”

I deliberately said the words aloud to wake myself from the exhaustion accumulated over eight days.

It did not help much.

Fatigue born from staying awake could only be cured by sleep.

So I simply accepted the haze and put my boots back on.

My gritty eyes and trembling hands fumbled several times, but eventually my freshly bandaged feet were forced back into the boots.

Instead of sharp pain, a numb heat climbed through my legs.

Tap. Tap.

Meanwhile, the rain continued increasing, and the strengthening wind struck my entire body.

Maybe because this was open plain, the wind felt particularly fierce.

Flap, flap.

The three tails of my coat whipped through the blue-black air.

“…Good thing I didn’t bring Frederick.”

If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to take proper care of him in weather like this.

Actually, not just today.

I wouldn’t have managed it at any point over the last eight days.

Leaving him behind there really had been the wise choice.

Praising my past judgment, I raised a hand.

The rain had grown so intense in that brief time that it was difficult to keep my eyes open.

Water struck my hand, ran along it, and flowed beneath my collar.

A slight shiver passed through me.

Still, moving like this was probably better than sitting still and getting drenched.

Forcing my leaden legs to move, I carefully advanced.

Squelch.

The fact that luck failed to cooperate was not particularly my fault.

“Haah.”

Too exhausted even to swear, I pulled my foot out of the mud.

It didn’t seem like the ground had become like this from the rain that had just started. This must have been a naturally wet region.

But it wasn’t even a proper mudflat.

Why was it so sticky?

I shook the heavy clumps of soil off my boot.

Shhk.

Continuing straight ahead was probably a bad idea.

I stepped backward and looked for another way around.

The fact that I couldn’t find one because I couldn’t see anything was, once again, not my fault.

“…Would using a lamp give me away?”

With my half-conscious mind, I agonized fiercely over whether to take out the lamp.

I was fully aware that it might give pursuers something to work with, but the combination of night and rain was disastrous for visibility.

There was no other option.

At this rate, I felt like I’d die from getting drenched before any pursuer ever caught me.

“Please don’t let anyone spot this.”

With that modest wish, I finally hung the magic lamp from my waist.

Its range was not wide, so I could still see only a limited stretch around me, but it was better than before.

At the very least, I wouldn’t step blindly into mud because I couldn’t see the ground.

Shhhhhhh.

The silence of the night, filled only with the sound of thick sheets of rain, soaked the road in chill.

“…….”

Walking like this without doing anything else felt like it would be bad for my mental health.

I knew that instinctively and searched for something to occupy my thoughts.

Fortunately, there were a few topics available.

Roughly speaking…

the worries I hadn’t finished sorting out before I fell asleep.

The pursuers.

What I was going to do from now on.

Things like that.

And the former was already done.

I had indeed fallen asleep while thinking about it, but honestly, even if I continued, it wasn’t the kind of problem where some new solution would suddenly appear.

The latter, on the other hand…

was something I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t start considering soon.

To the point that even my excuse about being too busy running felt awkward.

If I absolutely had to rationalize it, I could say something like, How normal could any plan made after four sleepless nights possibly be?

“…How am I supposed to live from now on?”

I deliberately spoke aloud as I considered the future, if only to break the silence.

Instead, the question made me feel even more lost.

Probably because, at first glance, it was a problem with absolutely no answer.

“Haah.”

For the last eight days, I had avoided every village and city to reduce the chances of being tracked.

I hadn’t even approached them.

The instant I spotted so much as the silhouette of a settlement, I immediately changed direction.

But how long could I keep doing that?

When I still couldn’t even light a proper fire and barely knew how to gather food in the wild?

…I couldn’t estimate the exact timing, but eventually I was going to have to enter a city.

If survival alone didn’t force the issue, the very goal I had chosen to flee in order to achieve certainly would.

Of course I was going to need other people’s cooperation to investigate this body properly.

Whether that meant knowledge accumulated by others or the memories of someone who knew this body’s past.

There was no chance I could avoid needing either.

I definitely would.

Someone.

Someone in a city… or a village.

“…….”

But when I considered my circumstances, there was one enormous problem standing in front of all that.

The first problem was that I was about to become a wanted man.

I wasn’t completely certain, but the odds were high.

The second problem—and one even more severe than the first—was that I possessed Demonic Energy.

Put another way, there was no way for me to escape the Temple’s eyes.

That was the whole reason I’d been going out of my way to avoid cities and villages.

“Just imagining it already feels like shit…….”

Calling the reaction paranoid would be difficult after everything that had happened.

For example, every time I entered a village, the Temple would glare at me and watch my every move.

Or how I could be located from miles away merely because I carried Demonic Energy—usually by the Hero, admittedly.

With memories like that, the next images my mind produced could only be negative.

I quietly sank into despair.

“Fuck…….”

No, seriously.

What am I supposed to do?

Forget conducting a normal investigation. At this rate, I’m going to get reported over and over again.

And on the off chance that the people with the information decide I’m something that needs to die and choose eternal silence instead?

Then how the hell am I supposed to learn the truth?

At that point, having pursuers on my trail wouldn’t even be the main problem.

I measured out the worst possibilities in advance and gained nothing except the experience of feeling suffocated.

It did not feel good.

The frustration only deepened.

“So in the end, Demonic Energy is the problem…….”

But I couldn’t simply give up because the problem felt impossible.

If I didn’t solve this, the road back home would become very, extremely, unbelievably difficult.

“Damn it.”

No, but seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to solve it?

I began piling up Korea’s national specialty of opening every complaint with No, but— while tearing at my hair.

Whether it was because I hadn’t slept or because the problem genuinely had no answer, nothing came to mind.

At this point, the easiest option felt like dropping dead face-first into a plate.

“If I at least had somewhere I could stay without worrying…….”

But what tormented me most wasn’t any of those problems.

It was the fact that I didn’t have a single place where I could safely sit and think through them, nor anyone I could talk to about them.

I think I finally understood why people who ran away with neither home nor shelter had such a difficult time.

Not that I’d ever wanted to experience that personally.

Sssssssk.

“……?”

Then, while I continued trudging along in the wet, a chilling rustle brushed past my ears.

It sounded subtly different from the rain and wind I’d been hearing until now.

Not merely wind stirring blades of grass.

Something smoother.

Faster.

Moving……

“…….”

What kinds of beasts roamed plains like these?

With that thought, I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword.

My awareness spread wide.

Nothing had entered it yet.

Nothing.

Nothing?

[Well, I’ll be. It really is Sir Knight.]

I nearly drew my sword reflexively at the presence that appeared in an instant.

The only reason I didn’t complete the motion was because I recognized the identity of the voice quickly enough.

The blade caught against the scabbard and rattled, narrowly avoiding being swung.

[…Did I nearly get myself killed?]

“…What is it?”

You think you’re the only one who got startled?

You scared me too.

I forced that thought down and returned the sword to its sheath.

[What are you?]

A voice I didn’t know joined in the next moment.

The contempt and disgust faintly underlying it made my fingers stiffen.

[You know that thing?]

That thing.

My lips moved once at the word chosen by the owner of the new voice.

No sound actually escaped, but something I couldn’t name definitely rose all the way to my throat.

[Yep.]

[…Explain.]

But…

getting angry would probably be a bad idea.

Judging by the way I heard the voice, this being might be something similar to the Mountain Lord.

An Ancient Beast, perhaps.

Or at least something of comparable rank.

And if it was something like that, it wasn’t particularly strange for it to find me unpleasant.

I did possess Demonic Energy.

[Well, see, the thing is…….]

Meanwhile, the Mountain Lord began explaining how it knew me.

The events in the Great Forest.

How I had killed Biryuho and given the Mountain Lord its heart.

Those were the important parts.

It occasionally included little things like how I’d bought it pickling melon too.

I had no idea why it was mentioning that.

[Anyway, Sir Knight is a really good person!]

Still…

it didn’t feel bad.

Yeah.

This felt pretty nice.

Watching the Mountain Lord’s tail wag wildly and sensing the goodwill that had been present throughout the explanation, the corners of my eyes softened faintly.

It really did feel nice.