Chapter 37 — They're All Gonna Die

Edward's grin is far too sharp for Yasu’s liking—his sudden shift from grim to sly as unnerving as the actual conversation they were just having. "Tell you what," he says, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial tone. "You kill that beast and free us..."

He pauses dramatically before continuing: "...and I'll give you a nice sack of gold or orbs as a 'bonus' for your efforts and a night with one of the women in this village. How's that sound?"

Yasu immediately cringes at that offer and looks utterly unimpressed by it. "What kind of grown man is he saying this stuff to a minor?!" Yasu contemplated the situation, his jaw clenching tightly, a muscle visibly pulsing in his cheek. "I’m not into that stuff. Matter of fact keep the gold. I’m not for sale, and neither is my interest in saving this village."

Edward's grin tightened, the predatory charm giving way to genuine disbelief. He blinked, leaning forward as if he hadn't quite heard right. "I... what?" The word was a choked whisper. "You're turning it down? All of it?" He gestured wildly, his voice rising with a frantic, almost desperate energy. "Do you understand what I'm offering? This isn't just money, you fool. This is a life. A name whispered in taverns from here to the capital. Titles, land... a king would look you in the eye and call you 'sir'!"

He stopped, his breath coming in ragged bursts, and stared at Yasu's unmoving face. The sheer, placid indifference was more infuriating than any insult. Edward’s voice dropped, becoming a low, conspiratorial hiss. "And the women. Gods, man, the women. They'd throw themselves at you. The wives of merchants, the daughters of lords... they'd see the hero who slew the shadow, not the grimy sellsword who sleeps in the mud. Isn't that the whole damn point? To carve a name into this world so deep they can't forget you, even when you're dead? What else is there?"

Yasu's gaze didn't waver from Edward's desperate, pleading eyes. He let the frantic speech hang in the air between them. A slow, deliberate shake of his head was his only initial reply.

"Your world is a loud and empty place as it's starting to think you're projecting yourself," Yasu said, his voice a low, even rumble that cut through Edward's hysteria. "You chase echoes of glory and the warmth of a stranger's bed, and you call that a life. It is a distraction. A fever dream."

He reached up, not with anger, but with the finality of a man closing a book, swatting Edward's hand off his shoulder with a simple, steady pressure that was far more dismissive than any shove.

"I have a promise to keep," Yasu continued, his eyes already past Edward, looking toward the horizon. "And a path to walk. Your gold and your fame are just stones on that path. I will not be distracted by them."

At that moment, Yasu began to depart — but the words struck Yasu not like a blade, but like a physical weight, pinning his foot to the dirt road. He stopped, his back to Edward, every muscle coiling into a knot of tension. The world seemed to fall silent, the frantic energy of the marketplace fading into a dull hum.

Edward's voice, now stripped of its desperate charm and honed to a razor's edge, sliced through the quiet. "They're gonna die."

Yasu didn't turn. He didn't have to. The truth in that statement was a cold knot in his gut.

"Every adventurer who took this quest and entered the labyrinth failed," Edward pressed on, his tone flat, matter-of-fact. "Meaning they all died. " He took a step closer, his presence a chilling weight at Yasu's back. "And since hope's gone? The village has decided to start sacrificing people instead. We decided that."

The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. It was the space where Yasu's carefully constructed indifference crumbled into dust.

Then came the final, killing blow.

"... Hilda and May are next on that list."

The names landed like stones in a still pond. Slowly, Yasu turned. The placid mask was gone, shattered. In its place was a raw, cold fury, his purple eyes fixed on Edward with an intensity. The path, the promise, the quiet dismissal—all of it had just been erased, replaced by the image of two faces he knew he could not let become another sacrifice.

Edward's voice dropped, losing all its frantic energy and becoming something far more menacing—a low, venomous whisper that seemed to coil in the air between them. "You wouldn't let them die in that beast's claws... would you?"

He leaned in, his words deliberate, each one a precisely aimed needle. "After everything they’ve done for you." He let the accusation hang, then twisted the knife. "Hilda, who stitched your flesh back together without a single question, who gave you a roof and a fire when you had nothing, even gave you such meal for free. And May..." A flicker of something almost like pity crossed Edward's face before vanishing. "That little girl whose laughter was the only thing that could cut through the stink of your own blood. Didn't she make you crack a smile, Yasu? Just once?"

He tilted his head, his gaze piercing, stripping away every layer of Yasu's carefully constructed apathy. "And what's their reward for their kindness? For their faith in you? A one-way trip into that dark hole to be ripped apart and forgotten because their 'hero' decided his 'important things' were more important than their lives."

The air grew thick, heavy with a truth so raw it felt like a physical blow. There was no more talk of gold or fame. Only the salt of guilt is being poured into an open wound.

Yasu's face goes blank, his expression carefully blank—but beneath the surface of his carefully schooled expression, a storm is brewing. Every word Edward says feels like a blow, each one cutting deeper than the last.

In any other circumstance, he might have brushed it off, dismissed it as empty manipulation to get him to do something for their own sake, but... but this—they were different. They had helped him, when he was injured… when he had no one else, if Lumina doesn't count that is.

Yasu's shoulders slumped, the rigid tension draining out of him in a single, shuddering breath. It wasn't a sigh of relief, but of resignation. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, the cold fury had been banked, replaced by a deep, weary sorrow.

"Fine," he breathed, the word barely audible. He looked past Edward, his gaze distant, as if seeing the faces of the two people he'd just condemned with his departure. "I'll free them from this curse. I'll kill the beast."

 His eyes snapped back to Edward's, sharp and unyielding.

"But make no mistake," Yasu said, his voice low and heavy with a finality that brooked no argument. "This isn't for your gold. It isn't for a name or a legacy. I'm not doing this for the village, and I'm certainly not doing it for you."

He took a deliberate step closer, his presence filling the space between them.

"I am doing this for Hilda. And I am doing this for May. Only for them."

Edward watches him closely—his expression unreadable at first, but something in the way Yasu says those last words makes his breath catch. There's no grand declaration of heroism here, no lofty ideals… just a quiet, brutal truth laid bare between them.

For a moment, Edward doesn’t respond—then he exhales sharply through his nose and gives one slow nod of acknowledgment. "Understood," he mutters simply before stepping aside fully now so that Yasu can pass without obstruction again too.

And as if sensing the shift in tone from earlier hostilities towards something more solemn now? Even Lumina stays uncharacteristically silent on her perch atop Yasu’s shoulder this time around instead of chirping happily like usual.

Yasu stops mid-step, turning back to Edward with a dangerous glint in his eyes—one that doesn’t quite reach the smile tugging at his lips. "Erm... which way’s the labyrinth?" he asks, voice deceptively light… like this is just another errand and not a death sentence waiting for him.

Edward blinks at the sudden shift in atmosphere—going from a tense standoff one moment to a seemingly casual request the next. It's enough to make him almost falter for a split second before he manages to catch himself. He clears his throat and regains his composure.

"East woods. The labyrinth is this way," he replies gruffly, gesturing off to his left. "Follow me." Lumina chirps and nuzzles against Yasu's cheek, as if eager to lead the way.