Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 20: The Strongest Onmyoji Digs A Grave
The next day.
I walked through the still deserted city in the early morning.
I continued the investigation of the bodies that hadn’t been completed yesterday.
However, it wasn’t yet the time for the city gates to open. When I reached the city walls, I stopped and exchanged glances with the scenery outside the city.
“…Huh.”
In the expanse before me lay a plain filled with corpses.
And there, there was a single figure.
“Amiyu…”
Whether my voice reached her or not, Amiyu lifted her face and looked at me.
“Oh, Seika.”
“…What are you doing? This early in the morning.”
Returning her gaze to the ground, Amiyu once again plunged the shovel into the earth before saying
“Can’t you see? I’m digging a hole.”
Then, as if offering an explanation, she added
“I have to bury these people, don’t I?”
Saying that, Amiyu glanced briefly at the lined-up corpses.
The bodies of the former undead soldiers, now free from the venom, showed little damage, peacefully displaying their final expressions.
I couldn’t tell when she had started. The ground around Amu’s feet had already been extensively dug up.
I hesitated and spoke
“You don’t really have to do that…”
Everything could be turned to ashes.
That’s how it had been done in the city until now.
However, Amiyu continued without stopping her hands, responding
“I don’t have to, but it’s fine if I do. The ground around here got all messed up when you went up against that Battle Princess, right?”
The location was exactly where that female knight had dropped the meteorite.
While I had dispelled the magic rock, the ground had been thoroughly disturbed and left in disarray.
“So, I thought it might be fitting… Being killed, turned into soldiers, and then burned again after dying once, that’s just too much.”
“…”
In this country, there was a tradition of burying the dead in the ground.
While it had a religious aspect, it wasn’t like Christianity or Islam, with a belief in resurrection after death. It seemed to be a simple notion passed down from a basic view of nature, that the deceased should return to the earth.
Cremation wasn’t entirely unheard of either.
However, even so… feeling pity for their fate was a natural sentiment in this country.
Amiyu continued without stopping her hands, saying
“I’m not asking you to help or anything. I’m just doing it on my own.”
“…”
For a while, I silently watched Amu digging the soil… Eventually, I walked towards the edge of the unusually wide hole, took out a shovel from the phase and thrust it into the ground without uttering a word.
“…”
Even as Amiyu observed me starting to dig the hole, she remained silent.
There were no words, just the sound of the two people digging a grave echoing across the morning plains.
“…How did you leave the town? The city gate wasn’t open, right?”
As I continued moving my hands, I asked, and Amiyu answered without meeting my gaze.
“There was a tall tree, so I jumped from there onto the wall.”
“Haha, well done.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
It was so typical of Amiyu.
“Hey.”
After a moment of silence, this time Amiyu started the conversation.
“Hmm?”
“Necromancers… They control the souls of the deceased by placing them in corpses, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I wonder, did the people who were controlled like that feel or think anything?”
“…”
“I wonder about myself too.”
Amiyu fell silent for a moment.
“I, too, defeated some of the remaining ones in the town attacked by the undead soldiers. At that time, I thought it was unforgivable to do such a thing… But I wonder, did the people I cut down also think, ‘Why do we have to go through this?’ Did they feel scared or in pain?”
Amiyu had stopped her hands without me noticing.
Still avoiding eye contact with me, she asked
“Hey, Seika… if anyone could understand, would it be you?”
I hesitated for a brief moment, then responded.
“Spirits… are often misunderstood, but they are not the actual hearts of the deceased.”
“…”
“A person’s heart doesn’t exist as a tangible thing. It’s a structure, a complex set of phenomena occurring in the mind. The overall structure is what constitutes a person’s heart.”
I sealed a chick in a glass jar and shook it vigorously.
Though nothing escaped from the glass jar, something precious was undeniably lost in the now disheveled chick.
That is the structure—the essence of the heart and the nature of life.
“Spirits are nothing more than remnants where that structure has imprinted itself on the world. Sometimes they may possess a consciousness close to the original person, but it can’t be considered truly them. Forcibly placing them in a corpse would likely further distort that. While there are various forms of necromancy… no matter the method used to resurrect a corpse, they never behave exactly like the living. So,”
I said, with a slight hesitation.
“The ones you defeated didn’t experience suffering.”
It was a deception.
The truth was unknown. Since I had never become an undead soldier myself, I couldn’t state anything with certainty.
Nevertheless, even so— for the sake of those currently alive, I had to say that.
“Hmm… that’s good to know.”
Amiyu’s response was brief.
She resumed moving her hands.
“…I might have been a bit naïve”
She muttered quietly, and I listened intently to her words.
“War is like this, huh?”
“…”
“People with such intentions, causing so much misery… I didn’t know.”
“…”
“I thought I could help those people for sure. Did you defeat all these? Even someone like you, who can do things like this, says it’s hopeless. I, who am just somewhat skilled with magic and a sword, couldn’t do anything. They called me a hero, summoned me to the imperial city… maybe I got too conceited. I…”
Amiyu continued to dig the soil vigorously, her expression seemingly unchanged, but there was a hint of dejection.
“You were right. I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this kind of thing.”
“…Not exactly.”
I found myself saying that without realizing it.
“The girl we rescued from the collapsing building would have died if we hadn’t intervened.”
“Hey, Seika.”
Amiyu thrust the shovel into the ground, turned to face me, and asked
“Can you bring dead people back to life?”
The young girl’s grass-green eyes pierced straight through me.
Reflexively, I lowered my gaze and answered with a hint of exasperation.
“I can’t do something like that.”
“When we were escaping from the imperial city… after I got on the carriage, I overheard you and Fiona talking a bit.”
Amiyu didn’t look away.
“I didn’t really understand it at the time, and I thought maybe I misunderstood… but in the audience chamber, didn’t the Emperor say there were no dead soldiers? It’s absurd. There were guards lined up on the walls, and with all that destruction, nobody died? You, restoring everything that was broken… when you restored things back then, was it really just objects?”
“…”
“If you wanted to… could you bring back everyone who died in this war?”
I, after a brief silence, shook my head.
“It’s impossible. That’s the truth.”
Bringing someone who has died once back to life is not feasible.
For the complete resurrection of the dead, one must negate the fact of their death altogether.
It’s a grand sorcery without a name, rewriting the records of the world. I can do that.”
However… as time passes from death, the records to be rewritten increase, and the difficulty rises exponentially.
Even I probably wouldn’t be able to go back even a single day.
Not only the countless innocent civilians who died in the war, but even the one wife I lost to illness in the past— I couldn’t bring her back to life.
And besides… even if it were possible, I probably wouldn’t do it.
“…Yeah. That’s right.”
“If you could do it, what would you do?”
I, in turn, questioned Amiyu.
“If you had the power to freely resurrect the dead… would you bring back all those who died in this conflict? Would you revive everyone who will unfortunately die from now on?”
Amiyu remained silent for a while.
But eventually… she shook her head.
“I thought about it for a bit, but… I might not.”
“Why not?”
“Sorry to put it this way, but I don’t have a reason to go that far… and I can’t take the responsibility.”
Amiyu spoke intermittently.
“If I could bring back many people, this country would surely undergo significant changes. It might be for the better, but there’s also a possibility that it could turn for the worse. Even if that happens, I wouldn’t know what to do… and not knowing scares me.”
“…”
“I think things like that are probably the domain of people like Fiona, the Emperor, and the Crown Prince. Those who have the determination and talent to change the world and the lives of many. If someone with the ability but without that determination, someone who would panic when the world changes, were to do something on their own… it wouldn’t be good, I feel.”
Amiyu continued, looking at me.
“When Stampede happened in Lakana, you were initially trying to get just the two of us out, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“At that time, I thought you were heartless! But now, I kind of understand what you were thinking. It could have turned into something really difficult. If you helped Lakana, then what? If they asked you to save this city, this country, this war next? If they said, ‘Take responsibility for the fate of our lives’… Sorry for making you face such a commitment.”
“…It’s not a big deal. It’s not something I regret, saving that city.”
“Really? But even if I were as strong as you, I think I would still only help the people around me.”
Then, Amiyu added quietly.
“As a supposed hero meant to save people, I might be disqualified…”
“No.”
I replied with a small smile.
“It’s very much like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you calling me heartless?”
“Being aware of your limits is different from being heartless.”
“Was I aware of my limits?”
“You are now. Maybe not so much before.”
“What? Is this some kind of backhanded compliment?”
“Not at all.”
Announcing with a smile.
“I’m saying that it’s characteristic of you to know the ways of the world and still intend to naturally help those close to you.”
This child is certainly not stupid.
There were some immature aspects, but I thought that eventually, they would come to understand that the world is not always about idealistic notions and pretty words.
If what remains after understanding is their true nature, then that’s the core of this child.
“…What’s that supposed to mean?”
Amiyu pouted and turned her face away.
While thrusting the shovel back into the soil, she muttered,
“You’re the same way, aren’t you?”