Now, the only path left was to accept my own death and keep moving forward anyway.
I was a monster who used the labels of “madman” and “savior” as shields, justifications for self-preservation. Part of me believed I had to accept whatever atonement and punishment came with that.
Joanne scoffed. “Fine. I’ll just keep trying to convince you.”
I’d thought we understood each other. In the end, this girl was still utterly insane. That realization hollowed me out with a fierce sense of futility, an empty exhaustion, and then crushed me beneath a heat like my whole body had caught fire with frustration.
So, I’ve got another enemy now? Joanne, who knows everything about me, turning into the leader of a third faction? N-No. I can’t. I’ll lose it…
Her proposal echoed in my skull.
If we just killed every last Kennethian and heretic, there’d be no threats left in this country. And on top of that, by some unknown method, I’d be freed from this short-lived body and get to spend eternity with my beloved Joanne.
Slowly, that image, so overflowing with bliss, floated up before my mind’s eye. The instant I so much as glanced at it, I felt Joanne’s consciousness seep into my own, like my very sense of self was being devoured.
My heart, stripped bare, was scraped away by a rough, red tongue.
I can’t let myself imagine that future.
The number of people who’d die was too different, on a scale that broke the mind. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives, all snuffed out for the sake of one girl’s deranged love.
I could never allow that.
“Well, see you later, then.”
Her voice carried a note of regret as she crossed in front of me, head slightly bowed, heading for the door. She laid her hand on the knob and started to twist it—
And I caught her sleeve and pulled her back.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “Let’s destroy the Orthodoxy together.”
It was far too blatant, an obvious, brazen lie.
Her big eyes went wider still. She cupped my cheeks in both hands and forced me to face her directly.
“You mean that?”
“Yes. I do.”
Her grip was strong. So strong it felt like she might crack my molars, her fingers digging into my jaw as she stared straight into my eyes.
She absolutely knew it was a lie.
But Joanne didn’t call me out on it. That, too, was already factored into her thinking. Because she loved me so completely, she couldn’t bring herself to discard the possibility that I might actually mean it, that I might really lend her my strength.
No doubt it was my old indecisive, half-hearted nature that pushed her toward that choice. And just as I’d expected, her expression shifted from a brief, overcast gloom to a brilliant, cloudless smile.
“Ahh, I knew you’d understand. Thank you, Oakley… I love you.”
When I wrapped my arms around Joanne’s slender body, I could feel the tension melting out of her back, flowing away bit by bit.
She nibbled gently at my ear. The image of the earlobe sealed inside her pendant flashed through my mind, and at the same time, her tongue slipped into my ear canal.
“No running.”
Her voice was cold as ice, a chill that seeped straight into the bone. Along with it, a boiling, pitch-black mass of love and heat poured into me.
Then it hit me. I finally understood the true reason behind the unease I’d been feeling from Joanne all this time.
It wasn’t because we suddenly saw eye to eye or because it had become easy to get along with her.
It was the mad ambition coiled deep inside her, the thing born from the fusion of our two minds. A monster that far outstripped anything I had imagined.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re suffering because this cult came into being in the first place. At the very least, I swear I’ll wipe the Aros Temple Cult off the map. On that point, I want you to trust me.”
She was right. On that point, I could trust the current Joanne.
It’s just everything else I can’t trust at all.
I let my body go slack and surrendered myself to her.
After the chaos following Fuankilo’s death finally settled down, it was officially decided that I would be transferred to the Northeastern Branch.
On paper, it was for training. Apparently, this was the first time in the cult’s history that someone born from a gestation sac was being considered as an executive candidate. I now carried all of Aros’s expectations squarely on my shoulders.
Before a long expedition, there was, of course, one thing that had to be done: putting back the organs I’d swapped with Joanne.
“Hey, you there! Mind giving me a hand?” I asked.
“Who? Um… me?”
“Yeah, you. I want to run a little experiment.”
“Okaaay…”
I grabbed a gray-haired woman who happened to be nearby and roped her into helping with the organ swap. In the end, the two of us could have done it alone just fine, so all she really did was stand there, watching, face drained of blood.
“Funny, once it’s over, there’s hardly any blood at all,” she said.
“Don’t lie. I was absolutely on the verge of death.”
Thanks to the handy convenience of healing magic, the whole procedure took about an hour. We didn’t lose that much blood either, so after being out of commission for a day, I was back on my feet with full mobility.
Humans really are creatures of habit and learning.
A few days later, we set out for the Northeastern Branch.
“The thought of you getting even stronger sends a chill down my spine,” Pawk said, offering what had to be one of the rudest farewell comments I’d ever received.
And with that, we headed for the frozen lands.
The ones remaining in the holy land Metasim would be just two people: Aros and Pawk. Shadik had already been reassigned to another branch. My companions on the journey to the Northeastern Branch were Joanne and Celestia.
In name, Joanne was coming along to keep an eye on me, the next executive candidate, and to keep Stella in check. Celestia, for her part, was supposed to inspect the Northeastern Branch and then undergo some combat training.
That made it a pretty major operation; two executives relocating at once. On top of that, we had a few more who wanted to tag along.
Some believers who claimed to be “deeply moved” by my achievements, of all things, had volunteered to accompany us to the Northeastern Branch. I wanted to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” but… if I looked at my record objectively, it was annoyingly impressive.
Thanks to the incident with Steve, who’d been Pawk’s puppet, I’d sworn never to truly open my heart to anyone again.
And so, with that resolve firmly in place, we were all loaded into a carriage and began our journey to the Northeastern Branch.
It would take more than a week of travel, which would take us through the old castle stronghold.
Among the executives, Celestia had one of the fastest means of travel. She simply flew through the sky and disappeared ahead of us, making straight for the Northeastern Branch.
Joanne, who could effectively perform long-distance travel by throwing her own severed head, had still decided to sit in the same carriage as me and endure the long ride. She clung to my arm and didn’t say a word.
As if the scene from a few days ago had been a lie, she was now utterly, eerily quiet.
We shared the carriage with two other believers: the blond man with a buzzcut and a plain, taciturn man. I was only familiar with the former.
Not that I liked him. From the very first time we’d met, he’d left a bad taste in my mouth. That fixed, pasted-on smile of his was just too disturbing. We weren’t on chatting terms, and the silence between us was suffocating.
Joanne kept her arms coiled around mine, staring steadily at the other two. The air in the carriage was so crushingly awkward that the thought of spending an entire week like this made my stomach hurt.
I tore my gaze away from the atmosphere inside and turned to the scenery outside instead.
Beyond the jagged peaks rising in the distance, somewhere on the far side of those mountains, lay the infamous Northeastern Branch.
Far to the north, where the Northeastern Branch was located, stretched an expanse of frozen land, a barren icefield known as the Anecumene.
Because of that, the Northeastern Branch’s base had been built inside an underground cavern to escape the cold. Its scale was small compared to the old castle stronghold or the holy land Metasim, both in facilities and manpower.
The believers stationed at the Northeastern Branch were the very picture of a small, elite force. Tough youths hardened enough to survive the harsh climate, mercenaries from foreign countries, former orthodox regular soldiers. Measured by normal civilian standards, they all possessed top-tier combat ability. Getting tossed into the middle of that might be good experience for me, I figured.
Hours passed as I stared out the window.
The road our carriage followed was a special route the cult used to avoid Orthodoxy patrols. It wasn’t properly maintained at all. We were just barreling straight through raw, untouched wilderness.
On the way, we passed along sheer cliff faces, forked rivers, and jolted across fallen trees laid over fissures in the earth like crude bridges. Any old supply stations along the route had long since been swallowed up by nature.
“W-Whoa, what a view…” the blond man muttered as he gazed outside.
Joanne immediately clicked her tongue in irritation.
The plain man turned pale, and even the blond slapped a hand over his mouth, trembling at the oppressive mood.
The tension inside the carriage was so horrible that I couldn’t take it anymore. I seized on the monk’s comment as an opening and forced myself to speak.
“H-Hey, you there. While Stella-sama’s been away, there should’ve been someone managing the Northeastern Branch in her place. Do you know who?”
Officially, the head of the Northeastern Branch was Stella. But while she was away, someone had to be acting as her stand-in.
Maybe he was surprised I’d engaged him in conversation, because the monk stumbled over his words as he answered.
“T-The one acting as Northeastern Branch Chief is Whip Funny Task-sama, sir.”
Whip Funny Task… Never heard that name before.
Maybe she’d done something in the original game, but if I couldn’t even recall her, it couldn’t have been much.