Ch.86Mask (5)

#

The next day, and the day after that, the Inquisitor unfailingly returned to the lake when night fell.

Well, from her perspective, it was a rational choice.

She had explained that her mission was to investigate the demonic energy, but that didn’t necessarily mean she had to sleep in a forest overflowing with it.

And having a base camp would make it easier to search for traces of her subordinates.

The problem was entirely mine, from start to finish.

I was the one inconvenienced by her presence.

I was the one feeling uncomfortable because I knew how her subordinates had died.

If the curse proved true and we ended up fighting, I would probably be the one to die, yet I was also the one who had thoughtlessly given permission while thinking of Miss Silvia.

Come to think of it, the reason Miss Silvia lived alone in this forest was a sacrifice to prevent the curse from spreading, not a desperate struggle to survive.

Consideration, kindness, help—I painfully realized that these things require a certain level of skill and qualification.

But the situation had already unfolded.

She had already settled into my cabin too naturally, and I had come to cherish those brief moments of chatting with her from our respective rooms before sleep.

It was a time that helped me forget the loneliness of not having Miss Silvia by my side.

I lacked the courage to tell her to stop coming when she was already treating my place like her own home.

But I couldn’t just leave things as they were either, so on the fifth night of her visits, I cautiously spoke up.

“Excuse me.”

“What?”

I could hear her sitting up from where she was lying down.

I was in the inner room of the cabin, and she was in the living room.

We began our conversation without seeing each other’s faces.

“…How long will you be staying?”

“…”

She remained silent.

Worried that I might have offended her, I quickly continued.

“Ah, I was just wondering about your mission timeframe.”

“I don’t know. Basically until it’s resolved. I can return if there’s an emergency situation.”

“…What? Resolved?”

“…”

“Are you saying you can eliminate this demonic energy?”

“…Hah, I misspoke.”

“If it’s troublesome, I won’t ask.”

“No, you live here too, so it would be dangerous for you not to know…”

“…”

Even after saying that, she seemed hesitant and didn’t easily open up.

I could hear her groaning slightly, as if struggling with something.

I silently waited for her to speak.

After a long silence, she slowly began to talk.

“Don’t be surprised when you hear this.”

“Okay.”

“…This demonic energy is the first stage of a massive calamity that will lead humanity to extinction.”

“…”

“And that calamity… is definitely related to the Demon Lord.”

“…Ah, that.”

“You… knew?”

She seemed surprised by my lukewarm reaction.

Even knowing she couldn’t see me, I hastily shook my head and replied.

“Ah, no?”

I did know.

The green woman had told me.

I even knew that it wasn’t about resurrection, but literally that the Demon Lord wasn’t completely dead yet.

Thinking about it, I should have been looking for Miss Silvia more urgently at a time like this, but she had disappeared somewhere and was nowhere to be seen.

“You should be more surprised or something. I’m talking about the Demon Lord, you know? You must know about it.”

“Ah, well… I kind of expected it because monster numbers have been increasing lately.”

“…You predict the Demon Lord from monster numbers? What nonsense is that?”

“Ah, well… that’s a thing.”

“…You’re definitely suspicious.”

Her low voice sank even lower.

I frantically shook my head from side to side.

It was strange.

According to her, the woman I was talking to through the wall was an Inquisitor directly under the Pope of the Goddess Church.

I couldn’t verify whether that was true, but just seeing how she remained unaffected despite wandering through demonic energy all day, and the atmosphere that somehow reminded me of Miss Silvia, I could tell she possessed overwhelmingly stronger power than me.

Yet somehow, her presence didn’t make me that tense.

Of course, I was scared and nervous during our first meeting, but day by day, my suspicions and tension toward her were gradually dissipating.

Unlike my first impression of her being intimidating, she was more innocent than she appeared and surprisingly reasonable.

Of course, it’s not really my place to say this when I haven’t even properly seen her face yet,

But I felt a slight unfamiliarity mixed with a thick sense of intimacy, like dealing with a childhood friend.

Perhaps, like Miss Silvia, I had been lonely from spending days without anyone to talk to.

With that thought, I desperately changed the subject.

“Anyway, can you really eliminate the demonic energy?”

“Hmm… to move on, I can purify demonic energy, but I can’t purify an entire area as large as this lakeside. At best, just around me. In that sense, this lakeside is literally a miraculous place. How is it still intact?”

“Just purifying the surroundings is impressive enough. You’re like a saint from history books.”

“…Yes. That kind of power.”

She paused for a moment, then muttered in what sounded like a resigned tone.

“Inquisitor…?”

“But… actually, it’s not quite like that. It’s mediocre.”

“…Is that so?”

“My skill with holy power can never match a saint’s. My combat ability will never match a hero’s.”

“A hero? Why suddenly…”

“Still, I have to do something.”

“…What?”

“Since you’re hiding your identity, I wasn’t going to tell you either, but I’ll be honest. You don’t seem like a bad person.”

A soft voice came from beyond the wall.

“I… have been assigned the role of a hero.”

“…!”

“To finish what Silvia, the previous hero, started…”

#

Several months ago.

After losing track of Balder, Alice headed straight to the battlefield at the border.

While there were no major issues or conflicts among the heads of each kingdom, the two territories facing each other at the border had repeatedly clashed, dominating and being dominated even before the Demon Lord’s death.

This was because a territory that was originally one had been split in half when the border was created, and the conflict between the lord trying to reclaim the territory and the lord trying to protect his newly received land couldn’t be easily resolved.

For Alice, who had expected complex political issues, this was an incredibly absurd truth.

Just for what amounted to a pride-based squabble, countless soldiers were dying like flies.

Still, Alice endured to fulfill her assigned duty.

As a priest of the religion both territories believed in and as an Inquisitor, she tried her best to mediate their pointless conflict and prevent soldiers from foolishly losing their lives.

She sent letters to the Papal Office with information she had learned from Balder, received replies and occasional news from the Papal Office, and collected various information sent by Eric.

Alice was keeping herself quite busy.

Every time she saw the two lords who would start arguing whenever they met, she felt a surge of desire to just kill them both, but whenever she saw the fearful expressions of the soldiers who showed no signs of hostility or animosity toward each other, Alice steeled her resolve.

However, the conflict between the two lords, which she thought wouldn’t take long to resolve, showed no signs of ending.

In fact, the Goddess Church sending someone—especially Alice, who was becoming a new icon of the church due to her growing popularity among the people—was close to diplomatic language meaning “stop the conflict out of respect for the Pope’s face.”

But these two fools, filled with greed for territory and hatred for each other, had no intention of yielding even a foot of land, no intention of bending an inch of pride, and no intention of apologizing for the sacrifices of their soldiers even by a speck of dust.

As a result, Alice was stuck in this territory for a full four months.

She couldn’t just leave in the middle either.

The two lords already saw Alice as an interferer preventing battles from occurring, so if she disappeared, it was obvious that these soldiers, who were sitting helplessly with spears in hand, would immediately head toward their deaths.

Then one day,

A letter was delivered to Alice.

It was an elegant letter stamped with the Pope’s seal, but the two words “Top Secret” written on the envelope gave off an ominous feeling.

It was also enchanted to immediately burn if opened by anyone other than the intended recipient.

With such caution,

Alice could already guess the contents before opening it.

Opening the letter was merely to confirm her guess.

The letter contained just three lines:

Alice.

The calamity has finally come upon us.

Please hurry back as soon as possible.

After burning the letter, Alice immediately summoned the two lords.

Along with a request that their heirs also attend.

In front of numerous soldiers and the sons of the two lords, Alice beheaded the lords with a single stroke.

She picked up the heads rolling on the ground and thrust them in the sons’ faces.

“You two are the lords now. Let’s end this war.”

Whether out of fear, or some misguided stubbornness to continue their fathers’ wills, the sons just sat on the ground trembling, giving no answer.

Alice urged them again, pointing her sword at them.

“Either sign, or we’ll find other heirs.”

That’s how the war ended.

Of course, it was a problematic method in many aspects, including politics, regional characteristics, and public perception.

Naturally, issues would be raised.

Alice clearly had liability, and criminal charges worthy of trial.

But Alice didn’t care.

With extinction approaching, what did this petty land-grabbing matter?

In reality, the kingdoms didn’t express any complaints to Alice or the Goddess Church.

More accurately, they couldn’t.

Demonic energy was sprouting from everywhere, undead were pouring out from rural village graveyards, mountains, and lakes, and monsters that appeared from nowhere, as if what had happened so far was just a warm-up, began swarming like ants and completely devastating small villages.

Fields withered, and rivers dried up.

Refugees gathered in capitals where royal palaces existed and cities where the Papal Office was located, and epidemics spread due to their poor conditions.

Corpses piled up throughout the cities.

The hardened faces of magicians burning corpses, ignoring the children writhing and wailing in front of those corpses, told the story.

Just as the Pope had written in the letter, the end of the world had come.

#

“You might not know because you’ve only been in this forest, but that’s the situation outside.”

“…My goodness.”

“All this calamity is because the Demon Lord is still alive. Now, while the wounds inflicted by the previous hero haven’t fully healed, is probably our only chance.”

I knew the Demon Lord had been resurrected, but I was hearing for the first time that the world was literally ending.

That day when I burned the revived Laila with my own hands.

I could clearly feel something dying within me.

Perhaps that’s why I calmly accepted the fact that I was dying in the demonic energy, even though I knew it.

Perhaps that’s why I was listlessly waiting instead of actively searching for Miss Silvia.

To be honest, really honest,

I was tired of everything.

Of course, I desperately wanted to see Miss Silvia, but it was just a wish.

I didn’t want to try anymore.

I didn’t want to make an effort.

As if losing Laila and turning her into that unpleasant existence had sucked away all my will.

Maybe I considered myself the most unfortunate and useless being in this world.

But I never dreamed the entire world would be in the same situation.

Despite having no right to do so, I asked as if reproaching:

“…If you knew, why… why didn’t the Pope inform us earlier…”

“We only knew a calamity was coming, not its cause. Even I was drenched in cold sweat when I first heard the Demon Lord was still alive.”

Did the Pope know?

It’s impossible to tell.

According to the green woman, the Goddess was punished by losing her divinity just for leaving a warning to the Pope that danger was approaching the world.

I don’t know anything about the world of gods, but perhaps she couldn’t reveal more even if she wanted to.

“Actually, I should be going after the Demon Lord right away…”

“…”

“Honestly… I’m afraid.”

Her self-deprecating chuckle echoed sadly through the cabin.

I couldn’t say anything.

“Silvia… even that great hero couldn’t do it. I don’t know if I can. Honestly… yes… I’m scared. Scared of dying without accomplishing anything.”

“…Inquisitor…”

“But it’s something I have to do…”

“…Why?”

I quietly asked.

“Didn’t you hear me? The calamity…”

“I know. But why must you do it? Facing the Demon Lord alone is madness, surely…”

“I’ll die.”

“Even if the world is saved, if you die, what meaning does that have?”

I know.

How utterly miserable that feels.

To be honest, I’ve never said it out loud,

But the thought that many people outside this forest were living normal lives, unlike all the misfortunes that had befallen me, troubled me quite a bit.

Jealousy? No, more like… a sense of deprivation.

A relative sense of deprivation and resentment asking why only they get to be happy.

It was my honest feeling, which I felt more frequently and strongly after being separated from Miss Silvia.

Perhaps, being in a situation where I couldn’t blame anyone, I ended up resenting everyone in this world instead.

“The hero and all their companions died. How do you plan to handle that?”

Or maybe I’m throwing a tantrum out of fear because the future the green woman asked me about is approaching.

Because I’m afraid too.

After listening to me for a while, she slowly opened her mouth.

“There is meaning.”

“What meaning?”

“Revenge.”

A somewhat unexpected word came from her lips.

“I had a friend in the hero’s party. My lifelong friend. My most precious friend.”

“…”

“But I couldn’t protect that friend’s family. The friend’s siblings, parents… and their deaths were also related to the Demon Lord.”

Did that friend’s family get caught up and die in the chaos of the outside world she mentioned?

I felt ashamed anew.

I had only been thinking about my own misfortune, but if the Demon Lord is running rampant, the terrible things that happened to our family would become as common as stumbling over a stone.

I quietly closed my eyes and hugged Pia.

Pia wagged her tail and caressed my cheek.

“Well, what can I do.”

She let out a sigh along with her words, as if spitting them out.

A thud echoed through the room.

It seemed she had been sitting while talking and had now lain down on the floor.

“I’m dying anyway.”

“What?”

“To put it simply, unlike Silvia, I’m a hero created by pouring holy power into me.”

“…”

“And it seems I can’t handle that power. It’s like a side effect.”

“Ah…”

“Don’t be like that. How can you be sad when we barely know each other? You don’t even know my name or face.”

“…Then—”

“Don’t ask me to tell you.”

“Why…?”

“It’s hard to part ways if you get attached.”

She let out a deep sigh after making a joke so cruel it wasn’t even funny.

Hero.

Perhaps the hero the green woman said would come looking for me wasn’t Miss Silvia but this person.

As I was thinking this, she slowly opened her mouth.

“…I had subordinates I sent to this forest. They’re probably dead.”

“…”

“I wanted to at least apologize to them before I go, but it seems I need to move soon.”

“…”

“Thank you for everything. I probably won’t come back tomorrow.”

“You’ll come back anyway.”

“…Haha, we’ll see.”

She definitely wouldn’t return.

Even though I had been so anxious about her presence, worried about the curse, now that she was about to disappear again, I felt incredibly regretful.

I wonder if Miss Silvia felt this way when she held that modest drinking party the day before I was supposed to leave.

Hearing about her life, which must have had its ups and downs no less than mine, made me feel even more empty inside.

Her voice didn’t sound that old.

At most, she would be around Miss Silvia’s age.

And yet, terminal…

“Excuse me.”

“What? Let’s sleep now. Did you forget I need to leave before you wake up?”

“…”

I couldn’t hide it anymore.

And now I had to acknowledge it.

From her rough but strong-willed way of speaking to her courage in calmly accepting her terminal condition.

She must indeed be an Inquisitor from the Goddess Church, no, a hero.

My life really…

Who would have thought I’d meet two heroes in my lifetime.

I couldn’t throw a drinking party as a farewell gift for her, but I could give her something she was desperately looking for.

I had been hiding it out of guilt, but she would need courage to go fight the Demon Lord.

I slowly opened my mouth.

“Actually… I know where your subordinates are.”

.