I wasn’t going to let him go that easy—not the guy in the dark-green robes full of pockets who looked like a traveler. I stopped my grasshopper quick as I passed him overhead, then when I was right in front of his eyes, I got off.
The man started to scram at full speed when he saw a summon suddenly appear in front of him.
I jumped off the grasshopper and went after him, grabbing the shoulder of his cloak.
He tried his best to beat me off, but I was desperate. If I let him escape now, I’d lose my one clue and my one chance of saving Raddermark.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?!”
“S-stop, please!”
I tugged the cloak and dragged him to the nearby wall of a shop. Then I pushed him into the hard brick wall. I held his neck with my right arm to keep him from struggling.
“You’re that drunk from before! Would ya care to have a chat with me?”
I had no clue what my face must have looked like after blowing my lid. The thirty-something man was practically in tears when faced with me, an eighteen-year-old.
“I-it wasn’t my fault!” he said, looking genuinely terrified. “It was all the voice! The voice!” He kept going on about some mumbo jumbo, but when I pressed my right arm against his throat, he stopped.
“I haven’t got time for your babble! Just answer the questions I ask ya!”
I was being openly hostile, but I didn’t have time to be nice to him right now. I kept pressing into his neck until he finally couldn’t stand having his air cut off and he nodded.
I pointed at the northern wall with my left hand.
“What the heck is that?! Is that the silver-whatever thing you were talkin’ about before?!”
The silvery feelers were flashing in and out of view above the wall the same as before. After looking at it just once, he looked frightful as he said, “It’s the beginning of the end. The thing that will open the door to our demise. It hasn’t forgotten the mission engraved into its very being itself or the wrath of the god.”
Partway through, I pressed on the guy’s throat again.
“Just the practical parts! None of this metaphorical nonsense!”
“I-it’s an Executioner. One of the Six Executioners of Metal. The Angel-Eater of Silver.”
It seemed like we were right on the money. Something I never wanted confirmed. Just then, my anger and impatience reached their peak, and I punched the wall next to the guy’s face with my left hand.
“Why?! Why’d you bring that thing into Raddermark?!”
The man couldn’t put up resistance against me anymore at that point. Tears were forming in his eyes as he gave up all attempts at evasion or lying. “It needs the Shidoh princess—Sasha Shidoh Zultania. That’s what the Angel-Eater of Silver was ordered to do,” he confessed.
I hadn’t expected Sasha’s name here.
Even less understanding of the situation, I ended up baring my teeth at the guy as I screwed up my face into an even worse scowl.
“It was ordered, huh…?!”
“I-I’m just a temple researcher. I travel to the ruins of legends and look for miracles left behind by the gods.”
“Seems like dire times if an academic from the temple’s hailin’ in world destruction. Is the nitwit pope tryin’ to destroy the world?!”
“No! J-just listen to me! I’ll tell you everything!”
I bit my lip until I tasted blood to keep my impatience at bay. I stared into the guy’s face practically with the eyes of a devil as I tried to judge whether the guy was sober and had all his marbles together.
“I-it was exactly half a year ago. The research team I was with excavated it on Cape Millegranna in the land of Kudoh… When we took it out of the ground, it was just a lump of silver, but it turned into a chalice overnight. At that point, when we realized it was some sort of artifact, we began our research.”
Even though he seemed terrified by my threatening attitude, he still looked like he had his wits about him based on the look on his face.
He wasn’t spouting nonsense anymore, that was for sure.
“We had our suspicions from the start that it was some remnant of the Angel-Eater of Silver. Millegranna is a local old word that means ‘silver headdress.’ Among mythological researchers, it’s believed to be the spot where Pandora fought the Angel-Eater of Silver.”
“Oh…? So you’re sayin’ you were chosen from among ’em, huh?!”
“Th-that’s right. I was. Sometimes—just sometimes, I’d hear the voice.”
“You’re tryin’ to tell me you were just controlled by the Angel-Eater’s voice?! Ya really want me to believe that?!”
“Please believe me! Please, really. There wasn’t anything special about me. To the Angel-Eater of Silver, humans are just tools. We were there to help it move, that’s it!”
“What did the Angel-Eater say?! Why’s it tryin’ to move?!”
“It’s trying to fully revive itself so it can restart its destruction. In order to resurrect itself after being defeated by Pandora, it needed something to serve in place of its core—an archangel. The voice in my head told me to bring it a powerful angel and to kill the beast and the world.”
“And that’s Sasha?!”
“She’s just the only person I know who can summon an archangel.”
“And why’s the thing gotta also destroy the world?! Pandora’s long gone! The Supreme God killed him eons ago! Doesn’t that mean the Executioner’s done its duty?!”
“It’s the goddess Yana.”
“Yana?”
“That’s right. The goddess’s corpse was supposedly used to create the Executioners. Her dying wish—her hatred—has turned into a curse that’s made the Executioners into the world’s destroyers. Though their original target was Pandora, it’s since also become the world itself.”
“Tsk.” I couldn’t help but sharply cluck my tongue.
I could get Yana’s mortification at being used as a sacrifice by her own lover, but blaming that on the whole world was completely off the mark. She should have limited her grudge to just that bastard of a Supreme God. She’d involved everyone who was only trying to survive in the world in her revenge.