༺ 𓆩 Chapter 31 — Ice Demon 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
The hell wolves, the silver wolf among them,
walked in among the Baitur as smoothly as water flowing; between the Baitur and the hell wolves there was no tension at all, no ordinary law of the food chain, no natural balance one might expect in the living world.
There was no sign of prey and predator, no preparation for survival, no instinctive fear.
Rather, some of the tribesmen reached out and touched the hell wolves’ cheeks as though greeting something dear.
Human and demonic beast.
A relationship that ought never have been able to exist, and yet between them there was no resistance at all.
“Hah.”
Isaac let out a hollow laugh; there was no way not to know. It was the moment when a suspicion hardened into certainty. The moment the last missing fragment of Vinfeldt’s end, omitted from the history books, slid into place.
There was nothing left to confirm here.
“..............”
The old prophet read the look in Isaac’s eyes.
He understood why wolves that had not been summoned had come crowding here.
He understood too what Isaac’s faint, derisive laugh meant.
He saw what the cunning little Goethe was aiming at.
And that truth was one that could never be allowed to leak back into Goethe.
“Kill that brat!”
The prophet shouted, and the hell wolves reacted at once, springing forward.
At the same time the tribesmen formed a ring so Isaac could not flee.
Everything happened in a flash; the time slowed.
It was a thing that occurred only within Isaac’s cognition.
His mana circuits blazed like oil-fed flame.
All five circulation paths moved in near simultaneity, and the current of mana accelerated with violent speed.
His heart throbbed with pain, and moment by moment his mind threatened to go distant.
Isaac closed his eyes.
‘I really didn’t want to use this method.’
The reason Isaac and Zeke von Goethe possessed such unusual and rare constitutions was not merely that they had overwhelming quantities of mana, nor merely that mana coursed through them at monstrous speed.
History had known many people born with overflowing mana.
A great number of them, however, could not endure it; their vessels shattered.
And from that day onward, they could never use mana again.
That once a vessel broke, it could never be restored, was one of the unspoken laws of magic.
Something very close to principle.
But both Isaac and Zeke von Goethe stood outside that principle.
Even when their vessels broke, they recovered.
That was why Isaac had suffered.
If one mana explosion had shattered his vessel and left him unable ever again to use mana.
If he had become a body that could hold no mana ever again.
Then no one around him would have been sacrificed, and there would have been no need to confine himself for fear of another explosion at any hour.
But Isaac’s vessel recovered, no matter how often it shattered.
Whether that was tragedy or Blessing.
Like the thorn-strewn pilgrim’s road that wanderers had to walk.
It repeated without end.
‘Balance, balance, balance.’
Isaac repeated the same word inwardly.
Even while his consciousness threatened to fly apart.
That word alone he clung to.
If the vessel broke, then the mana circuits and circulation paths he had only just stabilized would vanish as well.
He would have to begin again from the start.
And Isaac had too much still left to do to permit such waste.
So he drove himself only to the brink of rupture.
The vessel would chip and crack, and mana would spill from its broken places.
But he held it just short of collapsing altogether…….
It demanded a balance as precarious as walking along the edge of a blade.
One careless step and the sword laid beneath him would take off his foot. Fall, and it might take his head.
But Isaac’s curiosity, his hunger of mind,
and his will to protect Vinfeldt, to protect Goethe, had long since surpassed mere instinct for survival.
‘I saw it.’
Looking upon the final landscape of Goethe, where corpses had lain everywhere, Isaac had understood.
Flies laid eggs in the dead, maggots stirred into life, and fed upon the flesh.
Crows and wild dogs devoured the rotting bodies, flies and maggots along with them.
The crows laid eggs in turn, and the wild dogs conceived new litters.
Nature did not weigh the worth of one life against another.
Death became the life of something else.
There was no fear in it, no disgust.
It merely turned and turned and repeated itself.
Isaac too was no more than one part within that cycle.
‘So rather than fearing the disappearance of my world, what matters is where my world is going.’
Isaac opened his eyes.
Before him was the black wolf, jaws spread wide.
But not the slightest tremor touched his gaze.
Without the breadth of a hair’s error,
he realized the balance he desired.
A vessel that broke and yet did not break.
A miracle in which the mana that had been whirling violently within his vessel spread outward.
‘I want to protect my world. The worlds I hold dear.’
A blue radiance spread around Isaac like mist.
The hell wolves, sensing danger by instinct, hesitated for a single instant.
But by the time they realized it, it was already too late.
Krrrkkkk—!!!
In the space of a breath, all moisture in the surrounding area froze.
If there were a frost hell, perhaps it would look like this.
“U-uaaagh—!”
Those whose entire bodies froze never even recognized their own deaths.
But those only half-frozen could not believe what had become of them.
The lower half of one body frozen solid. The left side of another. Half a skull turned to ice.
They thrashed about, trying to move the limbs that had not yet frozen.
Krrrk—!!!
But the frost mana that had bloomed like mist slowly swallowed up both their fear and their desire to live.
Men and wolves, warm with flowing blood only moments before, were turning into sculptures of ice.
“Huff, huff, huff…….”
Isaac collapsed, unable to keep himself upright.
The ground was cold enough to sting, but he no longer had the strength to move.
“Young master, young master!”
From the far side of the forest, a familiar voice struck his ears.
Hans’s voice.
Perhaps it was only an illusion born of wanting to hear it.
***⚜***
Whung-whung-whung—!!!
Crash—!!!
A flying axe struck an ice sculpture and shattered it helplessly apart.
As ever, the broken sculpture revealed red entrails within.
There was no blood running out. It was frozen through to the core.
The prophet turned toward the direction from which the axe had flown and frowned.
He muttered something in the tribal tongue.
It was a curse.
“What the hell are you doing!?”
Bessemer rushed the prophet and seized him by the collar without preamble.
“It seems the common tongue comes easier to you now than the tribal tongue, coward Bessemer.”
In one hand the prophet held a spear, honed keen enough to gleam.
He had been on the verge of driving it through Isaac’s throat while the boy lay unconscious.
“Do you have any idea what you’re trying to do right now? Are you planning to get everyone killed?”
“Can you not see this hell before your eyes? Your tribesmen, your comrades, your brothers, slaughtered in misery.”
“…….”
Bessemer’s eyes swept the scene around him.
The old prophet had spoken true.
There lay tribesmen frozen in grotesque shapes, their faces twisted with pain.
“Whew. And you weren’t trying to kill him first?”
Carlson, arriving a beat later, gave a low whistle as he spoke.
He seemed less shocked than impressed.
He had known already, back when they cast out the Old Faith, that Isaac had been born with extraordinary magic.
But he had not imagined it to this extent.
Before serving as a soldier in Winterband, Carlson had wandered far and wide as a mercenary.
Yet never had he seen a child of this age wield magic on this level.
He counted himself fortunate that Isaac was not his enemy.
His reaction, if anything, was the restrained one.
“…….”
Hans and Günter stood mute the moment they saw the frozen figures strewn throughout the forest.
Their mouths and eyes had widened of their own accord, overwhelmed by the sight before them.
It was spring, yet winter itself seemed to have arrived, and the cutting cold, the frost and jagged ice sprouting through the brush, drained the color from their faces.
Hans was the first of the two to recover himself.
He had spotted Isaac lying on the ground.
“Young master, young master!”
Shoving past Günter, who still stood stiff and stunned behind him, Hans ran to Isaac.
“What have you done, you savages? Ah—”
“Your young master’s alive, so calm yourself.”
Carlson smacked Hans on the back of the head as the man glared murder at the old prophet.
Then the prophet spoke to Bessemer.
“Do you still not understand, Bessemer? This thing is a demon. For the sake of the Baitur, he must die. There is no longer any way to turn back. He has learned too much.”
“…….”
Bessemer picked up the axe lying on the ground.
Then he swung it with all his strength.
Pshh—!!!
One frozen hell wolf shattered into fragments.
“What are you doing!?”
“Only what must be done. La tu balaka sanctum.”
“…….”
Bessemer carved out a piece of entrail from the shattered corpse and put it into his mouth.
Though he chewed and swallowed flesh frozen solid, not the slightest change crossed his face.
Pshh—!!!
“La tu balaka sanctum.”
Pshh—!!!
“La tu balaka sanctum.”
Bessemer made no distinction between wolf and man.
“W-what is he doing?”
At Bessemer’s bizarre conduct, Hans asked the question.
“‘May they rest in Balaka.’ That is what it means, I think. I can scarcely believe it. A disaster like this, from that little body…….”
Günter began answering, but when his eyes passed from Isaac to the surrounding landscape he lost his words.
He could not grow accustomed to it.
If he too had been swept up in that catastrophe…….
A chill ran through his whole body, like falling into a winter river.
He shuddered.
“I saw Baitur soldiers in Winterband. The Baitur believe that only those who die fighting as warriors may enter the afterlife called Balaka.”
Carlson supplied the rest.
“Then why is he eating the entrails of the corpses?”
“To Harvest their souls. That way, when Bessemer dies as a warrior, they can all enter Balaka together. The Baitur do not divide soul and flesh, the way the Old Faith or the New Faith does. They regard them as one.”
“But why is he doing the same thing to the hell wolves too? They’re not tribesmen. They’re demonic beasts.”
“…….”
“…….”
Neither Günter nor Carlson answered Hans’s next question.
Because the answer had already risen in both their minds, and neither wished to know it, much less speak it aloud.
“You there, old man. Where did the rest go? This can’t be all of them.”
“There is no answer I will give to an outsider.”
Carlson had asked, but the prophet answered coldly.
“Fine, then. You don’t have to answer. But let’s put that spear down first. Hmm?”
Carlson reached out and took hold of the spear in the old man’s hand.
“If you don’t want to die.”
The old man glared at Carlson for a long moment, then flung the spear aside.
His eyes turned toward the ice sculptures crumbling beneath Bessemer’s hand, a gaze tangled with rage and grief.
With no chieftain remaining, the old prophet had been their leader, and their father too.
Yet by the sorcery of one demonic little brat, he had lost more than a dozen children.
His teeth shook with rage. He wanted to tear the boy apart where he stood.
Goethe, Goethe.
That accursed name.
That devil’s name.
And before it, there was nothing the old man could do.
Not thirteen years ago.
Not now.
Every chance at vengeance had collapsed again and again.
“Let me go, Bessemer.”
“……La tu balaka sanctum.”
“If you too are Baitur.”
“……La tu balaka sanctum.”
“As the great warrior left among the Baitur.”
“……La tu balaka sanctum.”
“Bessemer!”
Bessemer, having dealt with half the corpses, turned back toward the old man.
“Virfier.”
He spoke the old man’s name.
“Where did the King of Wolves go?”
“…….”
“Did it run again?”
“Until there is a new king, the King of Wolves must not die. If it does, all wolves will be devoured by wildness.”
“You mean you’d lose the things you use like your hands and feet.”
“If you had not been so terrified, if you had not fled from your own fate, the Baitur would have reclaimed this land long ago!”
Bloodshot veins stood out in the old man’s eyes.
“No. If you had not gone blind with ambition and driven Father on. Then perhaps half the entrails of our kin I had to chew through would never have been mine to eat.”
“As I thought, the title of great warrior suits you not at all, you traitor. Because of you…… khk—!”
Bessemer seized the old man by the throat and lifted him bodily into the air.
“Do you see them, Virfier? The two hundred and thirty-seven souls laid across my shoulders. I have not forgotten them for even a moment. Not once have I counted that number wrong. The one who kept them from going in peace to Balaka is you.”
“You already…… have become one of them. In league with those demons…… you are not Baitur.”
The old man’s face turned red, then purple.
The veins stood out more and more starkly in the face of the man who clutched at Bessemer’s hand and kicked helplessly in the air.
“You still live in the past. I only wish to live in the present with my tribesmen, with my comrades.”
Bessemer hurled the old man to the ground.
“Kehk, huff, huff—”
The prophet lay there, drooling, dragging in breath.
“Leave. This will be the last mercy I show you as one of my own blood. Is that acceptable?”
Bessemer’s gaze shifted toward Carlson.
“If I try to kill that old man, will you fight me?”
“At least until today, he and I are of one tribe. To protect one of my own, I’ll fight ready to die.”
Carlson stood with his arms folded, his eyes moving between Bessemer and the old prophet.
Isaac still had not awakened.
“I’d rather not fight for no profit either.”
Carlson gave a nod.
“My thanks. Go, then.”
Bessemer looked back at the old man.
“The next time we meet, you are an enemy. No longer a great warrior, no longer anything.”
The old man glared at Bessemer as though he would kill him with his eyes, then turned sharply and disappeared deeper into the Black Forest.
Bessemer stared blankly after the direction the old man had gone, then brought his axe down into the ice sculpture beside him.
There were still many frozen bodies left for him to perform the rite upon.
END σϝ CHAPTER