Chapter 318

[.…You.]

A long stretch of pursuit had passed — chasing after Minerva, who had vanished as if in flight — before a quiet voice finally called out to me. It was Minerva.

"You feeling a little calmer now?"

[Yes… thanks to your concern.]

Minerva let out a soft sigh.

It was rare to see her this rattled, so I kept my mouth shut.

Had what Venus said back there really hit her that hard?

The duty of the Seven Calamities.

That was the term Venus had used.

[…You.]

After a pause, Minerva called me again, her voice firmer now — resolved.

Sbeungali jolted at the sound and cut in.

[Hold on — you can't seriously be planning to tell him?]

[Yes. At this point, what's left to hide?]

Minerva answered him, then turned the question to me.

No — her question wasn't one she expected an answer to.

[You. How much do you know about us — the Seven Calamities?]

I said nothing.

A short laugh slipped out of her.

[The truth is, even I don't know that much.]

[We Seven Calamities don't know why we were born, or how, or even when we began to exist. And it isn't only me. It's true for all of us.]

She began to speak slowly.

The Seven Calamities.

Now that I thought about it, I felt like I knew plenty about them — but the moment I tried to pin it down, the gaps were everywhere. I kept quiet and listened.

[But if there's anything we have in common, I could name a few things.]

She murmured in a voice that sounded like she was carefully drawing the memories up.

[That the first being any of us encountered upon waking in this world was Ahriman.]

[And our purpose.]

"Your purpose… you mean the reason you exist?"

[Yes.]

She conceded the point easily.

[We were meant to preserve the balance of this world. That was our purpose.]

[And one more thing….]

She paused, drew a breath, and went on.

It almost felt as if she were giving me time to brace for what came next.

Or perhaps she was steeling herself.

[That each of us, in our own way, had to act to prevent the extinction of humanity.]

[This, too, was our purpose.]

"…Wait — what?"

The words caught me so off guard that I blurted the question without meaning to.

The name Seven Calamities had been given to them precisely because they were seven irresistible disasters for humankind. So what was she telling me now…?

Minerva answered at once, as if making sure I hadn't misheard.

[You heard me correctly. Each of us, in our own way, moved to prevent humanity's extinction. …Though I can't say how it must have looked to you.]

[…God damn it.]

Sbeungali clicked his tongue with rare, genuine irritation.

He let out a heavy sigh and muttered:

[Minerva, if you're going to spill all of it, then I might as well… no, never mind. As you said, what is there left to hide now?]

[…I'm sorry, Sbeungali.]

It was rare — no, as far as I knew, the first time Minerva had ever apologized to Sbeungali.

And it wasn't an offhand apology, either. She meant it.

[I'll take it from here.]

Sbeungali drew a long breath and began.

[When we say preventing humanity's extinction — that was, in truth, the conclusion we arrived at after a great deal of thought. What rang in our heads was simply this: maintain the balance of this world, and keep watch over the being capable of altering it most profoundly.]

[We spent a long, long time pondering it, living through it, and finally drew our conclusion. That being was humanity. To watch over them and preserve balance meant, in plain terms, to prevent the collapse of this world's balance through their disappearance.]

[…And before you misunderstand, let me say this in advance. Ahriman is no different from the rest of us. Whatever it pretends, it too is bound by the name of Seven Calamity.]

"Right, sure… I think I get the gist. But—"

I had to tilt my head, running back through everything I'd seen and heard.

No matter how I turned it over, there was a glaring contradiction at the heart of what they were telling me.

Sensing the question forming, Sbeungali spoke again, almost in a whisper.

[…I know it'll sound a touch off-topic, but let me tell you something about locusts.]

"Locusts?"

[Yes, locusts. The insect.]

He clicked his tongue once more.

[There are two forms of locust — the solitary phase and the gregarious phase. The solitary phase is what we'd normally call an ordinary locust. As long as the population in a given area — its density — stays moderate, it's the solitary phase that develops.]

And with that, he launched into a detailed explanation about locusts.

Normally I would have snapped at him to cut the nonsense, but this time I held my tongue and listened, because his voice had gone unusually grave.

[But when those solitary-phase locusts gather in great numbers and the density climbs, gregarious-phase locusts begin to emerge — with longer wings and shorter legs than the solitary form. They're built for long-distance migration, they move in swarms, and they devastate crops. What farmers of old called the yellow plague and feared as a catastrophe — that was the gregarious phase.]

[Why do they appear at all? For one reason: to stave off extinction. When too many crowd into one area, food inevitably runs short. The end of that road is mutual ruin. The gregarious phase is, in plain terms, a strategic measure to escape the risk of being wiped out entirely.]

At some point, Sbeungali wrapped up his locust lecture.

I wasn't sure where exactly he was going with it, but I could at least sense what he was trying to say.

[Right, let me give you one more example. Aphids — yes, aphids would do nicely.]

[When aphids multiply past a certain point and reach what we might call a danger threshold, much like the locusts I just described, they begin secreting a particular substance from their bodies. That substance draws in one of their natural predators — the green lacewing.]

Click.

The sound he made seemed oddly distinct.

[I don't think I need to spell out what happens when a swarm of aphids attracts the very insect that feeds on aphids.]

[They summon their own predator and let themselves be devoured.]

[Just like the locusts — to escape the threat of mutual ruin and total annihilation.]

Sbeungali murmured the last part quietly.

[Roughly, do you understand now?]

"Hold on — so what you two are trying to tell me is…"

[I already said it, didn't I? One of our purposes — alongside preserving the balance of this world — was to prevent humanity's extinction.]

[So, put plainly, it's this.]

Minerva and Sbeungali traded the words back and forth.

It wasn't something I could take in easily.

[We served, in a sense, as the regulator built to stop humans from destroying themselves.]

He laid the rest out slowly.

[…Margo, swallowing up an enormous criminal syndicate and unleashing waves of crime across countries.]

[This Sbeungali, attempting to manage and breed humanity.]

[Milited, drawing countless races together under its rule, locking territory against humanity.]

[Minerva, Venus, Juno — all three of us, deliberately living within humanity's reach when we could have wiped them out in an instant, serving as a kind of deterrent.]

[All of it was the choice each of us, in our own way, had made as Seven Calamities.]

He let out a small sigh once he'd finished.

Minerva picked up as if she'd been waiting for the cue.

[…And just now, Venus invoked the duty of the Seven Calamities and named you in the same breath. For us, that is a matter weightier than anything else.]

Two questions surfaced for me.

Why, exactly, was I being treated as a threat to their duty — to the balance of this world?

I could think of two possibilities.

One: I had crossed back in time, so I wasn't truly of this era — an irregular, in essence.

Two: as my sister Ji-na's letter had also mentioned, I was a being who defied the flow of this world.

"……"

Honestly, the reason didn't change much in practice.

I was going to have to fight Venus and Juno in this era one way or another.

The timeline had just been moved up a little.

But there was still that second question.

…Why had Minerva and Sbeungali only chosen to tell me this now?

Setting aside the timing — what was it about the conversation just now that had made them react the way they had?

It was Minerva who answered.

[…The reason Sbeungali and I never spoke of this until now is simple, you.]

[We are not like humans.]

[Failing to fulfill our purpose means having no reason to exist — and for us, that means complete death. Annihilation.]

[That is why not only Sbeungali and I, but all of the Seven Calamities, kept it locked behind an unspoken pact never to bring it up.]

[Nothing good would have come from a fact like that leaking into the world.]

She paused, then continued in a voice that trembled faintly, as if she were watching my reaction.

[…The reason I held my tongue is also simple.]

[At this late hour, I've come to value my own life again.]

[That's why I couldn't bring myself to tell even you.]

[…I have no face to show you.]

[I'll say it again — I can't bear to look you in the eye. Committing the very act I once despised most, and against you….]

"……"

I held my silence.

She was carrying a heavy weight of guilt for having hidden this from me all along.

I kept following Minerva's trail in silence, then finally spoke.

"Minerva."

[Y-yes… speak.]

Her answer trembled, as if she were braced for the worst.

She was visibly terrified — of me getting angry, of me looking at her with contempt, of me being overcome by betrayal. The picture of it was almost funny enough that a small laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

[…?]

"Ah, sorry."

I lowered my voice almost to a whisper.

"Minerva, you know what?"

[W-what?]

"I've got plenty of secrets I don't want you two finding out either."

And the same had to be true for Minerva and Sbeungali.

…The fact that they'd kept a secret from me was hardly enough, on its own, to warrant betrayal or anger on my part.

"What, did you really think I'd be disappointed in you over something like this?"

If anything, we'd been through far too much together for our trust to crumble over something like that.

The two of them had held me up time and again, lent me their strength when my mind wavered, and pulled me back from the edge of death more than once.

…It was embarrassing as hell to say out loud, but I trusted these two deeply. A secret of that size would've had its reasons, and whatever they were, I was fine with it.

"And to be blunt, it's not like you were hiding it to screw me over."

[Of course not — how could that ever be the case?!]

What I'd thrown out as a joke earned a frantic answer.

[I — the only reason I have for going on living in the first place is you — how can you not realize that…?]

"…Oh."

I went quiet.

So did Sbeungali.

The reply that had come back to my offhand joke had landed far outside anything I'd been bracing for, and as for Sbeungali, he clearly knew that, in a moment like this, keeping his mouth shut was the wiser play.

[…]

Then, finally seeming to register that she'd taken a joke seriously — and what exactly she'd just blurted out — Minerva fell silent too.

"……"

[……]

[……]

…I didn't know how long the silence stretched on.

After a long while spent chasing Minerva's trail, I had to stop walking.

Minerva's lingering presence had cut off.

"What…?"

I came to a halt and looked around.

Anyone else, maybe — but me, losing track of Minerva's presence? That just wasn't possible.

And yet at some point her presence had vanished, as cleanly as if someone had wiped it away with an eraser.

Surveying the area, I noticed the ground around me had been torn up, and trees lay snapped and bent in every direction. It looked like the site of a plane crash.

That was when a small cave caught my eye.

It was nowhere near big enough for Minerva's true form — she couldn't have fit her tail inside, let alone the rest of her — but for some reason it snagged at me, and I couldn't make myself walk past.

No way.

The thought hit me as I stepped into the cave.

"Wh-who's there?!"

A woman's voice — frightened, flustered — rang out from inside.

…It was the same voice I'd been talking with only minutes before.

"D-don't come any closer! Come another step and I'll — I'll kill you…!"

I'd been about to take another step, but the sheer panic in her voice stopped me cold.

Something was off.

Instead of moving in, I quietly spoke to her.

"It's me, Minerva."

I could feel her bewilderment ripple through the air.

"What…? H-how did you get here…."

"I followed you. Believe it or not, I'm pretty quick on my feet."

I said it while staring at the rock she was clearly hiding behind — her presence on the other side was unmistakable.

…Something was wrong.

The Minerva I knew didn't get frightened of someone like this, and she certainly didn't broadcast her presence so plainly.

Above all, the trace of her energy bleeding through the rock was unbelievably faint.

"S-so… is that how it is. Ugh… I-I see…."

"…Minerva. You all right?"

"I-I'm — I'm fine. So don't come over, no…… no, that isn't it, what I mean is — ah…."

She started muttering to herself.

I didn't push her — didn't want to make it worse — so I just stood where I was and waited.

A moment passed.

Only after several deep breaths did she finally inch out from behind the rock where she'd hidden.

"H-human… no, Yu Ji-hyeok…."

It was, in every visible way, Minerva as I knew her.

What was different was that she was thinner, drawn, and her presence felt weaker than that of an ordinary person — and most importantly, the horns and tail that defined her were nowhere to be seen.

Her face was twisted with distress.

"Wh-what am I supposed to do…?"

Minerva looked at me without even thinking to cover herself, her voice shaking violently.

"I — I've turned into a human. N-no — more than that…."

My power. I can't use any of my power.

She muttered it almost dazedly, sunk deep into panic.

The past had changed.

In the memory he'd glimpsed before through resonance with Minerva, she had taken on a human form by entirely different means — and had been genuinely overjoyed at having pulled it off.

She absolutely hadn't broken down or panicked the way she was now.

"……"

Yu Ji-hyeok stripped off his outer coat and draped it over her without a word.

She was naked, yes, but the bigger problem was that the cave was bitterly cold.

Minerva didn't even seem to understand what cold was — she simply shook, unable to make sense of why her body wouldn't stop.

"Minerva, let's head back for now. We need to get back and—"

He was trying to calm her when something began vibrating against his chest, and he pulled it free.

It was the bead he'd received as Lee Yu-na's awakening reward.

It was blinking, giving off a steady pulse of light.

"Ah, please don't tell me…."

It meant something was approaching.

A moment later, two notification windows surfaced in front of his eyes.

For him, it was the first time in months that a quest window had appeared.