Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 20 - Chapter 4

4. Unchanging Things in a Changing World

I have to talk about Kuzaku and Setora. At the time, I was doing my best to put them out of my mind. But I couldn’t do so completely, of course.

Kuzaku had been cut down by an orc named Jumbo, and Setora had tried to avenge him in a fit of rage, but it had only backfired on her. Then the No-Life King had shared his blood—though, “blood” might not be the right word; I just don’t have a better one for it—but anyway, the No-Life King had shared the blood of undeath with the two of them to bring them back to life.

It’s my fault that the two of them hadn’t been able to meet a natural end, and that they had been degraded into something inhuman. So, they didn’t get any kind of end at all. Despite having died, time didn’t stop for them there. Their lives had run out, only to be topped back up in an unnatural way.

Perhaps the No-Life King had granted them a new life, but the two people I had known were no longer anywhere to be found. Now that it’s come to this, I should think of them as dead. If I had been able to think that way, maybe I would have been able to sort out my feelings. But as things stood, I couldn’t. It was true that they’d died in front of my eyes, and those things that had replaced them weren’t Kuzaku and Setora. But they had changed too little for me to feel like they were completely separate from the people they’d been in life. On the outside at least, Kuzaku was Kuzaku, and Setora was Setora. But even so, it was best to regard what was inside them as different.

Or was it?

I couldn’t come to a definitive answer. I didn’t want to decide. So in my own passive way, by choosing not to think about them, I was putting the question off until later.

So then, why is it that I’m bothering to bring up Kuzaku and Setora? Why do I need to talk about them?

At some point, we volunteer soldiers started calling ourselves Daybreak.

The members of Daybreak weren’t always in Daybreak Village. There were plans to launch an expedition to Undead DC, but it was a really long journey, so if we were going to do it, we needed to be very mindful of our situation and choose the timing of the trip carefully. As such, our priorities were to build up Daybreak Village, expand the facilities there, and improve our living situation, but there were always ten or so of us out working in the Wonder Hole.

The Wonder Hole was a place that was changing constantly, as exemplified by the emergence of the grendels. And given that those changes could be sudden and violent at times, we wanted to avoid a situation where we would go in there after spending some time away, and find that something ridiculous had happened.

There were some practical reasons for it too. For example, we weren’t able to bring our relics up to the surface, but simply storing them in the Wonder Hole was not great either. It was better to have people carrying them. And using them.

The other less flattering reason was that guys like me who enjoyed doing simple work were in the minority. Most people in Daybreak Village felt more alive when they were exposing themselves and their comrades to the risk of death by exploring the unknown and getting into fights.

Ranta repeatedly asked me to come along, but I refused. Most of the members of Daybreak left me alone. I didn’t feel any particular sense of gratitude to them for that, though. Nor did my days of silent labor gradually lead to me becoming more positive. I probably didn’t want to swing between the highs and lows of emotion. I wanted to stop feeling happy or sad. Feeling nothing at all was preferable to me. However, there were a few occurrences that I couldn’t help but get emotional about.

One time, when Ranta came back from a trip with Renji and Ron, after he had finished partying with the two of them, he came to me saying, “I’ve got something to tell you,” and then took me outside Daybreak Village. It wasn’t the middle of the night, but it wasn’t exactly early in the evening either. The red moon was out. And despite his claim that he had something to tell me, Ranta was in no hurry to get to the point.

“What is it?” I asked reluctantly, and Ranta grinned.

“Let’s go take a piss together.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I’m just kidding. Like I’d wanna take a piss with you.”

“I wouldn’t want to take a piss with you either.”

“So here’s the thing.”

“Yeah?”

“We, uh... We may’ve done something.”

“Done something? Um, what?”

“So, uh...”

“Yyyeah...?”

“Me and Yume...”

“You and Yume?”

“Uh, there’s kinda something inside her now...”

“Inside...her?”

“Come on. Put two and two together, moron.”

“You and Yume did something, and now there’s something inside—whuh...”

I may be an idiot, but I wasn’t so dense I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at.

“Are you serious?”

“You think I’d be saying this if I wasn’t? Come on, man.”

“Well...”

“If this was a gag, would you laugh?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Oh... Have you told anyone else?”

“The other women. Or, Yume told them. I’m sure there’s a lot she wanted to talk about. Like, getting advice and stuff.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Yume told me...and I haven’t told anyone but you. What was she saying? It was kinda unclear. I didn’t really get it. But apparently it’s not guaranteed to come out okay. Was it a timing thing? I dunno. Nothing I can do about it, though. If we want it to come out okay, there’s stuff we’ve gotta do, y’know?”

“No. You’re being super vague, so I have no clue.”

“Well, figure it out. Anyway, that’s how it is. It’s still kinda, y’know, but if things go smoothly, she’ll be due in September, or something like that. Still way off. But get emotionally prepared.”

“I don’t know if I’m the one who needs to be emotionally prepared for this.”

“If it came out of nowhere, it’d be, y’know. You’d be shocked. Even a quiet, unsociable guy like you.”

“Well... Yeah. I guess I would.”

“That’s all I had to say.”

I had no idea how I should take the news. I was at a loss. And since I was at a loss, I couldn’t stay emotionally uninvolved. I mean, at the time, Ranta looked like he was kind of dazed. He must have actually been pretty badly shaken. Confused, even. Given the relationship between the two of them, it wasn’t all that weird that this had happened. Daybreak had other men and women who were, what would you call them? Lovers, basically. Like how Akira-san and Miho were officially husband and wife. There was no chance of children with same-sex couples, but with heterosexual couples, the possibility always existed. That must have crossed my mind once or twice, but I had apparently never really thought about it becoming a reality.

Ranta and Yume had made a baby. Their child might be born. Soon enough, Yume was going to give birth and become a mother. I felt some surprise about that, of course. And it’s not like I didn’t feel even a hint of joy. But it was buried under my uneasiness.

Like Ranta had been saying, there was no guarantee the baby would be born healthy. I had very little idea what the potential risks or complications were. But was it even possible to safely deliver a baby in Daybreak Village? Or to raise one there?

No amount of worrying on my part was going to help, though. Of that, I was sure. So I kept on working, day in and day out, just with an added sense of vague anxiety. I was worried for Yume, and occasionally watched her from a distance.

I think that Ranta telling me about her being pregnant was when I started to change. It showed me that even if I tried to remain stagnant, the world around me would not. As I watched Yume’s belly noticeably grow over time, it made me want to pray before going to bed at night. But what was a man of no faith like myself supposed to pray for?

As for Yume herself, she was fine aside from her growing belly. If anything, she was amused by how people fussed over her. I’ve gotta say, I was pretty impressed by that. Her cheer shone brightly not just for me, but for everyone in Daybreak Village, warming all of our hearts.

Like Ranta had said, the baby was born not long into September.

I had created a small place for myself to sleep in, which was less of a hut, and more of a pyramid resting on its side. That night, I was sound asleep when I heard someone quietly calling my name over and over. I felt as though I knew their voice from somewhere, and responded with things like, “Yeah,” and, “Uh-huh.” I might’ve thought I was dreaming, and so I responded as I would to someone in a dream.

“Haruhiro... Haruhiro. Hey, Haruhiro, come on. Wake up, Haruhiro. Yeah, I’m a bit hesitant about waking you up when you’re so soundly asleep, or actually, I guess I feel bad about it. But I came all this way, and I wanna talk to you about something. Haruhiro... Come on, Haruhiro.”

They touched me somewhere. My leg, I think. They grabbed my right ankle. That was what woke me up. I realized that the voice hadn’t been in my dream, and I tried to shake free of their hand. But the person was incredibly strong, and they had a firm grip on my ankle, so I couldn’t even move my right leg very well. I tried to kick whoever it was with my left foot. When I did, they let go of me immediately.

“Shh! Shh! Don’t struggle. Quiet. I’m here to talk. Don’t you get that, Haruhiro? If I felt like it, I could’ve killed you. But I didn’t, right? So calm down. Oh, wait, maybe you haven’t realized who I am yet? It’s me. Me. Kuzaku. Did you forget about me, maybe? There’s no way that could be true, right?”

“You’re...Kuzaku?”

“You should be able to tell by my voice. If I’m not Kuzaku, then what am I, an impostor? But what would the point of imitating him be? Can you think of one? I dunno. I don’t think there is one. Nah, there definitely isn’t.”

I got out of my sleeping spot. I’d chosen a location that was well away from the center of Daybreak Village where most of the huts were clustered together. There was no one else around. Just me and one overly tall guy.

It was too dark to make out his facial features, but I could see and hear well enough to be confident of his identity. It was Kuzaku. The Kuzaku who’d died. Died and returned to life. The No-Life King had brought him back. It was Kuzaku.

The No-Life King had taken Merry’s form. Or perhaps Merry was a part of the No-Life King now. Would he have revived Kuzaku or Setora on his own initiative? He’d had no reason to. Merry’s will must have played into it. That was the natural thing to think. Just like when I had revived Merry after she had died, Merry had been unable to abandon Kuzaku and Setora, so she had made the same mistake. And now, everything that I couldn’t accept about my choice had appeared before me in the form of Kuzaku.

“You said you wanted to talk... About what?”

“This isn’t a good place. If they find me, I’m just guessing here, but it’ll probably go badly. I mean, there’s a lot of dangerous guys around. C’mon, let’s go. Oh, and this isn’t a trap, okay? I could’ve killed you easily. But I didn’t, right? Though, I’m thinking maybe I will. I’ll come right out and say it. More than anything, I want to be open with you. I wonder why. Maybe I’m trying to be sincere? In my own way? I think it’d be good to kill you and make you like us. Because that’d definitely be interesting.”

“Man... What the hell are you talking about, Kuzaku?”

“I was thinking we’d all get along. Me, Setora-san, Merry-san, and you, Haruhiro. Doesn’t that sound fun? I mean, we’ll basically never die. Isn’t that awesome? I’m still having lots of fun, in my own way, but if you were with us too, then it’d be even more awesome. I mean, since I like you and all. I love you, man.”

“Kuzaku... How did you end up...like this?”

“Like this? Ohhh. Y’mean how I died, and then came back?”

“Yeah. Before you died...I know you liked me. And I felt the same.”

“Well, I haven’t changed that much. Seriously. I get it, though. You’re got your...misgivings? About it, I guess. If I’d been told, ‘don’t worry, you won’t change that much,’ before this happened to me, I don’t know if I’d have believed it either.”

“You...haven’t changed? I can’t believe that.”

“Oh, yeah? Of course, I’m not saying I’m one hundred percent the same. But, like, I’ve got my memories and stuff. I know all about what happened before. Oh, and my emotions too. I haven’t lost those either.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I just shook my head. Basically never dying? That, on its own, was a huge deal. Too huge. That wasn’t the kind of thing you downplayed as not being much of a change.

I mean, for us humans, whether we think about it all the time, or only once in a while, or come to terms with it, or ignore it entirely, we all know that the people around us will die someday. If we find bliss, we feel a sense of sadness because, Oh, this can’t last forever, we have to die eventually. When we find someone we love, we lament the impermanence of a world where we must someday part. It’s a rare person who hasn’t had a single experience like that.

Everyone thinks about it from time to time. If we’re going to die anyway, then isn’t all of this pointless? But since we’ll die either way, and in death we won’t be able to feel even that sense of futility, we tell ourselves that we should do what we can in the here and now. People live, and people die, in ways that are sad, comical, earnest, irresponsible, and serious. That’s what it means to be a person.

But you are different, Kuzaku. You look human, but you’re not. The most horrifying, dreadful thing about it is that, while you might understand on an intellectual level, it doesn’t feel real to you, and it probably never will. That’s why you were able to say you haven’t changed that much. You can’t understand humans, because you’re not one anymore.

You loved and respected me to a staggering degree, and were more loyal to me than anyone, to the point that it was a little annoying. It was rare to have someone care so much for me, and I liked you back, but you’re gone now. The No-Life King—no, Merry turned you into something different. And I’m the one who turned her into something different. It was me, Kuzaku. Ultimately, I’m the one who did this to you.

“Hmm...” Kuzaku crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. “I guess persuasion’s out, then? Well, Setora-san did tell me it wouldn’t work. She mentioned something about how no matter what I said, you wouldn’t accept. You know how clever she is. I mean, I know Setora-san’s right most of the time. Always has been. I shouldn’t neglect to respect her intellect. Hey, that all rhymes. Now’s not the time for wordplay, though. Anyway, I wanted to take your opinion into consideration. Maybe the end result’s the same, but I think how we get there matters. Setora-san’s not the type to care about that kinda thing. She’s all about efficiency.”

“Take my opinion into...” I was a little slow to realize it, but it finally dawned on me that I needed to be a bit more concerned about what was happening.

Kuzaku wasn’t human. He was in the No-Life King’s camp. The No-Life King, borrowing Merry’s lips, had told me that he wasn’t the enemy of humanity. Humanity had decided he was their enemy. He’d even said that he wanted to be our friend. But the No-Life King had united the undead he’d created with the orcs, the gray elves, the goblins, and the kobolds to attack and destroy the kingdoms of the human race. He had tried to be our friend rather than our enemy at first, but it hadn’t worked out, and so he’d joined hands with the oppressed orcs.

Even if the No-Life King hadn’t originally wanted it to be that way, he had become humanity’s enemy. And that had never changed. Kuzaku was a servant of the enemy. He was one of them. He was an enemy. An enemy had sneaked into Daybreak Village at dawn, and I was all alone with that enemy, an infiltrator whose goals I didn’t know.

My life as a laborer in Daybreak Village lacked the dangers I’d been used to as a volunteer soldier, but even so, I hadn’t become so careless that I didn’t sleep with a weapon. When I backed away, preparing to draw my dagger, Kuzaku put his hands up.

“Nah, listen, okay? If I was gonna off you, I’d have done it by now. I said I wanna talk, didn’t I? By the way, I’m not here to chat about old times, you know? Oh, let’s get back to the main topic. We’ve gotten way off into the weeds. Sorry about that.”

“What main topic?”

“I’m here to do a job. A job? Yeah, I think I’d call it a job. The king—that’s Merry-san, but it’s complicated, so I’ll just say the king. The king doesn’t give me and Setora-san orders. We aren’t told what to do, he only asks us for favors. He’s soft-spoken, you could say, or humble. Doesn’t act full of himself at all. He’s pretty busy running all over the place, so either Setora-san or I had to do this, and we decided it was probably better if it was me. I mean, Setora-san was technically never a volunteer soldier. She was from that village.”

“What... What did you come here for?”

“I. Already. Told. You. I’m here to talk. We seem to be going in circles here, huh? I’ll cut to the chase. This is an offer from the king. We want to know if you’d be willing to work with us, even if it’s just for a little while, toward a common goal?”

“That’s not...something you’re asking me as an individual, is it?”

“Nope. Soma’s here, and he’s your leader, right? But I feel like it’d be tough for me to just go and meet Soma right off the bat. Figured I’d better try going through you instead.”

“How do you even know about this place?”

“It’s near an exit to the Wonder Hole, right? Listen, Haruhiro. We’re exploring the Wonder Hole too. And actually, we’ve got a pretty long history of doing that.”

“I guess that’s not surprising.”

“Right? The king’s already retaken Undead DC. And some of the princes who’ve been around longer than us—though not all of them—have come back too. Makes it feel a bit awkward for me when I’m there. One of the princes, Gyabigo, explores the Wonder Hole for fun. He’s one of the ones that came back. You know about him?”

“Princes... And...Undead DC—you took it back?”

“Ohhh, you’re not aware of the situation at all? Figures, I guess. It’s pretty far away, after all. Undead DC was under the control of a prince called Ishidua Rohro. Terrible guy. Betrayed the king who made him undying, y’know. Used a relic to seal the king away. Then he took over, calling himself the king of the undead. Or at least, that used to be the case. When our king led the orcs and gray elves in an attack on Undead DC, King Ishi ran away without much of a fight. But he took the king’s original body and the relic with him, and we haven’t gotten them back yet. Uh, wait. Is it okay for me to be telling you about that?”

“Wait... Just hold on. If you dump all of this on me at once, I can’t keep up.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m not smart like Setora-san, so I’m bad at explaining things in an organized way. So, the king had five princes he’d shared his blood with, right? Or his power with. They were kind of like children to him. Me and Setora are the same, though. We’re not exactly undead. They’re something different from us.”

King Ishi, or Ishidua Rohro.

Deres Pain, who had assumed the title of archduke after the No-Life King vanished.

The four-armed “Dragon Hunter” Gyabigo.

The wielder of the primitive but powerful original form of magic, Architekra.

And Ainrand Leslie.

Those were the No-Life King’s original five princes.

One of the five, King Ishi, had sealed the No-Life King using a relic, and assumed the title of king of the undead.

Deres Pain had assisted King Ishi, and had then gone on to become the lord of a port town called Igor in the north.

As for Gyabigo and Architekra, after losing their sovereign, they had maintained a comfortable distance from King Ishi.

Ainrand Leslie had vanished. However, the name Ainrand Leslie and stories of him had continued to crop up in all sorts of places, beginning with the free city of Vele. I’ve had some involvement with Ainrand Leslie myself. We wandered into the Leslie Camp—which was, naturally, named after him—and as a result, we ended up in a mysterious world—or perhaps an afterlife—called Parano.

The No-Life King who had been revived inside Merry’s body had shared his blood—his power—with Kuzaku and Setora, turning them into princes. Then he had apparently gone on to form an alliance with the orcs and gray elves, and had attacked Undead DC. King Ishi had acted as if he would resist to the end, but had fled with his most important forces. Also, it seemed as though he might have taken the relic he had used to seal away the No-Life King with him, though that was unconfirmed.

“Y’know, it’s a shame. That relic that sealed away the king? I’ve never seen it myself, but basically, it’s supposed to be this big casket thing that the former king was inside. Like, you open it, and he’s in there? All this talk about the king, and the previous king, I dunno, it’s getting me twisted up and confused. The king’s true essence? His main body? That’s the stuff on the inside. And the outside is kinda just a vessel, maybe? There’s no telling what would’ve happened to Merry if we had gotten our hands on that thing. I could ask the king, but that’d be a little too awkward, even for me.”

“Merry’s...a vessel?”

“Uh, I dunno? It could just be that there’d be two kings then. Nah, that can’t be it. Or at least, I don’t think so. Seems unlikely. But y’know, I wonder. Because the king’s special. There could be things about him that make me think, ‘Nah, that can’t be it,’ but then it turns out that, surprise, surprise, that’s totally how it is. Yeah.”

I couldn’t decide how much I should believe what Kuzaku was saying. But if Merry was just the No-Life King’s vessel, then weren’t she and the No-Life King separate entities, strictly speaking? If the No-Life King regained his body, which was sealed inside that relic, then maybe he wouldn’t need Merry’s body anymore.

If so, then what would happen to Merry, his current vessel? If he left Merry, then would she go back to how she was before? Or was that too convenient of an outcome? It was possible that if the No-Life King left Merry, she would simply be an empty vessel that was no longer of any use. Basically, a hollow shell with nothing left inside. If that was the case, then I didn’t want the No-Life King to leave her. It would be better if he didn’t get his body back. But ultimately, that was all just hypothesizing. Even Kuzaku apparently didn’t know what would happen.

“Well, setting that aside, we’re facing the sekaishu, a massive problem, so wouldn’t it be good to deal with that first? That’s where we’re at now.”

“The sekaishu.”

Thinking back, the first time I had encountered the sekaishu was after Merry’s death. I had let Merry die, and Jessie had revived her by giving up his own life. Jessie had poured the contents of his body—which had looked like blood, but there’s no way that it was—inside Merry. From one container to another. And then there had been nothing left of Jessie but his skin. Obviously, he hadn’t been alive after that. Those had been Jessie’s remains. If Merry lost what was inside her, would she end up like that too?

But anyway, my first encounter with them was after that. The sekaishu had come seemingly out of nowhere. And then Merry had called them “Sekaishu.” She had known what they were. Or rather, the No-Life King inside of Merry knew. The sekaishu had appeared because they had detected his presence.

Then, when the No-Life King had finally awakened inside of Merry, she’d spoken as his mouthpiece.

“The world hates me. I am being rejected by the world. The sekaishu will try to remove me,” she had said.

All of this was triggered by the No-Life King awakening. The No-Life King draws in the sekaishu just by being there. That’s why he hides inside people like Jessie and Merry. Because if he doesn’t, the sekaishu will come.

But what about the relics? The sekaishu seem to be going after them. What are relics, really? Come to think of it, the hill southeast of Alterna turned into a mountain of sekaishu. What was on that hill? The Forbidden Tower. And what about the Crown Mountains in the Quickwind Plains? They were covered in sekaishu too. The lanky giants that lived around there also got attacked by the sekaishu.

The No-Life King.

Relics.

The Forbidden Tower.

The Crown Mountains.

Giants.

The world hates them.

The world is rejecting them.

Sekaishu.

I couldn’t figure it out. The Crown Mountains were one thing, but the No-Life King? The relics? The Forbidden Tower? The giants? Those were all beyond human knowledge. There was no way I was going to be able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

They transcend human comprehension. It’s hard to understand how such things exist in this world.

It’s hard to imagine that they’re of this world.

Someone had said something like that. Who was it? I can’t recall, but I feel like it was a woman.

The word relic is a catch-all for things that can’t be made with current knowledge, but that clearly had been made at some point in the past. Basically, they were things that seemed impossible to make, that weren’t new, and that hadn’t been made by anyone here.

It’s hard to imagine that they’re of this world.

They aren’t of this world.

Once, I—right, it was in the Well Village, in another world called Darunggar. There had been a stonework building there, with glass windows, and inside the building, there’d been a doll. It had been dressed in a red dress, white socks, and black shoes, and it’d had blue eyes and a red ribbon in its blonde hair. The people of Well Village had called the doll Kinuko. There had been more than just that doll Kinuko, though. They’d had all sorts of things on display inside the building.

A picture frame. A small, boardlike machine. Yeah, a machine. There had been a machine with lots of buttons on it there too. Intricately designed glasses, and awfully small books. Cans. Transparent containers that hadn’t been made of glass.

People would find those things, then put them in that building. They had to be objects from other worlds. Things that couldn’t be made in this world, but that could be made in another. That’s what relics are.

But what “things” can be relics? Is it limited to objects? What about creatures? What about us?

We came from some other world to Grimgar. I don’t have any concrete proof of that, but it’s a vague intuition I have. It’s possible that I’m wrong, and we were born in some faraway place in this world, and were just brought here somehow. Or is there some reason that the sekaishu don’t see us as foreign objects, unlike how they see relics?

Regardless, relics are foreign objects.

The No-Life King is a foreign object.

The giants are foreign objects.

What about the Forbidden Tower?

It was a relic.

Merry said so.

No.

That wasn’t Merry. It was the No-Life King.

The Forbidden Tower was a relic, and therefore a foreign object, so the sekaishu swarmed around it.

The No-Life King knew he was being targeted by the sekaishu. You could say he was running away by hiding inside a human skin. But he’d come out when he’d transferred from Jessie to Merry. That had let the sekaishu detect him. If all of that was correct, didn’t that mean I was the one who had created the conditions that had allowed this situation to develop?

If I hadn’t tried to bring Merry back, the No-Life King would have stayed inside Jessie. Jessie had seemed like he’d been reasonably happy just building the self-sufficient village he’d called Jessie Land. Maybe he’d had some kind of secret plot to revive the No-Life King and regain power. But I, we, wouldn’t have gotten involved in that, would we?

“You want to do something about the sekaishu...? Is that even possible? Kuzaku, is your...king going to deal with the sekaishu?”

“Well, see, that’s the thing...”

Kuzaku started to answer, but then he shut his mouth. Kuzaku had the great katana that he’d used before his death strapped diagonally across his back, and a longsword hanging at his hip. He drew the longsword, and leaped backward.

I couldn’t move a step. He wasn’t like Kuzaku at all. Kuzaku hadn’t exactly been slow, but because of his size, his arms and legs had moved at a more relaxed pace. Now that he’d died and become something different, he seemed to be twice as fast as he’d been before.

If Kuzaku had wanted to, he could have cut me down. He could have bisected me with ease. Therefore, he clearly had no intention of doing so. He hadn’t drawn his longsword to slay me. It was for his own defense.

I hadn’t noticed, but someone had been creeping up on us. They suddenly sprang out from behind me, taking a swing at Kuzaku.

“Hey, Ranta-kun! Long time no see!”

“Shut up, you knockoff!”

Ranta took swing after swing with his nameless katana, but Kuzaku dodged them all, or deflected them with his longsword. Was Ranta fighting seriously? Or was he holding back? I couldn’t tell. Kuzaku seemed like he was taking it easy, though. He made good use of his long limbs and the strength that allowed him to swing his longsword around like it was a twig to give himself a huge amount of reach. No matter how Ranta tried to close in, Kuzaku didn’t let him.

“‘Knockoff’? That’s mean, Ranta-kun. You can’t just go calling me that. It’s me, Kuzaku, the genuine article.”

“How’re you Kuzaku?! Don’t give me that shit! You damn fake!”

“Don’t throw a fit just ’cause you can’t beat me. You’re plenty strong, okay? But I’m insanely good. That’s all. I may not look like it, but I’ve been through some serious hell. Running all over the place. It’s been a whole lot of trouble.”

“Like I care, moron! Die!”

“Yeah, I can’t do that. I don’t die easily. Oh, I know. How about you, Ranta-kun? Want to try becoming like us? With your personality, I bet you’d turn out even stronger than me.”

“Huh?! Don’t be ridiculous! Who’d ever agree to—!”

“A baby’s gonna be born here soon.” Why did I say that? Well, one thing is clear to me. I wanted to stop them. I was trying to stop them. If I’d begged, Kuzaku would probably have backed down. But Ranta might not have. Knowing his personality, he wouldn’t have taken a step back until he was satisfied.

“You...! Mor...!” Ranta sputtered before jumping sideways, then turning to look at me.

Kuzaku didn’t take the opening to attack. “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!” he shouted. His voice was incredibly loud.

“No way! A baby?! Whose... Whaaaaaaaaaa?! Don’t tell me, whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?! It’s not Haruhiro’s and Yume-san’s, is it?!”

“Like hell it is! It’s my baby with Yume, obviously! Go die!”

“Oh, yeah? Go figure. But still, whaaaaaaa?! That’s awesome. Whaaaaaa! I gotta let Setora-san and Merry-san know. Whaaaaaa! Seriously?!”

Because he was raising his voice so much, the people of Daybreak Village were waking up and starting to gather around. Kuzaku was quick to throw down his longsword and great katana and put up his hands, even kneeling on the ground to show he didn’t mean to resist. In all likelihood, surrendering so that he could bring the No-Life King’s proposal to Daybreak Village had been part of the plan. He might have even been directed to do so by the No-Life King or Setora. If so, he should’ve done it from the beginning, but Kuzaku had deliberately come to me for a one-on-one chat. That was what he’d wanted to do. Maybe when he’d said he wanted to kill me and make me like him and Setora, that was his way of showing he cared for me, even as an undead. Kuzaku had changed. He was a very different person. But he was still Kuzaku.

The members of Daybreak bound Kuzaku and assigned guards to him just to be safe, then gathered around the campfire to discuss. Fortunately, Soma was in Daybreak Village instead of elsewhere, so the discussion didn’t get too complicated. Soma wasn’t the type to actively steer a conversation, and he didn’t strongly push his own viewpoints. Outside of the battlefield, he almost never acted in an intimidating way. He’d talk frankly about what he was thinking, even to someone like me.

With Soma around, everyone could say what they liked, and yet somehow the discussion would never go totally off the rails. Those with strong opinions would dispute them fruitlessly for a while, and then he’d step in to sum it all up. With him at the center, things stayed calm. He really had an interesting kind of charisma about him.

That said, I had seen Soma for the first time not long after I became a volunteer soldier, and in the intervening years he had mellowed out a lot. The Soma in Daybreak Village came off somewhat like a father figure.

“Let’s meet with the No-Life King and talk. If we can’t meet, we can’t trust him, and there’s no cooperation to be had. How does that sound as our response, everyone?”

I couldn’t nod in agreement. Meeting the No-Life King meant meeting Merry again. I wasn’t ready for that yet at the time. But even so, if I could see her, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Kuzaku was different from the old Kuzaku, but was still Kuzaku. So what about Merry? I had to see for myself.