Chapter 193 : Chapter 193
Chapter 193
“…….”
Obro was silent for a long while.
It seemed as if a great void had suddenly formed in his mind.
He didn't know where or how it was empty, but for a moment, he lost all thought and became quiet.
That state continued for several minutes.
I waited patiently for him.
“…They……”
He asked back very slowly.
“…are alive, you say?”
I nodded and answered.
“Though perhaps not all of them.”
“How… do you know……?”
A somewhat fierce tone mixed into Obro’s question.
My words were so sweet that he couldn't easily believe them.
As much as he wanted to hope, suspicion arose.
It was proof that his heart was covered in scars.
“For three years after the ‘Night of Inversion’… I wandered the entire continent. The Silver Dragon Magic Kingdom in the north, Horm in the east, the unexplored lands in the south, and even the Empire……. But I couldn't find a trace of them anywhere.”
“Does the method matter? What’s important is that they are alive.”
I drove the point home.
“Mariet, your goddaughter, has a particularly high chance of still being alive.”
“………….”
Obro looked at me.
“…You, over there.”
“Shion.”
“Yes, Shion…….”
Obro Denoebang let out a very deep breath.
“If what you say is true… I will follow you for life. I will dedicate the entirety of the life I once abandoned to serve you.”
“I didn't want something like that, but I won't refuse it either.”
“But, if… what you say is a lie……”
With his head bowed, he rolled his eyes upward, making it look like a glare.
Perhaps he really was glaring. It was the first aggressive attitude Obro, who had been steeped in fear, had shown.
“If you deceive this already miserable drunkard… again, and again……”
His two eyes were red. Uncried tears of blood had flowed backward, turning his eyeballs red. A chilling demonic energy swirled around him, seeming ready to erupt at any moment.
“…I will probably kill you. Even if I can't hold a sword, whatever happens, I will surely, by whatever means necessary, tear you apart in the most brutal way.”
Obro Denoebang said calmly.
Because of that, it was all the more chilling.
He wasn't expressing an intent to kill me.
He was declaring that because his heart was shattered to pieces, he would have no choice but to react that way.
Who wouldn't be afraid if Obro Denoebang expressed murderous intent, but I, as always, was brazen.
“Do as you please. I spoke the truth, so I have no reason to worry.”
“…….”
The brazenness, in turn, inspired trust.
“…When, can I go to them?”
“If you wish, even now.”
“…Now… you say……”
Another long silence.
Obro Denoebang looked down at his own hands.
They were a mess.
His training, which he hadn't skipped for a single day even in this state, had twisted his hands.
The calluses were so thick that bone and flesh had merged into one, becoming like stone.
With his hardened hands, he grasped his dirty beard.
Fearful of blades, he hadn't cut his beard or hair for eight years.
He drank every day, cried in agony, and shed blood with the sweat of self-reproach.
The smell of alcohol and saliva, the smell of tears, the smell of sweat, and occasionally the smell of blood.
The gray hair, filthy and steeped in all kinds of odors.
He saw his own face reflected in a liquor bottle.
He looked like a mouse.
No, there was no difference.
Scurrying into his mouse hole, afraid of people, he was just like a mouse.
Dirty, smelly, small, and insignificant gray furriness, that was Obro Denoebang.
It was the present state of the hero once called the White Lord.
“…Eight years… I've been dead for a long time.”
Obro stood up.
His steps were staggering, but he had definitely stood up.
Only then did I allow a genuine smile to grace my lips.
“Right. Do something about that beard.”
“…I’m afraid of blades……”
He grabbed his beard and hair tightly and tore them out with ripping sounds.
The smell and dust billowed out, making Amethus and me cough.
His beard and hair became drastically shorter.
Now they only reached a little above his shoulders.
“Better than before, though you still look like a wild man.”
“Thank you.”
His tone of voice had also changed.
Fear still remained, but he looked better than before.
Hadn't he stood up on his own power?
He was too old to be praised for taking his first steps, but still, I felt like praising him.
“…Ah, may I ask for a favor.”
“What is it, Mr. Obro?”
“…Please kill that friend.”
He pointed at Henson, at the unconscious Hesra Heport. I shrugged.
“There's a lot of information to extract from him.”
“That’s why.”
Interrogation is torture.
With war not far off, it would be even more cruel and painful.
Obro felt a deep sense of sympathy for Henson.
Regardless of whether he came from the Cordis intelligence agency or had been feeding him poison, he felt pity for him simply as a fellow human being.
“The fruit wine that my friend served… was quite delicious.”
“So full of compassion.”
I gestured with my chin.
“Send him off in one go, Amethus.”
As soon as the words were spoken, Henson's head fell.
If he hadn't been unconscious, what would Henson have thought?
Would he have resented them, or felt gratitude toward Obro, or perhaps felt sorry?
Either way, it didn't really matter.
He was a person they would never see again.
A pitiful person.
With that last mumble, Obro took a step.
“…Let's go.”
***
There wasn't much baggage to pack.
He had drunk all the liquor he had, so he couldn't even pack the bottles.
His steps were light.
Obro had wiped his shortened beard and hair, albeit roughly, and changed into clothes that were at least presentable.
He still looked like a beggar, but at least he looked like one who belonged to the wealthier side of beggars.
Which is to say, it was meaningless.
It was noon.
The sunlight was bright, so they left the village cautiously.
Still, by the next day, news that Obro had left the village would reach Duke Desep.
They got into the carriage.
Amethus volunteered to be the driver.
In the passenger compartment, there were only Obro and I.
Obro wanted to have a drink, but he tried hard to resist.
In the first place, there was no alcohol to drink.
He opened his mouth wide, yawning, and then began to speak.
“…Was I really being watched the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“And I was eating poison every day?”
“Yes.”
“So that's why I craved alcohol so much.”
“That's not it. That's purely because you are a drunkard.”
“…….”
I, who had been reading a book, lifted my head.
“Instead of beating around the bush, why don't you just ask what you honestly want to know.”
“……Mariet……”
It was a painful name.
The daughter of his closest friend, a child for whom he had gladly become a godfather.
He cherished and loved her like his own daughter.
The first time he had ever drunk was out of joy that Mariet was entering school, and the biggest reason he had collapsed was the fact that Mariet had gone missing during the ‘Night of Inversion’.
“…You're saying that child might be alive.”
“I can't give you a definite answer.”
I shook my head.
I, too, had only heard it from the Obro of my pre-regression life.
That if he had hurried just a little more, he could have saved Mariet, that he didn't know the child would be alive until then.
Judging by the timing, she should be alive now, but since I hadn't confirmed it with my own two eyes, I had to be cautious.
“…Since we have time, could I ask for an explanation?”
“Alright.”
There was no reason to refuse.
“But first, we need to talk about the ‘Night of Inversion’.”
The event of 11 years ago, the Empire’s second calamity.
“The cause of the ‘Night of Inversion’ was an Ancient God, the ‘Trace of Black Light’.”
The eight humans who became gods, the Houtus Eight Gods, drove out the thirteen gods before them. Eleven were subjugated, and only two survived.
The ‘Breath of Light’ and the ‘Trace of Black Light’.
The Breath of Light was particularly favorable to humans, so the Houtus Eight Gods made him an offer.
They would not take his life if he did not leave the island of Arete.
The Breath of Light, who had no intention of leaving the island anyway, readily agreed to the offer.
He spent a thousand years with the Aretion family like that, until he lost his life seven years ago.
It was my and Amethus's doing.
The Black Light is an anomalous existence even among the Ancient Gods.
Since he reigned as king in a different dimension called the Underworld, the Houtus Eight Gods had no reason to clash with him.
They were content with simply placing a massive lock on the passage leading to the Underworld.
“The Black Light has been trapped in his own dimension ever since.”
“This is the first I’m hearing of this.”
“Because it was in the Ancient Times. Houtus before Cordis, and the Ancient Times before Houtus.”
It was a distant past.
The Cordis Empire alone boasted a thousand-year history, so to speak of a time before the time before that.
Curiosity arose as to how I knew such stories.
But impatience was greater.
“Anyway, the Black Light, who has been trapped since those ancient times, is starved beyond measure.”
“…For what……?”
“Fear.”
I said it as if it were an obvious question.
“The Ancient Gods feed on the human mind. The Black Light’s main food is fear. I hear it particularly likes the absolute terror born from death.”
“…….”
“What Cordis did was simple. On the day called the ‘Night of Inversion’, they just threw wide open the gate to the underworld that leads to the Black Light’s shadow dimension. Somewhere between the three cities that have now vanished.”
“…I know where it is.”
It was a place Obro Denoebang had visited countless times.
A sudden headache arose, and he clutched his head.
Yes, countless… truly countless times he had visited that place.
Angrily, tearfully, and in the end, in a daze, he had just stared at the land that had swallowed the people.
“…The ground, they said the ground had split open. That all sorts of evil spirits and monsters came out from there and took people away alive……”
And then it had closed its maw.
He couldn't describe how frustrated he was, looking at the land that wouldn't open.
How powerless he was.
He had swung his sword tens of thousands of times.
“…I dug a pit large enough to fit a mountain, but I couldn't find the disappeared people, let alone the evil spirits and monsters. No matter how deep I went, it was just soil and rock……”
“Because it’s a different dimension.”
Not a completely different dimension, but a shadow dimension parasitic on the dimension we are in.
I mumbled the magical information that was complicated but not very helpful.
Having had Sen Sorti as a master, I had a certain depth of magical knowledge.
“To open a closed door, you need an Ancient Weapon.”
“…Aren't nine of the eleven in Cordis.”
“It has now become twelve. And not all Ancient Weapons can open the gate to the Underworld.”
I smiled faintly.
“Only three Ancient Weapons can do it… and as it happens, we have one in our possession.”
“…Now?”
“Yes. My subordinate drives the horses in front. The Breath of Light left his face to him.”
“…That man, he had jade-colored eyes.”
Obro Denoebang’s eyes sank deep.
He was thirty-seven this year.
Among the rumors he had heard in his youth was one about a family born with jade-colored eyes.
“…Don't tell me that man is.”
“The Last Aretion.”
“I see.”
I continued.
“He and the face of the Breath of Light will guide you to the Underworld, to where the disappeared people are.”