ch21-ch40 · 037-ch36

Chapter 36

Up until Toru turned seventeen, the Hayasaka family had a tradition of visiting his father's childhood home—Toru's grandparents' house—during summer vacation to tend the family graves.

His grandparents were warm and kind. He remembered that they got along better with Toru's mother than with his father, actually. His father was the quiet type, and his grandmother used to laugh and say, "I really don't understand that child." It was his mother's in-laws' house, but she never seemed uncomfortable. Maybe it was because she had already lost both her own parents.

His grandparents' house was somewhere between the countryside and the city—a place where fields and shopping malls coexisted in the same town.

They would lay out futons for him in the guest room that smelled of tatami, and when he slept there, two cats that his grandparents kept would come and crawl into his futon. That was the routine.

He'd never particularly liked or disliked animals, but he remembered being pretty fond of those cats. They weren't pushy, but they were always nearby, and they only crawled into his futon when he was sleeping. When Toru woke up, they'd leave as if to say "Oh, you're up already?" and lounge by the sunny window together.

—Man, that was hot.

—Just like now.

The moment he thought that, he felt a strong sense of wrongness and woke up.

The familiar ceiling, the feel of a single bed against his back. The cat beast-person child Mika was sleeping in a position that looked like she was practically clinging to his neck. And then there was the elf—Ilseria—who for some reason was using his left arm as a body pillow.

Mika's cat ears were tickling Toru's chin, which must have been why he dreamed about the cats at his grandparents' house.

"...Wait, why?"

Both of them were sleeping soundly, so he whispered his complaint quietly, but then he realized he didn't actually need to be quiet.

He was sure he'd gone to bed alone. The elf using his arm as a body pillow had even bragged about having a special sleeping bag.

Letting out a resigned sigh, he first peeled Mika off from around his neck with his right hand, then sat up and pulled his left arm free from the elf who was using it as a pillow.

For some reason both of them made dissatisfied sounds like "Mmmgh" but didn't wake up. Toru wouldn't have minded if they did.

Whatever, he thought, yawning. He covered Mika with a blanket, then kicked the elf off the bed—she still didn't wake up—and returned to the living room, where Tia was watching TV in her village girl outfit.

"Oh, good morning, Toru. Are those two still sleeping?"

"Ah... mornin'. I'm pretty sure I went to bed alone, so why were those two clinging to me?"

"Mika said she wanted to sleep in Toru's bed, and Ilseria said she'd keep watch over her. They didn't seem hostile, so I left them to it."

It was too much trouble to get involved, Tia added, shrugging.

Toru thought she seemed oddly indifferent about it—though he wasn't sure if "indifferent" was the right word. Come to think of it, yesterday morning at that fancy hotel, when Toru got angry at Ilseria's attitude, this holy sword user had said, "That's just how elves are."

"You got some kinda... what, history with elves? Or a grudge?"

He asked as he took a coffee drink from the fridge and poured it into a glass.

Tia showed a clear wry smile—unusual for her.

"Well... yeah, I guess you could say that. I've had big fallings-out with them, and I've also been strongly acknowledged by them. From what I know, Ilseria is one of the more reasonable ones. Come to think of it, she said she came from the Holy Tree Country. Maybe there are elves there who know about me. Elves are long-lived, after all."

When this world merged with the other world, the Atlantis continent appeared east-northeast of Australia—position-wise it was Mu, but it seemed the name "Atlantis" had stuck during the transition—and the race living there was the elves.

Other races, like beast-people and dwarves, had apparently appeared all over the Earth, but the elves were the only ones who arrived with their cities and civilization intact.

"If she's one of the reasonable ones, what kind of messed-up race are they..."

"Elves seem to get along reasonably well with each other, I guess. But I'm surprised you let her into your house. She just silently followed along when she got out of the car, so I thought maybe you'd kill her at some point."

"I wasn't gonna do that. She pisses me off, but I don't hate her, and Mika was outside the door. I figured she had some kind of agenda, and also it was a hassle. Plus she seemed nice to Mika. If I'd been wrong about that, I'd have pulled out Kagetsu and thrown her out."

Strangely enough, when Mika was first foisted on him by her mother, Toru had accepted that too. He didn't think it was a bad thing now, but at first he was genuinely troubled. Mika had warmed up to him pretty quickly, but he wasn't used to kids taking a liking to him.

He couldn't yet see Ilseria as "not bad," but he wasn't at the point of wanting to kill her just because she was in his house, and if he was making food for himself and Mika, he didn't mind making extra for her too. That was just how it was.

"Um... I'm sorry, Toru."

Tia spoke in a way that clearly showed she felt bad about something. But Toru didn't understand what she was apologizing for and could only tilt his head.

"For what? About using half my soul?"

"That was unavoidable. It's not like I'm deliberately using half your soul out of my own will. I'm sorry about that too, but that's not what I meant. It's about that time at the hotel... when I made you angry."

"Ah..."

"Back then, I didn't mean to badmouth you. I should have just told you straight up—arguing with an elf is as pointless as lecturing a thug who picks on newbies at the guild, as absurd as teaching arithmetic to a dog or a cat, and that if you're going to argue, you might as well just punch them. Since showing your strength would shut them up anyway."

She had acted normal during the dungeon exploration with Anthem, so Toru was a little surprised she was bringing that up again.

"Ah... well, I was annoyed too, so I wasn't in the mood to sit through that kind of explanation. Don't worry about it."

Actually, Tia's assessment of elves was pretty harsh.

Come to think of it, if someone was desperately trying to teach differential calculus to a dog or a cat, you'd stop them first. It'd be way too stupid. Well, not that Toru remembered enough to teach differential calculus anyway. He was already shaky on quadratic functions.

This was probably a difference in values, a difference in worldviews.

He never would have imagined she thought of elves—supposedly beings of superior intellect—as "the same as animals, so there's no point arguing with them."

Though now that he'd actually interacted with one, he could see where the assessment came from.

"But still, sorry. I think I have a tendency to do that sort of thing. Even when I was alive, I think I made a lot of people angry with that side of me."

"That's fine too. If there's something I won't compromise on, I won't compromise no matter who yells at me. That side of you pisses me off sometimes, but... ah, it's not like I hate you. It's better than someone who gives in on everything and just grins and bears it."

"Yeah. I like that side of you, Toru."

"Is that so. If you have any elf acquaintances here, would you want to meet them?"

"Hmm... not really? I mean, I died a long time ago in the other world. And now I'm just a ghost attached to Lightbringer, right? Being with you, the holy sword's owner, is my reason for existing now."

"'Reason for existing,' huh."

Toru snorted, and downed the coffee drink in one gulp. He felt like his brain was getting a sugar boost, but it was probably just his imagination.

"Mmm? Sounds like you've got something you want to say?"

"'Reason for existing,' 'meaning of existence'—I hear that kind of talk a lot, but 'valuable to who'? You're saying your worth or greatness is decided by whether someone finds you valuable. I don't really like that kind of thinking."

A worthless person—Toru was aware that he'd been in that position socially. Subjectively, he could agree with that to some extent.

He wasn't that great a person.

He probably couldn't do anything particularly meaningful, and he wasn't interested in contributing to society. He wanted the world to be a better place, but he wasn't trying to make it better.

Most people were probably like that.

That was exactly why—if you killed all those worthless people just because they were worthless, society would stop functioning in no time.

That was an extreme example, but since the idea that "you're worthless" was itself an extreme view, it was only fair to swing to the opposite extreme and argue back.

If society would suffer from killing all the worthless people, then those people weren't actually worthless. That was logic.

There was value.

Even if it was tiny, even if there were others who could replace them—there was definitely value. Otherwise, no one could keep cleaning up tens of thousands of monsters in the upper layers of a D-rank dungeon.

"So, Toru, are you saying I have value even when I'm not using the holy sword?"

"'Course you do. At the very least, you can be kind to a cat beast-person kid you just met. If that's worthless, then it means no one in the world has to be kind to any kid. There's no way that's right."

"...Hah, that's... amazing, Toru."

Tia's eyes went wide, as if she was genuinely surprised. Toru thought he'd just said something completely ordinary, so he didn't see where the "amazing" part was, but it wasn't a topic he felt like digging into anyway.

He glanced at the TV screen—it was 7:30 AM.

The news program playing was, right on cue, covering S City's "Dungeon Rampage."

"Oh... I guess it made national news."

"That said, I've been watching for a while, but the reporting's pretty vague. They're probably still deciding how to handle it. But since Anthem's stream is out there too, it's not something they can cover up. They're not making any clear statements about their response."

Tia's tone was cold, and Toru couldn't help but think about her life.

A hero discovered by the royal family, swinging her sword at their command—that was the story, wasn't it? If so, she must have encountered incidents on the scale of a "Dungeon Rampage" before. She'd probably even witnessed actual damage.

When she called out to Sadoyama and Kawai Sakiho in front of Sugai Dungeon, Tia had said, "Forget that." They were alive, so they could talk about it later.

Maybe she'd had experiences where she didn't make it in time because she hesitated. In short, their common sense was different.

"Toru, this time around you might get a collar put on you by the big shots."

Her tone was flat.

Toru quickly rinsed his empty glass at the sink, thought for a moment, then spoke to Tia, who was staring vaguely at the TV.

"You just didn't want to take the collar off, and you didn't want to break the chain either, right?"

He remembered reading somewhere that all power ultimately comes down to violence. He'd thought, yeah, that made sense. Authority, money, political power—they all relied on the violence of the military, police, or self-defense forces. They couldn't exist without it.

Currently, a nation's military power depended heavily on the quantity and quality of the explorers it had. That was because there was effectively no way to completely prevent a single person from infiltrating.

He'd heard there was once an era called the Cold War, when the world was threatened by nuclear weapons.

There probably weren't many explorers who could fully withstand the power of a nuclear bomb. But even without using something like that, you could, say, send a few A-rank explorers into the National Diet building, and unless they were guarded by explorers of the same rank or higher, they could massacre the members of parliament inside.

Structurally, it was the same as the Cold War, similar to the concept of nuclear deterrence.

If you do it, it'll be done to you.

If you have the excuse of retaliation, you don't have to hold back.

So you can't strike first.

That was how it worked.

Besides, since "labyrinths"—both a threat and a treasure trove of resources—had appeared all over the world, using explorers who had grown strong enough to serve as a deterrent in war was too great a loss. That was another factor. This wasn't the time for that kind of thing. Though apparently there were places doing it and being made to do it, unfortunately.

Setting that aside.

Toru seriously doubted that the kingdom that had supposedly employed Tia possessed enough violence to deter a being like her.

In the end, Tia's collar had only remained in place because of her own goodness.

Well, probably.

"Toru, would you not accept a collar?"

Tia asked without taking her eyes off the TV.

Toru shrugged casually after putting the glass upside down on the drying rack. Maybe he'd like it if it was a well-made collar, and if it was a bad one, he'd hate it. He wouldn't know until he saw it.

◇◇◇

After that.

He somehow made two cups of instant coffee, set them on the table, and ended up idly watching the TV as it shifted from news program to a news-style variety show.

Some weird pigeon at some park dancing along to an old man's arm movements. Some shop's jumbo parfait supposedly exquisite. A female announcer being made to do some pointless challenge... Watching things like that, the world seemed terribly peaceful.

No, maybe the actual level of peace—the peace index or whatever—was the same as yesterday. To say more, two days ago, three days ago, somewhere in this world, hell was unfolding right now, and in the middle of that hell, someone's family member was dying mercilessly.

What a shitty world, Toru thought.

Though he didn't feel anything beyond that.

So as he was idly watching TV, Mika appeared from the bedroom, approaching Toru with a grumpy just-woke-up face.

"Mornin'... Toru, food..."

So he gave the cat beast-person kid some honey toast, and as he watched Mika munch on the sweet bread with sleepy eyes, the elf appeared from the bedroom too, grumpy-faced, shoving her phone at him.

"I got a summons about yesterday's incident. It sounds incredibly annoying, but it'd be pitiful to dump it on Megumi and the others, so I'll respond."

"You want breakfast? It's just toasted bread with honey."

"...I'll eat. I'm going to change, so have it ready."

Three minutes later, the elf who had been in a negligee with a grumpy morning face returned wearing that same expensive-looking outfit. Right as the bread finished toasting.

"Toru. Mom's coming back, so I'm going home."

"Toru. You'll probably get a call later, so make sure you answer it."

The cat beast-person child and the S-rank explorer elf both left Toru's apartment with bread crumbs and honey at the corners of their mouths. Toru thought, fine, do whatever you want.

"I mean, why didn't that noble elf even acknowledge the fact that she crawled into my bed? Normally you'd say something, right?"

"...Well, Toru, since you offered her breakfast instead of confronting her about it, I don't think you're in a position to talk."

Accepting Tia's helpful jab, Toru started cleaning up the room that had somehow gotten messy. He figured he should check the online news too, and just as he turned on his phone—ding-dong—the intercom announced a visitor.

"Forgot something? No... that elf doesn't seem like the type to ring the bell, and Mika would just come in on her own... Sadoyama-san maybe...?"

Letting out a sigh, he headed to the entrance and opened the door.

A young lady and a butler were standing there.

"We have arrived, yo—! Are you Toru-bro-sama?!"

Toru quietly closed the front door.

He wondered if he could pretend that never happened.

He couldn't, though.