Witness (END)

Afraid.

That was the only emotion I felt as I helped the pair gather up our assailants into a pile.

After witnessing the fight, I was lost for words. Even as Annabelle hurriedly asked what to do with total trust, I sat there on our mount dumbfounded. The pair had started walking over, and seeing that I wasn’t responding, Annabelle took it into her own hands to close the distance with them as well.

I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t tell her otherwise.

At the moment, Annabelle was talking to Soren about something. He’d unmasked, and the expression on his face made it look like he was apologising—probably for leaving us in the rubble. He’d said something earlier about “his lady” understanding that we were alive and that the best course of action was to take the fight away from us. I already guessed as much, seeing as he could have easily levelled the entire forest if he so wished, probably killing us in the process. I was thankful for his mercy, but I didn’t particularly want to interact with him. I left the talking to Annabelle instead, and before I knew it we were setting up camp and I’d been assigned a task.

Afraid and betrayed.

I was wrong about many things. There were the obvious mistakes, like being wrong about Soren’s power level. The way he introduced himself and his title had given me some preconceived notions. There was also a clear mistake about assuming my memories of my previous life carrying over meant anything—there were more and more discrepancies piling up that were slowly eroding my faith in my “knowledge”... and then of course, there was also this mistaken delusion I had that I could contribute in any way.

I wondered how Annabelle could smile and giggle as he talked with that monster. Was he a god? A Saint lying about being a Paladin? I didn’t even understand what made a Saint a Saint, what differentiated an Apprentice from an Initiate, what each rank was capable of in terms of power. I didn’t understand anything.

I was delusional to think I could be of any help.

I’d finished tying up most of the assailants with ropes I’d repurposed from the carriage rubble as Annabelle placed down her final structures for the camp. The bandits were all knocked out cleanly—there were no cuts or injuries on any other parts of their body, and all of them were still breathing. Even with a genuine attempt on his life, Soren held back and only used the bare minimum needed to dispatch his foes. Meanwhile, all my maximum effort amounted to was menial, token labour.

I knew it was token because I hadn’t been given any instructions on how to restrain them despite the fact that every single combatant in the world had access to quanta. Me tying them up with ropes wouldn’t accomplish anything meaningful, and logically I understood that, but I didn’t dare to disobey my orders, and neither did the two seem interested in correcting me. Everyone here was exceptionally aware of the fact that Soren would easily deal with them as many times as we needed—maybe except Annabelle, but she was too busy chatting with Soren to notice me. The only significant matter was the woman who’d mysteriously cast from two elements. I’d left her for last to come up with ideas on how to stop her, but I realised I was completely devoid of any ideas. Maybe I’d have to cut off her wrists or something.

As I walked closer, I noticed the hooded girl crouching over and inspecting the woman’s body. Oh, maybe I can ask her for—

Then the monster cut me off.

He towered over me, and my mind went blank.

…Weren’t you just on the other side of the clearing?

“Apologies, but please do not speak to the lady directly. I will relay your message to her.”

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean… There’s a misunderstanding…”

“It’s alright, Soren,” said the girl. “He means no harm. And it would take a fool not to have figured out my identity at this point.”

“But my lady—”

“It’s alright,” she repeated. “Go direct the Apprentice on how she should go about healing those men instead. Make sure all the anti-monster barriers have been set up correctly as well.”

“Understood,” he said.

He slithered away, and feeling slowly returned to my extremities. I looked at the girl, crouching over the body of the woman. She stood up and gave me a pleasant smile; enough to distract me from my anxiety.

“Hello, mister. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. How shall I address you?”

Looking at her now, two things were clear—first, she was much shorter than Saint Alicia, but I never noticed because this was the first time I actually saw her standing up close. Secondly, she was definitely young, and while my mental estimate for her age had been adjusting steadily downwards ever since I first saw her, this needed to go to a further extreme than I’d realised. She was thirteen, probably fourteen at most—not the twenty I’d initially pegged her at. Her regal disposition and voice had given me the mistaken impression she was older… or maybe it was the piercing amber eyes and red hair making me feel nostalgic.

“Mister?”

“Ah… sorry. You just… look like someone I know exists.”

She simply repeated my statement. “Someone you know exists?”

“It’s a weird story. Not really relevant right now.”

“I’d very much like to hear more about this acquaintance of yours later,” she said. Acquaintance? Was I not vague enough with my phrasing? “For now, it’d be nice if I could know your name.”

“Ah… right. It’s…”

Watanabe? Primot? Rowan? I didn’t really know what to say. Supposedly, I was definitely one of those people, or even a mix of all three—but I didn’t particularly feel like any of those names. More importantly, all of those answers felt like lies. Daisuke was a name that died on a plane, Primot was based wholly on a series of delusions that were slowly crumbling apart… and of course, not Rowan. Someone who couldn’t cast a basic spell was obviously not a Templar.

“I… I don’t know about that. I’m sorry,” I said.

The girl’s expression became sympathetic. “I completely understand. Identities can be problematic. In that case, how about just ‘mister’? As an adult, it’s only natural that I’d show you respect.”

I tried my best not to wince. “Yeah… that works. …Should I get on with restraining her?”

“Hmm,” the girl mused, a finger on her lips. “I suppose that would be helpful. Thank you for your initiative.”

I nodded and slackened the rope I’d been carrying around my hand, tossing it haphazardly on the floor. Then I crouched over the woman and flipped her around, looking for her wrists. Not a very smart idea.

What instead greeted me was two things—first, the sight of a forearm beset with purple jewels. The colour of it was horribly, horribly wrong—it was a ghoulish grey compared to her tanned face, like multiple skin grafts gone septic. Blood and pus oozed out of the sockets in her arm where the exhausted pendulums were inserted, and an even more disconcerting volume of liquid was soaking her cloak from her shoulder “injury”. But that wasn’t the problem. It was the stench. My eyes instantly watered from the musk of late-stage decomposition that assaulted my senses, even though I knew the “corpse” I was looking at was floating in the air and casting a massive spell less than thirty minutes ago.

I quickly threw in the towel and backed away. Touching that would give anyone in this universe an infection, let alone me.

“Mister, could you please lift up her cloak? I need to confirm something,” the hooded girl said, squeezing her nose.

“......Of course.”

Well, maybe I was overreacting? The woman smelled like she hadn’t showered in a year and also had open sores, but I guess it wasn’t that bad? Annabelle could just disappear the illness, right? And I needed to eventually graduate from Rowan’s armour anyway. Might as well have done it now?

Holding my breath, I grabbed the cloak with my gauntlet and roughly cut it away with my shortsword to reveal a sleeveless leather corset. Her shoulder “injury”, as it turned out, was similar to what I’d seen on her arm—undead looking skin with blood dripping out of holes socketed with gems—although these gems were red instead of purple, and the shoulder itself looked like it could burst forth with maggots at any point compared to what was now looking like a mild infection on the rest of her limb. Then on her other perfectly healthy arm was a tribal-looking symbol that was absent on her other, more decayed looking appendage. Disgusting.

I dumped the fluid-logged cloak as quickly as I could, then brisk walked about ten paces away from the woman. At this distance the smell wasn’t so bad. I was curious about her, but not enough to kill myself—and the hooded girl clearly thought the same, since she quickly followed me right after once she confirmed whatever it was she needed confirming.

“Hmm. A Fire Mark,” she said. “So the rumours are indeed true.”

I hoped to extract some answers out of her, since my knowledge of Quanta TCG was completely blanking out on these so-called rumours. “What’s the deal with this woman, anyway..? Her body’s falling apart…”

“If I’m not mistaken, she’s an acolyte of the Cult of Asmodeus,” the girl said calmly. “Believers in the Original Sin and his eventual reappearance. This is also my first time seeing a cultist in person, so I can’t offer you much besides speculation, unfortunately. Supposedly, those insertions give them the power to cast from multiple elements, but I didn’t think they’d be this effective…”

Original Sin. Annabelle had told me a few days ago during a training session that Saint Alicia and the Quantum Mage sealed something with that title centuries ago. So it turned out to be some demon king. An independent third party bringing up that term made me more trusting of Annabelle’s explanations, and it checked out that the few differences that existed between the game and this world would all be interlinked with one another… sort of.

“But aren’t pendulums supposed to be rare? How did she find twenty of those to shove into her arm?”

“Those are not quite pendulums,” she explained. “As you might already know, every pendulum has a thaumaturgical component that helps filter quanta properly and make it possible to manipulate, even with the wrong Mark. These insertions completely bypass the need for those components by utilising the body’s natural ability to filter quanta—though as you can see, this artificiality comes at a great cost in blood. Since these shed the most expensive part of a pendulum, these insertions are definitely much easier to make, probably in the range of 1000 to 10000 times.”

“Uh huh. I see…”

I didn’t fully understand her explanation, but I got what I needed. All I really needed to know was that her explanations correlated with Annabelle’s, which meant Annabelle was passing on established knowledge rather than her own theories on magic, which meant that my various “quirks” with casting extended to more than just a dumb conspiracy by my companion or sheer incompetence. Not that I actually believed this, but there was always a possibility that Annabelle was hiding things or flat out wrong, no matter how small.

Still, while I had many other questions I wanted to ask this girl, like, are magic circles meant to be visible? Why is my quanta grey?—now wasn’t the right time.

“Are the other eight guys with her cultists, too?”

“No, definitely not—too weak. They’re most likely hired thugs or mercenaries.” She abruptly clapped. “Ah, speaking of—would you mind helping me plan a suitable way to deal with their release later? Soren’s not much of a thinker, and it always helps to have an extra mind coming up with ideas, especially one as calm as yours. It’s rare to see someone stomach the sight of blasphemy like this, let alone tolerate a discussion with such composure.”

The sudden compliment threw me off guard. “Uh… thanks? You’re very wise for your age, too. And well spoken. I guess.”

“...”

…Did I say something wrong?

This elicited no response from the girl, which was strange. She seemed to be getting excited that someone was finally indulging her nerdiness, but instead of elegantly accepting the compliment with a majestic voice like just about how I imagined she dealt with everything else in her life, she just stood there and brought her hand to her chin. It wasn’t a pose that fit a teenager… wait a second.

“Hmm… I didn’t think this was possible, mister, but could it really be that you don’t recognise who I am?”

No. Oh god, no.

“...Sorry… I, uh… am I… uh…”

“...But I do suppose we’re far out in the country, so it’s possible—no, most likely not. It’d be all the more likely someone was religious… is it the cloak, perhaps?”

At this point, the girl was just talking to herself. But I didn’t particularly mind. I was thinking more about the insistence of certain authors in including characters who were chronologically adults yet biologically underage—the phenomenon of the “legal loli”. Races that stopped physically ageing at 13, goddesses who presented as children, fantasy worlds that had questionable ages of adulthood, so on and so forth. If this was going where I thought it was going, then I was distraught.

Then she removed her hood.

Amber eyes, striking red hair tied in royal braids, a beautifully symmetrical face—all traits that belonged to a certain someone. Except, younger. Nothing that I didn’t already know before, except maybe getting more clarity on her hairstyle.

“…Well?” she asked, clearly expectant.

Your hood is useless, I wanted to say, but managed to stop myself in time. I reasoned that someone as intelligent as her wouldn’t make such an idiotic mistake, so maybe it was an artifact of some sort that… simply didn’t work on me? Magic seemed to work differently to my eyes, and if it were actually as easy to see through as I thought, and she was somebody recognisable based off appearance alone, surely Annabelle would have reacted as well.

That being the case… Aside from a younger version of that woman, I had no other answer to this question.

“Uhh… I still have no clue. I’m sorry. The only person I can think of is Saint Alicia, but that’s impossible. You’re obviously far too young.” And alive.

“But that’s— Hmm… So you’re aware of ancient history, but not current affairs..?”

She didn’t seem to be taking my ignorance badly. If anything, she seemed enthused by the prospect of this. Like a detective solving a case, or more aptly, a doctor trying to discern what mental illness would most accurately describe the idiocy she was currently witnessing.

“Random guess, are you a goddess?”

“…No? What would make you think that?” She poked at her cheek. “The divine don’t take physical forms.”

“Uh, how about a Saint?”

“That would be Soren, not myself,” she giggled. “I’m probably weaker than you in an actual fight. Don’t be deceived by my appearance.”

Wait. What?

“Soren is… a Saint? Not a Paladin?”

“Ah. Hmm. I meant it on a technicality—just forget I said that for now. Anyway, shall we start over? I’ve just concluded that you must be from another world, so the way I introduced myself must have been rather confusing. I apologise for that.”

My mind was going dizzy.

She smiled, then curtsied like how Annabelle would—except much more elegant, much more royal. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Maelle Piquet, 3rd Princess of the Holy Kingdom of Calice, although I am currently in exile for crimes against religion. May I know your name, please?”

“…Primot?”

I meant to say “pardon”, but my name somehow slipped out.

“Nice to meet you, Mister Primot. I’m excited to learn more about you.”

As she said that, there was a bellow of thunder in the distance, and the cold sting of spring rain washed over me. The overcast skies that the Saint had created from his attack earlier had finally decided to burst open.

“…I don’t suppose you could help me carry her back?”