292

Chapter 292 — Something I Can Accept (8)

Clang!

[Don’t be impatient, Gretchen. Once this little boy loses his strength, I’ll deal with you even if you don’t want me to.]

Naturally, the sword I had thrown did nothing.

The demon knocked it away with sharp claws and sneered.

“Go fuck yourself.”

But like hell I was going to give up because of that.

I generated several more daggers and threw them.

Clang, clang, clang.

Not a single one did any damage, but I felt considerably better.

At long last, I could at least throw knives at that bastard.

[An insignificant little thing like you…….]

「…You shouldn’t challenge her carelessly.」

The boy, however, wasn’t particularly happy about my help.

He hadn’t made any special movements after binding the demon’s arm, so there was no way my dagger throwing had suddenly interfered with anything.

It seemed that he was simply uncomfortable with me joining the fight at all.

「Your soul is enormous enough to suppress a demon, but that demon is cunning enough to squeeze through your soul and claw at the world outside.」

“Explain properly. Are you saying I should be careful, or that I shouldn’t fight her at all?”

「…A mental form doesn’t die even if it is killed. But the mind forced to endure all that pain will deteriorate.」

Maybe it was because of everything I had suffered until now.

Even when speaking to a child, my words came out somewhat curt.

The boy, however, didn’t mind the thorns in my tone and continued warning me.

「A deteriorated mind narrows your vision and makes you pursue only the salvation right before your eyes, without even knowing whether it’s false or true.」

Beneath his whisper lay layer upon layer of terrible exhaustion and regret, supporting every word.

「…You can’t let that happen. If it does, the demon will consume you.」

It was ground the boy had suffered through and built up entirely alone.

「So please stay behind me. I’ll be the one who fights.」

You won’t die if you’re strangled.

You won’t die if you’re stabbed.

At last, I could vaguely feel the weight behind what the demon had said.

[Self-sacrifice… How admirable.]

I looked at the boy who had somehow come to stand in front of me.

His back was still small.

Like the backs of children who hadn’t yet finished growing.

[But I already told you. You can’t anymore. You no longer have the right to stand on this stage.]

At the same time, the boy was a knight.

His straightened back, his legs spread the proper distance apart, and the two hands gripping his sword firmly proved it.

「I know.」

The sword flared with dazzling light.

Its radiance was closer to gold than amber, and closer to the sun than a torch.

The sword, burning more fiercely than a wood fire, illuminated the crumbling world.

「Even so, I’ll stand in your way. Just as I always have.」

The boy’s hair, dyed gold by the light, glittered like embers coming alive among ashes.

[No. You can’t.]

「……!」

But that beautiful light couldn’t change the course of the battle.

BOOM!

The moment the demon’s sword of pitch-black flame collided with the boy’s blade, the collapse of the white world accelerated.

The horizon had already been swallowed by blackness, and now even the scenery to either side was cracking apart.

[Fulfill the “promise.”]

「Kgh……!」

The boy pushed harder as if trying to resist it, but that was all.

He could slow the cracking, but he couldn’t stop it.

Only then did I come to my senses.

A sword appeared in my hand and stabbed toward the demon’s side.

[…Annoying.]

「Ah!」

Knight or not.

The boy was ultimately still a child, and I was an adult.

And as an adult, there was no way I could simply let a child protect me while I did nothing.

Even if that child had done something unforgivable to me.

Even if he had committed a sin that the entire world would point fingers at him for.

Children deserved a chance to atone for any sin.

For no reason other than the fact that they were children.

[Did you want to experience death, Gretchen?]

“I’ve already experienced it a fucking ton, so not really?”

I never wanted to fight a knight again… but the demon wasn’t a knight, so this should be fine.

I lashed out and kicked at the demon’s leg.

[Useless.]

But when you swept your hand through smoke that had taken form, its shape might distort, yet the smoke itself wouldn’t disappear.

The demon’s body was the same.

Her leg scattered like flame, like smoke, allowing my leg to pass straight through, then came back together in its original shape.

My eyes widened at the unexpected response.

[Have you forgotten whose power has been sustaining you out there?]

I wasn’t given much time to be surprised.

Fwoosh.

Flames erupted from her hand and poured over me.

I hurriedly rolled across the ground, but the fire still caught one of my arms.

“—!!”

I couldn’t even scream.

My mouth fell open beneath the pain of my skin burning and the flesh beneath it being eaten away.

It hurt about as badly as being struck by Divine Power.

「Steady your mind and imagine yourself before you were injured!」

Fortunately, the moment I followed the boy’s advice, the flames consuming me disappeared.

More precisely, the boy quickly cut away the burning section and removed the flames.

Clang! Clang!

During the three exchanges between the boy and the demon, I barely managed to regenerate the missing portion.

It was nice that I could heal myself just by wishing for it, but the whole experience still felt shitty in every possible way.

“If you lose your focus for even a second, you’re basically fucking dead in this place…….”

[Exactly. So, want to give up?]

“Fuck off…….”

I tightened my trembling hand around my sword.

The pain had hit me in full force without the convenient trick of adjusting my pain sensitivity, and it had been tremendous.

Still, I had suffered pain about this bad fairly often lately, so I could endure it.

CLANG!

“Ah, I shouldn’t be swearing…….”

My sword knocked away the flame that had been about to cut down the boy.

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[People with enormous souls are always pointlessly stubborn.]

The demon tried attacking several more times, realized it wasn’t working, and abruptly retreated.

The brief lull gave me time to catch my breath.

[Whatever. Time is on my side anyway.]

Apparently exchanging blows wasn’t an absolutely necessary part of this.

Using the demon’s words, I roughly assessed the situation.

It could have been a bluff, but judging by the boy’s silence, the prediction didn’t seem particularly wrong.

“…Hey.”

「…Were you calling me?」

“Is beating the shit out of that thing actually pointless?”

Still, I checked just in case.

The boy nodded gravely.

「Unless we can overwhelm the demon… in a situation like this, it won’t accomplish much.」

“But there are two of us.”

「It’s only because there are two of us that we’ve managed to maintain the status quo. Normally…….」

Crack.

Just as the boy was about to say something, an enormous fracture split across the world.

It felt somewhat different from the continuous collapse until now.

This break was visibly larger.

As though something had directly affected it.

“…Was that just now because of the concealment of ignorance?”

「…That’s part of it, but the fundamental cause is something else.」

“Because you broke a rule?”

「How did you……?」

“You basically said it outright. Why are you acting surprised now……?”

If you talked like that in front of someone, anyone could probably work it out.

I flexed the newly regenerated skin and started thinking.

It wasn’t as though I was experienced in mental battles and could simply beat the demon down, and according to the boy, bickering like this wouldn’t repair the collapsing world either.

In that case, wouldn’t it be better to attack the root of the problem instead?

“…So, in the end, the reason you kept quiet around me was because of a contract. And because you broke the rules first, the demon gained an advantage.”

I pushed my hair back while watching the boy fidget nervously and glance at me.

If Münmund hadn’t been in danger, would this kid have stayed silent until the very end?

Looking at the state of things, he probably would have.

The collapsing white world certainly didn’t look like a good sign for our side.

[Yes. You really are perceptive, Gretchen.]

“…And what’s this promise that has to be fulfilled?”

[Why ask when you’ve already figured it out?]

Did I regret using Münmund to threaten him?

No.

Even if everything had supposedly been for my sake, I hated being manipulated while someone covered my eyes and ears.

And I was sick to death of walking through a tunnel with no end in sight.

I needed answers.

Whether it was an answer I could make into a goal, or one that would allow me to tie off the life I had left behind on Earth without lingering regret.

Either way, I needed an answer that would let me put some part of my life in order.

[The conveyance of the truth. That’s the promise you and that little brat made, isn’t it?]

And all I needed from that answer was a handful of sentences.

“Really? Then answer one—no, two things.”

Of course, it would be nice if I could know everything, but if that happened, the concealment of ignorance would be completely broken.

Considering the effect that might have on me, I could abandon a considerable portion of the truth.

It wasn’t as though learning all of it would send me home anyway.

「……?」

“Can I go home or not?”

So I decided to discard all the trivial details.

How this boy had summoned me.

Whether the bodies used for it had really belonged to criminals.

Why it had specifically been me.

How he had known I would create the setting for the “Demon Knight” and given me a form matching it.

I would throw all of that away.

“I’m not selling my chance to go home just to satisfy some curiosity. I only need to hear the thing I need most. So tell me. Can I go home or not?”

If I could return, I was perfectly willing to live with unanswered curiosity for the rest of my life.

Under my stare, the boy bit his lip, then muttered as if exhaling the words.

「Y-you can go back.」

One corner of the world collapsed with a rumble.

Perhaps because so much had fallen away at once, the small fractures stopped spreading.

Maybe the fulfillment of that part of the promise had halted the minor collapse.

“How do I get home?”

「Th-that’s…….」

But what would happen if all of this white world collapsed?

At the very least, it couldn’t be anything good.

So I asked the second question I desired most.

This would be my final question.

「If you die—more precisely, if the body you’re currently using dies… or if you remain uncorrupted for ten years… you’ll be able to return to your original world.」

CRAAACK!

Like an enormous iceberg breaking apart, another massive section of the world caved in.

The answer itself wasn’t even as unexpected as I had imagined.

“…Then why did you keep quiet when those were the conditions?”

Death.

Corruption.

Considering how demons behaved in literature, neither condition was particularly surprising.

And they were easier to deal with if I knew about them rather than remaining ignorant.

So why hadn’t the boy told me?

I’d been worried it might turn out I needed to kill a mountain of people as sacrifices or something, but if this was all, wouldn’t it have been better to simply tell me and ask for my cooperation?

Of course, the time period was a little long.

Okay, very long.

「That’s…….」

“Ah, no. Never mind. If telling me would give that thing an advantage, then don’t bother. I’m not curious enough to risk it.”

In truth, I was insanely curious.

But not as much as I wanted to go home.

Instead, I mulled over the conditions I had just heard.

Either the body dies, or I endure for ten years.

I was damn glad I didn’t have to sacrifice anyone.

“This is enough. I’ve heard everything I need. What do we do now?”

「Well…….」

[Oh, how unfortunate.]

Contrary to what I wanted, however, the situation didn’t come to an end.

The demon grinned.

[First of all, I’ll praise you for being clever enough to set priorities, Gretchen. Trying to preserve the concealment of ignorance when you don’t even fully understand the situation is certainly the behavior of an intelligent person.]

Rustle.

At the same time, cracks appeared in the chains constricting her arms.

Beyond the shattered world, the gigantic hand of flame grasped the world’s wall.

[But a “promise” isn’t made that casually. At the time the promise was formed, I was its mediator, and I defined the concept of “truth” as “every fact pertaining to the circumstances.” That means it must be fulfilled exactly that way.]

“What?”

[You can’t just hear the parts you want and stop there.]

For a moment, I couldn’t understand what she meant, so I had to think harder.

Every fact pertaining to the circumstances.

Put more simply, it apparently meant the entire story of how we had ended up like this.

“You…….”

「I-I’m sor……」

I reflexively turned toward the boy.

But his face had gone indescribably pale.

Apparently, he had realized his mistake as well.

“No, you fucking…….”

I instinctively started to say what my heart demanded, then swallowed it.

In that brief moment, the child had begun trembling so pitifully that I couldn’t bring myself to continue.

That was the final thread holding onto my reason.

“…So you’re saying I have to hear everything?”

[That’s right.]

“…Even though I’ve already heard enough?”

[Then you should have worded the promise precisely when you made it.]

The demon standing before me gently scratched at that last thread of sanity.

[As the mediator of the promise, I don’t consider the current exchange equivalent. So you must hear the entire truth, even if you don’t want to.]

An adult deceiving an inexperienced child to gain an advantage.

This was a kind of fucking bastard I’d seen somewhere before.