Chapter 256

Chapter 256

In the meantime, Ather had worried over many things.

‘No matter how I think about it, it’s clear I’ve been given a role.’

Even though he had spat out a string of curses at the evil god and challenged him to a duel, wasn’t he still perfectly fine like this? That role might simply be a toy, but he had a very bad feeling about it.

Above all, Argio had shown him the heart.

‘That isn’t mercy you’d bestow on a mere toy.’

Then did the evil god truly want him to open the tomb?

‘Or does it not matter either way.’

After a long stretch of worry, Ather’s life became monotonous. He threw himself at it to read even a little of the evil god’s true intentions, was utterly defeated, then survived again, studied the ruins, and worried about the future.

Then one day, a small, fragile being entered the evil god’s tomb.

“...Hero...?”

“...Saint...?”

The one who called him a “hero” was a saintess in a child’s body.

‘There shouldn’t be any saints born in this world anymore.’

What saint could appear in a world abandoned by the Creator? But Ather, who had lived bearing the duty of a hero, could tell. This small being truly was a saintess.

‘Then a saintess who serves a god other than our Creator...’

Since he didn’t sense any trace of beasts, she must have been a saint from a completely different world.

He was flustered by the sudden encounter, but it wasn’t something he couldn’t accept. Thanks to Argio, he had already become aware of beings from many dimensions. With the world turned upside down and an evil god having taken the Creator’s seat, what else was there left that he couldn’t accept?

For a while, the two simply looked at each other. An awkward silence followed for a moment.

“...”

“...A-are you human?”

“I am human.”

It seemed this small saintess had seen the beasts “above.” They looked human, she said. To Ather, who had fought them prepared to die, it was absurd, but reality was what it was.

Ather lowered himself to meet the saintess’s eyes.

“May my father’s insignificant servant ask your holy name?”

“...I am Aram, a small youngest daughter who serves my teacher, the Moon.”

“A Moon, is it. Not a name that exists in my shallow knowledge. Where did you come from?”

“I crossed over through a dream...”

Aram was confused in her own way as well.

“Isn’t this a dungeon?”

“If you mean the dungeon made by the Demon King, then it would be accurate, but it doesn’t look like that.”

“Demon King...? I’m sorry, so... um...”

They needed to get the situation straight.

“...Shall we talk for a moment?”

“I will follow the saintess’s words.”

Ather was a person from an era with a class system. A being with a noble air, and a saintess at that, had to be treated properly. He introduced himself with even more courtesy than he used with Argio.

“My name is Ather.”

He briefly recited his story. The incident that had occurred here in the past and the trials that had befallen him, and therefore what had happened to this world. How he had revived, and what he was doing now as well.

After listening to all of Ather’s words, Aram nodded.

“A dungeon is... a single dimension. It can also be a planet where humans once lived. So far, among the dungeons that have opened onto Earth, there hasn’t been a confirmed case where the humans from that time are still surviving... but if what you say is true, you would be the first human from another dimension.”

“If it would not be rude, may I now hear your story?”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I got absorbed in your story alone.”

Aram bowed her head in a Moon Lady Religion–style greeting.

“As I said again, I am an insignificant human who calls myself my teacher’s daughter as the saintess of the Moon Lady Religion. I found something strange about the teacher I serve, and that is why I came here.”

When Ather heard how she had ended up coming all the way to this dimension, he furrowed his brow.

“...So for the fate of your dimension, you fell asleep alone? To research and dig into this strange dimension that you can only come to through dreams?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Alone?”

“...You can’t dream the same dream together...?”

“...It may sound impertinent, but you should be more mindful of your own safety. By my meager knowledge, no matter the dimension, isn’t a religion’s saintess a being who must not be easily hurt or broken?”

“S-sorry.”

“What do you have to apologize to me for?”

He was thankful she wasn’t a saintess as obnoxious and self-assertive as the saints he remembered. Swallowing a sigh of relief, Ather asked again.

“You said you were assigned a guide in the dream, so where did you leave that being...?”

“I didn’t leave her! I-I only asked her to let me walk around on my own.”

“...And even after saying that, you didn’t think anything sounded strange?”

“...From the fact that request was accepted, we should probably see it as the dream owner’s intention...”

“And the owner of that dream is the evil god who revived me?”

“It seems that way...”

“...”

“...”

Ather’s face crumpled.

“Learn how to be on guard.”

“I was on guard enough!”

“Then why aren’t you running away from me, a human revived by an evil god?”

“Because you’re a hero...!”

Saints instinctively sense the vessel of a human.

“You told me yourself that you are this place’s hero. I couldn’t find a lie in that statement, and so I believed your words. I also recognized that your worry for me is sincere.”

“Even if you recognize all that, there are things you must avoid. Do not misunderstand that all knowledge in the world belongs to you. Human wisdom can never surpass a god, and by a god’s intent, human fate flows.”

“I know that too. But if I know that and still don’t move my body, how can I accomplish what I want to do? I came here with failure and the worst possibilities in mind. To do what I want.”

“That is what is dangerous. If you could think that far, then all the more you should have been on guard. Do you truly not know what about you is making me uncomfortable?”

Ather let out a sigh.

“You do not know how precious you are.”

“I know that much too—how important I am, at least...!”

“That is being important, not being precious. It seems you do not know how essential peace and love are to humans. Do not trample that value as you please. It can easily become arrogance.”

“...”

Hesitating, Aram said,

“...You’re saying something similar to my teacher.”

“Do you mean the god called the Moon?”

“No, I have a human teacher.”

“It’s fortunate you have someone who can tell you even that much.”

His tone was just as polite as before, but it was unmistakably a sarcastic remark. Aram understood it well.

“...”

But she could not bring herself to get angry at him for insulting her family and her school. It wasn’t that she wasn’t displeased, but over the past few days she too had felt the Moon Lady Religion’s problems down to the bone.

That amusement park above had taught her peripheral, instinctive joy. It made her feel desires she hadn’t even known she had. It helped her feel what she herself wanted, learn it, and apply it.

‘...Every last one of the Moon Lady Religion’s family members was destroying themselves.’

They truly were frogs in a well.

‘Now, I won’t fall for that temptation, but...’

Humans clearly needed that peripheral joy. Even if it had no need or use at all, they had to pursue romance, consume unnecessary resources, and feel more emotions.

How could one claim to uncover truth when they didn’t even properly know themselves? Whatever the dream’s owner had aimed for in making this amusement park, the fact that Aram had learned from it was true.

“...Mr. Ather, you know the owner of this amusement park well, don’t you?”

“I told you earlier that it revived me.”

“What kind of being is it?”

“...”

Ather finally spoke with a sigh.

“An evil god.”

He meant perfect rage.

“Did you check the records of the ruins as you came here?”

“Yes. The letters I use were different, but in the amusement park above there was an opportunity to learn writing... so I learned it. The ruins recorded what atrocities it committed in the past.”

“If you go down into the deeper ruins, you can learn why an evil god like that was born. The being that revived me is a completely different being from the evil god of that time. And as long as that fellow’s heart exists, sooner or later he will return to the evil god he was before.”

“You’re worried about that.”

“The evil god killed my family and friends and burned down my village.”

That horrific form and the shrill shouts filled with rage were still vivid.

“So before that calamity fell again, I wanted to kill him somehow. But perhaps inevitably, I couldn’t. No matter how many times I charged in with my life on the line, he saves me again and simply leaves me in these ruins...”

“D-does he perhaps have you imprisoned?”

“The one imprisoning me is myself. Whatever he learned and how he was corrupted in another dimension, the evil god went and created an entirely new world. I, who had no confidence to look upon that world, remained here by the evil god’s mercy.”

“You think of yourself as a relic of the old era.”

“I am a wraith who should have died then. It can’t be helped that I wish to remain in the past rather than the future. Everything of mine remains only in these ruins.”

“...What do you want to do?”

“...And what about you, Saintess?”

“I don’t know.”

Hugging the white pillow, the saintess muttered.

“What do I want to do, and what can I do?”

“I’m in the same state, so I have nothing I can really say.”

“That’s a little unfortunate...”

“What did you see and feel in the amusement park?”

“...Um, first, I learned the amusement park’s structure.”

A kingdom made up of three species of beasts. There was also a holy city that any “guest” could enter. The foxfolk servants greeted guests there and helped them do anything they wanted.

“It was a place that made people go bad.”

That entire amusement park up there.

“In my dimension, there is a word called utopia.”

“If you mean an ideal land, that’s a word I know too.”

“That’s a relief. So, it felt exactly like that. Even though it can never become reality.”

“Do you want people who suffer because of reality to be happy for their entire lives?”

“I don’t think they should be. You can’t be happy forever, in the end. Even if you kept dreaming a similar dream for your whole life, someone would eventually shatter that dream.”

“...I told you I was trapped in a thorn prison for thousands of years.”

Ather added,

“I also said that, unable to endure that pain, I called the evil god. It was I who remade this world and brought disaster upon your dimension. But even if I went back to that time, I would call the evil god again.”

The reason was simple.

“Because I want to live.”

“...So you called the evil god, even if disaster would come?”

“I kept thinking in that terrible pain, but there was no other way.”

That was what drove Ather mad.

“My Creator grew sick of our stupidity and abandoned me, no madman came to the forsaken ruins, and the prison door would never open by my strength alone.”

“But calling an evil god through a hero’s mouth must have been a painful thing.”

“That is why I wanted to take responsibility. Even if I had to offer myself up, I wanted to kill the evil god.”

Naturally, it was impossible.

“But even now, I am ceaselessly researching a method. Why the evil god left me alive, what my role in fate is and where its end lies. What I can do within it. How much responsibility I can bear. I am agonizing fiercely.”

“...”

“Aren’t you the same?”

“...Yes.”

Eternal happiness, a perfect dream—such things could not exist.

“In the end, people have to stand up by their own strength.”

Someone could try to run from reality. They could be satisfied dying while running away their whole life. But not everyone could. It wasn’t that they shouldn’t—it was that they couldn’t.

The longer they didn’t know that, the greater the damage would inevitably become. Aram wanted to avoid such a future.

“So I, too, am curious about my role in fate and what I can accomplish. That’s why I came all the way here. I walked around that vast amusement park, studied history and writing, and finally... reached this place.”

“To have endured the foul poison of the Black Forest and the ominousness of the ruins and come this far, you truly are worthy of being called a saintess. You are remarkable.”

“It wasn’t easy, but I could do it. And I was lucky too, by someone’s arrangement. I came to learn everything about this dungeon. So I want to save my brothers, and make the world better.”

Their purposes aligned.

“If the world can return only if we seal the dream’s owner again, then we will do so.”

“I see. Will you allow me to help you bear better responsibility?”

“This really makes it feel like... some kind of play. Like we’re following a predetermined fate.”

“It’s damn unpleasant, but it can’t be helped.”

In the end, they knew this too was fate the evil god wanted. But humans were beings that struggled within fate. No one knew what fate that struggle would bring.

Even if they could not overcome fate, it was fine. It was enough if they could achieve what they wanted. It was enough if they could protect what they wanted to protect. And to achieve all of that...

“...”

They needed the master of all this fate.

“...Argio.”

“You’ve called me once again.”

“It seems all the actors for the stage you desire have gathered.”

“Seems like it.”

As if he had been there from the beginning, Argio looked at Saintess Aram with a natural smile.

“Is this our first time meeting?”

“...”

“Or is it not the first?”

“...Teacher.”

“I am not that fellow.”

“...”

Aram gave a hollow laugh.

“...I knew it. I thought I was getting too lucky.”

From where fate laid down by a god had begun, she could not tell.

(Continued in the next part)