Chapter 121: Four Idiots (2)

[121] 19. Four Idiots (2)

Perhaps because the path I’d walked had been so rough, there were many festering parts in my memory.

Too precious to cut away, and too painful to accept.

They were things I could only cover up and turn away from, having no other options left.

Among them, Marian was the most severely infected memory.

My and Parsley’s only friend.

…And the girl who died because of my mistake.

Every time I thought of her, I ached with guilt. Even when I downed hard liquor, my eyes would ache so much I couldn’t lift my head.

“Between me who only had a soul left, and Sage who only had a body remaining. Coming up with the idea to combine these two, Parsley is probably the only one who would even think of such a thing. Geniuses can be so simple-minded when it comes to strange things.”

And so, she returned to life.

Wearing Sage’s face, Parsley’s mother.

“Well, she says it would have been impossible without Alain’s pocket watch… But still, it’s definitely something that will go down in the Magic Tower’s history. Even *I* didn’t think I’d come back to life.”

How the hell am I supposed to accept all of this.

“Hey, Rem.”

I finally came to my senses at a pinching sensation on my arm. Marianne/Sage’s sullen face filled my vision.

“We’re meeting again after seven years, and you’re just going to keep staring blankly with that dumb look on your face?”

“No, I…”

I barely managed to swallow my words.

Right, let’s welcome her warmly first.

“It’s been a while, Marianne.”

“…”

Marian’s face soured for a moment before she let out a sigh.

“Right, what more can I expect from you. It’s probably because I look like this too. Even I didn’t know I would end up in the body of this crazy bitch…”

Marianne roughly pulled at her curly red hair, making a disgusted expression.

“But you should at least acknowledge this, without me, you’d still be stuck in that prison, you know?”

“What?”

I looked at Clevens. He shrugged and nodded.

“That woman came looking for us first. Said you might be hiding somewhere in the Magic Tower.”

At those words, I couldn’t help but be surprised.

When I turned to look at Marianne, a smug smile met my eyes.

“How…?”

“Don’t I know you?”

Marianne rested her chin on her hand and smiled mischievously.

“Of course, I didn’t expect the parallel world thing… But there’s no way you would have been kidnapped. It’s just not possible for the honorary top student of our Al-Rain Academy.”

I didn’t understand where her baseless faith in me came was coming from.

“…Then? Then why did you think I disappeared?”

“Well… Running away?”

That was another unexpected answer.

I frowned and asked back.

“Running away? You thought I ran away?”

“The you I remember always seemed like you wanted to run away from everything.”

Those words accurately captured the ‘me’ of that time.

Those were days when I kept getting blood on my hands, crushed under guilt. Even while clutching blood-stained happiness in my hands, I sometimes wanted to run away from everything.

“Anyway, I had a feeling you’d still be at the Magic Tower, so I decided to look for you. Parsley had left me behind and gone somewhere, so I had nothing to do anyway.”

In other words, she had found me based on her gut feeling and old biases.

It was proof that Marianne wasn’t an ordinary person either.

Marian picked up a bottle of wine shamelessly and crossed her legs.

“So, what are you going to do now? I overheard that it’s impossible to just directly tell them that you’re back.”

“…Well, for now,”

I quickly snatched the bottle from her hand.

“This first.”

“Hey! That’s mine!”

“You’re underage.”

I said that sharply and tossed the bottle to Clevens. He eliminated any remaining risk by emptying the bottle in one go.

“I’m a 39-year-old woman who’s almost at menopause, you know?”

“So, you’re going to live as an auntie for the rest of your life?”

Marian fell silent with a sulky expression. Her face showed that while she was annoyed, she couldn’t argue back.

Clevens spoke up right then.

“Enough with the childish bickering. What are you actually planning to do?”

“…First, we need to find out what Irene is really after.”

Haste makes waste.

“If we know what she wants, then we can also figure out her plan. And if we know her plan, then we can also figure out its weaknesses.”

“So how do you plan to do that?”

At Clevens’ question, I silently looked out the window.

What I could see was only the blue sky and low rooftops, but I could picture a forest overlaid on top of them.

A grotesque forest dyed entirely in violet.

The place where a witch who answers any one question lives.

“I know someone who might know.”

The all-knowing witch, Skuld.

I made an expression full of determination.

“…This bastard’s showing off again.”

“Ugh, he used to do that all the time at the academy, but now that he’s older, he’s just gotten more full of himself… Isn’t he embarrassed, acting like that at his age?”

“…”

I tried my best to ignore them. But when Clevens continued, I couldn’t help but turn to look at him.

“Anyway, that means we need to go somewhere, right? Hey, pointy ears. Get up and pack quickly.”

“What? Why are you guys packing.”

Clevens, who had been kicking at the unconscious Shafiq with his foot, looked at me with a bizarre expression.

“What, we’re not going?”

“Why would you guys come?”

I frowned and said firmly.

“You guys stay here. I’ll take care of it myself from here on out.”

***

Three days later,

Four people got out of a carriage plastered with all sorts of disguise magic and perception interference magic.

“A strong and powerful morning!”

The dimwit with pointy ears.

“Oh my, my back… How the hell did she live 39 years lugging around this huge lump of blubber?”

The old maid.

“Bleurghhhh… blarghhh…”

The drunken bum.

“Haaaa…”

And me, the medieval Robocop.

I watched the three people stretching freely. Again, I swallowed a sigh and opened my mouth.

“I’ll say it again, but there was no need for you all to follow me here…”

“Clevens! Silence spell!”

“Bleegh-!”

As Clevens, who was crawling on all fours, shouted, my mouth snapped shut. My lips wouldn’t separate, as if they were glued together.

“I’ll say it again too, I have no intention of backing out of this.”

Marianne glared at me with her arms crossed.

“Parsley’s life could be on the line. Do you think it makes sense for me, her best friend, to stay out of this?”

I wanted to retort, but my sealed lips wouldn’t budge.

“I feel the same way, Vice-Captain.”

“Bleeegh…”

Shafiq and Clevens adding fuel to the fire.

I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

…Of course, it’s not that I didn’t trust them.

How could I possibly distrust them, after having my life saved by them countless times, and being helped by them so often.

It’s just that Irene was dangerous.

I couldn’t tell how far her blood-stained hands reached, nor what she was capable of with those hands.

[Rem, my precious little brother…]

…I didn’t want to lose anyone in the same way again.

“There’s that expression again. How are you exactly the same as seven years ago?”

I glared at Marianne, as if asking what the hell she meant by that. But Marianne just rubbed her temples.

“Anyway, if you say that again, I’ll personally rip your mouth off. Got it?”

Marian was a girl who, unlike her gentle appearance, would do what she said she’d do. I had no choice but to nod slowly.

“Clevens, release the spell.”

“Urk.”

Finally, my lips parted.

While rubbing my stiff jaw, I asked something I’d been curious about since earlier.

“…When did you all become so close anyway?”

Marianne snickered.

“You think I only talked business with these people during the two months we spent looking for you?”

“The mage is right. We talked a lot of shit about you.”

“Bleeeeh-”

I stared blankly at the three of them, speechless. Then, a deep sigh escaped my lips, the oncoming headache made me do so.

“Haah, fine, let’s just go.”

“Been waiting for those words. So, Vice-Captain, where are we headed?”

Shafiq asked while hoisting the completely limp Clevens on his back. I rubbed the space between my eyebrows and pointed a finger at one spot.

“See that violet forest over there? That’s where the all-knowing witch’s cabin is located. There’s an illusion magic cast over the entire forest, so before we enter…”

“Understood.”

“Right, understo… Wait, WHAT?”

I quickly raised my head, but Shafiq was already running toward the forest.

“O all-knowing witch! Shafiq de Fasitao, friend of the Ashwood tribe, has…!”

“Urk! Bleeeeh! Uuurp…!”

Shafiq and Clevens quickly disappeared between the trees.

Clutching my throbbing head, I lamented.

“Those damned idiots…”

“Well, since we’re already here, why don’t you get some rest?”

It was Marianne speaking, with slightly softened eyes.

“You barely got any sleep on the way here.”

“…It’s fine. I’m okay.”

I shook my head firmly and started walking.

“This whole mess is because of me. I can’t just lie around and do nothing.”

Not long after, Marianne and I were able to arrive at the entrance to the violet forest.

The forest, as if it had somehow avoided the passage of time, looked almost exactly the same as I remembered.

It was a place where it wouldn’t be strange for an evil fairy to crawl out from between the tree roots. A place where an ordinary person wouldn’t even want to look at.

I rubbed my face, feeling my buried memories stirring.

“You’ll probably start seeing illusions as soon as we enter this forest. I’ll cast a simple mind protection magic…”

“I don’t feel any magic here, though?”

“Huh?”

Marianne walks right into the violet forest, leaving me behind.

“Wait, if you go in without any protection…! Huh?”

But Marianne neither collapses unconscious, nor freezes like a stone.

She simply frowns and waves her glowing hand in the air.

“See? Even if I wave magic around like this, there’s no reaction.”

“Uh…?”

I let out a stupid sound in my bewilderment.

After the bewilderment passed, what came was an ominous feeling.

“Are you sure that supposed all-knowing witch is even here? Maybe she moved?”

There’s no way.

Judging from the way she spoke, it seemed like she’d been living there for generations…

I pushed down my growing unease and started walking.

“Let’s go deeper inside.”

A short while later, we arrived at the cabin we had been searching for.

However, the person we were looking for was nowhere in sight.

“You’ve come, Vice-Captain.”

There was only a skeleton lying on the entrance.

Shafiq, who had been examining it, scratches his head vigorously as he gets up. With a rare serious expression, he asked me.

“This isn’t the ‘all-knowing witch’ we were looking for, is it?”

I looked at the robe the skeleton was wearing. Though it had rotted to nearly rags, the pattern embroidered on it was still clear.

It was the same robe Skuld had been wearing.

“Damn it.”

***

The inside of Skuld’s cabin was covered with a thick layer of dust, as if snow had fallen. It seemed as if not even an animal had set foot here for years.

I forcefully pushed away my fatigue and crouched down in front of the skeleton.

Just as I was about to examine it closely, I suddenly thought of Marianne.

It had only been three months since Marianne was resurrected. In other words, her mind was still that of a sixteen-year-old.

I couldn’t let her see something like this.

“Marianne, go outside for a…”

“What, do you think I’m scared of corpses? Don’t you remember I majored in Corpse Studies?”

Before I could say anything more, Marianne crouched down beside me. She started rummaging through Skuld’s skeleton without hesitation, rattling off information.

“Height 162cm, weight somewhere between 60kg and 70kg. Time of death about four years ago. Is this the right woman?”

“…”

“Rem?”

I quickly gathered my thoughts and nodded.

“Uh, yeah… What’s the cause of death?”

“This.”

Marianne pointed to a small hole in the middle of the skeleton’s forehead. There was an identical hole on the other side, as if something had pierced through.

“The moment she opened the door, someone probably pierced her head with an incredibly thin spear or magic.”

“…Any chance it was suicide?”

“Do people usually commit suicide by aiming for the exact center of their forehead?”

I grimaced and fell silent. Next to me, Marianne made a serious expression.

“Was this also Irene’s doing?”

I couldn’t answer.

The very fact that Skuld had become a skeleton was unexpected.

The woman known as the all-knowing Witch met such a sudden death? And by murder no less?

Something didn’t add up.

“I checked the outside.”

Shafiq, who had approached behind us at some point, spoke. He continued while brushing off violet leaves from his clothes.

“There were no signs of anyone having been here recently. Nothing noteworthy either.”

In other words, Skuld had been murdered four years ago, and her body had been left here ever since.

But why?

My head started to pound.

“And it seems like the murderer was after the books.”

“Huh?”

Shafiq strode inside the cabin and stopped in front of the empty bookshelf. He brushed away the snow-like dust with his foot and pointed to a deep indentation on the floor.

“Look. It’s a mark of something heavy hitting the floor. They probably gathered the books into a sack or something and then dropped it here.”

Despite usually being an idiot, Shafiq sometimes showed surprising insight.

Thinking back, I distinctly remember that bookshelf being completely filled with books. Someone had murdered Skuld and taken those books.

But the question still remained.

Why?

Fortunately, we had an expert for such things.

“Shafiq, wake Baldy up.”

“My name is Shafiq de Fasitao… Huh?”

“Yeah, I called you Shafiq.”

“Oh, well… Right.”

Shafiq awkwardly scratched his head and then walked toward Clevens. He raised his fist toward the head of the man who was snoring so loudly his nose might fall off, lying on the dust-covered sofa.

“Wrath of the Ashwood Tribe!”

*WHAM-!*

“Urk-! You son of a…!”

Clevens sat up abruptly with a flushed face, glaring at Shafiq. He leaned forward as if to pounce, but then suddenly stumbled.

“Ugh… My stomach is killing me…”

It was a typical symptom of an alcoholic, and Clevens’s daily routine.

He clutched his stomach and gave Shafiq a resentful look.

“Damn it, would it kill you to wake me up more gently…?”

“It would. It would have hurt the frustration in my heart.”

Clevens glared at Shafiq who answered smugly, then got up from his seat.

“Ugh… So what’s the problem?”

I briefly explained the situation.

When the explanation was finished, Clevens glanced at Skuld’s corpse and grumbled.

“And what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Can you guess what might have happened?”

“…Do you think I’m some kind of Imperial Investigator from a novel? How would I know with just that? Let me look around and then we’ll talk.”

Clevens grumbled sullenly and then slowly began looking around the cabin.

After circling the cabin twice, he suddenly called out to Shafiq.

“Hey, pointy ears. Come take a look at this.”

What he pointed to was Skuld’s desk. Though puzzled, Shafiq brushed away the dust on the desk.

His emerald green eyes, characteristic of elves, scanned the desk.

“Hmm, is it here?”

Shafiq suddenly blurted out, pointing to a spot on the desk.

*Click-*

Along with the sound of gears turning, the center of the desk popped open with a click. Lifting it up revealed another book.

“I solved one mystery.”

Marianne let out a laugh while watching Shafiq pick up the book.

“It’s fascinating every time I see them. They seem like they’re missing a few screws, but when you ask them to do something, they do it so well…”

“Retract those words, mage. I am perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah, stop blabbering and hand over the book.”

Clevens snatched the book from Shafiq’s hands. After scanning it briefly, he suddenly clicked his tongue.

“Tsk, it’s written in Ancient Tongue. Who writes a book in a language no one’s used for 200 years? Vice-Captain, you read it.”

I took the book Clevens threw at me. When I opened it, sure enough, it was filled with those confusing letters I’d seen at the Church.

“What, Rem, you can read Ancient Tongue?”

“I learned it when I was working at the Church.”

“Hmm…”

A strange humming sound, I involuntarily looked at Marianne, and she was looking at me with a strange expression.

“Why?”

“No, it’s just… It’s my first time hearing you talk about your past.”

Those words sharply poked at my long-buried guilt.

Turning my gaze back to the book, I muttered quietly.

“…I’ll tell you everything later when I have time.”

“When Parsley comes back. It wouldn’t be fair if I’m the only one who hears it all.”

Even though I didn’t look back, I knew she was smiling. Pushing aside the surge of guilt, I forcefully turned my attention to the book.

And after dredging up old memories, I managed to decipher the first sentence. It read as follows.

[Nicolai year 52, May 23rd.]

[This world is a world abandoned by God.]

…A diary?