Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 7.04

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“That said, Koyomin, you might know a little bit about this since you must have gotten a lecture from the very green Tadatsuru while in the depths of hell─or somewhere like it. Someone with good enough intuition should be able to arrive at the right answer after hearing nothing more than this park’s official name.

“But we can’t allow a conclusion made from a haphazard guess to turn into a mistake at a moment as critical as this one─so I’ll be explaining this from the top. What I say here may seem to be unrelated to Ogi Oshino at times, but I want you to listen carefully since this is where everything began.

“Four hundred years ago.

“Tell me, what happened then?

“You can’t be so dull that you’d even get this question wrong, Koyomin─yes, the date that the legendary vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade arrived in Japan. Though it’d be a major event now, surely creating a major commotion at the airport, there were no airports in Japan then, I’m sad to report.

“But I don’t say that as some sort of jokey metaphor─rather than use the ocean routes in that grand seafaring age, she arrived from afar by sky.

“You’ve already heard the circumstances from her own mouth─and we could have her explain it again since she’s here with us, but I’m going to ask that you allow me to do the honors, given all the hard work I’ve put in. I’m sure it’s not something that Shinobu─or rather, Miss Shinobu is very eager to do, either.

“To summarize… Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, about two hundred years old at the time, went on a trip around the world out of boredom. I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that the two-hundred-year-mark or so is when immortal vampires tire most of life.

“The unusual thing about her was that she visited Antarctica as a part of this global trip─but this would also lead her down the path of destruction.

“This happened because nothing existed in Antarctica that could recognize the aberration she was. Aberrations can only exist by being recognized by humans, after all─so she couldn’t exist for long on the massive uninhabited island that is Antarctica. Even Heartunderblade, however exceptional a vampire she may be, was no exception.

“So she panicked and escaped from Antarctica.

“She escaped with a super jump instant air dash.

“This is where the uncharacteristically flustered Heartunderblade flew into the air without thinking about her destination─I’m sure that she wouldn’t have done anything so thoughtless in regular times, but it was an emergency involving her continued existence, after all. And even if she’d landed in the mouth of a volcano, it wouldn’t have been much of a problem at all for someone like her with absolute immortality. Were you to compare it to something a human would do, it’d be like being flustered and walking barefoot to your front doorstep─or the opposite, walking back into your home without taking off your shoes in order to grab something you forgot. Nothing but a question of footing.

“At least, it should have been.

“No, in reality, that’s what it was─but this would be more than a small splash for the place where she landed. Quite literally, the splash she created was stunning.

“There, in the country known as Japan.

“Stood a body of water in a provincial town.

“She splashed down in the lake─splashing it everywhere.

“It’s incredible if you think about it in terms of probability. She’d essentially thrown a dart at a spinning globe, and not only did she happen to hit Japan, she landed right on a lake. The expectation would be for the dart to hit the ocean, and even if it did hit land, to hit a continent like the Americas or Eurasia.

“I guess you can just say she has great luck.

“That’s Heartunderblade for you.

“To go further, that lake was no regular lake─what’s incredible is that it was a sacred lake that had garnered the collective faith of the people of the area.

“A kind of Shinto shrine, if you want.

“She’d sent that splashing everywhere, so she’d created more than a little mess… She deserved more than divine punishment, and she would in fact face quite the punishment. That just shows you how well the world works.

“How balanced it stays.

“Heartunderblade jumped from Antarctica and flew halfway around the world like some sort of inter-continental ballistic missile only to land in a sacred lake─destroying it outright.

“Drying it out.

“She of course didn’t suffer a scratch─and it would have healed in the blink of an eye even if she had, but as for the place where she landed, as for the impact zone, this was quite the problem─but, as I said just a moment ago, while the occult view of this mess she made would say she deserved punishment, she had in fact brought blessings to the area as well.

“The water of the lake that flew into the air as a result of her impact turned right into blessed rain that fell on the then drought-stricken area.

“This must have seemed like a miracle to the people there who worshiped the lake─a welcome rain that meant their daily and nightly prayers to their god had been answered. After all, there at the base of the dried-up lake appeared a beautiful blond woman.

“She appeared, or maybe she seemed born.

“And so, they thought of her as a manifestation of their god─which was hardly surprising.

“If anything, it’d be surprising if they didn’t.

“As a result, the Western aberration that is a vampire─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, usurped their faith.

“Or you could say she scattered their god and took over its position.

“The shock is even greater when you consider that this means Heartunderblade had already slain a god before she was ever called the Aberration Slayer.

“You might be getting bored by now since this is your second time hearing this story, Koyomin, but is that how you’ve been reading this episode? That Heartunderblade had been treated like a god by accident, and that there was some god there that had been expelled from their seat?

“Come on, Miss Shinobu. There’s no need to hold Koyomin that tight. He’s nothing more than a delicate little human now. You’ll tear his body in two if you squeeze him like that.

“I’m not criticizing you. This is just a story─of long before long, long ago. It’d be too late to try to say anything about it. If I did dare to say something, it’d be that you rejected becoming a god despite being treated like one… That your strong sense of self, something no aberration should have, made the situation worse.

“I do want to point out the fact you made the situation worse.

“And that you invited the Darkness in.

“As a result, Heartunderblade was chased from the land back once more to Antarctica… But we’ll skip over what happened next.

“What we need to talk about right now is about the land whose god was scattered and whose false god was banished─in other words, we need to talk about the land with no god that had been created.

“Though blessed rains fell on the land, and rain continued to fall there thanks to their false god─that too disappeared, and the Darkness drastically reduced its population, and the land was devastated.

“But humans never stop growing in number, and have to live─they needed faith in order to live. No, you can’t blame it on the era. We still need to believe in something to keep on living, don’t we?

“Even I couldn’t live without believing in something.

“So long as we’re alive.

“So long as we live as humans, we have to believe in something or someone─whether that’s god, common sense, devils, or uncommon sense is up to you, of course.

“I wonder what it is in your case.

“Now that you’re familiar with aberrations, vampires, and even hell, what are you going to believe in as you keep living your life─what will you need to believe in to keep on living?

“In any case, as for the people who lost the lake they needed to worship, who’d lost their god─they needed to find a new god.

“No.

“They needed to create a new god.

“And so─they moved their shrine.

“They sealed the lake.

“And that’s what sealed their fate.

“All this happened quite a long time ago, so this, if anything, is something I can’t be certain of without the use of time travel…but it does seem the people of this land, having lost their faith and their population, decided to join a local indigenous faith to find a way to survive.

“This indigenous faith worshiped mountains, making it of a contrasting type to their former lake-based faith, in a way. If you’ll allow me to irresponsibly drop in from the future to make an irresponsible criticism, they were trying to do something absurd by bringing the ways of their lake to the mountains. What kind of a grafting is that? Though almost all the citizens who had worshiped the lake, which is to say Heartunderblade, had been swallowed up by the Darkness.

“The lake had dried out by then.

“The people who moved the residence of their god must not have known the details─in a sense, that’s when their traditions and their legends came to an end.

“An unsure next generation taking a faith─attempting to recreate a faith that seemed to have worked in the past. That’s not something I can laugh at and call foolish.

“And it’s not as if they were completely off the mark─they had the clamp needed to perform that grafting.

“A clamp.

“An axis─they had a thread that connected the mountain to the lake.

“Or rather, not a thread, but something else long and winding.

“A serpent─a snake.

“To air it all out, just as Kissshot did to the lake, the actual form the god worshiped there took was a water snake─and the form taken by the god of the small indigenous faith in the mountains was a mountain snake.

“A water snake and a mountain snake.

“The snakes were connected.

“Are you familiar with the traditional saying and legend that the snake who lives a thousand years in the mountains and a thousand years in the seas will become a dragon? Well, strangely enough, that’s the exact thing that happened here.

“This nearby indigenous religion was on the wane itself. As befitting of their god, taking in this new fold only meant creating a thin, long faith─it just didn’t work. The graft wasn’t meant to be.

“Like a puzzle piece that’s been forced into a space just because the color looks right. While it may work at first glance, you can’t deny that there’s something warped about it.

“This twisted, unbalanced nature created a kind of air pocket. One that gathered what we’d call bad things. But while these side effects and reactions occurred, the faith did manage to squirm its way through the next four hundred years or so─while I’ve exaggerated and hyperbolized this story to make it sound as dramatic as possible, these kinds of minor errors do happen all the time.

“They’re human acts, after all.

“Of course there will be mistakes.

“You can’t disapprove of every single instance─if the mistake is not a lie, not a falsehood, then you ought to overlook it.

“To be more specific, while the Darkness did not forgive Heartunderblade for feigning to be a god, the connection of the lake to the mountain seems to have been beyond the scope of its duties.

“So.

“I could talk about the details of this forever. It’s like an inexhaustible lake, but let’s stop with the tales of old times here.

“What I’m trying to say, Koyomin, is that the remains of the lake that disappeared without a trace as a result of Shinobu’s super jump instant air dash are located here, Shirohebi Park─and that the mountain shrine where they relocated the faith was Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.”