Chapter 24

“Urp!”

Unable to hold back any longer, Drich collapsed in front of the stream.

“That’s it, let it all out. Nice and easy.”

Urgh—at the raw sound, Quilbion wrinkled his nose and surveyed the surroundings.

In front of the warehouses where he’d spent time with Twella. There was still no one around.

Drich gasped and straightened his back, then buried his head again. Quilbion approached and patted his back.

“It’s better to vomit until there’s nothing left. If any remnants stay inside, you’ll be churning all day.”

“I’m… fine… urp!”

“Just throw up instead of talking.”

Pat, pat. After tapping his back a couple times, he sat down with his back against the warehouse wall.

He found himself laughing for no reason.

Was this also part of that damn gravitational pull of fate?

Quilbion struck his lips with his palm. Harsh words kept trying to slip out.

Was it bad that he was finding his original personality?

The sound of pigs crying revived from the depths of his memory. Squealing pigs that made an awful racket—spending time with them had been his daily routine.

After feeding them plenty of bean meal, he’d massage their bodies thoroughly with finely twisted straw.

‘You have to do it this way for them to birth well,’ the employer who’d kicked him at every opportunity had said.

“I wonder if those bastards are doing okay.”

Oddly enough, he thought of the piglets he’d raised in the corner of the pig farm more than the neighborhood kids he’d hung around with.

He’d even named some of them.

Clover, who hadn’t survived the hellish winter, had been well-roasted and stored in his stomach. The employer had a nasty personality, but he’d provided good food. Dead pigs became provisions for the neighborhood gang that way.

“Uuuurgh!”

“Hey, you’ll spill your guts. Looks like nothing’s coming out anymore, so how about stopping?”

He scooped up stream water and gave it to Drich. Drich, who’d grown haggard in the meantime, received the gourd with trembling hands.

“Drink slowly. Water can give you indigestion on an empty stomach too.”

Drich gulped down the water and collapsed as if falling. His appearance squeezing out a few tears was somewhat pitiful.

“What happened to me?”

“What happened? You’re fucked, that’s what.”

“…You, why are you using those words? You didn’t talk like that before.”

“What should I call a dick if not a dick?”

“Are you really Quilbion?”

“I am. Quilbion. I’m the owner of that tiresome name, so snap out of it quickly. If you stay like this, you’ll get eaten.”

“E-eaten? Me? Why?”

“You’re smart, aren’t you? You must have figured out the situation to some degree, so I’ll explain briefly.”

He quickly told him about this terrible livestock pen created under the sky wall, the goblins, and the brainwashing.

Drich listened to the explanation calmly, then nodded.

‘That’s impossible,’ ‘I can’t believe it,’ ‘You’ve been tainted by evil thoughts’—if Drich had said such worthless things, he’d been ready to punch him, but fortunately the atmosphere was one of acceptance.

“…I remembered. What I did outside. I thought it was a dream, but when I woke up, I knew.”

“Congratulations.”

“Is that something to congratulate me for?”

“It’s better than being eaten alive while blind, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Laugh, asshole.”

He sat down next to Drich.

“Quil.”

“What?”

“What did you do outside?”

“Me? Pig management. Fed them, massaged them, delivered their babies, cleaned their shit. I was those bastards’ caretaker.”

“Your mouth’s really rough. You were a kid who only spoke properly.”

“Try working all day in a smell that makes your nose rot. If swearing doesn’t stick to your mouth, you’re not human. You’re something transcending humanity. Even a god would say ‘Fuck, that shit smells like garbage’ if stuck in a pigsty for a day.”

Pfft—Drich laughed.

“It’s unfamiliar, but it also seems like your real self. It suits you.”

“Vulgar eloquence suits a lowborn. I think it suits me well too.”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way…”

“Sure you didn’t. So what did you do outside? Farming? Or some other corvée labor?”

Given his rugged appearance, build, and considerable strength, this guy’s life couldn’t have been comfortable either.

“I was a Buten.”

“Huh? You?”

“Yeah. No way to prove it though.”

Buten.

Second-class blood.

Next to the sacred royal family, the Suten.

If they’d been outside, he wouldn’t have even been able to make eye contact with someone of such high status.

“The premium pigs I carefully managed must have gone into your mouth.”

“That might be so.”

“A Buten, huh. Do you remember which region you were in?”

“No. I don’t remember that much. What’s coming to mind now is family, mansion, alcohol? About that much.”

“You’ll gradually remember more. I did too.”

“Will my personality flip around like yours?”

“It might, or it might not. And this is pretty tame. I’m not even mixing in a single swear word when I talk, am I?”

Drich laughed loudly and slapped Quilbion’s back.

His hand was so brutal that after getting hit once, a curse flew out.

“Quil.”

“What?”

“What do I do now? I absolutely can’t eat that. Earlier I didn’t know, so I just shoved it in and swallowed, but now that I know, I can’t.”

“Obviously. If you could endure that, you wouldn’t be human.”

Drich’s eyes widened.

“Come to think of it, you… you ate all of it, didn’t you?”

“I did. Deliciously.”

“How?”

“Sorcery.”

He stood up and extended his hand to Drich.

“The more comrades in arms, the better.”

“Comrades in arms?”

Drich grabbed his hand and asked.

“We can’t stay stuck in here, can we? So we have to fight.”

“How do we fight those monsters?”

Quilbion grinned fiercely.

“There’s someone I need to introduce you to. I don’t know if he’s ally or enemy, but for now, he’s someone we have to trust.”

*

“Well then.”

When the meeting ended, the Ascetics left the cafeteria.

Al Terua stared blankly at the blank paper on the table.

He hadn’t even heard the meeting content. His head was completely filled with the topic Quilbion had thrown out.

Outside memories.

The reason for coming to this place.

The method for surviving in this place.

The feeders commanded by the goblins wriggled around the cafeteria.

Things without consciousness. Things like insects that hadn’t even become locusts.

A one-meter-long feeder passed over a pool of blood spilled on the floor. The pooled blood disappeared cleanly.

The feeder also ate cleanly the corpse that had only a head remaining.

Before long, the cafeteria became as clean as always.

One feeder wriggled closer and climbed onto the table. When it tried to swallow the paper, he pressed it down firmly with his index finger.

Kiiiiik!

The feeder shook its elongated body mercilessly, then burst and disappeared.

The nark the feeder had accumulated scattered into the air. No corpse remained. Since they were things that couldn’t maintain substance without nark.

Al Terua stared at the blank paper again.

He gripped a pencil in his hand and wrote down his oldest memory.

“Right, I was close with that guy.”

Memory from outside.

The name of that guy who’d lived in the house across the way was Smith. He’d been taller than his peers but hadn’t acted cocky relying on his size. He’d been timid too.

Once they’d discovered a strange cave in the grasslands some distance from the village…

“In that cave, in the cave…”

He couldn’t remember.

Only an abstract feeling that he’d done something wafted strongly, but nothing came to mind clearly.

No, let’s concentrate.

He pulled out another memory. The day he’d become an adult and left the village.

He’d met with a girl to whom he’d given his heart. A girl he would certainly have married if he’d settled in the village.

He also remembered her face clearly. She’d had quite large eyes and a cute nose. Her lips had especially suited his taste, and even now he could smile recalling the poignant sensation when kissing.

The girl he’d liked.

But he couldn’t think of her name.

Body scent, body shape, voice.

Everything was vivid, but her name absolutely wouldn’t surface.

Some people’s faces, some kids’ names.

Some individuals he clearly remembered their characteristics but couldn’t recall a single related incident.

A bizarre situation where only the person remained alone in his head.

Al Terua looked at the words he’d written down.

“Well, well.”

He could acknowledge that memory impairment had occurred. The brain’s storage method was the height of absurdity, and defects were a deserved result.

But it couldn’t be this sloppy.

The pieces of missing memory.

Al Terua recalled when he’d just arrived at this place.

He’d discovered the clue to the surface realm, entered through the entrance, and had shuddered while discovering a new world.

Clue.

Al Terua circled the word he’d written as ‘surface realm.’

Where did this knowledge come from?

He could let it go since he clearly remembered the book containing fate, but why did he know about goblins and the surface realm?

The method for deceiving the goblins had been simple.

He just had to make his nark into a form similar to theirs.

“Where did I learn this too?”

Hahaha, laughter came out naturally.

The desire to tear open his head and look inside became desperate.

Was there really ‘me who isn’t me,’ as Twella had said?

What if the very self-awareness he believed to be himself, the being called Al Terua, was a processed byproduct?

Al Terua swept back his hair.

There were two hypotheses.

First, Al Terua was actually a goblin. A spy planted among humans while brainwashed to be human.

He might be a goblin’s means for blocking any variables.

Second, Al Terua was human but was in a brainwashed state.

If so, who brainwashed the human him for what reason and planted him here?

Either way, the conclusion was that the entity called ‘Al Terua’ couldn’t be trusted.

To think a situation where I have to doubt myself would come.

“I didn’t even recognize it.”

Was high-dimensional sorcery beyond the Purple Form’s sorcery placed on him? Or was it magic rather than sorcery?

Al Terua crumpled the paper and threw it to a feeder.

“Very interesting.”

Excitement came before fear.

Where does truth begin and end?

No, everything might be false.

Since the very existence called ‘me’ was a product of lies, couldn’t everything be lies?

Nevertheless.

Al Terua thought of fate.

Round and round, back to fate?

He threw endless questions to his inner self.

Where is your sense of purpose directed?

The derived answer was extremely simple.

Twella.

That child would show the answer.

When he returned to his room, Al Terua encountered two boys.

Quilbion and Drich.

There was no explanation, but he could understand the situation.

“He’s someone who’ll fight with us. He’s got a good build, so he’ll be helpful for something.”

Quilbion spoke while showing a rough smile. As time passed, his doglike temperament was emerging more and more. That must be his ‘true self.’

“First, I’ll apply sorcery.”

He placed a talisman against Drich’s mouth and formed a hand seal.

“Go on for today. I have things to talk about with this guy.”

He said while pointing at Quilbion.

Drich looked at Quilbion, then turned his head sharply to stare at Al Terua.

He seemed full of wariness.

It was obvious what he’d heard from Quilbion.

“You can go down.”

“Will you be okay alone?”

“If this person is an enemy, we’re dead anyway. So it’s fine.”

Drich walked heavily and left the room.

“Now it’s not even ‘Ascetic’ but ‘this person’?”

“If the form of address offended you, I’m sorry. But it’s not wrong, is it?”

“That’s true. When even I don’t properly know what I am, what use are titles?”

Was it because he’d used his head too much?

His energy was completely drained.

It was when he was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling. Quilbion sighed and lay down beside him.

“You said you’d explain in an organized way.”

“I’m showing you through actions, aren’t I?”

“I hate complicated things, so tell me simply. Are you going to eat us, or are you going to help us?”

“You don’t look tasty.”

“That’s fortunate.”

Hollow laughter came out.