No one can shape the future. In other words, you can't know what will happen next.
A prophet changes the future by speaking it and can't prove their own prophecy by not speaking it.
That's why every prophet is a deceiver who makes a habit of lying. Because the future has variability.
In the end, the future changes. It's variable. Therefore, you arrive at the conclusion that you can't know what will happen next.
'Ominous.'
Right before Rem spoke, he looked ahead.
It wasn't some lofty prophecy. A hypersensitive sense built on the sorcery he'd piled up until now thrashed like crazy.
For a moment, he felt like a deceiver and peeked at the future.
A black shadow covered overhead. Up in the sky, a black mass clumped together, took shape, spread its wings, and flew. A body bigger than a decent-sized house descended on the town, and the inhabitants fought it.
'They'll all die.'
The violet monster that came out of Silence before used a plague-like curse as its weapon.
If you just got close, your body rotted. The westerners fought for three days and nights with sorcery wrapped all around their bodies, and only then managed to kill it.
Because of that, countless people the west called heroes were sacrificed.
The monster that came out before that had a lizard shape with short legs. It swung just one tail.
Just from that, it killed more heroes than the violet monster.
"Tail-Needle" killed the most westerners, and the violet monster killed the west's best hero.
Then this time?
It was a dragon-like monster that flew and spat black smoke.
'Something that hasn't happened.'
Rem knew nothing had happened yet. That was why the words came out bluntly.
"We have to go in."
If something was going to come out from in there, he would take preemptive measures. From here, it took ten days on a bellopter to get to the town. If it was a winged monster, it would reach there in no time, and his wife and child lived there. His wife's name was Ayul, and the child's name was Kioda.
'Kio.'
It was a name with a double meaning. One was for darkness that waits for the light taken from dawn, with the meaning of light that wraps around it added.
It didn't mean tearing the dimness apart and pushing it away—it meant a light that embraces anything.
Not just Ayul and Kio. Even now, behind his back, there were piles of things he had to protect. It was one of the reasons Rem fought.
"Ending all wars and wiping out all the Demon-lands—that's my dream."
Wasn't that one of the reasons he'd been drawn to what Enkrid said?
It was because he had a lot he wanted to protect. Rem gripped his axe and stepped forward. It was the brief moment when his right foot fell and right before it touched the ground. In his mental image, Rem saw a round mass of pitch black with a vertical yellow line drawn on it.
'An eye?'
That was his first thought upon seeing it. The yellow line opened left and right. Inside it, he could see another pitch-black round circle.
That vertically split eye stared at him. It watched. It kept watch and it inspected every last detail. A warning his instinct told him tore through his head.
The opponent was inspecting him. Trying to pierce through him and grasp him.
'What are you?'
He gathered his mind and asked. His sorcery power reacted, clumping gray light all over his body. No answer came back. Thunk, his foot touched the ground, and the illusion vanished.
'So you want to do this?'
Rem felt like Silence was calling him. He hadn't expected to fight the Demon-lands today, but if it was needed, he would.
His resolve was high, and his will was firm.
He stepped forward. Right now, nobody could stop him. Gray flames flared up from both eyes. The sorcery power that burned too fiercely took form and showed itself in his eyes.
***
The unease that had started when the yellow-brown ground slowly turned black became a violent ominousness the moment they reached the Demon-lands, and Dunbakel slipped her right foot slightly back at the discomfort that stimulated her entire body. It was an instinctive action.
'What is this?'
The trees were gray, and the dark brown rocks looked like they'd had the insides of a living person pulled out.
The entire environment, including the trees and rocks, was bizarre. In the middle of it, a faint black fog wriggled, trying to block left and right. Like a will that said if you entered here, it would snatch you and kill you.
'This feels disgusting.'
A monster in the east called "Thorn Trap" came to mind. The moment she'd almost died the first time she went there.
Thorn Trap hid under the ground, made the ground collapse when you passed over it, and tore apart and ate the fallen prey's body.
It was a monster full of viciousness that couldn't move, but never let go once it bit.
It also didn't have any special weak point, so you had to drag the whole body out and burn it to kill it.
'What a damn memory.'
Dunbakel blew away the stray thoughts and focused on observing the surroundings.
The black clouds covering overhead looked like smoke clumped together from burning the entire forest.
'The Demon God's clouds.'
There was a similar phenomenon in the east too, but the smell was different from that.
If she had to split it up, in the east the stench of piss was strong, and in the south the metallic blood stench and acrid burnt smell were strong.
'A pooled, rotted smell.'
This side had that kind of smell strongly. No, a rot stench so thick it was incomparable to the two places she'd experienced stabbed into her nose.
That was why she'd talked less the whole way here. Everyone had been quiet since they all sensed the ominousness in the realm of gut feeling, but—
"This isn't normal."
Both her instinct and reason judged she couldn't go in there.
'We should get away from here entirely.'
She thought it was right to run away and escape like this. In the middle of that, she also saw an illusion.
An eye, a pitch-black circle with a yellow crack drawn across it. The same thing Rem had seen.
Dunbakel held her breath. Like a frightened rabbit, she tensed her body and finished getting ready to spring at any moment.
The eye in the illusion only watched and withdrew.
'Here, I back off.'
Dunbakel made a firm decision. It wasn't about overcoming fear or not. This was the kind you couldn't face. For sure.
Enkrid also saw the same illusion as the two of them. His mental world opened, and he faced a yellow eye split long in a black circle. The watching eye observed him.
If Rem asked what it was and Dunbakel held her breath and prepared, Enkrid was a little surprised.
"Did I fall asleep standing up?"
Enkrid asked. The target of his question moved. From behind, the ferryman popped out and stood next to him. Why was the ferryman coming out here? That was why the question came naturally.
"Halfway. Because 'that' intended it."
The voice was clear and high and lively. The hood covering the ferryman's head slipped back.
Then the lamp in her hand drooped and turned into a long spear, and the robe wrapped around her body had, before anyone knew it, become thick iron plate armor.
Even though Enkrid wasn't short, a woman taller by a whole head stared ahead.
A faint line of the ferryman's characteristic violet traces ran over her entire body as if sprinkling powder, and both eyes poured out a clear green light, and the braided blond hair that hung back shone like it held light.
"I told you we'd meet again, didn't I?"
The ferryman's apparition asked, staring only forward.
It was the same appearance as when she'd said it was only the eleventh "today."
"I thought I'd ended it all, but look at that. Choose the right answer, kid."
The first "ended it all" was in a self-mocking tone, and when she said to choose the right answer, it was aimed at Enkrid.
With those words, the ferryman's apparition quickly blurred. Leaving the vanished apparition behind, Enkrid faced an eye as big as a human body.
'The right answer?'
He didn't care whether that thing was looking or not. Her words bothered him more.
Normally, he would've brushed it off as the ferryman pulling some trick again, but this time, he didn't.
He'd felt it before too, but from some point on, it seemed like the ferryman was helping rather than hindering.
If not? He'd get played one more time.
That didn't mean he would collapse. So he only walked in the direction he believed in.
His mental world blurred, and the mind that had half gone out returned to reality. The huge eye only watched, then withdrew.
Opening his eyes, Enkrid recalled the nightmare. The nightmare the ferryman showed was always the same. Standing on a bridge with visibility limited because it was covered in fog, being forced to make a choice.
"I'll go in there and end whatever it is."
Rem said.
"...I'm not going in."
Dunbakel said from behind.
Their wills diverged.
"First, it seems like we should go back and tell everyone."
Juol offered a compromise.
Enkrid didn't open his mouth carelessly. This was a branching point.
'If I choose, what happens after that?'
If he hadn't learned anything from the repeated "todays" before, he wouldn't be Enkrid. Especially since the "today" he'd experienced recently had been so memorable.
'If it had gone just a little wrong.'
Instead of not giving up, he would've repeated only the "today" of dying on a bed. The ferryman's wish would've been fulfilled with endless death.
'Ger, Pitt.'
All of a sudden, the names of comrades he'd lost before came to mind. The dead can't come back, and you can't scoop up spilled water.
'A choice brings a result.'
Sweat beaded on his forehead. He accelerated his thought in an instant and drew the road ahead.
'If Rem and I go together?'
If they killed what was in there, was that the end?
On the surface, it was a simple problem. It looked like the most right path.
He would go in with Rem and leave Dunbakel behind. If a monster came out that he and Rem missed, she would stop it.
So what he had to say was decided.
"Rem and I will go in together. Dunbakel, you stay and deal with whatever comes out."
Rem nodded like he'd expected it, and Dunbakel also nodded like she was satisfied.
Enkrid went in with Rem just like that. And inside the Demon-lands, a monster popped out.
While he and Rem were gone. It wore a hood made by clumping soot together, and the gray skin looked like it had been stitched together.
It had a human shape, but there was nothing at all where the face should be. The hood had become skin in its place.
The thing stared straight at Dunbakel the moment it came out. She screamed.
"Aaaaaaah!"
Just like that, black flowers bloomed from her entire body. She'd decided to kill the parents who abandoned her, and she blamed the world.
'I'll kill them all.'
She was weak to mental domination. In some ways, she'd grown and gotten stronger, but right now, that weakness was hit exactly. Everyone has a weakness.
If there had been someone here to stop her, or someone who had a huge influence on her, everything would've been different, but right now, there was only Juol.
"Why are you doing this?"
Juol's neck was cut the moment the words ended. His head flew into the air, and the remaining body sprayed blood while standing.
Dunbakel's blade cut Juol's neck.
With the death of one westerner whose dream was to become a cook and open a restaurant, a monster was born that resented everything in the world.
And everything blurred, scattered like grains of sand, and vanished.
Blink—
Enkrid blinked. His sense of reality was hazy, then came back right away.
'An illusion.'
It was right before he spoke after thinking he'd found the most rational path. He'd actually opened his lips a little and pressed the tip of his tongue to his palate. It was right before the pronunciation of Re-em— came out.
He closed his mouth.
Rem looked ready to go in right away, waiting for his words, and Dunbakel was the same. With her preparations to withdraw finished, she waited for a decision.
'If I send Rem alone but tell him to come back any time if it's dangerous?'
Then he could make a plan after.
This time too, he saw an illusion. Staying behind with Dunbakel, fighting the monster that dug at her weakness. This time too, her mind wavered. Black soot clumped all over her body, trying to become a flower. Seeing that, he said.
"They say the liquor made with Paradise Water is that sweet."
At that one line, she licked her lips and light returned to her eyes, then split the hood-skin monster vertically.
"Who brews that liquor?"
she asked.
If you asked who, among the Mad Order, was the most crazy for liquor, the answer was decided. It was Dunbakel.
She loved liquor more than food. Especially if it was excellent and tasty, she went crazy for it.
Every time Rem stepped up and told her to hand over the liquor, she charged in and snatched the bottle and bolted.
"Juol does."
"Me?"
Juol asked back. It was written all over his face like it didn't sound like something that had been agreed on.
The illusion continued. Rem went into the Demon-lands alone and fought. At some point, the connection to everything around him was cut, and the entire forest attacked him.
He fought using all kinds of sorcery, but his weakest part was stamina.
Compared to an ordinary knight, he would last an absurdly long time, but it was clear his specialty was a short decisive battle.
There were multiple monsters that were hard to handle. A wave attack continued, stealing any time to catch his breath. He won a number of ridiculous victories with movements close to a stunt, but—
'Endure for a long time.'
And then die.
In the meantime, the Demon-lands kept sending mind-domination monsters that targeted Dunbakel.
Enkrid stood on the bridge. He couldn't leave the spot. It was impossible for him to intervene in what happened in there.
Again, the surroundings withered away like grains of sand.
"Come on, who should we kill?"
The ferryman's auditory hallucination came.
If he sent Rem in, he died, and if he left Dunbakel behind, she died.
The moment he reached his conclusion, the sweat that had been coming from pouring his mental strength into deliberation stopped.
'Is this really consideration?'
What would he have done if it hadn't been for the ferryman's dream? He didn't know.
He did what he did in the nightmare. In all four nightmares, he'd said the same thing.
"Come here."
He'd said it to those in the fog beyond both ends of the bridge.
With the same heart, he opened his mouth in reality.
"Rem, stop. Dunbakel, don't bolt. If you get caught while running, I'll beat you."
It sounded like a threat, but inside it was trust overflowing—trust to believe him.
"Trust me."
At the words that followed, Rem stopped his raised resolve and firm will, and Dunbakel felt a stability like never before.
Before, in the city of Oara, he'd bought trust through action, but now, there wasn't even a need for that.
They were the Mad Order of Knights, and they were people under him.
"Wait."
Enkrid stopped on the bridge and stretched out his hand.
Did he have to go? The answer was no.
They could come. Here, making their hearts bend and wait was the same as that.
"Fine, then."
Dunbakel said.
Even though Rem had seen the illusion of his city and wife and child dying, he stopped.
"What are you thinking?"
His excitement quickly calmed. Because relief came in.
"I don't know."
Enkrid only answered like this. Literally. He didn't know. Tomorrow, the future—nobody could cut it to shape.
But no matter what happened, one thing was clear.
"Whatever comes out of there, I'm not going to pass it behind my back."
He would stop it here and end it. If it was a problem because they were split up, he wouldn't do that.
"That's enough."
Rem answered. It was a truly satisfying answer.