“Do you really have to do that?”
Ariadne answered flatly. The old woman was astonished.
"What?"
“Honestly... I did see a miracle of returning to the past, but it’s all a very unfamiliar story to me.”
Ariadne shrugged. She was surprisingly not in a bad mood right now.
Today is the first time she's been able to talk so openly about regression.
The mere fact that they could share their secrets made her feel good. Naturally, they started talking more freely.
“As you said, teacher, I am from the Central Continent.”
Although they don't have faith, religion influences not only their beliefs but also their entire thought system and culture.
“It’s a bit unsettling because it seems like a demon. If it’s a god, an awakened being, or someone who uses magic, it’s okay, so aren’t they all people from the Moorish Empire? I’m not really interested in living forever among people I don’t know.”
"Ha!"
The old woman was out of breath, panting. It was a story she had never imagined.
“Hey, this guy!”
She guessed this is how parents feel when they see their only son, who has about eight older sisters, declare that he will never date or get married in his life.
Ariadne continued, unconcerned with the old woman's feelings.
“If we just keep going like this, we’ll probably have some bad luck and it’ll be hard. But if we don’t accumulate any more good deeds or bad deeds and just hang on at home and do nothing, we’ll just go back to the cycle of reincarnation, right?”
The return has already been paid in advance. There is a title and money has been made.
There is the problem that the love front is not going as planned, but isn't it already a hundred times better than her last life where she was betrayed by her fiancée and older sister and ended up in the West Tower?
Ariadne smiled brightly.
“Please correct me if there are any mistakes.”
“You ignorant thing!”
The old woman waved her cane.
Puck!
"Ouch!"
Ariadne hugged the old woman and protested to her.
“Why are you hitting me when you can just talk about it!”
“You’re so ignorant that you can’t even understand, why!”
The old woman continued speaking with a grin.
“Who would send you back to the cycle of reincarnation? Look, there is a day of judgment! The day you were supposed to die!”
It is the spring of 1137.
“If you commit many sins and live your life, from that day on, bad luck will come pouring into your life! And do you think you can avoid that by staying at home?!”
The storehouses where people store their wealth will catch fire, and a plague will break out in the fields where they graze their cattle.
The rock on which you built your house will crumble in an earthquake, and all your loved ones will fall ill or die or betray you, leaving you without anyone to stand by.
“Most of you give up here. Just give me some names you might recognize. People from the Central Continent... Let’s see. Okay!”
The old woman searched for a long time and finally found it. She had to go back a long way to find the hero from the Central Continent who had returned.
“Hercules of Philoa, unable to bear the pain, climbed up onto a pyre and killed himself over the fire. Ajax, a little later, was possessed by something and slaughtered the herd of cattle that the community raised together. Then, realizing that he was socially dead, he killed himself with a sword.”
She waved her cane around.
“Do you think they made that choice because they had less self-control than you? They just knew more than you! And Emperor Otto of the Ratan Empire...”
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Ariadne, who had both hands and feet raised, hurriedly apologized. However, contrary to her gentle words, she did not stop protesting.
“But I’ve already committed sin. I can’t compensate for it with good deeds. So am I already ruined?”
“...That’s right. The red mark on your arm is like a meter that lets you see how much sin you’ve committed. In fact, if it covers half of your arm, it’s pretty serious. You can consider it a failure.”
“Well, then I’m just going to jump off the top of a spire or something when ‘Judgment Day’ comes anyway, so what’s the point of accumulating good deeds?”
The Moorish old woman was silent for a moment.
“...First of all, you’re half-regressed, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like it because it feels a bit like a half-penny, but I’ll accept it.”
“There must be someone out there who cast a spell of regression on you. It’s either you or that guy who will pay the price, but I guess you’ll get it, right?”
“Why?”
“What does he know that he wouldn’t have cast a magic spell on you? When it comes to the art of splitting the bet, it’s probably right to assume that he knows more than I do. If he were going to give you all the good things and sink while only embracing the price, wouldn’t he have cast a magic spell on you?”
“...That’s true too.”
“But try to have some dreams and hopes.”
“You are not helping me achieve my dreams and hopes.”
“This punk!”
The old woman swung her staff again, but Ariadne dodged it. She wasn't a fool to be fooled twice.
The old woman clicked her tongue as she saw Ariadne laughing brightly, avoiding the noise.
“How clever... Anyway, there is a way to find that guy and figure out if you can get rid of his sins. If you just give up and say you’re screwed, you’ll really be screwed.”
“I agree with that.”
She was a grandmother Ariadne liked in many ways.
“Then who is the one who cast the spell...”
“Wait! Listen to the explanation first! I need to correct your ignorance first!”
The Moorish old woman was not a fool to try twice and fail. Instead of swinging her staff, she gave Ariadne a hard blow to the forehead.
"Ouch!"
The grandmother chuckled as she watched Ariadne groaning with her forehead covered.
“I was worried if I could hit you because you’re as tall as a pole, but you was a perfect fit. I’m not old yet.”
“It’s bad!”
The old woman drew a line on the floor with her cane, now out of use as a weapon.
“Let’s say you go beyond ‘Judgment Day’ and reach the day when your life naturally ends.”
She wrote the number <1.> in large letters on the floor.
“The ‘Awakened Ones’ will first see whether you have successfully accomplished the mission they have entrusted to you.”
“Mission...?”
“Yes. When you returned, didn’t you make any promises like, ‘I will prevent the Etruscan kingdom from falling in 1132’ or ‘I will ensure that your bloodline sits on the throne’?”
Ariadne shook her head.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“It’s not that I don’t remember, it’s that the fact itself doesn’t exist.”
She searched through her memories from the time of her regression. No matter how much she racked her brain, she never once promised such a grand goal.
“I just said that I would... get revenge, that I could.”
The karma you commit will be met with retribution, and the good you do will be returned. That is the golden rule. Can you do it?
The old woman frowned deeply.
“There’s no way those gentlemen would accept something like that.”
As far as the Moorish grandmother knew, the conditions were always quite specific.
“This is something you must accomplish. You cannot delegate the task to a magic user. He may have set out his terms and the ‘Awakened Ones’ accepted them, but he may not have told you what those terms were.”
“...Do I really have to achieve this?”
Since it is said that bad luck can be passed on to the magic user, wouldn't the price of mission failure also be passed on to the magic user?
“You punk!”
But it seemed that was not the case. This time the Moorish old woman's cane flew sideways.
“Ugh!”
Ariadne jumped back, but couldn't avoid being hit in the thigh.
“Ah! Say it, say it!”
“Shut up you ignorant fool!”
The old woman explained while drawing on the floor.
We talked for a while about causality and 'species', but in the end, it all came down to this:
“If I fail the mission, you take my soul?!”
“Yes. It’s a bad case of breaking the cycle of reincarnation. I’ll take it and burn it.”
“You’re the devil, right? And what are you going to do with something like a soul that you burn?!”
Is it pure bad taste? And is it the devil?
“It’s so hard to explain advanced things to a fool who doesn’t even know how to hold a sickle or an L... The soul is the material for supernatural powers! Do you think those guys are like gods? If you’re going to send people back to the past and stuff, shouldn’t they also be paying a price for the providence of the universe?”
“Ah...”
The old woman continued to grumble in front of the distraught Ariadne.
“No, if you want them to achieve their goals, you should let them know what the goals are. Why would they do something so pointless when they’re already ‘open-eyed’?”
“If I don’t achieve my goal, my soul will be torn apart alive?”
“I don’t know if you’ll be torn alive, but you’ll be torn. How do you figure out what your goal is?”
Ariadne spoke up.
“That is... There are times when the halo of light reacts.”
"Oh?"
“Sometimes when it comes to making a particular choice, the halo becomes very enthusiastic as if it is clearly supporting one side or the other.”
It was like that when he helped Cesare defeat the Knights of Gallico.
“That’s great! You just need to follow those words!”
“But it wasn’t always good for me! The last time the halo flashed...”
Ariadne roughly explained the situation at the time.
“As a result, a plague swept through Gallico, and my left arm, from the elbow down, looked as if it had been dipped in blood!”
The old woman answered calmly.
“That's a given.”
"Yes?"
“Your interests and the interests of the ‘Awakened Ones’ are not the same. Whether you drink poison all at once on the eve of ‘Judgment Day’ after being covered in misfortune or not, the ‘Awakened Ones’ have no interest in it. No, if you die after completing your mission, you will achieve your goal and collect your soul, so it would be killing two birds with one stone.”
Ariadne opened her mouth in disbelief.
“Are there really such people?”
“Don’t badmouth others. From what I’ve heard on the street, you’re just like everyone else.”
“...You’re sharp.”
I thought I wouldn't get caught...
The Moorish grandmother saw right through it all and blurted out the words as she looked at Ariadne.
“I came from a similar neighborhood and that’s why. You can see it at a glance. It’s not like pretending to be nice is an ineffective strategy, so keep pretending to be nice.”
“...”
The old woman neatly organized everything, leaving Ariadne standing in front of her, speechless.
1. Sins have already piled up as much as they can. It is meaningless to pile them up less now, so you will think about a way to hand them over to the one who cast the spell.
2. If you fail to complete the mission, your soul will be stolen by the 'Awakened Ones' on the day Ariadne's life ends in this life (note that this is not 'Judgment Day'). They will grind it up and use it as material for supernatural powers, so it will be the end for you forever.
3. If you succeed in accomplishing your mission, your good deeds will be measured and your treatment will be determined. If your good deeds are insufficient, you will return to the cycle of reincarnation, but if your good deeds are outstanding, you will be allowed to rise to the ranks of the 'Awakened Ones'.
“So, it’s not like I can do whatever I want just because I want to or don’t want to be one of the ‘awakened ones’!”
The old woman became irritated.
“You seem like an impudent guy. First, you have to complete the mission, and then you have to have a ton of good deeds to choose whether or not you want to do it.”
She kept grumbling about how there were so many children who studied hard all day long from the age of five to become 'the awakened ones', and how it was such a great honor, and how she could say things like 'like' or 'dislike' as she pleased.
Ariadne was thinking of something else.
“Ma'am, don’t you have any intention of coming to the de Mare mansion... no, near the mansion?”
She seemed like a person who could not only have knowledge of the mysterious world but also serve as a political advisor. It would definitely be beneficial to have her around.
But the old woman shook her head firmly.
“I hate being tied down. And we can only have this conversation freely once a month.”
The old woman looked up at the sky. It was already very late. It was well past midnight and deep into the morning.
“I guess I should wrap things up now. I decided to help you. It’s for personal reasons. But I’ll go once I’ve fulfilled all the karma I need.”
“Even once a month! Even if you go, Bocca della Giano is a better place to live than Campo de’ Spezia. There’s so much gold there.”
“If I receive that, my karma will only build up. I can’t stand it anymore.”
For her grandson to live a clean life, it was better to pay it off quickly and get rid of it.
However, Ariadne took note of the old woman's words, 'for personal reasons.'
“By any chance, do you have any grandchildren?”
Ariadne answered flatly. The old woman was astonished.
"What?"
“Honestly... I did see a miracle of returning to the past, but it’s all a very unfamiliar story to me.”
Ariadne shrugged. She was surprisingly not in a bad mood right now.
Today is the first time she's been able to talk so openly about regression.
The mere fact that they could share their secrets made her feel good. Naturally, they started talking more freely.
“As you said, teacher, I am from the Central Continent.”
Although they don't have faith, religion influences not only their beliefs but also their entire thought system and culture.
“It’s a bit unsettling because it seems like a demon. If it’s a god, an awakened being, or someone who uses magic, it’s okay, so aren’t they all people from the Moorish Empire? I’m not really interested in living forever among people I don’t know.”
"Ha!"
The old woman was out of breath, panting. It was a story she had never imagined.
“Hey, this guy!”
She guessed this is how parents feel when they see their only son, who has about eight older sisters, declare that he will never date or get married in his life.
Ariadne continued, unconcerned with the old woman's feelings.
“If we just keep going like this, we’ll probably have some bad luck and it’ll be hard. But if we don’t accumulate any more good deeds or bad deeds and just hang on at home and do nothing, we’ll just go back to the cycle of reincarnation, right?”
The return has already been paid in advance. There is a title and money has been made.
There is the problem that the love front is not going as planned, but isn't it already a hundred times better than her last life where she was betrayed by her fiancée and older sister and ended up in the West Tower?
Ariadne smiled brightly.
“Please correct me if there are any mistakes.”
“You ignorant thing!”
The old woman waved her cane.
Puck!
"Ouch!"
Ariadne hugged the old woman and protested to her.
“Why are you hitting me when you can just talk about it!”
“You’re so ignorant that you can’t even understand, why!”
The old woman continued speaking with a grin.
“Who would send you back to the cycle of reincarnation? Look, there is a day of judgment! The day you were supposed to die!”
It is the spring of 1137.
“If you commit many sins and live your life, from that day on, bad luck will come pouring into your life! And do you think you can avoid that by staying at home?!”
The storehouses where people store their wealth will catch fire, and a plague will break out in the fields where they graze their cattle.
The rock on which you built your house will crumble in an earthquake, and all your loved ones will fall ill or die or betray you, leaving you without anyone to stand by.
“Most of you give up here. Just give me some names you might recognize. People from the Central Continent... Let’s see. Okay!”
The old woman searched for a long time and finally found it. She had to go back a long way to find the hero from the Central Continent who had returned.
“Hercules of Philoa, unable to bear the pain, climbed up onto a pyre and killed himself over the fire. Ajax, a little later, was possessed by something and slaughtered the herd of cattle that the community raised together. Then, realizing that he was socially dead, he killed himself with a sword.”
She waved her cane around.
“Do you think they made that choice because they had less self-control than you? They just knew more than you! And Emperor Otto of the Ratan Empire...”
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Ariadne, who had both hands and feet raised, hurriedly apologized. However, contrary to her gentle words, she did not stop protesting.
“But I’ve already committed sin. I can’t compensate for it with good deeds. So am I already ruined?”
“...That’s right. The red mark on your arm is like a meter that lets you see how much sin you’ve committed. In fact, if it covers half of your arm, it’s pretty serious. You can consider it a failure.”
“Well, then I’m just going to jump off the top of a spire or something when ‘Judgment Day’ comes anyway, so what’s the point of accumulating good deeds?”
The Moorish old woman was silent for a moment.
“...First of all, you’re half-regressed, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like it because it feels a bit like a half-penny, but I’ll accept it.”
“There must be someone out there who cast a spell of regression on you. It’s either you or that guy who will pay the price, but I guess you’ll get it, right?”
“Why?”
“What does he know that he wouldn’t have cast a magic spell on you? When it comes to the art of splitting the bet, it’s probably right to assume that he knows more than I do. If he were going to give you all the good things and sink while only embracing the price, wouldn’t he have cast a magic spell on you?”
“...That’s true too.”
“But try to have some dreams and hopes.”
“You are not helping me achieve my dreams and hopes.”
“This punk!”
The old woman swung her staff again, but Ariadne dodged it. She wasn't a fool to be fooled twice.
The old woman clicked her tongue as she saw Ariadne laughing brightly, avoiding the noise.
“How clever... Anyway, there is a way to find that guy and figure out if you can get rid of his sins. If you just give up and say you’re screwed, you’ll really be screwed.”
“I agree with that.”
She was a grandmother Ariadne liked in many ways.
“Then who is the one who cast the spell...”
“Wait! Listen to the explanation first! I need to correct your ignorance first!”
The Moorish old woman was not a fool to try twice and fail. Instead of swinging her staff, she gave Ariadne a hard blow to the forehead.
"Ouch!"
The grandmother chuckled as she watched Ariadne groaning with her forehead covered.
“I was worried if I could hit you because you’re as tall as a pole, but you was a perfect fit. I’m not old yet.”
“It’s bad!”
The old woman drew a line on the floor with her cane, now out of use as a weapon.
“Let’s say you go beyond ‘Judgment Day’ and reach the day when your life naturally ends.”
She wrote the number <1.> in large letters on the floor.
“The ‘Awakened Ones’ will first see whether you have successfully accomplished the mission they have entrusted to you.”
“Mission...?”
“Yes. When you returned, didn’t you make any promises like, ‘I will prevent the Etruscan kingdom from falling in 1132’ or ‘I will ensure that your bloodline sits on the throne’?”
Ariadne shook her head.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“It’s not that I don’t remember, it’s that the fact itself doesn’t exist.”
She searched through her memories from the time of her regression. No matter how much she racked her brain, she never once promised such a grand goal.
“I just said that I would... get revenge, that I could.”
The karma you commit will be met with retribution, and the good you do will be returned. That is the golden rule. Can you do it?
The old woman frowned deeply.
“There’s no way those gentlemen would accept something like that.”
As far as the Moorish grandmother knew, the conditions were always quite specific.
“This is something you must accomplish. You cannot delegate the task to a magic user. He may have set out his terms and the ‘Awakened Ones’ accepted them, but he may not have told you what those terms were.”
“...Do I really have to achieve this?”
Since it is said that bad luck can be passed on to the magic user, wouldn't the price of mission failure also be passed on to the magic user?
“You punk!”
But it seemed that was not the case. This time the Moorish old woman's cane flew sideways.
“Ugh!”
Ariadne jumped back, but couldn't avoid being hit in the thigh.
“Ah! Say it, say it!”
“Shut up you ignorant fool!”
The old woman explained while drawing on the floor.
We talked for a while about causality and 'species', but in the end, it all came down to this:
“If I fail the mission, you take my soul?!”
“Yes. It’s a bad case of breaking the cycle of reincarnation. I’ll take it and burn it.”
“You’re the devil, right? And what are you going to do with something like a soul that you burn?!”
Is it pure bad taste? And is it the devil?
“It’s so hard to explain advanced things to a fool who doesn’t even know how to hold a sickle or an L... The soul is the material for supernatural powers! Do you think those guys are like gods? If you’re going to send people back to the past and stuff, shouldn’t they also be paying a price for the providence of the universe?”
“Ah...”
The old woman continued to grumble in front of the distraught Ariadne.
“No, if you want them to achieve their goals, you should let them know what the goals are. Why would they do something so pointless when they’re already ‘open-eyed’?”
“If I don’t achieve my goal, my soul will be torn apart alive?”
“I don’t know if you’ll be torn alive, but you’ll be torn. How do you figure out what your goal is?”
Ariadne spoke up.
“That is... There are times when the halo of light reacts.”
"Oh?"
“Sometimes when it comes to making a particular choice, the halo becomes very enthusiastic as if it is clearly supporting one side or the other.”
It was like that when he helped Cesare defeat the Knights of Gallico.
“That’s great! You just need to follow those words!”
“But it wasn’t always good for me! The last time the halo flashed...”
Ariadne roughly explained the situation at the time.
“As a result, a plague swept through Gallico, and my left arm, from the elbow down, looked as if it had been dipped in blood!”
The old woman answered calmly.
“That's a given.”
"Yes?"
“Your interests and the interests of the ‘Awakened Ones’ are not the same. Whether you drink poison all at once on the eve of ‘Judgment Day’ after being covered in misfortune or not, the ‘Awakened Ones’ have no interest in it. No, if you die after completing your mission, you will achieve your goal and collect your soul, so it would be killing two birds with one stone.”
Ariadne opened her mouth in disbelief.
“Are there really such people?”
“Don’t badmouth others. From what I’ve heard on the street, you’re just like everyone else.”
“...You’re sharp.”
I thought I wouldn't get caught...
The Moorish grandmother saw right through it all and blurted out the words as she looked at Ariadne.
“I came from a similar neighborhood and that’s why. You can see it at a glance. It’s not like pretending to be nice is an ineffective strategy, so keep pretending to be nice.”
“...”
The old woman neatly organized everything, leaving Ariadne standing in front of her, speechless.
1. Sins have already piled up as much as they can. It is meaningless to pile them up less now, so you will think about a way to hand them over to the one who cast the spell.
2. If you fail to complete the mission, your soul will be stolen by the 'Awakened Ones' on the day Ariadne's life ends in this life (note that this is not 'Judgment Day'). They will grind it up and use it as material for supernatural powers, so it will be the end for you forever.
3. If you succeed in accomplishing your mission, your good deeds will be measured and your treatment will be determined. If your good deeds are insufficient, you will return to the cycle of reincarnation, but if your good deeds are outstanding, you will be allowed to rise to the ranks of the 'Awakened Ones'.
“So, it’s not like I can do whatever I want just because I want to or don’t want to be one of the ‘awakened ones’!”
The old woman became irritated.
“You seem like an impudent guy. First, you have to complete the mission, and then you have to have a ton of good deeds to choose whether or not you want to do it.”
She kept grumbling about how there were so many children who studied hard all day long from the age of five to become 'the awakened ones', and how it was such a great honor, and how she could say things like 'like' or 'dislike' as she pleased.
Ariadne was thinking of something else.
“Ma'am, don’t you have any intention of coming to the de Mare mansion... no, near the mansion?”
She seemed like a person who could not only have knowledge of the mysterious world but also serve as a political advisor. It would definitely be beneficial to have her around.
But the old woman shook her head firmly.
“I hate being tied down. And we can only have this conversation freely once a month.”
The old woman looked up at the sky. It was already very late. It was well past midnight and deep into the morning.
“I guess I should wrap things up now. I decided to help you. It’s for personal reasons. But I’ll go once I’ve fulfilled all the karma I need.”
“Even once a month! Even if you go, Bocca della Giano is a better place to live than Campo de’ Spezia. There’s so much gold there.”
“If I receive that, my karma will only build up. I can’t stand it anymore.”
For her grandson to live a clean life, it was better to pay it off quickly and get rid of it.
However, Ariadne took note of the old woman's words, 'for personal reasons.'
“By any chance, do you have any grandchildren?”
Support Novellate!
Comments
Post a Comment