“…There’s something that I’d like to make sure of while we’re at it,“ the knight suddenly said.
We were carefully investigating the surrounding terrain. According to the knight, we first needed to find out how to get out of this system of tunnels. He also said that it would be better to check out the nearby diversions than to wander around aimlessly.
“What did you do during the time between [the last half of the third day and the fourth day] of the First Cycle?”
This question made me cry out uncontrollably. (??) The knight stared straight at my mentor with his hazy face.
“You don’t remember? Didn’t you say that you inherited Add’s memories.”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing in Add’s memory about what happened after the third night. The memories stop after meeting the guys at the church, returning home, and eating dinner. I’m afraid that Gray’s food had probably been drugged. Because Add’s consciousness is in tune with Gray’s, every time this one goes to sleep or loses consciousness, Add enters a similar state. The people from the village know this.”
“Wait.”
My mentor raised a hand and interrupted him.
“You say they drugged her.”
“You’re really asking that now? It’s exactly like I said. The villagers aren’t those moe (TN: Couldn’t think of a better adjective, wouldn’t have said that but you get the point) girls that I like, they’re not afraid to lay fingers on little Gray here.”
My mentor’s shoulders shook slightly.
He knew, of course.
The reason why he hadn’t looked deeply into the events of the fourth day when we met and went over the events in the First Cycle was because he was afraid of touching on anything that might evoke my psychological trauma. When I first left my village, I had detested discussing anything related to it. I wasn’t even curious at all when I heard that they had discovered the corpse of someone who looked exactly like me. I had completely averted my eyes from my village, and never considered thinking about what happened the last day before I left. I thought that since I wasn’t there anymore, I should just leave everything behind and start anew with London and the Clock Tower.
If it wasn’t for my mentor, or the members of the El-Melloi Classroom including Reines, I would have never considered returning to this village.
“This village was always like that sort of a place,” the knight said quietly. The sarcastic tone with which he said it made it feel as if he was talking not to other people but to himself.
“The sole purpose of this village is to transform Gray into a replica of King Arthur. Ah, to think that entire generations spent who knows how long on this kind of boring thing. It wouldn’t even suffice to call it a grudge (?). Though the idea of a family business sounds pretty good, there’s just no point to doing this sort of thing,” the knight begrudgingly said, revealing what we had known all along in an instant.
I had always known this. However, my mentor froze briefly in response to that, which was undoubtedly something worth being happy about (?). Most people who dealt with mystery completely disregarded common practices in the rest of the world. No, it was that they didn’t care about those things in the first place, like all the mages I had met so far.
“Hey, Gray, do you really remember nothing? Though the drugs would have made your consciousness become blurred, you must remember something. Even if you really are a forgetful idiot, there must be information hidden in the nooks of your brain, right?”
His words shot through me like the sharpened point of a spear. “Is [this] the reason why you avoided anything related to your hometown after you left?”
His sharp words made sparks fly in my mind.
“—Ahh! (TN: Alternatively, ouch)”
“Gray!”
I stopped my mentor, who wanted to rush over to me, and used my other hand to clasp my head.
Indeed. Though I was only half-awake then, I still had a trace of consciousness.
Ah, yes, though my senses were blurred, the smell I had smelled then still lingered in my mind. It was a smell of rotting weeds and water, a miasma that made me feel like my throat was going to rot as I breathed it in. There was no place in the village that was like this. However, I did know of one place.
“It’s… the swamp…”
“The swamp?”
My mentor’s voice seemed so distant. The senses from my flashback had shaken my brain(?). I did experience this. This receptor (body) did process these fragments before, but they had disappeared from my mind. I desperately tried to drag those fragmented memories out like a spinning wheel, but as soon as I managed to pull some out, it disappeared like sea foam.
“I… that’s right… I saw…”
What?
That was all I could recall.
The doors to my sealed memories were still locked. A couple of rays of light shone from the gap between them. I gathered the scattered fragments to my memories. Suddenly, an image flashed through my mind.
No, it was a sound. It was a loud, piercing shriek, as if hundreds of ravens were cawing at the same time. To my side, someone was yelling at me.
—“You… (did something to)… me…”
The one who lay in a pool of blood…[the masked person.]
“In the midst… of the crows… the other… covered in blood…”
“Gray!”
If it wasn’t for my mentor, I might have actually collapsed.
“So that’s the reason why you didn’t want to return to this village.”
The knight shrugged slightly.
“Both you and Add’ll get nothing out of being too kind. If you make her have a dream or something like a mage, maybe all this could be solved.”
“It’s not like I haven’t thought of that,” my mentor answered, while gently supporting me.
“Though, entering the consciousness of someone battling with emotional trauma can alter their minds significantly. …Besides that, mages have obligations to care for their students.”
“Ha. That’s why I say you’re too kind, nerd.” The knight puckered up his hazy mouth and tsked. “So, after what Gray just described, she was handed over to you?”
“…On the morning of the fourth day, Bersac came to me with an unconscious Gray in his arms. He told me then that this girl was now in my hands, that her corpse had been discovered near the Black Madonna, so nobody would try to follow us, and that I shouldn’t ask about anything else. That way, she would be saved, and I would have gotten a grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard.”
“I see. So you were completely out of the picture during the First Cycle,” the knight said, while sighing and scratching his head.
“Though if I just leave it be, it might go the same, unfortunately, I’ve already boarded this boat. Then again, even if the results are the same, it still can’t be helped… On that note, according to what you said, did something happen between Bersac and the villagers? Did Bersac steal Gray over from the villagers while they were planning to perform some sort of ritual on her? Or did another similar incident happen?”
“…I don’t know. I didn’t ask him back then.”
Just as my mentor finished his sentence, the knight suddenly put his a hazy ear up against to the wall of the tunnel.
“…Well, this is bad,” he muttered.
“What happened.”
“Someone’s coming in this direction.”
He stared at the darkness.
I stood up nervously.
I held onto the scythe form of Add tightly. Perhaps it was because he cared for me that he stayed in this state. At least I could fight this way. At least I could protect my mentor.
However, my will to fight dissipated when I saw the person who approached.
“…So you’re here,” said a low voice.
My mentor’s magecraft light(TN: whatever a light summoned by magecraft’s supposed to be called) illuminated a sturdy figure. Though he was old, he still held a giant axe in one hand with ease.
“Oi, isn’t this too much of a coincidence? This is what you call… Speak of the devil, isn’t it.”
“Mr… Bersac.”
I felt my throat go numb for an instant.
I didn’t know what emotions I was meant to face him with.
In the time I spent at my village, he was the only person who treated me like a human being. Just like Kay had said just then, other people saw me only as the body of King Arthur. At least, he was the only one saw what I was and still raised me as the next grave keeper. He even handed Add, who once belonged to him, to me.
Bersac Blackmore, the inheritor of the Blackmore lineage, and the true grave keeper.
“…There’s an extra one, surprisingly.” As he said that, Bersac narrowed his eyes and stared at the hazy knight. “If you’d excuse my rudeness, who might you be?”
“What a bother, the situation seems to have gotten more complicated. Just like I told these two here, just call me Kay. You don’t have to introduce yourself, I know you incredibly well, and I don’t want to hear another man introduce himself seriously.”
The knight shrugged nonchalantly.
“Kay? As in, Sir Kay?”
“So you’re also going to add the ‘Sir’.”
The knight sighed as if he’d had enough.
Even so, one hand remained on the hilt of his sword, and he did not let down his guard. If he saw Bersac as an enemy, that blade would probably slice through the grave keeper in a flash. Or maybe, like the knight had said, perhaps his silver tongue would be faster than his blade.
Bersac turned to look at the scythe in my hands.
“Did you come from inside Add?”
“Huh, as only can be expected from an old friend. Your guess is close enough. That guy managed to breach the defense mechanism and forced a Spiritual Origin (body) onto me. Either way, that’s how I ended up here, babysitting.”
“……”
I could not fully process this situation.
I originally thought that there would be bone soldiers, but I had made mental preparations to face the villagers. I never could have thought that the first person we met was him.
My mentor walked forward and stood in front of me as I struggled to figure out what to do.
“Are you our friend, or our enemy, Mr. Bersac?” He asked, carefully.
Extreme tension seemed to crush even the air in the cave.
Just as the tension was about to reach its peak, Bersac turned.
“…Follow me.”
His shoes clomped against the stone, and the sound of powerful footsteps resonated throughout the cave. I had followed after these footsteps for many years, but as I walked forward out of habit, my mentor reached out and stopped me.
“Could you please first answer my question. If the two categories of enemy and friend aren’t appropriate, could you at least first tell us the information you have.”
“You’ve should have guessed it all already.”
“Guesses are not the same as confirmed intelligence. Wasn’t the appearance of Sir Kay just then a surprise to you as well.”
“…Hm.”
Bersac let out a low groan(??).
“…I see, so there has to be some form of basic confirmation. Alright. Right now, both the church and the villagers are looking for Gray.”
“Both of them? Does that mean that the goal of the church differs from the goal of the villagers?”
“Of course.”
Bersac nodded.
“Then, as the grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard, is your goal also different?”
“To a certain extent, it is the same as the villagers’.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
Was this person my enemy, or my friend.
I had probably spent the most time with this grave keeper than with any other person. Was it possible that this person was also one of those who gave their lives to transform me into a replica of King Arthur? I thought that I might go mad from how tangled the situation was.
“Why are the villagers looking for Gray?”
“Why are you still asking this question at this time, Lord of the Clock Tower.”
His voice sounded incredibly stiff, perhaps because of the question that my mentor just asked.
“I’ve already heard something similar from talking to Sir Kay. He said that the purpose of this village is to transform Gray into a replica of King Arthur’s body. However, I don’t think that this [itself] is their goal. If there was no purpose to creating an identical body, they wouldn’t have retained this will for generations.”
He arranged and ordered the mysteries that had piled up as if he was moving chess pieces.
“I do have a theory. Many additional things have been mixed into the legend of King Arthur. Even the Holy Church and the Clock Tower have their own inputs on the situation, so it’s almost impossible to find out what was part of the original legend… However, there is one very famous part.” My mentor glanced over at Sir Kay, and continued.
“The words ‘the once and future king’ are inscribed on her grave.”
“……”
“I’m not sure know what ‘the once and future king’ is supposed to mean. Usually, I would assume that it was because she was a beloved king. It’s a legend about a wise, just ruler who will one day reappear to save her people in times of crisis. Similar stories that imply the desire for a savior appear all over the world, and it’s only natural, since it’s a rather simple wish,” he continued, as Bersac remained silent.
Hearing my mentor’s words, a strange expression appeared on the knight’s face. What emotion did he hide under the hazy face, I wonder?
What sort of comment would someone give on the lord they had served under a thousand years ago? Regardless of whether or not King Arthur was really the hero the legends described, he must have emotions that are difficult to describe.
Because, it’d be like if someone was talking to a person who they’ll never get to see again.
No matter what they do, they’ll never be able to undo past mistakes, and the tragic result will torment them forever. No matter how many times they come up with alternative words they could have said then or things they could have done, and no matter now many alternate correct answers they came up with, all their efforts are ultimately meaningless. In the end, all they can do is watch everything unfold and fall apart before their eyes. (TN: There is basically no subject in this entire paragraph originally, so it might make more sense to translate the subject as ‘your’ or ‘one’, but that looks weird)
That was also the reason why Faker was angry, wasn’t it.
“Therefore, all the villagers are all hope desperately for the king’s return,” my mentor remarked.
“The once-promised return of the once and future king.”
His whispered words made me hold my breath.
The once and future king (TN: alternatively, eternal king). What a glorious phrase, overflowing with majesty and hope. And yet, those same words were driving me to my doom. After hearing all this information, even fool like me could anticipate what was to come. I held my fist to my chest.
“…Mr. Bersac,” I said to him.
“I saw… the masked person with those bone soldiers.”
“You saw her?”
Bersac’s expression tightened. Though I had been with him for a very long time, as we would be in the graveyard regardless rain or shine, I had never seen him have such an expression.
“Who is she? Does she live underground? …No, is she a replica of King Arthur, like me?”
He did not respond immediately.
Even so, I could not back down now.
“Please tell me, Mr. Bersac.”
“…..”
I could hear the sound of his teeth grinding in the silence.
In the next instant, Bersac whisked around suddenly.
“—Like this!”
He swung his axe.
The heavy mass of iron cut through the air, slicing a couple of strands of my hair, and shattering the bone soldier that had crept up behind me.
The grave keeper pulled his axe from the pile of bones and shrugged. “Now I’m also one of their targets.”
“I suppose you’ll have to suck it up and deal with it, then.”
Kay whistled lightly. Bersac stared at him.
“It’s impossible that you didn’t notice that. Were you testing me?”
“Of course. It’s a lot easier to figure out things like this as quickly as possible, before the relations start getting complicated. Only a masochist or a really cold-blooded person would enjoy being around someone you didn’t know was an ally or an enemy.”
In other ways, Kay was observing how Bersac would deal with the bone soldiers. The knight, who just had his ear to the wall, looked up.
“We’ll have to talk later. I think they heard the sounds just then, and are now scuttling over.”
Soon, I also heard that noise. It was the sound of scraping armor and clattering metal, which was unmistakably produced by the army of bone soldiers. My mentor tensed up, while Bersac lifted his axe again.
“Do you not plan on using that sword,” Bersac asked the knight.
“Haha, no, I’m only here to babysit, so I’m going to avoid physical labor as much as possible. Though, I’m no amateur. The air has been flowing that way for a while.”
The knight turned his head and looked toward the twisting tunnels.
“Sir Kay?”
“Though I’d very much like to forget it, that obnoxious idiot of a court magician did say once that the best tactic is always to escape when possible.”
He turned around and immediately started running.
The sudden escape shocked us all momentarily, but a horde of bone soldiers flooded in immediately from the opposite direction.
“—Gah! Move!”
Bersac slammed his axe onto the cave wall with great force. The extreme might of the blow destabilized the foundation, and dirt clods began crumbling from the walls and raining from the sky from the point of impact. Just as the three bone soldiers in the very front of the group were buried by dirt, we followed after Kay.
*
The bone soldiers who had been disoriented in the collapsing tunnel quickly recovered. They gave up on rescuing their fallen companions, and a couple of them raised their sledgehammers to open a path through the obstructed tunnel. Since they had received orders from their master, they didn’t even consider retreat. They could not tire, so they could only advance.
They knocked at the dirt wall with their iron hammers, not caring if they accidentally hit their fallen companions. Their coordinated movements made them feel like automatons specifically designed for this purpose. However, after a few seconds, their movements stopped.
“…Hmph.”
Someone stuck out a tongue.
“It was hard enough already chasing them there, but I never thought that they would have collapsed the entire tunnel. I was so close to getting her.”
The bone soldiers turned silently.
Perhaps they had some way of judging the power level(?) of the people around them, as their mysterious systems had probably started shooting sparks of confusion.
A woman clothed in pure black stood in the equally dark tunnel. There was a splatter of freckles barely visible on the sides of her nose. Her eyes were the color of tea, and her body seemed out of place for an ascetic nun. The bone soldiers did not know the name of the person whom the surface world called Illumia.
“Hi.”
The wink she tossed at them was, of course, ignored.
One of the soldiers charged up to her, and swung its sword. The strike seemed as if it was strong enough to sever the head of someone just by brushing past it.
However, the nun dodged the blade deftly, and performed a backflip.
For a moment, it was as if a crescent moon had risen in the darkness.
The spine of the bone soldier was pierced by her flying kick. With that, the nun leapt up again and performed another gravity-defying backflip (Moonsalto). With the full force of her body, her foot fell upon the other bone soldiers. The instant she hit the ground, she swiftly crouched downward and performed a sweeping kick. She then stomped down on the ribs of the bone soldiers who she had just tripped.
She was alarmingly strong.
Her flexibility and agility resembled that of a carnivorous beast. Her balance could be regarded as the limit of human capability.
In an instant, her limbs were covered in gray armor.
Purple tendrils of electricity emanated from the surface of the armor. Perhaps it was because of the spell had been imbued into it, the old pieces of paper that could be seen between the armor plates. The bone soldiers, which did not react at all to regular attacks, did not revive themselves after being struck with attacks enhanced by the armor.
It was one of the pieces of equipment used by the Executors of the Holy Church.
Its name was the Ash Lock. Usually, it was disguised as regular gloves or boots, but it could transform into a conception weapon if a couple of pieces of paper were slid together. As they are easier to use than Black Keys, the majority of Executors prefer them. (TN: That sentence was copied from the description on the wiki.)
Of course, even though they were easy to use, they still held devastating power.
“Come on. (TN: This was in English originally)”
The nun beckoned them forward. She straightened and stood in the stance of a boxer.
The five remaining bone soldiers charged over in a line. There were two each on the left and the right, and another jumped from the back and attacked from above. In order to confuse their opponents, they created subtle differences in how their movements were coordinated, a skill that only an experienced soldier could pull off.
The nun hummed a light tune and took a step forward.
Electricity struck exactly five times.
“Ah, sorry. That may have been overkill.”
After her apology, the skulls of the four soldiers shattered, while the last bone soldier, who had taken an uppercut, hit the ceiling. Fragments of bone rained down.
Illumia impatiently brushed off the pieces that had fallen onto her, and laughed coldly, turning around. Soon, the light of a lantern appeared behind her.
“Aren’t you a bit too slow.”
“…Ha, huh, even if, you say, that,” said the almost spherical priest huffily with one hand braced on the wall as he looked around. Only scattered fragments of bones remained.
“…You did this, right?”
“Isn’t that a pointless question to ask. The very existence of these undead is blasphemy towards the Lord. Dust to dust, and ash to ash. How could I tolerate things that turn against the will of the Lord like these?” The nun said displeasedly.
Of course, that was part of the reason. In the context of regular religion, she was most certainly right. There was hardly any room for rebuttal.
Father Fernando narrowed his eyes.
It was hardly noticeable.
“Alright, time to catch up, Father Fernando.” With a thump, Sister Illumia punched her fist into her palm, and jerked her chin in the direction of the tunnel.
-End of Part 3 of Chapter 1 of Book 7-
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Originally Posted by All fictions
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