Chapter 158 - The Black Horse and the Young Donkey (3)

The elves lost the Mother World Tree.

The dwarves lost the furnace that would burn forever, and humans lost their shining kingdom.

Each race lost something different, but in the end, all of those things were likely another name for possibility.

There was once an age when a single being monopolized every possibility in this world.

An age when it gathered the starlight trying to rise and trapped it beneath its feet.

People called that age the age of dragons.

And here, in that harsh age, there was one more race that had lost its possibility.

The race with beast ears, the beastfolk.

What they lost was said to be "mystery."

* * *

"Sir Knight! Father!"

A black horse and a young donkey walked along a small trail.

But their journey, which should have been quiet, was being mercilessly shattered by the beastman following behind them.

"Let me come with you! I am certain I will be of help!"

The man named Nibelun, whom Vlad and Jean had saved from the fire pit, was still chasing after them and shouting for them to let him come along.

"What do you think? Could I just go break one of his legs a little so he can't follow us?"

"God is watching over us always and everywhere, Sir Vlad."

"Right. Of course."

After hearing Jean's words, Vlad scratched his head and frowned.

The world of knights, who dealt in swords and violence, had aspects he could relate to, even if it was lofty, but this young acolyte named Jean was still someone he found difficult to deal with.

"Then if I don't break anything and just curse at him to stop following us, that should be fine, right?"

"... I believe He would overlook that much."

Vlad was the elder and the guide, but the person this journey centered on was Jean.

Someone he had to protect, and the rule he had to uphold.

He was a child Vlad could easily have ignored, but Vlad had already decided to show Jean respect instead.

"Hey. Mister Nibelun Who Follows Death."

"Yes. Yes! Sir Knight!"

Even so, anger that had built up did not simply disappear.

Noir's snorting breath, as angry as Vlad's own huffing, brushed past Nibelun's twitching ears.

"Just how long are you going to keep following us like this? Didn't I tell you no?"

The growling menace in his voice was fierce, but Nibelun merely clasped his hands together and beamed.

"Oh dear, please do not think of me only as a nuisance..."

A black robe worn out here and there.

And though he was not wearing it now, the bizarre mask still hanging from his back made the beastman feel just as ominous as when they had first seen him.

"I may not look it, but I will be useful. I am a mage, after all!"

"What kind of mage gets caught by swindlers and turned into barbecue?"

Nibelun, who said he had come following death, was introducing himself as a mage.

A mage who followed disease and curses, at that.

Seeing Nibelun spit out nothing but words he wanted to avoid from their first meeting until now, Vlad wrinkled his face once again.

"Due to the nature of my magic, I need a little time to activate it."

"Right. The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like magic that won't be any damn help."

The things he carried were strange enough, so he might well be a mage, as he claimed.

But if he was at a level where he could be captured by swindlers worse than bandits, that told Vlad all he needed to know.

"This is really my last warning. If you keep following us, you can count on one of your legs getting snapped."

He did not need some useless extra mouth that would be no help.

Especially if that person was plainly unpleasant at a glance.

Vlad still found the crow mask Nibelun had hanging from him deeply unsettling.

"The Barony of Uthman!"

But Nibelun paid no mind to Vlad's reaction and only repeated what he wanted to say.

"Please let me enter that place, at least. I may not be of help to you, Sir Vlad, but I will certainly be of help to others."

"... You really are someone who only says whatever he wants, aren't you?"

Vlad looked at the thick book Nibelun was still holding dearly.

It was the book he had examined while Nibelun was unconscious, filled densely with drawings of all kinds of plants and their effects.

Nibelun the mage.

He was both a mage and a plague doctor.

* * *

"You came following death?"

"That is so. No, yes, sir."

The beastman, who had only just awakened, still looked dazed, but he was saying he was someone who had come following death.

"What death? Is there death here?"

The sight of a beastman, unfamiliar to people of the North, a shabby black robe patched here and there, and even that bizarre-looking crow mask.

As he looked at Nibelun, who was the very image of ill omen, the Village Head standing quietly behind them began muttering that they should have burned him after all.

"That is correct. I came following death, and... as you said, there is death here as well. Because if you stay here, you will all die anyway!"

"Sir Knight. Please, could you not let us burn that crazy cat? That bastard keeps casting curses on our village!"

"The village is already finished. You must get the people out even now, as quickly as possible."

"Sir Knight, please!"

From the start, Nibelun looked like someone who would climb onto the stake by himself, even if the swindlers' group had not been involved.

Perhaps because he was still out of it, the words he blurted out without order contained no concern for his own safety or consideration for those around him.

"The land has already been contaminated. It will not end with a simple bad harvest."

"..."

The Village Head raved that the fire at the stake had not gone out yet.

But as though Nibelun did not care about anything around him, he only pulled out a map, told Vlad to look at it, and thrust it toward him.

"This, please look at this."

"You get more suspicious the longer this goes on."

The map Nibelun showed him had things drawn on it far too detailed for a mere traveler to carry around.

Not only the rough positions of roads, but rivers, the heights of hills, and even the sizes of nearby villages.

It was suspicious to be carrying it for simple travel purposes.

"It's just the sort of map spies would like to carry."

But despite Vlad's suspicious stare, the man named Nibelun merely twitched his ears and gave no particular reaction.

He was only waiting for Vlad's answer.

"... What are these circles?"

"They mark the state of the plagues' spread."

The detailed map was covered with pitch-black circles.

The circles, which looked as though Nibelun had drawn them, even marked the village where Vlad and Jean were now.

"But this..."

After staring at the map for a long while, Vlad noticed something strange and frowned.

"That is correct. It is strange, is it not?"

As if pleased that Vlad had noticed, Nibelun pointed to one place on the map.

"If you look at this alone, does it not seem that the Vatican failed to carry out a proper purification?"

"..."

The circles on the map grew larger, more numerous, and darker the closer they came to a certain place.

The place those circles pointed to was Moshiam, the capital city of the Barony of Uthman.

* * *

Early morning, before the young acolyte had even crawled out of his sleeping bag.

Dawnlight began to brighten through the campfire, where half-burned logs gave off pale gray smoke.

"See? Did I not tell you I would be of help?"

"... You really were a mage."

Vlad, who had been poking for no reason at the completely cold campfire, answered bluntly, as though he did not want to agree with Nibelun.

A large circle drawn as if to surround the group.

The circle Nibelun had drawn yesterday, saying they would not need to stand night watch, created a bizarre distortion that was hard to explain even when Vlad looked at it with his closed left eye.

"But what are you planning to do once you get to Moshiam?"

Thanks to Nibelun's pleading and Jean's request, the group had decided for now to travel together as far as Moshiam.

However, Vlad knew well that to get this suspicious mage all the way inside, he would need Vlad's guarantee as a knight.

"If you don't tell me exactly, I absolutely won't let you in."

"Oh..."

Sensing an opening in Vlad's words, Nibelun's amber eyes began to shine.

"Does that mean you will let me in?"

"I'm telling you to start by saying exactly why you want to go in."

By now, the holy knights of the Northern Orthodox Church would be gathered in the city of Moshiam to search for any wicked entity that might be there.

The reason Bishop Andreas was sending his young acolyte to Moshiam was ultimately because he hoped Jean would move with them and gain experience.

"Have you not already seen it? I am a mage who follows plagues and curses..."

Though it was a village that had tried to burn him, Vlad remembered how Nibelun had shouted to the very end that they had to leave that place.

Because it had been a warning that went straight to the point without proper explanation, many people had condemned Nibelun, but he had repeated only what he had to say without the slightest hesitation.

"Because death is there."

And just as before, Nibelun was still blurting out the words in his head without organizing them.

It seemed to be an innate nature that would be hard to change.

"Why death?"

"Because death is the unknown, is it not?"

He held things heavily in his heart, yet when he spoke them aloud, only fragments came out.

Vlad realized that this beastman named Nibelun was even less skilled at speaking than he was, despite Vlad having lived in the back alleys.

"Mystery lies within what is unknown. It hides within the world of the unknown. We have spent our entire lives wandering from place to place in search of it."

"We?"

For this question, however, Nibelun answered without any misunderstanding, not through his mouth, but through his hand.

"The beastfolk?"

"Yes, yes. We who wander everywhere and anywhere, with nowhere to go."

What Nibelun pointed to were his own ears, twitching atop his head.

"Please let me enter Moshiam. There is death there, and because death is something no one has ever experienced, I very much wish to see it."

"..."

A beastman mage who wanted to experience death in search of mystery.

The first sunlight of the day began to shine over the campfire, which had now gone out completely.

In that light, Nibelun's amber eyes held a clear color, unlike his muddled way of speaking.

["There is intelligence that a plague may soon spread after the bad harvest. You must be especially careful of it."]

Before he left, Joseph had whispered to Vlad in a small voice, telling him to be careful of this.

That rumor had been brought by the retired knight Lamund, and it had begun with a note bearing a clumsy Vatican crest.

"... For now, I'll tell the person in charge there about you. I don't know if it will work."

"Oh dear, thank you, Sir Knight!"

Thanks to Nibelun's loud voice, which did not care about the hour, Jean began to rise from his small sleeping bag with a puffy face.

A black horse, a young donkey, and one cat.

Those three were now facing one another beneath today's sun.

* * *

["That thing moves by a curse. You cannot cut it with an ordinary sword."]

The young acolyte's song had echoed through the foggy campsite.

Within that sound, as Vlad held his breath quietly, the voice had spoken to him.

["Then what do I do?"]

["Can you use aura right now, by any chance?"]

["Are you messing with me right now?"]

["Listen."]

Beyond the fog was a woman shedding black tears.

She was a pitiful woman who had wept in search of her child.

["To break that curse, you need an exorcist priest who wields God's will, a knight who possesses a world of his own, and a mage who defies the rules of the world."]

The voice had spoken.

Only those three, who had firmly hardened their worlds, could sever the woman's tears from that wicked being.