The Escort Knight Who Is Obsessed by the Villainess Wants to Escape - Chapter 168

I didn’t want to accompany Barak in his naked state.

I looked around, trying to find something to cover his body.

We found a man squirming on the floor.

He was wearing tattered clothes.

I didn’t know who he was.

However, unlike Barak, he had lost all sense of self.

He was crawling on the floor, staring vacantly at the sky with his mouth hanging open.

He didn’t even look at me, nor did he respond when I called out to him.

He just made strange groans, “Ah, ah.”

“Why is this person like this?”

Barak sighed as if troubled and then explained.

“He’s a broken soul. The longer one stays here, or the more one clings to certain memories or desires, the more the soul loses its sense of self. Just like I did. Unlike me, who still had a bit of self-awareness, this person seems to have completely lost it.”

“Could it be that Miss Eliza could end up like this too?”

“…It’s a difficult thing to guarantee.”

Eliza hadn’t been here long.

However, the chance of becoming consumed by certain emotions or memories isn’t small.

Just as Barak had lost his sense of self due to his regrets and guilt, Eliza might undergo a similar process.

The destruction of the soul isn’t just bound by time.

It’s possible to break down in a short period of time.

‘I need to find it quickly… but where should I go…’

Barak stripped his clothes of the man.

The man did not resist when touched or flipped over, nor did he fight back as his clothes were taken away.

He simply lay weakly on the ground, gazing up at the sky.

Barak wore the man’s clothes.

They were shabby and unremarkable, but better than being naked.

Barak said a short prayer for the man.

It felt strange to watch that.

Uncomfortable.

Every time I saw a trace of humanity left in the person who had abandoned Eliza, an uncomfortable feeling grew inside me.

That was why I kept looking at the sky.

“Let’s go.”

“Right, but where should we go from here…?”

We needed at least a minimal clue to move forward.

I asked Barak, “How did you find the children?”

“I wandered around aimlessly after coming here and happened to find them. It might be fate that I saw it in such a vast place. After that, I wandered around in a daze, and eventually ended up tied up at that rocky mountain. Until you came, I wasn’t in my right mind.”

In the end, Barak didn’t know this place’s geography or its paths either.

We had no choice but to pick a direction and keep moving straight.

“Let’s go this way first… Huh?”

I was pointing in a direction when my eyes went wide.

A woman with black hair.

She was standing there, far in the distance.

So far away she looked like a dot.

It was like a mirage in the desert.

“Can you see that over there?”

“Where… What are you talking about?”

Barak looked in the same direction I was pointing.

He squinted as if trying to see more clearly.

“I don’t see anything…”

“Can’t you see the woman there?”

“No matter how much I look, I don’t see anyone… Are you alright?”

A sudden worry crept up in me.

Being alive and coming to this place, my soul might already be affected.

‘Is that why I’m seeing things?’

The woman was standing still, looking in our direction.

Her still waiting figure seemed to beckon us forward.

She had been like this when we first arrived here too.

And following her, I met Barak.

This time wouldn’t be any different.

‘Honestly, whether I follow her or not, it doesn’t matter since we don’t have anywhere else to go.’

It’s better to have at least a clue.

Even if it’s just a mirage.

Even if my mind is already breaking down, I can’t go back.

I’ll stay here until I find Eliza.

“Let’s follow her for now. Thanks to following that person, I was able to find you, Barak.”

“Alright, I’ll follow your lead.”

Perhaps he too felt there were no other good options, as he agreed with my words.

Barak and I followed the woman.

She kept a delicate distance.

Close enough to recognize her, but too far to make out her details.

We kept walking steadily.

While walking briskly, I asked him something I was curious about.

“Earlier, you mentioned that if you become obsessed with a certain memory or desire, you lose your sense of self. What exactly does that mean?”

I wasn’t dead, and I didn’t know much about this world.

On the other hand, Barak seemed to know quite a bit.

I didn’t particularly want to have a conversation with him.

But to save Eliza, I needed to gather as much information as I could.

Barak fell silent for a moment, as if organizing his thoughts, and then spoke.

“I died and came here. But right now, I don’t feel ‘dead.’ I still see, hear, and speak normally. So, what constitutes this ‘I’?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“It’s memories. The memories of who I was, the memories that tell me why I am me.”

Barak glanced briefly into the distance.

“To have that memory, and to be aware of it, means that I can exist as myself. But too much time blurs the memory. Then, I would become like that man, the owner of this garment.”

“……”

“To bury yourself in just one memory or wish means to sever that very ‘memory.’ For example, let’s say you remove your life and leave only the memory before meeting Eliza, and then return to the present. Would you still be yourself?”

I was silent.

“It was just a casual question thrown out because I needed information, but the answer feels so heavy…”

But the atmosphere was quite serious, and I, too, started to think deeply.

Who am I?

What constitutes me?

How childish, but the thought of Eliza crossed my mind.

The question Eliza asked me.

Whether he was real or fake.

I believed, assumed, and answered that I was undoubtedly real.

And Eliza, relying on my answer, said she was real and embraced me.

In that moment, I truly was just myself.

“But that alone, I suppose, is not enough to make up who I am.”

The things that happened with Eliza.

The things I experienced as a guard and a candidate.

Only by including everything, including my past life, can I truly become myself.

I remembered the words spoken by the god who sent me here.

The continuity of existence.

Was that what it meant?

“Focusing on just one thing causes you to lose the rest of it.”

Noticing that I had fallen silent while thinking, Barak was quiet for a long time.

After a while, he spoke again.

“If you cling to just one thing and are swayed by it, the other memories blur, and you lose your sense of self.”

“And if you lose all your sense of self… what happens then?”

“…That’s.”

Barak briefly looked up at the sky.

A pitch-black night sky.

The darkness was much deeper than the night seen from the ground, and the starlight was bright.

“I don’t know that either.”

“You don’t know everything, then.”

“What I just told you wasn’t something I originally knew. It’s just… when I came here, I naturally came to know it. But strangely, I don’t know what happens after that.”

Just like a living person doesn’t know what happens after death.

After adding that, Barak fell silent again.

I had gathered enough of the information I needed.

“What could Eliza be doing right now?”

Could she be buried in something, obsessing over it?

Or is she just walking around fine?

I would prefer the latter.

It would be problematic if she lost her sense of self before I found her.

After that, we didn’t speak at all.

We just silently followed the woman.

At first, I thought she was Eliza.

But as I followed her, I realized she wasn’t.

Then, who could she be?

“Could it be… that person?”

Just as I was about to recall who it was, the woman vanished.

I wasn’t surprised.

At the moment she disappeared, we had arrived at a certain place.

Eliza was nowhere to be seen.

Still, I was certain that Eliza was here.

***

An endlessly wide field.

A sea of green.

The scenery resembled a meadow that Judas had once seen with Eliza while riding Yuel.

In the center, clusters of red flowers bloomed in full, forming a circle.

Fully bloomed flowers.

Anemones.

The same flowers that bloomed in Eliza’s garden.

The anemones blooming only in the middle of the endless field weren’t that large in scale.

And there, there were a few people I hadn’t expected or sought to find.

“The head of the household is my position… I must take responsibility for the Bevel family by following my father’s footsteps… I can’t pass it on to someone like you, who’s lucky enough to inherit a mage’s power…”

Cain.

“Why should we give way? There are plenty of siblings, and the head of the family has already been decided, but how did someone like that come into being…”

Levi.

“I don’t even have enough to claim for myself, and you, a bastard born with the power of fire? This is absurd…”

Jezebel.

“You, a filthy bastard, actually don’t look too bad… I wonder how much more I can ruin that face of yours.”

Achan.

“This can’t be! Why did that person inherit our estate? Bevel isn’t something anyone can just take!”

Sarah.

Each of them was proud, miserly, greedy, impure, and angrily lost without direction.

They were five siblings, blindly immersed in their emotions.

The father, who had been negligent in caring for the family, stared at them vacantly.

Next to him, Judas didn’t have the time to wonder whether a living person could kill the dead again.

There was no room for such thoughts.

The five were standing around the anemone garden, extending their arms toward the sky, swinging them like zombies.

Above them.

In the middle of this vast field, in the sky.

A black sun hung.

The small orb sparkled with a mysterious black light.

It seemed to shine, yet it didn’t seem to shine at all—an otherworldly color.

It was too high for a person to reach, yet not quite in space, hovering in an empty sky.

“Judas was certain as he gazed at the black sun.

‘Eliza.’

Over there, Eliza is there.

‘I found her.’

That is Eliza herself.”