Chapter 233

Chapter 233

His chest felt stifling as thoughts and stray notions filled it to the brim.

“...I, you...”

At first, he thought he was human.

But as time passed, he realized that wasn’t the case. The average human lifespan was fifty, and no matter how well you lived, it was hard to surpass a hundred. He even thought that perhaps the new humanity might live long, but even that was unreasonable.

What human could, over 281 years, shape someone on the verge of becoming a horrible lump of meat?

“...I, I remember... calling you.”

It came to him truly late.

“I, I... surely... inside that narrow prison...”

“You called me.”

“I was afraid. Being alone was so lonely, and the pain lasted so long that my mind grew hazy. I didn’t want to stay like that anymore. I couldn’t endure it anymore...”

“You endured enough, I’d say.”

“...”

“Do you regret it?”

“...”

“You do look like you regret it a little.”

That he had called back into the world the evil god he had sealed with countless blood and flesh felt quite horrific. But at the same time, he was grateful. In the end, the only one who reached out a hand to his screams and his call was this evil god.

Contradictory emotions rose at once.

“...”

Biting his lip hard and taking a deep breath, Ater asked.

“...Why are you in human form?”

“Because I was human.”

“...Y-yes, you were. That’s right. So that’s how it was...”

“There is another reason as well.”

Argio was not complete.

“I am, hmm. How should I put it.”

“...?”

“I am not a complete fragment.”

“...A complete fragment?”

“I’ve gathered only ninety-nine out of a hundred.”

The assimilation was incomplete.

“As time passed, quite a lot of fragments gathered, but there are still many things lacking. To tell the truth, this is not my real appearance. After I was born, from the age of ten onward, I was always in the form of a beast, but because I knew how to imitate a person...”

So Argio’s appearance now was a kind of mimicry. The appearance of ‘Argio’ that the people of ‘that time’ remembered the most. In the end, the current Gio was a portrait, so it couldn’t be helped.

“So you needn’t worry. I cannot become as threatening a being as you fear, for I have not retrieved the most essential and important fragment.”

“...Where is that fragment?”

“Beneath this grave.”

“There was, something below...?”

“It seems the mages did some manner of arrangement in order to borrow my power while making the fake world. Strictly speaking, it is less ‘my’ power and closer to the power of ‘the evil god Argio,’ but...”

“Are the two very different?”

“It would be hard to say they are the same.”

The evil god was a monster made from the piling and piling of countless saints’ hatred and resentment. Even if Argio’s personality existed within it, one could not say he was that itself. Even if, upon becoming a portrait, he suppressed the endlessly blazing rage, that was only subjugation—it had not vanished.

“To put it another way, my heart and limbs were divided into tens of thousands of kinds and stored separately.”

“...Why have you not taken them back?”

“I cannot take them back.”

As if asking what obvious story he was talking about, he looked at Ater.

“Did you not seal me?”

“...Ah.”

Ater went blank for a long while.

“...”

Belatedly, he asked.

“...Is it still there? The influence of the seal?”

“How many precious lives were sacrificed—of course it must remain. What the mages touched was the location and degree of management; they did not touch the seal itself.”

“Then what are you, who stands before me now?”

“The last beast of the black forest.”

“...No.”

Strength pressed into Ater’s hand.

“You were a saint.”

“Ah, please. I don’t like that word very much.”

‘Saint’ was a word that suited a temperament like Giovanni’s, one that would meekly lead lambs along. For Argio, words like evil god, monster, beast fit perfectly. They symbolized free rage and worthwhile pain.

But perhaps it didn’t sound that way to Ater, for his expression was not good.

“...”

“My, are you blaming yourself now?”

How admirable.

“That what you did may not have been just?”

“...Why, why would you... say that... when you are the very one involved.”

“Because I am, I can say it.”

“You hated us, and so you killed countless people.”

“It is true that I killed, but I did not hate. At least, ‘I’ did not.”

It was sincere.

“I simply wanted to be angry.”

“Then at least, be angry.”

“But the rage I hold is not toward you. It is toward the cowards who insulted me as a filthy beast and burned the family of the black forest, so you must not force vile rage upon me.”

“...”

Ater’s face, after his lips moved several times, crumpled miserably.

“You look complicated.”

It seemed time would be needed, and Gio was about to rise from his seat when—

“...Just a moment, Argio.”

“What is it?”

“F-for me...”

After hesitating, he made a request. Resolve could be felt in his narrowed eyes.

“Tell me your story.”

Through the ruins’ records, he had learned countless hidden truths, but they were only fragments. The materials were far too insufficient to know, remember, and chew over the stories of those innumerable saints.

He wanted to hear Argio’s story.

“Please tell me what kind of being you were.”

“It is not difficult.”

Gio tilted his head.

“Can you believe it?”

“...I will judge with all my strength.”

“...Then...”

He liked that.

“You are human.”

You carry a heavy value.

* * *

“I was the child of a noble family.”

The evil god’s tale continued gently, unlike his oppressive voice.

“We served as a shield, preventing the monsters of the black forest, where calamity raged, from bursting out into the outside. It was such a family—performing an honorable duty, respected by the people.”

“...You were...”

“The youngest son. I had skilled hands and an ideal appearance, so I was quite loved. In particular, I showed outstanding artistic talent. Dance and painting, music...”

“...It doesn’t seem to suit the evil god I know.”

“Now you even joke properly—how glad I am.”

He says he was once loved.

“But in this family, a monster was born in every generation. That monster gradually took on the form of a beast and eventually grew into a demon beyond description. When the signs began to show, the family locked the young beast in the black forest to block calamity.”

“What is the reason? Simply because of hatred?”

“I cannot say that reason does not exist... but if they do not, the young beast draws calamity from the black forest and spreads it to the world. The family, judging the black forest and the human-like beast to be one body, continued that tradition.”

“But you were certainly a saint...”

“Only because no one remembered it.”

It was not that calamity flowed out of the black forest because a monster was born, but that they could block the black forest’s calamity because a saint was born. As too much time passed, people forgot that and only remembered the fact that ‘the monster must be abandoned in the black forest.’

“I grew up in the black forest like that. And I came to know my reason for being anew.”

“You must have felt wronged.”

“Rather than that, it was laughable. I wondered what humans believed in to act like that, and at the same time they were so paltry they were even cute. That is how fragile beings are—break and collapse however one stirs them.”

“...”

“Well, then...”

The face of the one who called himself a monster had softened.

“I made various family and friends.”

“...Do you mean the beasts of the black forest?”

“That as well.”

“Was there more?”

“Those I caught.”

“...”

After hesitating, he said it.

“You mean the living offerings that were presented to you.”

“That’s right. Thanks to that, rumors spread that I eat people as well.”

“Why would you...”

“The more those who fear me increase, the more convenient it becomes to do what I want. And above all, even if I refute it, is it not meaningless?”

Argio knew best the stubbornness and obstinacy of humans. Was it not because of that arrogance that he became a monster of the black forest? Though that direction was quite pleasant to Argio, the rage at their contempt for him did not disappear.

There was simply no reason to persuade them.

“Why bother?”

Thus, Argio lived as a beast.

“After quite some time passed, I lived as I pleased, and the people were terrified... so perhaps they thought they ought to do something—my family made a move. They finally released a part of the black forest.”

“...I don’t understand.”

“I said the family that gave birth to me has, generation after generation, been blocking the calamity sealed in the black forest, yes? From the deepest place there, they drew out the water... the very essence of the calamity that makes up the black forest.”

“Water...?”

“I simply called it black water.”

People called it something else.

“The people of the world called it a plague, you know?”

“...Wait.”

Ater was flustered.

“You’re saying even that was not your doing?”

That terrible poison that rotted people’s reason, made their bodies decay and rot away, and at last drove the world to ruin—was it not the evil god’s? Even that had been humans’ stupid act?

“At least I thought it must have come out of the black forest... Hah, b-but why... shouldn’t something like that be kept in the black forest? Why was it kept by your family?”

“If I recall the past that the very first saint remembered, it seems the purpose was to divide responsibility. Leaving one world-overturning calamity in the forest, and one in the family, to split the roles.”

“Why did the people of your family spread that into the world?”

“They did not think it would be a calamity. They only thought it was a very dangerous, but ancient and sacred weapon handed down through the family. They intended to use it as a weapon to subjugate me.”

“...”

“They must have truly disliked the sight of me.”

In a noble family, the birth of a beast-shaped demon like that was top secret.

But that young monster entered the black forest and yet did not die, and instead lived and wandered the world—so they feared when he might open his mouth, disgrace the family, and come to take revenge.

“Truly stupid, isn’t it?”

In the end, they opened the ‘weapon’ for the purpose of subjugating the cruel beast Argio, and the result was the plague that covered the world. The family did not even take responsibility for it; even when it was wiped out, they kept their mouths shut and fell quietly.

“As a result, I became a demon who tears people apart alive and causes countless incidents and accidents, and even the prime culprit who spread a plague that makes even children and the elderly rot and decay.”

“...So...”

“And then the black forest was burned. You likely know this too—in the end, the court dispatched an army and tightened in on me from all sides. In the end, I burned together with the black forest, was grievously wounded, and at last died in the arms of my family.”

“...And what was made like that is ‘the evil god Argio’? The cruel beast?”

“You seem to understand well.”

He smiled as if he found it admirable.

“Are you curious why I did not flee from the arson?”

“...Did you not have the ability? But, according to the records... you should have been more than capable...”

“I might have been able to flee.”

But he did not.

“Truthfully, I do not remember the reason.”

“...What?”

“Perhaps it sleeps deep within my remaining fragments. Well, was there not some treasure I did not wish to leave in the black forest? Or a tender feeling that I did not wish to flee leaving my homeland behind, or perhaps the army tightened so meticulously that I could not escape.”

“...Were you not simply tired?”

“That is also a reasonable thought. Perhaps I deemed this the ending that suited me best.”

A monster, as befits a monster.

“...Well, I thought so, but...”

“The evil god Argio could not hide his hatred toward humans.”

“That wicked divinity was not made from only me gathered together.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

After that, Ater also knew well.

“...You truly did not hate us.”

“At least, I had no reason to.”

“...Ha...”

It felt hollow.

(To be continued in the next part)