Chapter 235: Goodwill (2)
A ship running aground. I strolled at my leisure through the slowly tilting steel innards of the vessel.
Thump—
The presence of the Ezenheim, which had once filled more than half of this place, had noticeably thinned. The ones that had hidden among the cargo in the rear compartments, the ones disguised as stokers or skilled laborers, must all have died in the initial explosion.
Thump—
Even so, somewhere close by, one sticky presence was still pulsing.
Kuuuuung—
At the end of a warping corridor, I suddenly spotted a familiar silhouette.
“Yan?”
I quickly raised a hand and called his name.
“Yan!”
“……Huh?! Hey, man!”
So he was alive.
The young Aran man, still gripping the noble lady’s hand tight.
This fleeting connection was strangely welcome. I drew two Mana Stones from inside my coat and tossed them over.
“Take these and get up top right now.”
Kuuuuung——!
The tilt must have crossed some critical threshold, because marble tables and furniture came crashing down from the floor above. I stretched out an arm, batting away the falling debris to clear a path.
“Thanks, man! But there’s some kind of monster down there-“
“I know. Just go up.”
Somehow this kid gave me a sense of kinship.
Maybe it was because his looks were his talent, just as mine were for me.
After pushing the two of them upward, I pressed on again toward the source of the stench.
* * *
Thud── Thud──
The monster’s footsteps echoed through the dark passage. Charlotte sprinted breathlessly down the tilting corridor, and behind her, the wet slap of a hunk of meat clung relentlessly to her trail.
Thud── Thud──
The rounds in her self-defense pistol were already spent. No matter how many times she fired, the thing would not die. Black steam, not blood, spewed from the holes in its chest, and with a grotesque sound it knitted itself back together in an instant.
Thud── Thud──
Jace Arshtel. Could a man like that truly exist in this world? If he were a demon, it would almost make more sense.
“……!”
Then she reached a dead end. The whole passage was completely submerged in seawater.
She gasped and looked back. In the darkness, the monster’s charred facial muscles twitched, forming something like a smile.
Thud── Thud──
The instant it came pounding toward her, flailing its limbs.
Bang!
A gunshot ripped through the silence of the corridor. The thing’s head snapped back and its movement stalled. Charlotte did not miss the opening. She released her Mana, and a gust of wind surged in, violently shoving the creature’s body away.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The volley that followed held the monster off.
Pshhhhh!
The smell of burning flesh rose from the creature’s body where the bullets had lodged. They were “Silver Bullets”, steeped in Mana.
“Haah, haah…….”
Beside her, as she heaved ragged breaths,
Tok.
came the neat click of a shoe.
“So it’s true. The density of time really does differ from space to space.”
It was Eli Zella. He lightly waved his pistol and took his place at her side.
“You…….”
Charlotte stared at him blankly, and Eli hurriedly pulled her along. The ‘thing’ had risen to its feet before they knew it, leaving no time to talk.
“Let’s go.”
The two of them ran through the flooding interior of the ship.
“……Why did you bother coming down here?”
Splash, splash. Cutting across the rising water, Charlotte asked.
“No reason.”
Maximilian, Eli, answered indifferently and added,
“Actually, I thought you’d blame me for what I did up on deck.”
“……It was to survive, wasn’t it. I understand.”
Some rules are necessary. Because in a situation like this, someone has to survive.
If that standard is nothing more than “race”, then it’s certainly unfair, but if so, what other standard would there be? Sex? Age? Wealth? Ability? They’d all be dead before they finished arguing it out.
Charlotte was the sort of person who didn’t recklessly condemn things she didn’t understand.
Whooooosh──
The bulkhead right ahead of them broke open and water poured through. The surging current. Seawater filled the corridor in an instant. As if caught in the backwash, the two of them were swept backward.
Thud─!
The monster, meanwhile, had now become a beast.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud─!
Coming at them along the ceiling on all fours, its form and posture were utterly grotesque.
“Grab on!”
Eli stretched out his hand. Charlotte clutched it tight.
The two of them threw themselves into the rising water. They swam toward the hatch that connected to the floor above.
Creeeak.
Evading the pursuing monster, they opened the hatch and climbed back up into the first-floor interior.
“This way!”
They broke into a hard run and reached a half-crumpled door that opened to the ship’s exterior.
Wham!
Eli got the door open first. Gripping the railing, he perched on top of it.
The eyes of the two, looking down below, wavered for a moment.
Beyond the tilting space, the sea spread out in full, as though torn away from the horizon. Lifeboats and rafts bobbing here and there-
───Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
The monster’s thunderous roar jolted them back to their senses.
“Are you ready to jump?”
The height was about thirty meters. From this far up, a dive would work well enough.
“Of course. I have to survive.”
Charlotte nodded without a trace of fear.
Eli suddenly glanced back.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud──!
The monster’s pursuit was as relentless as ever. What a persistent thing it was.
“The damned thing swims well too. If we leave it like that, it’ll devour the other people in the lifeboats. Won’t it?”
Charlotte hesitated at his words. Something about the implication struck her as off.
But before she could take any action at all, Eli spoke.
“I’ll take care of things here.”
Thup.
He pushed her in the back.
“Wai……!”
Beyond the railing, as she plunged toward the sea, her eyes took in his smile.
“Survive.”
──Splash!
Charlotte’s body plunged beneath the surface. Watching her shrink to the size of a dot, Maximilian slowly rose to his feet.
He watched the ‘thing’ as it came for him.
“…….”
Now, it was time to bring the act to a close.
He rolled back his sopping sleeve and reached out into the empty air. At the gesture, as though grasping for something, the air shuddered.
──Wooong.
A slow, undulating wave, drawing near from far away.
The puddles in the tilted corridor rippled, and the moonlight beyond the shattered window converged into a thin thread.
Before long, a single ray of light shot in and fastened itself to his grasp.
It was the Ebenholtz longsword.
“───!”
The monster howled and leapt. In its eyes, the man was nothing but a puny bit of prey holding a single sword.
He swung the blade.
──.
A single flash, existing as nothing but a trajectory, one that left behind not even the sensation of the cut.
The creature’s torso stalled midair, and then, shhhrk!
A wound that gaped open from shoulder to flank vomited out dark red steam.
The thing recoiled, unaware even of when it had been cut.
The wound closed over in an instant, but Maximilian didn’t give chase.
There was no need to.
─Swish.
Into the empty air, across the ground, he drew a transparent ‘line.’
‘Inside this line is my domain, and beyond it is the place where you die.’
Ebenholtz Swordsmanship is, by its nature, a defensive art.
A fence to bar the intrusion of inferior beings. A noble’s sword, handed down from the very first gesture that drove a stake into the heart of the thousand-year empire.
“──!”
The monster threw itself at him.
──.
The moment it crossed the line, its right arm vanished from the elbow.
──.
The blade drew back, following the thing’s motion, then swung wide to the left and came down on it. Its left thigh split open without a sound.
──.
The thing took to the ceiling. There was a line on the ceiling, too. Its long, outstretched arm was sheared off.
──.
The cutting motion was nowhere to be seen. Maximilian simply stood at the center of the semicircle, his sword hanging slack.
──.
And so the monster could not understand. Where its flesh was being torn from, at what moment the pain occurred.
Because it could not understand, it could not learn, and because it could not learn-
──.
it was simply whittled away, endlessly, in the same place, in the same way.
──.
Though it reached out, and reached, and reached again.
──.
Though it stamped its legs, and stamped, and stamped again.
──.
Though it poured out its life force to regenerate, crossed the line again with regrown flesh, and was cut away each time it crossed.
──.
It could not reach him. It couldn’t so much as touch the hem of Maximilian’s clothes, let alone a single ripple in the puddle he stood upon.
──.
Because the Ebenholtz reigned high above, at a height that lowly things could never reach.
* * *
The sinking Titan. In the ship’s wheelhouse, Captain Erio stood facing the water as it slowly poured in.
“…….”
The Titan’s life had already run its course. Seawater had rushed in through the grounded hull, and the interior fittings, swept up by the waves, had turned into hideous wreckage.
And yet, a captain meant the master of the ship.
Within the surging water, Erio kept his hand on the helm, lost in thought.
It felt as if his whole life were drifting slowly past him.
Had it begun with scrubbing the deck, perhaps?
The cargo ship he’d boarded at fourteen. The days when saltwater cracked the backs of his hands and rope peeled the skin from his palms.
The night a veteran hand first taught him to tie a knot, and the lukewarm mug of beer he’d drunk after riding out the first storm of his life.
The day he first took the helm, and the ship’s heartbeat that came traveling up through his fingertips.
Having lived out long, long years in this place, he had come to learn one truth.
That the only reason a ship could stay afloat upon the sea─ was ‘people’, and nothing else.
Decades. Dozens of ships.
Someone’s emigration, someone’s escape, someone’s honeymoon, someone’s voyage, carrying all of that weight, and not once had he ever lost a ship.
……Today was no different.
Onto the back of the hand that held the helm, a cold drop of water fell.
There is an old saying among sailors.
A ship’s last passenger is always her captain.
As for the wife he had left behind at the harbor, he was sorry.
But to take the very last place on a ship carrying three thousand souls.
That was the price of this profession, and Erio, who had spent his whole life at the helm, had long since resolved to pay it in full.
He slowly ran his hand down the helm. As though stroking the mane of a beloved steed that had been with him for ages.
“……What in the world has happened here?”
A voice came from behind him. Erio turned toward it. It was Viktor Haim. His fine clothes had been torn to rags here and there, and in his eyes, in place of his usual composure, lay a sharp venomous edge.
“It is my fault.”
Erio answered plainly.
Was it a iceberg, or some other reason? He could not know why the ship had come to this, but at this point, dwelling on the cause was all the more meaningless.
“But that is not the problem.”
There were still many passengers who had to survive.
Viktor Haim, too, was one of the passengers.
“If you want to live, get to the stern. You may yet save your life.”
A dreadful rage settled over Viktor Haim’s face. His lips twitched as he glared at Erio.
“No. It is the problem. Your incompetence…….”
Hatred like bloodshot veins welled in his eyes.
Erio felt he almost understood the reason, and yet couldn’t.
“Haah…….”
Viktor Haim closed his eyes for a moment. The sound of ragged breathing filled the wheelhouse.
“…….”
He turned to leave, then abruptly stopped.
“My apologies, Captain.”
He drew a pistol from inside his coat.
“My patience isn’t generous enough to forgive a failure like this.”
Bang──!
The gunshot was swallowed by the sound of the waves. Captain Erio’s body buckled and crumpled, all strength gone from it. Viktor Haim hurried up onto the deck.
It was pandemonium.
There, where hastily made rafts were being lowered into the sea, First Mate Lecen and the other crew struggled to keep order.
“Children and women first! Step back!”
“Board the children and women first! Move it!”
Ignoring the crew’s shouts, Viktor Haim shoved people aside and pushed forward.
“Hey! Wait your turn!”
Some passenger grabbed his arm, but Viktor threw him off roughly.
“──Quit talking bullshit! My life is worth more than thousands of you scum!”
He forced his way onto a raft just as it was about to be lowered. The alarmed crew hurried to drag him off, but he pulled out his pistol and took aim.
“…….”
Lecen looked into Viktor’s seawater-soaked eyes. They were eyes that had already lost all reason. There wasn’t even time now to grapple with him.
Lecen gave the order in a weary voice.
“Let him go.”
At that, the crew loosed the ropes. The raft carrying Viktor Haim drifted out onto a sea where sea fog shimmered.
“Ptooey!”
Lecen spat at his retreating back, and just as he was about to turn again toward those left behind,
Krrrzzzk───!
The hull screamed.
The Mana lamps that had lit the deck all night without going dark even once. Those lights flickered in unison.
Once.
Twice.
Then the whole ship went dark, as if closing its eyes.
──Krggggggoom!
The colossal body, steeped in night, pitched forward. The bow drove down beneath the surface. The stern reared toward the sky, snapping at the root and crumbling down.
Everything on the ship, countless people and rafts and cargo, spilled off the tilted deck into the pitch-black sea.
Kwaddddk── Krrrk!
With the thunderous roar of tearing steel, the giant called Titan broke clean in two.
The bow half sank into the abyss, and the remaining stern stood upright on the surface for a moment.
Everyone out on the sea held their breath and looked up at that brief stillness.
──Whoooooooo
The stern slid down, slowly, ever so slowly, sinking.
A whirlpool opened on the surface, thrashing as though to suck the surrounding wreckage and people down into its gaping maw.
And then──
Silence.
The sea grew calm, as if it had never been otherwise.
No, the sea had always been calm.
The fittings of the once-lavish ballroom lay scattered in fragments, and through the fog, hundreds of blue Mana Stone lights on life vests flickered on and off.
The lifeboats that had already departed had vanished into the distance, and the rope-bound rafts floated precariously atop the waves.
* * *
I closed my eyes beneath the sea.
Slowly, I sank.
The world turned strangely, uncannily quiet.
The screams above the surface, the ticking of the second hand that always grated on me, even the beat beneath my collarbone, none of it seemed able to follow me down to this depth.
Suddenly, it felt like it wouldn’t be so bad to die like this.
No, it felt like it would be a relief.
If, through the death of a single individual, myself, I could escape from all this arduous suffering and torment.
If I no longer had to bear the weight I carried…….
“…….”
Among the many lives I had cut down today, there had surely been good people.
People who had called out another’s name before their own. Crew who swore to hold their posts to the very end.
The deaths of those who had willingly meant to sacrifice themselves for others were, in the end, brought about by me.
But their goodwill would one day be exploited by the malice of enemies, and would ultimately become the seed of the world’s destruction.
That is why this had been my choice.
Maximilian Ebenholtz.
I am nothing but a frail human being.
Not once have I believed my nature to be a hard, unyielding thing.
I simply liked to live as the current carried me.
Happy when I was happy, sad when I was sad, ignorant when I was ignorant.
Raise a dog, maybe. To marry the one I loved, and have children.
That much, and no more, was all my vessel was ever meant to hold.
And yet I, of all people, went and learned the whole of the truth.
If I am the only one who knows─ then grumbling that my vessel is too small is no reason to set the mission down.
And so, this is as far as the sinking goes.
“……!”
When I opened my eyes, someone was descending toward me.
I gazed at her as she drew near.
A face gone blurry, tangled in the currents.
Schatz Heizen.
A smile slipped out of me before I knew it, and a bubble popped free. At that she made an angry face, and as if to tell me not to smile, she clapped a hand over my mouth and hauled me upward.
Even her swimming speed was tremendously fast.
What was she, a torpedo?
“Pwahh!”
“……What happened?”
Above the surface, Schatz asked in a sulking voice. It was because I had only conveyed things briefly, by letter.
“…….”
Sweeping back my wet hair, I looked at Schatz.
“I killed a lot of people.”
At that confession, so heavy with meaning, Schatz gazed steadily at me.
“I did, you know… a whole lot of them…….”
Her eyes were as calm as a lake. A level gaze that passed no judgment whatsoever. Something about it steadied me.
“Was it necessary?”
At Schatz’s question, coming back at me out of nowhere, I…….
I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
Maybe this time I was wrong.
No, had I ever been right before this?
Had there ever been even a single time I was right?
I swallowed the urge to answer her that way.
To say “I don’t know” is to set down half the guilt. It is to abandon it irresponsibly.
It is no way to honor the dead.
If I had cut them down without conviction, then they would have died in vain.
And so I swallowed every last one of my words.
Calling to mind the faces, the names, the final voices of the countless people I had killed until now, people who were not Ezenheim, once again,
I tempered my heart.
“……It absolutely was.”
It had been necessary.
It had been something I had to do.
~~~
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