Ch.123Chapter 123

I absorbed the Knight Commander’s pain and suffered for it, and now I was lying in the knights’ lounge.

The throbbing in my head was still quite painful.

This kind of headache reminded me of when I drank four bottles of soju alone before being possessed.

The Vice Commander had taken care of the mess on the floor of her office.

The cleanup process was quite remarkable—Alpha and Beta appeared from somewhere with cloths larger than themselves, and when the Vice Commander swept her sword upward across the floor, everything flew toward the cloths, which covered it all before being disposed of in the fireplace.

According to the Vice Commander, with extreme control of Meditatio, it could be used like this in everyday situations.

But what if Alpha and Beta had been covered by that horrible substance!

Perhaps she had that much confidence in her abilities.

…I realized that even abilities of that caliber could be made to look trivial.

Anyway.

As I focused on my headache and felt the world spinning, I noticed something strange.

When I first absorbed the Knight Commander’s pain, it hadn’t seemed like it would end this easily.

It felt like my mind was turning blank, like I was losing myself.

Yes, that sensation of forgetting what you were about to do spread throughout my entire head.

But before that feeling could last longer, it suddenly changed to dizziness, then transformed into a hangover-like headache.

It felt unnatural.

This definitely didn’t seem like a natural phenomenon.

Could this be part of the coward mode?

Did coward mode have the power to censor even this?

Perhaps by continuously absorbing pain, I’ve become able to use powers related to Outer Gods more strongly.

Whether coward mode is related to Outer God powers is something I’ll need to examine further.

The door burst open, and I heard someone’s footsteps.

As I raised my upper body from the bed, something quickly approached me.

“Drink this.”

Vice Commander Marenne was holding out a cup to me.

I took it and checked its contents.

It was a yellow liquid with a subtle sweet fragrance.

“It’s honey water. Should help ease your headache.”

Though her words were gruff, it was clear she was looking after me.

Hmm.

Would honey water really work for this kind of headache?

Biologically speaking, it makes sense, but I’m not sure if this headache falls within the medical category.

Still, grateful for her kindness, I quickly took a sip.

I rolled the liquid around on my tongue.

It was sweet.

“Where was this honey collected from?”

“Hm? Haven’t you seen it in The Gardener’s garden? Flowers grow even in that field of corpses. There’s a place where bees live there.”

Huh.

I had no idea that existed.

I thought I’d explored The Gardener’s garden quite thoroughly.

Perhaps it was the sweetness entering my body, but I felt better—not necessarily less pain, just better mood.

I got up and headed back to the Vice Commander’s office to check on the Knight Commander’s condition.

Wait.

I confirmed that all the severe pain in the Knight Commander’s body had disappeared.

But the Knight Commander was still looking at me with a somewhat vacant expression.

“Commander?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you remember what your ultimate goal is?”

“Umm…”

The Knight Commander seemed to ponder, touching her chin with her finger, then pointed at me with a solemn expression as if something had occurred to her.

“After this is over, the Vice Commander promised to buy me a meal.”

“Haah.”

The Vice Commander let out a deep sigh.

Damn it.

What’s really going on here?

I thought my power was strong enough to eliminate the causality of pain, so why is the Knight Commander still like this?

After all that embarrassment, finding out the treatment didn’t work filled me with frustration and disappointment.

The Vice Commander seemed to share my feelings, rubbing her forehead with a weary expression.

Is there anything more deflating than thinking you’ve almost reached your destination, only to find you’re not there at all?

If this doesn’t work, what else can we possibly do?

“Raedan Tanthyn, you have reached your destination.”

As I was sinking into despair, The Chronicler’s voice contradicted my thoughts.

Is she seriously saying that?

That we’ve reached our destination?

Even with the Knight Commander still grinning vacantly like that?

I carefully pointed at the Knight Commander, making sure the Vice Commander couldn’t see, and spoke.

“I should clarify. You have reached your destination. That Knight Commander, however, seems not to have arrived yet.”

The Chronicler responded with an even more ambiguous expression than before.

The Knight Commander hasn’t arrived yet?

What does that mean?

“Hmm.”

In response to my question, The Chronicler made a contemplative sound as if choosing her words, then made an “Ah!” sound as if she’d found a way to explain.

“Yes, I think this will be easier to understand. Her personality is severely entangled with something right now. Your healing has resolved it somewhat, but she’s still tightly bound.”

Is she deliberately not remembering?

“It’s a bit different from that, but I don’t have the authority to say more, Raedan Tanthyn. I’d like to tell you everything, but it’s not easy.”

So it’s not deliberate.

If it can’t be restored even with the power to reverse causality, that suggests interference from an Outer God.

Did I approach this wrong from the beginning?

If that’s the case, maybe this isn’t memory loss but something like dissociative identity disorder.

The Chronicler didn’t say anything more, apparently unable to continue.

Still, her few words had been quite helpful.

Without them, I might have been wasting effort looking for another solution.

“Tanthyn.”

The Vice Commander called my name with a desperate voice.

I could guess what she was about to say without hearing it.

“She hasn’t fully recovered yet.”

“…What exactly does that mean?”

“For some reason, something seems to be tangled in the Commander’s mind. We’ll have to try a different approach.”

Despair washed over the Vice Commander’s face.

She must be wondering how much longer she’d have to see the Knight Commander in this state.

A personality bound from within…

If my earlier guess is correct and this is related to an Outer God, it would explain why her personality hasn’t returned even with the power of a Greater Outer God.

Perhaps the power of the Mountain Giant, which can overcome a Greater Outer God through compatibility…

An Outer God who grew up unloved, mistreated by parents, and even witnessed her father’s death.

Perhaps from her perspective, she feels jealous seeing all living beings coexisting peacefully.

“…Are you suggesting that giving the Commander an appropriate mental shock might return her to normal?”

“…Uh, what?”

“Isn’t that right? If the Commander’s mental state is incomplete, then even a slight shock could trigger a chain reaction.”

The Vice Commander seemed to have drawn her own conclusion from what I said.

I was surprised by her reasoning.

It actually made sense.

In the Vice Commander’s dream, the Knight Commander had said she would return to the Vice Commander when she came back to Rondan.

That meant the Knight Commander also had a strong homing instinct.

If so, her personality must be strongly clashing with that unknown force.

And if we gave her a slight shock in that situation?

It felt like a bomb might explode in her mind, clearing a path.

It sounded too fantastical.

But the world I’m in now is a dark fantasy world.

If even this level of imagination isn’t allowed, how could this be called a game?

At this point, there seemed to be only one way to give the Knight Commander a mental shock.

Having her directly see the comrades she had been with.

But finding them, not even knowing if they were alive, would be a gamble.

What if they had all been killed by the Mountain Giant?

But considering they were warriors strong enough to face the Knight Commander, I didn’t think they would have met such a miserable end.

Perhaps, like the Knight Commander who had been captured by The Cook and caught in a gap, the warriors might be in a similar situation.

As I was thinking this, someone knocked on the Vice Commander’s door.

“Enter.”

At the Vice Commander’s command, a knight rushed in.

Catching his breath, the knight saluted.

“Vice Commander! There’s a strange space that has opened outside Rondan Castle!”

And at that moment.

I thought that perhaps my guess had been correct.

“Vice Commander.”

“Mm.”

“Shall we enter that space together?”

“Hmm?”

As the Vice Commander looked at me with a questioning expression, I smiled and said:

“We might be able to cure the Knight Commander with this opportunity.”

The Vice Commander’s eyes widened at my words.