Chapter 325

For something so completely out of the blue — a meeting I hadn't seen coming at all — I wasn't that shaken.

Well — saying I wasn't surprised at all would be a lie.

But at least I managed to get myself back on steady footing almost right away.

It was thanks to a conversation I'd had with Su-yeong a few days earlier.

"Sbeungali, and Minerva. I'd thought I would never see either of you again, and here we meet by chance — it makes the reunion all the more poignant."

Ahriman greeted Sbeungali and Minerva — the two inside me — in a perfectly casual tone.

Sbeungali gave a small, uncomfortable click of his beak, and Minerva didn't make a sound — but I could tell that if she had any way to do it, she'd be tearing Ahriman apart right that second.

"Margo… I can't feel him at all anymore. And you've swallowed Milited too."

Wearing my face, he looked me over as if appraising me from every angle.

That blank, inhuman gaze of his finally settled on the pendant hanging at my throat.

"At last. Only three of them left."

He muttered the words and inclined his head toward me once more.

Then he rolled his eyes up to fix me with a steady stare — and that was the moment I learned, for the first time, just how unsettling my own face could be.

"Forgive me. Foundation stone, wedge, irregular, contrarian against the natural order… no, that's right — the one who runs counter to the world's flow. Anyway, allow me to introduce myself properly."

The thing wearing my face, my voice, my form spoke.

"A pleasure. Ahriman, they call me. The very Calamity you should never have crossed paths with — and the very one you've been most desperate to meet."

He gave a sharp clap of his hands.

I watched him for a moment, then steadied my breath and asked:

"Never crossed paths?"

"That's right. By rights, I had no intention of appearing before you until the day you died."

Ahriman nodded.

"To explain — I handle the spaces and gaps between time. Slipping away from a single person would be a trivial matter, wouldn't it?"

"……"

And yet here it was, showing itself in front of me.

Which meant there had to be a reason.

As if to prove the point, it made another of those stilted gestures.

"Well… this time I've come to lend you a hand, you might say."

"What the hell are you talking about? You just show up, and now you're helping?"

The thing gave a small nod at my words.

"Let me answer. You've… fought far too well. A touch better than I'd projected, even. Thanks to that, things are about to come undone."

It gave a shrug — so artificial it was almost offensive to look at.

"Venus and Juno have each taken serious wounds and fled. And the sheer terror of facing three dragons at once will keep them from showing themselves again for some time."

"I can promise you this: by ordinary means, hunting Venus down would take you thirty-two years, five months, and seventeen days. For Juno, twenty-seven years and nine months and eleven days, give or take. Milited… by the look of things, it still hasn't managed to reconstitute itself properly, so there's no need to concern yourself with that one for now."

"With Venus buried in the abyss and Juno gone to ground deep underneath the earth, who could find either of them right away?"

"……"

It was a blind spot I genuinely hadn't considered.

Right — common sense said anyone with no chance of winning would dodge the fight. And those two weren't like Minerva — they didn't throw themselves at opponents on sheer fighting spirit alone.

For a moment I was at a loss for words, and watching me, the thing curled its mouth into a smile.

"And that's why I've come to lend a hand."

"…Why would you."

"Hm?"

I quietly asked it again.

"Why would you, of all things, help me."

"Ah."

Ahriman clapped its hands.

"Right, you carry plenty of grudges where I'm concerned. There's the matter of you and… well, your little sister. There's the way I rummaged through your head once or twice. And above all, you hold me responsible for the fact that you ended up in this world to begin with."

It trailed off there and reached up to touch its own face.

The face it wore — my face — melted away, and another face overlaid it.

A man I'd never seen before. An old man.

"For someone like me to suddenly turn up offering to help, it can't possibly add up for you. Right… I understand."

It nodded along as it muttered.

Even with the face changed, the violent sense of déjà vu that came off it didn't fade an inch.

"I won't bother dressing it up. I'll give it to you straight. If you die in this era, it's a problem for me."

"What?"

"To be precise."

It pressed the point as if making sure I didn't misread it.

"The problem is Han Su-yeong dying. If you die here, in all likelihood she ends up dying in this era too, without ever doing a thing. No — unable to do anything would be the more fitting phrase."

Having said that, it kept its gaze fixed on me and added:

"Stay too long in an era you don't belong in, and the balance falls apart on that fact alone."

"Hunting down Juno and Venus, the two of them, would burn through at least sixty years. More than enough time for the balance to fall apart."

"And once it does, you'll come apart on your own and die — without me, or anyone else, ever having to lift a finger."

"And with your death, Han Su-yeong would, in due course, meet hers as well."

"That. Is a future. I do not want."

"……"

Up to that point, the thing had come across like a machine doing a stilted impression of a person.

But the very last line carried a desperation, an edge of real feeling, sharp enough to make me flinch in spite of myself.

"Now — even when I say I'm helping, I'm not going to go and hunt the pair of them down personally or fight at your side. I'll only… tell you where the two are now, how you can drag them out, and what the most efficient way to seal them would be. Nothing more than that sort of information."

Here Ahriman gave a small, reassuring wave of its hand.

"And one more thing. I won't be asking for anything in return, so set your mind at ease on that count."

How will it be?

It shut its mouth on that line, and I was left with no choice but to think.

Su-yeong had warned me to be careful any time I struck a deal with Ahriman, and beyond that, the very fact of it offering favors of any kind didn't add up at all.

But.

Maybe — actually….

A conversation I'd had with Su-yeong a few days earlier started surfacing in my mind.

Along with everything she'd shown me — every line from the book I couldn't read myself.

"It says here that Ahriman, while being a Seven Calamity, is different from the rest."

She'd run her finger along the words I couldn't make out a single letter of, reading them aloud in a quiet voice.

"He was the first of the Seven Calamities to be born, and was created with a purpose distinct from the others."

"That purpose is none other than to oversee the flow and balance of this world."

"The other Seven Calamities also hold this purpose, but in effect, because he oversees them, he holds higher authority than they do."

"For this reason, Ahriman is granted absolute rights over every one of the other Seven Calamities. These rights include permanent expulsion of an existing Seven Calamity, replacement, and — when truly necessary — a hand in the birth of a new Seven Calamity."

"However, in cases where these rights of expulsion, replacement, and creation were exercised, instances were observed in which the balance and flow were themselves thrown out of true. As a result, Ahriman was stripped of the rights described above."

"Just from this much, you can tell — there's something standing above even the Seven Calamities."

She'd broken off there and looked at me.

This wasn't really a book, she said. It read more like a report than anything.

"And on top of that, judging by what's written here, Ji-hyeok — you shouldn't exist in this world. More precisely, they won't tolerate it."

"Like I told you before, people who came over from other worlds, like you, end up as massive variables, and that becomes a trigger for the flow and balance to fall apart."

"Look at the proof. Three Seven Calamities have gone down to you alone. Who would ever believe that?"

"Foundation stone, wedge, irregular, contrarian against the natural order… anyway, removing beings like that, eliminating the variables — that's the main purpose of the Seven Calamities and of Ahriman."

"But here's where one question comes up."

"…If all that's true, then why on earth has Ahriman been leaving you alone, Ji-hyeok?"

She'd shared, very carefully, the thought she had been turning over, agonizing through, and finally arrived at as a conclusion.

"And the more I think it through, the stranger it gets. You said yourself — besides you, there are plenty of others who've crossed over from other worlds, right?"

"Why on earth did they end up coming over?"

"For what reason? How? With what aim?"

"Spatial magic is exceedingly rare, as you know — most people couldn't pull off even a basic working with a lifetime of training."

"…Th-that's not me bragging look how special I am, by the way, so take that part with a grain of salt, okay?"

"Anyway… the more I turn it over, the more your safe, uninjured arrival in another world looks impossible to begin with. You'd need an absurd chain of coincidences stacked one on top of another. An astronomically improbable outcome. Sure, you could just about buy it happening once."

"But not once — over and over. Periodically, even?"

"That isn't an accident. It isn't a coincidence. Someone is doing it deliberately."

"A being that created the Seven Calamities and is trying to maintain balance and order — would that being really make this kind of mistake?"

"I don't think so. Not for a second."

"…So who, in the end, is this someone?"

"And what is it they want?"

"Same with Ahriman. What in the world does that thing want from you, Ji-hyeok — and from me?"

"This is just a guess, but maybe Ahriman is…."

...

"So."

Ahriman watched me work through it in silence for a long stretch and then spread its hands.

"Have you put your thoughts in some order yet?"

What the thing wanted from me.

It was probably….

To use the two of us to escape from the thing above them.

Maybe that's what Ahriman is after… don't you think?

I gave a small nod.

In my ears, her voice — wanting to dismiss what she'd just said as nonsense even as she said it — was still echoing.

"All right."

I looked at Ahriman, who had at some point taken on the shape of a young girl, and answered.

"Since you've gone and put it like that, I'd be a fool not to take the help."

"Well, well."

Ahriman cracked a smile.

"A very wise choice indeed."

[I refuse.]

"…What?"

[I said, I refuse.]

Minerva said it and gave a sharp snort.

Then she pointedly turned her head away, making it clear she didn't even want to talk to me.

"Wait, hold on — Minerva…."

The flat refusal had blindsided me, and I couldn't keep the bewilderment off my face.

Of all people, she was the last one I'd expected to react this way.

The night before, I'd told Han Su-yeong everything as soon as I got back — that Ahriman had come to me, and the full content of what we'd discussed.

Once I'd calmed her startled reaction down, we'd talked it through in detail, and we ended up agreeing that since sitting still wasn't going to produce any clever solution, we might as well make a move.

I already knew that when Ahriman was striking a deal, it didn't lie, and the reasons it had for helping me made a reasonable enough kind of sense.

If I died, the only one who could use the pendant would be gone. Which meant any way home for Su-yeong would naturally disappear too, and she'd be stuck in this era for good.

…From what I could guess, for something whose whole agenda was for her to act like the proper protagonist of this world, that was without question one ending it needed to avoid.

So we'd decided to head for Venus first — the closer of the two from where we were.

Closer was relative; we'd still need to cross at least one or two continents to get there. Which was exactly why I'd planned to ask Minerva for the lift, and brought the whole thing up — but….

"Minerva, at least tell me why. Otherwise I can't even start figuring out how to fix it."

[……]

I'd told her we'd pinned down where Venus and Juno were hiding.

That with her help, we could handle both of them right away.

I'd laid the whole thing out from start to finish, and for reasons I couldn't begin to guess, Minerva — making her displeasure plain in every line of her — just kept saying no.

[…You asked why I refuse, did you?]

After holding her silence for a long stretch, she finally spoke quietly.

I nodded right away and gave her my full attention.

[This Minerva detests pointless action. Truly meaningless, wasteful conduct, I despise. Do you understand me?]

"Yeah. I understand."

[If I carried you and we flew, we'd be there in no time. But what if those creatures sensed my presence and slipped away somewhere else?]

"Me and Su-yeong can mask that much, easy. And if it really comes to it, we just keep our distance on the approach."

[…Even granting we make it, by what means do you propose to draw the two of them out? I think a more solid plan should come first — that's the proper order.]

"I've already worked that part out too. All we need to do is get there and we can pull them out right away."

[……]

Instead of answering, Minerva gave her tail a single flick through the air.

A move she always made when something was bothering her.

[…Yes — that's right.]

Then, as if a good idea had just struck her, she nodded and spoke.

[Along the coast, there are bound to be human settlements thick on the ground, are there not?]

"Probably… yeah?"

[And any humans who lay eyes on me are certain to raise an uproar, aren't they?]

"That, too — yeah."

[Right. And in that case, this Minerva would become very, very displeased.]

She said it and slid a sidelong look my way.

[I might just trample every last one of those humans flat and burn them to ash right in front of you. I might snatch them up and devour them, breathe out my venom on them as I pleased. And if I did, you two — being human yourselves — would find that rather awkward, wouldn't you?]

"…Then what exactly are you proposing we do?"

[As it happens, this Minerva has a wonderful idea.]

Minerva said it to me in an insinuating tone.

[If I took on a human form again, the way I did before, I could blend in among humans without any concern at all. Don't you agree?]

"……"

If anything, that would cause an even bigger stir.

Because Minerva, in her human form, was beautiful in a way that was difficult to put into words.

No — there'd absolutely be a massive scene.

But for now, keeping her happy was the priority, so I went along with it — brilliant idea, that.

"That works. So you take human form and travel with us, that's the plan?"

[That is precisely the problem, you.]

"What now? What's the problem this time?"

I let a small sigh slip out as I asked, and Minerva's tail flicked back and forth.

[I cannot return to a human form.]

"…What?"

[I said, I cannot turn human again.]

Minerva answered with utter nonchalance and held my gaze steadily.

[So you must turn me into a human first.]