Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 13 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Black Loss, White Reconstitution

There was no path, but it wasn’t because of something obvious like construction work blocking the road. This was my world, so that sort of thing wouldn’t happen. The lack of a path was something wholly different.

Before me, the entire region, including the road, was pitch black. It was as if someone had accidentally spilled black ink on a landscape painting. That said, it wasn’t a simple black that just absorbed light. It was a dreary and empty black, as if the world itself was falling apart.

“What is this?”

The world quite literally came to an end here. It didn’t exist beyond this point, even though there was no reason it shouldn’t.

“This is where...”

It was where the path that led to my school was supposed to be. Just as I tried to say that, I realized something. The path I’d taken every day was supposed to be full of familiar scenery to me, even if I hadn’t paid much attention as I cycled along on my bike. However, right now, I couldn’t remember what it looked like at all. That was exactly why I understood what was going on.

“I guess that makes sense... This is my world.”

I’d seen it as such from the very beginning, so it wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

“Meaning the pieces that are missing from my memory have fallen apart.”

I’d been warned about this before. My once-human soul was losing its original shape, eroding in the process. My inherent ability also took memories of my old world away, a loss that was reflected in this world.

“Master...”

“Ssster?”

Salvia and Asarina called out to me in consideration. I smiled bitterly, feeling a little ridiculous.

“Salvia, you knew about this?”

When I’d asked her if she hadn’t looked around that far, Salvia had looked slightly uneasy. Now I understood that she’d done so because she knew. It wasn’t that she didn’t try to go very far; it was that she couldn’t. This world was likely far smaller than I’d thought it was. It was chipping apart, vanishing, and breaking. The familiar path we’d been taking had no abnormalities, but if we took one step to the side, there would surely be nothing there. In fact, even the route to school I’d taken every day was in this sorry state.

I already knew this—I’d resolved myself for it—but when it was displayed before me so evidently, I wasn’t strong enough to remain indifferent. My lost memories painted this world black. What would happen once the entire world was black? The sight was more than enough for me to predict an answer to that question.

Still, I had expected this, which was why I stood frozen for only an instant. However, even in that instant, someone moved.

“It’s all right, my dear,” Salvia said, stepping in front of me.

Her steps were light. The sight before us was bleak, but it was as if she paid it no mind. She hunched down and reached a finger out to touch the missing land.

“What are—”

In the middle of my questioning what she was doing, a phenomenon occurred.

“Mist...?” I muttered.

Mist poured out of Salvia’s body. It spread out like a whirlwind and grew denser. At the same time, the presence of mana grew more prominent. After dispersing somewhat, it then started concentrating in one place, right at Salvia’s fingertip.

“The greatest illusion magic can trick the world itself, rewriting reality,” she said as mist continued gathering at the spot she was touching. “Such is the Misty Lodge. I’ll demonstrate its power here and now.”

The white mist filled in the missing black of the world. At the same time, the mist replaced the scenery, reconstructing what was lost. It was just like a dream.

“That about does it,” Salvia remarked.

By the time she stood back up, the path had been rebuilt. A line of trees stood in the plaza behind the municipal office, and a road ran alongside it. Yes. This was what it looked like. The moment that thought came to mind, I realized my memories had returned.

“How...?”

“How can I do that?” Salvia finished for me, linking her hands behind her back and turning my way. “You’re asking the wrong question, my dear. This is the type of being I am to begin with.”

Now that she mentioned it, she’d said the same thing earlier. She’d explained her nature to me when we first met. Magic that made impossible wishes a reality—that was what the Misty Lodge truly was. In that case, maybe this was, in fact, Salvia’s primary function.

“Just kidding. Maybe I played it up a bit too much,” Salvia said, smiling bashfully. “I confess, it isn’t always this easy. This is a very familiar place to you, so that made it much simpler. In the real world, the magic will come undone and return to normal, but once things are reconstituted here—once you remember—the world stabilizes. Normally, I need to continue doing it until it stabilizes fully, but it looks like that’s unnecessary this time.”

Her confession guided me to a certain conclusion.

“Have you been doing this the whole time you’ve been here?” I asked. “Is that why you haven’t come out lately?”

For the sake of restoring what’d been lost, she’d recreated what was gone and stopped things from breaking. Nevertheless, doing so required a significant amount of mana. If she was here restoring this world, then the mana she was meant to be stockpiling was definitely being exhausted instead.

“Just for me...”

“You can’t think of it that way, my dear,” Salvia said, cutting me off. Her gentle eyes captured my gaze. “Please don’t say that.”

Her words held a mysterious power that prevented me from saying any more.

After seeing me fall silent, Salvia smiled. “I’m doing this because I want to,” she said, satisfaction clear on her face. I could tell how much she believed she was no longer just an onlooker. “Right, Asarina?”

“Ssster,” Asarina purred in agreement.

I was speechless, and just then...

“How beautiful.”

I heard a voice. It was as if it echoed from the abyss, sending chills running up my spine.

◆ ◆ ◆

I was caught totally off guard. I mean, this was our world. No one else was supposed to be here, so the shock of hearing another voice was like a sudden punch to the face.

“Strength born of the purity of your bonds and feelings for one another. I see. I understand how you’ve made it this far.”

It was an unfamiliar young man’s voice, one I shouldn’t have been able to hear in this world.

“Wha—?”

We turned around in a panic, and green eyes looked back at us.

“You’re...?”

A young man with dark brown hair stood down the path Salvia had reconstructed. He hadn’t been there earlier. If he had, we absolutely would’ve noticed. Faced with this unexpected abnormality, I immediately drew the sword at my waist.

“Why is there a human here?!” I bellowed.

Only my servants could enter this world. Well, strictly speaking, there’d been one other exception—Travis, the man who’d turned into a vengeful ghost by using Holy Water.

“What are you?!” I yelled, pointing my sword at him.

Asarina bore her fangs and growled. Salvia hung mist around her so that she could make a move at any time. The young man before us was different from the melting and rotting Travis, but that didn’t mean we could lower our guard. He’d rudely barged into our world, after all. However, the young man completely ignored our behavior.

“You’ve come this far. With no help, at that. This is the second occurrence in such a short time.”

His tone was calm. In contrast to the tension on our side, he was perfectly at ease, which was why something felt off. It felt extremely unpleasant. I grew even warier, but as expected, the young man didn’t care.

“Seriously, it’s truly astonishing.”

He spoke without really addressing us, then for the first time, his expression changed.

“You’re an interesting one.”

He smiled. That said, I obviously didn’t feel any friendship toward him for it.

“What are you?” I asked, glaring at him with my sword still at the ready.

“You’ll find out one day,” he said, retracting his smile.

“What—”

“But not yet.”

With that, the young man vanished. I stood stock still in confusion. Nothing made sense. He hadn’t done anything, but the whole encounter left me feeling genuinely uncomfortable.

And then my consciousness started escaping me.

“Time’s up,” Salvia muttered.

I felt the world getting farther away from me. In other words, I was exiting this place—

◆ ◆ ◆

The moment I woke up, I sprang upright.

“Senpai?”

I heard a voice. I raised my face and saw Katou standing by my bed and looking at me.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You were groaning in your sleep.”

It seemed she’d come to check on me. I looked around, and everyone else was getting out of bed with worried looks.

“What’s wrong, Master?” Lily asked, getting up next to me and putting a hand to my forehead. The cold sensation of her palm against my slightly damp skin felt good. “Did you have a bad dream?”

If only I could say I had.

“Ssster.”

Just then, Asarina came out of my hand and purred. I sighed.

“Salvia?” I said.

“I’m right here.”

Salvia came out of a shroud of mist. Our eyes met, and she nodded. It seemed I hadn’t been dreaming.

“Everyone, I have something to talk about,” I said with another sigh.

◆ ◆ ◆

I shared everything I knew about what had happened right away. After that, we talked about countermeasures. There’d been an invader inside my world. Travis came to mind, but I couldn’t think of any instance of Holy Water finding its way to me, and I felt fine too. I hadn’t been able to sense someone inside me like I had back then, anyway. I couldn’t say for sure, but this felt more like a momentary point of contact rather than the effect of Holy Water.

“The intervention of someone with an ability that affects the mind... I suppose that would be about right?” Katou said. “But I don’t know if it’s a cheater, a beloved of blessed blood, or a relic of salvation.”

I was in agreement. At the very least, the person I’d met seemed to be a resident of this world. That didn’t necessarily mean he had the same appearance in reality, though. Still, speaking of abilities that affected the mind, someone came to mind right away—the cheater known as Heaven’s Voice, who’d been involved in the attack on Fort Tilia and had been in contact with Takaya Jun.

“But Heaven’s Voice is supposed to need to touch their target to manifest their ability, right?” Lily said.

“The exploration team thinks so, at least,” I said.

“That’s right,” Iino confirmed. “According to Okazaki.”

“Is he trustworthy?” Lily asked.

Iino nodded as if it were perfectly natural that he would be. “Okazaki’s ability is to use anyone else’s ability, after all.”

“The Almighty Vessel, huh?” Lily said, sounding like she found this a tad fishy.

I understood how she felt. Okazaki Takuma’s cheat apparently allowed him to use other people’s cheats. That said, I had heard of the inherent abilities of all the exploration team’s nicknamed cheaters like Iino and Shimazu, including those of the Almighty Vessel, so this part was definitely true.

“Okazaki can use other cheaters’ abilities. That includes Heaven’s Voice,” Iino said. “That’s why he knows how it works.”

“So you say, but it’s another matter whether Okazaki Takuma is really telling the truth,” Lily rationally pointed out.

Iino pouted a little, but before she could say anything, I cut in.

“Well, even if we believe him, I have no idea whether I came in contact with Heaven’s Voice during our time in the Colony. Either way, it’s entirely possible.”

And if that had, in fact, been Heaven’s Voice, we could analyze what he’d said to a certain extent.

“Strength born of the purity of your bonds and feelings for one another. I see. I understand how you’ve made it this far.”

We’d finally reached the imperial capital just the other day. It had been a long and thorny path, but it was a step toward reaching my objective of living a quiet life with my servants. Thanks to everyone, I’d overcome many obstacles to “make it this far.” If that was what he meant, I understood.

“You’ve come this far. With no help, at that. This is the second occurrence in such a short time.”

That statement was harder to interpret. If, for example, he meant “without the help of any visitors,” I could understand somewhat. Iino and Shimazu’s help hadn’t been made public, so if Heaven’s Voice wasn’t part of the exploration team, they wouldn’t know. I didn’t understand what he meant by “second occurrence,” but maybe someone else he’d had his eyes on was already in the capital.

“You’re an interesting one.”

And then there were his parting words. From the way Heaven’s Voice had pulled the strings behind the attack on Fort Tilia and the way they’d instigated Takaya Jun into action, I got the impression they were a criminal who took joy in how people reacted to their crimes. In that sense, they had much in common with this mysterious man. Of course, he could have just said a bunch of random things, though...

In any case, it was best to remain vigilant. After consulting everyone about it, I decided to report this incident to the Holy Order too. Although, it wasn’t as if I’d come to any real harm. It’d all happened in my sleep, so I wouldn’t be able to say much if they brushed it off as a bad dream. It was fifty-fifty that they were even going to take me seriously. I just hoped it would prompt them to be more cautious. However, the knights reacted in a far more favorable manner than that.

“Please be at ease, sir. We shall handle this immediately.”

Not only did Gordon believe me when he came by at my request early in the morning, he swiftly took action.

“We will set up magic tools to block all mental interference. By installing them in your room, they should obstruct any attempts to tamper with your mind from the outside.”

“So you’ve even got stuff like that?”

They lived up to their name as the world’s largest religious organization. They were in possession of all sorts of magic tools.

“Once the formalities are done, I’ll bring them over in the evening. Furthermore, I’ll revise our security protocols.”

Gordon had taken charge of the issue for us. In a sense, one could say we were even safer than before. After doing what we could, we finally had some room to relax.

◆ ◆ ◆

“Well then, shall we have breakfast?” Katou suggested after Gordon left. “They say you can’t fight on an empty stomach, and there’s no point mulling over it too much.”

“Yeah, let’s,” I agreed.

It was an unpleasant event, but fretting over it wouldn’t get us anywhere. It wasn’t as if the man had done anything to me, and it was fairly unlikely he would. I already had a track record of defeating Travis when he was armed with a relic of salvation. To harm me in the world of light would require a more poisonous power than the Travis variant of Holy Water. Not even saviors could do that.

In truth, I hadn’t felt any kind of threat from the young man. If he was Heaven’s Voice, I simply had to keep in mind not to let his words deceive me. Well, it was unpleasant to be prodded like that, but thanks to the Holy Order, we had a countermeasure against it. It was best to restore our spirits for now.

With that in mind, we had breakfast and relaxed. Lobivia was a little on edge, so I passed the time looking after her. That was when Mikihiko dropped by with Elena’s group.

“I’m here, Takahiro. Sounds like something weird happened. You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, no problems here,” I answered.

“If you say so. That’s good to hear.”

Mikihiko started by worrying about me, but once he knew I was okay, he flashed me a carefree smile.

“So, your schedule still open this morning?” he asked.

“Yeah. I knew you were coming, so I left it open.”

“Right on. In that case, wanna come with me for a bit?”

“Sure. What for?”

“Remember? Yesterday you said if you had nothing going on you’d exercise by sparring with Lily or Rose or the like, yeah?” he said, grinning. It was like he was inviting me to play on the way to the train station. “How ’bout sparring with me instead?”