248

Chapter 248 — Will It Mean Anything? (2)

[Enough, enough. Stop explaining. I get how much you like that guy.]

[Uuuugh.]

[Seriously, who did you take after to become this ridiculous?]

The fierce rain continued hammering my body.

The owner of the voice recoiled from the Mountain Lord’s praise of me and ordered it to stop.

Dislike toward me still underlay the voice.

But regardless of how that feeling reached me, I agreed with the attempt to stop it.

The Mountain Lord’s praise was embarrassing even for me.

[Why, what’d I do?]

[You’re not genuinely asking because you don’t know, are you?]

But who exactly was the owner of that voice?

Judging by the respectful way the Mountain Lord addressed the being, it probably wasn’t something of low standing.

Using the sense of distance whenever the voice spoke, I tried to estimate where the speaker might be.

It didn’t seem especially far away.

Close enough that, even with the darkness acting as a veil, I thought I should at least be able to make out some vague shape.

[…Enough. You’re not the only one who saw something good in that bastard.]

But all I could actually see was the Mountain Lord’s sleek body.

There was absolutely nothing else.

It was puzzling.

[I still have some concerns… but I’ll let it go for now.]

Ah.

Or could this being dissolve into the air too, like the Mountain Lord……?

Considering that possibility, I focused again on the conversation I’d missed.

I’ll let it go for now.

Even though the being disliked me, it had decided to tolerate me.

No matter how I personally felt about it, that was not a bad conclusion.

[Exactly, exactly. Sir Knight really is someone you can trust.]

[You wouldn’t say that if you knew what that thing has done.]

[What?]

[Forget it. I already decided to let the matter go.]

But the more I listened, the more I got the strange feeling that the other party knew me somehow.

Not necessarily well.

But as though this being had been aware of my existence before now……

“…Do you know me?”

I breathed out air that felt both hot and cold and searched my memories.

Had I ever gotten involved with anyone possessing a voice like that?

But there was no one within the range of what I could remember.

This was someone I didn’t know.

Then why did this being know me?

…Could it actually be someone who had known the real Demon Knight?

[Looks like you don’t remember me… Well, I suppose that makes sense. I look very different now compared to back then.]

I asked without thinking, a faint hope rising inside me.

The answer only inflated that hope further.

My heart, faced with a stroke of luck I had never anticipated—though it was not confirmed yet—began beating rapidly as though struck with a club…

No.

Strangely, it was pounding more slowly than usual.

[Huh? You two have met before?]

[Yeah.]

[When?]

[Not long ago. A few days back, when the city you were acting like a sucker for was actively falling apart around you.]

[…Huh?]

But the place being described could only have been Bemurchen.

The hope that had risen shattered instantly, leaving only an empty sensation in my stomach.

The muscles that had tensed relaxed and cooled unpleasantly.

[That bastard did make my other half stop committing atrocities, and my body was freed from being a puppet thanks to it, but I didn’t expect it to just take the whole thing and run off with it… Ah, right. This works out nicely. Any chance you’d be willing to give me my old body back?]

But I only had a moment to be consumed by that emptiness.

The other party’s words gave rise to an entirely new set of questions.

Its other half’s atrocities?

A body freed from being a puppet?

I took it and ran off?

Forget all of that.

What exactly did it mean by old body……?

I forced my dulled brain to turn the words over.

After all, all I remembered about what had happened in Bemurchen was fighting the lava demon and then waking up to find myself about to be executed.

Those two events had absolutely nothing in common with what this being was describing—

Ah.

Could it be?

“I don’t remember.”

[You don’t want to return it?]

Rainwater continued collecting on my lashes.

I blinked it away and added,

“I mean exactly what I said.”

It did not help much.

Maybe I’d spent too long acting out an unfriendly, curt persona.

Even my clarification was so short that it demanded an unreasonable amount of interpretation from the listener.

If I ever made it home, I felt like I might genuinely have problems communicating with people.

[…Does that have something to do with the core of Demonic Energy inside you?]

If there was any good news, it was that the other party was fairly perceptive.

Before I even had to add, I wasn’t the one who did it, the being understood what I meant and returned a suitable question.

I blinked again to shake the rain from my lashes.

“…Yes.”

[Then I suppose I can’t get my power back.]

“…Your power was taken?”

[From my perspective, more or less. Though if you tell me the victor merely claimed the spoils they had a right to, I don’t have much to say against it.]

Just what was this being?

Judging from the story, it sounded like the demon had taken its body or power while controlling mine……

Was the reason I couldn’t see it now because its body had been stolen?

But could something survive after losing its body?

Or since it had said old body, did that mean it possessed a new one now?

And before any of that, if the demon had personally gone out of its way to take this being’s power, just how strong had that power been?

How could something that powerful never have been seen?

Where had the demon hidden what it stole?

[If I can’t get it back, then forget it.]

The more I heard, the more questions piled up and tangled my thoughts.

A sentence carrying faint resignation and a sigh seeped into my ears.

Dududududu.

Through the distorted roar of rain, the words spread softly.

I had to repeat them in my mind exactly three times before they finally made sense.

“…You give up easily.”

[Obsessing over something already lost would only make me pathetic. And it’s not as if I bear no responsibility for how I lost it.]

Surprisingly, the being did not seem especially upset about being unable to reclaim its power.

That was unexpected.

Considering how unpleasant it found me, I had assumed this would anger it as well.

[If there’s nothing else, let’s go.]

[Uuugh. You done talking?]

[Yeah. Why? Got something left to say?]

[Well, there’re a few things I’d like to ask.]

I was grateful, at least, that it didn’t try to force responsibility onto me simply because I shared the same body.

If it had insisted on something that unreasonable, I would have had a difficult time.

[Like why Sir Knight is here, where he’s going, why he abandoned all his companions and is wandering around alone… things like that?]

[You’ve got a lot you want to ask. Do what you want. It’s not like I can go anywhere by myself anyway.]

[Hehe.]

Setting that aside, did this mean that being had no more business with me?

I still had plenty I wanted to ask.

I nearly stopped the other party from withdrawing from the conversation, but became conscious of the Mountain Lord and backed off.

The Mountain Lord probably wouldn’t try to crush my skull merely because I acted a little strangely…

but you never knew.

There was no need to act as rigidly as I had around the Hero’s party, but maintaining at least the bare minimum of my persona seemed wise.

Read only on MUGEX

[Then, Sir Knight, why are you here……?]

Seriously, this persona was practically a scarlet letter.

It kept stopping me from doing what I wanted and forcing me to take detours around things that should have been easy.

[Sir Knight?]

Huh?

Ah, right.

The Mountain Lord had been talking.

Realizing I had gotten far too lost in my thoughts—strange, I was sure I hadn’t been concentrating that hard—I shifted my attention.

The white serpent in my gritty vision looked somewhat blurry around the edges.

“I’m listening.”

[Ah. Yes. So what brings you here? I’m headed back to the Great Forest, but aren’t you supposed to be going north?]

At least I could still hear the voice.

After replaying the muddled sounds several times, I finally understood the full sentence.

“That……”

But wait.

How exactly should I answer?

The Mountain Lord might not know the details of my persona, but it probably understood that I was some lunatic obsessed with hunting demons.

Should I simply hide the fact that I had escaped from Bemurchen entirely?

Could I really do that when a being who knew what had happened in Bemurchen was right beside it?

“That……”

…Still, vaguely brushing it aside was probably better.

If I immediately said goodbye afterward, even if the Mountain Lord thought it was strange, there wouldn’t be much it could say.

[That?]

So.

“…….”

I moved my strangely dry throat despite the rain.

No sound came out.

And in that brief instant, my vision grew even blurrier until the Mountain Lord looked doubled.

[…Sir Knight?]

…Wait.

Seeing an object—

No, I guess it wasn’t an object.

Anyway, seeing one target split into two wasn’t normal, was it?

[Huh?]

Not only did the Mountain Lord divide into two, the entire world began tilting.

I watched it happen, confused.

Why was the world spinning?

The world wasn’t supposed to spin.

Seriously, what was this?

Why was the world—

Ah.

Was I the thing with the problem?

[Good heavens! Sir Knight’s dying!!]

With the Mountain Lord’s voice buzzing in my ears, my eyelids slowly slid shut.

I’d thought the ringing in my ears seemed especially bad today.

So that wasn’t the actual problem.

That was the last thought I remembered.

* * *

[Wh-What’re we gonna do?!]

The Mountain Lord barely caught the collapsing man and cried out in utter panic.

The tail it had coiled around him to protect him conveyed the man’s body temperature perfectly.

Cold.

And hot.

It was not the temperature of any human the Mountain Lord knew.

[H-He’s not gonna die like this, is he?!]

If the Mountain Lord had possessed feet, it probably would have been stamping them so violently by now that the surrounding land would have been devastated.

But it had no feet, and the tail it did possess was currently occupied wrapping around the man.

Thanks to that, it succeeded in preserving the surroundings quite peacefully.

[Is he dead?]

[Ancestor!!]

[Guess not.]

Unlike the Mountain Lord, Yukgwi clicked its tongue.

Wouldn’t it have been better for the world if he’d simply died?

The detached thought came as an added bonus.

[Why are you making such a fuss? One human collapsed. And one carrying a demon, at that.]

But was that thought truly only detached?

Yukgwi crawled carefully along the Mountain Lord’s body until it reached a position where it could look down at the fallen human.

The first thing visible was the face, so pale that it had taken on a bluish cast.

[What? A demon?]

[So you really didn’t know.]

Yet looking at the man inspired fear before pity.

It was inevitable.

On the surface, the man merely seemed to contain some Demonic Energy.

In reality, he was a vessel carrying a Great Demon.

[What’s inside that human is a Great Demon.]

[Whaaaaaaaaaat???]

Yukgwi did not know how a Great Demon had ended up parasitizing a human body.

Nor did Yukgwi know why, rather than pushing the human out completely, the human appeared to remain the one in control.

[…What if we killed him now?]

[A-Ancestor?]

There was only one thing Yukgwi knew.

The power that Great Demon would display if it awakened.

[The demon was already strong, and now it swallowed my other half and my body too. It monopolized practically all the power that Black Serpent and I possessed.]

…Yukgwi knew that thanks to that man’s intervention, the corrupted Black Serpent had died before it could cause even greater havoc.

And that body, which had become polluted into a nest for demons, would have caused trouble in every direction had it not been for that thing’s fire.

So.

Therefore.

In a sense, perhaps Yukgwi owed that thing something.

[Can you even imagine how powerful a Great Demon that swallowed the complete power of one Ancient Beast could become?]

But did that mean Yukgwi truly needed to feel gratitude toward it?

If the human had not clung desperately to the body, Yukgwi might have burned along with its shell by now.

And even if Black Serpent’s betrayal had already stripped Yukgwi of everything, the power that had originally belonged to Yukgwi had still been torn away wholesale.

For example, imagine this.

Someone’s leg was broken in an accident, leaving them permanently disabled.

But because of that injury, they were never conscripted into a war.

Should that person be grateful for the accident that broke their leg?

[The western dragon liked this human, and I know you do too. But that is one matter, and this is another.]

The answer would be no.

[Besides, that human… probably ran all the way here because he didn’t want to die…….]

[What? He ran because he didn’t want to die?]

[Back when he was in those tents, I heard the humans talking about executing him. Then that human disappeared without a word in the middle of the night. Doesn’t that obviously mean he ran because he didn’t want to die?]

[Normally, I guess that’d be right…….]

And so Yukgwi urged the Mountain Lord.

It was absolutely not urging it out of personal resentment because that thing had nearly driven Yukgwi to death, or because it had killed the being that, corrupted though it was, had still been Yukgwi’s other half.

No.

It was simply because Yukgwi was certain this would be better for the world.

[…Do we really have to?]

But after hearing all of that, the Mountain Lord fidgeted and quietly offered its opinion.

[…Am I being too selfish?]

If it had shouted that they absolutely couldn’t do it, that would have been one thing.

But the creature that normally chattered nonstop suddenly drooped and began mumbling timidly.

Yukgwi was left completely speechless.

[It… would be selfish…….]

[I thought so… But I really don’t want to do it…….]

[…….]

Seriously.

Why did this fool, who normally never cared what anyone thought, choose this moment to become sensitive to it……!

Yukgwi was utterly dumbfounded, but ultimately said nothing more.

After all, Yukgwi was the one who wanted that human dead.

But the Mountain Lord was the one who would actually have to carry it out—

and also the one who would have to look after Yukgwi afterward.

[I don’t know anymore. Do what you want.]

Well.

Honestly, if the human survived, the ones who would suffer were more likely to be humans than them.

So standing aside was probably fine.

After that calculating conclusion, Yukgwi finally gave permission.

The Mountain Lord’s drooping expression brightened instantly.

[Then let’s hurry home! A typhoon’s coming too, and we need to treat Sir Knight as soon as possible!]

It was time to continue the journey.