Ch.51People, Lions, Bulls, and Eagles (Complete)

# The Life Tree

“Life Tree, you say.”

It was a difficult and unfamiliar story for Kain to believe. Still, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard of it. During his college days, while working as Anna’s assistant organizing the library, he remembered briefly seeing titles related to it once or twice.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Lily asked with a puzzled expression.

“Of course it’s your first time hearing it. If you knew about it and he knew about it, would it still be a secret order? It’s now relegated to the back rooms, something only archaeologists might look into, but its lineage hasn’t completely died out.

Anyway. Well… I don’t know how my parents met. Maybe it was because my uncle and father were from the same class of inquisitors.

What matters is that my father knew everything about my mother’s and uncle’s family, yet he never said a word, and he never reported that an inquisitor from a witch family was wandering around Magdeburg.”

The meaning of “someone you can trust” that Haspel had mentioned suddenly took on a different significance.

“What happened next is pretty obvious. I don’t know what went wrong, but they say I could barely breathe. My mother had lost too much blood.

In front of my father and uncle, my mother took me to the Life Tree altar and… abandoned her own body to dwell within me. So if you want to confront my mother about anything, you just need to knock me unconscious. That’s what it means.”

“Then last night, that was…”

“Yes. Do you understand now? The more my consciousness remains, the less my mother can fully manifest. Last night’s situation couldn’t be handled with mere ‘unconsciousness.’ I needed to be completely ‘killed.'”

“What a strange story,” Lily shook her head.

“But… if I were your mother, I think I would be sad. For her to fully awaken in her daughter’s body means that her daughter is in danger. Surely she must be heartbroken about that.”

“Is that not allowed?” Maria’s words were cold. Lily was utterly bewildered.

“What do you mean?”

“Is my mother not allowed to feel heartache because of me?” Maria’s words were filled with bitterness.

“I don’t know what you might think, but I don’t welcome this life at all. Writing holy miracles with one hand and unconsciously drawing magic circles with the other? It’s bullshit. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be an unblessed child who stumbled into this life?

What if you got hit on the head and passed out, only to find that your mother had taken over your body and hung the neighborhood bullies upside down from trees? What if you lived surrounded by rumors like ‘if you mess with that crazy girl, the trees will grab your ankles’?

Before I grew up, whenever I dreamed, I would see my mother. She would play fun games with me, tell me old stories, and sometimes scold me sternly.

I thought all mothers were like that. But they weren’t at all. My father told me never to mention such things outside, and I became increasingly confused, confronting my mother every night, but she would only cry silently…”

“So that’s why you left home to become a petty thief?”

Maria shot Kain a venomous look.

“Ha. How did you know?”

“Your thieving movements seemed quite practiced.”

“That’s right. I was doing pretty well, in my own way. Whenever I got caught and thrown in jail after being hit by guards’ maces, my father or uncle would come to get me. Learning through cracked skulls made my skills improve quickly. So, do you want to hear a story about how a delinquent girl reformed?”

Maria’s face was filled with displeasure. Kain shook his head.

“No. If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t ask. But I think I understand why you weren’t affected by the Shadow last night.”

“Right. Thanks to this. Even without it, I know enough spells to protect myself from such dirty tricks. Last night I was too busy making fire to do it properly.” Maria flicked the leather strap lightly.

“So, are the Life Tree faith and the Shadow faith completely different? But they’re both considered heretical…”

“Well, mister, it’s a bit complicated,” Maria folded her arms.

“The Life Tree faith is like a power struggle. If you ask, ‘Why should I believe in the two-headed eagle that died and came back to life instead of the Life Tree?’ there’s no good answer.

So our order teaches, ‘The Life Tree is a bad belief.’ And the order has been quite successful. Now when people hear about the Life Tree Order, they think it’s a story from before the Empire existed.

But the teachings of the Life Tree themselves are passed down orally. Old stories. Folk tales. Even the order’s teachings have borrowed quite a few Life Tree anecdotes. But this isn’t the time for theological study, so I’ll skip that.

I’ll just tell you that the Shadow has cleverly twisted and distorted the teachings. The Life Tree they speak of is completely fake. They just cobbled together something to oppose the order, but if someone truly believed in and followed the Life Tree… they couldn’t do what happened last night.”

Maria lay down on the bed. She covered herself with the blanket and threw off her outer clothes. She seemed to be fidgeting under the blanket, then unfastened equipment like daggers and wrist blades.

“I’m going to sleep. Whether you two continue your romantic activities or go on another midnight date is none of my business, but don’t forget we’re in a monastery.”

“How could you say such a thing!”

Lily’s protest seemed to fall on deaf ears.

* * * * *

In the middle of the night, Kain woke up. He didn’t think he’d had a bad dream. He just opened his eyes and it was dawn.

He lay back down but couldn’t fall asleep. His heart felt heavy and constricted.

‘Maybe some night air would help.’

Finally, Kain got up. He was sleeping in simple attire, so there was no need to put on additional clothes. Careful not to wake the others, he put on his shoes and opened the door.

He exchanged greetings with a monk on patrol. The monk didn’t ask where he was going. Kain walked straight to the courtyard where the stars were visible.

Kain thought of Beatrice. The story about exaggerated guilt. He remembered how that thing, transformed into a Shadow, had clung to Lily, causing her more suffering.

He also recalled his momentary conflict when seeing both Maria and Lily in trouble. Rationally, helping Maria would have been better. He needed to quickly deal with the monster fighting Maria.

“Can’t sleep?”

His heart seemed to drop with a thud. Maria, properly dressed, was grinning beside him.

“Not really.”

“Think looking at the stars might help you sleep?”

“Probably not.”

“You like your colleague, don’t you?”

This was even more sudden than when she had jumped in earlier. Kain felt sleep slipping further away.

“That’s a very personal question.”

“Oh, is it? When both that cute girl and I were in trouble, you threw me a staff but physically flew toward her. And that’s a personal question?”

“My nightmare had flown toward Lily.”

“Hmm.” Maria looked up at Kain curiously. When Kain didn’t speak, she poked his chest with her finger.

“Fine, let’s say that’s true. Anyway, I can’t properly see the Shadow. To me, it’s just an unpleasant stain. But why ‘Whetstone’? For such a pretty and cute girl? You do mean that stone for sharpening knives, right?”

“…Yes.”

“What kind of nickname is ‘Whetstone’ for a girl?”

“A new recruit had joined the Security Bureau, so I went to interview her. Our department needed someone good at swordfighting, and Lily was perfect for the job. When I asked about her hobby, she said it was sharpening swords.”

Of course, Lily herself had probably blurted it out because she was nervous. The other managers snickered.

But Kain didn’t mind. It wasn’t as if she was walking around naked, and it seemed like something someone from a martial family who always maintained their blades would say.

“Ha. More impressive than I thought. And then?”

“So… as a joke, I asked if she always carried something like a whetstone, and she said yes. That’s why I called her Whetstone.”

“Less romantic than I expected.” Maria pursed her lips.

“What were you expecting?”

“Something like, ‘I actually love my subordinate, but I didn’t want to see her as a woman, so I gave her the jarring nickname Whetstone.’ Something like that. But it seems effective? She doesn’t even react when you call her by name, but when you say ‘Whetstone,’ she snaps to attention.”

“You must have been quite relaxed when fighting that monster?”

“You should have shouted louder. Honestly, didn’t you want to kill me? While I was rolling around like a dog, you… If you’d said you did it because you loved that girl, I could have understood, but this…”

“I’m quitting,” Kain said firmly, drawing a line. “After this is over, I’m going back to my hometown. What good would it do to get involved with someone who’s going home?”

Maria’s reaction was strange. She looked up at Kain with a smirk.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because it’s amusing?” Maria lightly hit Kain’s arm with the back of her hand.

“You ask people how they endure when they become disillusioned with work. You push away a girl who’s clearly following you around. And yet when asked if you’re a person without emotions, you say that’s not the case.”

“I need to do my job properly.”

“For someone who loves and cherishes their job so much to say they’re quitting… do you think that makes sense?”

“Are you interrogating me?”

“No. You should interrogate yourself. About why you’re running away.”

Kain’s face crumpled.

“That seems a bit excessive.”

“No. Not at all.” Kain stepped back, but Maria moved a step closer.

“It’s not excessive at all. You seem to think you’re very objective, but from what I see, you look like someone trying to distance yourself from everything. Like an eagle soaring in the sky.

Swooping down to the ground only when necessary, then quickly flying back up to the sky. Such an indifferent eagle. From what I can see, you don’t even seem to particularly love your job. You just.”

“Just?”

“You seem to be using work as an excuse to run away from everything. Some world of your own. Some perspective of your own. I wonder. Becoming indifferent doesn’t make your heart hurt less.”

“So the inquisitor from Magdeburg also provides psychological counseling?”

“You have to dig deep into psychology. It helps with interrogation.” Maria stretched her arms wide and yawned expansively.

“Well, sometimes a view from above the ground is needed. I’m going to sleep.”

Maria went in first.

Kain silently gazed at the sky and the ground. ‘Running away.’ He hadn’t expected to hear such words again from an unexpected person in an unexpected place.

Staying outside made his mind more scattered, so Kain returned to the room. Maria was already sleeping with her arms stretched out. Lily kept tossing and turning, mumbling something.

What nightmare was she having? What had Beatrice’s shadow dredged up? If Lily truly meant nothing to him… would it have mattered whether Beatrice’s shadow clung to her or not?

He was confused. He simply placed his hand gently on Lily’s forehead. Lily’s breathing, which had seemed startled, gradually calmed. Slowly, leisurely, she breathed comfortably.

Returning to his own bed, Kain soon fell into a deep sleep.

Kain was walking through a desert. Food and water had long run out, and the sand mercilessly grabbed at his ankles. The bones of beasts were scattered all around.

Above his head, an eagle circled. It neither moved away nor came closer. It just slowly circled, like angels waiting for death to take a soul.

As if it would descend when his breath stopped and his heart ceased.

So until then, he had to keep walking.

Despite his thirst and suffering, Kain walked. In the distance across the desert, he saw a woman waving like a mirage. But he couldn’t tell who she was.