Chapter 130
The Carnelian family's servant, Corbin, wiped away the sweat running down his face from his ceaseless labor, then stretched his back straight.
“Uuugh.”
A groan escaped his mouth, and the pain in his back eased for a brief moment, but a dull ache soon followed, as though that relief had merely been his imagination.
This pain would probably still be there tomorrow.
Thinking that, his irritation suddenly flared, and Corbin spat out a curse.
“Fuck, what kind of goddamn festival is this…? Damn bitch. If she’s going to die, she should just die quietly instead of making everyone else miserable. Hah.”
The feelings people in this land held toward priestesses existed somewhere between guilt and discomfort.
They understood intellectually that they were living safely thanks to the priestess’s sacrifice, but since it was difficult to face that fact directly, they simply chose to look away from it to an appropriate degree.
But there were people in the world who lacked even that much decency, and Corbin was one of them.
Bluntly speaking, what did it matter to him whether the priestess died or went up to the sky?
All Corbin felt was resentment toward the priestess who had made extra work for everyone by suggesting something utterly unnecessary.
While grumbling like that and repeatedly carrying loads,
something odd suddenly entered Corbin’s field of vision.
‘An oak barrel?’
A fairly large oak barrel had been left sitting by itself in a corner of the corridor.
It was strange.
It was suspicious.
It was something he ought to inspect immediately and, depending on the situation, report to his superiors.
‘I should pretend I didn’t see it.’
In other words, that would have been his choice if this were not the festival season.
The entire mansion was in an uproar, with countless people and supplies moving about in a chaotic fashion.
Assuming that someone other than himself had caused the problem, Corbin lost interest in the oak barrel.
If he touched it or hung around for no reason, only to be spotted by a superior and hear, ‘Hey, you, come help with this for a moment,’ that would be the worst possible outcome.
As a rule, during times like this, the best tactic was to focus solely on one’s own work and pretend to be busy.
Corbin did not know.
He had no idea that there were an extraordinary number of people in the Carnelian mansion who had gone through reasoning much like his own.
They had left the oak barrel alone because they were busy, because they were bothered, because they feared being scolded if they meddled with it, because they planned to look into it later, or because they assumed someone other than themselves was responsible for it.
“Hrrng—huh? Gack?!”
He did not even realize it after stepping on a small scrap of cloth that had somehow ended up beneath his feet and falling over.
A limp scrap of cloth thrown from the oak barrel had flown in a straight line across that considerable distance and landed beneath his foot, which was impossible according to his common sense.
Even after teaching one servant a lesson about keeping his mouth shut, the oak barrel’s—no, Gritz’s infiltration operation continued.
Sometimes by exploiting people’s perceptions.
Sometimes by hiding his body in the blind spots of their vision.
Sometimes by tracing routes that an ordinary person would have found impossible to imagine.
Inward, farther inward.
Toward the place where the highest-ranking person in the mansion was located.
Graaasp. Slump.
The guard standing watch outside the head of the family’s room failed to perform even the slightest duty expected of a guard when Gritz launched his surprise attack.
He could not draw his weapon to respond, could not make a sound to alert anyone to the abnormal situation, and could not even put up a desperate struggle to drain the intruder’s strength and time.
Until Gritz approached from behind with a movement like a slide, covered his mouth, and strangled him unconscious, all he managed to do was tremble violently before going limp.
Thus, the head of the Carnelian family only realized there was danger when an intruder burst into his room through the main door and shoved the end of a cane into his mouth.
“……? ……?!”
“Shut up. Unless you want a hole blown through your head.”
“……”
“You seem unable to understand what’s going on, judging by the way your eyes keep darting around, but there’s no need to find out. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and all you have to do is answer them sincerely. Naturally, don’t cause a commotion. Understand? If you do, blink twice.”
Blink. Blink.
With a soft pop, the cane was pulled from the head of the family’s mouth.
And, as anyone would expect, the head of the family screamed.
“An intruder!! There’s an intruder in the family head’s room!!”
The head of the family had not acted foolishly out of fear.
No, in fact, he had been extremely calculating and rational.
The intruder had intended to ask him something.
In other words, there was something the intruder needed to learn from him, so he could not simply choose to kill him immediately.
There was still a possibility that the intruder might act impulsively out of anger or desperation, but his weapon was a blunt object, not a blade.
On the other hand, this was the middle of his own mansion, so if he could endure being struck a few times, allies would arrive in the meantime.
The head of the family’s actions and judgment were logical in their own way.
But.
Even after he shouted like that, the mansion remained silent.
And Gritz did not seem particularly angry at the head of the family or make any attempt to stop him.
As he understood that fact, the head of the family’s face gradually began to turn pale.
‘Could it be that everyone has already been taken out?’
Had all the servants and soldiers in this mansion been dealt with? Every last one of them?
The head of the family did not know.
He did not know that Gritz had used a sound-dampening technique (遮音功), surrounding the head of the family with magic spread out like a thin membrane.
The mansion still contained countless people going about their business unharmed; it was simply that they could not hear the head of the family’s voice.
Since he had never even imagined that such a technique could exist, the head of the family’s guess went wildly astray.
Perhaps the monster before him was so powerful that it had single-handedly slaughtered everyone in the mansion, or perhaps it had numerous accomplices helping it.
Either possibility held nothing hopeful for the head of the family.
“So, have you finished struggling? Then I suppose it’s time for you to pay the price for ignoring what I said and breaking your promise, right?”
Gritz did not bother correcting the head of the family’s misunderstanding.
He had arranged things specifically so that the man would misunderstand in precisely that way.
“I-I’ll answer! No, I’ll tell you everything! I’ll answer anything, so please, forgive me!!”
Rather than simply beating someone whenever they refused to listen, it was more effective to fuel their imagination and fear.
At last, a long story began to flow from the head of the family’s mouth.
***
Long ago—far earlier than all the commotion outside about a Demon King and whatnot—our Carnelian family had ruled this land.
However, we were not the uniquely exceptional rulers we are today.
We were merely one among several local strongmen and influential families.
Then one day, while our ancestor had gone hunting, he happened to discover ‘it.’
I call it ‘it’ because the being had an appearance unlike any creature our ancestor had ever known.
At first glance, it had a form resembling a human, but it had large wings on its back, and a soft halo of light spilled around its body like gold dust.
If it had been whole, one could surmise that it must have been beautiful and majestic.
Yes, that was speculation.
Because when our ancestor discovered it, it was already in a state far removed from anything whole.
One of the wings that called to mind a white bird had been torn away from the middle, roughly half of its upper body, including its face, was stained with something like a mixture of blood and black mud, and its lower body had been crushed into a bloody pulp.
The remaining intact parts of its body were exceedingly beautiful and majestic, which made its wounds and missing parts all the more horrific.
Most wondrous and terrifying of all was the fact that the being was still alive in such a condition.
Whether it was compassion, curiosity, or being enchanted by the strange magic radiating from it, our ancestor took it home and cared for it.
It regained consciousness soon afterward, but its mind was not sound.
Calling it childlike would be far too generous. It was something closer to an imbecile.
It was slow and foolish, and it often forgot whatever it had been taught almost immediately.
Even when asked about its past or how it had ended up in such a state, collapsed there, it could not give a proper answer.
With no particular use besides consuming food, our ancestor used it as a sort of… trash can.
Complaints, grievances, resentment, irritation.
He vented every negative emotion he felt while leading a faction to it, or demanded that it agree with him—in other words, that it curse the same person.
He could say anything to it, including matters too sensitive to blurt out before servants or things that could potentially be used against him as weaknesses.
He assumed it would not understand properly anyway, and since it could barely move, there was little danger of it escaping.
Yet one day, something strange happened.
As usual, it had been staring blankly while listening to our ancestor’s story, or simply responding as instructed without understanding it properly, when it suddenly asked our ancestor a question in return.
-Do you want it?
-Do you want that fellow to become unhappy?
-If he were to become unhappy, how would you want him to suffer?
Our ancestor had been cursing another local strongman with whom he was locked in fierce competition, and he answered without much thought.
He said he wished the other man’s crops would fail completely.
The head of that faction had taunted our ancestor, boasting about how fine his wheat fields were and how abundantly they produced grain.
Our ancestor soon forgot the incident.
People do not remember, one by one, the things they throw into a trash can.
Even if something made a slightly different sound when thrown into the trash, it was hardly an event worth giving special attention to and remembering.
Ordinarily, that would have been the end of the story.
The problem was that the rival’s crops really did fail.
While all the surrounding families and fields enjoyed bumper harvests, only that family’s fields suffered a famine of record-breaking proportions.
It was such a bizarre event that the people around them talked about it for quite some time.
Our ancestor recalled his conversation with the being, which he had forgotten for a while.
So he asked it whether it had done something.
It could not give a proper answer. That was not particularly strange. It was the sort of being that might or might not remember even one thing after being taught ten.
Our ancestor simply said, ‘Of course,’ and let the matter go.
Then one day, another dispute broke out between our family and a different family.
It was a dispute over who would use a newly dug well.
Our family lost the power struggle, and our drunken ancestor once again vented his complaints and curses before the being.
But the being opened its mouth again.
-Do you want it?
-Do you want that fellow to suffer?
-What kind of suffering do you want him to endure?
Our ancestor said he wished the other family’s well would dry up.
He wished it would become a useless well that spat out nothing but mud, with no reward for all the effort they had put into claiming it.
And that was exactly what happened.
The well dried up, and the rival family lamented.
People regarded it as an unfortunate event and simply assumed that the place where they had dug the well must have been bad.
Our ancestor could not do the same.
Once might have been mere coincidence, but twice was something that warranted suspicion.
Our ancestor asked the being whether it had done this as well, but it could not give a proper answer either.
So instead, our ancestor said the following.
Could you dry up someone’s land?
Could you dry up the water someone uses?
Could you wither a tree someone had worked hard to grow?
It answered.
-Do you want it?
Our ancestor answered, and before long, all of them came to pass.
And so, Carnelian became the sole ruler of this land.
I approve the title as “#Chapter 130: Beggar Gritz (6) - Origin” to match the nearby chapter titles. I also preserved neutral wording for the mysterious being rather than assigning it a gender.