Chapter 12 — Takatou...You’re Starting to Sound Awfully Brutal
The people in the city guided Yogiri and Tomochika to a house in relatively good condition. “Relatively,” because though it didn’t have any obvious holes in the walls or roof, it was still run down.
Entering a room that looked like an eat-in kitchen, they sat at a small table. Yogiri looked around the room while they waited. There was no sign of anyone actually living there. It didn’t seem like the kitchen was being used, and it didn’t look like it had been cleaned. Though the “abandoned” city seemed to be populated, he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life they led here. He couldn’t tell just by looking at their surroundings.
“Uhh...so they want you to kill them?” Tomochika asked. “What are you going to do?”
“I can’t just kill people because they ask me to.” Long ago, he had killed the remnants of some beings at their request. Their consciousnesses had been scraped away by the passage of time to the point where the only thing they had left was the desire to die. They wanted total erasure and understood there was nothing else that could be done for them.
However, it was a different story for someone who was still human, both in form and mind. When Yogiri was younger, he might have killed them without question. But he wasn’t that simple-minded anymore.
“Hey, thanks for waiting.” A young boy walked into the room. He looked to be about six years old. Compared to the others, he seemed much better dressed. There were no large holes in his clothes, although they were still dirty and worn out. His eyes were purple, just like everyone else’s in the city.
“What happened to the others?” Yogiri asked.
“Ah, they can’t really think straight. So as the most rational person remaining, I’ve been sent to act as their representative. My name is Scott. I’m nothing fancy like a mayor or leader, though. I hope you don’t mind.”
“If you can tell us what we want to know, that’s good enough. I’m Yogiri Takatou.”
“My name is Tomochika Dannoura.”
After their brief introduction, the boy sat down at the table across from them. “Now then. You seem to be new here. How much do you know?”
“We know that there are four factions fighting, and that this Seyla thing is infecting the plants and animals.”
“Then I guess I should start by explaining the Seyla. I’m sure you already know, but we’re also infected.”
“I heard that infection makes you immortal,” Yogiri said. There were plenty of people who would wish for that, but from what they had heard so far, there seemed to be some negative side effects.
“Technically, we can’t die or grow older. Once you’re infected, you don’t age anymore. It may sound odd coming from someone who looks like a child, but I’ve been this way for decades already.”
“Just how immortal are you?” Yogiri asked.
“As far as we can tell, there are no limits.”
“Even if your body is ripped apart?”
“Put the pieces back together, and we’ll go back to normal.”
“What if you’re eaten by an animal?”
“The lost pieces will regenerate.”
“And if you’re burned up?”
“We’ll just reappear from the ashes.”
“What if you’re dissolved in acid? Oh, I guess that’s probably the same as using fire.”
“Yes. We’d still go back to normal.”
“But if you jumped into a pool of acid, you would keep dissolving even if you regenerated, so that’s almost like dying, right?”
“Takatou...you’re starting to sound awfully brutal,” Tomochika interjected.
“We tried that,” Scott answered. “We couldn’t get a pool of acid, but we did try jumping into a volcano. The lava was enough to keep killing us, but I’m still here.”
“Why is that?”
“If you leave someone infected dying over and over like that, eventually they’ll reappear in a safe place.”
“So...it’s not really just about regenerating the body, then.”
“Right. We tried lots of things, like sinking to the bottom of the sea and cutting our bodies into many pieces, sealing them in concrete, and scattering them, but in any situation where we can’t regenerate, we just reappear with an entirely new body somewhere else.”
“Even if you’re petrified or frozen?”
“Yes, the same thing happens. And I can tell you, it is a weird feeling to suddenly appear next to your own petrified body.”
“Hmm. What about locking yourself in a cramped box until you go insane? That could be a spiritual death of sorts.”
“You’re a bit too into this, aren’t you, Takatou?” Tomochika said with a sigh.
Yogiri couldn’t disagree.
“We tried that, of course,” the boy said. “Losing touch with reality might be good enough in the end, after all. But it was no use. Mental damage is regenerated by the Seyla as well. Eventually, we will appear outside the box, fully restored. We can even remember going insane, but can’t keep ourselves that way.”
“That’s amazing. It’s like the Seyla has thought of everything.”
“Doesn’t that make you curious, though? We do not get sick or old, and no matter what danger we face, we always return to life somewhere safe. That’s a pretty good deal, don’t you think? So why would people like us want to die?”
“Are you just tired of living after tens of thousands of years?”
“No. Though we’ve certainly lost sense of time after so long, it’s only been a few decades at most. At this point, we haven’t even exceeded a normal human lifespan.”
“Hmm. Then I have no idea,” Yogiri admitted.
From their discussion so far, the only real negative he could think of was the inability to grow up. He could imagine people like Scott being frustrated, stuck as a child forever, but an eternally healthy body was something most people could only dream of.
“There are two primary reasons. One is the hunger. We are always in a state of starvation. There are almost no sources of food on this continent, and those infected by the Seyla can no longer eat the animals or plants that are also infected. Of course, no matter how hungry we get, we won’t die or even lose weight, but our desire for food doesn’t go away. The hunger is constantly tormenting us, driving us mad. Going completely insane would be preferable, but the Seyla doesn’t allow that. We always return to sanity at some point, and the hunger remains. The Seyla makes no effort to reduce our suffering, like it believes that feeling pain is proof we’re still alive.”
“That sounds...horrible!” Tomochika exclaimed.
“You do like your food, don’t you, Dannoura?”
She always eats as much as she can, doesn’t she? Mokomoko added.
“Can you stop talking like I’m a glutton character?!” Tomochika seemed to sympathize with the people of the city from the bottom of her heart.
“I can handle the hunger a little better than the others. That’s why I am able to act as their representative. Maybe because of having a more developed metabolism, the hunger hits adults harder. With fresh meat in front of them, they can’t act rationally.”
“No matter how many times it happens, I can’t get used to the idea of being seen as food...” Tomochika murmured.
“There are people who aren’t infected by Seyla, though, right? Can’t you buy normal food from them?”
“That is where the second reason comes in. On this continent, those infected by Seyla are seen as a resource to be exploited. There is no negotiating.”
“A resource, huh? I can’t imagine that means anything good.” Yogiri remembered the sight in the tower in the canyon. He had witnessed half-demons being used as an energy source to power the ancient trap there.
“I’m sure it’s just as bad as you think. But it’s easier if you see our situation for yourselves.” Scott stood from his chair and stepped over to the window. Yogiri and Tomochika followed him over at the implicit invitation. “Take a look outside. It’s a normal enough occurrence for us, but if you get caught, it’ll be a problem for you, so be careful and stay hidden.”
Doing as they were told, Yogiri and Tomochika poked their heads out the window. People had collapsed all over the streets just like before.
“Do they always lie there like that?”
“Yes. There’s no need to work to survive, after all.” They normally spent all day sleeping on the streets.
“That’s definitely not normal,” Tomochika said sharply.
“I haven’t gotten to that point yet, but I can understand how they feel,” Scott replied.
“I never thought something could drive people to giving up like that...” Yogiri couldn’t understand their feelings, but he couldn’t deny that immortality might do that to someone.
After observing the scene for a while, they heard footsteps. Soon, five fully armed people arrived. Their body armor must have been a preventative measure against the Seyla. Looking closely, they seemed a bit different than the thugs from the Slow Life League who had attacked them immediately after their arrival in Belm.
“Soldiers from Himeln,” Scott explained.
“This is the western side of the continent, right? I thought Himeln was in the northeast. They came all the way here?” Yogiri asked.
“They have territory all over the place.” Presumably, being far from their home base didn’t make much difference to them. “Right now, this is a farm belonging to Himeln. Well, they don’t do anything to cultivate us, so I guess ‘hunting ground’ would be more accurate?”
The soldiers stopped a short distance away from a collapsed man. One of them raised a long-handled weapon. Where one would expect a spearhead was a long, cylindrical object. The soldier threw the spear at the man on the ground, a string attached to the weapon extending back to him. The spear punched through the man’s back and into the ground beneath him. He only let out a small cry of pain.
The other soldiers began to use their spears to attack the other infected people lying around the city.
“Bizarre, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. What are they doing?”
“They are collecting energy from us. Those objects on the end of their spears are called ‘cylinders.’ They are devices used to absorb energy.”
“Aside from being immortal, you’re just normal humans, right?” Yogiri asked. “You don’t have exceptional magical energy like half-demons, do you?”
“I don’t know if it’s magical, but we have an infinite supply of some kind of energy. When we die, we come back to life. That requires energy, right?”
“And they can just take it?”
“Yes. Those cylinders contain a deadly poison. Anyone stabbed by them will die repeatedly, and each time they come back to life, the soldiers steal the energy used to resurrect them.”
“I see. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to trap you all in one place and squeeze it out of you over time, then?”
“Takatou, your imagination is getting brutal again,” Tomochika chided him.
“If we get locked up somewhere, we revive outside. No one knows exactly how it works, so they avoid doing anything too risky.”
The soldiers could always do the same thing with animals, but it was easier to use the listless humans. If these people lost the will to live and just wandered around a given area, there was no need to actively confine them. It was easier to simply come and collect energy from them from time to time.
“Are you okay with them using you like that?”
“Of course not. But being immortal doesn’t make us strong. We can’t fight people with supernatural powers like the Gift. At first, we tried fighting back or running away. But collecting energy is absolutely vital for their war effort, so they don’t give up until they’ve collected the energy they need. We learned the hard way that resisting is pointless.”
“Aren’t there some infected people who were strong from the start?” If someone with the Gift was infected and became immortal, they’d be unstoppable. The infected could take over the continent that way.
“When you’re infected, you lose things like the Gift. There are even some people in this city who used to be soldiers, and now they’re just exploited like the rest of us.”
“So they’ve lost the will to do anything and just lie on the ground like that forever,” Yogiri mused.
“Exactly. Do you understand now? This is why we want to die. It’s why we have high hopes for your power.”
Unable to die, constantly being exploited like this, it wasn’t hard to see why they had fallen into despair. If that was going to continue forever, anyone would want to put an end to it. Yogiri could understand why they would end up thinking that way.
After a while, the soldiers pulled on the strings and retrieved their spears. They cleaned the tips of their weapons, then removed the cylinders and inspected them. They then began to discuss something amongst themselves.
“Normally, they would leave at this point... Ah, I see. You killed the ones who would normally be lying on the outskirts of the city, so they didn’t meet their quota.”
“Huh? Isn’t that bad?” Tomochika asked.
The soldiers began heading towards their building. Apparently, they were looking for more prey.
“Maybe we can talk to them?” Tomochika seemed fed up with the situation.
“I doubt it,” Scott answered. “At least, not judging from our experiences so far.”
Knowing exactly how this was about to go, Yogiri couldn’t help but sigh.
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