Chapter 47

"It's a merperson."

Leandros threw a large bundle of cloth onto the floor.

The constantly wriggling bundle was damp with seawater.

Wrapped in many layers of cloth and tightly bound with rope, there was no worry about escape.

Only the tail and face were the only parts left exposed.

Seeing the captured merperson, Erich's mouth fell open.

As Erich hesitantly approached the merperson, Arndt blocked him.

"Why, why are you doing this! I just want to observe it!"

"Are you trying to get yourself killed? If you have eyes, look at its face!"

Arndt's judgment was correct.

The merperson had become quite ferocious and had abandoned the beautiful state used to lure humans.

Why would anyone approach when it was clearly showing its teeth with its mouth split open to its ears?

[Send me back! Release me!]

"That's not possible."

He recalled that in his previous life, the merperson hadn't returned him either.

While unconsciously responding to the merperson that was screaming irritatingly, he removed his damp cloak.

He had been splashed with a considerable amount of seawater during the capture and was feeling chilly.

As he was wringing the water dripping from the edge of his cloak, he suddenly realized that everything around him was quiet.

Looking around, he saw Erich, Arndt, and even Leandros staring at him.

"...What's wrong? Did I do something wrong?"

"Are you speaking to the merperson?"

"Shouldn't I?"

He was the one confused by Leandros's question.

Was there some rule against conversing with demonic beast species?

But Arndt hastily said.

"That's not it. Can you understand what the merperson is saying, Your Grace?"

"I can hear it all, can't you?"

The merperson was even now screaming and singing to be released.

If he couldn't hear this, there must be something wrong with his ears.

Erich stared at him blankly, then swallowed hard.

"I, I have studied the language of merpeople, but I don't understand all of their signals."

"What does that mean?"

"Merpeople are different from us. Their language is melody and tone. Their communication systems are as different from ours as the languages of humans, dogs, and cats!"

He looked down at the wriggling merperson.

The merperson was speaking to him.

[Release me! Ungrateful human!]

"You can't hear this?"

"I can only hear high-pitched sounds in my ears, Your Grace."

Arndt answered his muttered words.

Confused, he looked at Leandros, who also nodded.

"So your words at the reef earlier weren't simply talking to yourself."

"How could that be interpreted as talking to myself?"

"It's not unusual for people to speak to animals that can't speak back."

This was absurd.

As he glared at the merperson with mixed feelings, Erich hastily stepped forward.

"O-on the contrary, this is an opportunity! If you can communicate with the merperson, you could hear details about what's been happening in the south."

"I'm starting to feel reluctant about talking to the merperson."

"Don't say that! You're the only one who can talk to it. Hurry, try it, hurry!"

At Erich's insistence, he hesitantly crouched down next to the merperson.

Leandros stood by his side, watching the merperson in case of any trouble.

But when he tried to speak, he felt at a loss.

After all, there was no need to specifically ask about the content the merperson had told him in his previous life.

Perhaps he should probe for other information.

"Are you also guarding the trench?"

[Release me! Release me, human worse than a microorganism!]

"I want to know what's in the trench."

[I'll curse you! I'll curse all of you!]

...This was not going to be a productive conversation.

When he looked at Leandros, he quickly asked.

"Is it not going well?"

"It's resisting. I could use some good advice right now."

"If you wish me to interrogate it as I did with Rotaer, I would gladly."

"No, not to that extent."

He recalled Leandros taking Rotaer out of the room after the interrogation, when he was extorting Rotaer's gold coins.

After thinking for a moment, Leandros offered another piece of advice.

"How about negotiating?"

"Negotiating?"

"To get what you want, you must give the other party something they desire."

"Then what can we offer the merperson?"

Leandros answered as if it were obvious.

"We can guarantee the merperson's life."

"...I'll try to negotiate somehow."

This world wasn't easy!

He had forgotten that this was a madness-filled world where life and information were exchanged equivalently!

He looked at the merperson, who was almost biting through the cloth, and opened his mouth.

"Do you know a human with blonde hair and red eyes? He was curious about the trench you're guarding."

The merperson's movements stopped momentarily.

A fiercely hateful gaze lingered on his face.

[That human? Did he send you?]

"What if I said yes?"

[Go to him and tell him that the one sleeping at the bottom of the sea will never wake up, even if we sacrifice our entire species!]

"What does that?"

The one sleeping at the bottom of the sea.

Sacrificing the entire species?

-I was banished. Banished from the bottom of the sea, and it was lonely to die alone.

-It said it didn't want to die. So it was punished.

-Yes. It had been that way since ancient times.

The merpeople had tried to awaken the being at the bottom of the sea both in his previous life and now, but had failed.

A being that couldn't be awakened even by sacrificing the entire species.

The merpeople had banished their kind who said they didn't want to die.

If merpeople sacrificed their own kind, then if some being requiring such worship and sacrifice was sleeping at the bottom of the sea...

"Your Grace?"

Though Leandros called out, he couldn't answer.

The pieces in his head were coming together one by one.

Yurik had pointed to the star walker in the eastern pit and called it "something that shouldn't be there."

At the time, he hadn't understood the meaning of those words.

All his attention had been focused on whether Yurik's plans in the east had failed or not.

The southern trench.

The eastern pit.

The merpeople in the southern sea.

The people gathered for the eastern business.

The sacrificial ritual offering the southern merpeople.

Those who jumped into the eastern pit.

There was a proper being in the south, and a wrong being in the east.

Leandros's intuition had been right.

What was about to happen in the south was a catastrophe of a scale he couldn't prevent with his own power.

Would it end in the south?

No, that didn't seem likely.

If this spread from the east and south to the north and west.

What was Yurik's purpose?

What did he intend to do by awakening an unknown being?

A sign of massive destruction that had suddenly approached.

That destruction would certainly be the ending of this novel.

Even the protagonist couldn't predict his own survival.

An ending so firmly predetermined that all extras would definitely disappear.

It wasn't something he could survive by trying.

It wasn't something he could survive by staying close to the protagonist.

Villain and hero.

In between, extras are miserably torn, ground up, and eventually disappear.

Like Amelia.

Like Aiden.

Like the extras whose names he didn't know.

They had will, but that will didn't originate from themselves.

It was merely a false will given by this world.

What if he was the same?

What if his movements and imaginations weren't his own will?

If dying at Yurik's hands was his role and the predetermined ending,

If he couldn't escape from it,

What on earth should he...

"Your Grace!"

Someone gripped his shoulder firmly.

Right in front of him were eyes as black as an abyss.

Only then did he realize that he had been breathing heavily.

Cold sweat trickled down his jaw.

The merperson was still spitting out curses, and Arndt was supporting his back.

"Your Grace, are you alright? I asked earlier if the merperson could use some strange sorcery, you quack!"

"W-well, but the research on merpeople is still insufficient, so even I don't know..."

"Be quiet, quack!"

Arndt yelled at Erich.

Leandros released his shoulder after confirming that his eyes were properly focused.

"It appears to be a temporary symptom. Breathe deeply. It's good to exhale consciously and focus on what's in front of you."

"Let's go back right now, Your Grace. Don't worry about the southern matter. I don't care if the Crown Prince is threatening you using me! Rather than seeing you like this, it would be better to wander forever like in the old days!"

"Is that something to say in front of His Grace right now?"

"What else can I do? For me, His Grace is my top priority, even above my own life. Don't you feel the same, Sir!?"

"Who said I didn't! Lower your voice a bit."

A faintly trembling touch that wiped away his sweat with fear and concern.

Yet these people who boasted and said he was their priority.

At their sincere words, not jokes, a sense of reality suddenly came to him.

They were not mere text.

They were alive and breathing in front of him.

The text describing them might be cold, but the body temperature of these two people was warm.

Blood flowed through them, and their hearts were beating.

They worried about people, laughed, got angry, and felt sad.

Even if this was a virtual world, the sensations and emotions he was feeling now were real.

He had only thought about himself.

He had thought of the protagonist as a counter to the villain.

He had easily comforted Arndt's feelings of debt to Aiden.

He had considered Amelia's death as an inevitable plot device.

His arrogance was now coming back like a boomerang.

There was no way that only his pain and sorrow were real.

What had he been doing all this time?

After having tried to die once before, what had he been afraid of?

To leave such people for someone like Yurik.

"It's okay. I'm fine now."

"Are you really alright, Your Grace?"

"I'm really okay."

He seemed to have sat down on the floor at some point.

As he properly raised himself up, Arndt carefully patted his back.

He seemed worried that he might collapse again.

He looked at Arndt and then slapped his thigh.

"Ow! Why did you do that, Your Grace?"

"There was a bug."

"Eek. Th-thank you."

Though it was a minor reaction, he found himself smiling a bit.

This made Arndt and Erich look at him strangely.

Perhaps it was strange for someone who had just collapsed from breathing difficulties while in a cold sweat to suddenly smile.

He took Leandros's extended hand and stood up.

"Sorry for suddenly laughing, I must have been tired earlier. With so many things happening. More importantly, the merperson..."

The merperson was now glaring at him while breathing heavily.

With its pretty face like that, it wasn't even scary.

Looking at it, he asked one last question.

"How great a price must be paid to achieve what you desire?"

[Ha! How dare! To speak of something impossible even if a thousand minnows like you gathered!]

The merperson's gaze scanned him up and down.

[You smell good, so if I offered you to that one, perhaps. They might wake up right away.]

"Me... Is there something different about me compared to others?"

[Even if you hide among the minnows, that form will stand out. You'll be caught eventually! You'll be chewed up completely, from head to toe, without a bone left behind!]

A good smell.

Was that why he was half-eaten in his previous life?

The bright moon was half waned.

Looking at it, he asked Leandros.

"Using the King's Road, how many days would it take from the capital to here?"

"If traveling day and night, it could be traversed within ten days."

Ten days.

After roughly calculating in his head, he started to untie the ropes around the merperson.

Though there was commotion around him, he continued to dig through the cloth and said.

"Let's make a deal. What he ordered me to do is the same as what you desire. He will come in ten days."

The merperson made a sharp sound.

It seemed that even for the merperson, the news of Yurik's coming wasn't welcome.

The merperson looking up at him from the damp cloth was eyeing him with suspicion.

[What do you want?]

"I'll give you one thing you desire. Not everything. What I want is to advance the time of its awakening."

[What's your ulterior motive?]

"Nothing. You need something to offer. So take one thing you want from me."

The merperson scanned him once more.

After calculating for a while, those sinister eyes met his.

The merperson, who had been staring intently, finally smiled.

[Fine. It's a deal. I swear on our fins.]

When that claw-like hand reached out, his eyes were open.

Soon, the screams of several people echoed across the nighttime shore.