Chapter 3: Detour ① 【Liz's Perspective】 The Junior-Like Beautiful Spirit 【Hopelessly in Love】

――Liz. My dear, precious Liz. Listen carefully. You must never entertain such a foolish notion as revenge.

――Why?! I... I...!

――Revenge creates nothing. It only makes the sorrow repeat itself.

――You are right. As expected of the woman I chose to marry. First of all, to bring down the illustrious House of Bellerford so thoroughly... Your opponent is no ordinary one. I might even say that, despite being our enemy, I admire what you've accomplished. You must not challenge someone this dangerous, Liz. You must calmly assess the difference in strength between you and your opponent, and if necessary, choose to retreat or surrender. That is also an important part of warfare. Surely I've taught you that much long ago?

――That... that may be true. But!

――I simply lost the war I fought as head of this house. That's all it was. House Bellerford has been defeated. That is an immutable fact. In that case, all that remains is to do what must be done as the defeated. Elizabeth Io Bellerford. My pride and joy. I have one final command for you, from a defeated general to his daughter. Go and seize your own happiness.

――Don't move! It has been decided that House Bellerford's noble title will be stripped! At the same time, the head of the house and his wife have been sentenced to execution! If you don't want to compound your crimes and burden your own child with them as well, then submit quietly!

――You know, Liz... Mother wants you to be happy. You've grown into such a beautiful young woman. I'm sure someone wonderful will come into your life. That dark desire for revenge will only rob you of the bright happiness that awaits you. That... that is the one thing I cannot accept.

――She's right. Listen to me. You must not allow yourself to be trapped by the past, by us. You must seize your future. As one who carries the blood of the proud House Bellerford, show us that you can grasp a wonderful happiness for yourself. That is all your mother and I could ever wish for. ...I'm sorry. And thank you for allowing me to have those final words. Now, I will neither run nor hide. Take me wherever you wish.

――A surprisingly noble attitude for a great sinner. ...Take him away!

――Wait! Please, wait! I'm begging you! Father! Mother!

Please. I don't want anything else.

So please... please.

Don't leave me behind.

Don't leave me alone.

――――

―――

――

"――Father! Mother!"

The words I cried out unconsciously vanished into the empty air, unheard by anyone, while the hand I stretched toward the sky grasped nothing and hung there helplessly.

Ah. It's that same dream again, isn't it? Honestly, you'd think I'd have grown tired of seeing the same scene over and over by now. Just once in a while, I'd like to see a memory from a happier time instead...

No. That is foolish indulgence. A weakness worthy of contempt.

I am Liz. Just Liz. I have already cast aside both my family name and the precious name my parents gave me.

But that was never so that I could forget them. Quite the opposite. It is a disguise, a cloak to conceal my identity until the day I can reclaim that name.

I will make the hateful enemy who brought about the downfall of my House Bellerford and drove Father and Mother to their executions pay for what they did. Then I will clear the names of House Bellerford and my parents of their disgrace, and I will rise again as Elizabeth Io Bellerford.

And yet... I still cannot even catch the slightest glimpse of my hated enemy. I continue to waste my time accomplishing nothing.

Mother said revenge was meaningless. Perhaps she was right. I cannot say that my life as it is now has any meaning.

Father said the enemy was far too dangerous. Perhaps he was right as well. Even now, I have uncovered nothing.

And then there was the fact that, with their own deaths approaching, both of them wished for nothing more than for me to find happiness.

But... I am sorry. Father. Mother. I cannot feel happiness.

No. That isn't quite right.

In a world without the two of you... in a world where that hated enemy still laughs carefree... I do not wish to enjoy happiness.

If I were to find fulfillment in something as ordinary as a normal person's happiness... If I became satisfied with that and abandoned my revenge... then wouldn't that mean accepting the deeds of the demon who brought about your downfall? That is what Liz believes.

Therefore... therefore, my happiness... If such a thing even exists... must surely lie beyond the completion of my revenge. At the end of this cursed path, atop the corpse of my enemy, and only then, will I allow myself to be happy.

And so, Father. Mother. For the first and last time, Liz will defy your wishes.

I swallow my meager meal without even tasting it, a meal so plain that it cannot possibly compare to what I once ate.

But perhaps this is for the best. After all, I have neither the time nor the luxury to concern myself with cooking or meals in the first place.

With my father's sword in hand,

I close my eyes once and take a deep breath.

And then.

I cast Elizabeth aside―――and become the mercenary Liz.

It was the beginning of another ordinary day.

The same morning routine I had repeated countless times before, and would surely repeat countless times again.

I had resigned myself to the certainty that days like this would continue repeating themselves.

Yes. Until that day.

From that day onward. Or, to be more precise, from the moment I met a certain woman.

My life would change completely.

"Um... You're the female mercenary Liz, aren't you?"

"That's right. Is there some kind of job you want to hire me for?"

I was rather infamous for being a woman who worked as a mercenary.

That was probably why I attracted both people looking to mock me and disgusting apes who were after my body.

I replied sharply, making it clear that if this wasn't about a job, then she should leave.

But this time, my visitor was completely different. For one thing, she wasn't a man. And she wasn't looking to hire me, either.

"Then can I call you Liz-senpai?!"

And so, without seeming to mind my cold manner in the slightest,

she――the female mercenary Tierra――declared with a smile as radiant as a flower in bloom that she would become my "junior."

Tierra As.

She was an extraordinarily strange and peculiar person.

For starters, her speech was polite and suggested a high level of education, yet there wasn't a shred of ladylike refinement or grace in the way she carried herself. Though, to be fair, that was probably how a mercenary ought to conduct herself, and my own mannerisms no longer bore any resemblance to the person I once was, either.

Even so, someone who has only recently taken up such a profession is bound to let their true inexperience show somewhere. But there was absolutely none of that with her. If anything, she almost certainly hadn't possessed those qualities to begin with.

Her speech was that of the upper class, while her behavior, knowledge, and common sense were those of an ordinary commoner――no, there were even basic things that ordinary commoners would know that she somehow didn't.

She was a person of utterly mismatched pieces. And yet, she carried a pair of exquisite twin blades I had never seen before, weapons that commoners could never hope to acquire, as well as black clothing designed to conceal her identity with highly sophisticated magical mechanisms.

None of it made any sense whatsoever.

When we went hunting, she possessed enough skill to rival even me, a young woman who had been trained in magic and combat as the daughter of a knightly house.

And yet, whenever she fought humans, she became terribly frightened and hesitated to deliver the finishing blow. You could call it kindness, but in this chaotic world, it was nothing more than a contemptible softness that served as a shackle.

I could count on one hand the number of people I knew who could have carried such softness with them all the way to her age.

And not one of them behaved anything like her.

...Though that only applied when her opponent was human.

When faced with anything other than a human, no matter how terrifying its appearance, she would charge forward without the slightest hesitation and take its life.

And then, as if that were simply part of the process, she would cook it and eat it.

"Senpai, senpai♪ Come eat with me! It's our duty as the ones who hunted it!"

I was forced to eat with her――and then found myself staring in astonishment at just how delicious it was.

In this way, she was not normal.

She was peculiar. Abnormal. Unnatural.

And yet, strangely enough, I never felt any negative emotion toward her. If anything, I could even say that I was fond of her.

Everyone I had known in the past had abandoned me. The only people who gathered around me now were those who saw me as an object for their base desires.

And on top of that, there was always the possibility that my hated enemy might send assassins after me.

Under such circumstances, it was only natural that I would come to look at everyone around me with cold suspicion. And that was exactly what I had done.

Even so.

No――perhaps because of that.

She appeared completely different to me.

After all, there was no way anyone would send such an obviously suspicious person as an assassin.

...If even this was some sort of scheme designed to outwit me, then I would have simply given up and admitted defeat.

That's how much she was...

So blatantly unnatural, so ridiculously eccentric, and yet, in a way that bordered on miraculous, so completely natural.

And at the same time.

Though I would only realize this later, when looking back on it...

By this point, I had already been drawn to her.

"Senpai, senpai♪ Let's go on a mission together again today! Let's go hunting! I've always wanted to say that! Ehehe!"

And so, on this day as well, I would spend my time with her.

Ever since I began spending my days with Tierra, my life changed completely.

For one thing, I gained someone I could call a friend. And, remarkably, that included men as well.

She was an extraordinarily friendly person, casually striking up conversations with men without a second thought. In the first place, there was absolutely no sense of gender distinction in her way of thinking. In her eyes, perhaps there simply were no men or women.

On one occasion, she even formed friendships with people who were men while also being women, or women while also being men. Apparently, attitudes toward them varied considerably depending on the country or region, but here they were still social outcasts. Yet, as expected, she didn't care in the slightest.

Because she was like that, she had an enormous number of friends. And since I was almost always by her side, I inevitably ended up speaking with many of them as well. As a result, I gained people whom I could call my own friends.

Of course, she was extremely beautiful and adorable, with an outstanding figure, so she also attracted people whose desires were even more vulgar than those directed at me. And to make matters worse, she had absolutely no wariness toward such people!

My friends and Tierra's friends formed connections of their own, and there were even times when we all joined forces to protect her from such scoundrels.

"Senpai, senpai♪ Look at this! Apparently, it's a specialty liquor from around here! They say it's customary to drink it once you've come of age! When in Rome, do as the Romans do. I thought I'd give it a try――"

"Throw it away. Right now. And tell me who gave it to you."

It was notorious for having a powerful aphrodisiac effect.

The man who gave it to her claimed that he'd been drunk and had only meant it as a joke.

That didn't matter. We beat him half to death anyway.

If I am to speak of her, I cannot possibly leave out her cooking.

Tierra was utterly obsessed with cooking.

I didn't know why, but she was absolutely insistent on "cooking."

Even when we were on a mercenary assignment and had neither the time nor the ingredients, that didn't matter. Somehow, she always insisted on preparing all three meals of the day herself.

Once, I asked her why.

She answered like this:

"It's frustrating, you know? The fact that cooking――the greatest cultural achievement of humanity, something we've spent thousands of years developing――might be surpassed by something as primitive as a wild boar that hasn't had a single thing done to it. I'm not giving up on the possibilities of cooking."

As usual, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

And then she said something else.

"Besides... I need to improve my skills as much as possible before the day comes, so I can win over a certain person's stomach. For the sake of my goal."

When I heard that answer, my heart gave a sharp pang.

The fact that there was a side of her I didn't know.

The fact that she was looking toward someone other than me.

She cut the conversation short there, and I couldn't get anything more out of her.

But that day, I became aware of a dark emotion that had taken root within my heart, separate from my desire for revenge.

At the same time, I finally recognized the overwhelmingly powerful feelings I held for her――I realized I was in love with her.

From then on, I spent even more time with her than before, watching her every movement and paying close attention to everything she did.

Having been raised as a nobleman's daughter, I had absolutely no idea how ordinary romantic advances worked, much less how one was supposed to approach another woman.

On top of that, my desire for revenge refused to allow me to accept the possibility of my own happiness.

Looking back, I must have been acting particularly strangely for a while.

Part of me wanted to draw closer to her, while another part insisted that I had to leave her behind. The two opposing feelings ran wild, eventually giving birth to the bizarre behavior of my excessive physical contact with her.

The desire to touch her, draw closer to her, and have her accept me.

And the desire to be rejected by her, to leave her behind, to have her push me away.

At that time, those two completely opposing desires had undeniably existed within my heart simultaneously.

Yet she never rejected me.

On the contrary, the woman who had been hiding something from everyone finally revealed to me――and me alone――that she was actually a spirit.

In return――or rather, that was merely the excuse I used; in truth, I simply wanted her to know me――I told her about my past.

She neither looked down on me nor pitied me.

She didn't even condemn the desire for revenge that even my own parents had rejected.

She simply listened in silence.

And in the end, she gently embraced me.

She accepted even my dark past and blackened emotions as nothing more than aspects of who I was, and continued treating me exactly as she always had.

It was over for me.

She accepted everything that I was. She even embraced my foolish desire for revenge.

And so, I could no longer lock away my feelings for her.

But by this point, I had realized something else as well.

She was planning to leave soon.

The "purpose" she had spoken about for so long.

Presumably, it was connected to her existence as a spirit. A "duty" that only a conceptual spirit, born with a definite purpose unlike human beings, could possess.

Something akin to a mission――something beyond the measure of human common sense, something that was itself the very reason for her existence.

And that was why she was preparing to leave this country.

Meanwhile, my revenge was something that could only be accomplished in this country.

I was deeply troubled.

I agonized over it for days.

And after all that suffering, I finally proposed that I travel with her, even though doing so meant being prepared to abandon the revenge I had clung to for so long.

――And then, she rejected me.

She refused my proposal apologetically, doing everything she could to avoid hurting me.

When I saw that sunny, warm smile of hers――the smile that resembled sunlight――turn sad because of me, I felt as though I had committed some terrible sin.

My emotions became completely tangled.

I couldn't make sense of anything anymore.

If I couldn't follow her, then I wanted to keep her by my side forever.

That foolish desire painted over every other thought in my mind――

And before I knew it, I was trying to force myself upon her.

I began pulling off her clothes.

And then.

"Senpai! Please stop! Senpai!"

Her frightened voice brought me back to my senses.

I understood exactly what I had done.

And then, unable to bear the sheer stupidity and sinfulness of my actions, I burst into tears.

Yes.

This foolish woman had gone so far as to commit another sin even at this point.

She was the one who should have been crying.

Yet I, the perpetrator, was the one who broke down.

And then she...

She gently embraced a woman like me, who had so horribly betrayed her trust, and said:

In that same gentle voice that seemed capable of embracing everything.

"I'm sorry. I can't return Senpai's feelings. Even so, I promise I'll meet Senpai again. Once I've finished what I have to do, I'll be the one to come find you."

"...Sniff. You can't possibly know that! Father and Mother! My older brother and older sister! The servants and even my friends! Not one of them ever came back! They all abandoned me and left me behind!"

But I couldn't believe her.

Because there hadn't been a single person left at my side.

That was why――

"Even so. I promise. I'll definitely come back to you, Senpai. That's how it's supposed to be."

Yet she said it without the slightest hesitation.

As naturally as if she were talking about the weather today.

As though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She simply said it.

When I asked her why she could be so certain, she answered:

"Let's see... How about we call it a spirit's intuition?"

She said it jokingly.

Yet there wasn't the slightest trace of an intention to deceive me in her eyes.

"Sniff... ...Okay. I'll wait for you. I'll keep waiting for you, no matter how long it takes."

"Yes. Then, Senpai. Let's meet again at the end of the roads we each must walk."

I understood the meaning behind her final words all too well.

Both she and I had something we had to place above our own happiness.

Something we had to accomplish.

She would fulfill her purpose as a spirit.

I would fulfill my revenge.

Completely different paths.

And yet, she was saying that our paths would inevitably cross at the end.

No――that she would make sure they crossed.

And so, I believed in her.

And we parted ways.

My first love lies at the end of my path of revenge.

The days I spent with her were nothing more than a glimpse of a distant, distant landscape that God had shown me on a whim.

Even so.

I now had a reason to live.

I would survive.

I would definitely live long enough to accomplish my revenge.

Because my confession had been accepted.

I had confessed my feelings to her.

She had answered, "I can't return Senpai's feelings (because, for now, I have something I must accomplish above all else)."

No matter how many times I went over the conversation in my head, there was no mistake.

I wasn't misunderstanding her.

If that was the case, then she had promised to return my feelings in the future.

This was basically an engagement, wasn't it?

Come to think of it, wasn't there some kind of black magic spell for getting two women to conceive a child...?

I'd better learn it.

★Tierra's Inner Thoughts

"(What the hell? This makes no sense. Why did she suddenly attack me? For now, I'd better be gentle so I don't provoke her any further...) I'm sorry. (I don't really understand what's going on, but...) I can't return Senpai's feelings (because I'll be coming back eventually). Even so, I promise I'll meet Senpai again (as an ally on the protagonist-kun's side). Once I've finished what I have to do (the preparations I need to make before the main story begins), I'll definitely be the one to come see you (because the protagonist-kun will inevitably come to meet you as the story progresses)."

"Even so. (I need to be careful with my wording so I don't provoke her again,) I promise you. I'll definitely come back to Senpai (because you and the protagonist-kun will meet during the main story). (That's how the story is supposed to go.)"

"Let's see... (I can't tell her about my original world or the game.) How about we call it... a spirit's intuition? (I don't actually have anything like that. Will that satisfy her? No?)"

"Yes. Then, Senpai. Let's meet again at the end of the paths we each must walk (as allies on the same side)."