Translator: Alpha0210
"Close the door, would you? The night wind of the Amakan Desert runs cold."
When someone said as much, Residue offered no further reply and shut the door. Thud. The sound of it closing rang out a little too loudly, and the sharp glares, the weight of the crowd's pressure, grew stronger.
But Residue's expression didn't so much as flicker, as if social awareness were something that simply didn't exist in him. Without sparing a glance at anyone in the room, he walked straight to the counter.
Then he spoke to the innkeeper, who had been watching the situation unfold with his arms crossed.
"What's good here?"
"At this hour we only sell liquor and simple bar fare."
"Is that so? Then I'll take that."
"There are no seats on the first floor, so you'd have to eat in your room."
"Fine by me."
"Which room?"
Only then did Residue's gaze turn toward Lukas at the table.
"Which room is mine?"
Lukas found himself momentarily startled. The barrier he had formed around them didn't merely keep sound from leaking out; it could also blur their presence to a certain degree.
Of course, it couldn't conceal them entirely, but to be found this easily...... Were his instincts sharper than he looked?
"Room 207."
"Room 207, apparently."
"Understood. I'll send it up right away."
Residue flicked a gold coin and turned in the same motion.
The innkeeper spoke up hastily.
"Wait. Your change?"
"Pour a round of drinks for the fellows at the tables or something."
"You're sure?"
"Of course. Money is one of the most useless things in this world. All it does is weigh down your pockets."
"...Hm. There'd still be some left over after the round."
"Yeah? Congratulations. Consider it a tip."
The innkeeper's eyes went wide, but Residue said nothing more and went upstairs.
The people who had been eyeing him so coldly just moments before let slip something close to laughter. The strangely heavy atmosphere seemed to have softened a little.
The power of money? Schweiser watched the scene in disbelief.
"What kind of guy is that? Is he seriously related to you?"
"I'd like to believe he isn't. Sincerely."
"He must be loaded, though. ...Gah!"
Schweiser's eyes went round.
"Hold on. Could it be him? The benefactor who dumped all those donations on the Temple."
"Hm. If he's throwing gold coins around like that, it's certainly worth suspecting......"
In a rare turn, Iris agreed with Schweiser's opinion, but Lukas cut their speculation short.
"No. That money came from me. Though it seems I misjudged him."
"...He threw around someone else's money like that? What a piece of work."
"Money comes and goes. That's its nature."
For a moment it seemed Lukas had answered, but the voice came from the direction of the stairs.
Residue, who they'd assumed had gone up, was leaning just his upper body over, looking their way. Only now did they realize how remarkably similar his voice was, too. With a blank expression on his face... he looked almost identical. Iris and Schweiser felt a strange displeasure at the fact, rather than any sense of familiarity.
"Lukas."
"What."
"I'll be traveling with you for the time being. Just so you know."
"......"
"No need to worry. Yours truly intends to refrain from conspicuous behavior for now."
And with that, he truly did head upstairs.
Iris shook her head at that self-centered attitude.
"I don't know what gives him the nerve to act so sure of himself. Lukas, was he strong?"
"...Hard to say. He doesn't seem to have learned magic, at least. We'd have to ask Kasajin or Lucid to be certain, but I didn't get the sense he'd trained his body either."
"So he acts like that without any special ability to his name. How pathetic."
"We can't know that. He appeared with lightning, didn't he? And that lightning reduced the Desert Monster completely to dust."
"Right. If there's anything suspicious about him, that's the whole of it."
Iris lowered her voice.
"It can't be helped. I'll keep watch over that man from here on."
"Can I leave it to you?"
"Yes. If I see anything suspicious, I'll report it at once."
"So we have to keep some creepy guy of unknown origin at our side? Can we even fight properly with that hanging over us......"
"Think positive, Schweiser. If he's suspect, keeping him close might actually be the better option."
"I agree with that, but...... Ugh. Fine. Handle it your way. Your head works better than mine for this sort of thing anyway."
At Schweiser's words, Lukas nodded and said,
"That's all I had to say. You're free to do as you like until noon tomorrow."
"Then I'll head up and get some rest myself."
Schweiser rose from his seat first, leaving Lukas and Iris alone.
Iris fell silent for a moment, then ran a finger along the rim of her glass and said,
"Care for another? I hear this place stays open until dawn."
"I'm good. There's something I need to sort out, so I should head up first."
Lukas rose from his seat and looked at Iris.
"I'll cover the tab, so feel free to drink a little more on your own."
"...No. I think I'll turn in for the night as well."
"I see."
Lukas gave a slight nod and went up to the second floor first. But Iris, who had said she would rest, remained seated there for some time even after Lukas had gone.
She stared blankly down at the table, then let out a faint sigh and murmured,
"It's not easy. It really isn't."
*
Back in his room, he closed the door. When he lit the candlestick on the table, a soft glow bloomed in the darkened interior.
Lukas walked over with unsteady steps and collapsed onto the bed. ...It wasn't as soft as he'd expected. What lay beneath the covers wasn't cotton but sand. Well. Better than a bed of stone.
"......"
With his face buried in the covers, he watched the wavering candlelight.
A deliberately enclosed space. There was a saying that a space small enough to take in at a single glance gives people a sense of security, and lately he'd come to sympathize with it somewhat.
But Lukas couldn't quite pin down why he himself found comfort in that fact.
Was it fatigue from dealing with other people?
Or was it because, in moments like this at least, he could cast off his duties and allow himself to look less than composed?
Lately, there had been more and more moments that were hard to bear.
That sense of reaching his limit wasn't something he felt only when fighting powerful enemies.
Just moments ago, even during a trivial squabble between friends he respected, he had suddenly felt fatigue and irritation. He hadn't frowned, hadn't raised his voice, but he'd come close more than once.
Was it age catching up with him?
Thanks to mana's influence, he looked no different from a young man on the outside, but that didn't mean his insides weren't aging.
"...Whew."
Even entertaining the half-hearted joke did nothing to lift his mood. It wasn't as if he'd ever had much of a sense of humor to begin with.
Lukas shook his head clear.
It was a feeling he'd had often enough lately, so he decided to regard it as part of a process, one that would make him more solid in the end.
He'd indulged in enough self-pity; time to organize his thoughts.
Lukas got up from the bed. He carried a chair over to the window and sat down before it, then opened it just a crack.
He hadn't particularly intended it, but a massive temple was visible beyond the window. Tomorrow's destination. The Temple was so extraordinarily large, even accounting for the city's scale, that travelers visiting Sarman for the first time sometimes mistook it for the royal palace.
On the table sat a single notebook and a writing utensil.
Lukas picked up the writing utensil and opened the notebook. It was nothing remarkable as notebooks went, but for the Lukas of today, it was indispensable. Whenever his heart grew heavy, he would pour his jumbled emotions out into its pages. Organizing his thoughts that way made his tasks stand out clearly and brought his mind a measure of peace.
Scratch, scratch.
First, the odds that a Demigod is there are extremely high.
But if so, what changes?
Fighting them is no easy task. Even battles against the creations they made had inflicted serious damage. A direct clash with the Demigods themselves is worse still. In a single battle, he had survived dozens of brushes with death. It was a miracle that every one of his companions was still alive with all their limbs intact.
"...A benevolent Demigod, huh."
He quietly murmured the words Schweiser had spoken.
Iris had dismissed it as the talk of an idealist. Sorry as he was to Schweiser, Lukas agreed with her. The conduct the Demigods had shown thus far, the traces they'd left across the continent, the character that could be inferred from all of it.
Immensely arrogant, cruel, and inhumane.
These were qualities the strong should never possess, and worse, they were not one but many.
How many could there be?
Personally, he figured that past five, their chances grew slim, and past ten, the continent was already finished......
'...Most intelligent species other than humans have resolved to submit to them.'
A fact learned through investigation.
Moreover, the Demigods weren't hiding entirely in darkness.
Their traces could be found among the Wise Gods of Indigenous Myths in every region, among the Highest Authorities of Great Religions, among noble bloodlines wielding immense power. Their influence reached even the Barbarian Tribes, whose civilizations had developed comparatively slowly, and the dens of monsters.
They seem to be everywhere, and nowhere at all.
That fog-like quality made the Demigods all the more terrifying, all the more impossible to gauge.
In truth, even confirming their existence hadn't been an achievement of Lukas's party. The same went for learning the name Demigod. Most of the facts they now held with certainty had come from Lukas's master.
Lukas had wanted to learn everything he could about the Demigods, but his master had only quietly shaken his head.
โThe rest, you must find out for yourself.
Lukas's hand stopped.
Right. His master taught him nothing beyond that, so he doesn't know the most important thing of all.
Their true purpose.
Are the Demigods truly divine beings? If so, is our chance of winning nonexistent?
It is not.
He doesn't believe in gods, but he knows the importance religion holds. Sometimes, just having a pillar to lean on is enough to endure.
If the gods people believe in are beings like that, beings who kill humans with a single finger without a second thought, who feel not a shred of guilt over it, who run experiments on human bodies to pass the time.
Lukas will drive them out.
Fear is an emotion that can be converted into anger.
"......"
His eyelids were heavy. One careless moment and he might fall asleep.
He couldn't rest yet.
He had to draw up a few plans in preparation for tomorrow's visit to the Temple. That kind of preparedness decided survival at the critical moment, so it couldn't be done halfway.
Maybe he should wash his face.
He found himself wanting to splash some cold water on it.
He was a bit tired, but if he was going to think through his responses to whatever crisis tomorrow might bring, there was no time to rest.
Lukas closed the notebook and set down the writing utensil. Then he went outside and headed for the empty lot behind the inn. There was a well in the lot; he drew up a pailful of water there and washed his face.
Use of the well in the lot was a privilege granted only to Lukas's party. It came from having paid generously when they decided to stay here.
Splash.
The water pooled in the well was as biting and cold as ice water, and it sharpened his mind. A tingling sensation that passed through the skin of his face and reached deep inside his skull.
It felt about as foolish as pinching his own cheek to stay awake, but he decided to take meaning in the simple fact that his mind was now alert.
Lukas deliberately left his face wet, giving his head only a shake, and headed for his room. And when he climbed the stairs past the now-silent first floor and stood before his door.
"......"
He froze.
The door was slightly ajar. Had he left it open when he went out? Had he been that scattered?
No. His state of mind wasn't such a mess that he couldn't remember even that much.
And from inside the room, he sensed an unmistakable presence.
The hour was already well past the dead of night. It wouldn't be strange for the sun to rise soon, so no one had any reason to come calling. Even Kasajin, who knew nothing of manners, wouldn't pull something like this.
The moment Lukas drew up his mana,
"What are you standing around for? Come in already."
A voice he wasn't yet used to. But not one he was hearing for the first time.
Lukas opened the door.
Inside the room,
Residue sat beside the table, reading something. It was the notebook Lukas had been writing in until just moments ago.
"What are you reading?"
"You must be exhausted. Can't you see? It's the autobiography you wrote."
Residue said, waving the notebook back and forth.
"No, wait. Is it a diary?"
"You're the one who must be exhausted. What I'm asking is why you're reading it without permission."
"To kill time."
"......"
Lukas's expression turned cold.
Even as he felt a chill anger stretch from his chest up to his head, he weighed the matter one final time.
Was he being oversensitive?
Or had this man crossed a line?
Naturally, the answer came easily.
"Get out of my room, Residue."
*****
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