[I recommend making a plausible excuse.]
As always, Salkenia offered advice.
[In the current situation, explaining Salkenia and losing the boy’s trust would be a poor choice.]
Certainly, I did not think Lorenzo would easily understand an explanation that my ship was a ghost ship and that its ghost was possessing me. He might even think I was insane. As Salkenia said, it was not a good choice.
“I was talking to my ship.”
Salkenia’s advice was perfectly reasonable, but I did not take it. Even if it was only for today, I did not want to tell my sailor an unnecessary lie.
“To your ship?”
To begin with, I was not ashamed in the slightest of being Salkenia’s captain, and I had no desire to hide it from others. There could be problems, so I would not bring it up first if they did not ask, but still.
“Yeah. It’s clinging to me right now. I came here to find the head my ship lost.”
Lorenzo fell silent. Naturally, it would be impossible to understand my words without any context. But I did not ramble on about my circumstances. Lorenzo’s question had only been about whom I was talking to.
“Is your ship a Relic, Captain?”
But surprisingly, Lorenzo made the correct guess.
“How did you know?”
“You mentioned Relics while you were talking to your ship, and you asked whether Relics were common, right? That means you’ve seen Relics several times recently. And since you said it’s a ship you can talk to, I thought it might be a Relic.”
I had felt it at the harbor, but Lorenzo seemed to have outstanding powers of observation. Then again, that was probably why he could perfectly memorize a path he had seen only briefly for a few seconds.
“Exactly.”
“Relics aren’t common. This is only the second one I’ve seen.”
If it was his second, perhaps he had met Kalena. Kalena seemed to be staying in Lindana, so she might have caught Lorenzo’s attention while he watched sailors.
“So, is there anything I can help you with?”
“It’s all right. It’s too dangerous.”
“It may only be for today, but I’m your sailor.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“If you stop me because it’s dangerous, you’re treating me like a child, not a sailor.”
He seemed genuinely offended. I thought it over before reaching a conclusion.
‘He’s right.’
If a sailor followed his captain, then all the captain had to do was take responsibility for his sailor.
“Then do you have anything on you? Anything will do.”
“Something on me? Um.”
Because we were inside the Unknown, Lorenzo could not see what he had with him and check. After thinking for a moment, he answered.
“Except for what I’m wearing, I have a compass and some wire.”
“That’s all? What about the silver coins I gave you?”
“Uh, I lost them.”
I frowned. Though I had not known Lorenzo long, I knew that he placed considerable value on money. Yet he said he had lost it so easily.
‘He’s lying.’
I could tell without seeing his face. But I did not press him about the lie. Interrogating him was not what I needed to do right now.
“I understand the compass, but why do you have wire?”
“It comes in handy sometimes.”
Lorenzo dodged the question again. Unlike the issue of the silver coins, this was certainly something worth questioning.
“Do you know how to pick locks, by any chance?”
Lockpicking was the method of opening a lock without a key. Lorenzo answered with a guilty note in his voice.
“No?”
“You do know.”
“……I don’t do that anymore. I’ve turned over a new leaf!”
His fixation on money and the wire. Put the two together, and it was easy to reach a conclusion. He was young and small, with a sharp mind and sharp eyes, so he would have been quite a nuisance if he had stolen things. Lorenzo spoke as though he had been wronged.
“It’s true. If I made a living stealing, why would I have been begging to survive and looking for a job?”
“I believe you, so you don’t have to say any more.”
If he had truly wanted to hide it, he would have lied as he had about the silver coins. He would not even have mentioned that he had wire.
“But don’t you want to try it one last time?”
“……Try what?”
“Stealing.”
***
I stepped outside the Unknown with my pistol at the ready. I blinked only briefly to adjust to the light before I saw the skeleton standing and crying on the broad expanse of land in the distance.
“Phew.”
I had worried that it might be waiting in front of the Unknown. Perhaps it felt uneasy standing on the cliffside path, because it seemed to have gone back. Lorenzo, who had followed behind me, was struggling to open his tightly squinted eyes like a child who had just woken up.
“Be careful of that thing.”
When Lorenzo saw the weeping skeleton, he released a tremor with his breath, as though he were calming himself.
“You told me to run into the Unknown if I get caught. That makes six times.”
“What does?”
“The number of times you’ve told me to be careful.”
Had I said it that many times? I closed my mouth and moved forward along the path. Lorenzo followed close behind me.
“If you die, I’ll be trapped here and die, too. So do your best to stay alive.”
“I’m not planning to die already. I have so much life left to live.”
That was true. I, too, had been living with death close at hand recently, but I had no intention whatsoever of dying. Dying once had been enough.
“Yeah.”
Even if I died, I would do everything I wanted and live happily before I did.
“My goal is to die of old age!”
I took Lorenzo, who looked dumbfounded, and moved onto the broad stretch of land. The skeleton, which had been standing still, turned as though it had expected me to come back.
‘There’s no answer in facing it head-on.’
I had reached the broad expanse safely, but it was not a pleasant situation. After sending Lorenzo to the side, I faced the skeleton.
Creak.
The skeleton’s jaw opened threateningly. Salkenia whispered.
[The skeleton is screaming.]
“It doesn’t look like it’s in pain, so why is it doing that?”
[Given that it screams the moment it sees your face, perhaps……]
“What? Are you saying my face is so shocking that it makes it scream?”
[I am joking.]
I had not known Salkenia could joke. It eased some of my tension. As the skeleton charged at me, I leaped to the side.
“Go easy! Go easy!”
The skeleton sailors understood when I spoke to them. It seemed that this weeping skeleton had no intention of communicating with me. It would be difficult to buy time by talking.
Clatter, clatter.
The skeleton charged in a strange posture, covering its right hand with its left. It held the dagger in its right hand, and it seemed to be protecting that hand in case I shot and shattered it again.
“You’re smart! Even though there’s nothing inside your head!”
I did not know whether the provocation had worked, but the skeleton truly seemed intent on killing me. I had never felt anything like this from the skeleton sailors. Now I could see how a moving skeleton looked to an outsider. If there were a moving Unknown, perhaps it would be like this. I would rather face a sea monster.
‘Wait.’
I already knew the dagger’s power, so it felt like death rushing toward me. The moment the skeleton swung that dagger and twisted it, my frail body would be shattered to pieces.
‘Wait.’
But I did not run. I had been running along the edge of the land from the start, so the cliff lay behind me. This was what it meant to be trapped between a rock and a hard place.
‘Wait.’
I waited until the enemy came forward. Until that dagger reached my life. My instinct to survive screamed. My back tingled. The soles of my feet itched as though my body were preparing to spring away. More. A little more.
Whoosh!
The skeleton, now right in front of me, swung its dagger.
‘Now!’
I threw myself to the side at the narrowest possible moment. It was a leap like a fox bounding over snow. Rolling down at the edge of a cliff was not particularly enjoyable.
‘Did it work?’
The skeleton’s attack pattern was simple. Since that deadly weapon was a dagger, it tried to close the distance at high speed and slash or stab me. That was why I had lured the skeleton toward the cliff.
Smack!
I thought that if I dodged at the last moment, it would fail to control its momentum and fall. But.
Scrape!
The skeleton kicked off the ground, spun its body around in an instant, and drove its dagger into the earth. Held by the dagger embedded in the ground, the skeleton’s body stopped before it fell over the cliff.
‘Why is it so nimble?’
The skeletons at my place only clacked around. Why was someone else’s skeleton this agile?
“So you’re not that stupid after all?”
I got up at once and ran.
‘Attacking won’t work.’
I could use the pistol to hold the skeleton back, but it had probably learned by now that a pistol needed to be loaded. Naturally, it would not give me time to reload, so it was right to treat this shot as my last.
‘Defending is difficult, too.’
Blocking the skeleton’s attack with my dagger had been close to luck. Since the Relic had not cut through both my dagger and me at once, it seemed that defense itself was possible. But without something like a shield, trying to defend against that destructive Relic was too much of a gamble.
‘All I have left is evasion!’
I fled at full speed. The skeleton’s immortality and the Relic’s destructive power made for a terrifying combination, but the skeleton’s actual attack pattern was simple. I intended to exploit that.
‘In the end, a dagger can’t attack at all unless it gets completely close.’
Even in the age of swords and magic, daggers were mainly used for assassination or self-defense. In a frontal battle like this, the blade’s length was the range at which one could attack.
‘Since it has no other weapon, it can only make simple attacks that close the distance.’
That would be different if it had a longsword or a cutlass, but with a dagger, I had room to keep my distance. I caught my breath and waited for the skeleton to pursue me. Sure enough, it came straight after me.
‘Is luring it into falling going to be difficult?’
The skeleton was clearly learning. It had been shot, so it was trying to hide its weapon or protect itself. It would not fall for being lured toward the cliff again. It might even anticipate that I would dodge and change the course of its attack.
Whoosh!
The skeleton rushed in. As I measured the distance, the moment it entered a certain range, I spoke.
“Let’s hide.”
At the same time that I held my breath, Salkenia stretched her hand toward the sky. Light could not be withdrawn where there was no light, but this space clearly had a gap through which the sky could be seen. All the light shining here came from that gap.
Whoosh.
As Salkenia swept her hand down, the moon visible through the gap vanished without a trace. Complete darkness, like the Unknown, filled the land.
‘The skeleton didn’t enter the Unknown.’
I did not know whether it was afraid, but the skeleton also avoided complete darkness. Holding my breath, I walked without a sound. Because I knew the distance, I intended to get as far as possible from my original position. But then.
Clack.
A faint sound came from the darkness. It clearly was not coming from the skeleton. There was only one possibility left.
‘Lorenzo!’
At that moment, something chilling brushed across my back. Salkenia’s calm voice followed.
[Duck.]
The instant I ducked, a long line pierced the darkness.
Clack.
With that strange sound, the darkness was cut away.