“Silence!”
The Pantheon priest’s bark carried weight.
Whether it was simply his rank, or the divine power threaded through his voice, no one could say—but the mercenaries who had been shrieking like they’d been bewitched by the Witch’s sorcery, and the villagers who had been murmuring among themselves, all fell quiet at once.
Even Sirin found herself able to rein in her agitation.
The priest turned to Gordo and asked.
“What you just said—’vengeance for the fallen vice-captain.’ Is that the grounds for your company’s duel?”
His voice remained dry, though something like a flicker of irritation seemed to run beneath it.
Gordo still looked dazed, not quite free of the aftershock Sirin’s tongue had left on him, but he nodded on reflex.
“Th-that’s right! Vengeance for our comrade—for our honor!”
“Very well.”
The priest answered briefly, then turned his gaze to Sirin.
“You have not yet stated your grounds.”
He paused for a moment, then gestured toward Marta, Merye, and the murmuring villagers.
“Will you take their cause as your own? Is your reason for this duel to deliver justice on behalf of those who were wrongfully abused?”
Sirin, who had been drawing slow breaths to calm herself, felt a sudden curiosity.
“So… if I accept their cause, what happens?”
The priest explained.
“If you accept their cause and the Scales recognize it, you become their champion—their Surrogate Warrior. You would be fighting in place of those villagers, standing for their honor and safety.”
“A Surrogate Warrior? So they’d become parties to this too?”
“That is correct.”
At those words, Sirin recalled what the priest had said earlier.
‘The victor shall inherit all rights over the vanquished.’
“So they’d be bound by the outcome of the trial as well?”
“That is correct.”
The realization hit the villagers a beat later, and their faces drained of color.
If Sirin lost, the consequences of that defeat would fall on them too.
Marta and Merye in particular swayed as though they might faint on the spot.
The victor’s mercy?
From that pack of mercenaries?
Not a chance.
As they staggered, Marta and Merye caught Sirin’s eye.
Trembling, hesitant—caught between fear and something unspoken.
The other villagers moved to steady them.
Sirin looked at them and smiled.
“No. I don’t need it.”
“What?”
The priest, the villagers, even the mercenaries—all of them blinked in momentary confusion.
The priest let a beat of silence pass before asking in a low voice.
“…Their cause is just. And yet you refuse to take it?”
His implication was clear enough.
Becoming the villagers’ Surrogate Warrior would increase the likelihood of receiving the goddess’s blessing.
But Sirin shook her head.
To her, the villagers—everyone except Marta—were nothing more than background scenery.
Present or absent, it made no difference.
Losing any one of them wouldn’t matter to her.
But the courage they’d shown just now, speaking up for that wretched woman—that had pleased her.
It looked like Peter had nudged them into it, but courage was courage.
There was no reason to drag them into this and make them bleed for it.
And beyond all that, Sirin had a reason that mattered more than anything else.
The cause behind Sirin’s actions had to belong entirely to herself—to her own will, her own 我.
“I have no interest in being anyone’s Surrogate Warrior. I have my own reason.”
“Then state it.”
Sirin was starting to get tired of this whole song and dance.
She wanted to get hit, get her Body Enlightenment, and get her Body Rebirth done with as fast as possible.
At this rate, she’d die of old age arguing over what counted as legitimate grounds.
Sirin decided to throw the Scales and all the rest of it out the window.
“That man.”
She jerked her chin toward where Heres’s body would be lying behind Gordo.
“Heres insulted my mother.”
“…What?”
It was Roderick, the security chief, who asked.
Roderick knew that Heres had stabbed Sirin first.
Her killing had been self-defense—grounds more legitimate than anything the mercenary company could claim.
But Sirin was saying something else entirely.
What in the world was this lunatic going on about?
The expressions on everyone else’s faces said the same thing.
Sirin swept her gaze across them all with a look of withering contempt and declared:
“You savages! Do you not even know this? Your mothers are my mother!”
“…?!”
A wave of murmuring broke out.
Has she actually gone insane?
The priest holding the Goddess’s Scales stepped forward.
The brass scales in his hand didn’t so much as tremble.
“The Scales have not yet evaluated your claim. Explain yourself.”
Since it had come to this, Sirin decided she might as well educate these ignorant fools in Eastern philosophy.
“The great sage once said: ‘Revere even the mother of the most wretched soul as you would your own!'”
This was the teaching of the Venerable Wonhyo—spoken when petty monks tried to stop him from carrying the funeral bier of the most lowly of the low, a snake-catcher’s mother, citing the dignity of his station.
[ The one I’m asking about is your mother. ]
To Sirin’s mind, this was the very essence of Buddhist philosophy.
Regard even that bastard’s mother as you would your own.
“According to that great teaching, even the mother of a pebble by the roadside or a blade of wild grass must be cherished as one’s own! How much more so, then, your mothers! Therefore, your mothers are my mother—”
Sirin pointed a finger in the direction where Heres had fallen and continued.
“—and that goddamn child-raping, murdering, degenerate piece of filth Heres went around doing things that would shame his own mother! Which means he dishonored my mother’s name! I could not permit such an act of depravity against my mother! That is my reason!”
—Ding!
[ Your sophistry has maximized the effect of the title ‘Witch’! ]
[ Minds consumed by fear begin to accept your sophistry as truth! ]
[ Terror of the Witch triggers collective delusion! ]
The dimwit mercenaries, not understanding a word of it, started flailing again.
“The Witch was my long-lost sister all along!”
“I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIIIIIS!!!!!”
“Shut up.”
The mercenaries shut up.
—Ding!
[ The Witch’s presence overwhelms the assembly! ]
[ The Witch’s infamy continues to rise! ]
—Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
[ The Witch’s deranged ravings begin to dominate the minds of lesser bein—
“Shut up.”
“I already shut up…”
One idiot muttered resentfully under his breath, then caught Sirin’s murderous glare and immediately drove his face straight into the ground.
Perfect silence once more.
Peter, who had been watching the whole scene unfold, stood there with his eyes nearly popping out of his skull and his mouth hanging open.
Sirin gave a satisfied nod.
“Order!”
The priest let out another weighty bark.
Having restored quiet to the crowd, he raised the Scales.
The brass scales didn’t move.
At last, the priest spoke.
“The Scales… will not evaluate your grounds.”
At those words, the tension drained from Gordo’s face.
Did that mean the Scales refused to recognize the Witch’s bizarre claim?
If so, the goddess’s blessing would surely fall to him.
For mercenaries whose lives and deaths were decided by a single inch of a blade, a single step of movement, the blessing that could tip that one moment of fortune was everything.
Gordo’s expression brightened as he spoke.
“Then the blessing comes to us—”
“That is not what I said!”
The priest cut Gordo off, his irritation plain.
“I mean that the Scales will not evaluate whether that woman’s grounds are right or wrong in the first place. What she has offered is not the kind of thing that can be weighed on these Scales.”
His tone was that of someone who had just touched something unclean.
The priest, as though he had seen quite enough, handed the Goddess’s Scales to Roderick, who was standing beside him.
Roderick took it with his mouth hanging open.
“Take it. The Pantheon will not involve itself further.”
“W-wait! Priest! Then what becomes of this duel?!”
“I don’t know.”
The priest answered shortly.
“Not my concern. Sort it out yourselves.”
With that, he turned away without a backward glance and began making his way back through the murmuring crowd.
In the space the priest left behind, an awkward silence bloomed, and the whispers of the crowd swelled louder than before.
“Good heavens… the goddess refused to pass judgment…”
“She really is a Witch… even the goddess’s Scales…”
“The Pantheon washed their hands of it…”
Similar sounds leaked from the mercenary side as well.
“The Witch cast a veil over the goddess’s sight…”
“It’s sorcery, I’m telling you…! She’s a real Witch…!”
“That’s why Heres… damn it, we need to get out of this cursed village!”
Gordo had clearly heard those dark whispers too.
The bravado he’d been puffing up with while denouncing the villagers and Sirin had vanished without a trace.
His face now wore bewilderment, and beneath it, the faint shadow of fear.
Gordo was the superstitious sort.
Before a fight he always fished a worn animal-bone charm from his breast pocket and turned it over in his hands; if he heard a crow call, he’d grumble about bad omens for the rest of the day.
His refusal to enter the village had been for exactly that kind of reason.
Gordo had his own bizarre personal system for deciding when luck had turned against him.
That was the kind of man he was.
So the fact that the goddess’s gaze had turned away—that was bound to unsettle him.
Watching Gordo hesitate like that, Sirin felt an anger rise in her that she couldn’t quite explain.
Stronger than anything she’d felt before.
Body Enlightenment and all the rest of it—she didn’t care about any of that right now.
She simply could not stand the sight of Gordo being so pathetic.
“Gordo!”
Sirin called out sharply.
“Are you going to fight or not?!”
“B-but the Scales…”
Gordo answered with a stammer.
The fighting spirit in his voice had already crumbled considerably.
“You idiot! Nothing has changed!”
Sirin snapped.
“Is your will decided by some scales? Is the goddess your master? If she told you to lick her feet, would you lick them? If she told you to roll over, would you roll?”
Sirin stamped her foot hard on the ground, and Gordo flinched.
That only stoked her fury further.
“If the goddess put a collar around your neck, would you wear it and crawl around on all fours like a dog?!”
Sirin spat out her burning rage.
“Someone you loved is dead! The woman who killed them is standing right here in front of you! Right in front of your face!”
Sirin couldn’t understand herself—why was she this angry?
For the Body Enlightenment?
Body Enlightenment couldn’t be gained without taking hits.
Getting punched by that ox’s massive fists would hurt like dying.
She might take the beating and still come away with nothing.
Sirin didn’t like pain.
She hated pain.
And it wasn’t just because it hurt.
The memory of slamming into the cliff face and breaking her brain was still vivid.
The suffocating frustration of not being able to say what she wanted to say—the kind that made her want to smash her own skull open.
Above all, the wiring between her brain and her tongue had never fully healed.
The agony of pulling Heres’s sword out of her stomach had scrambled that wiring all over again.
If she went through that kind of pain once more, her tongue might break down again.
One part of Sirin’s mind was telling her it would be fine if this duel never happened.
But she could not stand watching that ox act like a spineless wreck.
“You had something you were going to do! Something you had to do with everything you had!”
Sirin drew the sword she’d been holding and leveled it at Gordo.
“Do what you came here to do! You useless fool!”
Gordo stared blankly at the sword Sirin was holding.
Heres’s sword.
Sirin’s pale, slender fingers were wrapped tight around the grip, and below them the blunt crossguard spread wide.
And below that—the blade, straight and true, dark and murky where Sirin’s dried blood had stained it.
“…”
But the tip caught the sunlight and gleamed.
Sunlight on the edge of a blade.
Gordo had the strange feeling that the light was flowing out of Sirin herself.
What Sirin had said.
What Gordo had to do.
Without realizing it, Gordo murmured.
“Vengeance and…”
A low growl tore free from Gordo’s throat.
“Honor…!”
The wavering in Gordo’s eyes steadied into focus.
The hesitation fell away, and something else—something he had forgotten—came roaring back to life.
The insult to their honor.
The rage over a comrade’s death.
“RAAAAGH—!”
—BOOM!
As if to shake off the last of his fear, Gordo slammed his gauntlets together and let out a roar.
—Hff.
Gordo exhaled a hot breath.
He was no longer wavering.
The fighting spirit blazed in his eyes.
“Good.”
Only then did Sirin feel her anger begin to ease.
The ox-brained idiot had finally become something resembling a person.
“Now you’re at least a little less pathetic.”
Sirin smiled with satisfaction and raised her sword.