Chapter 14

Suddenly, rain began to fall.

Amidst the dense fog and pouring rain, Juuichi stood beside the trees on a small hill, watching intently.

Ahead, there was a decaying fortress. Beside the crumbling wooden gate, several thieves, who seemed to be sentries, were idling around.

The men had started a campfire and were sitting nearby, appearing to drink. They glared irritably at the rainy sky, passing the time in boredom.

Juuichi drew his sword and smoothly descended from the hill.

He advanced along the overgrown abandoned path toward the gate.

The group finally noticed Juuichi’s presence, rising with weapons in hand, yelling.

“Who the hell are you? You wanna die?”

Juuichi swung his sword.

The blade’s arc swept through the air, and three heads flew into the sky.

The thieves couldn’t see or evade the inventory window, making it impossible for them to comprehend what had just happened.

As blood from the instantly slain corpses doused the fire, Juuichi didn’t spare them a glance, kicking down the gate.

Two men stood there, eyes wide. With two swift strikes, they collapsed, mortally wounded.

To the right of the entrance was a slope. As Juuichi climbed it, a man with a sword lunged down from above.

With a strange yell, he raised his weapon high.

Juuichi didn’t move a muscle, merely watching the man. The man spat blood and collapsed.

A cut wound had opened on his back—his own sword had passed through the inventory window Juuichi held in front of him and exited through a window behind him, slicing him.

Passing by the fallen man, Juuichi finished him off with a slash to the carotid artery.

After reaching the top of the slope, he found a corridor running along the log walls, allowing a full view of the fortress’s interior.

By then, the thieves, realizing that an outsider had forced their way in, had started to panic.

Whistles used as signals echoed.

Juuichi opened his inventory and pulled out a talisman.

The talisman bore a magic circle, with a small black stone infused with magic power attached to it—

Taking up a pen, he added a single line, completing the magic circle.

Throwing the talisman, a great flame burst forth. The wooden gate of the fortress caught fire, blocking the entrance.

Juuichi himself could not use magic—he had no magical power.

His abilities, like the inventory, were separate. Only the humans and creatures of this world possessed the supernatural power of magic.

But with magic stones attached to the “cursed talismans,” he could make use of them in this way.

As he walked along the corridor beside the log walls, a swarm of thieves climbed up another slope toward him.

Their bloodshot eyes and weapons—axes, clubs, and swords—hungered for the intruder’s blood.

Juuichi opened an inventory window horizontally and narrowly in front of the ground where the first group ran.

They tripped and toppled forward, tumbling over one another as those behind stumbled onto them.

Juuichi’s sword flashed through the confused thieves, slashing with precision through the invisible inventory window and striking vital points.

Several men instinctively raised their shields, but it was futile; Juuichi’s attacks didn’t travel through the air. A window opened from behind the shields, and his blade attacked from within.

One by one, they fell, and the head of a man who tried to flee split in two.

A whistling sound.

Juuichi recognized it as the sound of arrows.

Without dodging or looking, the arrows vanished before they could reach Juuichi.

An inventory window behind the archers returned their murderous intent directly back at them.

The two men on the watchtower dropped their bows and collapsed. Juuichi had already scouted the fortress before entering, knowing the locations of the archers.

From inside the buildings within the fortress walls, several men rushed out, weapons in hand. As he walked along the log wall, Juuichi cut them down as soon as they entered his sight.

There were no limitations on the distance Juuichi could deploy his inventory windows.

He could open a window anywhere—within his line of sight or in areas where he already knew and sensed what was present.

In other words, any space within that range was within Juuichi’s sword’s reach.

Many thieves fell, struck in the heart or decapitated from afar, unable to resist.

When Juuichi beheaded a man in an iron helmet, his sword bent and broke. He discarded it, drawing a new one from his inventory.

Swinging his blade smoothly, he proceeded to the next target.

When he reached the end of the corridor along the wall and descended the slope to the ground, no more enemies emerged from the fortress buildings.

The survivors who ventured outside froze at the sight of their fallen comrades bleeding out and collapsing.

A sea of blood had formed.

Juuichi had already killed close to thirty men.

It wasn’t a fair fight—nor did Juuichi intend it to be.

It was purely a one-sided slaughter, extermination, annihilation.

And having begun, he had no intention of stopping until the end.

As he approached a building that seemed to have once served as barracks when the fortress was still in use, Juuichi peered inside through a wooden window. He saw someone fleeing deeper inside.

He pulled out several talismans from his inventory, quickly adding lines.

He thrust them back into the inventory, spreading them within the building through an opened inventory window.

A fiery explosion erupted. Flames spread inside.

Ignoring the screams behind him, Juuichi tossed talismans at the tents scattered within the fortress, setting them ablaze. Those who had been hiding emerged, engulfed in flames, dancing as human torches.

Then, arrows flew from directions Juuichi hadn’t accounted for.

But they vanished before hitting their mark, appearing on the other side of the window to fly back at their sources.

An inventory window in a 360-degree cylindrical formation surrounded Juuichi, rendering any physical attacks ineffective.

Though magical means could breach this, it was unlikely that impoverished mountain bandits would have high-level mages among them.

Those who realized there was no place left to hide fled toward the second exit, located on the opposite side of Juuichi’s entry point.

Juuichi pursued them at a walking pace, cutting down the thieves as he encountered them.

Blood.

Corpses.

As the bodies piled up in death around him, Juuichi’s expression didn’t shift an inch.

Like a machine of slaughter, he continued to kill anyone who entered his sight.

Before the other gate, a few cornered bandits tossed away their weapons as Juuichi approached.

“Please, stop! Don’t kill us anymore! Just tell us what you want—money, women, whatever it is, we’ll get it for you!”

“Are you the leader of these bandits?”

“Yes! But, what are you?! Why are you killing us? What did we ever do to you? Anyway, we surrender!”

“In a certain village, you strung up the village chief’s entire family, didn’t you? The couple, their two children, even an infant… and left them for display.”

“… Were you hired for revenge? Who are you?”

“They call me Amber.”

“Amber? Y-You’re the Crossroads Man?! That…!”

Juuichi’s sword flashed.

With a single sweeping slash, one of the bandits fell, blood spurting from his neck.

“Stop it! We’ve thrown down our weapons!”

“You killed the village chief, who held no weapon. I’m sure he begged for his life, didn’t he? But you killed him, and even the children… you didn’t spare even a baby.”

The bandit leader shoved his subordinate toward Juuichi and kicked open the gate, fleeing as fast as he could.

Juuichi opened an inventory window at his feet.

Obeying gravity, Juuichi’s body disappeared as though sucked into the ground.

Another inventory window opened midair in front of the fleeing bandit leader, and Juuichi stepped out, materializing before him.

The bandit leader’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of Juuichi’s teleportation.

In the next instant, Juuichi’s sword sliced down from the leader’s shoulder, cutting deeply into his abdomen.

With blood-stained hands, Juuichi left the corpse behind and walked back to where he had previously been standing.

One of the bandits, trembling and unable to stand, desperately begged for his life.

“I-I didn’t do it! It was that village on the highway, right? The boss and the others did the hanging! I didn’t kill anyone!”

Juuichi’s eyes were cold.

In that brief moment, he had closely examined the man’s clothing.

“Those clothes of yours… there’s old bloodstains around the hems and waist. It’s definitely not the blood of those I just killed. From the tailoring, it doesn’t suit a bandit—you killed a merchant and stole it, didn’t you?”

“Ahhhh!”

The man, attempting to crawl away, suddenly found his head drooping, held only by a thin strip of skin.

Stepping over the spraying corpse, Juuichi walked through the burning fort.

Some still clung to life.

Regardless of whether they noticed Juuichi’s presence or not, he killed every person he came across.

Soon, he was the only one left alive within the fort.

The rain grew heavier, extinguishing the flames that had engulfed the fort. Nothing moved now, save the thick black smoke rising into the sky.

Juuichi stood silently, sword in hand.

Fifty people.

More precisely, fifty-two.

He had killed every last one.

This was certainly not the first time he had killed someone. He’d taken countless lives, stained his hands with blood, and piled up sins over the years.

In this world, killing to protect oneself was not seen as a sin. It was the right of the living, upheld by their own justice.

The village chief, Origo, and the villagers certainly had that right.

But for someone like Juuichi, who willingly threw himself into a battlefield, undying, no matter how many times he was cut or beaten—did that same right apply?

Probably not.

Juuichi no longer feared death. He couldn’t die, even if he wished to.

For a being deprived of the fear of death, how could he possibly have the right to deal death to humans?

Immortality. For someone like him, the act of taking away another’s only life felt far from justice or rightful retribution.

It seemed one-sided, cowardly, and arrogant.

It felt like something only a god would do.

Is it something a human should do?

Was it necessary to kill them all? Could he not have just killed the leader and scattered the others, letting them go?

… He knew. He knew he couldn’t let them go.

If they escaped, they would simply repeat their crimes.

There was no system of rehabilitation in this world for criminals. Here, a prison was only a holding place before execution. Rehabilitation for killers was a mere fantasy.

And even executions were entertainment for the supposedly virtuous.

If he let them go, they would surely retaliate against the village. Not only the village chief, Origo, but the villagers, their families, their children—they would all be targeted.

These were bandits, after all. They had no respect for law. Juuichi knew all too well the nature of bandits and brigands.

Juuichi wanted to protect those villagers. And if that were the case, he had no choice but to cut down the bandits.

… Then, that would make Juuichi nothing more than a murderer.

Even the most ruthless killer who spares no one—not even infants—didn’t come from nowhere. However vile their deeds, they, too, were once born of human parents.

Juuichi had chosen this path. Because he wanted to.

Even though he had no right…

“… Haah.”

He had lived too long. Lately, self-reproach and anguish often plagued his thoughts.

They say that a person never forgets their first kill.

Even if the faces and names of the second or third victim fade, that first face, met in the final moments, is something that remains forever.

Since coming to this world, Juuichi had learned that this was true. For him, at least, it was. There were times when he would see nightmares at night, haunted by that memory.

But after 300 years…

He didn’t know he could forget even the face of the first person he killed, buried beneath a mountain of memories of countless other lives taken.

The Rain Falls.

Juuichi sheathed his sword at his waist and began to walk, stepping into the blood-stained puddles.

He carried the loss of his humanity deep in his heart.

As he returned to the highway, Juuichi advanced towards the village in question.

The rain had already stopped, and sunlight began to break through the fractured clouds.

He thought it would be enough to tell Origo that there were no more bandits.

He had no intention of demanding a reward. He wasn’t short on money.

What Juuichi sought were the fragments of the goddess, and he aimed to collect them all to achieve ‘liberation.’ That ‘liberation’ included even his own end.

He still could not die. There was nothing left he desired.

—But.

After walking a short distance, Juuichi came to a halt.

He sensed something was off.

“This is strange. There’s no side road leading into the village—”

He should have been able to see the side road long ago. If he continued along the highway, he would return to the town he came from.

He stopped and looked around.

Based on his sense of distance and the shape of the forest, there should have been a side road here.

The rain had already stopped, and considering the position of the sun and the time he had experienced so far, there was no mistake.

“…”

Though there was no path, Juuichi walked towards the familiar highland forest. There was underbrush, but he took out a machete from his inventory to clear a way forward.

The terrain was the same. However, it had not been opened by human hands.

He stepped on the wet, grass-strewn ground and headed towards his memory.

Looking up, he saw the tall treetops unchanged from yesterday, and the sun signaling the end of summer.

Then he caught sight of the thatched roof…but it had changed drastically.

The decayed roof had collapsed in several places, and the mountain cabin was so dilapidated that it was uninhabitable.

The door lay fallen before the entrance, the inside was ransacked, and plants thrived everywhere.

“Could it be—”

Juuichi stood still for a moment.

Then he finally realized the source of the discomfort he felt back then.

“Is that it? The position of the sun; it hasn’t even reached noon today. The sun I saw yesterday was in the evening. ‘It rose in the west and set towards the east.’

This was already no ordinary space. I had forgotten why; no, the effects included things I couldn’t even be conscious of.”

Looking down, Juuichi eventually moved towards the place where the village should have been.

From what should have been the entrance, Juuichi gazed out.

Several houses in the village had burned and collapsed. And it wasn’t recent.

He could not see anyone out and about, just as before, and this time there were no gazes or presences peering from within the buildings.

The once-cultivated fields lay in ruin, weeds growing waist-high, and the path was littered with broken fence fragments and the bones of livestock.

Gravestones lined the path in countless numbers—a crooked cross with the top slanted, signifying the direction the dead should go to the afterlife.

A burial ground from a religion in the Northern Regions.

When he reached the well, he saw a broken roof lying on its side.

When Juuichi looked down, there was a charred, half-burned cloth doll lying in the mud.

An ominous and desolate wind blew.

Sadness and regret flickered in Juuichi’s eyes.

Near the well, there was a house from which Origo had emerged. It was in ruins, yet barely maintained the shape of a home.

Juuichi approached that house and grasped the door handle. With an eerie creak, the door opened.

Just inside the earthen floor, a human skeleton sat in the shadows.

The skeleton was wearing clothes that were worn but belonged to Origo.

In front of it lay two silver coins and a white stone…

“My premonition was correct. I didn’t want it to turn out this way…”

Everything had been in vain. A senseless sacrifice.

Juuichi had hoped, more than revenge, that the fifty villagers would live without being threatened, and so he killed fifty bandits. But they were already dead.

What remained was a hundred futile deaths.

The result of breaking principles due to temporary emotions and showing weakness was this.

Cursing his own foolishness, Juuichi picked up a small stone that lay before Origo.

Without a doubt, it was a fragment of the goddess’s body.

Origo had left no traces of having used magic; this was likely something he had clutched in his hand at the moment of his death.

Sometimes, fragments would exhibit such mysterious behavior—especially when a human died with regrets or resentment left behind.

Transcending the means of magic, it sought to fulfill the person’s desires, resentments, and unfulfilled wishes.

That power made the impossible possible.

The power of a true god could, uniquely, overturn death.

However, it took the form of distorted desires…

Juuichi’s visit to the village was by chance. The effect ended because that band of thieves had been annihilated.

Whatever Juuichi’s feelings had been, Origo’s wish had been granted.

This was speculation, but when Origo returned to the village with news, the village was likely already looted, and all the villagers had been killed.

If a blood relative was the village chief, Origo might have been from this village.

He could not accept the ruin of his homeland.

After burying the dead, he eventually took his own life.

The fragment fulfilled the thoughts he held, granting a temporary life to Origo and the villagers.

It is a part of Origo’s wish.

The village chief’s family did not come back to life; only the remains and the traces of tragedy remained, reflecting Origo’s desire for revenge against the bandits.

His own memories had been altered, and he did not know that both he and the villagers were dead, continually waiting for a trigger to retaliate against the bandit group…

This seems to be the case. Even with the use of past reproduction, Juuichi had no desire to verify the truth of these speculations.

There was nothing left here…

The revenge for the dead had been fulfilled.

Whatever he wanted to know or think about, everything had already come to an end.

Juuichi left the house, departing from the deserted village.

There was nothing more he could do here.

He retraced his steps, making his way through the forest trail he had cleared himself. When he returned to the highway, he glanced back toward the direction where the village had been.

The forest stood quietly.

—As if to say that nothing had ever been there from the beginning…

He stared at the piece of the goddess in his hand. In the end, perhaps the only way to obtain this was to heed Origo’s wish.

There might have been a more moderate way.

Now, no one could know.

He had to continue his journey.

Juuichi turned his gaze toward the road ahead.

—Are you ready yet?—

—Not yet!—

“…!”

At the distant echo of the voice, Juuichi looked back at the forest behind him once more.

He had collected the piece of the goddess. There shouldn’t be anything happening anymore.

The echo had melted away into the air as if it were an illusion.

It was an impossible occurrence.

But…

“No. I’ll leave it be. That village has already had enough of its past wounds reopened. I should let the dead sleep peacefully.”

Juuichi said, averting his gaze from the direction of the village.

Alone, he headed down the highway toward the border.

What was done had to be allowed to end—repeating the end would serve no one.

Even if he temporarily revived the dead like Origo, it would only be an emptiness.

It would merely repeat the painful past in vain.

What the living could do for the dead was to pray, simply ensuring not to disturb their eternal slumber.