Harrison remembered well the day his dream was shattered.
“That is the truth of the world.”
Upon becoming the marshal of the Holy Order, the truth was revealed to him by Gerd Kruger, who’d already become an archbishop.
This was the end of the dream Harrison had devoted his whole life to. He couldn’t protect everything in the saviors’ stead. Faced with that cruel reality, he started down the road of whittling away at his own soul.
Publicly, the Holy Order had supported saviors all throughout history. However, behind the scenes, they were one part of the system that enforced the absolute authority of saviors. It wasn’t a matter of good or evil, but rather a necessity from the point of view of statesmen.
For example, what was to be done if an evildoer were to appear as a savior? What if they turned to depravity? What if they resorted to tyranny?
The saviors had far too much influence on the world itself. If things took a turn for the worse, the entire world could be thrown into chaos—which would damage the World View and potentially trigger another Grand Calamity, ending the world itself.
Those who knew the truth had a duty to guide visitors down the proper path. If necessary...they also had to kill said visitors behind closed doors. It was a detestable job, but if nobody did it, the world would be destabilized.
On that point, the advent of saviors this time around imposed horrible working conditions. From Harrison’s perspective, the situation was pretty much a series of nonstop nightmares. The appearance of visitors on an unheard-of scale was far beyond the abilities of the Holy Church to manage. What’s more, because they’d appeared as far as humanly possible from the imperial capital, it had been impossible to deal with the situation immediately. By the time Harrison had personally rushed to Fort Ebenus, half of the confirmed visitors had already scattered.
For many reasons, saviors couldn’t be allowed to cause trouble in a world they were unfamiliar with. The visitors had to be brought in quickly before any chaos could be wrought. And yet, more than sixty had already dispersed into the world. This left Harrison at his wits’ end as it was, but the situation deteriorated further.
Around the time he started his desperate pursuit of the scattered visitors, he had received a report that humanity’s greatest stronghold, Fort Tilia, had fallen because a visitor had gone on a rampage trying to return to his own world. Soon after, it came to light that two monster tamers, beings who posed a threat to the world simply by existing, had appeared.
Even as Harrison devoted all his time to manipulating information and dealing with the aftermath, the visitors made grave mistakes all over the place, creating the fake savior panic. Continuously hounded by problems the visitors created, he found himself unable to make any moves, and needed some plan that would take immediate effect. In other words, he had to make a rash move.
Just maybe, if the only visitor who’d appeared had been Majima Takahiro, there might’ve been a more reasonable way of handling this, even if he was a monster tamer. However, reality didn’t afford Harrison that leisure.
“I’m sorry.”
Just once, Gerd apologized to Harrison. Gerd was the guardian and warden of the world, even more so than Harrison. He watched the scales of this so-easily shaken world emotionlessly. For the sake of protecting it, he would do quite literally anything. That didn’t mean he was a cruel man, though.
“Your nature would make you unsuitable for this role. However, this world is far too fragile. You’re the only one capable of doing this job.”
Gerd knew that Harrison suffered over having to commit evil deeds. Harrison didn’t believe that what they did out of necessity to preserve the world was wrong. And yet a necessary evil, no matter how justified, went against everything he stood for. Knights were the embodiment of justice, so as the one called the knight among knights, this contradiction tortured Harrison.
He never gave up, though. He continued doing his duty. There was no other way of protecting the world.
This world was so fragile and unstable. Someone had to protect it. Harrison was sure that it was his destiny to continue doing so until his last breath.
Even if there were many problems at a fundamental level, the people of this world lived earnestly. They cared for each other and stood against the cruelties of reality hand in hand. He couldn’t possibly allow the world to end. He had to protect them, no matter what.