Chapter 93

Chapter 93: Chapter 93

The sun was setting at the edge of the Heiden Plains, which stretched out like gentle waves. As the sky turned crimson and gold, bonfires were lit throughout the encampment.

The tents varied in shape, color, and size. Some were conical, while others had triangular cross sections.

A large campfire blazed at the center of the encampment, where adventurers soothed the exhaustion of the day with drink and women.

Wherever money and people gathered, merchants inevitably followed, and they provided the entertainment.

One might wonder what they thought they were doing when they had come here for an operation, but this was a typical sight in a military encampment in this era. Of course, they were not actually an army.

Rickart was not the sort of person who particularly enjoyed revelry. He could rest and feel satisfied simply by sitting alone in quiet contemplation or chatting with his friends.

Right now, however, sitting still was unbearably awkward.

It was because of Daisy.

Marie had gone inside the tent and was nowhere to be seen, while Volka, Boribori, and Ice stood there staring blankly at the two of them.

"Who did you say she was?"

Volka asked, pointing at Daisy.

"Hello. My name is Daisy, and I’m Ricky’s wife. We married a long time ago, but unavoidable circumstances forced us apart for a while. Now we’ve finally reunited."

Daisy greeted Rickart’s friends with a bright smile. Having spent her childhood being pursued and wandering from place to place, she was never intimidated even in unfamiliar surroundings.

She might look like a clean and innocent young beauty now, but she had lived through quite a turbulent childhood.

"Is that true?"

Boribori looked at Rickart for confirmation. Rickart shook his head.

"No. Absolutely not."

"Ricky is just embarrassed. We exchanged rings and made a promise to each other, remember? Ricky."

"Stop framing me."

Rickart responded like a machine, his mind half numb.

"I thought you said you were a follower of the Order."

Ice looked at Daisy as he asked.

"That’s right. But I wasn’t particularly devout even when I first joined. My gift of foresight was simply well suited to the Order, so I spent several years living there."

"Foresight? Don’t tell me..."

"Yes. I am the Order’s Sister of Prophecy. So aside from being bored, I wasn’t treated particularly..."

The moment Ice heard that she was the Sister of Prophecy, he flinched, hastily closed his eyes, and turned his head away. Though he had left the Order, its doctrines must have been ingrained in him, for he could not bring himself to look directly at the Sister of Prophecy.

Boribori stared silently at the beautiful yet somehow peculiar girl before speaking.

"I think the answer to your problem might be right here, Ice. You should just be like Ricky and accept every woman who comes to you instead of turning them away."

"W-What? Bori, what are you talking about?"

Rickart, who had been sitting there in a daze, instantly snapped back to his senses at Boribori’s unexpected remark.

"That’s just how it looks to me. For the record, I don’t think it’s wrong. It’s your problem to handle, Ricky."

A friend could also serve as a mirror that reflected oneself. Hearing that once-innocent boy address him in his own manner of speaking left Rickart utterly dumbfounded.

It was not as though he deliberately went around saying cruel things to people, but he suddenly found himself wondering whether he had always been this harsh.

"So what was the prophecy?"

Volka asked. Even Daisy, who was uncannily skilled at controlling her expressions, grew slightly somber.

"God will be resurrected. That means you cannot win. Turn back while you still can. I’m taking Ricky with me too."

Volka and Boribori did not appear to believe Daisy, but Ice’s body momentarily stiffened as though he had been deeply shocked. After all, these words had come from none other than the Sister of Prophecy.

"Well, you all say the same thing."

Volka, however, replied indifferently. Every follower of the Order of Judgment constantly proclaimed that their god would be resurrected.

Unfortunately, they could not obtain any special information from Daisy. That was because they did not lack information at the moment. They had more than enough, and the real difficulty lay in sorting out what was useful.

After the incident last autumn, hundreds of people had been hanged every day in Nibelungen as the authorities rooted out the Order’s followers. Naturally, torture had also been employed.

An enormous amount of information had been obtained in the process, but separating the useful information from the worthless material was no simple task.

Hellauman, the current commander-in-chief, knew where the Order’s temple was, how its infiltration routes were arranged, what daily life there was like, and approximately how powerful its forces were.

The problem was how to put that knowledge into practice. Everyone knew that a tiger lived inside a tiger’s den, but figuring out how to enter and kill it was another matter entirely.

They could not simply charge in as one enormous mob. How should the individual units be divided? How should the organizational structure be arranged? How would it all be managed? How long should the operation last? Questions like these were troublesome.

As a branch chief and clan master, Volka had attended the strategic meetings and was aware of those problems.

That was why he had no time to concern himself with nonsense about prophecies, and Boribori also regarded prophecies as absurd.

Boribori placed a hand on Ice’s shoulder.

"If every prophecy were guaranteed to come true, what would even be the point of us being alive? So don’t worry about it."

Ice, however, could not dismiss the matter so easily. There was also a dilemma concerning prophecy. If prophecies were nonsense, then Armant’s words could not be trusted either.

"I feel a little sorry for Marie . I’m sure you’ll handle it yourself, Ricky, but look after her. I’ll come back if there’s anything else I need to pass on. You guys get some rest."

Volka lightly tapped Rickart on the chest with his fist before leaving.

With that, the question of what to do with Daisy seemed to have been settled for the most part. From the adventurers’ perspective, Daisy was merely a useless deserter from the Order. Nothing more.

Had this been last year, when the frenzy of hunting down and persecuting the Order’s followers was at its peak, they might have demanded that she be hanged immediately. But she was acquainted with Rickart, and they knew that it was not important right now.

The most troublesome issue at present was that they had only about a month to complete the operation. Since they had no separate supply units, even one month was actually a tight deadline.

They had to finish the subjugation within that time, but the greater problem was that some adventurers still had not assembled.

This was reality. Whenever people were gathered to accomplish something, all manner of problems arose.

Of course, those were matters for the command staff to resolve, not something Rickart needed to worry about.

What Rickart had to worry about was the precarious tightrope he was walking between Marie and Daisy.

"Daisy, you go with him. He used to be part of the Order too, so you should be able to understand each other."

Rickart pointed at Ice.

"I don’t want to."

"Ricky, from what I can see, I think it would be better to put Marie and Daisy together and have you stay away."

"W-What are you talking about, Bori?"

"Right now, every time you try to comfort and reassure both of them, you only seem to make the situation worse."

"You’re supposed to take my side..."

"What are you talking about? I’m always on your side. I just want everyone to get along."

When it came to relationships between people, Rickart tended to be oblivious, while Boribori was thoughtful and sensitive.

But did that mean his suggestion was right? Put Marie and Daisy together? Rickart found the idea difficult to accept.

Then he suddenly wondered what the point of having friends was. He grabbed Daisy by the shoulders, abruptly pushed her toward Boribori and Ice, and bolted across the field at sunset.

He was running away.

The sight of a consumptive patient fleeing so frantically that he was left gasping for breath was quite something. Boribori caught Daisy when she hurriedly tried to chase after him and watched Rickart go with an incredulous expression.

"Let go of me."

"For Ricky’s sake, hold yourself back for now. Stop forcing your feelings on him."

"What if we’re separated again?"

"What?"

"Have you ever spent years agonizing over one person and thinking only of them?"

"No. But why should I care about your circumstances? We were all getting along just fine, and you’re the one who disrupted our peace. Right now, you’re an unwelcome outsider to us. So behave accordingly. You can understand that much, can’t you?"

Boribori valued his people—his friends—more than anything else in the world, so he honestly disliked Daisy for threatening to create cracks in those relationships.

Perhaps because he had learned so much, he no longer stammered helplessly as he once had. He spoke with remarkable clarity and logic.

Unable to stand by any longer, Ice stepped in. Without looking directly at Daisy, he lowered his gaze and spoke.

"Sister, I will escort you."

Perhaps Boribori’s words had some effect, because Daisy allowed Ice to lead her away for the moment. That did not mean she had accepted his argument in her heart, however.

Marie was alone inside the tent, Volka was busy, Daisy had been moved out of the way for now, and Rickart had fled.

Left standing there all alone, Boribori sighed and started walking.

He was going to find Rickart.

"Good grief..."

In the past, Rickart had practically raised Boribori, but now their positions seemed to have been somewhat reversed.

Yet the nearest place was often the last place one thought to look. Rickart had not actually fled very far.

He had hidden behind a nearby tent and watched. Once the situation appeared to have settled down, he quietly reemerged. Even in circumstances like these, his deceptive tactics were impeccable.

Rickart carefully lifted the flap at the entrance of Marie ’s tent and peered inside. No candles had been lit, making it difficult to see the dark interior.

He tilted his head and rolled his eyes this way and that as he tried to make out what was inside. Then Boribori suddenly appeared behind him and shoved him forward.

Even a brilliant deception could be easily seen through by someone familiar with the deceiver.

Rickart’s words offered no comfort at all. They were nothing more than excuses. Still, part of him honestly felt wronged.

It wasn’t as if I did anything wrong, was it?

Not knowing what to do, he needlessly touched the tips of Marie ’s feet. He toyed with her toes one by one, half teasing and half not. Marie promptly pulled her feet away.

Still, Rickart felt relieved that she had responded at all.

"She’s just a pitiful girl. They said she was entrusted to the Order, but wasn’t she essentially abandoned? That doesn’t mean I have any special feelings for her. You’re the only person I’ve opened my heart to. I mean that sincerely. It’s the truth. I shouldn’t even need to swear an oath, but if you need one, I will."

"..."

Having stumbled into the tent as if he were about to fall, Rickart’s heart lurched when he found Marie with her face buried in a pillow. His body went rigid. It seemed that she had been crying the entire time.

"M-Marie ..."

Rickart did not dare approach her.

Still, he carefully sat down beside the bed. Even comforting her was difficult, and he had no idea what to say.

"It’s not like I cheated on you... It was something from a long time ago... We were children. It was just a childish game..."

Silence descended.

Only the distant sounds of adventurers drinking, laughing, and chattering could be heard. The occasional vulgar remark drifted over as well.

Rickart remained silently by Marie ’s side.

After crying for what must have been a long time, Marie spoke in a nasal voice.

"...Swear it."

"What should I swear?"

"That you’ll love only me."

It might have seemed somewhat childish, but that was what she wanted at that moment. Even the steadfast and courageous Marie sometimes wanted to act spoiled, but only with Rickart.

Rickart did not dismiss her childish request as mere childishness. Without the slightest hesitation, he immediately swore like a chaste knight.

"I, Rickart, swear that I will love only Martellia. Even in death, that will never change."

After a moment, Marie finally sniffled and turned her head toward him. Truthfully, she looked rather unsightly, but her natural beauty only made her seem more pitiful. Her pillowcase was completely soaked.

Rickart wiped away her tears and runny nose with his hand, then casually wiped his hand on his own clothes.

When that was not enough, he used his sleeve as well. After tidying her hair and gently stroking her face, she looked much better.

There was nothing he could do about the red tip of her nose.

"Did you drink a lot?"

"Huh?"

"Your nose is red."

At his simple little joke, Marie finally let out a soft laugh.

"Oh? They say if you laugh while you’re crying..."

"Would you like to check?"

"What do you mean, check? I was going to say that laughing while crying brings happiness."

"Hmph..."

"My, you’re surprisingly naughty, aren’t you?"

"What did I do? What exactly did you think I wanted to check?"

"Who knows?"

They had been serious only moments earlier, yet somehow Rickart and Marie soon returned to exchanging their usual playful banter. But their eyes sparkled like stars as they gazed at each other.

They naturally drew closer without even thinking about it, and that alone was enough.

These peaceful moments were so precious, and knowing that they were permitted only to the two of them was both moving and deeply fulfilling.

There was no such thing as a perfect person. Everyone had something they lacked and wounds they carried, and sometimes they unintentionally wounded others.

Even so, what mattered was giving one’s whole heart.

Like following a star, Rickart and Marie looked toward each other. Neither was perfect, but they shared one thing in common: they gave their hearts sincerely.

At times, their feelings strayed from one another and they were hurt, like travelers tripping over stones in the road. Even so, rising once again, looking toward the stars as though in prayer, and offering one’s heart sincerely required courage.

Fortunately, Rickart and Marie were courageous.

They had lived very different lives, but in that regard, they were alike. That was why they could not help being drawn to each other, like stars pulled together by gravity.

But their starlit moment did not last long.

After all, this place was a battlefield.

It was difficult to understand how they could have overlooked something so obvious, but the commanders had never imagined that the enemy might attack them. They had been so preoccupied with thinking of ways to crush the enemy that they had developed a blind spot.

The stars bloomed with exceptional abundance over the Heiden Plains.

And beneath that starlight, which poured down like rain, the first battle began.

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