Translator: Alpha0210
For an instant the lights of the street grew a little brighter, and the harsh backlight cast a deep shadow across Lukas's face. It happened at the very moment he was about to examine that mug more closely.
Because of it, he had no choice but to set aside for now the question of whether this fellow was real or fake. To begin with, even the thing draped over him closely resembled the brown robe he had often worn in the past.
Is this the only outfit this guy owns?
While he was busy with that idiotic thought, Lukas suddenly vanished. He hadn't used something like Teleport; he'd simply spun his body around and melted into the crowd along the street.
"......"
Residue watched the street where the fellow had disappeared with a rather blank expression.
Should I have grabbed him? Or maybe I should have at least acknowledged that I knew him.
He wasn't sure. Just as he was thinking he might chase after him even now, Lukas reappeared. There was a difference from before he'd vanished, and it was that he now had food in both hands.
It was skewered meat and vegetables threaded onto a stick in alternating pieces and then grilled.
Simply put, a meat and vegetable skewer.
He must have just bought it, because grease ran glistening down its surface and an appetizing smell wafted over.
"...What's that?"
"I bought something to eat. You've been out cold for four days straight, so your stomach must be plenty empty."
"Four days....... That long?"
He'd meant to add You've got to be kidding, but sure enough his belly did feel a bit hollow.
Residue abruptly stuck out his hand, and a meat and vegetable skewer was pressed into it. He opened his mouth wide, shoved the whole thing in at once, and chewed and swallowed it down.
Lukas spoke in a dry voice.
"You certainly eat well."
"I was hungry."
"Is it good?"
"No. It looked appetizing enough, but it doesn't seem like any great delicacy. The flavors feel like they're playing off in separate directions, if anything."
Residue licked the grease off the skewer and went on.
"That's what happens when you grill meat and vegetables together in one go. The two of them reach peak flavor at different cooking times, so I don't understand why they were cooked all at once. In a case like this, if the meat comes out well done the vegetables get a little charred, or if the vegetables turn out edible the meat ends up slightly underdone. Well, it's far easier than grilling them separately, and skewering them alternately like this does have the advantage of looking rather presentable."
"......"
Lukas stared at Residue, briefly at a loss for words, then let out a sigh.
"You've got some nerve, running your mouth like that after being fed for free."
"You're the one who asked for my impression, aren't you?"
"At a time like this, you politely just say it's good."
"Don't expect courtesy from me. Do you still not know that?"
"......"
At that, Lukas gave him a heavy, sinking look and sighed again.
"Fine. Enough with the trivial talk about food. You've filled your stomach, so now answer what I asked."
"What was it you asked, again?"
"Whether you were feeling all right."
"My body, is it....."
Residue checked over the state of his body once more.
"Not good. The worst, in fact. My whole body is heavy as lead, and my head is hazy, like it's overcast with storm clouds. Honestly, even now I feel like I'm half wandering through a dream."
"Are you sure you didn't just sleep badly?"
"Weren't you the one who told me I'd slept for three days?"
"By your standards, that might count as too little."
"...That could be. But sadly, my sleeping hours aren't long."
The truth was that ever since he'd obtained a body he'd come to enjoy sleeping a good while, but he decided to keep that fact hidden.
Lukas looked at Residue with an ambiguous expression, then nodded.
"Fine. In any case, you've recovered enough to move around like this, so will you tell me now?"
"Tell you what?"
"Who you are. And also about how those things can be brought down."
The part he'd tacked on at the end didn't quite register.
Residue was silent for a moment, then asked.
"...You, are you asking right now who I am?"
"That's right. I've been curious ever since the moment you showed up. Who are you? Why did you help us? How much do you know about them? Are you...."
Lukas said,
"...a man I can trust?"
"......"
Hm.
Was this Lukas, like Iris, also not the Lukas that Residue had known?
That seemed to be almost certainly the case. Feeling needlessly hollow at the thought, Residue gazed past Lukas's back. The street where the lights stretched out faintly, where people bustled to and fro, felt distant and dim for some reason.
While he chewed at the skewer without any real purpose, Lukas waited patiently. Residue spat out a splinter of wood caught on his tongue and spoke.
"I don't know."
"What?"
"I don't remember. Not all of it, but I have no memory of ever talking with you. As far as I'm concerned, this is... our first meeting."
"...Is that true? You've forgotten everything we discussed at those ruins?"
Throb.
A headache came on suddenly.
A discussion.
Right. There was a feeling that they had talked about something.
No, he had definitely exchanged some kind of conversation with Lukas.
But was that place really a "ruin", as this fellow claimed? That didn't seem right. The desolate feeling matched, but it hadn't been a dreary place like a ruin. If he had to describe it, it was a hazy, blurred place....... He couldn't quite tell whether this was because Residue's memory was faint, or because the place where they'd actually talked really was hazy.
In all sorts of ways, it was a jumbled mess.
"...It really does seem you're suffering from some confusion of memory. Now that I think back, you didn't look quite right when you first appeared either."
Lukas's muttering pierced Residue's ear.
Residue looked down for a moment at the bare skewer left after he'd finished eating, then said.
"It's as you say. Nothing comes to mind properly, and it doesn't seem like it will, so you'll have to do the explaining. Speak. When we met, what sort of conversation did we have? What was the 'me' that isn't in my memory babbling about? And... where is this place?"
"For someone who's lost his memory, that's an unbelievably arrogant attitude."
Lukas gave the same sort of reaction as Iris, his voice full of disbelief. When Residue stayed silent, having nothing in particular to say back, the voice continued.
"I suppose there's no help for it....... Fine. You asked where this is? It's 'Saraman'. One of the villages at the entrance of the Amakan Desert Region, and right now it's the festival season. From now for a whole month is when the moonlight shines brightest, and during this period a night market opens across the entire village to honor the Desert God."
"......"
I didn't ask for the village name or its geographical location.
Residue asked.
"Which continent are you talking about? This isn't 'the Outside', is it?"
"It is the Outside. If anything, I don't understand what you're talking about. Is your head still spinning?"
By this point, even the comparatively slow-witted Residue couldn't help but sense that something was off.
Still, for a final confirmation, he tried saying it once.
"Destruction."
"......?"
Lukas tilted his head.
Ignoring it, Residue went on.
"'The Outside', 'Exiles of the Entire Universe', 'World of Void', 'Beginning Wizard', 'Twelve Void Lords'....... Damn it. Enough."
Seeing Lukas's face grow more baffled by the moment, he could no longer do anything but accept it.
Neither the Lukas before his eyes, nor the Iris he'd met just before......
They were not the ones Residue had known. Their appearances were subtly different, and there were slight differences in personality too. Above all, the gap in the knowledge they possessed was vast.
Things that the two he'd known would naturally have understood, these fellows now knew nothing of at all.
"Keep talking."
Lukas, casting him a look as though watching a madman, nodded and said,
"To the southwest of this village there are ancient relics. Depending on how you look at it, the place could also be called a ruin, and there an unbelievable sight lay spread out."
"What sight?"
"The relics were entirely submerged in water."
Lukas folded his arms and continued.
"It rains in the Amakan Desert too, of course. But you couldn't say the rainfall is heavy. Enough rainwater to sink an entire relic? Even if a downpour lasted three days and three nights, it would be utterly impossible. Above all, if a weather anomaly on that scale had occurred, it should have been observable here in 'Sarman' as well. Yet when I asked those in the village, they said they'd sensed no such sign."
"......"
"It's one of two things. Either the sky has gone mad... or some transcendent being worked a miracle."
Residue looked at Lukas with indifference.
His attitude was one thing, but he wasn't letting everything this fellow said pass him by entirely.
"As I was looking around the ruin, a monster came out of the water. It wasn't the being we were searching for, but it was formidable enough. Above all, there were far too many of them. No matter how many we struck down, they kept crawling out. Just when we'd reached our limit, in willpower and in stamina alike, lightning suddenly struck."
"Lightning?"
"Yes. As if splitting the night sky in half, a sky without even a storm cloud, a single bolt of lightning drove into the ground. That lightning strike was bright enough to blind, and thunderous enough to tear the eardrums. The monsters that had been hiding beneath the surface, tormenting us, were pierced by that strike and left looking like charred octopuses."
"...Hm. Was that lightning strike me?"
"You're talking nonsense. A person can't turn into lightning. You merely fell along with that lightning."
"......"
"Right after you appeared. You had a stupid look on your face, as though your mind had drifted off somewhere, but the moment we saw you, every one of us couldn't help but be greatly startled."
Residue lightly traced his own face.
"Because I was the spitting image of you?"
"Yes."
Lukas nodded.
"At first I thought you too might be one of their underlings. Of course, if that were the case it wouldn't explain why you killed the monsters, but I couldn't just trust you blindly. From your appearance to your looks, on the whole you were far too suspicious."
Well, of course Lukas would be suspicious first, when a man identical to him had shown up together with lightning.
Residue thought Lukas's reaction was reasonable and kept nodding.
"...Even after hearing all this, nothing comes back to you?"
"No."
Honestly, he'd wondered whether hearing the account might jog something loose, but there wasn't even a hint of it.
"When you fell from the sky, you were like a drenched rat, and even in that shabby state you swaggered about talking all the same."
"Talking about what?"
"You said, 'I will watch over you'."
"......"
Residue asked, just in case.
"And who's this 'you'?"
"You didn't point to anyone precisely, but at that moment your gaze was directed at me. In any case, you left only those words, muttered some strange gibberish to yourself, and then collapsed right there."
...That's vague.
I said something like that, yet I don't remember it.
The possibilities that came to mind at once numbered about three.
Either it was something spoken unconsciously,
or it was spoken with awareness but forgotten for some reason,
or perhaps some other being had been controlling this body.
'...The Sun God?'
No.
Right now that thing shouldn't have enough power left to control this body. Even after he glanced around inside himself a few times as a test, there was no answer.
Residue looked at Lukas again and asked.
"What did I say?"
"Hm?"
"You said I babbled some gibberish. What exactly was that gibberish?"
There might be a clue in it.
At that, Lukas frowned slightly.
"Well... your voice was so mumbled that I couldn't make it out in detail."
"Fragments are fine, so tell me anything."
"Hm......."
Lukas pondered for a moment, then spat out the fragments of words.
"...'change', 'exchange', 'a match', 'a wager', 'conditions', 'what one wants to do', 'what one must do', 'the moment of death'......."
It's not as though it's some riddle.
The creases around Residue's eyes deepened.
"Ah. And you sang a song too."
"A song?"
"Yes. This one I remember clearly, because both the lyrics and the tune were simple."
Lukas hesitated a moment, then cleared his throat and spoke.
"On the day thunder strikes... raise the anchor... warrior's route... journey of courage......."
Residue took up the song from there.
"...Let typhoons and tsunamis look upon me. Even if the deck crumbles and the mast breaks, the warrior's voyage shall not stop......."
"...Did the memory come back?"
"No."
That wasn't quite it.
This was the sailor's song he'd heard from Retip on the roof of the King's Castle. What meaning was there in his having hummed it? Frowning, Residue looked at Lukas.
Before the thought, there was something he had to say first.
"You're tone-deaf."
"......"
"One last question. Who are these 'they' you've been going on about?"
Something that submerged an ancient ruin beneath the water.
A being that could conjure monsters pouring out endlessly, no matter how many were struck down.
Residue recalled "Destruction" as he asked it, and Lukas's expression hardened.
"...They're our main enemy. We still haven't grasped their true nature precisely, but at the very least I know what they call themselves."
After a slight pause,
Lukas spat out a word into which countless emotions had been condensed.
"Demigod."
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