'......No.'
Come to think of it, there might be no need to kill the ghoul at all.
It was still down, smashing everything within reach of its hands.
Killing it would inevitably require accepting a certain degree of risk.
By comparison, the benefit gained from killing it was negligible.
Its ankle was already broken, wasn't it?
It would be impossible for it to follow us any further.
I settled on resuming the journey at once, just as we were.
I climbed onto Formel and headed for Kallen, who was far off.
Kallen listened to what I said and nodded.
"Understood. But do you remember which way Oscalt is, sir knight?"
"......For now, we'll keep going straight the way we were running. Getting out of the forest comes first."
The stars were almost invisible.
It was because of the ancient trees' enormous leaves covering the sky.
Whether it was simply that kind of species, or whether even these ancient trees had become ghouls, the leaves themselves were lush despite the dead roots.
We soon set off again from a spot well away from the prone troll ghoul.
Running at a moderate pace, Formel yawned as though tired and smacked his lips.
"It's a waste, the baggage we left behind."
"If you're confident you can break through that wave of bastards alone, I won't stop you."
"It's just a manner of speaking. I wrung the best things the Order had out of them for that."
Even in a darkness where the surroundings were only faintly visible, Formel managed to run while dodging the terrain this way and that.
I couldn't say how much time had passed.
Around the time the outlines of ancient trees sweeping past like wind grew tedious.
The strength gradually drained from Kallen's arms around my waist.
Startled, I looked back to find him fast asleep with his mouth hanging open.
I used Kallen's robe to tie him firmly to my waist.
Through the faint sound of wind came the sound of Kallen snoring.
"......."
As though in protest, Formel cast a sidelong glance at Kallen.
I could feel just how sleepy he was.
He was set to run all night without a moment's rest, so I had no grounds to object to however much protest Formel offered.
"We'll rest plenty once we're out."
- GRRK
Formel muttered something.
Regrettably, I could not make it out.
***
Half a day had passed since we came out of the primeval forest.
From one gentle hill onward the ground grew steadily higher, until before long we had climbed high enough that looking back showed the road we had come far below.
It was proof we were on the right road.
For Oscalt was a city situated at a considerable altitude.
"It's a bit chilly."
"Why not put on more layers?"
"Where would I get clothes to...... ah."
Kallen pulled out the robe he had tied among the baggage.
In the end he threw a second robe over the thick one and put on a satisfied face.
The look of him was like a ghoul grown fat after a long feed.
"We've only come a few days north, and the air's completely different."
"The altitude here plays its part. Oscalt too is a city on a plateau."
"How big is Oscalt? If it's on the scale of Pirberg, it'll be hard to find him easily this time as well."
"As I recall, it isn't that big. It's a fortress city built with siege warfare in mind to begin with."
"A fortress city? It's in the middle of a domain, so is there any occasion for a siege?"
I looked at Kallen for a moment.
The moment we met in the mansion in Brüs came suddenly to mind.
Just as I had changed, much about him had changed too.
And recalling what had changed naturally brings to mind what had not.
The clear gaze of one meeting the world for the first time still remained in him.
"Humanity's enemies aren't only human. How large do you think Erbern is?"
"Hmm, how large?"
"About half of Slonhar."
"That small?"
"Naturally. The whole of the Erbern plateau is as good as a battlefield, so there'd be no room to expand the domain."
"War, you say...... monstrous beasts? What kind?"
"Undead."
The Erbern plateau was one of the foremost habitats of the undead.
Whether they had gathered in from across the Empire or arisen on the plateau itself, no one knew.
It was only certain that every region within Erbern that could be called a plateau was packed full of undead.
"At least the area around Oscalt seems to have been cleared. It's the only city in Erbern with a trade route open to it."
"......It's that bad? Won't we run into them on the way?"
"I can't say about the other cities, but Oscalt will be safe. Otherwise, how would the coachman carrying Findel have arrived so early?"
The Erbern plateau was damp in all four seasons.
I drew a deep breath, filling my lungs with the moisture-laden air.
There was a smell of dank water mingled with iron.
"Undead...... that's unsettling somehow."
"They're no different from any other monstrous beast. Ghouls themselves are a kind of undead."
"And weren't those ghouls unsettling?"
"......I can't say they weren't."
Undead.
Those who, though dead, cannot die.
For an ordinary person like Kallen, finding them unsettling was the norm.
But I felt a little differently.
What is death?
It is the terminus of life, and its full stop.
The undead are those who wander forever through a story without end, with no destination.
How dull is a story with no ending?
Death is the only key that can strike off the shackle called life.
And so death is a blessing.
To be Undying is a curse.
"Strictly speaking, I suppose I'm undead too. I come back to life in situations where I ought to die."
The difference between me and the undead is not so great.
The undead are corpses revived once.
I am a corpse that revives again and again.
A corpse whose shackle will never be struck off, no matter how many times it tries to die.
"......Do you hate that?"
I had obtained eternal life, humanity's long-held wish.
To say I hated it would be a lie, but to say that I therefore liked it would be a lie as well.
"Well, what is there to like about it?"
Kallen bit his lower lip as though thinking for a moment.
Then he smiled softly.
"Sir knight, I am happy right now. I'm glad to be alive, glad I can experience this moment. Are you unhappy right now, sir knight?"
Happiness is a relative concept.
There are countless people in the world, and each of them has their own whole standard of happiness.
For that reason, defining happiness is impossible.
Am I unhappy now?
Does this moment fall short of the measure of happiness I hold?
This much at least was clear.
"......No. I'm not unhappy."
"Then it can be said you are happy right now, sir knight."
"Perhaps so."
"If you had died long ago, sir knight, you would not have been able to feel this happiness. Not now, nor afterward, nor beyond that."
Kallen dug into the gaps in my words with terrible persistence.
He dug me open and brought centuries of contemplation crashing down with a few words.
"You feel pain because you are alive. That is no different from being able to be happy because you are alive. Pain and happiness are both just different names for the process of perceiving the world."
Happiness is relative.
Then are life and death absolute?
Kallen was saying they were not, that being Undying was not a curse.
Not dying is painful.
But because I do not die, I can laugh, weep, and remember.
To be Undying is both a curse and a blessing.
"Maybe there's no need to pity the undead unconditionally after all."
I laughed.
Hearing me, Kallen laughed as well.
All of it was something the dead could not do.
***
Oscalt, the fortress city where the living and the dead coexist.
Unlike other cities, its gate was firmly shut.
"......The mood here is strange."
On the wall of stacked cut stone, and on the wooden watchtowers as well, stationed men kept watch on the surroundings.
The ease and idleness usual to guards was nowhere to be found.
"A fortress city's always like this. It was built as a war base, and it's actually at war."
A war not with humans but with the undead.
A war that would never end short of plowing Erbern under.
The guards inevitably had to pour out enormous mental effort, and tired that much more easily.
Deep fatigue had built up on the faces of the soldiers standing watch.
"What should we do?"
The firmly shut gate looked to have no gap even for an ant to enter.
In fact, the answer was simple.
"Follow me."
Sometimes striking head-on is the right answer.
This was one such time.
As the two figures approached the wall, a soldier on watch hurriedly aimed a crossbow downward.
I looked calmly at the glinting head of the bolt.
"State your identity and your business!"
"Free knight Roan Belgard. I've come looking for gold coins with no owner."
The soldier disappeared behind the wall.
Kallen took the chance to whisper.
"What's all that about gold coins?"
"It's cant that free knights use. It means asking whether there's any work worth taking on while I stay in the city a few days."
The line I had added was not simply for show; it carried the effect of raising my credibility.
Using free knights' cant was as good as backing up my identity to some degree.
"They didn't throw us out on the spot, at least. How did you know it would go this way?"
"You can tell just by looking."
Most cities welcomed free knights, and Oscalt would be no different.
Free knights took on the 'troublesome' jobs that were hard to deal with and that no one wanted to dirty their own hands with.
And such troublesome jobs multiplied the less spare attention a city had for its internal problems, so Oscalt, locked in a life-or-death struggle with the undead all day long, would have work piled up that a free knight was well suited to solve.
Free knights were usually a problem by their absence, never by their presence.
As I traded idle talk with Kallen, the soldier who had vanished leaned out again.
"Do you have some solid item that can prove you are a free knight?"
It seemed Oscalt fell among the rather thorough cities.
There was no shortage of nobodies who threw on passable armor and played at being free knights, so it was not unreasonable.
"The paladin's sigil of an imperially sanctioned order. I don't belong to the order, but it guarantees my standing."
"An order...... Talios, then. Very well. We will open the gate, so stand back."
What I had drawn out was the paladin's sigil I had received on leaving Pirberg.
Unlike the Apostle's Sigil I had received fifty years ago, it was an item the Order issued to every knight whose standing it vouched for.
In the soldier's eyes I would look like some lunatic who had turned down a proper paladin's post in an order to call himself a free knight, the sort of thing fallen nobles did.
In broad strokes, that was not wrong either.
The sound of pulleys turning came, and soon Oscalt's gate opened slowly with a ponderous noise.
Kallen and I passed through the small opening of the gate at a pace neither slow nor fast.
"Free knight out of the Talios Order, welcome to Oscalt."
Having already let us inside the walls, they had no reason to shun us, and the soldiers treated us amiably.
While Kallen exchanged greetings with them, I quickened my steps.
Findel Morein. At the end of a pursuit long if you called it long and short if you called it short, the truth of everything was right before my nose.