WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 78

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Beginning

The most interesting part of Niserath's story wasn't that he'd failed to ascend, and it wasn't that he'd driven off the demon with wild boars.

What really caught Elbridge's attention was that Niserath had gotten three chances at ascension.

With so many gods in heaven, it was easy to overlook, but being chosen by the Chief God wasn't an opportunity that came around often.

"Niserath. Just how loud a life did you live?"

"Not loud so much as long. There aren't many elves older than me, even among elves."

"Really?"

"I've met plenty of gods from before they ascended. Come to think of it... I even met the Goddess of the Rusted Shield before she ascended."

An intriguing thread had just dropped into the conversation.

It happened to be early morning right now, the hour when the Goddess of the Rusted Shield would be asleep.

Elbridge lowered his voice and asked, "...By any chance, what kind of person was she?"

Even as he asked, Elbridge assumed Niserath wouldn't answer.

Most of the time, when it came to heaven or divinity, people brushed the topic off, saying they couldn't talk about it.

But Niserath was the first exception Elbridge had ever met.

"Scaldrina the Unyielding. She was famous."

"...!"

Beings on the ground were expected to give up their names when they ascended, so few gods had names from their mortal days that were still known. Naturally, this was also the first time Elbridge had ever heard the goddess's real name.

That wasn't even the end of it. Niserath kept talking, the way someone might pass along news about a neighbor.

"Back in those days, the paladin people loved most was definitely Scaldrina."

"Really? Sounds like she must've been the strongest paladin."

"Sure, her skill was good too. Not sure if she was the strongest, though... But the reason Scaldrina was loved wasn't her skill. It was her personality. Sharp looking on the outside, but soft-hearted and indecisive underneath. Oh, wait, your goddess isn't listening right now, is she?"

Even knowing there was no one around, Elbridge lowered his voice.

"Don't worry. This is her sleeping hour right now. Anyway, why would that be a reason people loved her?"

"Because in situations where an ordinary knight should have retreated, she often held her ground instead."

The higher-ups of every church didn't think highly of a knight who was slow to make tactical calls, or who couldn't stay cold-blooded.

But seen through the eyes of the people standing behind that paladin, the story changed.

Holding the line when retreat was the sensible choice meant saving people who should have died. It meant the person being protected had the best odds of surviving.

"Anyway, you can tell the moment you look at someone whether they're going to become a god. I knew it the first time I saw Scaldrina too. Ah, that one's going to ascend... And sure enough, it turned out just like I figured. Not long after, I heard she ascended together with a friend of hers."

Niserath's story had been so unconventional that Elbridge only belatedly grew worried.

"Niserath. Are you allowed to tell me something like that? Passing down stories of heaven to the ground is forbidden, isn't it?"

"This isn't a story about heaven. I'm a being of the ground, telling you a ground-side story about someone who used to belong to the ground. How could I possibly leak information about heaven when I've never even properly set foot there myself?"

This was an enormous opportunity. Niserath remembered events from a distant past that wasn't even preserved in legend, and he was willing to share them.

There was a mountain of things Elbridge wanted to ask.

But right now, the person coming to Elbridge's mind was the Master of the Central Magic Tower.

Hadn't the Master of the Central Magic Tower telling him to head south, to the Lake of Eternity, been a move that took Niserath into account too? Hadn't they thought Niserath might be able to tell him about Leonhardt?

Even if it turned out to be a wrong guess, it didn't matter.

Elbridge figured Niserath probably wasn't unfamiliar with Leonhardt.

"Do you know Sir Leonhardt too?"

"Leonhardt of the Order of the Rusted Shield? We only talked once or twice, at most. Come to think of it..."

Niserath stared straight at Elbridge.

"You must be the one Leonhardt was talking about. The one who could have ascended but didn't. Now I get why he put it that way. You're someone who could rise to heaven."

"Me?"

"I told you earlier. You can tell the moment you look at someone whether they're going to become a god. You'll get your chance to ascend someday. If not this life, then the next."

Niserath's words sounded less like a guess and more like a certainty.

Elbridge's heart pounded hard.

Me, becoming a god of heaven?

"Of course, not right now. The door to heaven keeps getting narrower, so you'll need even greater skill and more achievements piled up. You're not satisfied with your current skill already, are you?"

"...Of course not."

Lately, since the other paladins had fallen so far behind, he'd had little reason to notice, but Elbridge himself knew better than anyone how far he still had to go.

Even setting his age aside, Elbridge was a skilled fighter, but not someone who could be called the very best. At least, not by the standards of that era.

Niserath rummaged through his pocket as he spoke.

"Heroes always face hardship. Elbridge. When the hardest moment comes, when you need help badly, ask me for it. We'll be useful to each other. You'll get through the crisis, and I'll get my fourth chance at heaven."

What Niserath pulled from his pocket was a silver coin engraved with his own profile.

It was almost certainly an object carrying magical power.

'Where would something like this even get made...'

Elbridge took the coin and asked, "Was becoming a god your goal too?"

"That's right. I'll become the god of the mixed-blood and the half-breeds. The god of the discarded, the ones caught in the cracks."

Elbridge had already guessed Niserath was mixed-blood. Pure-blooded elves rarely left the northern forests.

Then Niserath asked Elbridge, "By the way, why is the thing that was sealed with the Archdemon wandering around now?"

"The seal broke around this time last year."

"Who broke the seal?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if someone broke it, or if it came undone on its own."

Niserath's brow furrowed.

"No. If a living being was used as the seal's core, then a seal only breaks for one of two reasons. First, when you give up everything and meet your death. Second, when someone breaks the seal. There's no third option."

Information he hadn't known came out of nowhere. Elbridge's eyes went wide, and Niserath's expression grew a little more troubled.

"Is this the first time you're hearing this?"

"Yeah."

"Elbridge. This is something you'd naturally find out if you'd gone looking for a decent mage. The fact that you didn't know this means... you never even tried to find out who broke your seal."

That was true, undeniably. Elbridge had only wondered briefly why the seal had broken. He'd never once tried to find out the reason he'd been freed.

Elbridge answered in a voice that had shrunk a little.

"I was busy with one thing and another. The church situation was unstable too. And it wasn't really a time when I could reveal who I was without worry, either..."

"No. That's not it."

Niserath cut him off.

"You're not a fool. The moment you were freed from your seal, you would have wanted to know why, before anything else. There's exactly one reason you haven't looked into it until now."

"...What is it?"

"You just settled into being satisfied with your current situation, now that you're free from the seal. You didn't want to think about why you'd been freed. Isn't that right?"

Elbridge's chest dropped.

Like a child caught misbehaving by an adult.

When Elbridge fell silent, Niserath gestured to the wild boar.

The wild boar carrying Elbridge crouched down and let him off onto the ground, naturally.

Niserath said one last thing.

"Call if you need help. Elbridge."

By the time Elbridge got back to the village, the wild boars had already vanished without a trace.

Rombel and Marcus were both awake, and Masa, the village chief, had already finished preparing to guide Elbridge's group onward. She'd even packed lunch boxes for the three of them, her hands full.

"Follow me!"

Even though they'd only stayed in the village a day or two, Marcus had gotten strangely close to Masa.

While the two of them chattered away happily, Rombel walked up to Elbridge.

"Where'd you go this morning?"

"Nowhere. Just went out for some fresh air."

That was his answer, but all sorts of thoughts were spinning through Elbridge's head.

Really, had he settled into being satisfied with his current situation?

It was hard to deny.

The waiting had been agonizing, not knowing when it would end, or whether it would ever end at all.

He'd lost count of how many times he'd regretted volunteering to be the seal's core in the first place. He'd only endured it because he lacked the courage to give up.

Given all that, the bewilderment he'd felt on the day the seal broke had lasted only a moment.

Deep down, he'd been glad for the goddess's oracle, telling him he'd done enough, that she wanted him to rest now.

He'd said with his mouth that he wouldn't look away from his duty, that he would rebuild the church. But in truth, that was the surest form of avoidance there was.

Wasn't it, in effect, a declaration that he'd look away from the big problem and only take care of the church?

He hadn't tried to face the problems bearing down on the world.

He hadn't tried to touch anything that might turn into a headache.

He hadn't seriously wrestled with a solution.

He'd just claimed he was busy, that there was so much to do for the goddess and the church, and used that excuse to savor the life he'd gotten back.

His chest felt tight. But strangely, his mind had cleared.

Elbridge offered a prayer.

"Goddess."

- I'm listening. Elbridge.

"I think I'm about to get even busier."

- Haven't you been busy all along? I've never once seen you resting easy. Did something happen?

"Seeing and experiencing all sorts of things in the Great Forest gave me a lot to think about. I realized there's a mountain of things I need to do."

- You're already doing well, so don't push yourself too hard. A person is like a bowstring. Pull it too tight, and something's bound to snap.

"I'll take your words to heart, Goddess."

But contrary to what the goddess said, Elbridge considered the past year to have been a period of rest.

Now was the time to draw the bowstring taut.

The church's situation had settled down some. It was time to move past the immediate problems and step toward something more fundamental.

"We're here!"

Half a day after following Masa, the Great Forest gave way, and a wide-open grassland spread out before the group's eyes.

Masa hugged Marcus tight, then waved at Elbridge's group.

"Come visit if you ever have business down south! Especially you, Marcus, you have to come!"

Masa brought both hands to her mouth and blew a kiss toward the departing Marcus.

Marcus grinned goofily back and waved at Masa.

"I'll make my fortune and come get you, so just wait a little while!"

Clearly, a great deal had happened between the two of them in a short span of time.

"..."

Odd as it was how well the two of them suited each other, Elbridge and Rombel found the whole scene a little irritating.

"Let's see."

Marcus used the sun's position to figure out their direction.

Their destination was, naturally, eastern Solenion.

"That way. Let's go."

But Elbridge didn't follow after Marcus.

"No. There's somewhere I need to stop by first."

"Somewhere to stop by? You mean passing through the mountain city? Or Middlemarch?"

Elbridge shook his head.

"The place where I was sealed for two hundred years."

The rest was over.

The one saving grace was that he hadn't spent the past year doing nothing but play.

A modest amount of influence.

Companions he could trust.

And the strength to survive a fight.

That much, at least, counted as minimal preparation.

The time had come to dig into every problem from the root.

In the end, every answer had to lie in one place.

"First, I'm going to find out who broke the Archdemon's seal."

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