Uhak the Silent - 2

Recording the events that happened that day could have served to damage Uhak's honor.

However, I knew very well that Uhak himself didn't wish to lie or cover up what happened. Furthermore, in order to leave behind a nugget of truth I accidently witnessed that day to someone, it was impossible to avoid touching on that blood-drenched incident.

Around the time the sun had progressed past its zenith, a small set of clouds had closed in on the far-off mountain outlines.

I was in the midst of drawing water from the well, when I saw a thin wisp of smoke rising off in the direction of the village.

"Uhak. Uhak, look."

Although he couldn't hear my words, he surmised something had happened by the tone and rhythm of my footsteps—the only thing Uhak couldn't hear was Word Arts speech—and immediately came out into the church courtyard.

Was it a fire or a signal? I prayed that it was simply children playfully making a bonfire as a prank. I hastened to the village, Uhak pulling my carriage along.

As we approached, the disquieting atmosphere on the main road grew denser

and denser.

Birds in every direction, feathers and flesh getting caught in branches and torn off.

None of the wild rabbits were hidden in their holes, instead standing stock- still in the middle of the road, gazing at the sky.

I had seen animals in a similar state before. Back when the True Demon King was alive. That vague terror, making absolutely anything and everything go mad. When we drew closer to the village, a stretch of bloodstains spanned across the area, as if drawn by a thick finger, and I could see the smears continue all the

way into the village.

I strongly wanted to avoid thinking about what had come to the village and what was happening there, but I couldn't communicate to Uhak to stop the carriage.

"Mother Cunodey! You can't go into the village right now!"

One of the villagers who had escaped blocked the carriage, their face growing pale.

Their clothes were stained with someone's blood and flecks of soot, and they gave an account of the situation.

"I—I… I know that woman! It's Belka the Rending Quake! No one can beat her! Even she's gone mad! It's the Demon King… That's for sure…"

"…Please try to calm down. In times of distress, we all need to help each other. I have the sacred protection of Word Arts, and Uhak is with me as well. What is going on?"

"Belka… Belka the Rending Quake. The champion who went to slay the Demon King… I thought all of them had died…"

The elderly craftsman's lips trembled, and he tightly shut his eyes.

"She lied. She couldn't just die. She came back, back from The Land of The End… She came back, and now she's gone mad. She's nothing but a monster now."

I patted him on the back, and after speaking some words of comfort to calm him down, I urged Uhak to hurry with the carriage.

The dreadful spectacle came into view soon after. The blue storehouse roofs that always greeted me at the village entrance were being smashed by a palm from above, scattering into splinters.

The owner of the ginormous hand stretched up high into the sky, towering over all the buildings in the village.

Belka the Rending Quake. If the craftsman's story was right, she was a gigant

who traveled to slay the True Demon King...now a shadow of her former self.

They say there were only two people to ever return alive from an encounter with the True Demon King.

"H-help. Help. I can hear it…! I can still hear that voice! It's awful! Help!

Aaaaugh!!"

Her insane bellowing alone was enough to torment my ears and mind, and her colossal straight cleaver, appearing to have been used several times on Belka herself, was smeared with the crushed villagers' blood and entrails, glistening with a red luster.

"B-bbberruka io arr." (F-from Belka to Alimo earth.) "Welllln mmetttt." (Wriggling swarming shadow.) "…Help…" "llllosse aanettt." (Origin of steel.) "Nooorstems." (Smashing wave.) "…I-I'm scared… I can't take the terror…!" "Uiomtestop!" (Hatch!)

At Belka's feet, a number of small anthill-like mounds thrust up from out of the ground.

I felt a foreboding about her frightening Word Arts and immediately hid behind the general store building…before realizing I hadn't brought Uhak with me.

"Uhak!"

No matter how desperately I shouted, words were the only thing Uhak couldn't hear.

He was standing near a crushed water mill…and was enveloped in the mound's destruction, exploding in horrible flames and light.

Horse corpses were easily sent flying, and the frame of the watchtower was broken and collapsed in half. The pools of blood went bone-dry in an instant, and the wooden outer wall burst into flames on its own just from the heat of the aftermath.

I didn't understand what sort of Word Arts Belka the Rending Quake used, but I was sure it was some sort of Life Arts, generating something from the ground that exploded in a mix of thunder and flames.

"Uhak! Oh my… Impossible…!"

Uhak was safe. At the very middle of the destructive wave, he was totally unharmed.

Not a single scratch.

I couldn't believe my eyes. There was nothing around to shield him, and Uhak hadn't moved a single inch, yet there wasn't a single scratch, a single singe on his gray skin.

No matter how sturdy his body may have been, was such a thing even possible? I believed I had at least an understanding of what was and wasn't possible in this world.

"A-augh… Hnaaaugh… The voice… Make it stop… Help me…!"

The crazed gigant looked out over the survivors with murky, unfocused eyes and picked up a mother, gasping her final breaths, half her body blown off, and chewed on her.

Each time she bit down on the thing gigants generally weren't supposed to eat, she'd cough, spilling blood from her lips, and the fact that even this didn't faze Belka spoke to the depths of her madness.

"Enough! Belka the Rending Quake! The True Demon King is no longer in these lands! The thing you fear, the thing tormenting you, doesn't exist anywhere anymore!"

"...…Lies," the gigant answered as the bones of the ground-up villagers gashed the inside of her own throat.

At that moment...deep down, I could barely contain my desire to run away. Unlike my dead comrades, in truth, I was not a fine, upstanding priest in the depths of my soul.

It was simply the fact that, if Uhak stood there without running away, it compelled me to do the same myself.

"Then, this voice… Inside my head, it's still there. I can s-sense…the Demon King…! Th-they're…still alive!"

"No! There is no voice! We need to fight against the fear in our own hearts! If you doubt, fear, hate, and kill everything, then even with the True Demon King's death, it's like that era never ended! Please, you need to take back that heart of a champion! Belka!"

Belka was next to speak. They were words of murder.

"F-from Belka to Alimo earth… Wriggling swarming shadow…origin of steel. Smashing—"

"From Cunodey to Alimo wind. Waterfall flow, shadow of the eye, breaking twig! Contain!"

Before her Word Arts of destruction finished, I needed to invoke Power Arts to protect myself.

We both changed our Word Arts at the same time—and then. Then…nothing happened at all.

I couldn't use Word Arts—an absolutely impossible, completely inconceivable occurrence.

Our Word Arts incantations hadn't failed. However, neither Belka's ground transformation nor my attempt to weave a wind force field resulted in anything. The words we both spoke were nothing more than sounds.

The fear I felt in that moment might have been difficult to explain. But… within the teachings of our Order, these Word Arts themselves served as proof of our mind's existence.

It was as if I was being confronted with the fact that nothing like that ever existed to begin with.

Belka's eyes widened, as if witnessing something unbelievable… And then she collapsed to her knees.

"…Belka?"

Belka didn't respond to me, trying to compel her body up again, still stirred by fright.

I watched her from nearby—watched her shoulders dislocate the more she struggled, her bones being crushed and snapped, and her flesh splitting and tearing. As if I was being shown that such a large creature like a gigant, living on land, had all been nothing but an elaborate lie.

Belka raised her head, her expression one of blood, agony, and terror. Uhak was there.

"F-from Cunodey to Alimo winds—"

I went to chant Word Arts, to protect Uhak. Or rather…because I thought my earlier failure had been some sort of mistake.

The wind didn't answer my call. My words failed to reach not only Uhak but also Belka. Solitude, as if cut off from everything else in the world, seemed to exist as a hard fact.

"Mnnrgghh. Hnggh…ngh…"

Belka croaked out an inarticulate groan. She had wanted help.

Even if she had been saying something, it was almost wholly indistinguishable from the growls of a mindless beast.

Uhak kept his eyes fixed on Belka, picking up a large piece of debris, a section of a broken stone fence.

He used it to smash the gigant's drooping head.

She let out a scream of grief and anger. She uttered words without meaning. Uhak raised the stone up in the air once again. Then he brought it down on her head a second time.

He looked just as diligent as always, like taking care of a necessary duty of his, as he smashed the gigant's head, and continued to smash it—breaking it open.

The gigant champion, unable to use any Word Arts, unable even to rise from the ground, was slain.

None of the villagers circling the area and watching from afar were able to stop it. Including myself.

"…Uhak?"

After everything ended, I at least realized I had regained proper speech. Uhak didn't answer. He lived in a world without Word Arts.

…And now he was having a meal.

He quietly sat down like usual and silently picked out the insides of the gigant's crushed head and ate them.

Everyone in the village, including myself, understood it for the first time—

Uhak wasn't an ogre who couldn't eat people. He simply didn't.

The situation from there gradually grew worse.

The terror that Belka brought to the village infected the residents, and they all looked at Uhak with fear and suspicion. Though he had simply been wrapped up in it all, even if he had only done it to save someone…and even if it was an outcome no one had wished for, everyone knew that any tragedy born from the Demon King would be enough to lead to the absolute worst situation.

I had traveled back and forth to the village hoping to save those who lost family and neighbors in any way I could, but I was unable to lift the curse they harbored. Who would be next to show up, how exactly were they going to die off…and was the True Demon King actually alive somewhere?

It was exactly as the villagers had said. The sights of the people racked with fear, futures sealed in despair, these were the very sights I had witnessed during the era of the True Demon King.

As long as this terror was etched into the people's minds, the Demon King would continue to be brought back to life over and over again, filling their hearts

with terror. Though they were long dead, just like they had in the past, they'd bring about misery in the future.

The clear stream of Alimo Row, walking steadily on the road to restoration now that the world was saved from the True Demon King, was muddied red.

Those without homes wandered the town with empty eyes, and those with homes conversely shut their doors tight, to ensure no one would pass through.

If anyone, no longer able to bear the constant tension and fear, caused a violent incident, that person and their whole family would suffer a public execution administered by the rest of the village, and if any of their corpses stayed intact, they'd be hung on display at the village entrance.

Please, I asked for forgiveness. Forgiveness for being powerless, unable to save a single person as I watched them tumble down back into the era of despair. Everyone believed that faith in the Word-Maker was powerless before the fear of the True Demon King. They were unable to accept an ogre like me. They

feared they'd be carried off to the church to serve as ogre food.

This result was likely the obvious outcome. They had the right to begrudge me for being unable to save them.

Torches lit, the villagers drew close to the church, gathering to execute Uhak and me.

—These were the events of the night prior.

"Kill the Ogre." "Kill the man-eating monster." Those were the voices I heard. Cunodey the Ring Seat, for all of them, was now a vague enemy of theirs, under the blanket name of the Order.

As we studied letters together in the candlelight, I called his name.

"Uhak, nothing you did was wrong. You saved a great number of lives. Even eating Belka's corpse… That wasn't wrong, either. Monstrous races eat the flesh of minian races. It's been a fact since the beginning of our world. Despite that, you…you considered our feelings and went without eating any all this time…"

Uhak had continuously fought. A battle between his ogre-born sin and his starvation. How much faith and temperance was needed to make that possible? It was something a minia like myself couldn't begin to imagine. If one of us was destined to die, I thought it should be me, unable to save anyone and powerless as a believer.

I wrote down the words to convey them to Uhak.

"Slip through the forest and immediately cross the river… Then, in some other village somewhere, look for the Order's help. This letter I wrote should help you out somewhat. I have speech, words. I need to dispel the shadow that's

fallen over the hearts of the people… The curse of fear."

Uhak took the letter and seemed to give the faintest nod. However, he pushed me aside as I went to leave the church and seek out the villagers.

"…Uhak! Don't!"

My words didn't reach Uhak. None could.

Cries of rage and fear rose up among the villagers I was supposed to protect.

They all had their own respective weapons set on Uhak. Every single one of them, down to the arrows in the air, were fended off with a flash of his club.

The bewilderment at being unable to converse with each other, at their Word Arts not performing their functions, spread through the gathered mob.

There was one who tried to flee, in fear. Uhak grabbed them on the back of their neck. Snapping it like a twig, he used the club swung over his shoulder to crush a different villager's head. A simple punch of his fist, and the villager twisted like a cloth doll and died.

When Uhak fought, nothing around him happened.

Almost as if the monolithic size of a gigant was a nonfactor.

As if Word Arts capable of calling out and communicating with the people and things of the world had been wholly impossible from the start.

Before Uhak, all the people of the world were nothing but mindless beasts, bereft of any of life's mysteries, while he himself was nothing more than a gargantuan ogre.

Not a single difference between anyone, villager or champion.

He swung his club, diligent and solemn, slowly turning the villagers into bloodstains.

"…Uhak. What was it…? What was I supposed to do…?"

The one causing the tragedy before me was my son. My comrade. My only family.

I must've wanted to run from the reality in front of me, and thus I fled alone into the woods… And then right as I felt my foot get caught on some thread, an arrow pierced my side.

The villagers had set up booby traps to kill us.

And I was caught, as if I were a beast being hunted.

My own mistake and foolishness filled me with more regret than I could bear. I had brought the trap on myself with my weak heart, trying to abandon Uhak to escape and survive on my own.

A number of villagers who were lurking in the forest started to encircle me, sticks and hammers in their hands. This time, for sure, I was going to steel my

mind and accept my fate, but I was unable to, with the terror bubbling up inside me, when…I saw one of the villagers fall to the ground.

Almost as though a path was being opened up between them, the villagers brandished their weapons at my feet one by one, without showing any sign of waking up.

Finally, once all the villagers present had collapsed—a familiar face came into view from among them. A face I could never forget.

"…Hey, Teach."

It was one of my former pupils, Kuze the Passing Disaster. "Mother Cunodey. You still alive?"

With the heat from my arrow wound circulating through my body, his cold hand slapping against my cheeks felt pleasant.

There were many other, more important things I wanted to tell him, but with my consciousness fading, the only thing I could get out of my mouth was a simple observation.

"…You're all grown up, Kuze."

"Sorry. It's always like this for me. I'm always too late. It's my fault." "..."

"…Don't worry, just wait there, Teach. I'll be sure to send everyone packing.

All of it… I'll clean up this bad dream."

Then Kuze wrapped me up in his overcoat and laid me down in my quarters.

He tried to cheer me up, but with this wound, I wasn't going to make it to the morning.

In which case, something, anything… I wanted to try to record my thoughts like this to express my final thoughts to poor Uhak, unable to comprehend speech.

I've never been able to forget the wolf pup I killed that day.

I knew that, even now, in a corner of the garden, there was a grave for the pup, a small collection of stones surrounded with a great many flowers.

We were all born bestowed with the blessing of Word Arts. Thus, before birth, just what sort of difference was there between us and those beasts not bestowed the same gift?

Although he couldn't speak, Uhak had a heart. Considerate of others, able to endure hardships, devoted to his faith… An undeniable heart, just like our own.

Several scenes, ones I had casually witnessed from a young age, circled in my mind.

I had seen horses no longer capable of pulling carriages get butchered with axes and turned into meat.

When the children once kicked a small cat and killed it, I had simply warned them not to get too close to wild animals.

…Without showing any respect or affection to the livestock that continued to be sacrificed for us, we consumed lives like it was our natural right.

Within a world where anyone who possessed Word Arts—including beastfolk and monstrous races—was capable of expressing their minds, creatures without such a gift were nothing but tools or enemies.

Things weren't this way in the Beyond. In fact, it was possible this world was a particularly cruel one… Why had I forgotten these things, things that a traveling visitor had told my father when I was eleven years old, up until now?

Could that wolf pup have been the same as Uhak?

Possessing a clearly established heart but simply without any method to communicate its words?

If that was indeed the case, what a truly terrible and awful sin it would be.

As long as we continued to live in this world, we were sure to continue piling more and more on this horrifying sin of ours.

Ever since that day, I've been tormented by thoughts unbecoming a priest. Were Word Arts an absolute law of nature?

Dragons fly, gigants walk, minia communicate with words, and Word Arts give birth to phenomena.

Do all these things we take for granted really just exist without any reason behind them?

…Uhak. In your eyes, you must have always looked at us mindless beasts as one and the same. You were the only one capable of loving everything equally, judging all things impartially, and confronting life on your own.

I was sure that eating a life you killed was your way of taking responsibility for the life you took.

You stole the lives of many of the villagers. Much like how I killed that wolf pup.

But that isn't your sin to bear.

We're the ones who're wrong. We're exactly like Melyugre the Silent's siblings, addicted to their Word Arts and destroyed.

I taught you this at some point, I'm sure. Priests needed to be people who can lift curses.

Uhak the Silent. From tomorrow on, I want you to throw away all the teachings I gave you.

Without being bound by the morals the minian races created, I want you to live as you feel is right, treating all lives as equal.

…I cannot endure the sins of living any longer. I don't think I'll be able to atone for them. It's far too much for a single person to bear.

If I die, I want you to eat my flesh.

The Sixteenth General of Aureatia, Nofelt the Somber Wind, and his troops arrived the next morning, after the tragedy had passed.

The villagers who attacked the church were all smashed to a pulp, pieces of them bitten off and eaten. Additionally, they discovered others hiding in the forest who were now all corpses, with their vitals gouged out by some small dagger. Nofelt was readily able to discover the ogre responsible for the massacre.

Nofelt put down the farewell testament the old woman had left behind. "Funny."

Everything was too late. It was always like this with incidents related to the Order. Even when it concerned the very almshouse he was born in, it took a day's time for military personnel to get permission to save it.

"…How stupid. Granny Cunodey's definitely got some screws loose… Even went and croaked on me without a word to me about it."

The heart of the abnormally tall swordsman was filled with hatred, in contrast to the flippant smile on his lips.

Aureatia abandoning his birthplace. The Word-Maker, unable to save anyone.

A world manipulated by the True Demon King.

Neither the Hero nor the nobility, not a single one, gave a damn about the weak who continued to die.

"Yo, Uhak. So if you're one of Granny's disciples, see, that basically means you're my junior, right? That's enough, don'cha think? I don't really care. Let's ruin everything."

The ogre was silently sitting with his back turned, facing the altar.

He didn't express it with words, but he was performing his daily prayers. "All right, Uhak. Hero time."

A mountain of flowers was placed at her body, lying in the cathedral.

He perceived the world even though he could not comprehend Word Arts.

He possessed the true power of disenchantment, thrusting the same reality he saw on others.

He commanded, as the strongest of all minian-shaped creatures, strength and size that existed as authoritative reality.

An axiom-denying monster, ever in uncommunicative silence, that overturned the basic premise of the world.

Oracle. Ogre.

Uhak the Silent.